After serving as pastor of Student Ministries at Cornerstone in Simi Valley, CA, Chuck Bomar planted Colossae Church in Portland, Oregon. He is the founder of CollegeLeader and has created numerous resources for college ministry leaders. Chuck speaks frequently and has a tremendous heart for youth workers, especially those in college-age ministry. Chuck is married to Barbara, and together they have two daughters; Karis and Hope. Oh, and lest we forget, Chuck is a regular ConversantLife.com blogger. His latest book is Worlds Apart (Zondervan 2011).  

We've heard rumors that you drink more coffee than anyone else in Portland, and that's saying something. Talk about your strategy of frequenting cafes as the pastor of a growing church in Portland.

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I struggle with what I call the shadow: my name for that sudden darkening of my inner vision, the acedia or spiritual apathy, the gray and muffling pall of depression. Sometimes it is mercifully absent from my inner horizon for days or weeks; other times it is hovers, vaguely threatening, in my peripheral vision.

I’ve tried fighting back: asserting, in the face of crippling self-doubt, that I have so much evidence of my own accomplishments that the shadow is absurd. Unfortunately, the positive-thinking route does not work. It has been more effective to accept the reality of the feeling while intellectually recognizing that it is based on a lie, a distortion of reality. Better yet has been to also offer up my sadness to the Lord in prayer, and turn my thoughts deliberately toward gratitude for all the good things in my life, which are many – to be grateful, even if I don’t feel happy.

It's common knowledge that fashion magazines touch up photographs of models. If this is news to you, I'm sorry to have to break this to you; the faces you see on covers of magazines in the check-out counter at the grocery store are no more real than cartoon characters. Jennifer Anniston really isn't that thin. The Kardashian cheekbones don't look like that in real life. Images in fashion magazines are conjured by artists, manipulated and carefully sculpted to deliver a message - mainly that you will never look like this but, you should try as hard you can to.

The process a model goes through to be deemed photographable and the subsequent manipulation of the photograph are well documented in this video that Dove did as part of it's Campaign for Real Beauty several years ago.

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Earlier this year the board of the ministry I direct, Mika, granted my proposal for a two month sabbatical.  According to Wikipedia and tradition, a sabbatical is a time of rest from work.  It comes from the Biblical concept of Sabbath and God’s own example of resting.  So after seven years of leading Mika and living in the neighborhood where we work, it seemed like a good idea to practice sabbatical.  I am grateful for the rest and beyond that we at Mika want to develop a culture with healthy, biblical rhythms and resting is clearly part of that.

Often sabbaticals are granted for different types of work, especially in academic circles, like research and writing.  While I plan to do some writing, the point of this time off is truly to rest and reflect.  I am staying with my sister and her family in Oregon.

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I've wanted to be a psychotherapist since I was in eighth grade. It's what I went to school for, and it's what I've done for the last ten years. I've been licensed and with with the same private practice for ten years. It was a very comfortable place to be. I liked my colleagues, I liked that the job was challenging and cerebral, and I loved that I could set my own hours and work part-time for a decent wage. One of the things that drew me to this career was that I thought it would be very compatible with motherhood. I thought I could see a part-time caseload during Mark's off days, while staying home with the kids.

This worked out well when Jafta was a baby. I really enjoyed going in to work, and the adult conversation was a welcome change to the quiet days at home with a baby. When India came along, it got a little more difficult to juggle. I felt a little more frazzled in session, and really struggled to keep up with returning phone calls and setting appointments during the week. Once I had Karis, I could barely find the time to call back the referrals I got. The few long-standing clients I saw after her arrival were hard for me. I felt like my brain was in short-circuit mode. I just couldn't get my head into a space where I could really be present with clients. I am an introvert, and motherhood was draining any energy I had that I could previously devote to my job.

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I sometimes get those dual voices going in my head. That one voice that says, “You gonna take this sh*t? You’d better stand up and tell them people what you really think!” Then the other one that says, “No, just take the ‘higher road’ and say nothing…or better yet, just ignore it because they’re just ignorant.” Sometimes I even hear that voice telling me to act a fool and just “go off.” I especially hear these voices when I’m in all White crowds and being the “only one” of my kind. Do I say what’s really on my mind when someone asks me yet again if I rap? Do I yell at the top of my lungs at someone who denies my life narrative and relegates it to the status of “too sensitive?” Do I simply use four letter words to express my thoughts because it seems “holy words” aren’t working? Or, do I say nothing at all? Do I take the calm Negro route? Do I make the White folks feel comfortable with my smile and 3 button suite and PhD? Do I caress the White male with the phrase, “It’s cool, and I know you didn’t mean me”? What voice do I listen to?

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A gal I meet with for spiritual direction encountered her quarter-century-birthday last month. Unlike the celebratory session I might’ve guessed, however, it was exceptionally sad. In summary, she had distinct expectations for where she would be at this point in her life. And they were “far from her reality.”

Help me understand what you mean by that, I requested:

“I mean a lot of things…
I mean I’m not married.
I mean have no children.
I have a job, but not a stable, or steady one, and I’m not even positive I wanna keep it, or even stay in the field.
I feel close to my family in some ways, but also like I shouldn’t be, because I’m supposed to be a “grown-up” now.
I’ve never had sex.
I’ve never even had a real date.
I mean I’m a let-down to society.
I don’t know how to make a casserole, or bake a homemade pie.
I don’t know how do my taxes, or do laundry without messing-up clothes every few loads.
I don’t know what the point of me is—I’ve spent twenty-five years as something other than dust, but that’s all I feel like (dust).”
I have nothing to say for my two and a half decades. He/she/it gave me a chance and look what I’ve done for it—nothing."

Who is he/she/it again?

“Society.”

Okay, and what would it look like not let he/she/it down?

"I don’t know…I guess I’d know who I was and where I was going. I’d be married and have at least one kid and maybe another on the way. I’d own a home and meet with women in my neighborhood for book club. I’d understand finances and have balanced perspectives on life and God and money and all the stuff you’re supposed to know at my age."

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Heard a lecture on sex and sexuality this week and here’s the sound bite that stuck: “The healed state of homosexuality is not heterosexuality, but holiness.”

The sticking measure isn’t about anything gay/straight related though; it’s about healing. If the statement is true, which I believe it is, any stray “from what it was in the beginning,” be it sexual, emotional, psychological, physical, etc., finds healing not based in an opposing polarity, but in a new identity—called “Holy.”

The early chapters of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures explain a God who created Adam and Eve, a heterosexual, two-party couple, meant to further create, enjoy and rule over the earth. The so-called fall of man, however, caused that all things fell, and all pursuits since have been twisted, to some degree, bereft of Love’s original intentions.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is man fell, not God.

Love never changed; man’s reception of it did. Even in our twisted pursuits, Love kept pursuing, as originally intended.

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O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,