Accept That Everything You Think You Know is Wrong

The Guide to Extraordinary Living Part 1

Everything you know is wrong. Yep. I’m sorry to be the one to have to break this to you, but you’re wrong. Totally.

I don’t just mean the kinds of things you think I mean. I don’t mean the correct spelling of pseudonym or how many miles it is to the sun (even though, if we were being honest, you probably are wrong about those things, too)*. I mean the important things, such as the basic assumptions you have about what is real that direct the decisions you make, and ultimately how you live your life.

Huh?

Let’s take the classic example. Take the entirely fictional case of Timmy. Timmy is in his senior year of high school, and he sure is excited. He has big choices to make. Which college to go to, what major to choose, who to take to prom. Good thing for Timmy, he’s a child genius, the star Quarterback and a 100 mph left-handed pitcher. So he has his pick of colleges and prom dates.

He’s managed to narrow it down to two. Colleges, that is. On one hand, there’s Yale. On the other hand, Lone Pine Community College. He sits on his bed with the acceptance letters to both laying on the covers in front of him. His eyes dart back and forth. Finally, they settle on one. His hand reaches for the letter. Which one does he choose?

The wrong one.

No, not the community college.

They’re both wrong.

How can they both be wrong? Because they’re both based on the assumption that if he goes to a good school, he’ll get a good education. And if he gets a good education, then he’ll be able to get a good job or maybe even start his own company. And if he gets a good job he’ll make a lot of money and then he’ll be able to provide a safe, comfortable life for himself and his future family. And then he’ll be happy.

There’s the problem. He assumes that a safe, comfortable life will make him happy. But it won’t. It will make him dull. Lifeless. He may have a semblance of a happy life, but that won’t be the extraordinary life that he is longing for in his heart. Safe and Comfortable are what the padded cubicle walls are built out of. Instead of being set free by riches, he is made a prisoner by them.

You see, we've all bought into this idea that we are to be successful, or pursue what is in our hearts, or be rich or famous. That, whether we are teachers or shoe salesman or Fortune 500 CEO's, we should be happy doing what we want and that we should achieve some measure of comfort and stability. It's a subtle way of turning everything that happens into something about you. It's totally inward focused. The key to success supposedly lies somewhere inside of you, where if you can just create the right environment, you'll trigger this thing called happiness and then: you will have arrived.

Which brings us back to the dullness of life. We can't always do things only for ourselves – sometimes we are forced to go to a job, or live somewhere we don't like, or be in close quarters with someone we don't enjoy. We make up for this by going on self-indulging binges whenever we have the chance. Movies, food, sports, sex, video games, hobbies, TV, even religion. We pour so much energy into making ourselves happy despite the fact that we're obviously not happy that we miss the most central truth to all reality: life is not about us.

Life is not about you.

Real life, I mean. Extraordinary life. Think about it for a minute. Think what would happen if you stopped doing all the things you did every day that were designed to make you happy. If you seriously consider it, you might start to realize that everything you ever do is done in an effort to satisfy this insane hunger to become happy.

I would humbly suggest that the path to extraordinary living lies in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of the world flowing inward to me, to satisfy my needs and desires, it should flow outwards. I should focus my attentions and energies on other people, and pour myself out to help meet their needs and desires.

A few steps down this path, and you start to realize how amazingly refreshing it is. Don't get me wrong – it's not all clouds and roses. In fact, it feels a lot like I imagine a heroin addict would feel during detox – crazy, unstable, and intensely hungry. When you're not gorging yourself on entertainment, your eyes begin to see things clearly for the first time, and that can really hurt.

When it happened to me, I realized several things. That I essentially suck at relationships. That I don't make any sort of impact with people. That I am weak and fearful and hardly ever do anything daring or bold. But I also realized how free I was – how much more strength and potential flowed through every second of my day. Since nothing was about me anymore, I had way more space to move about. I was no longer a slave to my comfort.

So, that's the first step to extraordinary living: Accept that everything you know is wrong. That life is not about you, it's about what you can do for other people. If you can grasp that, you begin to sense the limitless potential and dream of much bigger things than a nice house or big screen TV.

But that's the next step...

*The sun is approximately 93 million miles away from earth. See, I told you that you were wrong.

Luke's Guide to Extraordinary Living

Let’s face it, life is drab. Real life, that is. Sure, there’s lots of excitement, humor, and drama on TV, but it can only come portioned in 30-minute or one-hour chunks. Real life is almost depressingly boring.

What do I mean? Boring is getting up, showering, going to a job, coming home, eating, sleeping, doing it again. Boring is looking back over the last three weeks and realizing that you don’t have one distinct memory out of the entire block of time. Boring is listening to radio, or reading the news, or watching TV, just looking for something to get worked up about.

Like I said, drab. Plain. Muted.

In fact, in most work places I’ve been at they actually encourage drabness. There was one office I worked at that literally had a policy that you couldn’t hang things on the cubicle walls because it ruined the “sound absorption qualities” of the cubicles.

I know most of us have come to accept that there is a certain amount of routine required for living, that in order to survive you have to have a paycheck, and in order to get a paycheck you’re going to have to get a job. The dullness just goes with the territory. You can have your fun on the weekends and holidays. I know most of us have come to accept that, but I believe it’s a very reluctant acceptance.

I think really we long to be free. We long to do something with our lives that makes us excited. We want to feel passionate about what we are doing. We know there has to be some way life can be more vivid, more inspired. We ache for the rewards of a life that has meaning to it, that can take our breath away with beauty and pierce our hearts with tragedy. We are tired of being numb.

