Day 7 of New Life

Apathy is cancerous. It starts small with just a little thing. Maybe you didn't feel like wasting the gas to go to a church event or help your friend move. Maybe you didn't take the time to find out why that guy at work was in such a bad mood. Any disease left unchecked grows, often without you realizing it. It's like that when you put a lobster in a pot of water and you gradually heat it. By the time the crustacean realizes anything is wrong, it's too late.

What started as wanting to avoid an inconvenience can become a total lack of care for anything thing and everything. Friends, family, work, church, God. It might sound like an oxymoron but it becomes an active apathy. You seek out ways to avoid your life and hide away so you can do nothing and feel nothing. That's my experience anyway.

A lot has happened in my life that I look back on with regret. Regret was where the apathy began. I looked back at all the things I had done wrong and it made me want to shut down. I thought about how self-absorbed I often was. Did I really care about my friends in highs school and did I express that? Was I truly RA material or did I merely have the title? I could go on and on but as much as this is about me this posting is about something bigger.

In Decemmber something earth shattering happened. My world was sent into a death spin. I had a choice to get back on my feet or step off the world. I chose the latter. While maintaining the facade of okay-ness, internally I quit living.

I was unemployed for extended periods of time and I wanted to stay that way. I took a leadership position at church and then did nothing. I promised the youth leader I would help her and then I didn't. I quit reading my Bible and praying. I sat for hours staring into space with nothing on my mind. But, man could I talk the talk and make veryone think that life was peachy. God is good, right.

Seven months have gone by and in that time I have left a trail of lies, unfulfilled promises, and debt. I have last my passion for helping the disenfranchised and I have ultimately become one of the Pharisees as Jesus described them, "white-washed tombs." Any recovery from this seemed impossible especially since I didn't care.

And then something happened.

I'd like to say something earth-shattering happened like Saul's conversion on the way to Damascus but it was much simpler than that. I realized how much I hated what my life had become. I knew that my life's purpose was not to wallow in nothingness for the rest of my life.

So I changed everything and now I'm the pastor of a successful mega-church.

NOT!

I'm just making it one day at a time as Jeremy Camp says. Daily, no hourly, I have to remind myself of who God is and who I am in relation to Him. I hold onto verses lie "Do everything as working for the Lord and not for men" and "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

Each day I have to seek God and push everything else aside. I admit it is difficult because it has become a habit for me to avoid life and now I am stepping out of my shell and trying to live. As I think of this or that and how it should be different I also find people that I need to apologize to and make things right. But God truly is good and the only way that I am escaping from apathy into vibrance is by Him, carrying me.

Learn from this and don't hide when life falls apart. In the words of Dennis Quaid in "The Rookie," when life throws you a curve, don't duck."