Just Push Through?

Being on a mission trip for four weeks rather than two may be tricky. I normally push myself the whole time so I can be as effective as possible, but am I gonna hit a wall soon? We've only done one day of ministry and one day of leisure (though rafting the Nile isn't the most leisurely activity), but I've ended every day completely exhausted. I suppose that constantly drinking water and hanging out with God are the keys to making this work, but I haven't even begun working in the hospitals yet! I've been battling a cold the whole time, which is usual when I travel, but I don't think I can afford to be sick for too much of the trip. I was sick for the second half of my trip to the Philippines last year, and I just pushed through, but I dunno whether my body can take all of it.

Lookin' At Pov'tree

I've been in Uganda since Wednesday now, though this is the first day that I haven't felt horribly jet-lagged. With ministry, at least the kind we're doing, each day drives you to your pillow (and to lean against the window in the bus to nap on the way back). Every day is exhaustion.

But it's also good. I'm seeing how these other students process the tough issues here. I never talked things out, at least not much, when I went on mission trips to Kenya. And when you're faced with poverty like this, you tend to either have to ignore it or try to find some way to come to terms with it. It's difficult, but I just stick to some mottos, one of which is "Do what you can, while you can." I'd tell more, but my eyes are trying to shut, and I kinda like the idea.

G'night and such.

Quiet Time On The Plane

May 22, 2012

Uganda trip

For some reason or other, I have felt off about this trip. The primary reason is, of course, the fear of performing medical practices in hospitals when I have yet to have received any training in such areas. Yet I could swear that that isn’t the only reason. But now,  with only five hours left until our plane arrives in Entebbe, Uganda, I have finally gathered that feeling, that drive, that something that pushes me onward. It goes beyond my issues with my dad being unable to see missions work as good use of my time (if I don’t make money, it isn’t worth doing, though he won’t say it in so many words and would likely deny it if put to the question).

I love the challenge of having to rely on sheer force of will and my outgoing personality. To throw myself into the work that others avoid, to leap into it with a willingness that I have only managed to muster by learning about the servanthood that defines leadership, and the examples (primarily that of my youth pastor) of such. To be asked to perform a task, even something that is entirely out of your comfort zone, and to leap into it immediately to the farthest extent of your abilities, rather than to hesitate and process the idea or wonder if there could possibly be another person or another way to accomplish the task.

And the chance to do something that’s purely good. I mean, what is more inherently good, religion at its purest, than going to visit a need and work to fulfill it (the book of James talks about that). When at school or work or play, or whatever endeavors I undertake, all is open to criticism. Not so with missions work. This, this is a faultless pursuit. It is the essence of selflessness, and because of the ministry involved, it is also the most trying. No more are you able to compartmentalize things, separate your public life and your private life, your work from your leisure. Every moment is a ministry opportunity, a test to make sure that you and Jesus are on good terms, and that you are sensitive to His Spirit. And if you are at first unprepared, distant with God, you are thrown into a learning curve, and must either live miserably in your emotions, spirit, and mind, or embrace the Christian faith and set about showing that faith through works. Even if that faith is shaken at first, works have a way of strengthening, like tying a stick to a plant to help it grow straight, despite the fact that its growth comes from the inside.

And then there are the bonuses. Exposed as your skillsets and lack thereof become, you begin to catch sight of precisely what it means to be depraved, and at the same time, the overpowering grace of our Lord who constantly offers to work within you to raise you to embrace the state we are meant to remain in, that of being coheirs with Christ. And when we can catch that, when we can recognize what He desires to do in us, and when we can, through His grace, manage to surrender the fears and the worries that so plague us, we enter into something new entirely.

Because God doesn’t need a perfect Christian. He desires a willing vessel, which is a much more difficult state to reach. Instead of being busy and trying and striving and working hard, it takes a balance of surrender that is surrounded by uncomfortable uncertainty that the world around us cannot accept. It takes clinging to the hope He promises us and a decided “no” to the hope we can perceive from what we see around us.

Abraham, the father of the Christian and Jewish faiths, was the first to find this careful balance. He began as most of us tend to, hearing God’s promise to make him the father of many nations, and believing, but then being persuaded by his wife and friends that such an idea was ridiculous. Because it was, with him being so old and yet having no son to be his heir.

In his doubt, he agreed with his wife who recommended that he have a child with his servant Hagar. Abraham wasn’t punished for this. Because of his actions done in disbelief (though not in disobedience), his servant Hagar and her/Abraham’s son were sent away, taking her from the provision of his household. In the big picture, Islam was created through Abraham’s son, Ishmael. Thus we have the Muslim and Christian faiths in conflict with one another today. When you have a difficult time believing God’s words and promises to you, and you act upon that unbelief, it may not seem to hurt anyone as far as you can see, but rest assured, acting in unbelief will have consequences, even if you don’t know/see it.

God later fulfilled His promise to Abraham and he bore his son Isaac, because His promise was not dependent upon Abraham’s actions; Christ is faithful regardless of whether we are. However, after God did this, he tested Abraham’s obedience.

In commanding Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice, God was asking him to be willing to trust the Lord even when it would ruin everything the God had promised to do. (It should be noted that God didn’t tell Abraham to sacrifice his son. God told Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice.)
Then Abraham did as God commanded and was about to slay his own son when God stopped Him. And his reward for being obedient to God’s will was that God not only reiterated His earlier promises of many nations coming from Abraham, but He also added that through him, all nations on earth would be blessed. This, as some New Testament passages point out, would be through the birth of Jesus.

Because of Abraham’s obedience, God allowed him to have one of his descendents be the Son of God. These rewards are real.

Attacks

Turns out that spiritual warfare is still a thing. And you're in it whether you decide to take notice or not. And it becomes much more noticeable when a bunch of lil' things happen that are detrimental to one traveling to a foreign third world country for a month. One such thing is your dad, who by this time has found a respect for you because you managed to show him respect through your obedience to God, declaring you to be ungrateful because you can't manage to mow his lawn while you've got another parent contending for that same chore at the same time.

So yeah, my dad was giving me issues, and frankly, it frustrates me because unlike any of my siblings (excluding Priscilla, my younger sister), I don't spend all my time drinking, getting high, and doing nothing with my life. Earlier in the week, my dad and I (and my brother invited himself to join us) spent half an hour arguing about my future plans to attend grad school before medical school. He called a few hours later to apologize though.

I can understand that he's frustrated, but I'm not wasting my life. I'm doing things, though I'm sure that I will never manage to do enough to equal his life of work ethic. Nor do I wish to, except in the mission field, which he doesn't have as much respect for, because it isn't a proper job. No job is a proper job unless you make money. And if you don't have a job, you aren't a fully-functioning adult.

It's just frustrating... And then (skip over this if gross things are gross, 'cause I don't even like attempting to spell the word), I had diarrhea tonight. I never get diarrhea. But man, I got up from reading and was doubled over from the pain of everything deciding to take the least convenient path through my body. While sitting in there, unable to read from the pain of it, I clued in to the fact that this was one of those spiritual attacks, that satan isn't very happy about my going to Uganda, despite how awful of a Christian I've been in preparations.

So if you happen to be reading this, pray for me.

Junior Year Reflections (Part 2)

Last semester, I asked God if I should go out with someone. This is the second time I’ve popped such a question on Him, and this time, He was significantly more soft-spoken in His answer, in that instead of an immediate and clear “NO” like he had given me in high school, He didn’t answer, or I couldn’t discern it, or whatever. But my train of thought was, “If He answered me with such a powerful ‘NO’ last time, maybe a lack of answer is a ‘yes’.” Fortunately, the situation worked itself up and before I had mustered the power to do any askings out, there was no need to ask; it was apparent that it was a no-go, in a good way.

That taught me an important lesson: just because there seem to be no red flags doesn’t mean that God is peachy about all of it. In fact, if God isn’t directing every step of the relationship, including getting into the relationship, it isn’t safe. I told my mom this opinion on it yesterday, and she said “Well, I tried that, and was married for 29 years, and now I’m divorced.” However, I didn’t spend the fall of my sophomore year confronting my parents’ divorce and the effects it had on me to be so easily swayed by one whose poor decisions in such areas has her in such a worse place now (still referring to my mom, in case you hadn’t guessed). It’s sad to come home and think to yourself, “man, she needs counseling” and also “remind me not to be a psychiatrist.”

I’m finding more and more that the only reason I haven’t dated is just because I have a lil’ wisdom about it. I know how much bad relationships have messed up my friends, made morals and standards change, and I also know how easily that happens to me without being in a committed relationship. People hurt people easily because people trust people, and, people being people, people aren’t trustworthy. I know I’m not, though I’m finding that now that I’m the best me I’ve yet known, I’m earning more trust than I’m comfortable with.

That brings up something else. I don’t know who I want to be. Sure, I wanna be a doctor, a medical missionary, a singer, a guitar player, a piano player, a videographer/video editor, a dancer, an actor, a model, and a myriad of other things, but there’s something bigger than that that I have no idea about: what kind of Christian do I want to be? What kind of Christian does God want me to be? I know He probably isn’t overjoyed at the super-Christian me since that version was judgmental without realizing it, but the Christian I am now occasionally enjoys slightly-excessive drinking and other worldly things that are just as full of satan, if not more. And I don’t know which version of me would be the best witness, or which one I could actually be long-term. I think it would depend largely on the wifey, what kind of upbringing she has. But then again, does God have an opinion on this? I figure this is kinda His thing. My magnetic personality is there regardless, and I always keep the best rep I can, but I dunno.

Over spring break, The Hunger Games movie came out, and since I respect books so much, I refused to see the movie till I had read the book. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get ahold of those books at the time (filthy peasant children hogged all the ones at the library). Instead, I took up a long-beloved series, The Wheel of Time series, by Robert Jordan (now deceased). I began reading and was reawakened to the wonder I had experienced as a 12-15-year-old. The series wasn’t finished when I had last read them, and the last book is only going to be released in January of next year, to be followed (according to IMDB) by the movie based on the first book. As all other fans of the books, I doubt whether they could do it justice, but I’ll yet
hold onto hope.

Oh, and I read the first of The Hunger Games books, but still haven't seen the movie.

Anyway, I took up these (the Wheel of Time series) books, and read them rather than watch shows while at school, which, as it turns out, makes for a much healthier study break. It also causes induced myopia, but that’s like the best way one can possibly destroy their vision, excluding getting a look at Jesus.

Junior Year Reflections Part 1

Sadly, I was not immune to the fever that tends to grip those who ascend to my age. When I was crowned the legal rights of being a 21-year-old, I began to drink, the reasons for doing so changing as I did so. At first, my reasoning was quite pure, forged through talking to my pastor about it, careful observation of friends and family, and my own Biblical gleanings. I love the taste of wine. In fact, I normally drank wine at my house in Texas, so it was not such a change. And when I traveled the world, I drank a fair amount there too.

But soon, feeling the effects of the drink came to supersede the priority that the taste of the drink had once held. And that rather typical way of thinking began to consume. When school began, I started to earnestly desire escape from it. In the midst of my studies, I would think to myself, "I just wanna drink away my troubles," somewhat sarcastically, but with such repetition that it began to bear truth. Though I never got drunk using this mindset, I did manage to essentially soil the reasons I had for drinking in the first place. I found friends whose house I could drink at, and had too much to drink many nights. This same group of guys would later gain a bad reputation for serving minors).

