Crazy

"Oh, I'm in Tulsa. Some friends from the internets that I've never met offered me a place to stay indefinitely, and told me they'd try to get me a job, so I drove 1,560 miles out there to take them up on it."

"That's crazy!"

No, it just looks crazy. For most folks, I guess I understand that, but then again, most folks are walking meat puppets. They hardly ever think more than five minutes ahead, and rarely do anything but what (should) make their lives easier. However, to me it ranks up there as one of the more rational things I've done.

Why? Well, there's a philosophical concept I try to implement in my life, and while I don't know if there's an official term for it, I call it "being internally consistent". To me, it means that each of the disparate parts of my life, the various things I believe, do, and say, need to be as consistent as possible with all the other parts.

Of course, conflict is inevitable, so a hierarchy needs to be established. For me, that means everything starts with Christ. If I'm actually going to call myself a Christian, I can't put Christ fourth, third, or second, He's gotta be the first step, the bedrock upon which everything else is built.

The relevant part of this concept is that if I really believe that God speaks to people, and if I really believe that God is speaking to me, than I can't ignore it. If I really believe that God Himself is telling me to do something, I'd have to be absolutely mad to tell Him that I don't really feel like it.

So, when I was offered a place to stay in Tulsa, and told that the guys were going to try to get me a job, should I have turned that down to be homeless somewhere else? When I randomly met a Christian lady, while working a shift I wasn't scheduled for and didn't want to take, who told me how much she regretted not getting into mission aviation and how much I'd like Oklahoma, was I supposed to ascribe that to pure chance?

Maybe, maybe not. Even looking at my "options", I had three choices:

1. Keep working a part-time job in Spokane, renting a studio apartment for MORE than I was previously paying, with little-to-no chance of even breaking even, let alone paying stuff off so I can save up for school.

2. Move to Idaho, rent a very similar apartment, only I wouldn't have a job.

3. Move to Oklahoma, where I'd have a rent-free room for a while, some meals provided, and a fairly high chance of getting a really nice job with some pretty cool people.

Just looking at the options, Tulsa makes sense, even without the consistent answer to prayer, even without random folks telling me that I should go. But with it all taken together?

I'd have to be crazy to have done anything else. It was so obvious that I'm not even sure it qualifies as a "leap of Faith". It might, but I think I reserve the term for doing things that don't have a visible solution. Quitting a job for no reason other than God's telling me to quit, that took faith. Going to school without enough money to refill the gas tank once I got there, that took faith.

Driving to Oklahoma was one of the easiest things I've ever done. I have no doubt, absolutely none, that God will provide. He's done so before, and God's not going to abandon me now, just when things are really starting to get fun.

On the other hand, maybe I'm nuts. Hell, I went to a school 400 miles from home to get trained for a career that at the time, I didn't really want, and by the time I got thrown out, I had become as motivated as anyone I've ever met to be successful at it. Even after getting thrown out of the premier mission-av training school, I'm still locked on getting into mission aviation, and as long as God opens the doors I need open, that's where I'm headed.

I want to get into a career that basically doesn't come with a paycheck, flying in the second-most-dangerous flight environment I know of, only with less safety protocols than the first. And all because a voice in my head that I call "God" is telling me to.

Am I crazy? Yes, and no, and neither of them. Short form, God needs sane people to do sane things, and crazy people to do the crazy things. I may be crazy, but that's not the issue. The issue is, am I the right kind of crazy?

I say yes. The voice in my head agrees with me, and it's consistent with the rest of what I know and believe.

If that's "crazy", I don't want to be "sane".