A Good Life (so far…)

Today is my 28th birthday.

And for just over a year now, I’ve been prayer journaling.  So I took this morning, as I was beginning my prayer time, to look back through the journal, and I was amazed at how much I’ve experience, grown and changed this year.  Here’s a brief look:

1. I became accountability partners with Jake Malloy.  I’ve been friends with him and his wife Tiffany for several years, and Tiff and I worked together for a couple of years.  I approached Jake at the end of October and asked him to hold me accountable.  I think he was pretty taken aback, but agreed.  We started out slowly, but quickly became very close.  Not long into our accountability relationship, he informed me that he’d renamed us ‘teammates’ because ‘accountability partners’ is too old school.  We began to call our meetings ‘teammate time’.

2. I really developed a strong community of friends, including Henry and Meredith, Scott and Sarah, Henry, Allan and Patty, Amanda, Stormie and Ash.  I’ve begun meeting with a lot of them on a semi-regular basis to discuss faith-matters, like living more simply and taking time to rest.  Living with this group has profoundly affected several areas of my life.  Among other things, we’re working on noppression.com, a site we hope to use to help us learn to buy more fairly.

3. I started dating Manda, and have really learned a lot about myself and how to communicate.  She sent me to see Norma Jean for my birthday, then we went with some friends to see Coheed & Cambria and Jimmy Eat World together (before we were dating) and then took some of my students to see Angels & Airwaves.  We met Chris at Pointfest and ran into Brian and some of her old friends.  And that’s just the concerts.   She took me to her absurdly huge family reunion (nearly 300 persons all related to her), where I was well-liked.  She’s gotten to meet my entire family as well, and was also well received.

4. I wrote a Christmas play with Stormie.  It was really dark and intense, but in the end was really all about hope and redemption.  We almost didn’t get to do it, but in the end we prevailed.  It was well received, both critically and popularly.

5. I co-led a small group study w/ Manda and Klint on Spiritual Disciplines last Fall.  Last semester, I led one on Genesis 1-11 with Brooke and an all-guys study called Dude Man.  All three studies proved to be really life-changing for everyone involved, myself included.  I did this, however, at the expense of my health.  Last Spring I nearly burned myself out.  I’m not leading Bible studies anymore.

6. After taking my first real vacation in about 2 years (and only my second since I moved to Columbia), I had a tumultuous summer.  Spending a week on the beach with several of my closest friends, I returned to spend the summer dealing with the most intense crisis in my ministry career.  Also, I took my students to New Orleans for the first time (for them; fifth time for me), where I found a dead body in a house (for real).

7. I celebrated my 5th year of working for my church.

8. After living with two of my best friends for two years, I lost both of them… one vanished forever, and I married the other to his now wife, Marcy.  They moved to St. Charles, which means I don’t get to see them nearly as often anymore.

9. But… in a move to simplify my life, I moved with Allan into the ‘ghetto’ of Columbia, next door to a crack dealer on one side and a guy who grows pot on the other.

10. My dad and stepmom went to the brink of a divorce, and are now reconciling.

11. I began working with multiple churches to put on VISION retreats, which are really fun.  In April, we did Create!, which was the coolest event I’ve ever been a part of.

12. Jake and Tiff moved to Kenya, and Henry and Scott became my new teammates.  I am sad that Jake and Tiff are gone… I miss them a lot, and their absence has changed our community a lot.  But they’ll be back in less than two years.

13. At the Catalyst Leadership Conference (which was amazing), I won a trip to the Dominican Republic through Hope International, a micro-finance organization.

All those are only a small taste of what a huge year I’ve had.  I feel incredibly blessed, and I know I’ve grown more this year than any yet.  Truthfully, I credit that to the fact that I’ve been more diligent about spending regular time with God than ever before, and in ways that actually help me to connect with her/him.

I learned so much this year.  I learned where my limits are.  I learned how important my community of friends is to me.  I learned how to love more perfectly.

It’s been a good year.  But here’s to my 28th.  It’s going to be even better!