You Settle For What You Settle On

I was born and raised along the Oregon trail in South Central Nebraska. 

My ancestors traveled in covered wagons powered by a deep desire for something better. They were headed West to California, but they pulled up way short. Way short. Maybe the Go-West thing was more of an idea than a place—an idea full of dreams and hope. At some point, however, my ancestors reached a spot in the prairies of the Midwest and thought This is good enough; or maybe it was This will have to do. Perhaps they were called settlers because of what they settled on. Think about it. They were headed toward the beautiful and rugged Pacific Coast, where opportunity flowed as far as the eye could see. But they settled for the barren plains of Nebraska, where their eyes could see even farther because absolutely nothing was impeding their view. They didn’t even wait till they hit the mountains and the going got steep. Nope, they stopped in a place that was flat and viewless and the topographical equivalent of a coffee table. To this day, I still don’t get it. The dreams of California’s Golden West Coast and the Pacific Ocean were laid aside for a pasture, a sod hut, and corn fields. 

         History calls them settlers. Growing up, I thought they were quitters. They literally dug out a living from the sides of pasture hills and built homes from sod. Sod is an amalgamation of mud, water, and crap. Imagine how desperate your situation has become when you’re following your livestock around to find steaming building materials!  I’m guessing crap-construction housing was not what they originally had in mind when they headed West, at least I hope not.

Now, it’s true there are those who see the rolling plains of Nebraska as beautiful and expansive. Growing up, I did not share that perspective. Still don’t. Anyone who has traversed 1-80 from Omaha to North Platte understands the mind-numbing boredom that only 400 miles of interstate with no change in scenery can provide. Your kids will ask a million times, “Are we there yet?” and the answer will always be no —or at least it seems that way.

Branching Out of Nebraska

My great-great grandfather’s name was Eurastus Comstock, a moniker that lacked genteelness but made up for it with the potential for double entendre. His parents were the ones who put a stake in the ground in a place that would later come to be known as Oak Nebraska, where they ran a general store and served as a watering stop for the Pony Express.

Photos of Eurastus show a rugged man with a penchant for mustaches and dungarees. He certainly had to be tougher than I am, so why didn’t he get the heck out of  Nebraska[IB1] ? There, his life was marked by death, disease, and desperation. The Indian wars of 1864 took most of his family and possessions. The fact that he survived was no small miracle. He just did.

Because the Comstock  branch of my family tree stopped in a town called Oak and put down roots in a big pasture, that’s where I began—born a few miles away in Superior, Nebraska, a town named by someone with no sense of irony. 

         As a boy, I would stand on the highway that ran through the center of town, look to the West, and think If I start walking, I can get to California or Colorado or Oregon—or just about anywhere but here. I never looked East, perhaps because of an inbred longing to get to where my ancestors were headed for in the first place. All I knew for sure was I had this internal propulsion to get out of Nebraska. I felt trapped.

Truth is, the town I was raised in was quite lovely. Still is. Heck, the town has so many restored historic Victorian houses lining its streets that it hosts a Victorian Festival each year and calls itself the Victorian Capital of Nebraska. Of course, my exit was long before all the HGTV-propelled “Victorians are cool” hoopla kicked in. (My memory of Victorians is that they are cold—especially when the winds whipped across the plains with nothing to stop them.) That being said, it was entirely possible that my desire to get out of Superior had nothing to do with the subzero winter temperatures or the overall tone of the town. Nope, my desire to bolt had everything to do with an innate sense what had been lost years before I was born: big dreams.

         I don’t know that most dreams die; it’s seems more often that we compromise and remake them until they’re barely recognizable and what we have is good enough. I wonder if settling is the enemy of satisfaction. The desire for safety is an important part of staying alive, but as a core value it focuses on your physical body while killing your soul. That’s why, when I graduated from high school, I loaded up my piece of junk 
Olsmo-Buick, headed down Highway 136, and drove all night. I wasn’t just moving away; I was escaping. I was breaking free. I was eighteen, and I wasn’t going to settle for crap. I least I thought I wasn’t.

