Thrive.

The word comes from the Norse verb thrífa: “To grasp, to get ahold of.” In Middle English it used to mean “To grow, to increase.”

Survive. It comes from the Latin superviviere meaning “to outlive.”

If survival is a sea, I’m bobbing up and down like a tiny, tiny fish. When I’m underwater, I’m wishing I could see the sun. When I force myself above, I’m wishing I could rest.

But thriving is like when you’ve been swimming and swimming and you finally grab onto something solid. (Like, for instance, that new island that just appeared off the coast of Pakistan.) You climb up and just lie down. Finally you have rest and air. And even enough energy to move beyond a struggle to survive.

My friend Brittany and I talked yesterday about the difference between thriving and surviving. She and I are in debt to God. We owe our lives to Him, you know. So we are kind of in a position where we have to do what He says. Even if it means dying. Even if it means He told me to just tread water all my life.

But the thing is, that’s not what He told me to do.

What does God want from me then?

That’s the question the receptionist at my work is asking: “What does God want for me.” I told her a better question is “What does God want for me.”

You see, we have a Heavenly Boss who loves us. He thinks we (our hearts or spirits or whatever) are more valuable than the work we do. Heck, He’s smart and powerful. If He really needed something, why the heck would he ask you or me — a tiny little fish, bobbing up and down in the ocean?

God does whatever He wants. (Isaiah 46:10). If He ever needed something, boy, He wouldn’t tell you (Psalm 50:9,12). We’d be the last people to ask to do the job well. We’re weak creatures, one of the few kinds that has the audacity to defy him, though we are in debt to Him for even existing.

I didn’t make myself exist. I didn’t purchase the patent for my lungs or my kidneys before employing them for my benefit. Did you?

Yet we are slaves to a master who loves us. You know what that means? You are commanded to thrive.

Check out what Jesus says in John 10:10. Jesus didn’t come to earth because He needed us to obey. He came because He wanted our ultimate joy. He was gonna be glorified either way, even if we lived here under the illusion that He didn’t exist. He could have created us and left us like so many fathers do, never to know Him. But Jesus became a human being, just so we could understand Him and know Him. Not because He needed attention or glory from us. But because He knew of a person who could give them everything they could ever want and more: His Father.

I’m glad I know God, because I know I was made for more than just to leave a genetic mark on the world like the rest of the fish (and the fish-derived). But lately, to be honest, I have still felt like that tiny fish. Just surviving.

Why? Sure, I know God. But part of it is that I’ve been distracted by other things I bow down to, things I hide under when I’m scared, like a mask. Or things that I just let take up my time and attention because I’d rather sleep with everybody than remain by the side of my Lord. I have everything in Him and yet I still ignorantly lust after more.

Another part of it is that this tiny fish is no longer in school. By that, I mean two things.

First. I spent the entire evening, hours and hours, planning my birthday. Actually, I’ve been planning it for days. I wanted it to be this amazing thing in the mountains where a bunch of people come to the mountains, play games, sing songs, and connect with God in a way they otherwise wouldn’t when the tyranny of life separates us like lonely coals that aren’t hot anymore because they aren’t together. I wanted a time when I could like one body, moving together, celebrating together, changing together before God.

And about an hour ago I had this epiphany. What I want for my birthday is not to plan this new cabinny thing; I want the experience I’ve had for the past 2 years at the Rock Retreat. The yearly retreat from my good old campus ministry. And everything they do is exactly the combination of ideas I thought I was coming up with for my birthday, in my infinite little fish creativity and fish organizational skills.

I told my dad and he said I should try to go to this thing again. But I told him I can’t. I felt like if I tried to go to the Rock Retreat this year it would be like weaseling my way back into a place where I’m not really invited. Like the when you visit your high school after having graduated, and the security guards kick you out and the students are all shorter and less familiar than you remember. It’s just not home anymore.

But this really was my family. And losing them all at once was hard. I haven’t given myself much time to really grasp it. (I haven’t grasped much of anything this year, really.)

Which is why I devoted some time this evening to crying on my floor, mourning the loss, the loss of an entire family.

Yet I have not lost them. They’re still there. Over there. Just a drive away. And a year’s worth of memories they’ve gained in which I have not partaken with them.

Should I take this chance to relive the glory days? Or should I continue on, striving and striving to produce the same kind of Acts 2:42-47 community all by myself? Because that’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since I left.

Which brings me to my second point. Every fish needs a school, even to survive. But most of the time I feel alone in what I’m trying to accomplish here in my community. In my vision and dreams and hopes for what the church could be. Is there anyone in this city who would like to join me in building some walls? Because if so, we must be swimming on two entirely different levels, because I never cross paths with you. Or at least not enough. I don’t know you and you don’t know me.

Is there anyone who has not been so scarred by unmet expectations in the church that they have completely lost any pure, untainted sense of the ideals and virtues which we are commanded to pursue?

So yeah. That’s the question I’m shouting to the less-traveled, echoing wall that is my blog feed, the wall that asks me the same questions I ask others, because I am no different. I, like everyone else, lose my sense of the ideal, my sense of who I am to God, my obedience to His command to thrive. Maybe we’d burn hotter and brighter for these ideals if we were together once more.

But it’s late, and it’s time to rest, so in the morning I’ll have enough energy to see the sun