Where the Life is

I've silently hated the truth that love is a choice. Whenever someone reminds me that this concept is in the world, the image of a lifeless couple sitting on a dirty couch with frozen dinners pops into my head. Saying that love is a choice seemed belittling of Love to me.

As usual, God's proven me dead wrong.

Every Friday morning at 7am, 40-60 college students pile into my living room. Myself and my housemates host something called Friday Morning Worship. A few years ago, upperclassmen felt the desire for a more intimate worship experience than what they were getting at church or other student ministries. This tradition is now three years old and is one of the biggest graces in my life.

Thursday night, my housemates and I make muffins, set out the tea, coffee, and we decorate our table with an impressive bunch of mugs for the early morning. Upperclassmen wake up even earlier and drive the underclassmen from their dorms to our house. It's a beautiful thing: so many exhausted students craving Jesus' touch in the early morning. I get to sit amidst a sea of voices in my own living room and feel the atmosphere change for the rest of the day even after the music stops.

This particular Friday Morning Worship, I wanted to make pancakes for people. I remember as an underclassman feeling so blessed whenever I was in the home of an upperclassman. I felt safe and fed. I desperately want to give that to whoever steps into my home. Those who have gone before me brought me up beautifully.

But, I was crying as I watched the pancakes turn golden. And they weren't happy tears. I was serving like I wanted to be but I'd lost myself again. My mind had been anywhere but the present and had created narratives in my head that I didn't choose. I was convinced that life was anywhere but where I was and that I had to go on some grand adventure to find it. So I cried because I was serving and struggling to find life there. A million different lives I could've lead flashed through my mind.

College has always been a tense relationship. I'm tired of learning about things and not being touched by anything. I take the least amount of classes as I possibly can so that I can strengthen relationships, travel, and learn what's outside of Miami. Experiential learning is what I need and college isn't delivering. On more than one occasion I've imagined myself hopping on a plane and leaving without a trace.

My love life has always been a tense relationship. I feel like I know too much that I have to chose when my heart comes to life and when it doesn't. If I have 50 different litmus tests for where true love is, which ones are allowed to fail and which ones are the most important to pay attention to?

I have so much knowledge, but, I feel so finite in a world that insists knowledge is power.

Worship ends and I get it together. The buzz of prayer and laughter begins and I snake through to my room, leaving the pancakes for whoever. My friend follows me and I collapse on her shoulder. I'm not going to class. I wait for the last of my dear friends to leave then I burst into tears. Where have I gone again? Where is the life?

I take a drive and my mind has no traction. I go to my writing session and breathe again. Where I write is beautiful. As if a spell of comfort covers the place, it makes me see the world outside in a new light. I felt untouchable as I walked through the wildflowers and felt the sun break through the clouds onto my path. Prayer freed me again.

As it turns out, knowledge isn't power; turns out, power isn't really the thing to be interested in anyway. I find that when I let my mind try to gather more knowledge about where I would be happiest, I just end up distressed and crying into other people's pancakes. But when I think about Love, intimacy, and the fact that those things are the core of my God, I remember that its really hard to make a wrong choice.

When I decide about where I stand, no matter where I've chosen to be, I'm free. I fall so far when I can't decide. I lose myself and my foundation. To find love and life, we have to decide when we've found it. And that only works if we believe that wherever we wander off to in life, in God's eyes, we never reach the tips of His fingers or the edges of His palm. I won't spend my life straddling different lives and rationale-ing all the possible endings.

I guess it's called contentment. I guess it's called choice. But I can only have these things if I also believe I have love. So I'll decided to trust that I do.