         I dreamed of going West, but for some inexplicable reason, I took a sharp left turn and pulled up in Tulsa of all places. It wasn’t California, but it wasn’t Nebraska either. I wish I could say I had plans, but the truth is I didn’t. You could sum up my entire life plan with, “Gosh, I sure hope something neat happens.” 

I had a passion for music from a young age and began playing guitar early on. I confess, as a teen, I used the hairbrush microphone time and time again to perform rock shows in the mirror. My practicing was more like pretending. There’s a certain discipline required for becoming a professional. Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, the ground-breaking book about high-achievers, refers to that discipline as the 10,000-hour rule. To become proficient in a skill or talent, you need 10,000 hours of hard work on that skill.[1] If my skill was rocking out, I was going to be just fine. Turns out, there wasn’t a market for that. 

Instead, after another left turn in my twenties, I found myself living in Nashville and working as an agent and then manager for music artists. I surmised that I could live out my dreams through those outliers. I was touring the country, which in my defense included California, and traveling the world as well. Some of the artists I worked with were household names. I was married to a woman more beautiful and incredible on every level than I could’ve ever imagined or dreamed. Our family of four beautiful and unique children was starting. Things looked good.

Yep, I had made it out of Nebraska. Something neat had happened after all. I know, Nashville isn’t West, but it has been nicknamed the Third Coast. It’s music, culture, and vibrant community can compete with Portland, Seattle, and such. I was a Nashville success story in the eyes of many, and my bank account supported that premise.

There was just one problem. I felt hollow, emotionally bankrupt, and totally lost. I hearkened back to ten-year-old me standing on Highway 136, looking West. It was just that eighteen years later, at age 28, I didn’t know which way to look. Part of me thought I was just getting my midlife crisis out of the way a little early, but another part knew it was something else; something a new red sports car wouldn’t fix. 

 I still felt a gnawing need to keep going. I had staked my entire plan on making it out of Nebraska. And I was out. But still, I was trapped. I don’t think I realized it for years because I was moving too fast to feel the shackles. Then, one day, I did. It was almost like being on a plane, when your ears pop open and you realize, Wow, I didn’t even realize they were plugged. My life suddenly popped open, and I was hearing clearly. I just didn’t like what I heard: “Darren, you have settled for sod.”

         You see, all those years, I was trying to change my biography, but all I had done was change my geography. I was trying to feel fulfilled by changing where I lived, but I had no clue who I was. I was constantly running my whole life from band to band, city to city, record contract to record contract. I had discovered the worst possible news.  I had gotten everything I had wanted, but I was still me.  

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was still trying to escape. What was I running from? The truth is I didn’t even realize I was running at all. I was just doing what it is you do in building a life. I thought I was running toward something, but actually I was running from something. I was running from myself—from who I was meant to be. I thought I had lost my dreams, but the truth is I was the one who was lost—and running scared. 

Lion Lessons

Proverbs 28:1 is a verse that kicks butt and cracks dense brain matter: “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” You can usually spot a lion in the African Bush by looking where all the other animals are looking. If there’s a lion near, they’ll all be standing at attention, looking in his direction—waiting for even the slightest movement, and then they’re gone. What’s the lion doing? Whatever the heck he wants. He’s not running from anything. The gazelles? They’re jumpy—sprinting, stopping, peeking. Running, oftentimes, when no one is pursuing them. Running this way, that way, and sometimes in circles. It’s exhausting to watch them.

Back then, I was not lion-hearted. I was a jumpy, sprinting, spastic gazelle-like man in search of an identity— running this way and that with absolutely no sense of direction. I didn’t know who I was or why I was on earth in the first place. I was a Christian who by faith knew God, but I did not know myself at all. I firmly believed that I was made righteousness by God through Christ, but I didn’t know enough about how God had wired, designed and redeemed me to be His agent of change in the world. He had given me the same authority and identity that Jesus had, and yet any cursory glance of me proved I was more cowardly lion and less Mufasa. 

