I'm not okay, but I'll be okay

"The ﬁrst day I was alive. I got on a ride against my will. It's so amazing, I made it this far." Maybe-As Cities Burn

Feb 15, 2024

I’m not okay, but I’ll be okay. But first, a little context…

Since I was sixteen, my life has had a specific path.

A week before my sixteenth birthday, I had a friend who invited me to a church retreat. I remember heading with him to the church and crawling into the van. Inside the van, I met a few youths from the church. It didn’t take long for them to include me in whatever conversation they were having…about me mostly. I don’t remember much about the ride, but I do remember feeling glad I was there.

We arrived at the camp, and off we went. They started introducing me to their friends, and we all hung out. It was a beautiful fall day. That evening, a group from the denominational affiliated college came to give a presentation. I remember being moved to tears while they spoke about the love of Jesus and inviting us to accept Jesus Christ as our lord and savior.

The following day, we said our goodbyes and returned home. A week later, it was my sixteenth birthday, and a week after that, my dad died.

Those few weeks in October 1996 changed my life. Since then, I’ve been taking steps toward what I felt was my purpose, my call.

For the last 28 years, I had a sense of where and what my life would be. And though it wasn’t a straight line, I have not veered too far from that.

I feel for the first time since I was sixteen, I’m starting a new chapter in my story.

After that church retreat, I attended St. Luke Cumberland Presbyterian Church (CPC) in Madison, TN. It didn’t hurt that I started to date a girl who went there, but I swear that wasn’t the only reason I went. It didn’t hurt either. It was about 30 minutes from where I lived in Gallatin, TN. That place and those people loved me back to life. They cared for me no matter how I looked or smelled (I smoked cigarettes then). In fact, for the next few years, it was at that Church with those people that my purpose and call were affirmed and confirmed.

I was of two minds back then. I lived two lives. In one life, I was growing and deepening my faith.

I started to spend more time with my youth group. We spent time together with friends from other CP youth groups. I spent the summer at different events and camps (TN Synod Sr. High Camp, General Assembly, Cumberland Presbyterian Youth Conference (CPYC), etc.), and we went on a mission trip that summer with other CP churches in the Nashville area. In fact, I went to CPYC and met some really cool people from Indiana, and they invited me to their church camp. I ended up going to that, too. I loved that summer and all the amazing people I met. I made so many new friends and had amazing conversations.

The other life, I was a rebellious teenager who was crap at school but great at socializing. I missed all those events and camps the following summer because I had to attend summer school. I got my life together my senior year and ended up quitting my manager job at a music store at the mall, and I went back to all those summer events and camps. It’s hard to describe what those summers spent at Crystal Springs Camp and NaCoMe for CPYC, among others, meant to me.

By my senior year, I was taking the necessary steps to head toward my purpose, my call. I had discerned that God was calling me towards ministry. And so I started the ordination process by going to my church and sharing my call to the ministry. They affirmed my sense of call and sent a letter to my presbytery. I went under the care of the presbytery to begin my journey towards the ordination of word and sacrament in the Cumberland Presbyterian church, which I completed in November 2007.

As I was in the process of ordination, I was asked if I wanted to be the summer youth worker for Clarksville CPC. I went for the summer and worked with the youth at that church. It was my first experience leading youth, and I began my vocational path in ministry. After that summer, I was asked if I wanted to be the youth minister at the church. So, during my senior year in college, I drove about an hour and a half back and forth every Wednesday and Sunday to work at a youth ministry in Clarksville, TN.

Once I graduated from college, I moved to Clarksville and stayed until I moved to Memphis, TN, to begin seminary. A man I had met at one of the church camps I attended was leaving to be a missionary and asked if I might be interested in his job at Faith Presbyterian Church in Germantown, TN. Over the next four years, I worked at Faith as their youth minister. When I graduated from seminary, I moved closer to home and worked in young adult ministry at Tusculum CPC. I moved back to Memphis four years later to work at Emmanuel United Methodist Church. Then, in 2015, I started my work as the youth and young adult ministry coordinator for the Cumberland Presbyterian Denomination.

For the last 22 years, I’ve been in ministry with and alongside youth and young adults. It was always the plan to be in ministry with youth and young adults. And though it hasn’t always been easy, it was my greatest honor and joy. This work has given me so much over the years. I’ve made lifelong friends. I’ve seen the world. I met my wife. I’ve authored a book. I’ve led worship. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve made a life. I owe much of what I am to this work and the people I got to share that work with for so many years.

