Hello Hurricane, You're Not Enough

Hello Hurricane, You're not enough
Hello Hurricane, You can't silence my love
I've got doors and windows boarded up
All your dead end fury is not enough
You can't silence my love

Everything I have I count as loss
Everything I have is stripped away
But before I started building
I counted up these costs
Ain't nothing left for you to take away

- Taken from the song "Hello Hurricane" from the latest Switchfoot album of the same name

Over the twelve years that I've been listening to Switchfoot, my life has taken some very different paths. I've worked for not-for-profits, built houses in foreign countries and spent my summers working at camps with inner-city children. To someone looking at my life, it may seem a mystery that now I've ended up at one of the top MBA programs recruiting for corporate jobs.

With all this in mind, I find it ironic that one of my favourite Switchfoot songs is Company Car. As I drove back from the concert last night with a friend who also has a strong not-for-profit background, we discussed what it truly means to live a sold-out life, rather than being sell-outs. My cell phone ring for the past several years has been "we were meant to live for so much more... have we lost ourselves?"

What does it mean to live a life that is beyond myself? How do I get past the lure of company cars and Prada handbags to living a life that brings lasting value to the rest of the world? Without running down the resume list of things I'm involved with at Darden that go beyond myself, I'll say that I am still giving back to the community. But is that really what life's about? Doing what you need to for your career, and then doing some charity on the side?

I want my contribution to the world to be deeper than that. I'm not sure it means that I don't pursue my career as it is. But deep down, I'm hoping to eventually be able to use the skills and abilities and connections that I've developed to accomplish something bigger than mergers and acquisitions or growth strategies or operational efficiencies or branding. I've been talking to a few companies that show some promise with CSR, and hoping that as my career grows I will have more opportunities to contribute to companies in ways that do more to enhance the bottom line and allow them to contribute to the broader global community.

At the same time, I am challenged to hold loosely to the blessings, especially material ones, that I have been given. It's hard to figure out what a life "with nothing left to lose" looks like. Pondering these Switchfoot lyrics after being on Maximillian Strasse (the most expensive street in Europe - think Jimmy Choos, Prada, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, etc.) last week has definitely got me thinking. There was part of me that dreamed of Burberry handbags once I am finished school, but as I turned over the price tag on a scarf last week - 250 Euros - I realized that it's shallow and empty. I want my investments in life to be bigger than a brand name stamped on a, albeit high quality, handbag.

But there's a big range of materialism between pauper on the streets and obsessed with Jimmy Choo shoes. I'm trying to figure out where the best place is on the range and what it means to hold loosely to what I have.

Just some lighthearted thoughts for a Sunday afternoon. ;-)

Surrender Isn't Easy...

(Just so you know, today's blog is very much faith-focussed.)

It's funny how music can affect us on such a strong level. Last Sunday at church, during the worship time, I had some powerful epiphanies about learning to surrender, and though I intended to reflect and blog about them, they slipped past my mind by the time I was driving out of the parking lot. Today, though, I found myself singing in the shower and found I was belting out the words from a song committing to surrender.

There's nothing more I need than to give you all of me.
There's nothing more I seek than to lay my all at your feet.
Everything I hold dear, I would trade it all for you.
My Lord, my life, I give it all to You.

My everything, my everything.
There's nothing I won't bring to you my King,
I give it all to You.

(Note: This song was written by someone in the worship band at my church, and if you want to hear it, try this site.)

To be honest, I can't say that I fully embrace the words of that song. My journey of surrender goes much more like a micro-manager handing out assignments. "Hmmm, let's see here, God, you can have this area of my life and that area of my life, but this one... no, I don't quite trust you to handle it."

