Re-inventing yourself before it’s too late
Charles and Sarah Kaye jumped off a cliff yesterday. After careers in high finance in New York, they bought a farm in Virginia.
But even that didn’t scratch the itch they had. Charles graduated from
Harvard and got an MBA
from Wharton, but all that has been a disguise for his real identity as a
radical missionary of the most high God.
They and their two young children left on a jet for Nicaragua
yesterday, having boxed up their earthly belongings and selling off much in
garage sales. So today they woke up in a
remote part of Central America re-invented as
missionaries. They’re plan is to pour
themselves out for Nicaraguan refugees.
If there was a part of Charles’ right brain that was beginning to
ossify, it’s been jolted back to life in 2006.
Charles and Sarah knew that over time, we all become like
caricatures of ourselves. At age 25 we
lock in a career track and a lifestyle and we don’t look back till we’re
50.
As people get older and more specialized, their creative,
open-ended right brain that ran the show when they were children playing in the
sand box, begins to wither and die. The
orthopedic surgeon who has developed a certain kind of knee replacement is paid
to do it a thousand times over. The
carpenter builds variations on the same model house. The stewardess hands out 280 drinks and accompanying
bags of peanuts every day. Office
workers develop carpel tunnel syndrome.
We build the rut, live in it, and are defined by it – we
are
the rut. And our left brain takes over
the show. Predictability and structure
rule the roost.
I see such potential in people to be warriors for God like
the Kaye family, building His kingdom, attempting great things for Him, and in
the process, re-inventing themselves.
The orphaned children of the world are crying out for such
warriors. Anybody doubting me can go
live in a village of children I know in Swaziland. If you do this and if you serve well, you
will be a hero within half a year.
Comments (3)
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Charles and Sarah are exceptional people. We’ve been delighted to get to know them and their family.
I don’t fully understand their work, but after spending a total of maybe a dozen hours I’m confident they’ll achieve everything they came do.
They’re the kind of people who make one feel better and more encouraged about life.
That’s how I feel, I worry that parts of me are dying off too early, that I’m settling because I don’t know any better…one camp tells me to step up and do something, another tells me to be patient and wait for God, a third tells me to be responsible and provide for my wife, my own mind tells me that if I live life with reckless abandon my wife will reject me and that I will be a failure…but I want to live with that passion, I don’t want my passion to die out like my parents or friends or friends parents…I don’t want to go through the motions of being alive…I want to live.
Thank you for another great real life story.
I think it’s official now, I’m addicted to reading this and other AIM blogs daily and I will never be ok slumbering in the “matrix” ever again.
I don’t doubt you at all but I think I need to visit these children in Swaziland for myself. I never thought I would be able to see that as a possibility, so Thank you Seth & Heather!