I hope to share more personal and specific stories about my time in youth and young adult ministry down the road.

But this isn’t really about that. I say all of this to give context to what I want to say.

I’ve changed. And I’m changing.

And though it’s hard to articulate it because I’m in the thick of it, I know I’m on a different path. What I’ve been so certain of for these past 28 years is not clear to me anymore. But recently, I spent some time in LA for a class in my graduate certificate program. That experience taught me a bit about what’s changing in me.

And so, I’ve created this space to write, share, and explore this changing me. It allows me to move toward my own words rather than finding myself in other people’s words. I want to feel how I feel in my own way and not just find myself in other people’s stories.

For a long time, I've tried to limit who I am as a creative. I’m not a writer because I don’t write like others. I’m not a musician because I don’t play and sing like others. I’m not a this or that. However, my time in LA has allowed me to discern and understand that it was just a way to guard myself against moving into the world without any risk, and I was living a disembodied life.

I can only reflect on my experiences and express my mind and heart through a creative lens. I’m not an artist like other people, but I see that though I’m not like other artists, I am an artist. We all are. Some might be better artists than others, but that’s not for me to judge. My life is creative and worth sharing because, without that artistic expression, I shrivel up and die.

Recently, I had a friend die. It was abrupt, and I’m still grieving this loss. In my grief, I tune in to all I’ve grieved; the grieving cycle recycles and compounds. I guess, for me, it’s recycling the grief I felt when my dad died when I was sixteen. Many believe their “time” is chosen by God. Yet, if this is true, God has chosen an awful lot of unthinkable and unconscionable deaths. I learned at an early age that the idea that “God just needed another angel” was either cruel or wrong.

As my grief recycles, I am aware that parts of me have been dying for a long time. My faith is one of them. Or at least the parts of faith that people in my circles tend to believe. I notice myself being more aware of this death every day. But we don’t like talking about death, which seems odd for resurrection people. I keep asking myself why I choose to live in these spaces that are leading me towards death. Why do I feel drawn towards spaces where people say and sing things I don’t believe? Where it feels more like a show than a way of life. Where people come together and pray the same things over and over and over and over, seemingly weekly, abdicating what I think are our responsibilities over to a God who chooses to either ignore or avoid them. Platitudes and banalities that ring like a noisy gong and clanging cymbals. Words that once seemed comforting seem to cut away at whatever faith I have left.

god is with you,

have you prayed about it,

in god’s timing,

must be god’s will,

are you saved,

god works in mysterious ways,

let go and let god,

god knows your troubles,

god knows your pain.

So, I ask myself, why do I keep living in these spaces?

I think it’s because these spaces are “... where moments of beauty can happen.”1 And those spaces seem to be places I feel most alive.

In these glimmers of space, where the real world breaks through, I can do the hard work of grief abatement. Where what is dying can be cleared away for new growth, ideas, new eyes, and a mind to take those signs to live inward and outward. And so I start to think maybe it’s not a lack of faith but a changing faith.

I created meditations for my LA class final project that most resonated with me from my encounters in LA. Some were from interactions with classmates who helped me be as open as I could be in my current state. But from a class perspective, what I heard people say deepened my sense that I can’t be disembodied. I have to let what I’m feeling come outside to play. It needs attention. It's not necessarily attention in that people must pay attention to what I’m saying; it's more like it needs a connection outside of my body.

I didn’t realize how much I was suppressing things until I encountered so many people who were living embodied. People making their way in the world through art are risking every day because they must. As one artist said, they must “knead it out to rise.” So, the next faithful step for me (and perhaps others), I feel, is to be open enough to say that I’m not okay, but I sense I’ll be okay.

I don’t know what to call any of this anymore. I’m not sure if I truly want to define it or articulate it, as much as I want a space and place to experience it, shape it, and share in it. I want to live, and move, and have my being and help others experience that, too.

Drawn There

For more, click the button (Drawn There) for a musical reflection of some of these experiences I mention here:

This song (Maybe by As Cities Burn) has been on my mind lately. It resonates with me as I reflect on my life and where I’m at, and just feel amazed by how I’ve gotten this far.

the ﬁrst day I was alive

I got on a ride against my will

it’s so amazing I made it this far

once it crossed my mind

rest I would ﬁnd jumping ship

I can’t believe I stayed aﬂoat

I stayed aﬂoat this long

Maria Fee, Beauty Is a Basic Service: Theology and Hospitality in the Work of Theaster Gates (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2023): 12.

The Getting By

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