On Life in L.A.

I am a large pick-up truck.  Not one of those overbearing, humongous, compensating-for-something types; just a big, worn around the edges Chevy pick up.  I've got a couple miles under my belt, I'm sturdy, but I just can't seem to find parking.  I'm in a giant parking lot, with so many spaces I hardly know where to start looking.  

Oh! There's an open spot! 

My engine sounds off as I accelerate towards the blessed piece of dirty pavement.  Sure, it's a little farther away from where I had originally planned on staying for a while, but that's okay, I'm not too...Dang! Compact spot.  I'm too big.  

"Well," I figure, "there's a lot more pavement where that came from!"  So I go trucking along to find another space.  

Doo do doo do doo.... Wow, for such a big lot, there are not very many spaces!  Oh well, gonna keep on.

Oh hey!  A parking attendant!  He's pointing me in the right direction.  Thank goodness.  I follow his point and take a left, somewhere even farther from where I had wanted to be, but that's okay, a spot's a spot, and I'll take it!  Actually, there's a few trees over there. A nice bit of shade would be nice.  These spots are lookin' great!  Now excited, I head over to the well manicured parking area.  

"Um, excuse me?" I hear from above as I pull in.  "Can't you read?"  I look up, and a not so pleasant RESERVED PARKING sign looks down at me with an erkiness usually reserved for those annoying idiots that are lost and stop in the middle of the street searching for... whatever it is those types search for.  I wouldn't know. 

I head back to the parking attendant to see where I went wrong, but he was gone.

Thus my adventure continued. 

There's a spot! ...nope, a Mini Cooper that had pulled far forward.

There's another!  Motorcycles only.

aaaHA! ...Darn, I'm not fancy enough for the limo valet...

Just too wide for this one...

Too long for that one...

Okay, now this is getting ridiculous!  I'm gonna blow a gasket!  I'm gonna run out of gas before I find a place to park! 

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Sheena and I are thinking about taking a trip (sometime in our L.A. lives) to Albuquerque.  Yeah, random, I know.  But we are like-to-move-around types, and Sheena has been doing some research online about ABQ for her work.  Looks like a great place to be!  And cheap to visit relative to most tourist destinations.  If it's good, in a couple years, we might even move there!  (If we don't move to Maui, Japan, Seattle, Denver...)  

That's kind of how life is right now.  Don't really know what I'm doing, don't really know where I'm going.  I'm willing to bet that this is a common side effect of moving out to be on your own for the first time.  College doesn't count, I was never really on my own.   

In a way, I hate being on my own.  Feeling anxious about finding work, having actual responsibilities...

But then, I love being on my own.  Being self reliant, living with the woman of my dreams, making my own decisions... 

I know I'm preaching to the choir.  Pretty much everyone that would read this is on their own, have probably already gone through what I'm attempting to monologue about while not going into detail, because details are boring  to blog readers.  

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I have also been searching for the meaning in my life that has seemingly disappeared.  Purpose is hard to come by in the midst of moving, searching for jobs, worrying about money...you know, all that crap that comes along with adulthood. 

Once I heard someone say that purpose is something that comes from selflessness, from giving yourself away. 

For that reason, I find this quote from page 106 in Anne Lammot's Traveling Mercies quite comforting. 

"...the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes.  You sit with people... you bring them juice and graham crackers." 

But of course, just being selfless is not enough.  There has to be a driving force behind your selflessness, a greater love.  Which, for Christians, is obviously Christ and His Kingdom.  

While I know that this concept is elementary, I find it helpful to remember that the driving force isn't only driving the selflessness, but also driving how that selflessness is enacted in the world.  Purpose isn't something we can create for ourselves by handing out juice and graham crackers, but something that is created for us when we say 'yes Father' before handing out juice and graham crackers. 

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