Live Big

Just look at the ground on the grassy hill. It’ll lift you up but it holds you still, ‘cause gravity binds us but glory defines us—it’s the greater pull of a perfect will ...

It’s so full of meaning, alive and careening into the grace of the great unknown. I’m stuck down here. …up and away to the great wide open, adrift in an end­less ocean, in a bliss of mystical motion. I have found this much is true: love alone can carry you.

-Andrew Peterson-

It’s no secret that I love Andrew Peterson. Something about the way he writes. I think he says things the way I would say them if I could – or he says things in a way that reaches me. Sometimes I feel like the songs are his but the words are mine. I feel like I’m seeing things that I knew or should have known all along, but somehow couldn’t express or identify. I learned last night that he has an album for kids. I think my daughter will like it someday, if this next one is a boy I imagine he’ll eventually enjoy it to. I love it now. It was on in the car today and I enjoyed it more than I’ve enjoyed any music in a long time. It’s probably that I’ve regressed so far spiritually that I have become like a child, but in between all the silly there are powerful truths. Kids are silly and young and so they like fun and adventure - they don’t dream because they are young - they dream because they haven’t forgotten how. We were made for adventure and dreams and pirate ships and imagination. None of my jeans are grass stained and I rarely make gun sounds when I fly. I want to live – live big.

I want to slay the dragon and rescue the princess. I want to live the life I’ve forgotten. This gravity binds us, but its glory that defines us. To live big, in his will, carries us with grace unto the great unknown. I want to fly.

I became a commercial pilot two weeks ago. It’s the realization of dream. In the pursuit of that dream I have done and seen things very few people will ever experience. Up and away into the great wide open, I’ve escaped the bonds of earth and danced the clouds. I’ve been engulfed in blackness and thunder. I’ve seen beauty and power - felt free and weightless. I’ve been both conqueror and completely insignificant. I have been breathless and speechless and giddy. Somehow in all of that I began the think it was work and study that propelled me. I got lost in the effort and forgot the dream. The truth is: it was never me. It was and is always about the greater pull of a perfect will. It’s not a dream I had, it’s a dream I was given. I forgot.

God, forgive my forgetfulness. I have nothing to offer this journey. This is your dream, your story, your will. My efforts are futile; it’s your love alone that carries me.