Forgive me for this, but . . .

. . . I'm gonna bring us back to a familiar topic - hope.

Thank you if you are still reading :)

And I would gladly switch topics, but the truth is I'm so blown away by hope. I love how stubborn it is, this impulse and deep rooted desire to not only SEE a place where things are redeemed and made right, but to dare to believe that that vision WILL BE a reality.

I'm writing a paper for NBBI, the school I went to from 2004-2007, in order to get my Bachelor's from them. And going through my class notes from 3-6 years ago, it blows my mind how much I've grown. Not just in my awareness of who God is, though that definitely hit me as I looked through my Systematic Theology notes. But grown as a person, grown into a man, grown in the sense of my view of life, myself, the people around me.

And there have been people along the way who have helped me see things in a way my imagination had never tried to before - Tamara helping me see the "Jesus inside everyone", Mike helping me flesh out some crazy ideas that started making a lot of sense, Asher and Dayna and Trish helping me realize the value of letting people just be themselves in a relationship, my mom and sisters proving the strength of family bonds, my dad providing an example of how it's better to forgive than maintain anger . . . and a host of others.

If you were to tell me that this is where I would be, at 26 (almost 27!) years of age, having let go of most of my ridiculous claims about myself and God, and being free to just contentedly dwell in the present while looking expectantly to the future . . . if you were to tell me this at 23 years of age, fresh outta NBBI, a new youth pastor . . . well, I would have laughed. I had all the answers I thought I needed, my life was perfect AND getting better, and I had no desire to change anything.

Growth, though, is change. And so without even consciously acknowledging it, I was closed off to growth . . . and growth, it would seem, is painful at times, especially when we try to fight against it . . .

Part of this growing is realizing my own limitations, especially when I want nothing more than to convey something to someone, and find I hit an obstacle - be it the very nature of words themselves - or the limitations imposed by others, their own walls, that I may not always understand but do my best to respect. And another part is realizing that I am also limited by my own impositions on my imagination - for instance, it's hard for me to accept praise, especially if I don't feel I've done anything praiseworthy . . . but that's only because I lack the imagination that says that it's possible this person is seeing something I'm missing, or that my actions touched them in a way beyond my ability to imagine . . .

We're our own worst enemy so very often, eh?

So here is the hope - that the same God who hasn't given up yet, who has continued to open up my mind these past 6 years, and the previous 7 before that when I began this journey at 16, will and IS going to be continuing to redeem me every day . . . and that excites me to think about where I might be in the next 6 years, the next 20, the next 50 . . .

And that last statement is especially wild for Greg French to make, because for so long I have dreaded growing old . . . but hope changes you like that, I suppose.