Split Allegiances

FOMO can be a funny thing. One minute you're standing around, perfectly content minding your own business and doing whatever it is you happen to be doing, and then the next you're on the floor, concentration broken and all semblance of productivity forgotten, your anxious mind fixated on that one, seemingly inescapable question:

But. What. If...?

We've all been there, whether it's something as simple as choosing between activities or destinations on a day off, what to eat, what to wear, the constant always-online nature of the world means that whatever we choose, all too often we're left feeling like we made the wrong decision, that there will always be something else, something more, that we gave up on to end up where we are, leaving us feeling either totally unsatisfied, or in some cases putting off the decision entirely right up until the point there is no longer a decision to make.

Over the past year, I have been thinking about this a lot. Looking back on my life over the last 10 years or so, I think it's probably fair to say that things haven't exactly gone how I might have expected them to. That isn't necessarily to say it's been bad, as such, though there have definitely been ups and downs along the way (and probably more of the latter than the former), but it's certainly true that the 18 year old version of me about to sit his A-levels could not have predicted the rollercoaster ride he was about to embark upon. In hindsight though, a lot of the things have shaken up makes perfect sense. I never envisioned myself working in the education sector, yet I find myself in a technician role, in a familiar (albeit much busier) environment, working with familiar (albeit much fancier) equipment, in a familiar location. I attend the same church and serve on the same teams, in the same roles and in the same place as I did five years ago. None of these things are in any way inherently a problem. In fact, there is something to be said for the huge benefits that come with relative stability in life, and I am incredibly grateful for that, but the more I think about it, the more I begin to realise that almost all of these things have one, very significant, element in common: The path of least resistance.

Throughout life, many of the choices I've made, and paths I have chosen to walk, have been largely decided by that one simple concept. Good with numbers and equations? Try a stem degree. Looking for a church at uni? Have a friend come visit one week and then go along with the first person you speak to at the CU church meet the next (thanks Ruth and Ruth). Realities of uni life prove more challenging than expected? Move back home and take pretty much the first job you're offered, then stay on largely the same career path for most of the next six years. All the while paralysed by indecision and feeling unable to diverge from the path directly in front of you. Honestly, it sucks. The more I think about it though, the more I realise that in a lot of ways, those two concepts - FOMO and the path of least resistance - really have a lot more in common than I might have initially thought. Specifically, the decision paralysis and dissatisfaction from FOMO almost always leads you to take the easiest option, not because it's necessarily "better" or "worse", but because it is simply the only one left by the time you make the choice. Sometimes that option is a good one, other times it is not, but regardless of the outcome, the one thing that has been consistently true about that path is the sense of dissatisfaction that comes with taking it, and the lingering feeling that somehow, somewhere, there is something more to all of this, if only you had had the courage to step up and seize the opportunity. 

The thing is, FOMO has a tendency to feed into itself. In our desire for connection and to not miss out on all the good that we see in the lives of others, there is a very real temptation to push too far in the other direction - to commit to so many different things in order to try and fill the void that we never truly get to experience any of them. Split Allegiances. In chasing after the breadth of all life has to offer, we risk missing out on the depth of connection that we all so desperately need. It isn't necessary that any of that breadth of experiences is bad in and of itself, rather that in trying to focus on so many different things at the same time we invariably lead end up in a situation where we are unable to truly commit to any of them, and honestly, that sucks.

I had this whole spiel lined up at this point about how I recently did an audit of my life and came to the realisation I may just possibly have been overcommitting myself to things over the last 2 years, but I couldn't figure out where I wanted to go with it without getting into waaaaay more detail than I'm comfortable with on a random blog post on the internet. The short version though is that it's a lot, and I care about it a lot, and it's all good stuff, but attempting to maintain all those connections while simultaneously leaving time for myself and for rest has at times been incredibly challenging. How can we possibly be expected to hold onto this much care for others and for their situations? I think Abbie Gamboa puts it rather well in her recently released song "Consider Him":

We will run this race focussed on Your face
You won't let us grow weary
We're not made to sprint, it's a pilgrimage
You won't let us lose heart

Consider Him the Author and the finisher
Oh lift your head and look to Him, the son of man
My weariness is swallowed in the kindness of our covenant
Consider this, consider Him, He is everything 

He is everything 

Maybe, at the end of the day, all we really need to do in the midst of all the busyness of life is take a moment to take a step back and consider the one who has all things under control...

