If luv is a verb, so is joy

I was having a discussion over lunch last week with three friends, all of whom are recent or near seminary graduates. We were talking about jobs and the like, and they asked me how I knew what my “calling” was, as I mentioned that I felt as if I’d settled into mine. I was sort of taken aback at their hunger to hear whatever bon mot I might spin into the answer to “how do you know?”.

Lately I haven’t been able to get Lewis’ phrase, “surprised by joy,” out of my head. Joy to me is a scary word, one that I handle with care and little regularity. I think of these Jackson Browne lyrics as I talk about joy:

And I had a lover
Its so hard to risk another these days
These days–
Now if I seem to be afraid
To live the life I have made in song
Well it’s just that I’ve been losing so long

The main line there for me is “well it’s just that I’ve been losing so long.” See, I’ve been down for a long time, and I’m not sure I’m done being down. So as I dare to be so bold as to confess that I think I’ve befriended such an elusive suitor, Jackson Browne throws up all the disclaimers I’d like said.

When I was in the deepest throes of my depression, I remember calming my crackling, frazzled nervous system by simply whispering to myself, “I’m gonna be okay, I’m gonna be alright.” I’d say that over and over and over and over if I had to, convinced that if I hit myself over the head with it enough that hope would erode what had become my reality to the contrary.

In scattered moments during that period I would stub my toe in an “aha!” moment and think to myself, “I’m okay”. Not as a promise, like the rope I used to throw ashore to keep me tied to some far place where things supposedly were okay, but as simple reality.

“I’m okay”.

The song that kept me together during that time more than anyone will even begin to fathom had that very lyric in it, from a super-obscure John Mayer tune:

This will all make perfect sense someday
I’ll be ok

Well, it all may not make perfect sense, and that someday may never dawn, but I seem okay. More days than not, I feel strangely fine.

My mind covered all that ground as I beleaguered to finish chewing last week. I sat down my burger, settled into my posture of pontification and with all the studied erudition you’d expect from a gangster of elocution of my stature, said something to the effect of,

“I just sort of know, it just sort of fits, I’m just nuts about my job.”

You see, I think joy is a verb, and I can live it better than point someone toward it.

Of course, there was more to it than that (the only time I give answers that curt are to my middle schoolers or the lady at the blood bank), but it really does reduce to that.

I think, dare I say, that we can recognize joy and things being “all as they should be,” when we see them. Buried in those dreams and secrets that we’ll never breathe to anyone save the Lord Himself, when it all comes together, when those things start showing up in the real world, we can spot ‘em.

We know it when we see it.

We just know.

Which of course explains my trepidation at daring to say I’ve found it. I wish it were more complicated, I wish someone would come along and poke holes in my theory, and remind me of all the reasons why my life sucks on paper.

Things have just sort of lined up for me like never before, and I haven’t gotten used to it yet.

If this joy thing is real, then maybe I never will.

Let me get back to you on that. Lemme finish chewing first.

A Life More Honest.

Well, a funny thing has started happening this week.

Think of it as simple “out of sight, out of mind” I guess.

Think of it as hope delayed fulfilled at last perhaps.

Think of it as the perfect set up for “well, what took you so long?!?”

I’ve started thinking of myself as a “former seminary student.”

I’ve started saying things to friends like “back when I was in seminary,” or thinking about no longer having my student discount at the Angelika, or noticing the ever louder din of that drip drip drip asking me again just what makes exegeting from the Greek so important.

And I’ve started doing normal people things, like stress only about my job when I’m at work, ponder things I’d like to do with world class friends I’ve neglected, get all Wahhabist about my finances, try and talk to a wonderful female friend from college regularly on the phone (it’s platonic, Mom), get some new recipes, read with more depth, think about picking the guitar back up…

Simply put, just be alive again.

I am not going to try and put you in my shoes to see how hard I pushed myself, and how far out of balance the cost of what I was willing to sacrifice for the thing(s) I had decided to pursue was compared to simple life affirming things. My life was pretty empty when the days were all said and done, and now well, I’m trying to fill them up with the things I’ve thought only true heroes neglected.

I’ve got a lot of stuff to replace, however. You probably remember this post from few weeks ago. Yeah, that’s one of my more bare, and stupid, moments-but it was honest then and I’m trying to live honest now.

In the honesty department I’ve been doing no small heavy lifting as of late, but I am convinced to my core that the best God has for us is found when we risk a life lived more honest.

I’m not entirely sure what’s next for me, school-wise. I’ve got 81 of the 120 hours I need for my degree in the can, and most of what I’ve got left to take, well, it will apply to any other degree I pursue; the only unique part of it are my last two semesters of Hebrew. There was a time when I was nuts about that Hebrew, any sort of theology, trivia about NT manuscripts, what fed into Martin Luther’s thinking on Bible translation, what a Mike + the Mechanics song being sung in Christian circles these days says about everyone you and I know, different theories on the nitty gritty of the Incarnation, etc. and etc. and etc.

Those parts of me are on hiatus right now, or, to use a recent phrase in my world, “indefinite bedrest”. That one turned out okay for my friends, and I suspect it will for me.

So what I’m doing in the meantime is simply loving my job and slowing down enough to apply all these years of school and daydreaming about “when…” to well, now, and doing a life more honest.

We probably haven’t seen each other in a while, so here’s a picture I shot just tonight:

Me, 11/1/07

There’s more stirring behind those glasses than in a long time, that I can promise you.