watching the rain

Rain poured down today.  Tons of it.  

Walking outside before the storm I was bombarded with absurd gusts of wind.  It felt almost tropical, like perhaps the world's first winter hurricane was going to hit.  I don't know why this seems so important, but it was so refreshing and I just spread my arms out and took it. 

I got home just as it was spitting rain.  A few minutes later, it was an all-out downpour.  So I did what any rational person would do: opened the back door, pulled up a chair, turned on the flood lights and watched the rain.

I just sat there.  Watching it, contemplating whether or not to get my camera and just take pictures of rain drops.  I thought...you know what?  I'm going to try that stillness thing.  Just sit.

So that's what I did.  I sat, praying and thinking about what or where in the world God was calling me.

I've tossed lots of ideas around in my head.  Some big, some small.  Start up an NGO in Africa?  Latin America?  Get acquainted with inner-city Athens?  Start a business?  Find another job?  All of these things?  

I got what I didn't expect.  An answer.  And it was the most unexpected, beautiful, and decidedly romantic answer:

Pursue your wife.  

Wow.  Happy Valentines Day.  Love, God.  PS.  This year it's not just a Hallmark holiday.

It was an awesome calling.  So easy.  So perfect.  So divine.  And so deserving for Bailey.

And it makes so much sense.  As a married couple, we should be one in purpose, united in flesh and in Spirit.  We should be of the same spirit, desiring each other's goals for ourselves and the other.  Encouragement should be the hallmark of our relationship.  We should continually push the other to love God and to pursue Jesus.  

Listening to a Francis Chan talk, he mentioned that married couples should have the same mission.  This mission should be our focus and should be what we both pursue wholeheartedly and alongside one another.  An awesome image.

To be ready for that mission will take a marriage founded in nothing less than the grit and the essence of Jesus Christ.  So I'm going to do my part and spice up our relationship with a little bit of that Jesus love.

So perhaps the big be-all-end-all mission calling is coming.  But at least I know where to start.