The feelings of a first day…

The lucidity of a last day…

The cracking and inviting sound of a book newly opened…

A certain kind of wonder lives in the starts and finishes, the restarts and the revisits, in the places where we give ourselves the most permission to be simultaneously optimistic and forgiving. How life-giving would it be to live in those types of places perpetually? Why is it so hard to embrace our truest selves in the same spirit on the days in between?

Imagine the place that carries the present full of sacred moments and sacred wounds. The here and now gives a place to see the self as alive, broken, becoming, transformed and still at the center of so much movement. If that space is one of being folded in half on the floor, bewildered, confused, disoriented, realizing there’s nowhere to go but up, it becomes the space one can see what’s left—not the remainder of self but the essence of who one is becoming.

Lifecoach

On the last day of 2014, I accidentally hired a life coach. It was a quick decision. Her name is Amy Poehler. Have you heard of her? I picked Amy because:

• She’s available eight days a week…or 24/7.
• Judging is against her religion.
• The price was right. She would not charge me the tens of tens of dollars I had accumulated by working in youth ministry. (If you’re not picking up on the sarcasm, it probably means 1. you’ve never met a youth worker selling secondhand items on day three of a youth group rummage sale; 2. you’re not from the Midwest, where sarcasm is a legitimate love language.)
• She’s true. Not even her career dictates her days, but her career benefits royally because she’s OK with herself.

The Jump

I had just done the most counter-intuitive thing in my life. I had replaced myself in ministry (quit my favorite youth ministry job on the planet) with someone similar to me to do the things I liked to do. Then, I started something I didn’t know how to do with a person (me) I wasn’t sure I could be.

In a lot of ways, taking a risk uncovered parts of the scariest me.

Here’s a brief timeline:

• 2001-2014: Full-time Youth Ministry (sometimes with an office and health insurance)
• Fall of 2014: Start the Thing (Later to Be Called: The Justice Movement)
• January 2015: New Year’s Resolution: 365 Just Water (Translation: 365 days without coffee).
• 2015: Curate a Global Movement (or build a bridge for students to cross into compassionate ministry that could connect them to local churches and develop a basecamp of tools for them to use while exploring their gifts to serve, without coffee).
• 2016: Find the Best Version of Me Inside and Outside of Youth Ministry
• Maybe your timeline looks similar to mine. Same feelings but different circumstances? A story with ups and downs, heroes and villains?
• If it does, then you also may have felt as if you had jumped across a canyon and were trying to build a flying contraption on the way across.
• As I’m careening through the sky, wondering why I had jumped and how I was going to manage, I came across Amy and decided the mantra of my year would be:

“YES, to becoming more me.”

I’m saying yes, because…well…Jesus loves me.

A simple revisit to the truth that God loves the created me is what helped me find my lens. Not only can I say, “Yes, Jesus loves me,” but I can add something to the world around me. Jesus loves the created me. The created me can bring an and to the table, a best gift. It’s the thing I can add most genuinely. It’s the something about me that God wanted to be seen and shared. The “Yes, and…” way of living is inspired by an improvisation technique that helps actors make what happens on stage more rich (and funnier). I feel as if ministry is a lot like improv—we all bring an and that no one else is able to bring.

Learning to say yes was a big life lesson for me this year. Amy’s accidental intervention (through the writing of her book) helped me see that my yes could look different, but different is good. (Sidenote: Amy is a busy person. She is a mom and a moonlighter. She spends a lot of time being hilarious. So, she’s done a really nice thing and has written a majority of her coaching advice in a bestseller. It is within the pages that we meet 100 percent of the time.)

Amy writes:

Career is different. Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty. Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren’t. Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later.1

I had been eating cake for breakfast. They weren’t the exact words Jesus used to speak to me, but these words were definitely a creative echo that I desperately needed to hear.

I told a friend, I feel as if God was conversing with me:

I’m releasing you from what you think you need to do to find out who can be. Go on—find someone to take your place. You have what it takes, because you have Me. Youth ministry didn’t save your life; I did. What if you’ve been leaning on youth ministry when you should’ve been leaning on Me? Now you’ve got cake all over your face and mascara dripping down your cheeks, and we’ve got work to do.

Still, I was sooooo happy eating cake. Aren’t we all? We decide to go for the good thing, but then it gets hard, and we sit down with the cake because it makes us feel better for three full seconds.

I knew there was work to be done—not just in imagining and resourcing a movement that could help others—but in building a me that was more solid with Jesus and that she was on her breakfast cake diet.

The finding usually happens when:

• You shift focus
• Change jobs
• Face a crisis
• Get a big job
• Feel inconsistent
• Discover creation, art, inspiration
• Realize how weird you really are
• Explore your creativity
• Decide you should jump
• Hibernate
• Question

It’s in these moments we have to shift to finding ways to steer away from being consumed by negativity or sadness pertaining to the loss of what used to be. We have to deconstruct and reconstruct a way of life that embraces every aspect of our humanity.

