Sickly Reflections

I often tell people that I came to JBU a charismatic, but now I'm much more baptist than I was. But it's not always true. I find myself controlled by my feelings. I feel driven by them. In my eyes, it's a very negative quality, because it leads me to be very fickle. And when I feel like there isn't a constant in my life, I tend to want to throw it all up in the air and give up.

God has always been the constant in my life. It's almost laughable, 'cause I have a harder time believing Him after He's shown Himself to be true countless times, or when He speaks clearly to me where I used to just pray that God would take the time to say something to me, anything.

I've never had the problem of not knowing what to do with myself. God has always led me to one decision or another, whether for college, mission trips, studying abroad, career choices, or relationships. He keeps on leading. I never, ever have the problems everyone else seems to have. God makes a way.

That's why I confuse myself with how great a distrust I've begun to have towards God. I get tunnel-vision, only seeing my faults and shortcomings, which I interpret to be God's fault, "because," I think to myself, "if God wants me to do something, He's going to pave the whole way for me." And when the way doesn't seem so paved, when I notice some bumps or places where I have to get out and push, I question everything that has already been trustfully assured to me, and I begin to fear false hope.

I should get sick more often. That lil' metaphor helps clear the noggin.

Coma Sleep

Being home, I've gotten the best sleep I've gotten this semester. I've been falling into comas, 11-hour stretches without a break, just sleeping continually. The downside is how little I dream, but I feel infinitely better now. Maybe it's the silence. Maybe it's the lack of roommate. Maybe it's the lack of people on my end of the hall. Whatever the case may be, I didn't realize what I'd been missing. And oh, the glory I had been missing.

Job Before Medical School

So, I got to thinking a little bit today... What if I took a year off after graduating, just to get a job in the medical field (using my Biology degree) and study for the MCAT? Granted, it adds an extra year to my time in school, but I've never been so fed up with school as I am now. I think it'll also add a lot to my chances of getting into medical school, having so much more experience. Since my grades in the sciences are going to be low, it'd probably give me a boost.

Such an idea makes me feel a lil' more hopeful.

Dad Issues

When I got prophesied over at the Prayer Vigil, I almost dismissed what they said about my dad and I. They said that he didn't approve of or appreciate my style of creativity (or something to that effect), and basically made it sound like I had something to work out there.

When one of my best friends growing up moved into my dad's spare room this summer, he was excited. But he told me later about how frustrated he was, 'cause he said he could never seem to gain my dad's approval. I told him that I never tried.

But after that prophecy, I recalled how lowly my father had spoken of the hours and hours of time I was putting into editing videos from our mission trip to the Philippines. I told him how excited I was 'cause they asked me, rather than their media guy, to edit, 'cause they thought I could do it better. My dad said that they didn't want me for the job: they wanted someone who'd do it for free.

So I worked for hours on end, trimming eight hours of footage down to five minutes, working several full work days at the church. And when my dad offered to take the youth pastor and me out to eat, he joked, but in a fairly serious tone, about how "London doesn't seem to understand that a job is where someone works and gets paid. Meanwhile, I'm footing the bill for it."

So yeah, the work I put into the mission trip, which is a thing universally respected because it is a selfless act of going to another place for the sole purpose of helping those who cannot help themselves, was dismissed as a waste of time and effort. The one thing that, in my eyes, is irrefutably respectable, was now tossed aside because I still could not support myself while doing it.

Dreams I'd Almost Forgotten

I want to travel.
I want to see the world with a significant other by my side.
I want to live in Boston, sampling wines every night as I revel in a world of creativity.
I want to be a street performer, both as a one-man dance show and by singing on the streets of the UK and Europe.
I want to live in Belfast, journaling my poetry and stories in coffeeshops every afternoon.
I want to read books.
I want to learn.
I want to write books.
I want to marry a French girl.
I want to marry an Irish girl.
(One or the other.)
I want to be a wine connoisseur.
I want to have spiritual struggles besides the ones regarding academics.
I want to have friends that do as the Proverbs say with the phrase "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
I want to help people in such a way that it'll be an irrefutably worthwhile use of myself.
I want to love what I'm becoming.
I want to go to Paris.
I want to fall in love with someone else who's never been kissed.
I want to dance till I bruise, then dance till I bleed, then dance till I pass out.
I want to be interviewed by Conan O'Brien.
I want to love what I do.
I want to know and respect something about everything.
I want to be limitless.

