a jack van handey moment

Every year the Hope chapel band releases a CD containing many of the tunes used in campus worship services that year. Oftentimes a component of said CD is a bonus track, usually of a very random, silly nature. Although I believe it predates my time at Hope, one such CD contained a bonus track of "Deep Thoughts with Jack Van Handey," a spoof on the original "Deep Thoughts." I don't remember much about the deep thoughts themselves, although I do think that one of them was something about the black squirrels on Hope's campus. (Those things are a little too accustomed to human contact!)

I'm feeling a bit like Jack Van Handey tonight: random, Dutch, and deep in questioning-type thought. What will the year ahead look like? Will I be able to get done all that needs to get done? Where should I focus my attention and energy? What am I truly called to be? A teacher? An organist? A violinist? Sometimes I look around in bewilderment and wonder how on earth I got here, with this swath of commitments pulling me every which way, but then I look back and realize that this has been my life all along - making music in all these different ways and sometimes scrambling to keep up with it all! (And writing incredible run-on sentences in the process - sorry about that, folks.) To this point in my life, it has been glaringly obvious to me that this great diversity of commitments was itself my calling. But lately I find myself wondering if it might finally be time for a change. Maybe it's time to stop trying to do everything and instead to focus on one area, even if I keep all the others in my life in a smaller way. But then again, perhaps I'm meant to always live a life of foci rather than of focus.

Sometimes I wish I could see the future. But that is not how life works. So I will choose to find joy in the journey, knowing that all the not-knowing is what makes God God, and me, well, not.