“There is how we were before, and how we are now, and the time between is spent choosing which doors to open, and which to close.”
-Karen White

I’m in the time in between.

I’m in the time in between, returning from Cambodia, having worked in youth ministry to resettling in Australia, preparing to work in media production and possibly have some sort of semi-long term stability and grounding.

I jest. Stability? Eh? What’s that?

It’s been four months now since I’ve been back and as great as it’s been, I have come to realize that I am possibly a little impatient and that I may overlook and quickly forget about all the blessings and opportunities that have come my way.

Since being back, I’ve had the chance to:

• act in a television commercial
• work at a polling booth on election day
• run a youth program at a missions camp
• spend the day as a child care worker
• produce baptism testimonies for church
• volunteer at a playgroup
• report for an online pop culture show in Sydney and Brisbane
• bar tend
• audition for a TV show
• gig at a winery
• film a conference for Christian satellite TV

I quickly forget about all that though. And if you’d asked me yesterday what I’ve been doing in the time in between, I would have sullenly replied: nothing.

Nothing. Because right now: nothing defines me. And maybe that’s what scares me. And maybe that’s why I call it the time in between.

Because right now, if you ask me who I am, I can’t give you the go to answer of my job title or my student status. Because I don’t have one.

And, right now, if you ask me who I am, I have to search a little deeper and be a little more vulnerable. And all I could tell you is that I am. I’m not a youth pastor or a producer or a graduate student even. I just am. I’m just Chris.

But I’ve come to realize that there might just be something with this time in between business.

Jesus had a time in between. Saul had a time in between his transition to becoming Paul. Moses had a time in between in the desert. Jonah had a time in between and his was inside a fish’s guts.

It’s suddenly dawned on me that life is made up of times in between. And that how we use our time in the times in between may almost be more important and say more about us than the times that aren’t the times in between. You feeling me?

Because it’s when all the labels, distractions, and all these layers of superficiality that we cover ourselves in, are gone, that God can show us a little more about who we are and more importantly, whose we are. 

(For more on Who We Are and Whose We Are, check out the sermon, Philippians: Sons vs. Servants by Chad Mansbridge).

Which leads me to conclude, that maybe this time in between isn’t such a bad place after all.

Maybe this time in between is exactly I’m meant to be right now.

And that the next time I’m in the time in between, I might just complain about it a little bit less.

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Have you had a time in between? I’d love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook.