bigjohnsblog.com

I’m living the dream- living this crazy, unpredictable Florida life- in the past 7 years, I got married, became a high school teacher, and got a youth director position in one of the largest churches in America.

I never even dreamed it’d be this good though. I’d doodle in 5th grade. And even my doodling wasn’t this good. I can’t even draw on paper how amazing life is today.

I’d sit on my trampoline in 6th grade and think about love and all that mooshy stuff….and I had no clue that my dreams weren’t nearly high enough…

In high school, I’m not sure I ever fit in. I remember going every Saturday morning to trailer parks and apartments to work with underprivileged kids. I don’t even think anyone in high school knew the real me, maybe because I didn’t really know me either.

I didn’t learn who I really was until my best friend Kelley died when I was 20. Check that….I didn’t BEGIN to learn who I was until then. It was a process that included her visiting me in a dream one night back in 1999. She’s resting with God, but man did she ever change dozens of us forever.

Once I figured out who I was, then, I had to figure what I’d do with my life. I really believed God had a plan for me. I was single, and 26 years old. I knew that I had a gift with people….especially with adolescents….one day, when I was pondering my future on a vacation to Florida, a friend drove me by this new high school. My heart yelled so loud I couldn’t describe that I needed to be there…..so I decided to go back to school (already had my bachelor’s) so I could teach there. Didn’t quite know that it was an elite school…one of the top in the state.

I also didn’t know what I’d teach. Checking my college degree, heck, I had enough to be a teacher….so I took a few more classes and ended up ready to teach math. But I couldn’t get a job at that school…..so I took a different job at Menendez High School. For a year, I worked there. Then, through the weirdest turn of events in a 15 day span ever known… …I subbed for a best man at a wedding, and found a girlfriend, I quit my job at Menendez, took a job at a church, got dumped, quit my job at that church, tried to get my job back at Menendez, but couldn’t. Jobless, prideless, and girlfriendless….I took communion every day for so many days I couldnt’ remember. I called it my 90 day fast from dating…… within 2 days, I got a job teaching at bths, that school I’d driven through in 2001. Some 28 days later, I met the girl I’d marry.

Almost 4 years later, we’re living my dream. She believes in my dreams. After getting married, times were hard. We had to find a church, and I still had to finish some college classes….it was tough times. 4 hurricanes hit Florida and she was basically out of work for almost 2 months. Sometime during that spell, we found our dream church…..a church started in 1998 and now with over 7000 people (www.celebration.org). We volunteered to start a youth group down in St. Johns County where we live. Almost 3 years later, we’re youth directors of around 200 middle and high schoolers at the campus level, and part of a team of 4 youth pastors that ministers to over 1000 teens in our area code monthly.

I miss my mom. She’s back in Mississippi running her very own country store. She’s living her dream right now too. She raised my brother and I on her own. I was with her when she graduated…..she was 2.5 months pregnant when she walked that May night back in 1974. I miss lots of other people….but she’s the closest to me. I miss my grandpa Bill. He died back in 2003. When I spoke at his funeral, for the first time since I was a 9 year old kid in the back of his pickup, I felt like I appreciated and understood him. It was tough to look at his casket. I’m only 33 and I’ve already seen so many of those.

So many of my friends believed in me when I sometimes thought no one did. I was meant to move to Florida, become a teacher, then become a youth director again, then get married. It was so tough to get here though. The spring of 2001 almost killed me. Come to think of it, most of that year almost did, and probably half of 2002 as well. To get here, I had to leave many of my friends behind in Alabama and Mississippi. Sometimes, it hurts their feelings when I talk about how God’s blessed me so much today. I hope someday, they’ll understand that I was incomplete back then. I was way far from perfect. Searching for myself while at the same time trying to lead many of them.

I’m just starting to partially figure this thing out…..and bang, life is almost maybe halfway over. But if the first half was about discovering who I am, and what my dreams are, and fulfilling that, then the second half has to be bigger….

I want to fulfill God’s dream for me. You’re not born to an 18 year old mom, suffer through 3 alcoholic father/stepfathers, survive a suicide attempt at age 9 (I tried to jump off some stairs but was too uncoordinated to land on my head, instead landed on my butt I think), and end up where I am now and somehow think it happened through determination or natural selection or luck. Nope, God loves me man. And He very much intervened time and again. He gave me dreams that I’d marry a woman who loved Him like I did….and boom, there goes the dynamite baby.

I know a huge part of living the dream is loving my wife beyond her imagination…..and making her dreams come true….and together touching the world like it aint’ nobody’s business. She has this special gift of stabilizing people. She’s their calm….their sounding board, their cleft of the rocky life where the wind and waves and dust and shrapnel (if you’re still reading this, I’m not sure why I typed shrapnel, it just sounded cool) can’t reach them. She reminds people of who they are….like some cheezy Hallmark card, she learns your heart’s song and sings it back to you when you forget it.

I feel like I’ve been way too many places in such a short time….If I’ve crossed your path and let you down, I truly am sorry. If it’s any consolation, maybe you helped me find my way. And if I could find my way, there’s no excuse for you…..you can find your way too….just follow the Way. The Truth. The Life. Above all things, just love Him and others.

-big John

Currently watching : Before Sunset Release date: 09 November, 2004