These years between "adolecence" and "adulthood"

So this season of life, some people in the christian circles call it the "college and career" group or age, some might call us the "young adult" group.  People know us as "kids" who cannot commit to anything, or who don't know what we are doing with our lives. Either way this is who we are and where we are at. 

I have come to the conclusion in my own life that this time in life has been a season of seeing and figuring out ( discovering sounds to smart for me) who I am.  Much of this confusion and ....lack of direction... has been because I have been  learning, and ( ok fine) discovering who I am.  It has been a time of discovering things in life like, brokenness, things like death.  For me it has been a time of realizing that these things are no longer a childhood joke, that life is not a video game anymore that you can "reset" yourself if you die.  Realizing that people die, and that in the face of death,  literally in the reality of death, we as humans, don't really have much say in what happens.  People die, it is inevitable, some in their time, some way before their time.  I have discovered the reality of the brokenness we live in.  How this brokenness affects everything, everything we do and strive for.  

Much of the confusion and frustration in my life in the past couple of months has been because my eyes have been opened to some of the things that are  a reality in life.  And to be honest with you it has stopped me right in my tracks because some days I just can't sort all of this stuff out.....



I donno   

Identity

So for those of you who do not know I have been unemployed for over a month now, and continue to look for a job.  The other day I was walking around town stopping at places picking up applications, and it was by all means a beautiful day.  While I was walking, in this beautiful weather, I suddenly realized that I like wasn't even able to enjoy the weather because my mind was so focused on finding a job and the fact that I don't am not working. I began to realize that I feel like I have been way to overly focused on getting a job and all that comes with that.

I began thinking about all the people out there without jobs, and was just thinking about like how easy it would be to get really depressed over not having a job, I mean just the process of looking wears you down, let lone the fact of knowing you still need to get one.  I wonder how many unemployed people there are out there who are struggling with the burden of finding a job, and because of that are struggling with serious depression.  


Why does a stupid job lead to this?....I am blown away by the thought.....How does this happen?

I mean you can totally disagree with me I don't care.  


The reason is we find Identity in our jobs. I mean you can tell me if I am wrong but there is truth to that either way.

Jobs give us status, they show that we have money, they give us money to get what we want, they show other we are capable and competent.  Jobs ( maybe without us thinking about it) say that we are achieving the American Dream.... am I right... maybe I pulling to much out of this, tell me if I am. 

We find some kind of Identity in our jobs.

Sooo these things always come back to Jesus for some reason. I have been thinking lately about the passage in Luke where Jesus tells the people.... Ill just quotes it...

Luke 9:23-24
"Then He said to them all,"If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it."

AKA: sacrifice the things you find Identity  

CRAP    What have I been striving to find Identity in? A job, a relationship, clothing, music style, how much money I have, what I am doing with my life? CRAP 

I mean this is where good "Bloggers" come out with a real smart conclusion and something that makes us all sit and think for a minute....     Sorry but I don't have that this morning.

Honestly I don't know what to think. I feel the pressure of Culture telling me to strive for certain things, and I also know that those things will never amount to anything.  I feel the burden of needing a job and feeling almost overwhelmed by the process.  

I am not strong enough to shake this off on my own....

..A Morning Walk....

So it has been... a while since I have written on here.  I have much to explain, and tell of what God has done and is doing. But I decided to just post something i wrote in my journal this morning after walking around Norristown. Walk with me won't you?  


Thursday September 8, 2011
Thanks to the suggestion of a friend I went on a prayer walk this morning.  In all honesty, though, I really mostly just thought about things.  I thought about brokenness alot.  LORD how brokenness like floods humanity, how you know it fills every home and every life and yet we do our best to hide it, to look like we have everything together. I donno I want to like, scream, because I see this and know that there has to be more.  My heart, my body,...my soul knows within me that this is not how it was meant to be and it just makes me want to scream.  I was thinking about why some people are more impoverished than others.  Like why is half of the world starving while in our country we have fancy restaurants where we eat fancy cheese cake? But,...aren't we all really living in poverty?  So maybe those countries around the world have less food and money, but what about Americans living in emotional poverty, living in"communal poverty"......relational poverty.  LORD what a mess.  I see this and honestly I'm frozen in my tracks because I don't know where to start, LORD, I don't know how to start. 

Africa

So me and some friends who are looking to start a community house have been talking about going to Africa for a couple months.  We are beginning to walk forward and looking to go sometime in December of this year.  

If you think of us keep us in your prayers


I will keep you updated on the process.  

