Coming in for a landing...

So, I have decided on January 5th as the ending date for my vow. I am planning on taking the clippers to work to have my clients do the honors of the head shave. I am working with adults with developmental disabilities. I realized a month or so ago that if I showed up to work with no hair one day I might cause some turmoil with a group of people who survive on their routines. My solution (we'll see) is to have them do the haircut portion of my transition out of Nazariety.

As far as the rest of wrapping up the vow, I need to do some serious thinking in the next couple weeks. I want to figure out some of the sacraficial elements of ending the vow. I've run into a couple snags in my original plan. The Suburban I intended to sign over to my friend, Darel now has a blown out transmission. I am thinking that giving it to him may not be as exciting for him as it would be sacrificial for me. As far as the tools go, I have a pile of things collected in my garage (admittedly not as many as I had hoped). The only problem is that winter in Durango is not exactly garage sale season and my stuff doesn't really amount to much in the ebay universe. I am wondering if giving it all away might be a better option--even though that doesn't do much for the Hotchkiss family who I intended to donate the proceeds to.

I am currently racking my brain to try and come up with ideas of what I could give as meaningful sacrifice in ending this vow. I want to do something because I am grateful for the opportunity to do this and I feel that God has shown me some things in this process that have changed and shaped me.

The End Is Near

So, at this point, I am really looking forward to the end of this vow. Not that it hasn’t been a fascinating experience; I’m just ready for it to be done. I was thinking about it the other day and it’s been about four months since the last time I had a conversation with someone that wasn’t interrupted by a comment about my hair or beard!
Last week, my friends who live in China visited us and I had a chance to reflect on the vow as I caught them up on how it’s been going. Here are a few things I think I am taking away from this experience:
I want to trust God. This may seem elementary, but I want to truly trust God—depend on him and learn to live with what he provides on every level of life. I believe that I have had some level of trust in the past, but I am ready to drive deeper in my dependence on him.
I want to honor God with the way I use the resources he has entrusted to me. I will continue to use only cash for my expenditures. Jenn will still carry an ATM card, but the credit cards are gone for good. Our next step is to decide how much money we need to live and commit to give the rest to serve God’s Kingdom.
I am going to go through my wardrobe and decide what I really need. I won’t be staying with the three changes thing, and I may never wear a collared polo shirt again, but I like the idea of simplifying and living with less clothing.
As far as I am concerned, this all adds up to a deeper submission to Christ’s lordship in my life. By lordship, I mean that I go further in allowing Jesus to lead my thinking and living as opposed to just making my way and asking for his blessing—or even different from doing what I think he would want me to do. My aim is to allow what Jesus has said to inform my thinking, but to listen to what he has to say to shape my life now.
Oddly enough, this language is probably close to how I would have described my Christian life before this vow. Now, however, the words carry a different meaning—a new depth, maybe.

The part of all this I may have to think about a little more is how I use my Nazarite experiences to encourage others along a similar path. I would love to come up with a way to articulate what I’ve experienced and help other people figure out how to structure and follow through with their own vows.