on ghosts, geese, and grasping at the wind

This post will someday make its way into a book if I ever can begin the book writing process.  For
now, since I seem to have enough of a challenge just getting a post done here or there, I will settle on a few hundred words to unload something out of my soul.  I have a dilemma.  Its a fairly serious one, far more serious than the decision for or against skinny jeans.  My dilemma is that I feel compelled, from the depths of my soul, that my story is to encourage others to dive deeper into their own stories ... and in doing so to overlay God's story into theirs so much more fully than most are ever likely to do.  My story has driven me out of a secular life into something that I'd term professionally sacred.  I make my living doing this, but on top of that, my very living is doing that... so much more than average.  Allow me to be painfully honest and to remove any humility for a moment.  My journey has not been average, by professionally sacred standards. It's not that I'm more sacred by any means ... most time my sacred is totally lacking and frankly rather sucks.  It's not average though ... the unconventional path to ministry, the challenges that I've chosen (not had thrust upon me) and this resulting current phase of planting something new in some of the rockiest soil imaginable, have all been beyond average.  Most people who do what I do, haven't done it the way I've chosen to do it.  Don't misunderstand ... I'm not bragging here.  I'm complaining.  It's not an honor, this calling,  no matter how I may want to color it. Certainly I can look back and find a sense of accomplishment, pride and gratitude for the journey ... after the fact.  In the midst of it though I just want to whine, shake my fist, and move to a small, white clapboard, country church at some 4 corners of nowhere and mind my own business.  I want that more than anything and at times I strain like a 3 year old straining for the cookie just out of reach.  Herein lies my dilemma.  I want the people that I encounter to have such a rich and deep relationship with the author of their own stories that they learn to walk by faith, not by sight.  From the depths of my being I know that this is the place where true relationship with Jesus and the true formation of a follower begins to form... and I desperately want that for them, even while I'm tired of it myself.  I'm tired of chasing the ghosts of possible answered prayer,  It's the "aha" followed by the "just kidding" that has a way of getting to me.  Like having a faint light emerge in the darkness and a form seemingly take shape only to have it disappear like a wisp of fog when the breeze kicks up.  Ancient Celtic faith referred to the Holy Spirit as a "wild goose".  Insightful analogy that I'd love to sit and meditate on but I'm too pissed to care when my own version of chasing them unfolds.  In the end I don't know the answer ... I just know that I want for them what Jesus wants, a deeper and richer walk down a path that challenges faith in every way imaginable.  How is that going to happen?  How will this be played out?  What exactly is my role, beyond mere survival?  I have no idea.  I thought that I did once, but I ended up grasping at the wind one more time.