What I Am Not Writing About Today

I wasn’t going to write anything today.

I did not want to write about how two weeks ago I didn’t write anything because I had a full-blown mental breakdown from reality. Or maybe it was a full on collision with reality. I don’t know which is worse.

So I won’t write about how I just want to get home. Wherever that is. How I am tired of living on the road. And how I desperately just want to wake up to four walls that belong to me. That I worked hard to get. I just want to be able to walk into the kitchen without pants.

I am not going to write about going seven days and counting without a cell phone after dropping my iPhone off a 200ft waterfall leading to its untimely death. About how after two days you start reaching into your pocket every time a phone rings. Phantom vibrates begin. Like an amputee who can still feel his missing extremity, you swear the phone you no longer have is ringing. I am not going to explain to you that I often go to everyone else for advice before I go to God. And about how being disconnected from everyone reconnected me with God; allowing me to redefine my relationship with Him on my own terms rather than under the influence of everyone else.

I’m not even going to try to write about the trip I took to Walmart at 10pm on Friday night looking for pain killers, and discovered an entire new race of human beings that presumably dwell there. I don’t want to ask you why it looked like everyone spilled their dinners down the front of their shirt, why every man there seemingly had forgotten how to shave, and why were there so many unsupervised children under the age of three running around like they’d just eaten a box of sugar for dinner.

I wondered if I should tell you about recently being asked what my theology was, and how I was stumped to respond.

I turned to Lauren, who answered for me, “I don’t think Max has a theology.”

That sounded about right. So I said, “I love Jesus, and I do my best to follow him.”

I am not going to tell you that story.

And I am not going to tell you about the afternoon I spent exploring and photographing an abandoned hospital that shut down in 1984.

I’d like to tell you that after seven days without an iPhone you forget how to sit on a park bench by yourself, how to wait in line (Hands in pockets? Hands out of pockets? Hands at my side? What the hell am I supposed to do with my hands?), and how to stand alone in a park without looking suspicious, but I won’t.

I am not going to tell you about leading a discussion about sex and pornography in the back of a tattoo shop on Monday night.

There’s nothing to say about the Cook Shack, where I went to breakfast on Saturday morning in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina. And in the middle of nowhere a bunch of middle-aged musicians pack inside a living room that doubles as a restaurant that serves Folgers coffee in tiny non-biodegradable cups, only has four tables, and every photograph every taken hangs on every inch of available wall space.

And I won’t retell a discussion I had about prayer, the Emerging Church, and whether or not our sins would have been forgiven if Jesus had been crucified as an infant instead of an adult.

I am not going to tell you any of those stories because none of them have an ending. They simply bleed into the next hour which had me eating pizza with new friends. They bleed into the next day where I relaxed at Starbucks and read a book about zombies.

I am not going to tell you about any of these things that happened to me on the road this last week because trying to make a story out of any of them is just going to complicate things.

Because I believe life is simple. I believe following Jesus is simple.

It’s not easy.

But it’s simple.

Yet for some reason we try to complicate everything. We try to find meaning in everything. We try to find the answers, the solutions, and the justification for every action and reaction.

Maybe God threw my cell phone off that waterfall because it was a huge distraction and addiction in my life. Because I was dependent upon it for answers. If I couldn’t call someone who had the answers, I could simple find them on Google. And God wants me dependent on Him for answers.

Or maybe I am just that unbelievably clumsy. It runs in the family. Just ask Calling All Cool Moms.

Either way, my cell phone is gone. Now when I have a free moment, I am forced to go to God first instead of calling everyone else I know for answers. I actually have to pay attention to my surroundings. I actually have to think.

Whether I have theology or not, it’s not going to save me.

I can grow weary and discouraged that 126 days later I am still on the road, but regardless, I am still on the road. And I may never have this opportunity again. So on my way home I will make every day an adventure.

I can make fun and stand bewildered at all those people at Walmart, or I can try to see them the way God sees them. Because it’s the same way He sees me.

Simple.

I am not looking for answers. Solutions. Or conclusions.

I am just looking to live.

To experience life. Learn from it. And move on.

Even when life gets hard. Which it will. Because I don’t want to be the guy in Heaven that has to tell God, “I had a lot of questions, and not enough answers, and suffered great loss, and when life got hard, I didn’t really know what to do with it.” I imagine that conversation going something like this:

God: You weren’t dead for those few years, right?

Me: No, I was very much alive.

God: Then you should have been living.

What I am going to write about is this: Life is meant for two things. 1.) Life is meant to be lived. With great risk, with great joy, with great love. 2.) And if we have life, we are meant to glorify God with it.

And one cannot truly be without the other.

You get some awesome wall art, I get a tank of gas. Help me get back home by purchasing my photography from the road –> Make It MAD: Photography

Then follow me on Twitter because I live a lot of my life there too: @maxdubinsky

Stealing is for suckers. You can’t have this. Copyright © July 2011 Make It MAD