And that’s why Proverbs 28:1 hit me like a sledgehammer right between the eyes. It forced me to ask myself Why am I not a bold lion? Why am I a stinking, spastic gazelle man? Then that sledgehammer chucked into brain matter, and I realized, If I’m righteous but still running, then it really has nothing to do with where I am. That’s just geography. The problem is not knowing who I am. Whom did God craft me to be—and why? 

Seriously, learning the answers to those questions and stepping into my authentic God-designed identity changed everything. It didn’t matter where I was when I knew who I was. I traded running scared for walking powerful. I traded gazelle for lion.

An identity transformation doesn’t happen overnight.  In many ways it’s a life long journey.  It’s a journey I’m still on.  Other believers with astute acumen and dogged attitude guided me. Ok, they gave me good, hard shoves because they could see who I was meant to be even when I was a blind-as-a-bat gazelle. I’ll take you down that winding road in the next chapter, but the Twitter version is this: I went from playing at being an Artist Manager to living free as an Investigator. Same guy but with a new name and a clear purpose for being on earth. I went from spastic. running gazelle to a stand my ground lion with a clear role in the Power of Seven. I’m not in Nebraska anymore; I’m on a journey that is full of fear, adventure, risk, danger, and life. 

Identity Game Changers

The Bible is full of stories of changed identities. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. From “heel snatcher” to “chosen by God.” Jacob’s life was littered with terrible choices and bad decisions. Like me, he spent much of his life on the run. He thought he was running from his pissed-off brother Esau, but, like me, he was running from himself and who God made him to be.

But my favorite identity-crisis guy is Simon, whose name Jesus changed to Peter. Jesus told him he was changing his name from “worm[IB2] ” to “rock.” But it was more than just a new name. Peter was discovering his identity, which meant he discovered his purpose. Peter the Rock was the one who gave the first altar call in history. In front of the same people whom he cowered from just a few days earlier, he stood and proclaimed the truth of who Jesus is. Peter became a lion who roared.

I wonder if Peter initially felt like he had escaped his fishing village the way I escaped Nebraska. Jesus had called Peter to go, to be part of this cause, and Peter didn’t think twice. He left town. 

But the old boy stumbled a time or two—as we all do. When Jesus died in front of him, Peter went back to being Simon. He went back to the stink of fishing, to his nets—the same place he had escaped from. Peter forgot who he was. He momentarily forgot his purpose.

When you read the four Gospels, you can see the fluctuations between using the names Simon and Peter. When Peter was blowing it, the writers called him Simon. When Peter remembered who he was, the writers referred to him as Peter. It’s a beautiful little clue in the text of how our own lives often screen shot. It doesn’t happen in every instance, but it happens enough to take notice, and process into your own life. 

Finding your God-designed identity is finding your purpose. Finding your purpose is finding the fulfillment that all humans crave at the core. You chase happiness and find yourself empty. You move to a new town, take a new job, embrace a new relationship—and yet there you are —with the exact same empty soul that was in the last town, job, and relationship. 

         Finding my identity got me off the running circuit. Finding my identity as an Investigator has allowed me to find the purpose God created for me. It’s a fulfillment that has little to do with my situation and location and everything to do with my God-designed role in life.

To put it the way Paul did in Philippians. 4:11-13, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

The word “strength” Paul used in this passage is a unique word that means far more than physical strength. It speaks of a foundation, an identity. Paul could do what he did because he knew he wasn’t Saul anymore. He wasn’t the Christian-killing religious Pharisee who cast a lot of stones at people. After his eye-opening conversion on the Road to Damascus, Paul would’ve had to face his victims and their families regularly. Imagine the shame he must have felt. Knowing humans like I do, I’m certain he was reminded of it regularly. But Paul did not back down from his new identity. No, he roared like a lion.

