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I had a GREAT night tonight - I almost called and canceled my Japanese lesson at Ihara-nihongo-no-kai, but decided to go instead. It turned out that this week was actually a yasumi (break) but my conversation partner Furuyasan had told me that there was. So he was there, and 2 of his friends from his old job (Furuya-san is a retired police officer) and those 2 women's high-school aged daughters. One of the girls will be attending Ihara next year. I had seen Gotenyama all lit up for hanami (cherry blossom viewing) and so suggested that we all walk over there. We ended up sitting in the jiyuseki section, having konbini snacks and chatting. Then me and the girls hiked up to the tsuribashi (suspension bridge). It was really fun just talking and joking and learning some Japanese. After, we came back to the sukoyaka center, Furuya's friends left, and he invited me over for some coffee with him and his wife. We sat under their kotatsu (warm-table - we don't have these in the states) and watched a crazy Japanese show called "taimu shoku" (time shock) where celebrities are strapped into a contraption and asked questions, and if they don't get enough right they get spun around in a 3-d "torunado." Some 56-year-old Japanese dude dressed as a woman won the game. (His name was Peter.)

I'm really starting to feel the weight of the fact that I'm leaving Japan in 4 months. There are a lot of things I wish I could stay and do, and I'm going to miss a lot when I move away.

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This is all worth it - everything I do is worth it.

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Passion

It just hit me. It just clicked. It just all came together, moments ago. I have thought, for years, that I am passionless. I have told myself that I'm 80% good at everything, but not 100% good at anything. I've never found an activity that I could see myself doing every day. I have agonized over this thought for a long time, wishing there was a career, a cause, a sport, or something that I could give myself to in order to find meaning in my daily life. And now it's hit me: My passion is for Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about a career, I'm not joining the ministry, I haven't decided to enroll in seminary. I'm talking about passion - a daily living, a daily purpose, a unifying cause which rules over everything, and under which my daily life plays out.

Recently I've been learning how anything I do can be and should be done to the glory of God, and how offering my body as a living sacrifice is how I am to spiritually worship my Creator. I've been learning and hearing new things through sermons and messages from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I've been reading good books and memorizing scripture. I've been wondering about my career, what kind of a job I should get after the JET Program, and how my calling to be a diplomat is supposed to play out practically and be satisfying. I was worried that I couldn't do it, and I was worried that I wouldn't find joy in it, if and when I got there. But tonight I was reading Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper, and it taken me many days and about 50 pages into the book before that book's specific message suddenly finished the picture, finally tied the last knot on the shoelace that pulled together my vehicle for purposeful motion for the rest of my life.

I've been running with shoes untied for so long, slipping and stumbling, turning my ankle and losing my purpose as it falls off behind me and I go tumbling down some God-forsaken path. The sentence in Piper's book read: "Don't coast through life without a passion." and I had been been doing this, looking for something to focus on, never being satisfied with anything, and feeling all the worse and inadequate for it.

But I see it now! The real and true something. The thing that's not a what, but a look to the whom. It's all for the praise and glory of Jesus, and in this I get the joy and the fullness of life! There are no compartments to my life, and I will not define each aspect of my life on its own merits and its own purpose. I now have the purpose, and therefore anything I do will have purpose because it's done unto Jesus. I am no longer passionless because again, the definition of passion is not found in what I do, but to whom I do it.

This is all very new to me, and I have a lot of thinking to do, and a lot of thoughts that must be mastered by this truth that I have discovered. I simply had to come on and share this tonight because it is going to absolutely revolutionise the way I see my purpose in my career, my job, my family, my hobbies and my daily life.

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