One Messy Morning

I yelled at God today.

I’ve been praying about trust a lot. What it is, how to do it, why it’s so difficult. Why it seems like God likes to play games. So it’s no surprise I found myself in a brief season of intense confusion and dissatisfaction. It seemed like the more I asked God to teach me how to trust him, the more confused I became about my life. It felt like ole, “I’m going to confuse the heck out of you because in that frustration the only thing you can really learn to do is let go and trust me.”

Awesome. Thanks Lord. Good times. 

It was a rough morning. I slept in too late because I’m sick. I opened an email which let me know that although I’m a nice salesperson, the company was going to pass, and a switchblade of failure and defeat sank into my gut, again. Must be me, I thought. 

Then I went to the coffee shop and said something really stupid to the girls that work there. One of them is a short brunette with a beaming spirit and bright brown eyes. She likes me, I think, and has a cute smile with dimples, one of those girls that all guys can’t help but be attracted to. She has great style, kind of like a modern punk rock mixed with classic pin up. The other girl has fair skin and shiny chestnut hair that falls randomly about her neck, like a French Queen. She has light green eyes that seem to hold you for a moment. She doesn’t know how gorgeous she is. Both of them are naturals, wearing little makeup. They’re the reason the coffee tastes so good. Angels and High Priests of God’s Holy Bean Juice.

That morning, they were both wearing Playboy shirts, which I realized after the fact it’s never a good day for a girl when she’s trying to be cute and they end up matching with another girl. I have sisters. I should have known. But I had just woken up… wasn’t really thinking straight yet. Hadn’t even had that first sip.

The right thing to say would have been nothing, but instead, half awake, I said, “haha, I just noticed you’re both wearing playboy shirts, it’s a vibe. You’re putting out the playgirl vibe.” As soon as the words “play-girl” rolled off my tongue I felt like a jackass.

Neither of them looked at me, they just raised their eyebrows and kept doing what they were doing like, “did he really just say that?” To make it worse, I backpedaled, like all giant douches do, and said, “Ah I’m just JOKING!” As if it was their fault I was an idiot. I immediately found myself falling through the air of an existential crisis. What was I saying? I mean seriously, who am I? What the fuck, Zach!?

I was highly disappointed about the whole damn thing. It hurt my ego because I like those girls. I have a guilty crush on one of them, the brunette one, like always, but it’s a crush I feel too old for and guilty about for the immaturity of the whole thing, especially since just six months ago I was engaged (all my fault; big explosion; I’m sober now). But I have to let myself feel again at some point, right? Otherwise, I’ll continue to banish myself in emotional exile, walking barefoot over scolding hot sand and purposefully bending over to pick up scorpions and let them sting me, because I deserve it.

In my newly single and newly sober life, these girls at the coffee shop are the closest I come to going out and flirting. (Which I think I’m too old for anyways.) By my actions, I showed them I’m not that cool which sucks because the coffee shop is where I go to try and look cool. And up until then I was doing a pretty good job of it. It’s been something of a routine for me. A way to be seen. At 7am, I put on my best outfit and walk through the backdoor, making sure to leave my sunglasses on a few extra steps into the building. Sleepdrunk, I order an Americano and have two or three sentences back and forth with whoever’s at the register and then I sit down and read, write or talk with friends and that’s it, that’s my new Saturday night. So to blow it like I did really hurt my ego, which by this point you can probably infer is quite a problem for me, and put an embarrassing rain cloud on one of the few sunny social aspects of my life right now. 

So I got mad at God, naturally. It’s his fault I say stupid things, right? I mean who else is there to blame, after all, he made me. The bruised ego from the “playgirl” comment really sent me on an existential spiral. I realized I don’t really know who I am; I am not enjoying my day to day life; I hate sales but am afraid of poverty; and right now life just seems kind of baffling. And the one flicker of positive female attention and normalcy, even if it’s a flimsy tickling of my fragile ego: the emotional support I receive from ordering coffee from a cute girl; I sabotaged and once again confirmed that I am indeed, an awkward person, one who possibly has a condition, if only a bad case of the human one.

So as I was driving to a meeting, which I failed to prepare for, (I didn’t feel like pretending), I decided to do the most honest thing I could think of. I yelled at him. “How am I supposed to NOT lean on my own understanding? How is that possible?! How am I supposed to live in wisdom but then not lean on my own understanding? How do I trust you!? What are you going to do, make me wait 10 years in a cloud of confusion? In a fog of failure!? Only to force me to be at peace with my broken dreams and major let down of a life!? Am I going to have to die before I get any satisfaction?! Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to be? When will you show me my path?!” And I yelled whatever else erupted from my heart. 

