Looking for a Reason

The wind is moving,

But I am standing still.

A life of pages,

Waiting to be filled.

A heart that’s hopeful

A head that’s full of dreams,

But this becoming

Is harder than it seems.

Feels like …

I’m looking for a reason

Roaming through the night to find

My place in this world,

My place in this world.

Not a lot to lean on

I need Your light to help me find

My place in this world,

My place in this world.

If there are millions

Down on their knees,

Among the many

How can You still hear me?

Hear me asking

Where do I belong?

Is there a vision

That I can call my own?

Show me …

I’m looking for a reason

Roaming through the night to find

My place in this world,

My place in this world.

Not a lot to lean on

I need Your light to help me find

My place in this world,

My place in this world.

This song written and recorded by Michael W. Smith in 1990 has haunted me for over twenty years now. Its release coincided with my graduation from my medical residency and the beginning of my “real” life … as if my medical school and residency experiences were surreal … which in many ways they were. It was finally time to seriously search for where God wanted me to go, who He wanted me to serve, and what church He wanted me to partner with. Never mind that the United States Air Force would still have quite a say in these matters for another five and a half years. But there was at least the illusion of choosing where to belong in 1990 and then especially in 1995 when I separated from the Air Force.

Now 21 years later, what has really changed? Sure my geography has changed … well not by much. I live a mere 140 miles from the Destin/Ft. Walton Beach area where I trained [and even now I sit looking out at the mysteriously green waters of the Emerald Coast as I write this] but that was by way of sojourns in middle Georgia and the South Pacific. Still where ever we went, we looked for community and struggled to find that perfect fit … whether it was the home-school community of both Warner Robins and Honolulu or the charismatic churches we attended in both Ft. Walton Beach and middle Georgia to the Calvary Chapel in Mililani to the Evangelical Free Churches in both Honolulu and Tallahassee as well as the spiritual community that forms Community Christian School in Tallahassee, our life has been a tapestry that only God could weave. But no matter where we’ve been, we’ve always looked for where we could “belong.” And isn’t that really what it means to be human after all?

I can't help but notice that we are a world of joiners. This goes all the way back to junior high and high school if not before. When you boil it all down, isn’t the principal trauma of those crazy years trying to figure out which clique it is that we belong to? There are the freaks and the geeks and the jocks and the nerds and the vandals and the rebels and lastly, the invisibles. I was never much drawn to the freaks as I had an inherent aversion to both needles and pipes. I guess I had the geek prerequisites down pat but never found that I much liked the crowd or the identity. It’s sad when you reject your calling. Makes the struggle all the more difficult. I most identified with the jocks but had too many incongruities … all they ever saw was the “brains” and they weren’t too impressed by the “brawn.” No need to explain why I didn’t want to join the nerds. No one really ever joins the nerds anyway; it seems like we get assigned there by acclamation. I didn’t see much future in the vandals either. Besides, I was trying to break the stereotype of being Italian and being in the mafia. Have you ever noticed that if there is ever an Italian on the screen, you know that he did it? So that pretty much left either the invisibles or the rebels – and aren’t the rebels really just the ones who are desperately trying not to be invisible while knowing they don’t fit in anywhere else? Maybe this is one of those things that make Jesus so attractive. If James Dean was the rebel without a cause, Jesus was the rebel with one.

This desperate need to belong doesn’t end with our high school commencement ceremonies; it haunts us for the rest of our lives. I like this think of myself as a person who is not trapped by the need to join but my wallet tells a different story. Just unfold it and self-awareness comes crashing in … I have both an AMC Theater card as well as a Regal Cinemas card. Two Visa cards and a MasterCard. A bank debit card and a credit union membership card. A State of Florida drivers’ license; AAA card; Best Buy Reward Zone card; Capital Health Plan insurance card; American Academy of Family Physicians card; Sam’s Club card; Premier Fitness Club card; both Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks beverage club cards [and I don’t even like coffee]. Heck, I even have a membership card to a now bankrupt bookstore chain [Borders].

Yes there are an endless number of symbols of belonging all around us. We join clubs, teams, sororities, fraternities, unions, guilds, churches, synagogues, organizations, political parties and, sadly, even Klans. We mark our tribes through labels, tattoos, piercings, colors, symbols, music, language, and style, and this is just the surface of an array of ways we find to belong, to fit in, to be insiders … how ironic is that the less genuine community we have, the more we create artificial communities?

We live in a world of planned communities [I sit in the planned beach community of Carillon writing this] and virtual communities that are growing as fast as the human community is disintegrating. I don’t think it is coincidental that over the past twenty years the labels on our clothes have moved from the inside to the outside. We know who we are by our symbols, and we can identify those who belong to our tribe by simply reading the signs.

Could something as meaningless as moving the labels to the outside of our clothing actually have deeper spiritual implications? Is it possible that we are all created with a need to belong to something, to belong to someone, and the less we actually belong to each other, the more symbols we need to feel like somehow we are making a connection? It goes so much deeper than what we wear. We will go to great lengths and great pain to become insiders.

At one end of the spectrum, we will pierce ourselves, tattoo ourselves and even mutilate ourselves to become our unique selves, who end up looking like a lot of other people. At the other end of the spectrum, we will use Botox, collagen and plastic surgery to become what we hope other people will love. We will go through hell weeks, allow ourselves to be demeaned through months of hazing [thank you Sigma Chi fraternity], and even commit unimaginable acts of violence to make it through an initiation just so that we can belong, so that we can be a part of a tribe. In the end, we are all tribal. We are created by a relational God for relationship. Why does this concept come so much easier to women than it does to us men?

Yes it seems to be true. God made us for relationships, and we only begin to experience life fully when we move toward healthy relationships and healthy community. Our souls will never be satisfied with anything else.

When we are estranged from God, we drift from love. Without God we lose our source of love but not our need for love. What was once our source of endless pleasure would become our soul’s deepest longing. What was intended to be an unlimited resource has become rare. We can spend the rest of history searching for love. And we would find ourselves far too often all too alone … and each of us in our own ways builds strategies to avoid aloneness.

Some people are related to each other while others are connected to each other. Some people share the same space while others share the same heart. Some people live in proximity with each other while others live in intimacy with each other.

Why do we find it so difficult to move from “me” to “us?” In our gut we know are not supposed to simply live for ourselves. Even the central figure in the L.A. riots of the early 90s, Rodney King, asked, “Can’t we all just get along?” It seems it is time to recognize the opposite of “me” isn’t “you,” but “we.”

Our need for relationship comes from the core of our being. It is the greatest of tragedies to sacrifice others in our effort to find ourselves. Our souls crave to belong. While the experience of love emanates from God, it is not limited to Him. We are created for each other.