Life After the Dream

What do you do when you follow the formula and you don’t get the desired outcome?
No matter what anyone says, there is no formula for life. True formulas are reliable. Follow them to the T, and you arrive at the intended outcome. But life is not like that. Life isn’t a simple math equation like y=mx+b. Life is complex. Life is unpredictable. Life is messy.

I have been chewing on this for at least the last year. And in the last week, one of Charlie Kirk’s statements has stuck with me. Namely, he often encouraged young folks along these lines:

Go to Church, get married, have kids, and stop partying into oblivion. Leave a legacy, be courageous.

These are all great pieces of advice, and I agree with them wholeheartedly. You SHOULD do that. However, even if you do all of those things, it won’t always lead to the desired outcome. Why? Because this world is broken. You are also broken. Even when you become a Christian, you still have indwelling sin. You’re no longer enslaved to sin and are now a slave of Righteousness, but you still have indwelling sin, and this works against both good principles and good intentions.

I became a follower of Jesus at 17 years old (now 20 years ago). I married my high school sweetheart at 18, had my daughter at 20, and my son at 21. I attended Church on Sunday and small group during the week without exception for 2 decades. I worshipped, I prayed, I read books, I attended conferences and retreats. I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover multiple times. I’ve listened to thousands of hours of podcasts and sermons. I’ve given tens of thousands of dollars and so much of my time and energy. I’ve led small groups, attended small groups, and even moved across the country with a team of 50 other people to help plant a new church in a new city. I’ve been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt.

20 years later, I’m a divorced, single dad who is completely burned out and has zero zeal for God or the Mission that he laid out for the Church in Matthew 28. I’ve led hundreds of Bible discussions–attempting to encourage other Christians along in their faith. Although I’ve done all of these things imperfectly, I’ve always course-corrected when the trajectory of my life got sidetracked. I didn’t sleep around with a bunch of girls in my college years or follow the traditional college narrative. I imperfectly adhered to what Charlie Kirk prescribes to our youth so that things would go well for them.

Again, I’m not trying to come up with a list of “good works” or things that I’ve done that should “earn” me some sort of praise or blessing or desired outcome.

Truly, I’m just going through an existential crisis of sorts–doing a post-mortem of the last 20 years. However, there is still a part of me that finds it difficult not to feel “cheated” a bit. I did the stuff. I prayed the prayers. I worked really hard. I gave a lot of time, energy, and money. The end result is a tired, cynical, divorced man. I don’t come off this way on the surface. It’s all internal. It’s all ingrained into my nervous system. It’s pushed down deep and compartmentalized. No one who meets me views me as a tired, cynical person. I’m actually quite a positive person. But it’s often just a suppression of how I actually feel underneath the mask.

I know how to say all of the right things. I know all of the platitudes and can recite them without blemish. I know the verses, the principles, the values, the liturgy, etc. But it’s all just a cope. It’s all just “positive affirmations.” Most of us are very disconnected from our nervous systems. Cannabis users probably understand this better than most. For example, cannabis-induced anxiety isn’t a negative side effect of cannabis use. Cannabis simply reconnects the mind to the nervous system so that you begin to feel the emotions that you subconsciously suppress throughout your day. Those feelings underneath? Those are your actual feelings. Your real feelings. Not the person you are on the surface. It’s actually the “real” you.

For 20 years, I kept driving at 80mph with the check engine light illuminated. I ignored it. Buried it. Suppressed it. Maybe it was a bad habit I picked up from my time in the military? A survival mechanism. But you can only bury those things and ignore the warning lights for so long. Eventually, life comes to collect. One of the worst things about this? Nobody will stop you in your tracks, grab you by the shoulders, look you in the eyes, and say, “Hey, I think if you keep going at this pace, you’re going to turn yourself into a piece of burnt toast.” At the end of the day, you are your own advocate. Nobody’s coming to save you.

How’s your soul doing? We’re a soul in a body, not a body with a soul. Who are you in the deepest recesses of your being? Whoever that person is, that’s the real you. Not the avatar that everyone sees on the surface. As humans, we treasure control. We’re always trying to control things. The illusion of control relaxes our nervous systems. That’s why we treasure it. That’s why dopamine (the neurotransmitter that drives motivation) moves us toward trying to control things. Except we’re not actually relaxing our nervous systems. We’re simply suppressing them. And this works quite effectively–often for years or even decades.

Even people who use drugs and abuse alcohol are ultimately doing it to have some sense of control over their lives. It’s not just the compounds in the drugs that affect our neurotransmitters; it’s the very choice to use the drugs that also calms the nervous system. But this is sneaky. Because there are other habits and behaviors that we can choose to engage in that are much more socially acceptable, and much less “damaging” in one sense than substances. Literally any life activity that gives you the illusion of control and calms your nervous system can be chosen. Even good things.

But again, eventually life comes to collect. Everything has a trade-off. Everything has an opposite and equal reaction. You are not the one exception to the laws of the universe. You will pay the Piper at some point. You’re a human being. You’re finite. You have limitations. But we often ignore this indisputable fact. As one pastor, Zach Eswine, puts it:

We want to do large things famously and fast.

Know your limitations. Acknowledge them. Accept them. Be content with them. This is me preaching to myself as much as anyone else.

Where do I go from here? Things didn’t work out the way I had planned. But at the end of the day, I come back to this verse from John 6 where the Apostle Peter is speaking to Jesus:

“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”