A lot has changed over the past few months, and a lot is different.
Let's recap, shall we?
Spring of 2007:
- I decide on Hillsong International Leadership College as my Bible college of choice and apply. I'm accepted and begin the process of moving my life to Sydney, Australia to study Worship Music.
- I started attending TACF (Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship) Central, the young adult congregation in the heart of Downtown T.O..
- I join a small group at TACF and start to attend regularly and form friendships.
- I leave my job at Starbucks, a company I'd been working for for close to two years.
- I am jobless...
- TACF North York is planted, and I, feeling called to be there, plant with them and a beautiful little community is started.
- I start work at a small camera shop in a mall, and enjoy it marginally.
- The process of moving to Australia for Bible college continues.
- I apply for and secure a job with Apple.
- I attend the Heavy Rain conference at TACF and go through spiritual breakthrough.
- I start work at Apple for the Holiday season under the assumption of a continuation of my contract in January.
- After much thought and prayer, and a lot of fun playing with people's minds, I decide to stay in Canada and not attend Hillsong and release the information slowly outward.
- On staying in Canada: I decide that I will pursue opportunities here to grow in ministry and grow with TACF and see where God leads me, still with the intent of someday becoming a pastor.
- I feel in my heart that the season has come to leave my home church, Hillstreams, of more than five years where I've met some amazing, life-changing people whom I will never forget and love very dearly.
- I have the best New Years I've ever had in Northern Ontario in cabins with a whole bunch of awesome people.
January of 2008 (now):
- I return from my best New Years ever to work the next day and have an excellent shift, however, at the end of the shift I am taken to the managers' office to be told that, unfortunately, there is no room in the store to extend my contract.
- I am jobless and confused, and writing a blog called "Purpose without a path provides for a perplexing problem..."
So, yeah, here I am. (Rock me like a hurricane? Sorry, I had to...)
I find myself in a weird place spiritually and otherwise. I was never so content as I was at the end of last year. I had a great job that looked like it was going places, I had (and still have) the best group of friends I've ever had, I had a plans for the year with regards to work and life and church and things look good.
It's funny how we build ourselves a little castle, and one of the bricks at the bottom comes out, and either it's really wobbly, or it all just falls down. Luckily, my castle is still up and standing, and the other bricks are still pretty stable. But, this castle, this paradigm, it's built with many different factors, and work is one of them. I built this plan based on all of the elements in my life, all supporting and working with each other. And now that one is seemingly missing, or different, the entire plan begins to look a little different, a little less complete.
I chose the title of this blog for a particular reason, because it's what I feel like I'm facing. I still have that goal of what I want for my life, and I think I know what it will look like (according to the desires of my heart and what God has shown me in small bits here and there), but I have no idea on how to achieve it anymore. When I was going to Hillsong, it seemed to be well laid out for me. When I decided to stay in Canada, and everything was smooth sailing, I wasn't so worried about it and was just going to take it one step at a time.
Now, you may be asking yourself, or your computer screen, "Well, what's changed? Just because you lost your job you don't know how to build your life?"
Well, in a sense, no. I still have the same goal, and the other parts of my plans remain, but working, especially at Apple, provided for a very stable plan in my eyes. Now that I face uncertainty about where and how I will be working, and whether or not my next job will be as rewarding and successful as the first, my plans are a little up in the air in some ways.
I still want to move out in six months to a year. I still fully plan on taking the leaderships courses at TACF and starting a small group of my own. I still want to go new places in music and songwriting and relationships and health and a whole bunch more. But I have no clue what to do with my work life. I can't even think of something I'd want to do other than work for Apple now that I've had that dream job.
(All this being said, there is the possibility of going back if business needs change at the Apple Store.)
I don't even know where to look without stooping lower than what I've already achieved. Call me picky, I don't care, but I'm not going back to Egypt (aka Coffee Shops). I'm believing that God is not going to take away to not give back, and to give something better at that! I'm praying, "Lord, please, take me from glory to glory, not from glory to shmory."
I said this to my buddy Jordan last night, and he laughed and said, "Isn't it funny how we try and tell God what to do?"
I guess I need to have more faith...
It's also interesting how much that not only I, but a lot of us, put our strength and hope and etc. in our work. It's our security and our stability. I always try to be thankful and make God my source and my first place of provision. And I do believe that indeed every good and perfect gift comes from the Father, but it's weird how now that this supposed "gift" is taken away, I don't feel so secure in my source anymore. As though God needs Apple...
My friend Jim said to me the other night, "You don't know what's in you until something happens and it all comes up to the surface." Or something to that effect. Wise words, because apparently what was in me was a dependance on the gifts that God gives me instead of God, the giver, himself.
Anyway, just some things to ponder there and a little glimpse on what my life looks like at the moment.
Take care all, Happy New Year!