Release, Reflection, and Resolution

 

"Sometimes being in a place is too painful so you 
decide to go on a walk instead"

A new year is a funny thing. For some, it represents hope, desire, and a longing for things to be better. For others, loss, letting go of things behind, and moving forward. This year though, for me and likely for many, many others, it is little more profound than an arbitrary way of marking our planet completing another revolution around that big firey ball of gas in the sky while reflecting on how the previous 12 months completely and utterly failed to live up to the hopes and expectations we set for them.

Now, don't get me wrong, 2025 hasn't been all bad. There have been plenty of moments from the last year that I look back on now with real thankfulness and joy, and plenty more that have profoundly impacted me in a positive way. I've joined a small group, served on several different teams across multiple contexts, and organised and helped run many different events, the most significant of which was a charity video game marathon that raised over seven thousand dollars. On top of all that, this year marks the first time in a very long time that I have genuinely felt at home in a community, and that I might actually belong somewhere rather than just existing on the fringes all the time, and that to me is a really really big deal. Despite all these things though, I can't help but looking back on the year as a whole as something of a catastrophic failure.

I haven't really engaged with the concept of "new years resolutions" for a while now. All too often they just start out as good intentions which then fall flat after the first week or month with nothing to support them. Honestly, I've never been particularly good at motivating myself to do anything without a clear, well defined goal to work towards that is external to myself. Generic "self improvement" has never really been a good enough reason by itself to elicit meaninful change, and thus, it hasn't really made sense to me to set myself goals like that. For the last few years though, one thing I have been doing is praying into a specific word or phrase to represent the year ahead, and for 2025 that word was "Release".

Of course, when I prayed that prayer, I had no idea that the "release" in question would involve a year of feeling totally overwhelmed and needing to take a pretty significant step back from several areas of ministry in order to properly re-evaluate where and what I have capacity for, as well as the end of postgrads with the departure of our pastor, and the disappointing but not remotely surprising news that The Equip Festival (and by extension puppet academy) would not be going ahead in 2025. Nothing on this list really came as a "surprise" as such, but even still, everything happening at once ended up being quite a shock to the system, and one that I hadn't really anticipated. The phrase "bumpy road" doesn't quite do this year justice. A better descriptor would likely be "road closed - follow diversion [through several miles of roadworks]". Only time will tell whether that diversion actually landed me where I need to be...

All that brings me onto the year ahead, and where we go from here. I haven't usually been making a habit of sharing these "words for the year" with other people, because a lot of the time they're pretty personal and if things don't come through it can end up feeling fairly meaningless. In the case of 2026 however, I've been feeling for a while now that the word that I need to be praying into for this year is the word "Resolution", and honestly, it feels like it's a word that demands a certain level of accountability, so here we are. With all that in mind though, the question then becomes: why "resolution"? What does it mean, and what does it mean for me to be praying into it?

Interestingly, the word "resolution" actually has several meanings:

• A firm decision to do (or not do) something 
• The act of finding an answer or solution to a conflict or problem
• The disappearance of a symptom or condition
• The smallest interval measurable by a scientific instrument
• The degree of detail visible in a photographic or television image
• The passing of a discord into a concord during the course of changing harmony

There are plenty more definitions I could list here, and I'm not going to go into depth about all of them, or how specifically they relate to me personally, because we would be here all day, but what I will say is that the more I look into it, the more this word feels particularly apt for the situation I find myself in entering 2026, and I don't think it's an accident that this word specifically is the one that has been on my heart for the last 4 months. Ultimately, my prayer is that 2026 would be a year of:

• Choosing decisiveness over indecision
• Finding peace and comfort in the face of endings
• Healing and letting go of past hurts 
• Rediscovering clarity and direction
• Rebuilding and restoring relationships

Honestly, as I write this now, I have no idea what this year will look like. Heck. I'm not even entirely certain what the rest of this week will look like, and there's only another three days of that left... The one thing I can be pretty dang sure of though is it's going to be a pretty wild ride, whatever direction life ends up going in in the next 12 months, and I don't think I can do it on my own. To quote another post I wrote just under five years ago now: "In a world where everything we’ve ever known is breaking we have a simple choice: Hold onto God and His promises and ride the wave, or break with it." 

Onward and upward to 2026 I guess!