Restless leg syndrome

I can only imagine that one day, when I am moved to actually make this blog-o-rama public, that someone is going to read my angst about blogging and just want to yell at me..."For cryin' out loud, get over it dude....it's no big deal." Alas, every time I sit down to click the keyboard "it's" there again....Why are you doing this? You figure you actually have something to say? Go back to your fortress of solitude and journal.
Anyway, to any future reader, sorry for this opening theme in most of my posts but heh, I just can't seem to relax and let it flow. Maybe it isn't meant to be....
But there seems to be a dynamic to all this that draws me back...I just can't articulate it. Something about the way I think when there is a possibility of someone reading over my shoulder that stimulates thought in a manner different than the guaranteed confidentiality of a journal entry. Heh buddy, you're the one who has always valued transparency and being transparent requires another person looking in doesn't it? (If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a sound?)
OK, enough. This blogging angst moment brought to you by Caribou coffee, your neighborhood purveyor of black adrenaline.
So,life goes through these chapters and the chapters seem to fall into overall sections. By most anyone's measure, I'm certainly in a mature phase chronologically. I remember looking at people my present age when I was younger and thinking that I doubt much is happening in their life anymore...just in an extended wind down phase headed for that spiffy assisted living facility just down the street.
But no, that's not the way it is and I continue to wrestle with being this authentic person who lives out life in conformance with what I say I believe. And so it's like this, I get most of my heart back, get healing (or at least in process) for most of the wounds sustained earlier in life and awake once again to understanding that it is not about me. I, as a friend of Christ, (He said it so I claim it) am motivated by being somehow used in advancing the Kingdom of God. A lofty sounding goal if I've ever heard of one. But that is what makes sense to me, gives me overarching purpose to the daily grind of schlepping out the same ol',same ol'... of slugging out a living 5 days a week, making ends meet. I am an itinerant Kingdom advancer and I am getting quite restless. (The pharmaceutical companies would probably like me to be diagnosed with "restless leg syndrome", the latest disease invention that they just luckily happen to have a product for .)
You see, as a believer in the 'good news', I have spent an inordinate amount of time applying spiritual truths to my life, bringing the old man under the authority of my Creator, participating in sin management, patching my life back together after amazing amounts of self-absorbed idiocy including masterfully assisting in an overall family and life implosion back in 92'. Seven years of my own version of wilderness, then years of getting dusted off, sort of reclothed and regrouped, remarried and generally recalibrated and voila!, I sit here clicking away. (All, I might add, described in a rather cavalier tone which is only a fake mask to hide the soul-wrenching,self-loathing that such historical self-reflection can so easily unleash.)
So the intercessory ministry has been very rich...so good because it has so obviously been choreographed by Him...I certainly would have never even considered it, wouldn't have sought it out....you know, you just can't make this stuff up! Father, thank you for your invitation to participate. As Elizabeth Elliott said, "Next to the incarnation,I know of no more staggering truth than that a Sovereign God has ordained my participation." Thank you Father.
But I am aware of "there is more" , "there are some new next steps" and I have learned that all I really have to do is say yes, bring me into all You have for me!
Somewhere along the line, I let the disparaging term "social gospel" preempt my activist side, my outward focus. The poor, the disenfranchised, the discriminated against, they all somehow didn't seem all that pertinent to me in my personal-spiritual-quest-space.
Too much of my spirituality has been inwardly focused, just dealing with all the "incoming" and the press of circumstances. Emphases too imbalanced...personal salvation, bless me club....community, what's that? Too much focus on fast forwarding to co-reigning for all eternity with Christ on the other side of death. And for now, what about the NOW between right here and cremation? Just hangin' out? Trying to stay out of trouble, keep your nose clean,concentrate on transformation, do the right thing while biding your time til the sweet bye and bye? Little ministry in the local body, throw a few logs on the church fire while being always subtlety conformed to the system of the world? Where is the agenda for NOW! We're burnin' daylight here Hoppy....you have been transformed by enough renewing of your mind to now see that it's time to be more of a change agent for the Kingdom!
Things are really swirling around me, Shane Claiborne and Brian McLaren end up in my hands, Beyond Belief series comes into WH and pow!, it is like I am being awakened out of some kind of coma and I want to sign up for mobilization. I had previously signed up to "toe the line" in joining the invisible war against the powers and principalities...that is right and good for me and that will not be going away, only growing. But there is to be more! Yes, I am excited to find out what that is (and also am sobered at what that will cost). I want to become a more dynamic part of the solution, to resist the insanity that is the very fabric of this fallen world's system and to live in more overt rebellion, to be more active in my revolting.
And so, I am in transition....I feel an impending growth spurt (heh,it's my domain, I call it growth)coming and I want to get it right. Fortunately, there is now some measure of modest wisdom and I am not at all tempted to author this myself. No, that is something I only need to hear and see as Jesus unveils it for me, either suddenly or gradually, my role is just to say Yes at the right time. And so I am looking, I am listening... show me those next steps Abba. And so I practice my response..., "Yes Father", Yes Father" "Thank you Jesus" "Yes, of course"......
Still in process Santiago....still in process....steady as she goes mate.....deep breath....