I like to stay in one place for a while, and settle into that life. I don’t really know what that life is about, or what I’m doing there, until I’ve been there a long time. But there are people who are constantly looking forward, and thinking about their next move. They aren’t really living in the present in its fullness, except as a conduit toward the ever-receding future.

Maybe that’s too harsh; I guess I’d say that some people have a knack for seeing their next steps clearly, for planning strategically. Boy is that not me. This, incidentally, is no doubt why I’m such a lousy chess player. I’d rather sit and look at the cool pieces and how they are arranged so neatly on the board than think four moves, three captures, and two sacrifices later to my winning combo. Can’t we all just get along as we are?

But the other side of this is that I often miss my opportunities for growth.
I stay in that one place, like a meditating monk, as life happens around me. It’s not that I don’t want to grow; it’s that these things take time to sink in; truth has to saturate you, and that can’t be rushed, unfortunately.

So the seasons of my life seem longer than they do for other people, I guess. It’s a feat that I can even start to think in terms of my next job, or my down-the-road life; it’s perhaps a hallmark of an experienced perspective that I can think ahead to the day when I go to counseling school. I see that as a definite stop in the future, and in some respects what I do now is helping angle us around to be ready for that time.

It’s not hard to look back on eight years in Chapel Hill and find fault with my way of living and learning. After all, I went to the town with an M.A., and eight years later I leave, some would say defeated, with no more than an M.A. What took so long to learn?

Perspective is what took so long. I had to learn to see myself! Over the past eight years I’ve learned to see crucial facets of who I am:

• A guy who struggled early and often with anger
• A guy who retreats into small stories when life gets difficult
• A guy who has held onto available certainties (like the Bible, formerly) out of fear of faith and intimacy
• A guy who has ADHD, OCD, and chronic depression, and frequent flatulence
• A guy who has been called to teach transformative truth
• A guy who asks good counseling questions
• A guy who has been called to wrestle with God and with the idea of the divine, probably forever
• A dang good teacher

Learning all of those things took great pain, and a long time. I think I'm one of those people who needs to be still long enough to get to these moments. You have to smoke a lot, drink a lot, sleep a lot, work a lot, hurt a lot, waste a hell of a lot of time, and be willing to talk about it all directly and honestly.

And a Game Boy Advance doesn't hurt, either.