During the Thanksgiving Break of that semester (still in fall of 2011 for all of this), my youth pastor informed me that since by attending our school we had agreed to things like not drinking, refusal to abstain from such activities sounded an awful lot like rebellion. At that point, I began to feel convicted, and stopped drinking...WHOOPS, ONLY THE FORMER! In fact, I drank the very Sunday following that conversation, and became sick from it for the week after, and when my car broke down the week after that, I finally acquiesced to God's increasingly persuasive arguments.

And I became a lil' better after that, though the moment I got home from school, I drank, but it was covenant-friendly, so it was a'ight. Then God made it clear to me that drinking would continue to be a no-no indefinitely. And it cleared my head.

Now that I think about it, it had consumed me in a way not unlike the way God has in the past. Knowing that I could be consumed by such in that fashion (even a crush is better, since it's a person), is kind of a horrible thought.

So spring semester began, and with it, the greatest me I've ever yet known. Granted, it started out as most do, with me having no idea what the professor was talking about in the first day of the new semester of Organic Chemistry. SN1 reactions? E1? Carbocation intermediate? I slowly began to realize that this was not a class I could just work the normal amount for a given class and still pass. I knew too little.

As this was going on, my extensive notes on what I'd do for my JBU Talent Show host auditions burned a hole in my Evernote app in my newly-acquired iPhone (an entirely unexpected Christmas present, and among the greatest possible presents I could have expected, except perhaps for God telling me to skip school and join the mission field). In that first week of school, I discovered that they had used a different method from what they had done in years past, and had already selected the hosts of the Talent Show.

Fortunately, this turned out to be sort of a turning point for the semester. I had learned some contortionist dance moves for a mission trip to the Philippines last summer, so I figured it was time to put a solo act together. After all, if I wasn't going to host the Talent Show, I might as well attempt to compete in it.

So for the sake of dancing, I began working out. Auditions were a week away when I decided to put together a routine, so I spent the weekdays getting into shape, that weekend choreographing most of the routine with a friend, and finishing the choreographing and working out until the auditions on Tuesday evening. Even before the auditions, my friend who helped me choreograph (Tim Nickelson), in his efforts to help, directed it back to God, which is good, because I was all about just being entertaining. He had me explain just what my song of choice, "Symphonies" by Dan Black, actually meant to me, and I learned that it reflected a lot of what I felt. I didn't know why, but the song spoke volumes to me. Here is a portion of it.



"I come disguised I was hypnotized,
I wanted easy stuff to please me
Something in the dark began to squeeze me.
See me, there, then there in the mirror,
Totally focused, no hocus pocus,
Dare I give in to this thing gripping my skin,
To win, thinking how to

As the lights of the cars go by in the street,
Seems like I stand pretty much unseen,
But I open my eyes and beams
Come out.

Gimme, gimme symphonies
Gimme more than the life I see.
Scores rise up, angels play,
and the loneliness get blown away.

Gimme gimme symphonies,
Gimme more than the life I see."

The first two lines pretty much summarize the fall semester, just wanting to escape my troubles through the desire (and not even necessarily the action) to compromise my state of mind. But in the spring, something in the dark, something that I couldn't quite pinpoint, urged me towards discipline and being the best me I can be. I had had such desires before, but when I tried for it, it hadn't seemed to work since high school. But I examined myself (4th line), and decided to take the chance that God might make me into some semblance of what He wanted me to be, though I still had to figure out the rest of what that would require (lines 6-7).

The chorus represented a bit of a fear that I've acquired when I visit home. My brothers have settled into a way of life that, to be perfectly honest, manages to disgust me. It's a perversion of what they could be. My oldest brother is technically a genius, with near-photographic memory, making a 1460 on his SATs (that's out of 1600), and just a remarkable genius in everything he does. My other brother (also older) is creative. He used to build stuff constantly. Growing up, he would build great Lego creations and I would just play with them. He's as much of a genius, though more with hands-on stuff. If smarter existed, they'd both be higher on the scale than myself. Yet what do they do with their lives? One a college graduate (though it's been years and he hasn't bothered to pick up his degree) and the other a dropout, they spend all their time flying radio-controlled airplanes with cameras built-in, getting high, and playing computer games. They both stay up till 3:00-4:00 AM every night, work their jobs, then go right back to it, chugging energy drinks and destroying their bodies to keep it all up.