Moving Along

 To say that everything has been perfect would be a blatant lie. But I can say that things have been getting better.  It seems that in the midst of me freaking out about every little detail in my life God slowly opens doors, sometimes without me even realizing it.  


Me and some friends are looking into going to Africa for a couple months, and there are some details that some of us are concerned about.  I feel like we could try to do everything in our power top make the details work out, but for some reason I still feel like things would go wrong. Why not just step out and trust God with the details(I feel like I have more faith in Him dealing with the details than with us dealing with he details)  I was reading through Hebrews 11 the other day, just reading all the people who did crazy things and it just say "in faith" they went and did this or "in faith" they left here.  Just thinking about how us kids stepping out in faith to go where God wants us is nothing new. This is something He has been calling people to do for some time now.

We fit right into the story.      

Surrender

..Hmmmm...

So I'm pretty sure that this week was one of the hardest weeks... mmm.. that I've had in a long time.  I think it is easy to say that I hit rock bottom.  To be honest with you, I told God that I was F***ing mad at Him more this week than...   ever.    I don't know how well you guys know me, but it is safe to say I hit rock bottom.


Going through last week really sucked, but to sit back and look back on it I can say that God made it, or let it happen for a reason.  I guess my fleshly tunnel vision is still around. Maybe last week was the catalyst to put me where I am at now, I don't know.  But I will be honest, I have this sense of peace right now that I can't even describe.  Yea I still don't know what is going on, I don't know where God wants me, but I know it's gonna be ok . 


And I'm almost gonna cry just typing that.     




Thanks for all your prayers, even the ones I don't know about


... Let the Story continue, for we know it must......

...The Story Continues..

Sorry for not posting lately, my excuses are lame, you don't want to hear them.  

Yo for some reason I really enjoy the song, For The First Time: by The Script  ??

I have felt in that past couple of days that is seems I have been very focused on getting, and finding, a routine for the everyday grind of life( if that makes sense).  I feel like I may have been really focused on that and I felt like that was really bad.  But as I am sitting here writing this, I kinda feel that that is not true. It doesn't really seem bad it actually seems kinda normal, right?  I feel alot better saying that.

But anyways. 

I have really feel like I need to be helping out with my old youth group.  So. I went the other night, and it was really awesome. I honestly felt like I was missing something not being around and encouraging kids, almost like I need to be doing that whether I want to or not. But it was really cool, there was one kid that totally recognized me and knew my name.  I knew he looked familiar but didn't know anything about him. So we talked for a good while which was, good.  I talked with my old youth pastor at the end of the night about helping out more. He told me he thought the whole "tone" of the night and of the kids was different because me and another guy my age were there......

.....yea sounds like my life... 

My boss really ticks me off sometimes.  You may think this is dumb, and maybe I'm only like this because I can be really anal about some stuff sometimes.. but..   So He will like tell me to do something and I will like start to do it or like um be in like the middle of doing it and he will just like tell me to do something else, or like pull me away to do something else. (kinda hard for me to explain it).  But I donno this really annoys me sometimes.  I don't know if it is because I like to like finish things before moving on or what.  But this morning we started working and I was kinda just thinking about this whole thing and like why I get so annoyed at it. And then for this moment( you know these moments) I was kinda just like, what does God want me to get out of this annoying situation?  I feel like even in this move that like I was pulled away from what I was doing and wasn't like able to finish.  And I was thinking that maybe He wants me to learn to get pulled out of things I'm doing and be ok with it. Because I feel like He is gonna do that again to me.   Not pulled out in a bad way either, but pulled out as in Him leading me somewhere. 



oh there is more .. I'm tired though


Love you guys


Godspeed

Come Away - Jesus Culture

Come away with me, Come away with me
It's never too late, it's not too late
It's not too late for you

I have a plan for you
I have a plan for you
It's gonna be wild
It's gonna be great
It's gonna be full of me

Open up your heart and let me in


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZoOfGiqZ7Y



This is kinda just a prayer that has been in my head for the past couple of days.  I hope that it will encourage you as much as it has encouraged me.



Love you, Godspeed

A Prayer Request

I was talking with a friend who told me to live in the moment. Lately it has been really hard for me because I really want to seek out where God wants me in the future, and see what He is going to do. If you think of me in your prayers, pray for me, that I would plug in right where God wants me, and live in the moment, where He has me for the moment. For some reason this is really hard for me right now.   





thanks   Love you guys



  Peace to you

With Relient K In The Backround

So my parents have very, very slow dial up internet.  This is the delay on posts, if any of you care...

So I donno about any of you, but this week flew by.  Work has been good, we have been putting down wood floor the past two days.  Construction totally beats up your body, by the end of the day I'm pretty beat.   

