Better Questions Blog - Dive (Life on the Way)

[Nate Porter]

I’m Diving in, I’m going deep, in o’er my head I want to be…
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in o’er my head I want to go…
The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive…
So sink or swim I’m diving in. (Stephen Curtis Chapman – “Dive” from Speechless)

Vida en la via (I think) – “Life on the way” – that’s where I am. I don’t know where I’m headed and so much seems to be changing and opening up.

I’ve spent the last couple of months wondering about short term outcomes – where will I live? What will I do for a living? How will I provide sufficiently for my family and copious college/seminary loans?

God has somehow taken all that, put it together, swished it around and spit it out so that I can simultaneously have no idea what’s going to happen and yet have confidence that it will.

Suddenly I’m making $8.55/hr + tips instead of around $20 per hour, and yet, I have the free mental and emotional space to begin reconnecting with my family (who I lost too much connection with along the way). And even though it’s been a long fall and there’s a lot of pain, there’s love there to build on.

Suddenly, I’m in a business I love and can be passionate about even though it’s nothing like what I thought I trained for. And yet I can see potential in the future that it could become exactly what I trained for. The pipe dream of opening a Christian coffee shop in Japan might not be so far off working in a company with 1/3 of its stores in Japan.

Suddenly, I find myself connected with a community of believers that might actually “get” my family and who we are, where we are not an aberration or novelty but part of a community of compassionate and purposeful endeavor.

And suddenly, I feel like I am the one diving in not knowing where the water is headed or where it will take me, only that it will take me where and how I do not expect.

God, keep opening my life to you and reminding me that you know the ways I should go better than I myself. Strengthen me to love people, to love creation, to love your church, to love you. Catch me in your rush and flow and never let me go. Amen.