Meanwhile...

Seven Years Ago while sitting in LAX, the idea of the hero's journey as analogous to my own journey began to take hold for me. Since then it has been a major filter for me as I process the events of my life both large and small. It certainly has become a recurring theme for this blog.

My last entry dealt with the in-between place I found myself in. I anticipated this entry to be about waiting and choice. I thought I would be writing about how the hero's journey ends when the hero returns home (or at the very least finds a new place of rest). I expected to be writing that now rather than seeing my journey like Frodo returning to the Shire or Alice finding her way back to the tree by the river bank, I felt my journey had become a series of quests with rest still far in sight.

This would be true Sunday to Thursday.

Two things happened on Thursday.
I received a text asking if I was available for a phone call with Pastor Doug of Cal Heights United Methodist Church here in Long Beach, and my mom started to feel feverish around 11:00 pm.

Friday morning two more things happened.
My mom woke me up at 1:10 am complaining of fatigue and shortness of breath and asked me to dial 9-1-1. The ambulance arrived shortly thereafter. From the emergency room my mom was wheeled directly into surgery to have a shunt placed to flush out a 99% blockage in her right artery. By 5:00 am my mom was in the ICU and allowed to get some rest. I went home and slept for a couple of hours.

At 9:00 am my phone rang. It was the call from Pastor Doug. We discussed the denomination and the position they had available. We talked a little shop. He asked if I could come in on Monday for lunch. He then went on say "after that I will show you the church, I will take you to where we do our background checks, and then we can get you started." I realized that with no formal interview I had just been offered a position at Cal Heights United Methodist.

Obviously I needed time to think.
I truly had no idea what was going to happen from day to day. Some days my mom was fine and being discharged the next day looked hopeful. Other days I was asking the doctors if my brother should be buying a plane ticket to come see her.

The position that was offered was for a part-time interim Youth director. Not exactly what I was looking for.

In the midst of all this, there was also a lack of clarity as to what my mom would need when she left the hospital.

Then I had the hero's journey redefined for me.
Above I spoke about the hero's journey being one of returning home. In fact I wrote something very similar before I left for Copperopolis. Yet somewhere in the last six months I had grown a desire to be great and important. To have others know of my work and my calling. To have others know of me. I had defined for myself the hero's journey as a quest of greatness, a proof of my value and worth.

Somewhere underneath my desire to be present, to make a difference right where I was, I had grown restless and allowed outside voices to be the barometer for my worth. I had allowed others view of my calling and work to be the definition of those things.

To be brutally honest, I am still processing all of this. 
Still looking to find meaning in it all.
Still trying to find the balance. Not wanting to make this last month one of fate, seeing these events as necessary for God to work. And yet, not wanting to make them mean nothing seeing them as pure happenstance.


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

Tune in Next Time.. When our hero has some distance and clarity on all this to share with you all, or simply uses this space to rant about Kermit the Frog.