Hey guys.

Been quite preoccupied lately, in every sense. But I wanted to check in.

Last week, I told you I was weary, and that I needed to live with love. It’s still a struggle this week, but God has been reminding me how meaningless and confusing my life is without love.

Like living paycheck to paycheck,
My life without love is lived task to task,
And without task,
I don’t know who I am anymore.

With failed task,
I am a failure.
With successful task,
I am a fleeting ghost.

I am quite an ambitious person. I refuse to believe this is just some mistake of genetics or some disposition of personality. I choose to believe that the desires I have have been laid on my heart for a reason.

But when?

I was reading the book of Daniel tonight. As I was reading, a few things hit my that I prayed through. But it wasn’t until I started writing this blog and looking back at the book that I realized a point on which I humbly admit I relate to Daniel. That point is on the vastness of God’s will.

You see, I’m writing a post about God’s will. It has quite a few logical points to it, because logic has been a huge foundation to my faith. I think there are quite a few things we can understand about God’s will.

I don’t believe God left us to just wonder and wonder,
To try to do His will,
Then never know whether or not we did it.
There is fruit.
There is purity.
There is transformation within and without.
These are a few marks of God’s will being done.

But God’s will is still, largely, a mystery.

Mysteries can be intriguing (or so all my friends who watch “Sherlock” tell me).
They can be frustrating (or so my guy friends will shake their heads at the mystery that is women).
Mysteries can be beautiful.
Mysteries can be scary.

God can’t help but be a mystery to us. We’re ants compared to Him. Little, beloved ants.

And yet, this God seeks to find common ground with us.
This God,
sanctified,
set apart,
pure,
wants fellowship with
us.

How, then, shall we treat other human beings?
How can I keep myself pure in my doctrine,
my thoughts,
and my actions,
while finding common ground with
the world?

It’s a mystery.

Daniel lives here.

In this paradox.

He has a secular job, like me, working as a political adviser for various kings. He’s the weirdest of the bunch, and surprisingly, even though he doesn’t often do what they want or expect of him, by trusting in God and being faithful to work diligently, he always exceeds their expectations and keeps getting promoted. It’s pretty cool to see.

At the start of the book we see Daniel interpreting dreams of kings. Sometimes he will even tell the kings their dreams before they even tell him what they dreamt about. He always boldly admits it’s not his fault he knows these things, but God’s.

When Daniel acknowledges God’s power, he’s promoted. When certain kings pretend they’re powerful, they go crazy and starting acting like wild bird men (it’s in the Bible, guys. Look it up).

But very soon, Daniel starts having dreams and visions of his own — and they’re at least as disturbing as the dreams of the kings about the imminent destruction of their kingdoms.

Mysteries can be disturbing like that.

Even when they’re explained… by mysterious angelic beings. What?!

So, I don’t know what you would do if you had a dream about goats with ten horns and horns growing out of their horns, shattering rams with other horns, and then finding out that it’s all about how the government and the nations are going to shift in some unknown time in the future… but here’s how it went down with Daniel:

“While I, Daniel, was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there before me stood one who looked like a man. And I heard a man’s voice from Ulai calling, ‘Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of the vision.’ As he came near the place where I was standing, I was terrified and fell prostrate. ‘Son of man,’ he said to me, ‘understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.'”

Then Gabriel explained the vision.

He concluded, “‘The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been given you is true, but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.'”

“I, Daniel, was worn out [no kidding!].
I lay exhausted for several days.
Then I got up and went about the king’s business
[in other words, he had to go back to work after this].
I was appalled by the vision;
it was beyond understanding.”

Daniel 8:15-17, 26-27
(bracketed phrases and sentences outside quotation marks are mine)

So anyway. I have a lot of ambitions. My mom often tells me to cool it on a lot of the stuff I’m involved in, because she watches me turn into a zombie when I do too many things, and she has to deal with that. 🙂

But I have all these dreams of things I want to do — things I need to do,
or I must just go crazy and turn into a bird woman.

For example, God laid on my heart the issue of unplanned pregnancy. I was going to work at a ministry dedicated to this cause, but I didn’t. This was so frustrating and confusing for me. Why would God lay this desire on my heart if He didn’t want me to go? Unless I totally disobeyed him and am living in sin pretty much because I’m not at this ministry. Though I know now that it’s a little more, well, mysterious, than that.

It’s why I cared so much that this Sunday was Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.
It’s why I posted about the movie Gimme Shelter last week.
It’s why I helped at a booth at my church for a pregnancy resource center.
It’s why couldn’t choke back tears as I sat in the service and thought about just how amazing each of our lives is…
and how most of us will NEVER even realize that.
It’s why I’ve been staying up until 2am for a while trying to develop my thesis into something useful,
and agonizing that I haven’t sent anybody the information I told them I’d send a year ago.