He's Too Clever

Here’s an idea I had recently. What if God is pulling the classic thing He seems to pull on lots of Christians trying to follow Him? What if He’s telling me to become a doctor only to give me a break and let me jump into the mission field earlier? I had felt like He told me to go to Boston University in the fall of my senior year in high school, but the moment the application was in the mail, He said I wasn’t going there, and later redirected me to John Brown University.

I’m already incredibly useful on the mission field. Like, really useful. If I was dropped off in some foreign country and got to work under a ministry, God could really use me well.

Granted, if I can predict a plan like this, He probably won’t do it. He’s much too clever. Especially since the sermon He’s having me be the illustration for tends to need some follow-through. Then again, I’m sure there are loads of sermons applicable to God changing up plans and such.

Spiritual Brosies

I miss having friends who are at the same spiritual pace as me, or ahead. I mean, I have those friends, but they're the type I hardly get to see, or they get stupid and aren't those types of friends anymore.

Granted, I'm not always ship-shape. But when I am, it always seems like the reason I am is so I can help someone else along, rather than have some mutual God-pursuit.

But I suppose that's what church is for. Too bad Sunday is my reliable catch-up-on-sleep-day-because-my-roommate-goes-to-church-on-Sundays-but-is-up-bright-and-early-on-Saturdays.

The Last Two Years

Sometimes, I think that God tells me too much. He's pretty talkative when you ask what's going on, and you shut up long enough for him to answer.

I used to be SO jealous of my friends who seemed to hear from God so easily. I thought of them as little unthankful brats, spoiled and casually talking to God as they licked a lollipop. I used to want God to talk to me SO badly. Day after day, I'd ask Him to speak to me.
I was always jealous that my friends felt what God was doing. They described things with feelings, and then I'd be stuck thinking to myself, "Well, I don't feel anything." I used to pray for God to give me discernment, so I could feel and/or see demonic and angelic things.

Then there was my frustration as a freshman here in college. I was so full of God, with Him giving me sermons and teaching me lessons constantly. But I couldn't find any outlet, no way to release any of what I had in me. That first fall was so frustrating, with not being involved with ministry, that I went home devastated. I told my pastor about it, and he didn't have much in the way of answers. God only answered me with the word "knowledge", just saying that it was time for me to focus on learning. And it frustrated me no end. The year previous at New Years, God had laid out an entire semester's worth of things He was gonna be doing. The year had started out perfectly.

That New Years though, God wasn't all that talkative. I went back to school and was frustrated to the point that I dumbed down my Bible reading. Up till college, I had been reading several chapters a day, and had needed to do so in order to meet the needs of the spiritual hunger I felt. But that spring, I got so frustrated that I dumbed down my reading to just the Proverb for the day. It's still the Bible, but it's sorta the least spiritual, most practical part. I kept that up for maybe a month and a half till I was miserable enough to start reading the Bible again.

Then I went to Ireland for six weeks. I fell in love with Belfast, the Irish accents, and the gingers. But halfway through the trip, I learned through Facebook that my parents were getting a divorce. When I went back home, I thought I could stop it from happening. I knew that my being home before college and following God so much had kept a lot of this junk from happening before I left, so I thought I could make a difference. YFN came and I was scared of letting God go crazy with me, 'cause I felt like He had kinda ditched me that past year.

Then as the divorce was becoming more real, our family went on what my mom called a "Divorce-a-moon," and I was terribly perturbed. For the first time since the whole divorce thing had begun to go down, my mom sat with the children (besides the youngest, Alexandra), and we talked about it. Of course, we did so in St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy. What a horrible way to experience one of the most romantic places in the world.

