Ten Weeks In and Experiencing Extrovert De-Tox

So I'm a good ten-ish weeks into my new job and I've had some excellent moments already. It's encouraging to see the staff I work with do good work. It's fun to come alongside and brainstorm and encourage and get to know them and their students.

And it's been really cool knocking on some doors at campuses where there's no InterVarsity work and seeing what might open up. One campus in particular has seemed to pop with potential and I'm hopeful that we might be able to plant there in the fall.

But there's been some challenges, too. Being the flaming extrovert that I am, I have missed the crowds. I'm getting some great one-on-one time with my staff. But that's not quite the same thing as being at a large group with 300 students. I always came away energized by large group--even when it was bad.

This has led me to some good reflection. God has made me as I am--he knows how I'm wired.

But that wiring needs significant redemption. I can become addicted to the crowds. So part of the blessing of this job change for me is the move to a slightly more solitary job in order that I might not become addicted to the crowd.

In other words, as a a part of these first several weeks of my new job I'm going through de-tox. Love the crowd too much, you can become addicted to the crowd--you can start to use the crowd to prop yourself up rather than being free to bless the crowd. Jesus loves me and the people around me too much to allow me to live out my addiction for too long.

I will always love people--the more the merrier in my book. But my hope and prayer is that as I submit myself to the Lord in new ways in my new position that I'll be a healthier extrovert because I have cultivated that introvert side. I hope to be more fully human and allow others to be human, too.

So that's the first few weeks in the new gig. I look forward to seeing what God has next.

Pony Rider over Soccer Player & The Importance of Leaving the Party for Zoe

Before I had kids one of the things that I saw in my friends who did that caused me the greatest angst was having to leave a gathering of some sort because your kid was a mess.

I'm such a crazy extrovert, I mostly just want to be where the most number of people are in any given social event. I couldn't imagine having to give up the crowds in order to take care of a kid.

But over the weekend, there we were: me, Kelly and the kids at a fine and very rare gathering of most of the IV staff in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. The people were all inside. But one of my kids, the most introverted of the five of us, at least at this point, needed a break. She asked if we could go outside to the swing set.

I took a deep breath and then gladly took her hand and we went out back. I pushed her on the swing and we chatted about what she wanted to be when she grew up (currently it's a pony rider over a soccer player, but not by much).

We stayed out there for a while and then it was pretty clear that all our kids were needing to get on the road. We gathered them up and headed for the door--the first ones to leave, a station in life that pre-kids was utterly foreign to me.

Before I had kids I couldn't conceive of meeting their needs over the call of the crowd. But now that I have real kids, not a hypothetical situation, that decision isn't quite as tough. My love for them compels me to take care of them, to prioritize them over the siren call of my flesh to always have to be in the midst of the action.

And all of this matters in any number of ways. But the most important reason is the deepest needs of their soul.

I won't always prioritize my preferences or comfort for my kids. But there was one who did. There's one who left the easiest place, the place of honor, comfort, power. There's one who left the party in order to come and get us--one who gave up all sorts of "rights" in order to come get you, get me, get each one of my kids.

He didn't just leave the loftiest place of comfort, he came to the lowest point of injustice and affliction. In order to secure our place at the party, he left it. He was born in an animal feeding trough. He lived in the muck and mud and mire of peasant-class Middle Eastern society. He died a brutal and shocking death. And he came back to life and re-ascended to the party in order to prepare a place for us there.

I need to be able to leave the party, as imperfectly as I am at it, in order to point my kids to the one who did, in order that they might not ever have to. And I'm getting better at it, by God's grace.

But I'm thankful that there's one who did it perfectly--that's my hope, both for me and for my kids.

Shutting Up in Burlap in 2016

Sunday morning at our "Faith Formation Class" (a.k.a. Sunday school with a less boring title) we were studying James 3. It's one of the most searing passages of all of Scripture, talking about the destructive and deceitful nature of our tongues. Consider this:

...no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.

Ouch. I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about here, but I'm sure some of you might.

Last week I finished Henri Nouwen's book The Genesee Diary. Nouwen spent seven months on sabbatical at a Trappist monastery from his teaching post. The book is a diary of his experience. It has been extremely helpful for me--especially last week as I read about his last month and the "P.S." that he wrote six months afterwards about his re-entry into normal life.

The Trappists are famous for having a fairly strict rule of silence--particularly on the grounds of the monastery. They mostly use sign language to communicate. If they must speak they often will retreat to a room away from common areas in order to maintain the general quiet of the place.

Nouwen says that the rule of silence had a couple of profound affects on him:

1. He realized how much he used words to manipulate the people around him into liking him. Words were his key tool for enduring himself to people, for building himself up and getting people to appreciate him.

2. But it wasn't just his own silence that was disorienting for him. The people around him were neither critical nor approving of him. He couldn't find his place in the pecking order. He was left stranded by the lack of feedback from the people around him--exposing another (unhealthy) prop in his emotional and relational world.

All of this had the effect of leaving him to deal with the people around him and with the Lord as he really was. He was just a person, along with everyone else--naked, exposed, without his primary tool for advancing himself or navigating his way into privileged or affirmed places.

Since I am, after all, a flaming extroverted people-pleasing external (verbal and written) processor, this whole idea of living a life of silence scares me to death. I wonder if I could do it for longer than a couple days without spontaneously combusting.

But I also wonder if the experience (of silence, not spontaneous combustion) might ultimately bring some much-needed freedom and life and joy.

Next sabbatical, 2016: get me to a monastery. I hope that the burlap doesn't itch too much.

Tortured Introverts

So looking at the men who comprise sort of my "inner circle" of friends there's one remarkable trend: most of them are tortured introverts. That is, they have these inner worlds that are rife with inner conflicts, struggles, questions, wrestlings with God and with themselves over issues like calling, purpose, identity and why the NHL even bothers having playoffs any more. Okay, I made that last one up--nobody I know even cares about why the NHL bothers having playoffs any more.

I was talking with one of these tortured introverts just the other night. He was asking me why I had relationships such as these.

I think the answer is that I am an off-the-charts-extrovert who does not want his entire life to be comprised of externals. I want to have a rich internal life that fuels my work and my relationships. I want to be thoughtful and engaged in the world of ideas while at the same time working out those ideas in ministry and in my relationships.

One barometer of whether or not I'm actually living out this desire for a rich internal life is this blog. I started this thing because I had so much stuff going on in my head that it was getting a little bit crowded in there. I needed some way to process it. I needed a vent. So I started Piebald Life.

When I'm healthy--which includes reading thoughtful books as well as being in Scripture regularly and journaling--I've literally got thoughts stacked up like circling planes waiting to be blogged about. I told someone the other day that I blog about every 36 hours. Her response was, "About what?!? What you had for breakfast that morning?!?" But when I'm healthy, these posts are just piling up, waiting for expression. Sometimes I'll write up a couple of posts at the same time and just publish them later.

When my life overly-consists of externals, my internal world goes flat-line. And so my blog quality is a good barometer of my internal health. And these last several weeks have been pretty blah. Which is pretty indicative of the life I'm living right now.

But give me several weeks and summer time's here. And then it's a whole different ball game. And hopefully I'll have the space and time to pursue those internal-world things that give the external stuff of my life the quality and texture that I so deeply desire.