Dear internet,
Today I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to visit their mind-mansion exhibit, with a bunch of mind-teasers and puzzles and other cool things. I always like things like this but I never feel like I’m very good at puzzles like this, Alissa is way better at them. There were several times when she would stand behind some kids performing the puzzle, and she would say the answer is 7 or 12 or whatever it is, and be completely right. Just by looking at it and thinking about it, she would be able to solve whatever the problem is in her mind. One of many things I love about her.
Me? I love to learn new things but I have a more, uh, brute force method. What I lack in cleverness I more than make up for in stubborness. And I have been in a season of a lot of learning. Almost everything I think I knew was washed up and washed out to sea and now I get to learn a lot of new things all at once.
Who wants to read a newlywed that thinks he has marriage all figured out? That’s part of the reason I haven’t been blogging as much lately. I have so much to learn. I’m learning how to be a husband. How to be an engineering manager at work. I’m re-learning how to lead 6th graders. I’ve done this 2 other times, you would think I’d know what I was doing by now, but like I said, I’m a brute force-learner. Maybe by the time I have my 10th class I’ll have this down. It’ll be the class of 2078 but better late then never?
Marriage. Ministry. Leadership. Management. Parenting. A few new categories and I’m in the 101 class on all.
So I won’t tell you about any of them. Because, again, while I have passion and interest in all of them, let’s wait for wisdom to come before thinking I have anything to contribute to the sum of human knowledge on these topics.
Through it all I want to stop and quit and give up and do something else. (all new areas of life but same AJ, it turns out…) But God reminds me I have learned a thing or two through the years.
Like the fact that He will supply grace upon grace from His fullness. (John 1:16) And that He is at work within us to produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (can you believe I just typed that from memory? I forgot faithfulness, but I am getting there.) And that He has made me fearfully and wonderfully.
And that He has already done amazing, miraculous, good things. That I have experienced the love of Christ though it is too great – FAR, FAR, FAR too great — to ever understand.
Look, I don’t know why you’re still reading. I don’t write these for you, I write them for me. And when I go back and look three, four or even six years back I realize how little I knew, how much my passion and enthusiasm was like a bull in a china shop, and how far God has carried me.
In seven years, I look forward to reading this and remembering what it was like to follow God right before He took me on another grand adventure.