Had Coffee

I am mostly getting polite friend vibes from the crush.

As for my feelings toward her, I am unsure. Once again, she seems to be everything that 12-year-old me would be after. But past me had not traveled, had not been exposed to so many people and cultures, and had not thrown quite so many hard questions at the faith that carried him.

She is like a fictional something that somehow survived years of change. Rather than grappling with difficult things to improve herself, did she only stick with the largely familiar?

I honestly have not spoken so much Christianese in a long time; it was both refreshing and frustrating.

Her moving away and me trying to get back into ministry stuff will probably be good things.

All Things Without Saving

I'm at this odd point now. Crush is singing at a benefit thing this weekend, and I will likely attend too because of its focus on local missions. I also told another friend (previously known as "too young crush") that I may attend their young adult small group that they recently started. Being involved, even insofar as attending ministry-oriented events, is a weird thing. It feels like muscle memory, like of course I know God and want to know Him more and all of that. Yet at the same time, I have been away from this environment for years; it feels corny. And almost as if it no longer fits.

This, I suppose, is the downside to my "field research", my more concentrated efforts at being all things to all men, with only a small emphasis on the "so that by all means I might save some". My efforts at seeing things from a worldly standpoint had me assuming that my previous view had been left behind with the passage of time and the changing of culture.

I suppose that this is due in large part to the white evangelical church's wide embrace of our current president. The distrust is very easy to place in the church (since they tipped the scales), and the ones who fought for good, for what Jesus taught, were the unsaved. So it was to the unsaved that I found some solace and an ability to relate.

Now that politics have somewhat died down, it feels as if it is time to return. Our witness as evangelical Christians was traded for a supreme court justice, and in the process, hopes were projected onto the human product which impressively manages to manifest many of the things that Jesus spoke most strongly against.

Forgivable Turn Offs

There are a few small comments over the past, well, months or year that have made me change my "turn offs" from ladies. Given that my standards seem borderline impossible in the modern world (despite being kind of normal to me), being able to discard a few things is kind of a relief.

I always thought that I would have to end up with someone who was very quick-witted. Aside from it being a mark of intelligence, I consider it to be like an accent; I do not really know how to talk without it, at least not for long. But I mentioned that I liked someone who is not necessarily known for being funny, and a friend was confused as to why that was a requirement. And for whatever reason, that was when I reconsidered. For one thing, humor is perhaps the only realm where I can get competitive, even to the point of being childish. So being around very witty friends, while usually a pleasure, could become difficult from a relational point of view. Bearing this in mind, and the fact that less witty friends have become more witty by hearing me express my humor around them, has convinced me that humor perhaps does not necessarily need to be a particularly notable quality in a future spouse.

Another one came about when I mentioned to my mother that I liked a girl, but she kept posting pictures of herself hunting or some such related activity. This was a turn off for me, partially because it is a more traditionally masculine activity than any in which I have gravitated towards, and also partly because I struggle with the idea of killing a bug, much less a deer or other more noble creature. My mom explained that these hunting habits indicated that the lady in question spent time with her father. This to me translated to mean that she would be bereft of many of the daddy issues that tend to plague the attractive ladies in whom I am likely to invest interest.

So the narrow spectrum of perfect human specimens has widened ever so slightly. Maybe I will figure it out before I die.

Why I Ask

I am slowly remembering why I bother with the whole principle of asking God about a lady I like. The basic reason is that when it comes to any sort of commitment to and with another human, it is something that I do not wish to take lightly. In fact, I do not trust myself to make clear judgment in the area. After all, once the idea pops into your head that you like someone romantically, you are suddenly attempting to evaluate more than just their qualities and preferences against your own. You are trying to evaluate your own feelings, which tend to be thrown into a state of anxiety and fluidity at such a prospect.

In addition, my parents divorced. I do not believe that such an action should be contemplated, and their examples (and the fallout that still continues from the divorce) only affirm what Jesus had to say on the matter.

