Five Lives I Might Have Lived

I wanted to be a geologist. All during high school, I felt I could happily make rocks my career. For a few years, I felt like I could do nothing else. My passion for geology was all about mysteries of science and the thrill of exploration. It was downright mystical. On camping trips we searched for agates on the north shore of Lake Superior, and in the gravel pits around Moose Lake. I loved everything about it. Out in the sun and wind, searching for rare and beautiful stones captured my imagination. Learning about the formation of fossils and minerals, and trying to figure how all this squared with Genesis was heady, intriguing, and profound. I could have been a happy geologist.

I could have been a park naturalist. The same loves and curiosities of geology were aroused later on in my early adulthood, after I had already started down the road toward ministry. But—as always—I would be scanning the horizon of my interests to think of other directions I might go. There was a long season of my life when I found nothing more inspiring than to walk the trails of Minnesota’s parks and nature centers. I was dabbling in the identification of trees, wild flowers, and birds. My teaching and preaching in church helped me see the rewards of communicating to groups, and I could easily see myself being the guy that takes school groups on nature hikes. That would be fun.

And I wanted to be a writer. I still do. Like pretty much everyone. All the usual reasons: be my own boss, stop shaving, sit in coffee shops all afternoon and call it work, see my book in a bookstore, be invited to “come and speak.” Be on Larry King. You know. But everyone wants that. It’s a global collective fantasy on a planet with too many books.

These days I want to be a professor of literature. There, I said it. My job right now is a gift out of Heaven from the Lord: teaching Bible and theology, and ministering one-on-one to growing young Christians. But put me in a time machine and take the Jim of 2010 back to 1981, and I think I would go to university and major in literature. “Stories and poems” is how God communicates. “Stories and poems” is humankind being God-like—creating beauty; communicating meaning. I’m only now learning the glories of it all. I will spend my last (I hope) 50 years reveling in literature. I wish I knew at 21 what I know now at 51.

I could have been a stand-up comedian. I’ve learned this in the last 6 years of teaching at Briercrest College. And on this point I choose not to elaborate.