I Want to Throw Up Volume II

In my previous post, I wrote about the quest for opportunities that require risk and fear and possible failure and all the subsequent queasiness that accompanies. A few more words on that here. . .

Too often, the risk is right in front of me and I'm too self-absorbed to see it. It is less event-based; rather, it is a daily risk, a steady march towards victory or failure. The game day, or the speaking date, is not on the calendar. It will sneak up and surprise, unannounced yet full of all the dread of knowing that in that day is the winning or losing, the evidence of my preparation being called to account to be presented for all to see.

I read the words from the last post: "I want work that costs something, work that matters, opportunities to face mountains and to shake my fist at them and declare my impending arrival. I want risk. And I want to be counted on to do the difficult." It is here, everyday, right in front of me.

What greater risk is there than the lives of my children and the moments they will have spent with their father? Or the strength of my relationship to the woman I've been blessed to spend my life with, the woman who knows me better than anyone, the woman I've been called to love sacrificially? Or my eternal soul, and my opportunities to pour out a little of the love I've been given by Christ when those opportunities present themselves - ready or not, here I come! - to my neighbor, to my co-worker, to my enemy, to my friend on the day he asks me from where does my help come.

I went to the funeral of a man from our church who died unexpectedly just before the New Year. I had known him and his family for a long time; I taught his son when he was in high school, his son who is now a teacher himself. The service was an emotional one for me, though many in the full church were much closer to him than I. I think one of the reasons is because there was a man with ample evidence of having won - won the love and admiration of a son and a wife, won the respect of his peers, won by spreading joy in all directions, won by overflowing the love of Christ from inside him with everyone he met. And I see that I lack that evidence in many regards.

Game day for him was not death day. He had accepted through grace a victory over sin and death long before that. Game day was each day with every interaction, every jesting comment in love, every smile, every act of service, every time he got to perform. And game day for him as a parent was long before. It was when his son joyfully brought friends into the home because he knew they would be embraced. It was when his son sought out his company, his companionship, and his leisure time when he became a man. It was then I'm sure that he could look back on the journey and see that all the time, all the emotion, all the risks of parenthood were not in vain, because he had done good work at work worth doing.

This post in not a rejection of my previous one. I will continue to seek out events that force me to be nervous and stressed and scared and nauseous. And I believe so should you. What this post is, though, is a recognition that in the absence of those events, or in the interim between, there is much to be nervous about. There is much for which it is worthy to fight. And though an audience of 500 or 5,000 will perhaps be replaced with an audience of one (or One), there is still a game to prepare for.

And the risk, oh the risk, is sweet risk indeed.