In the Write.

People tell me to write. Last summer, I was told that I had a book in me. This year I took short fiction and LOVED it. [I'd love to share a story or two if you'd like to see them.] Last night, a guy at yearteam read a post of mine and really liked it. Called me a writer. Today, chatting in the park, a friend told me to write. Journal or blog or something, he said. Write.

But all I have, really, are beginnings. I have thoughts that peter into dreams, hopes that trickle into sighs. I have short stories that become paragraphs, novels that become essays. Songs become poems, and poems become stanzas left to season on my external hard drive. I call its overarching file 'The Mind', because it's as wildly jumbled and unfinished as its namesake.

I want to write. I want to lead. I want to disciple young boys into adulthood. I want to teach them what it means to 'only do what we see the father doing', what it means to 'lose our life for the gospel, and so save it'. I want to know what it means. I want to teach them how to love your roommates, how to build community, how to find the lost and the broken. I want to teach them how to work hard, for Jesus, even when brewing a carafe of House Blend.

I want to walk into the courtyard, approach a table of young men, and say, come, follow me. And I want them to say, yep, I'll have what he's having. Then I want the humility and the wisdom to lead them to Christ. I want to know Christ, the power of his resurrection, the depth of his love, the depth of his suffering. I want to be as confident as Jesus was, to pray for healing- to command it.

But this is all I have. Beginnings, desires, seekings. Maybe, with the Holy Spirit, that's all you need to lead. Apparently, it's all you need to write.

I pray for opportunities to minister. I pray for more desire to pray. I pray for a deeper intimacy, a deeper faith. And I pray for the capacity to lead, to express thoughts in ways that draw others along.

And I begin, with naught but beginnings and seekings and desires, failures and longings and perhaps a little more. But my communities say I'm ready, so I'm pressing on and waiting, day to day, for young men to lead and things to write. I fully understand that in all my dreams, striving, pushing, I may be confused, in the wrong. Tell me, if you ever suspect it.

But in the meantime, I'm going to trust that Christ, by His Spirit, has put me in the write.