I also have a passion for my local church. I think it’s the vehicle through with God wants to change things. But what is my role? Part of leadership development is stepping back. I’m seeing new leaders step up, trying not to feel obsolete or inadequate or compare myself, but trust. But still be passionate. But also be patient.

I also kind of really secretly but also I guess not so secretly have a passion for the LGBT community. What the heck do I do with that? Right now, I read up on it. I comment. I pray. And I agonize over all the ways we could do better in our conversation about same-sex attractions, sexual identity and stewardship, and what exactly gender is, and why it matters. And just finding common ground wherever it can be found, instead of polarizing and/or marginalizing every living person — male, female, or otherwise — in sight.

And then, I also want to help some of my friends start a coffee shop at my church. But when? How?

And then there’s my job, which I’m passionate about, but I spend more time working than doing things I’m ever more passionate about. I’m learning valuable skills, and I choose to believe they’re preparing me for something. But what? And when? I love my job. I love working.

But I also have to rest. How am I supposed to balance that with everything else? Rest isn’t very exciting.

And sometimes, I feel guilty for doing all of these things I’m passionate about because I wonder whether I’m doing them for myself, for God, or for some reason I simply lost along the way.

(Hence the importance to resting, reflecting, and remembering, I suppose.)

I feel guilty because I’m spending more time doing than being, which I’m often told is not good.
But neither is letting babies die and women suffer and men become passive and disciples become stagnant.
So.

And then, there’s this idea of reconciling the world to God. Everyone’s suffering, and I’ve been charged, like every other disciple, to be and make disciples of all nations. If it’s by God’s grace that we’re saved, that’s great. But where do my works fit in? If I don’t share the gospel, is God’s grace sufficient? But if nothing ever happens but by God’s grace, am I wasting my time toiling over all these things?

It’s a mystery.

But I guess tonight, some of that mystery was revealed to me as I spend time in the Word. Digging. Really digging. Like, giving that book my undivided attention and praying over whatever popped out at me.

It was only revealed in the same way that, when you answer a huge question, it just leads to more questions. But it somehow gave me peace.

You see, I’m like Daniel in that I’m very frustrated these days with God’s mystery. For Daniel, it was kind of as if God just dumped out all His secrets on him, and you can hear Daniel’s muffled voice under the pile of, oh, I don’t know, things that are gonna happen at the end of the world, saying, “What the heck was that for, God?”

And then He was like, “So… none of this is gonna happen until the end of the world, so you can just, uh, tuck that in a drawer for the time being.”

Wow. Srsly?

As for my own ambitions, God has dumped all of these seven things on me. And for some reason, He’s dumped all of them on me now. But, just like in Daniel’s case, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of them are going to come to fruition. Not just yet.

Some things, I may never really gain traction in until a year from now, or after I get married, or when I’m a grandmammy. Or when I’m dead, and the people I’ve affected have started caring about these things, too. Or maybe they’ll just live on in my prayers and how they affect the spiritual realms, where credit is seldom stolen by men, and I’ll never really do any hands-on work regarding each calling.

Or maybe, I’m meant to slowly whittle and whittle away at them. Writing a blog post here, a direct message on Twitter there, a YouTube video here, sending up a prayer this night, going to a Bible study on this day of the week.

So where’s the balance between being committed, neglecting, forgetting, or spreading myself too thin?

It’s a mystery.

But that’s why I must trust God every day. God, who “holds in his hands [my] life and all [my] ways” (Daniel 5:24b).

And frankly, I don’t know what that means exactly. But I do know that God will always have a bird’s-eye view of my life, and I never will.

I’m gonna make it a priority to talk to Him. No — not talk to Him. Listen to Him. Hear from the general before running around aimlessly in the field. I’m gonna follow His Spirit, who lives within me. I’m gonna follow him step by step, day by day. I’m going to plan, but I’m not going to fret when my plans don’t happen as soon as I’d like, or even at all.

So where would you have me, God?

May I ask this whenever I get the chance.

Some mysteries aren’t meant to be understood.
They’re meant to be experienced.
God’s just like a magic show that way.

So cut me in half and put me back together.
Drown me and let me escape with the glitter still frolicking in my hair.
Pull a rabbit out of that top hat of yours.

Steal the show.

It’s not mine to steal;
It’s not my trick to know.

It’s a mystery.
An appalling,
frustrating,
confusing,
beautiful,
difficult,
mesmerizing
mystery.