Then school came, and rooming with Adam Howard turned out to be one of the things I would miss most this semester. Since I had decided to be a sophomore during my freshman year, I switched to being a freshman my sophomore year, and I had a fun time with all of it. God and I still weren't great, but we weren't awful either.

Freshman transition would probably have ended that summer if it hadn't been for my parents' divorce. But since that happened, I spent my sophomore year mercilessly examining my insecurities, because I wanted to face whatever problems I might have inherited from my parents, not ignore them. Christmas Break came, and though I had largely blamed my mom for the divorce, I saw her as the wounded insecure human who didn't know what to do now that she was on her own. So I got past my judgmental stance and just saw the divorce as something that was done, so we needed to work with what we had.

Spring semester came and I felt myself leaving transition, having faced a lot of what I needed to face regarding my parents' divorce.

I went to Italy to study abroad, visited the very same places with our study abroad team that I had with my family the year previous. In St. Mark's Square, I experienced what I was entitled to experience as a single guy in one of the most romantic places in the world: that crappy feeling of not having a significant other there with you. Still, it was much preferable to the other option of sitting there drinking wine while disagreeing with your family's concept of love, which doesn't quite seem to fit what the Bible says about it. After Italy (and a brief hop over to Barcelona), I had the wondrous opportunity to visit Ireland again. With "Set Down Your Glass" and "The Planets Bend Between Us" by Snow Patrol on repeat, I soaked in Belfast. In Dublin I met up with Andrew Layden, and we went pub crawling. The country just feels so warm and friendly. I trusted my belongings in Irish hostels, whereas the hostels in other countries left me uneasy.

Then I went home for two and a half weeks, had just enough time to edit videos, practice skits, dancing, and prepare a sermon, and it was off to the Philippines for two weeks, where I became the most useful I've ever been in my life. And while it was a huge amount of work, I don't know that I've ever been more proud of what I've done in any other two weeks of my life. Missions work seems to be the only thing in life that makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something worthwhile, of value, 'cause no one can argue with the good of helping orphans and widows and the impoverished in their time and place of need.

Then I spent the last month of summer at home, editing videos, experiencing horrible jet-lag (13-hour time differences can really get you messed up), and finding out what state my family was really in. My youngest sister is taking the divorce the hardest, acting out like crazy and putting parents against each other. I frequently played the role of the go-between, making sure my parents didn't fight as they disciplined Alexandra.

Since I lost those two years' worth of blogs, I wanted to try to write some sort of summary of them down, so I'd have something.

Revelation

Coffee, wine, cider, and 8-page research papers don't mix.

One Really Bad Thing About Majoring In A Science

...is that you forget how to write a good research paper. I used to be able to crank these out like nobody's business, but now it's like everyone knows that business and I'm left being ridiculed for my business models.

Eight pages of research on stream restoration. I'm gonna know all kinds of crap about how to make streams better before tomorrow comes.

Practice What You Preach

When I was first trying to bring God into our house in more concentrated doses (it's a good way to get shot down quickly), I remember telling my dad and brothers some piece of basic Biblical wisdom. My oldest brother's reply was something to the effect of, "You're one to talk. You mess up in that same stuff all the time. Practice what you preach." And he proceeded to ignore the sound advice because I wasn't living it out well enough.

I wonder if subtle undertones like that are what make people like me turn into superChristians. 'Cause I did turn into one. And no one likes a superChristian, 'cause they aren't real people. The thing is, when I give real advice to people, and it's good advice from the Bible, I'm often struggling with it myself. I gradually learned to always say something to the effect of, "And hey man, I'm struggling with this too. But the Bible says we need to..." even if I wasn't actually dealing with it at all. I was determined to be a good witness.

"Practice what you preach." I'm not a fan of the saying. Every good preacher either dealt with or is dealing with the problems they preach on.

Looking Forward

Maybe this Christmas break, I'll hang out in a Starbucks and do the artsiest thing I can do well: write and edit stories and poems for publication. I asked my creative writing professor, and he referred me to a book with thousands of publishers. So maybe I'll write instead of just reading over this break. If one thing makes me feel dandy, it's knowing that all the work I put into things that don't quite matter too much can be for a reason.