So I say, give me symphonies. Give me more than the life I see. 'Cause I can't stand the thought of settling for the life they live, the life that was fun to imagine as an ideal when we were young.

Anyway, God told me before the auditions that the Talent Show was only a means of providing a deadline, a reason to get to work on the dance routine, that in reality, I was working on the dance routine for the sake of future mission trips. So I was happy with my audition. And overjoyed when I found out a few days later that I was selected to be in the Talent Show. I kept stretching and working out and soon discovered that when I do such things, it kept me from being moody, the product of which was a lack of blogs (since most of my writing, good or bad, comes out of frustration). Somehow, being disciplined physically also carried to academics, and I began to prove to my Organic Chemistry professor that I was willing to do whatever it took to bring my grade up. And he told me that it would take me visiting his office as frequently as possible, showing up to class a little early (9:55 AM instead of 10:00 AM on the dot). And I did it. And unlike other students, I read ahead the nights before class as frequently as I could. I learned an enormous amount in a short amount of time. Granted, I still made bad grades on tests, but I was actually learning the most difficult subject of my undergraduate education, and some of my professor's love for the subject began to rub off on me.

I didn't place in the Talent Show, and though if there was any justice in the world, I shouldn't have been beaten out by Christian rap, it didn't matter, 'cause it really was just a deadline (though it helped that everyone agreed that I should have placed). Because of it, I was in shape. And unlike so many who deal with insecurity issues, I have no such trouble, so every time I worked out, it made me more than self-esteemy; it made me borderline vain.

...and that's all the time I have for now. Time to meet up with family for dinner. Thanks blogger. I hardly knew ye.



(Notes for me on the next part(s) of my reflections:
Prophecy rooms
Uganda
Last semester's crush that I almost asked out
Realizing how I've managed to have wisdom with dating
Not knowing what kind of Christian I'm destined to be, super or baptist
reading WoT books thanks to Hunger Games)

Why I Mission These Trips

I had a dream last night in which I talked to some guys, apparently strangers my age, and we were making smalltalk about our lives, so naturally I mentioned that I was going to Uganda, and what I'd be doing there.

One of them replied, "Man, that's one of those things you'd only do if God told you to." And in the dream, I thought he had made a good point.

I've never felt like this, actually avoiding thinking about it. I mean, I had an excuse before, with school and everything going on, but in a week and a half, I'll be in Africa. No excuses, only having whatever I've prepared in the meantime. Gah, I just need to sit back and face this stuff, considering that it is everything I want my life to be. Haha, and that is precisely what makes it so funny.

I love the challenge of all of it. Going there and actually having a chance to use my natural abilities to do God's work. During school and everything, that only gets to play a small role. I normally have to hone the abilities I wasn't born with and work really hard while everyone around me is discouraging. On a mission trip, I'm doing the only thing that I know is undeniably and purely good. It's hard work, physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and all those other -ally's, but it's encouraging throughout, and it's an amazing learning/teaching curve every time.

Ah, I feel better about it already. I just need to remember why I do it all, what makes this career choice the very best of all possible ones.

Apprehensive Thinking

I haven't really paused in awhile.

'Cause if I pause, I think.
Not that I dislike thinking, exactly...

It's just that when you know that God wants to use you a lot, and you haven't put in as much time as you should have, you can get a lil' apprehensive.
I often claim that I have a lot of experience traveling. Technically, I do, but I also have traveled with a thick padding of finances and plenty of planning by other people with more administrative prowess than I possess to guide my steps.

However, this trip to Uganda (and Europe)...