Making Peace with Wapakoneta

I’ve become very familiar with I-75. Several times a year, I’m on that road for about four hours at a time, and it’s a great opportunity to catch up with friends on the phone… until I hit a certain stretch of road where my signal starts to toy with me. You know how it goes. My phone drops a call without warning, and I look down and see four bars going strong. “Hm. Must have been my friend’s phone,” I say to myself. So I call my friend back, and… the call won’t connect. I look down again and see the signal slide from four bars to zero bars and back again like it’s playing a xylophone. And then I remember. Wapakoneta. I must be driving through Wapakoneta.

Now, I’m not trying to be a hater. I know that it’s not Wapakoneta’s fault. It just happens to be the location of one of those mysterious dead zones that lasts for about 15 minutes and then is gone. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor inconvenience. It’s such a small thing to be momentarily unable to talk on my cell phone. But even when I’m expecting it, I have a strong desire to chuck my phone through my windshield in a fit of primal frustration. Little glitches like this serve to expose the selfishness and smallness of my perspective on life. The universe does not exist to fulfill my every desire and accommodate all my plans. The universe is also not out to personally thwart my desires and plans. There is no conspiracy aimed directly at me when I hit every red light. Win or lose, I’m just *not* that big a deal. And that’s actually really good news. It leaves enough room for there to be a bigger purpose to my life and to the lives of everyone around me (even people who walk too slowly in the grocery store). It’s an invitation to be caught up in something bigger than me, to serve Someone bigger than me who has a greater purpose for my life than I’m willing to imagine.

Last week, I was driving that familiar route on I-75, watching the miles flow by. I needed to stop for gas and a quick bite to eat, and I saw a sign informing me that the next exit was, you guessed it, Wapakoneta. I paused for a moment, and then turned on my blinker. It was a peace offering of sorts. It was an acknowledgement that my Meg-centric view of life is inaccurate and inadequate. And I’m hoping to take it even one step further. I’m trying to be thankful for the reminders that there is much more to life than me. So Lord, thank you for Wapakoneta. Thank you for drivers who dawdle in the fast lane. Thank you for neighbors who are learning to play the drums. Thank you for the daily opportunities you give me to find freedom from myself and the tyranny of my own perspective.

Of and about this second post...

Oh, the irony. I spent a decent amount of time this week laboring over what to write. This second post is tough – it sets the tone, establishes a trajectory. It needs to illustrate what this blog is going to be like. The problem is that I don’t really know what I want this blog to be like. And it really isn’t important to know right now. Is it such a tragedy if I start something that has the freedom to evolve over time? But it’s so like me to get stressed out by unnecessary expectations that I’m imposing on myself. If I waited for everything to be perfectly clear, I would never start anything (exhibit A as to why I dragged my feet to start this blog in the first place). And as I ponder that frustrating habit of limiting myself to the known, I realize that this train of thought would make a great blog post. Irony, table for two? Let’s you and I discuss this for a minute.

I don’t like uncertainty. I don’t like to start something unless I know where it’s going to take me or how it’s going to end. But that’s not an adventure. That’s a routine. Adventures are risky and require courage because we don’t know what’s going to happen. The thing that makes them scary is also the thing that makes them exciting. Routines are comfortable because we know what to expect. It’s not that routines are not bad – we need routines. It’s that they will not be able to take us somewhere new. They will not help us break out of a status quo that has begun to hold us back. And so, when it’s time to start something new, we have to (we get to?) gear up for an adventure. We have to step up to the edge of the cliff and jump. More often than not, I can get myself to the edge. Breathless, I stand there in awe of the potential, and then, I begin to contemplate. I start to make pro/con lists. I negotiate the time line of when would be a better time to jump. I think through contingency plans. I bring a recliner and my journal and a little table for my books and coffee and suddenly, I’ve become comfortable at the top of that cliff. I’ve actually (hello irony again) made a routine out of standing at the edge of adventure. Man, I’m good.

Lord, give me the courage to jump. Help me to realize when my routines have become tiny, comfortable prisons and to realize that you are offering me a chance to escape. Whether it’s what to write in my blog or what to be when I grow up, I want to trust You with the uncertainty. Because really, the things I know for sure far outweigh the things that are not able to be known. You are real. Your love for me is constant and unfailing. My identity, my worth, my acceptance are all firmly established. So, what am I waiting for??