The Muppets are liars!

It kills me to say this, but the Muppets are liars.

Let me back up a little.

My senior year of college was marked with some pretty melancholy moments. I know its not terribly unique to feel this way in your early 20s. Heartbreak and confusion of what the future held hung pretty heavy in my dorm room that year. My roomate and I even had this unspoken contest as to who could pin the most depressing song lyrics on our walls. It got pretty ridiculous, until one day I decided to go another route.

I put up the lyrics to a song from The Muppet Movie. The song is entitled "I Hope that Somethi' Better Comes Along." It is an upbeat little number sung by a frog and dog bemoaning the difficulties of relationships. For me that was the ray of optimism (and absurdity) that broke through the clouds of my little self centered world.

That fall turned to spring, and graduation was right around the corner. Soon enough our group of close knit friends slowly drifted apart as new jobs took us to new places and new lives and new marriages added new responsibilities. My roommate married, and together we celebrated that his "something better' had come along.

Here I am today, nearly twelve years later. And I find that melancholy is a pretty easy mode to slip into.

The link above is from the newest Muppet film (debuting Nov 23). One of the lyrics states, "Life's a happy song, when you have someone by your side to sing along." I can do several things with this lyric. I can bemoan that fact that I am alone (I'm not, but I am certainty not living the story I had envisioned I would be twelve years out of undergraduate school.). I can focus on the community that is around me (which I am trying so very hard to do. I always assume that no one wants to deal with my stuff, should have to deal with my stuff, or simply has there own stuff to deal with). Or I can do something completely else.

I cam realize that the Muppets are liars.

In the same movie where the frog and the dog sing of the woes caused by inter-species relationships, there is a much more famous song, "The Rainbow Connection." It is the song that opens the film. The Muppet Movie ends with what is essentially the second stanza of "The Rainbow Connection" known as the "Magic Store."

"The Magic Store" begins with these words "Life is a story. Write your own ending."

Part of me wishes that sentiment was true. I would love to take pen to paper and make my wishes and dreams come true. However, the wiser part of me knows that we do not write our own endings. God does. God is the author of this hero's journey I am on.

I can do many things as I look at the story of my life. I can look too far too deeply into the past and become stuck there unable to be effective here and now. I can do the same with the future.

But in this story it is the author who is omniscient and not I. I do not know what the future holds and honestly barely understand what the present holds.

I do not know why registration is such a difficult task for me to understand, or why my radiator hates me, I do not know why the school work can seem overwhelming at times.

I don't know when my something better may come along, I don't get to write my own ending.

But even without knowing those things, there is something I can do. I can be obedient.

I know one thing. And I am relatively sure of one thing.

God has made me to be a Children's Pastor. That is my call, that is my vocation, that is my core, that is my true self. I am relatively sure that North Park is the road to accomplishing becoming a Children's Pastor.

And so I push on. I obey. I do what I can to move through this course of education, and trust to God for the rest.

So my life can indeed be a happy song. Because I trust not in the plans I have, or in the ending I would write. I trust instead in God.

The Muppets may be liars. But my God is not.

So for now, for today, I will hold onto His plan and trust in His ending.

--Serving Him alongside all of you, just from further away
--Jesse Letourneau