But, we quickly let the sound absorption qualities of our cubicles stifle those thoughts, because immediately following them is a fear. A very subtle fear invades us when we start thinking about freedom and purpose. It’s not the kind of fear you would expect, not the “How would I pay the bills?” or “I have responsibilities, I can’t just let everyone down” type of fears. Those are simply the clothes we dress the fear up in. Those are the sensible words we use to cover up the fear that really eats at our souls. The real fear, the one we hardly ever truly address, is this: that there is nothing greater - that this dull reality is all there is, and that if we were to go crazy and risk everything for our dream of extraordinary living, we would find that it was all just a pipe dream and that extraordinary life doesn’t exist.

You see, as long as we don’t put extraordinary living to the test, we can at least hope that it’s out there somewhere. The hope - that maybe one day we will stumble into it, that the perfect job will come along, or we’ll marry the right person, or win the lottery, or invent something that will make us millionaires overnight - that hope keeps us alive and gives us the motivation to push through the dullness day after day after day. Without that hope, we have to face the awful truth that we are half-dead already.

So, is it out there? Can you truly live an extraordinary life?

Yes.

How? I aim to show you. In the next series of entries I will reveal a simple - yet difficult - guide to extraordinary living. It’s more possible than you ever imagined.

Stay tuned…

Okay, okay, I know

Yes, I know it's been forever since I've updated.

I'm sorry.

Busy, new child, etc. etc.

Hopefully, more consistent updates from here on out.

Here's one now!

Life, After Jumping Off the Edge

So, this month is a special anniversary for me. Yes, Lydia's birthday is this month, but that's not the one I'm referring to. What I am referring to is that this month, one year ago, is the last time I received a paycheck of any sort.

It's quite crazy to think about. It has now been an entire year since I have worked at a job for a hourly wage or commission.

I remember how, when I was living in that world, I was terrified of living off of support. In fact, that was pretty much the one thing that kept holding me back. I mean, what isn't there to love about the missions life? I work with people every day who are hoping to get closer to Jesus, and I can help them do that. I invest energy into things that I feel are worthwhile and have eternal value. I get to do something meaningful with my life. I get to live and work with my family. Really, the only bad thing about it is the pay.

I mean, its not like I haven't experienced it both ways. I lived for a year in missions before, and let me tell you, I did not enjoy any aspect of the financial situation. I felt like I was always scraping, always one step away from financial crisis, and always having to bite the bullet and not do the things I wanted to because there was no money.

On the other hand, I have lived the life of providing for myself. Honestly, I can tell you that it was much harder. I worked 60 hour weeks, had an intensely stressful job, was always worried or angry or uptight about something, and couldn't think about anything but money. That was no way to live, either, but at least there was an element of control to it. Everything else may be falling apart, but at least I knew what my paycheck was going to be every two weeks.

So I was living like a fool, clutching onto a sinking ship because I was afraid of walking on water. In my head I came to view returning to missions as jumping off a cliff. I knew it would be adventurous and exciting, but I wasn't quite sure where the bottom was or if anyone was going to catch me or not.

And of course, the list of excuses was a mile long. I had debt I had to pay off first, right? I couldn't expect to go into missions when I had debt hanging over my head. And what about insurance? Was it "responsible" of me to go gallivanting around the world when I couldn't afford insurance for my family? I couldn't expect other people to shoulder my "responsibilities," could I? My South African friend claims that this is cultural, that we Westerners put a high value on independence.

But God, thankfully, is one persistent Dude. Despite my fears and excuses, he called me to take the leap and see how far we could fly.

So we did.

And let me tell you, it has been worth it. The first part of the year was a real struggle with God. I was always telling him how much I didn't like how our finances were, and he was always telling me no to worry about it.

Me: "What about our credit card bills? We can't pay them again this month?"

God: "Don't worry about it, just trust me."

Me: "Sure, we have enough for groceries this week, but what about next week?"

God: "Don't worry about it. Trust me."

Me: "What about..."

God: "Don't worry about it!"

It took some time, but it finally began to sink in that when God says not to worry, he really means not to worry. He doesn't mean "Let it consume every waking thought but just don't talk about it." He means "Act like it's not even a problem in the first place." This is so, SO hard for me to do. Honestly, it feels like it goes against churchianity teaching. Shouldn't I be a responsible, productive member of society? Isn't my "witness" more important. How does it look if someone who claims he is following God can't even pay his own bills?

But apparently, God is pretty secure in himself. He's not nearly as worried about my witness as he is about my character. And what he wanted to cause in me is a lack of worry. An utter carelessness about my credit rating, my debt-to-income ratio, or even my next paycheck. I guess being care-free is more important to him than any of those other things.

So I gave in. I jumped off the edge in my heart this time, and made a decision that I was simply not going to care what people thought of me, what creditors said to me, or how much money I had. I was simply going to listen to God and do what he told me.

You know what? God hasn't faltered yet. Just last month we paid off the last of our credit cards - something that should have taken us at least 6 years of working and saving and scrimping. We were forgiven of amazing amounts of debt. We are not rolling in the money, by any means, but God is faithful every step of the way. And I don't worry about it anymore. It seems like the less I worry, the more God provides. As soon as I start to get uptight about our finances, they run out.

And, I'm learning to rely on others. I think this was the original plan and design that God intended with people. We were never supposed to be independent. God wants us to be interdependent, where we rely on each other for everything - including finances.

So, if God's telling you to jump, just go! I can promise you won't ever hit the bottom, because God is great at teaching you how to fly.