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).
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)
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