Oy!

Aimee,

It's 3:00am and I just finished three hours of resume and cover letter writing. I have a one on one at 10:00am, I'm too nervous to sleep. Not because of the one on one but because I just submitted an application for an internship but I'm not at liberty to disclose where to right now. I can tell you however, I put under my skills: "proficient in growing facial hair." OY!! WHY?!?! I don't know either. I thought it was clever and would make it stand out. They said they wanted to be wowed by my sparkling wit. I'm such an idiot!  Oh well my friend.

Oh, and again, I'm super stoked for you and making it straight to the final interview for Teach for America! That's so wonderful and such a great opportunity!!! I'll be praying for you.

...facial hair growing? really? oy! Oh, and I straight up said I don't have the experience. I STINK at this!

In Regards to His Plan

Dear Aimee,

Today, we finally got to catch up in person after what feels like a month of not seeing each other. It made me happy. However, there are a few things that don't make me happy: the fact that people leave the role they play in my life, worries, uncertainty, enmity, and sin.

The point of development for this tangled web of dislike starts with uncertainty. We are uncertain. Every single person that lives, has lived, and will live exists in a state of uncertainty. No one knows what the next five minutes of his/her life will bring. I could die or get a call from a friend or fall asleep before I even finish this letter. I believe that we as people can be certain of only two truths. We can be certain of the Lord and we can be certain that our lives will go on. If there is only two things we can be certain of then that leaves a lot to be uncertain of and this uncertainty leads to worry. But why worry? If we are certain of the Lord then we are certain that He is present. That He is in control. That He knows where our lives will go. Sadly, I know for myself I tend to focus on the other certainty that life will continue. This is a great thing but when we focus on the fact that life will continue then we focus on our earthly lives too often instead of our eternal ones. We begin to worry about how to control the things around us. We focus on the future, relationships, health, wealth, and time. We worry. We put into perspective how short our lives are and how fast they'll go by. We realize that our lives will quickly never be as they presently are. We realize that our friends and the people around us will one day be moved on to their own lives. But why focus on the leaving? Wouldn't it be so much better to focus on the people who will take up new roles in our lives? The people we will meet, serve, love, and learn from? Those people are uncertain though, we don't know whom they are or if there will even be there. We convince ourselves that we need to hold onto what is ours. Our friends. Our families. Our money. Our time. Our space. Our love. We become more compulsive hoarders than the ones on TLC. We hoard everything we are too worried to lose because we are so uncertain as to whether or not we'll always have the things of this present moment. We begin to form a sense of enmity. We become hostile to the world. We believe that the world is trying to take what is ours, trying to replace what we know. We oppose these attempts and close our borders to an extent. We focus on our things. We build our own community and create a division between the world and us hoping that in the end the world will not take from us. When we fall into this mess of a mindset we fall into sin. We separate ourselves from the uncertainties and cling to the things of this world. We spend more time with friends instead of in prayer. We read textbooks and novels more than the Bible. We search google and seek humanly advice instead of seeking the Lord. We put barriers between God and ourselves, thus allowing ourselves to revert back to our sinful nature. We become greedy and selfish, wanting all that we can call ours. We focus solely on the people we worry about losing and neglect all others around us.

We have to be certain of the Lord. If we are certain of the Lord then we can be certain of His word. We can take comfort when His word tells us that nothing is uncertain to Him. When He tells us we have no need to worry. When He tells us that he will provide for us. Where our uncertainty causes us to worry and our worry causes us to focus on people/things that are ours and our intense focus causes us to create a sense of enmity and our hostility causes us to sin; our certainty of the Lord causes us find peace and our peace grants us the ability to accept changes and our acceptance grants us the ability to love freely and our love grants us the ability to keep a guard up to sin. 

So, Aimee, while there are a few things I don't like in and of themselves I realize there are greater reasons as to why I do not like such things. I am also reminded just how important the Lord's role is in our lives is and how much better things would be if I gave him more of me. 

It looks like today was an even better day than I had originally thought. 

Faith in Question

This morning, as in Tuesday morning, I had my weekly Connect Group meeting. The exit we just finished in InnerState80 was primarily on faith and we had some good discussion, but as I read some of the chapters in the book and as we talked I was confronted with the realization that my faith is not all that strong.

Mercedes made the comment that she never doubts if God is real yet she struggles with trusting Him in earthly matters. I on the other hand have the exact opposite problem; I never doubt that God is working in my life and that I can trust Him to be righteous and good. What I do find myself doing quite a bit is questioning, “What if there is no God?”

For my degree I have a concentration in Humanities, which means the predominant themes in a handful of my classes are culture, philosophy, and religion; however, the underlying theme is similarities and progression. These classes like to make a case for the progression of culture and beliefs as a product of man’s development of previously known knowledge, thus connecting everything to a similar origin; especially when it comes to religion. This tests my faith often. When I look at the development of civilization and introduction of religion into cultures and how similar the religions are or how they have progressed I begin to question whether or not God is real or if it is all just the product of man. As I was making a shopping cart for next semester’s classes I was hesitant to sign up for some of the department’s best professors, because I am worried about putting barriers in between Truth and myself. That, though, makes me want to sign up for the classes. What kind of faith is one that can’t withstand testing? I know I don’t want to have a faith that is strong because I shadow it from the realities of the world, I want one the can withstand academic knowledge and informed questioning.

