video: 5:29

Monday threw me a little off kilter. Things have been pretty chill for me lately, so one little problem became The Biggest Deal, mostly cuz I’m not as used to dodging curveballs as I used to be. I was running some Amazon Flex around in my funky little car, a bright yellow 2003 Mini Cooper stuffed with a collection of plush pikachu to match. Pipachu has been pretty reliable despite her age, but it was HOT Monday, which seems to have done something to the clutch. As I was making deliveries, she kept losing her giddy up, stalling out a couple of times, so I opted to find a safe place to park while I waited for my partner to come fix it and/or get a tow so I didn’t end up stuck alongside a busy highway.

Hanging out in the sweet, sweet air conditioning of a Caribou Coffee, I opted to keep sifting through my old notes instead of doom scrolling. I’ve been collecting thoughts to throw up on the site in the future. Some of these have been living as fragments in my notes app to be fleshed out later. Others made appearances as captions on my social media, before I archived a bunch of old posts.

This one in particular shook me out of my stress spiral a bit, reminding me that peace is built into my core. I think I originally wrote this back in 2016.

Rewind to Genesis 1. God created the world and everything in it, and then breathed mankind into existence. Everything was at peace, in rhythm, and lined up exactly as it was meant to.

God was intentional when He created us. When He created you. Everything else in creation was simply spoken into existence, but you were painstakingly formed. Carefully sculpted with an exact purpose for your existence. He didn’t make you to be the bowling ball that sent the pins of perfection into chaos. He didn’t create you to be broken, to be a failure. He made you in His image. Your primal identity, in your bones, was given to you by the Creator himself.

Sure, Genesis 3 happened, and sin sure made a mess of things, but that doesn’t change who we are at our core. We are made in the image of God, no matter how off the mark your image may seem. You have inherent worth and value because you were brought to life by God’s own breath. Never forget that.

While this was originally penned as a reminder of identity and self-worth, what hit me as I reread it today was this: peace has been at the core of my being since the beginning. The poetry of the Creation stories in Genesis points to wholeness and rest. In Genesis 1, God speaks all of existence into being and calls it good. In Genesis 2, he forms man from the dust of the ground and gives him a garden to run around in.

The backyard has been my sanctuary lately. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on my back porch under the shade of our ash tree. There’s something about being surrounded by the greenery, the gentle sounds of wind rushing through the lilac hedge, birds and critters chittering away, that I find to be incredibly soothing. Walking barefoot through my moss and clover ridden lawn is so grounding. When humankind was created, we were given a tranquil little slice of paradise, and even now, we need to touch grass.

I have done A Lot of Work to learn what peace and rest even look like. I was raised to be very independent, and then threw myself into a system where I was only valued as much as I could bring to the table for the ministry. Breaking out of a mindset of “I have to bust ass for the kingdom” has been so hard, and I often find myself sabotaging my peace by falling into my old “self-sufficient” behaviors.

Back in February, I had a little bit of a mental break after I pushed myself beyond my capacity, at which point, JT was like “Dude, I make enough to support us, you don’t have to keep burning yourself out like this.” But me, I still feel like I have to be “pulling my weight,” like I’m somehow wrong for being dependent on another person. It’s the only reason I was out doing a Flex run Monday, cuz I felt like asking my partner to help me pay a bill was a failing on my part.

When I wrote the 2016 post, I said you were “Carefully sculpted with an exact purpose for your existence.” Back then, I was likely talking about how each person has a higher calling upon their life, a divine motive for everything they do. Y’know, that “you are called to speak life to people by blessing them with each cup of coffee you make! Being a barista is your mission field!” sort of bullshit.

These days, I wonder if that “exact purpose” isn’t just to be here. Simply enjoying the ride of existence should be enough.

They said, when this entire post fell out of their head after a day where The Ride Of Existence had been anything but enjoyable. Monday, I was straight up Not Having A Good Time. We still haven’t figured out what exactly is wrong with the Mini, but she’s not the only one with check engine lights on. Obviously, I’ve still gotta run a diagnostic check on my heart, cuz like 2016 Pip said, “He didn’t create you to be broken, to be a failure,” so there’s gotta be something out of whack that I gotta take care of, before I, too, stall out.