Undecided At Life

Reading other blogs, I see that some bloggers explain the title to their blog page. Mine, as you can see, is Undecided at Life. I chose this title because due to some shake-ups in my life, I am reassessing my life, goals, and direction.

I’m not unemployed, but I didn’t want to be defined by my current job. I work in security at a Community College. It’s an easy job, the pay isn’t great, but it makes ends meet and I work at a college which is pretty cool most of the time because I work around educated people and I get to have some pretty good conversations. In addition to all that, the campus is in a developing rural area, so it’s quiet and beautiful.

Even though I have a military and security background, and I have some basic law enforcement training, security work isn’t something I want to do for the rest of my life. Frankly, I didn’t think I would be working this job for this long.

I thought I wanted to be a pastor. I’m passionate about Christianity and the Bible, I love helping and teaching people, and I truly felt that ministry was something I was called to. I went to college and earned a divinity degree. I put myself in positions where I could get involved with ministry. I wrote, preached, ministered, and taught at every opportunity I was given.

In churches, I have taught Sunday School from primaries to adults. I have taken advantage of opportunities to preach in a variety of church settings. I have done community outreach, ministering in homeless shelters, nursing homes, prisons and halfway houses. I’ve been involved in music ministry as a performer, composer, and as a director.

While I was on active duty in the Navy, I served as a Protestant lay leader. As a military lay leader, my responsibility was to conduct services in absence of a Protestant chaplain. On my last ship, we had no permanently assigned chaplain at all and for my first deployment, I was the only qualified lay leader of any faith. That meant that a lot of the responsibilities that would normally fall to a chaplain fell to me. Really, the only thing I didn’t do was conduct chaplain counseling. That’s not to say that people didn’t come to me for the type of counseling a chaplain would do, it’s just that I had to let people know that since I wasn’t a chaplain, our conversations weren’t legally protected and confidential the same way they would be with a chaplain. I would however, keep all conversations confidential where I was legally able.

I even attempted to start a church. That endeavor was short lived and due to unforeseen circumstances, I had to step away from it. That’s another long painful story and maybe I will tell that story some time.

I went on Facebook to change my employment status. My occupation was “Pastor” and my place of employment was “Mosaic Bible Fellowship”. Even though I had a few members besides my family, the church never really got off the ground. So, I deleted that as a workplace from my history.

By the way, the "never really got off the ground" part isn't why I had to step away. The members I had were faithful and excited about growing a new church.

I also decided to reconsider pursuing ministry. That door has been closed on me so many times, I wondered if that was even God’s calling for me. I will still preach and teach if asked and I will be a lay minister in whatever church I join. I have decided to focus on just being a layman again for the time being. My wife and I are praying for direction.

I told a friend of mine about my experience and she made this great observation "Maybe you feel drawn to the ministry, but were meant for something else." It's nice to have smart, encouraging friends.

Since I wasn’t a pastor and I didn’t want to be defined by my security work which is hopefully temporary, I was left with the question, how do I define myself now? And, What do I want to do with my life? So, while I try to figure out the answer to the second question, for my current occupation on Facebook I put “Undecided” and my workplace is “Life”. One time, I looked at my work history on Facebook and it said my current work was “Undecided at Life.”

“And,” to quote Kostas Portokalos from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, “there you go.”

Why Blog? Why Not?

Several people have suggested I start a blog. I guess it kind of makes sense. I like to write, I have opinions and some people like to read them whether they agree with my opinions or not.

I tried blogging a few years back when I was in the Navy, but I wrote two pieces, and lost track of my account. It's still out there, but I lost the password and can't get back in. I didn't really work that hard to figure it out. I was in the Navy and didn't have a whole lot of time to write. Rather than fight that fight, I thought I would start from scratch.

So, what will I be writing about? It's a blog, so I can do whatever I want. I like politics and religion even though mixing those is like mixing raw potassium and water. Of course I also have some pretty strong libertarian leanings, so while I don't mind politicians who are open about their faith, I don't really like telling others how to live or people telling me how to live. Obviously there are exceptions because I'm not an anarchist. Politically, I'm independent with libertarian leanings, but I usually vote Republican. I say "usually" because I have proudly supported and voted for candidates in other parties.

One of the things that I look forward to in blogging is that I will be able to more clearly and completely present my ideas and opinions. I love social networking. Facebook put me in contact with so many people I had lost contact with - people who I am very fond of and even love that I thought I would never see again. Twitter is great because I can watch a live feed of news as it happens. The problem with all those sites is that people try to figure out my opinions based on a one or two sentence post.

I'm an evangelical Christian, so I am very conservative on most issues especially on theology. I come across and may well be a liberal on some issues. The fact is, I'm an iconoclast and you really can't define me by a political party, conservative, liberal, or any other kind of label you may want to apply to me.

In conversations on a wide variety of subjects, I have been called a liberal when talking to conservatives and conservative when talking to liberals. On social networking sites, when I comment, I tend to use hyperbole, come across as reactionary, and sometimes I paint with a broad brush. Of course, in those instances, I'm not trying to be nuanced or properly articulate. I try to be a little clearer in my Facebook notes and I will probably transfer some of those here.

I hope to entertain and enlighten people. I also know that I will frustrate and anger everyone at some point. It's not personal, it's just that I can't make everyone happy and I'm not even going to try. If you want to criticize my opinion, that's fine, but just know that if you engage me in a debate, you're going to need to have a stronger argument than, "You're obviously stupid," or "I disagree with you." Be adult or don't try. I can not abide trolls. I won't feed them, I will only delete their comments.

I won't just be writing opinion pieces. I've done all kinds of writing, so maybe I'll put some of my fiction up here too. I've done some teaching, so maybe I'll put some of my lessons up here. Who knows what else I will put in here?