My American Dream

"My American Dream...is one in which who I am becoming means more than where I am living. 

One in which the people I am impacting matter more than my title or salary. 

One in which I am fulfilled & content even in the face of disappointment or difficulty, 

& know I am loved even when circumstances say otherwise."

excerpt from an "InTouch" article

School has started back!! 

I'm back in the zone.

Coffee dates before the doors open at East high.

Lunches spent holding open cafeteria doors & awkwardly navigating the space between the tables to find my friends.

Afternoons of milling around on the steamy pavement, squeezing in conversations with kids before they speed off to work or practice or a far corner of the parking lot to 'catch up' with their significant other.

Filling the in-between hours writing to donors, making phone calls, hanging out with other leaders, & being alone with Christ.

I am truly living the dream.

My American Dream.

Found this on the Young Life Leader blog today.

It was written by a YL leader turned pastor & I am pretty sure is the dialouge for a really epic banquet video that mimics the well known TV show, Friday Night Lights.

It beautifully sums up what fall, as well as the rest of the year, looks like for us YL leaders.

As long as high school kids mill around at ball games looking for love in all the wrong places...  

As long as they desperately seek an identity based on the opinions of friends and reputation...

As long as kids limp through the stands broken by family strife, enslaved by drugs, alcohol, and sex...

I want to be found- not in the adult section where it is respectable and controlled... 

but right in the middle...where passions, vulgar and profane, blurt out obscenity...

Where raucous and reckless facades hide wounded hearts filled with torment and fear...

Where the price tags have been changed and darkness confuses...

Right in the middle where God has positioned me to shine forth His grace, His Hope, His love and His truth.

As long as there is an enemy who can convince his victims that tomorrow doesn't matter, that harm will not find them, that chains are like jewelry and cool is free...

As long as his lies leave character, soul, and life in ruins- when thrill goes ill and fun turns fatal...

As long as terminal is only a passage word to an eternity of one's own choosing...

 

As long as God has rendered him a defeated foe using the weakest of us to shine a light that pierces the darkest places, that brings rescue to the lost...

As long as the darkness is blasted away by the light of the world- that Light that lives within all who know, follow, and love Him...

 

As long as there is such darkness...

I'll man my post right in the middle of all that chaos, holding my position until he calls another play, and I steal home. 

As long as we stand in such an important place, we must not forget what it means to be salt and light in this tasteless and dark generation.