back to the future

I’m not always the best at being thankful for the place I’m at/in. It takes me awhile (okay: a really long while) to settle into a place. Then, by the time I’m finally settled & loving where I’m at, I’m usually moving somewhere else (and then pining for that place I just was.) On the other hand, I don’t really think about the future all that much. To be honest, I have a hard time imagining what the future might look like and envisioning myself in it in any concrete way. It’s always been this way for me.

Even since college, my life’s changed a lot. Before college, I planned to do outdoor rec; in college I somehow ended up majoring in advertising. Then I got involved in this crazy-awesome church (Valleybrook) & thought, for a couple years, that I was going to work with high school students, so I went and got my educational ministries degree at Wheaton. While at Wheaton, I took a creative writing course and realized that this mattered somehow & spoke to something fundamental about who I am. So I went to get an MFA. And somehow in the middle of all of this, I ended up spending several months each year for five years in Norway and Latvia—places that messed with me in such good ways. Basically, it’s been one change after another. There are a few common themes in my life: the outdoors, art, working with people, but one of the major tenants of my life has been unpredictability.

A couple years ago, I heard Rob Bell say “It’s not about being pushed forward by the past. It’s about being pulled into the future.” I don’t think he was talking about always looking for the next thing, but about having some bigger sense of what your life’s about and moving towards that. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I want to be the sort of person who’s fully alive and fully engaged in the present moment but I also want to be the sort of person who is being pulled forward by something big and compelling and beautiful. What this big and compelling and beautiful thing is & how to run towards it in the midst of an unpredictable life…I guess that’s the question for me these days.