I feel like there are so many things I want to be involved with.  Like kids I want to be involved with, music things I want to be involved with.  I was in a conversation couple days back and this guy was telling me, more or less, to be open to what God wants me to do.  I was thinking about it the other day, and I was just like you know I really want to do all these things, but what if God doesn't want me to do them, and I don't mean this in a bad way.  As in the sence of He has other things, probably better things, He wants me to be invovled in.  So lately I have been praying that God would open my eyes to see the things He wants me to be involved in. 

The other day I was talking with a friend about my level of confidence.  For some reason sometimes my confidence level in myself totally drops. My friend was telling me that I have no reason to not have confidence. While driving to work yesterday I was thinking about it.  I was trying to think if there was something in my past that might push me towards thinking this way towards myself.  I was thinking about how everyone likes me, and if this has like subconsiously placed some standard on me, and now I like have to be like perfect?  I donno, all I know is that I'm only gonna find real and true confidence in God. 



Ok, I'll stop talking... 

Godspeed to you

Community House

So me and a couple of friends are thinking about starting a community house. And up until like this week we didn't think anything would become of it. We got talking to some people we really respect and kind of started praying more intentionally about it.  And wouldn't you know that by the end of the week a couple of things started coming together. I'm really excited to see what God is gonna do through a couple of college kids who have no idea what they are doing, except that they want to further the Kingdom of God. 


 So if you think of Us pray for us, that we might be able to hear the leading of the Spirit, and follow faithfully.

This and That

Despite what you might think, construction is in fact harder work than setting up skis for people.  It's hard to believe, I know, but it is true.  But anyways I'm am slowly getting back into the routine of working.  I got kinda lazy the last few weeks, mostly cause of the fact that i didn't work for like two weeks straight, but whatever you will have this. 

So I have been thinking about community houses, well, like a lot.  I am like super excited about being apart of starting one.  I feel like my experience of jumping in and out of some intentional communities has shown me how much I need, like really need, good community.  So i donno I'm really excited about that, but I'm trying to let God do the planing, and let me doing the sitting back and watching.  Easy right? Right. 


 Oh I was almost graced with the presence of like some really good friends of mine today.  They were like a half hour from me.  But they didn't even stay long, they just up and left real quick.  I hope you guys are overcome with guilt right about....now. Anyways I was really bummed about that, but whatever.   


that was my day today, exciting, I know

LORD bless you guys

A Continued Story

So the move back to my parents was uneventful. As I am faced with the reality of trying to settle in again I can't help but have way to many emotions swirling around in my head.  Coming back here I feel like I am  pushed back to my childhood, because of all the memories, and because most  everything is still... like the same.  Everything except for me.  I don't by any means mean this in a prideful way, but for real.  I cannot believe how much I have grow in the past few years.   In maturity, in knowledge, it is really crazy to sit back and see what God has done in my life, and also how He has continued to use my life to affect others lives.   

I was taking a walk down my road today and a neighbor kid, who I grew up with, was outside, so I stopped to talk.  I can't believe how much he has grown, and soon find he is now a freshman in high school.  Anyways, we talk for a while just about stuff, life, school, what to do after school, and just about growing up and how it is sad when kids go after meaningless things like drugs and such. Mind you I haven't talked with this kid in, i don't know, a while. So any ways we depart from each other and as he is heading inside i yell, "Yo I'll see you around", and he comes back with, "Yea I really like talking to you."  

Hahaha I don't know, I walked away from that just thanking God for who He has made me and that He has allowed me to speak truth into peoples live even when I don't realize I am doing it.  



Glory be give to God

The Drive

When you are driving away from people you really Love it's funny how slow 70 mph is. 

A Final Farewell

    To all of those who I leave in a few short days,
 Just so you know, I am going to miss you all as much as your going to miss me, I just don't show it.  It has been a wild ride and I am glad to have crossed paths with all of you.  To those who I have encouraged, continue seeking God, seek Him with all that you have.  Trust me when I say it may ruin your life, but it will be worth it all.  To those who have taught me, you may not know who you are, but I am eternally grateful for the example you have been for me. Continue in diligence and faithfulness with what God has called you to, for I know it is worth it in the end.  


And as a friend of mine put it, " This isn't goodbye, just see ya later."






Godspeed to you  

Philadelphia PA

This past weekend I traveled down to Philadelphia with the youth group I help out with.  We challenged the kids to see people in the city as Jesus would see them and not just as people who are "different" than them, or "weird". As I personally began to process this trip certain things came to my mind.