The Found and Lost Department

Jackson was a little boy who was rescued into our church’s Restoration House ministry in Haiti. He was young when he was rescued but had already lived a life of neglect—scavenging and stealing just to eat and survive. After he moved into Restoration House, he continued to steal. He would steal from our guests and staff. It was quite frustrating, and discussions began about sending Jackson away. But Pastor Lafleur, our partner in Haiti, stood up and said, “Jackson needs to stay. He’s not a street kid anymore; he just doesn’t know it.” Jackson’s geography had changed, but his identity had not. 

Jackson was a loved and accepted child of God. His needs were provided for and he would always have food available to him when he needed it. He just didn’t know it yet. 

Jackson is no different than any one of us. We need to learn who we are, and then remember it—and remind ourselves of it every day. Reverting to the habits of lashing out, withholding love, or being a workaholic are all just symptoms of us forgetting who we are. We are beloved children of God, made righteous not through our efforts, but through the work of Christ.

 When my kids were younger, we adopted a dog from a local shelter. He was half Great Dane and half Black Lab and 100 percent pathetic. The paperwork said his name was Adonis, but there was zero chance I was going to stand on my back porch and yell, “Adonis!” The foster family had nicknamed him Sampson. That felt more masculine and seemed to fit his demeanor, so we rolled with it.  We soon figured out why the foster family had called him Sampson.

This dog could break out of anything. We tried two separate pet carriers. He shattered them. My wife then tried to leave him in the hall bathroom when we left, thinking the little extra space would give him what he needed. He ate the bathroom. Literally, chewed off the doorknob, chewed off the door frame, and destroyed the interior of the door. He could and would break out of anything, even if it harmed him. 

We were told he was the only puppy to survive from an extremely abusive home. He had been abused and caged. Somewhere in the core of who he was, Sampson had changed from the beautiful sweet puppy he was born as and changed into a scared and aggressive Cujo. 

My kids know Sampson as this lovable, sad, pathetic dog. My friends know him as a ferocious beast who will claw their eyes out. As a father who travels the world and must leave daughters at home, I must say that I never worry about them while I’m gone. 

When Sampson is confined, it’s almost like it takes him back to some other life. A life of abuse and self-survival. When he encounters a stranger in our home, specifically a male, he reverts to a time when he was on his own. He forgets he’s the loved Sampson. Those who have encountered this version of our dog haven’t met Sampson at all. They’ve met Adonis the street dog. The old boy forgets who he is. Our job is to remind him day after day. 

And that’s our jobs as believers too. We must know our God-given identities and those of others, be able to recognize how those gifts work together, and continually affirm one another so we don’t forget who we are and fall back into our old ways—whether that’s running like a spastic gazelle like me, getting tangled up in fishing nets like Peter, or reverting to bad dog behavior.

The Authentic You

Do you know who you are? Your identity, the person God created you to be? God is your designer. He knows you through and through—and loves you through and through. And if you doubt that for a second, remember that the hands of the Potter who is shaping you have scars in them. In the moments when it seems your life is spinning out of control, remember the feet of the Potter pumping the wheel have scars in them too. His intentions for you are good because he’s done the hard part. He died so you can live your identity—the authentic you. The you that has a vital, dynamic role to play in the Power of Seven.

The craving for purpose is a thirst that can only be fulfilled by and through Jesus Christ. The water He offered the woman at the well in Samaria is a water He still offers today. But the water wasn’t just a well in one place. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:4 that “they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.” 

         We’re made righteous through Christ. And we are made to be as bold as lions because of who we are in Christ. If you’re new to faith in Jesus, that might be new information. If you’ve been around a while, you may know this without really knowing what it means—without knowing the implications of this in real life. Being made righteous means you don’t have to run from yourself anymore. You can stop fooling yourself into thinking you’re running after something. Being made right, means you can stop being afraid. Learning who you are and stepping into that identity changes everything about you. 

         Are you ready to stop running and start being the best you? Are you ready to discover who you are and your purpose in life? You will find your God-given identity in one of the next seven chapters. And that will change everything.

6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:6-7

[1] Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, Little, Brown, and Company, Hachette Book Group: New York, 2008, p. 39-42.