Then I cried a little and went about my day. 

I was on the 73 going north, which cuts through the hills on the border of Irvine and Newport. At right about the moment when I accepted the day before me and wiped the tears from my eyes, I came up over the last hill, and because of the howling wind the night before which created one of the clearest days of the year, I could clearly see downtown LA in the distance. It was the first thing I saw. This was a twice a year type of clear day, a miracle of sorts.

See, in my confusion and struggle to trust God, I realized I really haven’t been confused at all, but I’ve been scared. Lately, the echoes of my creative calling have been haunting me, which is a big part of the reason my sales job feels like a plastic bag over my head. I’ve been rolling an idea around in my head that God’s will for my life is the manifestation of my wildest dreams: to succeed as a creator. The biggest possible God sized dream I can think of is to become a producer, or a screenwriter, or an author, or a designer, or some combination of these things. Hence why I took the LA skyline as a sign. 

I believe I’m meant to create. That’s the greatest want and desire of my heart. It feels like my calling. It’s about the way I see the world: how I feel the music in the sunrise each morning, how I march on to a slow, melancholy refrain, the underlying music of a world that’s not as it was meant to be, and the longing to return; how I embrace and marvel at the interwoven nature of humanity, God, beauty, truth, pain, presence, friendship, loveliness, disappointment, hopes and dreams.  

And if you take this perspective and combine it with the heart God has given me, a heart to serve him and bring him glory and live a meaningful life founded on sacrificial, unselfish love towards my fellow people; combine this innate calling of my heart with my story of failure, and how I’ve never quite felt like I’ve landed in the place I’m supposed to be, yet here I am, almost 31 years old, 6 months sober, just beginning to break through the rubble of Ground Zero after an epic collapse of character and just starting to feel like I’m finally on my path; and combine that with a belief and love for Jesus and the Gospel, along with an increasing conviction the Church at large is stale and unrelatable, and my desire to make it known how beautiful is the love story between God and man; if you combine all of these parts about myself, and lastly pour in one final liquid ingredient which blends and holds together all the others, so my perspective can be poured and baked into manna cakes of meaningful sustenance meant to be consumed as meaningful gifts of life and nourishment; and this one final ingredient is a subtle refrain, a sustained chord of harmonized hope, deep within my soul, pressed into purity like a diamond, which believes that God is good beyond our wildest dreams; combine this with my desire to create, then, alas, you have my dreams, my calling, my purpose: to write. 

That’s the big picture perspective, the object and reason for my struggle with trust. I am not meant to trust God for more sales, to be successful at something I wasn’t created for, but I’m meant to trust God in the fulfillment of my life’s calling and purpose, according to his plan, according to how in his eternal wisdom, my greatest happiness and sense of meaning lies at the intersection of my wildest dreams coming true and God’s predestined plan for my life. 

This is what it means to trust in, this is what it means to surrender to. 

So why is it so painful? What am I so afraid of?

It’s painful because of the failure which has qualified me to get to this place of nothing to lose. It’s scary because of societal norms I have to shed in order to follow my dreams, the ones I’ve subconsciously idolized as the ultimate destination designed to hold existential comfort, you know, the wife and the kids and the house and the 401k and the “I have everything all together right on time” look, usually underlined by a nice car, that we all seem to be going for in America, or at least here in Orange County. 

I yelled at God because I was scared about not having a guarantee when it comes to following my dreams. How long will it take? How long must I pitter-patter as a peddling, suffering salesman? When can I walk into the coffee shop as a man of dignity, accomplished and proud? I was frustrated because the path wasn’t explained to me, step by step, like the navigation app on my phone. And in response to crying out like an impatient toddler on a road trip , God reminded me of my dreams, and once again, asked me to trust him. 

There is unknown in the path of our destiny. We progress slowly, one bread crumb at a time. I’ve accepted there is no guarantee. We must believe, have faith, and trust. And the evidence of our faith, of course, is action. 

I cried out to the Lord and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. He listened, patiently, and waited for me to stop yelling. 

“That’s it buddy, get it all out. Come on, give me your best shot… oh, you’re done now? Okay, let’s go. This way.”

“Okay, Lord, but can we stay in San Clemente please? I can commute…”