Live like no one else

It's true that I'm a pretty black and white thinker.

I finished Funny in Farsi (read it!) and now I'm on to Kevin Leman's The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are. A characteristic of only children is that they tend to be black and white thinkers. And as a mostly-only, I think that applies to me.

But life is so gray. So, so gray.

I want to live like no one else. Or maybe that's not true. I want to live like few people live or have lived.

I'm taking a 13-week class about financial peace and the motto is "Live like no one else so that one day you can live like no one else." But this is more than just about money.

I find that my soul is stirred to live differently-- in life, in passion, in love, in generosity, in purpose, in self-worth, in the basic and mundane decisions. I don't want to live life and wake up one day and realize that it just kind of went on its merry way around me, and I was simply washed this way and that with time's ebb and flow. I want to be moving. Active. I want my life to have a current.

One of my friends once said that I have a fire shut up in my bones and I think that it's true. She also said that you can tell that I'm going to do amazing things... I'm still waiting on that. I think this is a time I'm supposed to be waiting, though. Healing. Growing.

My epiphany last week occurred when I was reading the biography of one of the directors of the Kids with Cameras foundation. Basically, boiled down to the essentials, my epiphany was this: If I want my life to be something, I have to just do it. Just start making the choices to set the ball rolling. If I sit here waiting in my desk chair, the life I want to live will always just be a dream.

The wonderful thing is that it's possible to live with a purpose and live in the gray. It's possible for me to be passionate about Jesus and not be one of those people who goes around condemning and judging and being bogged down by rules and a black and white list of what should or shouldn't be. It's possible to live a life of love and grace and truth in the gray. That's where Jesus lived it.

Oh, to be more like him.