superordinary

I've always been the one who gets overlooked.
Last one picked. First one to miss out.

I watch the blessings land on everyone around me and I wonder, again, why not me.

For a long time I quietly believed God had passed me over too. That I was the one He forgot.

But I keep reading about people nobody noticed. A shepherd kid left out in the field while his brothers lined up. A woman drawing water at noon so no one would see her. Two tired travelers on the road to Emmaus who didn't recognize who was walking with them.

Grace found every one of them. Right there in the ordinary.

I don't have this figured out. Some days I'm still at the bottom of the wheel, waiting.

But maybe being overlooked by everyone isn't the same as being overlooked by Him.

Maybe that's what superordinary means.

The kingdom was me.

I can see it clearly now, the way you only see a house for what it was after it's burned down. Every room was built for one person. I was selfish. Self-centered. I didn't care about anyone but me, and I didn't care who got hurt.

People got hurt. I'd watch their names light up my phone and let it ring.

It came from my own hurt. That's not an excuse, just the truth. Hurt people hurt people, and I got very good at it.

I remember the night it finally caved in. Sitting in my truck in an empty parking lot with the engine off, because there was nowhere I wanted to go and nobody left I hadn't pushed away.

That's where He found me. Not at my best. At the bottom of everything I'd built.

He called me by another name.
Not selfish. Not the guy who hurts people. Not the names my hurt gave me.
Son.

It wasn't the nails that held Him there. It was a love that wouldn't let me go, even while I was the one doing the hurting.

He didn't wait for me to become someone worth saving.

I had nothing left to live for.
He gave me something worth dying for.

I grew up knowing exactly what to say and do.

Third pew from the front. Hand up at the right part of the song. I knew which verses to quote and when to bow my head. I could pray out loud in a circle and make it sound like I meant every word.

I walked the walk. Talked the talk. Everyone believed it.

It was an act.

The second the car doors shut in the parking lot, I took it off like a Sunday shirt.

Nobody saw the real me. Not my friends. Not the people who said they were proud of me. Some days, not even me.

But He did. The whole time. He saw the kid mouthing the words and the man still hiding behind them, and that's exactly the one He wanted. Not a better performance. A real relationship.

I always thought He was waiting for me to finally get it right. Arms crossed at the finish line.

He wasn't waiting.
He was walking toward me the whole time.

The end of the act.
The start of something real.

Went back today.
Took the long way, past the water tower and the ball field with the lights that never all worked.

The corner store is a vape shop now. Half the field is a parking lot. Our sidewalk is still there, though. It's cracked down the middle, and half our names are worn away under twenty-some summers of other people walking over them.

We carved them with a stick the afternoon they poured it. Somebody's dad yelled at us from a porch. We ran, laughing so hard we couldn't breathe, and I remember thinking nothing would ever change.

Everything changed.

There's a picture of me from that summer: sunburned, missing a tooth, grinning like I already knew how it all turned out. I wonder what he'd think of me now. Whether I kept any of the promises he didn't know he was making.

I've spent so much of my life trying to dig things back up. Old summers. Old versions of me. People who moved on.

But I'm starting to think some things get buried for a reason.
Not lost. Planted.

All the things I couldn't keep.
But He kept me.

There's a shoebox under my bed I don't open much.

Inside is a picture from August. The fair was in town. We're standing by the midway right as the lights came on, and I remember thinking: if I could just freeze this, I'd never have to find out how it ends.

There's a ticket in there too. Ferris wheel. We never rode it. The line was too long, or somebody had to go home. I don't even remember why. But I kept the ticket.

That's how I've treated most of my life. Holding on to the stub of something I never got on.

I used to be afraid that when the lights went out, when the music stopped and everybody went home, God would forget who I was. That I'd fade out with the rest of it.

But He was never trying to remember the old me.
He's looking at who I'm becoming.

After the lights go out,
He's still here.

Some days my life feels like a map with no "you are here."

I could fill a notebook with the wrong turns. Plans that fell through. Doors that never opened. Prayers that felt like talking to the ceiling.

And I kept asking for directions. Show me where You are. Give me a sign. Something big.

I think about the two guys walking to Emmaus. Seven miles with Jesus right beside them, and they didn't know it was Him. They talked the whole way about how disappointed they were. It wasn't until He broke the bread at the table that they finally saw Him.

That's me. Looking for a miracle out on the horizon while the miracle walks right next to me, listening to me complain.

He was never hiding.
I just wasn't looking at who was beside me.

I wanted thunder.

I wanted the sky to split open and a voice to tell me I was on the right track. Something I could point to. Proof.

Most nights, all I got was the ceiling fan.

There's a story about Elijah hiding in a cave, worn out and ready to quit. A wind tore the mountain apart, but God wasn't in the wind. Then an earthquake. Then fire. God wasn't in any of it.

Then a whisper.

I've spent years waiting for the fire and the wind. Meanwhile He was in the quiet. In the 2 a.m. questions. In the ordinary days I didn't think counted.

Heaven wasn't far away.
He was here all along.