"Get up. Keep walking, Brian."

January 14, 2009

Four years ago, on a brisk October day. Walking in sanctuary at Radnor Lake, Nashville. A wildlife refuge. A winding trail. I was wrestling with an incessant question: “Why is it that throughout my professional career when I believe that I might just have found a “home” where, like so many people I have envied through the years, I could use my full gifting and eventually retire and write books and teach in a small college…it all suddenly ends. Unexpectedly. Abruptly. Sadly.

And between my silent steps I would ask, “Why?” Silence.

“Why can’t I have a legacy of my own?” Silence.

“Why can’t I find a home where I really belong?” Silence.

“Why can’t I find that place where I can finish?” Silence.

Two hours of one-way conversation. No eye contact with errant trail hikers. Sitting on trail benches with the sense I would remain till God revealed something to me. Some hint. Some message. Even the slightest answer. Silence.

I was sitting on a bench near the end of the lake trail, a cartoon character trapped in clouds of thought balloons. And then I heard a stirring rising up inside me, an audible silence coursing through my veins and covering me in a linen parchment of words:

“Get up. Keep walking, Brian.” I stood up, turned obediently to my right and walked.

“You will not have a legacy that is your own. Yours is the woven legacy of others. To walk with them along their paths. To support their story.” I kept walking.

“You do not need a home and place of your own. You have had, do have and always will have the only home you need. In Me. I Am with you.” I kept walking.

“Not of this world. Not of this world. Keep walking.” I kept walking, And for the first time in my life career I felt contentment wash over me in the warm rain of knowing.

Last week my current working relationship with the EFCA in Minneapolis, became the past. Unlike more former transitions when moments of change like this would sting with the demons of rejection, frustration, fear, victimization, failure and loneliness… I stand up and keep walking. As my steps broaden the distance between what was and what is to come I leave with the imprints of lives left upon me that I cherish, and that have become an indelible line on the fingerprint of who I am. I pray that my time there has left even a few drips of ink that will endure. That the hard, good work our team began will be carried on by others with even more passion, creativity and commitment than that which I hope I brought and have now left behind. And I pray God’s continued favor for a group of devoted men and women who are fighting the fights that matter. With grace.

And so, I keep walking. And this time I welcome this moment given to me. This gift of pause. This inserted emphasis into my path. My parenthesis.

I welcome each of you who know me, worked with me, have recently met me and those who will come to know me, into my Parenthesis.

Brian

(b) in Parenthesis.

Find yourself in (the) story.