This New Year was truly the turning of a page.  I graduated from seminary last month and so now I feel like I have this wide expanse before me.  The only problem is I don’t know which way to go.  I’ve got a lot of ideas rolling around in my head.  However, many of these hair-brained ideas lead to the five years that prefaced my coming to seminary.

Standing on the edge of a wide expanseDuring that time, I had three different jobs and watched my business fail.  In the process of that business failure, I incurred a good bit of debt that I’m still paying off.  Several relationships became strained and instead of working things out, I walked away from the church for a time.  My last job before coming to seminary, I quit while on a business trip.  So much of that pain and heartache I believe can be attributed to my thinking.  So many times, I just chose the idea that seemed right instead of seeking guidance from the Lord.  I would give lip-service that I was praying about it, but even if I did, I wasn’t listening.

As I stand on the precipice of my future, I want to learn from my mistakes.  I know that there will still be hard times.  But I don’t want those hard times to be a result of my stubbornness and failure to listen.  I also don’t want to waste anymore time.  One of my bad habits is over-analyzation.  I will evaluate every contingency of a decision.  Then I make edge cases and evaluate those and it becomes a vicious cycle.  I fail to act because I “need” all the facts.  So I find myself in a tug-of-war on this precipice.  I don’t want to make a foolish decision but I also don’t want to fail to act.  As each day passes, I find myself increasingly restless.  I have experienced this restlessness in the past.  It contributed to many of my past decisions.

So as I wrestle with all these issues, the only thing I’m sure about is that I want to do something.  Something of significance.  Someone asked me the other day what I ultimately want out of life.  I surprised myself.  My answer.  “I want my life to matter.  When I reach the end of my life, I want to hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”