Saturday, September 12, 2009

Living Life Between the Margins

Eight-and-one-half by eleven. A full sheet of paper with which to craft your works. But that's where you're wrong - you loose a bit on every side. One inch on the sides, and inch and a half on top and bottom? Guides so that we don't get too close to the ends of the paper. Put everything you have neatly inside these prescribed lines and everyone will go home happy. What happens when we start ignoring those margins and claim all of the paper for ourselves?

I'm working with a new piece of paper myself. About five or six weeks ago, I moved down to southern California from Visalia. Its been a refreshing reboot of my systems. There was so much in Visalia that was tied to my past, tied to hurt, memories, and hopes that I was grateful to leave behind. We never leave those things behind, do we? Some of it will linger and reshape our new existence. Nevertheless, we take the good with the bad, and love the life that is lived today. I have so much to be grateful here in my new home. I have four great housemates - Patrick, Matt, Doug, and Scott. I enjoy the times that I get to share with each of them, as they're all polar opposites of one another. Its like going in to Baskin Robins, and getting four scoops of different ice creams - you love it because its ice cream. They don't mix perfectly, but individually they're all great flavors. That kinda makes me wonder what flavor of ice cream I'd be. Hmmm. Outside of the house, I'm still at Starbucks. It is a new feel at every store that I work with. At first things were quite odd because they don't do things quite right there, and it has the tendency to frustrate me to no end. I'm a bit of a legalist and structuralist, and I feel that we do things for a reason because it works best that way. Not to say it doesn't work the way we do it in my new store, but I digress. There's also the friends who live down here already. Megan GC has been down here for years, and so has Justin Griffin (and his new bride, Carrie). Carrie's sister is also down here, Christy, as well as her roommates who are all a lot of fun.

That all barely scratches the surface of what is going on in my life now - for the rest you'd have to be reading between the lines to all the unmentioned people who are dear to me and the phone conversations I've had that continue to shape my perspective and bolster my hope in the ideals Christ spoke of. I'm still writing on this new page I've found, and I like the work that I have done so far. I can see a day in the not-so-far future that I'll have filled up my page with words, works, and self-proclaimed wonders. I can only pray that God sees fit to fill me with more and to make use of all those margins that I'm levaving Him. I suppose that's the metaphor there - I want to be sure to always give God room to work in my life, so that I won't fill it up with me, me, me; that the page can be perfected in Him.

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