Thankfully, as I was writing this I realized a theme between all the times that I question my faith. I seem to question the realness of Christ when I focus on the similarities of the religions but I am able to reestablish my trust when I remember the differences. When I remember the Gospel.  I believe this is the devil’s greatest temptation for me, his ability to tempt me with doubt. Satan was close to entirely crushing my faith in a god until God himself intervened through Josh last year to open my eyes to the Truth. Satan had almost succeeded by getting me to question once, which is why I think he continues to use it, in hopes of bringing me to the same mental state that I was in a year and a half ago. To combat the darkness I now realize that I must focus on the Light.

My message and preaching were not with wise or persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on man’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

                                                                                       -1 Corinthians 2:4-5

I don't do well with:

• To-do lists
• goals
• plans
• communicating my ideas
• knowing what I want to do
• staying on task
• relating to others' feelings or perspectives
• praying when I say I'm going to
• waking up early
• cleaning my dishes right after I use them
• not spending money
• being singled out
• making decisions 
• parking
• keeping my mind focused on what I'm doing
• remembering what I read
• statistics
• going to class
• choosing productivity over sleep
• hanging flyers
• photographing memories
• reading aloud 
• putting others first at all times
• never doubting my faith or people
• explaining things
• telling stories
• spreading work over time
• remembering to take food out of the freezer in the morning
• correcting people in important matters and not correcting them in frivolous ones 

We Can Love Better...

I was on my way home tonight driving down Alafay with Pandora Radio playing from my phone. As I was approaching campus "Do Better" by Say Anything came on. I got very excited because I will be seeing them with a handful of great friends on November 17th. However, the song became much more than a punk rock song while I was praying tonight, it became a worship song.
As I was struggling to get the song out of my head so I could focus on my prayers something happened and I just started sing new words to the song. The original lyrics at the end of the song are, "we can do better, we can do better, we can be the greatest band in the world;" they became, "we can love better, we can love better, we can serve the greatest God in the world," and variations of such that would emphasize praising God or serving more depending on what came out. I like it, particularly, because this week I've been trying to focus my life on serving and loving others more. I continue to ask myself, "how can I best love and serve so-and-so in this situation?" I think this pondering has come from worship Sunday at church when we sang, "They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love. And they'll know we are Christian by our love." It's true, every word of it is true. People will know we are Christian by how we love others and each other. I know for myself I need to love better. I need be intentional with loving others, taking the time to figure out how to actually love people the best way possible, not how I would like to love them. Loving someone is not a feeling we get inside of ourselves when we think of a person. Loving someone is serving them, attending to their needs, putting them above ourselves. Most often it is easy to distinguish the difference between the I love yous. We know whether it' an I love you as in you're a good person I like being around or an I love you as in you're someone that means a great deal to me and my life or an I love you as in you're important, you matter, here is all of me. If we truly love others the way God calls us to love them, the way Jesus loved them, then our 'I love you' will express the latter of the three. No matter what a person's beliefs are or their lifestyle choice it is important to love them, to place them above ourselves and serve them. As Christians I believe that we can love better and thus serve the greatest God in the world. I sure know that I can.

Simple Options, Endless Joy

I'm excited and almost liberated by the idea of possibilities. I desire arbitrariness and spontaneity, the realness of living. Life is so boring sometimes and it doesn't have to be. The simplest of pleasures are often the greatest. I want to wake up and drive out to the beach for a day. I want hear of an unknown band playing in the area and go to their show. I want to try exotic cuisine at hole-in-the-wall authentic restaurants. I want to go camping and swimming. I want to grab a picnic and head off to an obscure location with friends. I want to see the taping of movies. I want to explore galleries and museums. I want to discover the beauty of classic books. I want to get a bike and ride for miles. I want to take road trips to Dinosaur World and other random attractions. I want to visit thrift and novelty store. I want to find nature, relationships, self, and God. I want a life worth documenting. I want a life in the possibilities.

It's in the Air

I was walking to the office this morning around 11:50 and couldn't help but smile. Autumn is in the air and it's apparent to all! On my one and a half minute journey from my room to work I thought about nothing expect how beautiful the day was and how excited it makes me, I knew it was going to be a good day. Then once at work it seemed everyone I talked to had a comment to make on what a gorgeous day it was outside and how much they love this time of the year. It got me thinking, why it it that so many people love Fall?

 In a season that everything in nature is dying, people are rejoicing and for me personally I couldn't feel more alive. Part of me believes because it subliminally emphasizes man's original purpose, to have dominion over the world. It makes us feel like we're greater than nature, that we're not as susceptible as it is. If that's true than I'm even more annoyed with Adam and Eve than I use to be. Why would anyone want to jeopardize this feeling of exuberance? Why would anyone think twice about giving this up? To walk with God and be filled with joy from nature, I wish I could've experienced what those selfish bastards had! Yes I just used the term bastard, it's true, they were born of God who wasn't married to himself; therefore, I'm appropriately using the term. However, since I don't want to harvest negative feelings nor do I want to be depressed during the other three seasons of the year I'm going to choose to believe the other part of me. We as humans desire change and after a long season of heat we're just excited about the change in the air.

On another happy note, I just bought a cardigan and scarf on sale from Urban Outfitters yesterday!