"I Didn't Sign Up for This"

Proverbs 3:5-8 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him,and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes;fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.

"I didn't sign up for this..." These are the famous words that my thirteen year old son stated to me in May 2013 as he was talking about the effect that the divorce between his mother and I had on him just two years prior. He continued by saying, "Dad all I wanted was a normal life." It is the words that cuts deep to a parent.

His comment has never left me as I have said much the same over the past 5 plus years as one crazy thing has followed yet another. If you were to follow the journey it was a trip which started in Chicago wondering and asking "God am I where You want me to be?" What I didn't know in the fall of 2003 that it would not lead to where I am today. If I knew where it would have brought me today there is no way I would have signed up for the journey.

In 2003 I felt God moving. I said to Him I will go anywhere as long as it was not Florida or California. God has an odd sense of humor because the place I committed not to go I ended up in; just outside of Orlando, Florida, but that was just the start of the ride I so quickly wanted to exit from.

In the summer of 2004 I moved to central Florida and that is where the ride of my life started (so I thought). My moved happened just 3 short weeks before the first of 3 hurricanes hit central Florida. It is very rare for a hurricane to hit central Florida and unheard of that 3 would hit consecutive in the same season as the last hurricane to hit the Orlando area hadn't happened in over 50 years. My mother-in-law at the time claimed it was God punishing us for moving to Florida as she didn't want us to go.

In 2006 I lost the job that brought me to Florida and consequently started my own business. Things went well for my business as I hired help, got an office and settled in for the long haul. I thought, wrongly, that maybe the economy would slow at worst and didn't expect it to ever fall off a cliff. Who would ever think that something like that could happen as it hadn't happened since the 1920's and our economy is far more stable than that.

By the end 2007 I was forced to close my business. In just 3 months I had more than $50,000 of cancelled contracts and just as much in clients who couldn't or didn't pay, which only compound for even more financial loss over the following 3 years. I was finding myself working 14-16 hours a day for free most of the time. As a result if found myself in bankruptcy by 2008.

If the previous 4 years weren't bad enough the following 6 years only showed me that life can get even worse. Within 18 months of the bankruptcy my house was lost as a result of hurricane storm damage, my wife falsely accused me of domestic violence, filed divorce (after I found her cheating on me), took my 4 kids from me, became unemployed, homeless and spending my days at Starbucks for almost 9 months as I had no other place to go.

To compound matters my former wife refused to allow me to spend time with our kids. She went on a binge of telling the kids lies with hopes of keeping them from me. When it wasn't enough to threaten and scare the kids she stepped things up. As a result she has dragged me into court more than 100 times before more than 4 judges in two different states and two separate child support offices over 5 years in a crazy ongoing case that seems to never stop.

As I was walking the dog this morning I had given more thoughts to this post. If I didn't sign up for this journey, what journey would I have signed up for? Would I have signed up for nothing because the results, different as they may, could have their own negative outcome or would I have traded my experiences for maybe less drama and twists and turns and not become the person it has hence made me?

I don't think the comment of not signing up for the journey we are going through is truly the question.  Looking at it in a little more of a broader scope I think it boils down to what is our desire? The desire is not necessarily peace or lack of journey rather the sense of security and stability. It is that knowing that just because the world is out of control doesn't mean that that is my address, where I live is the place of chronic noise and flashing lights.

As I face finding another place to move next year I reflected where all I have lived in the last 10 years and 20 years. When I was asked the question this week "if you could change anything moving forward what would it be" I couldn't answer that right away.

Yet as I was walking this morning the answer came to me. In the past 6 years I have lived at 11 different addresses. Over the past 20 years I have moved more than 17 years. I am tired of moving. I am tired of not having that place of refuge where I can reside in the safety of rest without chaos. I desire a place I can escape where the journey has eroded who I am and keeps from the best of what God desires of me.

It is not about the journey son as much as it is finding the rest to complete the journey. We all have a journey, but do we have a place to go to catch our breath?