It’s What I’m Here For
It was eighty-two degrees when I threw my pack into the back of my truck. Aiyana was spending a few days at the beach with a couple of her friends. The boys were at a weeklong camp where Caleb was a counselor and Blake was a camper. Jenelle and I had an empty house and an open evening. Perfect timing for a dinner date for just the two of us. Since I'm needing to toughen up for a Colorado elk hunt in September, I suggested hiking up the Savage trail from the bottom, going a couple miles, making dinner and then hiking back down. Of course I would be carrying my pack with everything in it that I needed for the elk hunt, minus my bow.
At the trailhead we noticed that there were lots of insects buzzing around and so we, or at least I, immersed myself in cancer causing Deet, and then we headed up the trail. The pack felt good on my back but the heat was a little immense. When I looked back at Jenelle, she seemed to be doing a lot of motioning or something. I paused to hear what she had to say, but apparently she wasn't trying to say anything, just flailing at the gnats. When you're running or hiking up a mountain, especially on the tougher ones and when the air is cold, they'll often tell you that it's best to breathe by breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Well this situation warranted for the opposite. If you clenched your teeth together and inhaled through your mouth, and then exhaled out through your nose, most of the gnats and mosquitoes were filtered out of your airway, which is a great thing in my opinion. Between the heat and the bugs, we only made it a mile up the trail. We stopped and made our supper on a big rock. The chicken and rice tortillas, and the Pringles and the cookies all tasted great. I expected the cool evening breeze to kick in at any moment. That's one thing that I love about living in the mountains! Everything can cool down really quickly. But then again, it doesn't always work that way. Well, it didn't cool down. So we packed everything up and headed down in the heat and the bugs and the skeeters. Of course it was great to be together but the memory of the hike was better than the romance of the moment.
This week, the kids were all back home. Not a real eventful week but we did do a couple hours of paddling on the Savage and it was hotter than the blue blazes at work! Who in their right mind would play with twenty one hundred degree glass when you can break into a sweat just walking to the popsicle stand! Oh well.
Friday evening, I took the boys and we met up with some friends at a Beast Feast. It's a thing where hunters get together, eat food, and then they'll usually have someone talk about hunting or outdoors or whatever. Since this was a Christian event, they had a Christian hunter and speaker as the guest speaker. And that guest speaker was none other than Justin Gibbons from Limitless Outdoors. If you've been around the hunting world and watch hunting shows and such, you've probably heard of him. If not, and you like hunting shows, you can easily find him on YouTube.
Anyways, we got to meet him, eat lots of good food, and then watch Justin's latest video and listen to him speak. Let me just say that Justin is a powerful speaker/preacher/ encourager!
He talked about how God planted seeds in our hearts way back when and wants us to grow, enjoy and use these things because he has a purpose for them. He quoted my favorite verse from the book of Ephesians which is ". . . you were created in Christ, to do good works, that he prepared a long time ago." And just to clarify, that doesn't mean letting those works become more about making "me" happy, than God or our families or whatever, which is what we tend to do. And then those things we do to make "me" happy, just leave a big hole anyway. Another way that we tend to think, especially in America, is to work hard and build up a big retirement, and then when we retire we can spend our savings doing those good things that we were meant to do. So then we often do just what makes us money and often we dread going to work. And when we retire we aren't physically able to do what we were created to do in the first place.
But that's really not how it was meant to be. Of course we need to work to make a living. But we were created to enjoy our work.
Funny thing about Justin is that he didn't grow up in church. Hadn't even been to a church service until he was in his mid twenties. But he loved to hunt. And that's about all that he did. But he never felt satisfied even on his biggest and best hunts and there always seemed to be an empty hole inside.But when a local preacher ordered a DVD from him and asked if he could drop it off at the church, they started a relationship that became a friendship that led Justin to meeting Christ. And then he learned that God had a purpose for him and that God wanted to use his hunts to tell others about Jesus. And so that's what he does. And now everything he does has purpose! And the hole he had is filled with joy!
It was a good evening for me.
I was encouraged to keep doing what I'm doing. Loving God and loving on Jenelle and the kids. Nourishing those little seeds, those passions that I have for hunting and canoeing and looking for sheds and making glass antlers. And writing out our stories along the way.
And I hope that God can use these stories to encourage you in some way and maybe help you to seek out all that you were meant to be in Jesus.
After all, I believe that's what I am here for. And I won't trade this joy for anything!
