Turning 26

Writing a post about my birthday on my birthday has become a tradition. Here are links to my past birthday posts: 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25.

I don’t think anyone ever imagines himself or herself being twenty-six years old. It’s not much of a birthday. I’ve been told starting when you turn twenty-five the only birthdays that matter are the ones divisible by five. I can see that being true. It’s sad to think that eight out of ten birthdays will lack a sense of grandeur from now on. Also, being twenty-five seemed a lot cooler than being twenty-four, and so far twenty-five seems a lot cooler than twenty-six as well. It’s nothing more than additional age. A year ago I still felt closer to twenty than thirty. That’s no longer true. To be fair, I don’t have any idea what it feels like to be thirty, so even saying it like that is a bit screwy. What I do know is I no longer feel a strong association with the collegiate version of myself. Furthermore, I don’t miss that guy. If given the choice, I wouldn’t go back. I have no desire to trade down.

The tone of the birthday essay I wrote a year ago is one of extreme optimism and triumph. I went back and read it today before I began writing this essay. I had keyed in on the desire to live life with purpose. I was asking myself if I was willing to rearrange my life in order to grab hold of what I wanted the most. I had formed a plan, and it was a good one. I knew what I wanted and I knew what I had to do to get it. Today I see a couple things in my hopes of a year ago that I didn’t see back then.

My year has been dramatically influenced by a few key writers and speakers, most notably Donald Miller and his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In it he talks about what makes a story meaningful, and how those same principles make a life meaningful. He defines a story as “a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.” Every story you’ve ever read or watched can be summed up in these broad terms. The best stories are when the character wants something noble or priceless while the conflict is extreme. The unfortunate reality is that these things are true about story because they’re also true about life. And I say “unfortunate” because I now see that I spend a lot of time trying to circumvent conflict rather than trying to overcome it. I’m not saying that avoiding unnecessary conflict is a bad thing, but attempting to avoid unavoidable conflict is cowardice and ultimately futile. That’s not the stuff of good books and good movies and it’s not the stuff of a good life either.

I have struggled through a number of moments this year which I would characterize as severe conflict. Let me mention a few I’ve not written about previously. I had a major burnout during my mission trip to Berlin, and I took out my frustration on one of the in-country leaders. For the first time in years I found myself both unable to do all the things being asked of me and unable to run away from that difficulty, plus I compounded the problem by acting petty. In the fall semester I had to withdraw from a class I was taking because the material and the topics were over my head. This move simultaneously crushed my ego and ended any chance I had at completing my so-called two-year plan — the one I lauded in my previous birthday essay — within two years. Then there’s my ministry work with The Navigators at FSU. I had this grand vision for training Bible study leaders this fall and spring in an interactive classroom setting but it never became what I hoped it would, largely due to my poor planning and poor follow through.

I wrote a year ago that nothing short of the grace of God had prevented bitterness from taking root where I’d let anger produced by poor circumstances linger. I said I was content, rejuvenated even, and that it had to do with having the opportunity to exercise my primary gifts. I even wondered aloud at whether that newfound strength was meant to prepare me for something.

All this conflict was only in my life because circumstances separated me from something I wanted. I wanted to build strong relationships with some other missionally-minded people in my church and grow in my relationship with God. I still needed six credit hours to receive a graduate certificate in publishing and editing, which itself I wanted in order to help me advance my career. I wanted to teach and mentor students and student leaders, and I also wanted to try out new methods to see if I could achieve even greater results. In each of those instances I thought I’d be able to use my gifts and find the same sense of invigorating life I’d recently found.

There were moments in each of these stories where the conflict brought me to my knees. But I’m learning that conflict in itself is not failure, even though I often perceive the two to be analogous. My Berlin teammates stood by me in the midst of my burnout, even the guy I treated poorly. God taught me that my habitual self-reliance is a liability, not a strength. Conflict actually brought about the attainment of my goals. I grew closer to missionally-minded people and my relationship with God grew deeper. Dropping that class cost me a lot of money and broke my plan, but my original intent was to open up new career opportunities. Concurrent with these events my boss offered me a new job, one in which I’d be a web designer. God provided a new career opportunity even when my route to that end was sidetracked. As for the training derailment, when I’m really honest with myself, the reason I became so worked up about it not working out is because I didn’t get my way. I still got to help lead a freshman study and I still got to train the leaders by example like I had in the past, but I had to settle for something other than my vision. God was still getting what He wanted — men and women reading His Word and relying on Him — but that wasn’t good enough for me. Sometimes conflict can be resolved with a little perspective.

I often wonder as I get older if I actually get any wiser or if I just clumsily bounce along and make the same mistakes year after year. I thought I’d had a major epiphany a year ago. I was on the right track, but I still conceived the world as a place where I could have my way if I only planned a little better or tried a little harder. Having a plan is important. Good stories include characters who know what they want. But I was consumed with achieving success and yielding results. I had unintentionally under-emphasized the sovereignty of God, that He works for the good of those who love Him. Solomon put it best when he said that many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. Solomon doesn’t chastise us for having plans; he reminds us who the true main character of the story is.

I’ve decided I want to live a great story. I’ve begun to accept that facing some conflict is unavoidable even though I’d like to believe otherwise, and that some conflict even ends up being a step in the right direction. But to live a great story I also need to aim for something priceless. In his book, Miller wrote about living a few “practice stories” (climbing the Inca Trail at Machu Picchu, biking with a team from L.A. to D.C.) before taking on something he considered priceless (founding The Mentoring Project). I haven’t decided whether I want to try his practice route or just dive right in, but attempting neither is not an option. Viewed in this light, in spite of what a person might typically say about this particular birthday, I have high hopes for my twenty-seventh year.