I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. A lot.

Go Fo' Broke

I talked with God again. "Flicker" by Audio Adrenaline came to mind, as did the song "Undignified" by David Crowder. I do miss going for broke and getting lost in serving God, whatever the capacity.

Answers I'm Not Crazy About

Well, after hours late at night in the rain talking to God, I got some answers. God and I went through Abraham's life story, then the part of Paul's that applies, and then through my own.

Two important points came up from those other two lives.

When Abraham decided not to put all his hope in God, he had Ishmael and began a whole religion that would go against the faith he was meant to found and promote, hence to this day there remains conflict in the Middle East as a result of his disobedience.

Paul, in the midst of kinda just talking for awhile in 2 Corinthians, talks about a thorn in his side, this thing that's holding him back from being everything he can be. He knew that he could do more for God if it wasn't for this hindrance, so he asked God to remove it. And again, and again. Finally, God just said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made complete in your weakness." (From memory, not actually quoted. I did a lot of playing with how they talked when I roleplayed them last night.) It's like the worse off Paul was, the better God looked. Paul scrunching into the fetal position allowed God to flex a little.

And that's basically the answer God left me with. I'm doing crappy because it makes Him look awesome. It's gonna show just how much I needed Him all along.

It's great, because who isn't a fan of going before the pre-professional committee at your school and trying to convey that the reason your grades are awful is because that's precisely how God wants them to be. And me trying my hardest is me just barely getting by.

Less Than Hopeful Direction

Somehow, confirmation on what God has told me, and has been telling me for years, isn't comforting in the least. In fact, it only manages to upset me. It's that age-old problem of reality not matching up with the hope given me by God. I should probably feel awesome knowing that God has given me what he doesn't so easily give everyone. Direction. Yet here I am, pretty annoyed that it's the same direction, and, what's more, I'm supposed to be hopeful about how things are gonna turn.

And this season is supposed to be summer? Summer is my favorite season, right before I get to see the good results the Lord brings about in my life. Only, there's a reason why summer doesn't include anything involving my major. It's 'cause at the end of the summer, I tally up all the wonderful things that God has done in and through me. At the end of the semester, I don't have anything much to tally up. Yet that prophecy made it sound like I'd have something to tally up academically. It was real prophecy too, totally confirmation mixed with a lil' bit of near-future tense.

I probably need to get humble before God so He can bring about all the crap in my life that He wants to.

Prophecy Room

Once each semester, the Prayer Ministry on campus hosts a 24-hour Prayer Vigil, where they have prophecy rooms. People who work in the prophetic giftings come over and prophecy over you and some other people for awhile. Last year, they were way off for most of it. This time, they were dead on.

They talked about how I'm a contortionist (a claim which I had only begun to make as of this summer in the Philippines), though more in a spiritual way. I see things in a unique and creative manner, and my perspective is different from most everyone else around me. All true.

They said that God says not to doubt Him just because I can't see what He's working out, that the puzzle pieces are going to come together.

Then they talked about how I'm stepping into a season of summer (my favorite season). It's a time to keep weeds and bugs out and keep my focus right.

Lastly, they talked about how I'm going to be a man of stature. And not "going to be" as in distant future, but, like, I need to start stepping into it. I'm going to be able to stand, shoulders back, head high, being fully confident in what I'm doing.

That stuff about the near future, is, to be perfectly honest, doubtful to me. I get told it ever so often by so many people filled with the Holy Spirit, yet reality doesn't seem to back it up.

Ugh, what the hole!

Since Sunday

Since that last hopeful blog, I made a terrible grade on that test. Fortunately, I had already been yelling at God the whole weekend, so we were fine after I found out the grade. It's His.

I started watching the show Breaking Bad, which, along with being really good, also touches on a few chemistry concepts, which, to be perfectly honest, makes my studies seem a lil' more exciting. Of course, the show is about a high school chemistry teacher making crystal meth, but once again, when real life and science interact, it's much more engaging.

Not for the first time, tv based on science makes me care more about the subjects.