It isn’t easy. There are days when adrenaline and emotions lure me to become silent, feel conflicted, move into fight mode. None of these things raise the bar for me to become a better me. None of these things support the people in my life trying to become better themselves.

Finding…

Finding me—discovering me—who I am, what I’m about isn’t a one-time event but a process. It’s a series of discoveries about myself. A series of findings…

Finding What We’re Made Of

We find out what we are made of when we walk away from what we think we are made of (youth ministry) and get in touch with the One who made us.

Knowing your best self and getting in touch with the One who made you doesn’t always stem from transitioning in your role or changing things drastically. You can feel the pull when you’ve camped out too heavily in any identity that wasn’t meant to be your full identity.

When you find you’re at the end of yourself and your heart and abilities are tired, God can give you a new song, and a transformed view of yourself.

However, it doesn’t happen in holding on to what we know. It happens in letting go. It happens in our yeses, our ands, and in our letting go.

Letting Go

These words are the key to the lock, the underground-tunnel prison break. They are the ways beyond, the breakthroughs. Some days I get it; other days I forget it. I want you to know there’s no match for God’s love on this journey. God wants to reveal the best version of you—and He can show you the reasons why your expression of His creativity is important. The finding of you begins with an unclenching and an adventurous spirit.

I had to let go before I could find. I mentally had to take off the many hats I was wearing: child of God, spouse, parent, minister, writer, leader, creator…the list begins to bulge with a heaviness that makes the desire to find more feel daunting. Let go of some of the burden you carry in label wearing in the hope of finding what you need more.

Finding Rest

Find a place where you can talk to God. Go there more often than you think is necessary. Name the fears. Name Jesus as Lord. Speak your dreams and your doubts. Ask for peace. If you’re angry, speak it. If you’re tired, express it. Name the thing that rips you apart. There is healing in expressing grief to God. We can be specific with the Author of specifics and rest in the knowledge that He loves us and will not leave us alone in the finding.

Finding Words

Open up the Scripture. Let it read you. Let all that you have learned be quieted while you let the Word speak specifically to you. Read it once…and again. Ask questions about what it might be saying. What resonates? It’s so easy to forget our secret tool because we’ve gotten used to it lying open nonchalantly on our various pieces of furniture and electronic devices. Yet if we want the Word to be deeper than the surface, we have to open it and walk into it.

Finding Trust

The three most impactful words of my year have been, “It is finished.” Jesus said these words. Jesus lived these words. Jesus is steady and won’t drop you in the middle. The grace that is needed is provided. Find the place where you’re unable to trust, which may take some hours with a counselor. It may require friends holding you until you physically can stop shaking. It may take a bit of searching; but when the light pierces your fears, you will walk toward it and see your bravest self. Stay steady.

Finding One Thing

Ask yourself, “What’s the one thing I have to do? What is the unique contribution that’s been imprinted on me to be a divine interruption in the world? What is the one thing that unsettles me when I ignore it and invigorates me when I explore it? It’s time to find your and. If you need some help finding your one thing, try writing a letter to your 80-year-old self. Write to him or her about how your life looked, what you were grateful for, and the things you are so proud of doing. What did you do? Who did you become? How much fun was it to be you? Then take a look at what you are doing now to compare. You may need to look for support to be able to say no to the things that aren’t helping your one thing become your main thing.

Finding a Pace

I became overwhelmed with the enormity of the new work I was doing, so much that I became breathless thinking about it. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t believe that anything good was still in me. I was facing debilitating depression and needed a better pace (and grace, grace on top of grace). I needed to find a pace that allowed me to create what marketers call minimal viable product. I had to offer what I had and not worry that it wasn’t enough. Knowing that this is something that happens to so many of us, can I simply encourage you? Don’t be daunted by the enormity of what’s in front of you. You neither are obligated to solve all the world’s problems, nor are you free to abandon the work. Walk into your calling and passion; pick a pace; don’t give up. The pace may change, but the passion doesn’t have to change.

Finding Weird

Embrace the weirdest thing about yourself. It’s a home base—something magnetic and wonderful. It’s that sweater with the cat on it or your obsession with no-churn ice cream. It’s the way you seem to walk left when others walk right. It’s all those things that make you you. These are the things that will give you courage to be courageous in the extraordinary things God leads you to do.

Finding Expertise

When you become intentional about being more you, you’ll need to be less of some things. You may feel emotions you’ve never felt before. You may face a challenge you can’t seem to break through. Find help. Look for an expert and trust him or her. Don’t be afraid to say, “I need you.” Don’t be limited by the belief that you have to become someone else to do something great.

When you say yes to becoming more you—yes to the finding—you’re saying yes to the God who mixed only one you for a life full of freedom. Find that life. Find that you. Find that peace. When you get to the bottom of things, you’ll have a chance to look at what you have left, which is the one and only, wonderfully created soul standing in the presence of an ever-generous and unchanging God. The God of the finding never will leave you. The God of the finding will set you free.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17).