So thoughts have been creeping in as of late and planting their seeds. She is moving away. Even if she were not moving away, she is so much of what we (the various characters in my mind) have searched for that she is bound to go after some other guy if I refrain from making a move.

At this point, it is time to step back. Why did I ask God for His input on this? If it is because I trust in Him, then does it not stand to reason that He will instruct me as needed if she is the intended partner in this ministry called life? So the reality here is really the usual, that I should be focusing on God and what He is speaking, and if He wants something to happen here, He will make a way. If not, He will not, and there will be someone else. Or there will not, and I will go at this whole ministry thing like Paul, single until I die. So I need to rest in Him and what He has placed before me, because if I do that, I cannot lose. How can you lose if the one in charge of everything is the one telling you what to do?

Finally Went To Church Again

In my attempts to gain clarity to ask God about a certain lady, and in the subsequent overwhelming deluge of revelations (with little bearing on my attempts at a divinely approved romance) regarding a potential bar ministry to reach my own age group, I have ironically been avoiding the sauce. Well, I have at least refrained from purchasing alcoholic beverages for now. Drinking alone at night drowns out not only your own thoughts, but also the prayers that should be such a regular part of life.

In any case, I went to a wedding yesterday and began drinking in the late afternoon, not leaving until night was very much upon us. It was the wedding of a crush I had through junior high and high school, and it was genuinely nice to see them off. There were many delays in proceedings, but the bar was open for all of them, so I had consumed something close to five glasses of wine before the end. However, I was also there for a similar number of hours, so do not panic. The combination of that wine along with dancing on the exceedingly buffed floor resulted in me finally going to sleep at a decent hour and able to wake up for church.

So I attended church today for the first time in a long while. It is a small Methodist church just a few minutes from my mom's house (where I currently reside). It felt as if a quarter of the congregation was a part of the service in some form or another, and I am pretty sure that my voice was the only audible one off stage during worship, but it was still pleasant. People were impressively responsive to the pastor's impressions of characters from Finding Nemo, which he claimed was the best Pixar movie (even after mentioning The Incredibles, but I have hope that he chose the other option exclusively because of its relation to his sermon). At any rate, I was just content with the fact that they did not become political. The crowd seemed very much of the variety that would adore Trump, but as long as I do not know about their political leanings, I can still appreciate the place of worship.

Tricksy Lord

"Hey God, I think I maybe like a girl? What are you thinking?"
"Oh, we're talking again? Cool, 'cause with all of that traveling and living life as a human has given you some insights that could play into a ministry thing that could perhaps play a role in making sure that your generation goes to heaven."
"Oh wow, okay. I mean, yeah, once school stuff is out of the way, maybe I'll try some of that. But this girl seems in tune with how I think when I'm doing things right with you."
"Okay, so you're going to feel compelled to write all of this down."

God lured me back to actually listening to Him by using a pretty girl. Classic tricksy ol' Lord God Almighty.

Social With Studying

The way that I have heard medical school described, it seems as if life is on hold. That has felt true. But people also live a little. They have social lives. This is an aspect that has been notably missing from my journey. It was the same issue that I ran into after graduating from university, namely that I do not know how to meet people and be social outside of church or school. And since church has been unsure territory, and my schooling has been independent for the last year, I have remained without a method of meeting people.

Much of this has been due to the studying. Any time I spend going out feels like it takes away from my time studying. I really do not know how to balance studying with, you know, not. It tends to feel like it is all or nothing. I am back to living at home, and when family offers to go out to dinner, I tend to reply in the affirmative due to hunger, but then do lose hours of study time. But I also know that if I do not go out, that is detrimental to my studying too. I suppose that it is just a game of constantly relearning to balance and discipline oneself. However, I am afraid to jump back into the intense studying again. I was studying for 10-12 hours per day without much difficulty, but the stress hormones that allowed it made me lose weight (and a little eyebrow hair).

I suppose that I must attempt to finish getting some studying done tonight before I debate whether to have a beer or to have a sober mind to listen to God. We will have to see what wisdom lies within.