Pastor Ryan Gaffney

Tomorrow I will be sworn into membership of the church I’ve been going to since summer. It’s going to be the first church that I’ve belonged to since my parents split up.

Now I dunno what it is, maybe It’s “fear of commitment” only instead of girls I have it with churches, I have no idea but all of a sudden I’m not sure I want to be part of this church at all.

There’s drama in the college group. The community that I once thought was so incredible seems to be turning it’s back on me. People are mad at me for things I didn’t say, but heard I did from other people.

Everybody I know there has some kind of problem they hadn’t told me about. The Jr. High department hasn’t called back in over a month about whether they are going to hire me as their intern. The service I go to hasn’t had the deep theology I started attending for in months. And the trip to Africa has now prevented me from an incredible opportunity at a summer camp.

I’m suddenly tempted to pack up and move to Australia! It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!

So I went to my old church… To visit.

I went to the church that I left because of it’s watery theology and the awkward ties that were created there because of my parents.

I went to the church where all my friends from high school who never went on to college stayed behind to see if there might be any redemptive substance I could get from the community I had invested so much in.

…The service was as expected, the anonymity was tempting… But my old friends were there.

They have the jobs I wish I had.

One’s a Jr. High Coordinator… I can’t be an intern. The other’s a IT Tech.. I got fired from that job….

…I kept sleeping in, because I would miss the alarm clock…Because I had sleep apnea…

Oh yeah I was also diagnosed with sleep apnea this week… so that nice!!!

And now I’m sitting here alone, utterly unsatisfied with myself, terribly displeased with my life, and where it’s going, and confused because I thought I’d given it away to God a long time ago

How can I be so inadequate when all I want to do is be the least?

Where do I return to the father when I’m the son that stayed home?

Isn’t this supposed to be the time when I stop making footprints because you carry me?

There has to be some reason that cheesy poem is popular.

Isn’t your strength supposed to be being made perfect somehow?

Isn’t there some kind of strong tower I could run into?

But I see no easy fix on the horizon. I believe in a realist god that immerses us totally in this world and interacts holistically and that’s exactly how I’m experiencing him.

At least the lost can go out and get wasted!