pick up.

I am intrigued by people's unique individual qualities. I enjoy learning about their passions and talents. Lately I've been thinking a lot about my strengths and how to use them to best glorify God. I think knowing them and how to use them effectively is super important. Someday down the road I'd maybe like to help others figure this out for themselves. I like that it's strategic (a strong thought pattern of mine) because harnessing your potential will increase your effectiveness and efficiency.

I feel like I've been on the fast track to a mature walk w/the Lord. The last five years have been a wild ride, but I think it has been good all around. I've always been surrounded by people who were more mature, some very much so, which helped me grow immensely.

For the first few years of my walk with the Lord, I ate everything up. My faith became very real and personal to me. In hearing many sermons and reading many books, I focused mainly heard the "should nots"- things I should not do, should not say, should not think. But somewhere along the way there was a disconnect with what I SHOULD do, say, think. If people were telling me, I was not listening.

In his book The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Clairborne writes about this feeling. "There must be more to Christianity, more than just laying your life and sins at the foot of the cross. I came to realize that preachers were telling me to lay my life at the foot of the cross and weren't giving me anything to pick up. A lot of us (his youth group/friends) were hearing 'don't drink, don't smoke, don't sleep around' and naturally started asking, 'okay well that was pretty much my life, so what do I do now?' Where were the do's? And nobody seemed to have much to offer us."

Do you ever feel this way? I think all of us probably at some point in some way. A college grad might lay his future down at the foot of the cross. But what does he do while he waits for God's direction? My relation to this is my identity. I'm at a loss. I know that I should not find my identity in what I do. My resume, my planner and my list of goals in life do not define me, but it's ingrained in me in many ways. And even when I can figure out how to lay it down, I don't really know what to pick up.