Why?? (Part 1 of 4)

I've had a bit of a hiatus from blogging after I started so strong! It's not because I haven't been writing...it is just that most of my writing ends up looking more like a novel than a blog post. My blog savvy wife has informed me that there is a certain blog etiquette as it relates to length of post in the blogging world, and as an amateur I'm doing my best to heed her advice! That being said...I do plan for this post to be the first in a set of 4; as a means of avoiding the creation of a novel, as well as the fact that I'll be presenting 4 separate ideas.

I want to share the 4 main purposes we felt the Lord give to us for this Sabbath year. He began to lay these on our heart pretty early in the process of wrestling with this idea. We were at the point where the idea had come up, in many ways it had captured both of us and was consuming much of our thought life...but our hearts were still probably only about half-way open to the idea at this point. There still remained a heavy dose of fear and doubt that prompted us to begin to ask Him for some "whys". So as Eliz and I began to ask what He may be up to; we started by asking Him to give us an idea of what He would want to accomplish through this year. Specifically we asked God to give us something compelling enough to move past the fear that we felt would inevitably deter us from saying yes. My next 4 posts will explain what we felt like we heard from Him in the months that ensued:

Purpose #1: Freedom from the "rat race"

As I understood it, the rat race was something I was immune from. I had taken certain precautions as I entered the working world after college to protect myself from what I perceived to be a harmful and distracting phenomenon happening in most of corporate America. I had committed to working no more than 40 hours a week, and in so doing I felt that I would no longer be susceptible to this race. The Lord graciously gave me an experience that opened my eyes to the contrary, and ultimately became one of the catalysts for where we are today.

About a week after I had returned from taking time off for the birth of Hosanna, my boss at Starbucks called me with what she said was "an exciting new opportunity for my development." I had in many ways been on the fast track of development at Starbucks the past few years and each new challenge was presented as another great opportunity to prove to upper management that I had what it took to excel at the next level. My boss continued that there had been some changes in the district and she wanted me to take over management for a second store. This wasn't a new thing in the Starbucks world; in most cases it is a natural step in the process of getting the next promotion. Immediately there was a pit in my stomach and to be honest it confused me...'why am I not excited? This was what I've been working towards, this is my big shot...what in the hell is this pit doing in my stomach?' I tried to fake excitement and attempted to give myself some time to process what was going on inside of me by telling her I'd need to run the idea by my wife and pray about it. I asked her when she needed to know by...she said I had an hour...

I called Eliz and she said she trusted me, but didn't have a great feeling about it either...I pulled aside a couple of my trusted friends who worked with me and told them what had just happened...they both said basically the same. I understood that saying yes would mean more hours away from my family, even less energy to invest at home than the fumes I was running on at the time with a newborn, and a huge increase in stress as I tried to put back together a store that was not in a good place while at the same time running my own store. I also understood that saying no would in essence take me off the development fast track...a track that I had seen very few people be able to find there way back on.

I called my boss back about 59 minutes after we had last talked...I thanked her for the opportunity and for believing in me...and said I was going to turn down the offer...

"What?!?!"

I can still hear her response as clear as if it were yesterday...and something strange happened in that moment. A weight that I had unconsciously been carrying for years was lifted, and in a moment of epiphany I realized that this was the first time I had ever said no to my boss. But even more than that...it became very clear that I had been sucked in...for the past few years I had been a participant in a race I thought I wasn't running. I had made the assumption that involvement in the rat race was determined solely by the amount of hours away from home your work demanded; what I began to see was that my work had been demanding much more than just my time.

The conversation with my boss continued; but my head was spinning as I got what I would describe as a download of epiphanies in that moment. My inability to sleep as I stewed on work stressors, regularly waking up prior to my 3:45am alarm as my mind churned with what needed to be accomplished at work, my lack of patience with my wife, my lack of energy with my kids, stress induced headaches on an almost daily basis, losing sight of the missional calling I had felt when I began at Starbucks, an obsession with hitting goals, an obsession with being the best, a craving for my bosses approval, and so much more all began to make sense. These were not normal by products of being a working man...these were normal by products of being a participant in the rat race.

My boss ended our conversation saying something to the effect that she wanted to make sure I realized that the decision I was making would be detrimental to the development track I had been pursuing for years. And what I wanted to say more than anything as all of this information flooded in was "Yes! I do...and thank you, thank you, thank you...you have no idea what a gift you have just given me!!" While I had been so focused on giving work no more than 40 hours of my physical working time...I had lost sight of the countless hours I spent thinking about work, stressing about work, and worrying about work. Were these hours to be added to my work week I imagine it would have easily doubled. And the unfortunate by-product of what I now realized to be a much longer working week, was that my family was suffering and my mission as a follower of Jesus was suffering. I was not being the father, husband and disciple of Jesus that I knew I was called to be...and in that moment I knew something had to change.

This all took place about a week before the Sabbath year idea surfaced...I'll probably have to tell the story of that night some other time...

Freedom from the rat race was the first purpose the Lord showed us as He took us along a journey towards saying yes to this crazy idea. Committing to a 7 year rhythm of 6 years of work and 1 year of Sabbath has completely changed the way I view my work. What at one time looked like a long ladder towards retirement that took 40 - 50 years to climb...now seems more like a series of short sprints with a year or retirement in between. A Sabbath year will allow me to work from a place of rest, rather than constantly seeking rest from my work. Our hope is that I will be an even better worker, and will be able to see work as it was intended to be...my worship. I believe that it will allow me to embrace work as a calling that supports my true identity, rather than work becoming that which I find my identity in. Our hope is that it will protect me from what I now see in myself as a high susceptibility to the rat race...and in so doing...allow me to stay true to my primary identity as a disciple of Jesus, on a mission of making disciples of my family and anyone else the Lord would allow our lives to touch.

Is this for everyone...probably not...is it for more people than just the Stones...probably. My experience has been that the rat race is not a race with a finish line. It's also not a race that values what is valuable in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God has a finish line more glorious than any success, wealth, prestige, or anything else the rat race promises. In my opinion; a life spent seeking the kingdom, and protecting oneself from the race will never disappoint.