Sometimes I love to just sit and watch people. And I almost feel dumb saying this, but I feel like I have forgotten how many people there are in the world. Being in the city really brought me back to that reality. Living in Tioga county you can get caught up in the two neighbors you live next to. But being in the city, even just riding the train, I was hit with the reality of how many people are actually alive.  And every one of them has a story. Everyone has baggage. Everyone loves, and wants to be loved.   C. S. Lewis said it best,
    
       "You have never talked to a mere mortal. ... But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit —         immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."   






How easily I can forget. 








  

Reflections on this Life of mine

Have you ever had one of those experiences where a bunch of people are talking about your life and saying how much you have impacted people? Well hopefully I'm not the only one with those experiences. Anyways so the other night that happened to me. And I can't help but be super humbled. To hear people say," See how Shannon  live, let that be an example to you."  Wow, to hear that, almost brings tears to my eyes.  See I have tried to figure out why things like this have been said of me.  And, to be honest with you, I can't figure it out. The thing it brings me back to is God.  I feel like I cannot take any credit for the things said of my life.  Since the day of committing my life to the Father, He has never stopped touching people's live through mine. And I can only stand back, speechless, in Awe, and watch.



Glory be to the Father

Late Night Musings

Tonight I was watching the movie Saving Private Ryan. And I mean people die in war, and that is kind of normal.  But do you ever feel if we have become immune to death?  I mean we watch it on tv and movies like, like it is nothing. I can't help but watch movies like this, and sit back and ask how fragile is life?  How fragile is life?  How often do I take my life for granted?  

We can live for years, and love others, and work jobs, and raise kids, and invest in relationships, and it all can end in a moment.

Seagulls and Sojourners

So, most of you who know me know the landscape, and weather of my current location. To those of you who do not know of these things.  I live in up state PA, to most of you it would be considered the middle of nowhere.  Also, this winter is especially,.."wintery", meaning that there is a decent amount of snow on the ground.  Can you form a picture of what I am describing?

Anyways so the other day I am kind of rushing out the door to get to work.  I jump in my car and glance out the driver side window only to find three Seagulls riding the wind, like there is nothing new.  Now I don't about you, but I don't think that seagulls are native to northern PA..... in the middle of winter.

My "busy" life seemed to stop for a moment.  These birds seemed to remind me of someone who is in a foreign land, a pilgrim,... a sojourner. For that moment I felt a very strange connection between these birds, and myself.  I was reminded that I will keep seeking a home in this world.  But I will never know the truest sense of Home until I leave this earth.

True to the Narrative

Yo, ok. You ever have those times when some certain events happen and life seems to like slow down at that moment? And then afterwards you kinda get this "Oh Crap" kinda feeling?

So like the other day I finally, after putting it off for some time now, decided to call this guy about a job for after the big move, I was pretty sure it was gonna fall through. So anyways, I call him, and he is just like," Oh yea I could probably use us once it gets warm out." So I'm like super excited about this because God just keeps coming through in these situations where I don't see that anything is going to happen. Anyways, so I go to hang out with a friend, and she tells me about how her and some of my other friends have been devising to start a community house, and they haven't even told me until now( Actually they had only talked about it like a week ago).

So this is pretty sweet, I mean I have really prayed for people with like the same vision and direction as me for a long time.  But what does this mean for me? I really feel like I should be moving, but I would Love to be apart of something like starting a community house.  Should I forget about moving and pursue this community house gig, or move and maybe let it pass by?  ........ I'm pretty sure if you hear screams outside tonight it is just me letting out some frustration. .....

Anyways, so a guy I really love and look up to reminded me how like none of the people God uses in the Old Testament knew for sure the complete outcome or direction of where God was taking them.  They were just faithful to leave their homes, or build an Ark in their back yard.  .......  


That's what I want to be like....        

The Beginning

Tonight I had the song.... You know ... "Roxanne, you never gonna"... bla bla. I'm not really sure how the song goes.  Anyways, that song randomly was in my head in the middle of a Youth Group Leaders meeting.  I'm pretty sure it has been a wild ride getting to this very spot I am in. There have been a lot of twists and turns. Many belly wrenching laughs, as well as many heart aching tears.  But it is all worth it no doubt, and all will be worth it no doubt.

Those of you who know me, in this very moment, will know why this gig is called The Final Days.  To be honest a buddy, who we will call Thor, gave me the idea, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks Thor. Anyways... This is an invitation to join me in my last remaining days, as I seek to move where my Father in Heaven wants me.  I would greatly enjoy your company as I, or We, continue this adventure.