I struggle with what surrender is supposed to look like for the 21st century North American Christian. I've heard stories from around the world about people who have been persecuted for their faith. People have given up their lives, watched their families tortured, been imprisoned, lost businesses... All for taking that step of commitment and surrender for their faith. Me? Well, here in North America, I may get snickered at when I say I'm trusting God for something, but that's about it. Or perhaps you may have been reading my blog all along thinking I've got a good head on my shoulders (actually, no, not my blog), and now you read about me talking about learning to surrender to a God that you don't believe exists and you may think I'm crazy, but that really doesn't have the same impact on me as if you were to murder my family in front of me.

So what DOES surrender mean? It's easy to say that I would give it all up if called to do so, but what does that look like in my everyday life?

One step I am starting with is learning to mentally give over control to God. As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of areas of my life that I still hold quite tightly. It's definitely a daily struggle, but surrender starts with opening up and letting God's grace wash over those areas. Practically, this looks like being open to new ideas. I am one of those people who really likes to plan and know what is happening. I DO have a five year and ten year plan for my life. But learning to surrender means holding those plans loosely. It means learning to trust that God may open other doors besides management consulting and that maybe those other doors could lead to something better than what I have for myself.

And the second practical part of learning to surrender is learning to take myself out of that "#1 position" and putting others there. Jesus continually called his followers to LOVE. And if I am going to live a life of surrender, I need to learn to love, day in and day out. Fortunately, the Apostle Paul provided a manual on how to love. You've probably heard it quoted a few times at weddings... Love is patient... kind... not envious... not boastful... not rude... not self-seeking... not easily angered... (1 Corinthians 13) I can't say I have any of those mastered yet.

Why surrender? Ultimately I believe God has an amazing plan for my life. And when I fight his leading, it only creates anxiety and uncertainty for me. More importantly, the crux of my faith is that Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice for me. So how can I possibly fathom holding back?

Surrender isn't easy. But the easy thing is never worthwhile anyway.

Let It Go...

Yesterday was a very frustrating day. To make a long story short, I got stuck doing a lot of IT stuff and felt in over my head. (I'm not an IT person... I dropped out of computing science 8 years ago so I wouldn't become an IT person, but I still know too much about computers since I grew up with them in the house as my mother is a computer programmer.) And I was at work late, staring at my computer screen getting frustrated. When that happens, I just start to feel frustrated about everything...

As I stared at my computer screen, all I could think of was that I wanted to be running through the river valley. So, when I wrapped things up and gave up for the night, that's precisely what I did.

As I was running, a song called "Daisy" by the band Switchfoot came on my iPod. As I was listening to it, I felt an immense rush of peace, and wanted to share the lyrics:

Daisy, give yourself away
Lookup at the rain
The beautiful display
Of power and surrender
Giving us today
And she gives herself away

Rain, another rainy day
Comes up from the ocean
Give herself away
She comes down easy
On rich and debt the same
And she gives herself away

Let it go
Daisy, Let it go
Open up your fist
This fallen world
Doesn't hold your interest
It doesn't hold your soul
Daisy, let it go

Pain, give yourself a name
Call yourself contrition
Avarice or blame
Giving isn't easy
Neither is the rain
When she gives herself away

Daisy, why another day?
Why another sunrise
Who will take the blame
For all redemptive motion
And every rainy day
When he gives himself away
--------------------

I don't spend enough time surrendering. I get frustrated at work because I expect myself to have all the answers right away. But they take time, and often the input of someone else with a slightly different skill set to shed a new perspective. I get frustrated with life because I expect it to fall in place the way I see it, rather than trusting God's plan and His direction.

One thing that I always need to remember is to just "let it go." Nothing that happens on a daily basis is going to shatter my life. When I get wound up, it only makes things worse. If I want to release the stress, I just need to "open up [my] fists." I get so caught up thinking that it's success and accomplishments that matter in life, when really they are far down the list of what TRULY matters. It's easy to get caught up in what is tangible and easy to measure and let the things that truly matter - my faith, my family, relationships, serving others - slip.

But if I can learn to let go of this obsessive drive for success and instead learn to, as one of my good friends always tells me, "breathe and let God do the rest," I think I will have fewer frustrating days.