Day 32: I've gone completely off the deep end (and maybe thats a good thing)

So the writers club at FHS that I founded my senior year (co-founded really, but same difference) is meeting this Thursday, and I'm trying to prep stuff for the meeting. Whatever it is, it needs to be good because, well, I am the founder. So I got to thinking. Writing falls under literature, which falls under art in a sense. So as an art, it has to have a purpose. Picasso used his paintings as a way of telling of the Spanish revolution or something like that. Spanish Civil War maybe. Anywho, you use art, stories or poems especially, for a specific purpose. And I got to thinking. . .

What is my purpose for my art?

As a a guy who is trying to follow Christ and His commandments, this should be something of immense influence as to the purpose of my writings. It needs to be something that can and will glorify God and expand His glory.
As a guy who is currently single and waiting for God to orchestrate what it takes to pair me with a WOW girl, I'm going to do my best to woo. Woo I say! (and yes I am crazy enough to use the word woo, and probably strange enough to try and court a girl instead of getting in with this whole relationship stuff that everyone's entranced with nowadays)

I don't know if the girl in mind will ever read anything I write, but poetry of love, commence! May the woo be with me. It's been a while since I've had it.

Day 31: The Pains of our Past Friendship

There are two living persons that mean a lot to me. If my standing with these two is good, life's very easy to live in the way I need to. But without them, I find it hard to have hope enough to live for the Real World because I feel like I have nothing to support me to the end.

One is a girl. The one who got away. When we were near each other, she was a true ray of sunshine, happiness, joy, peace, and seemingly a reflection of who God really is here on earth. She's one of the few people I honestly believe is really focused on Him fully, and that doesn't change because life is busy, hard, or lonely. She is who she is, and there is no changing that. Wonderfully intelligent. Terrifyingly beautiful. I made a conscious decision to let go of her, but every time someone asks me about her or she happens to come up, I just go on this tangent, smiling and trying to relate how awesome she is, and every single time it happens, someone always comments, "Man, you must be really into her." Not, "you must have" which is past tense, but "you must be", present tense. I don't understand, but it's how it goes.

The pain is that it's been over a year now since I really talked to her, and I never can bring myself to talk to her or anything because, let's face it. This is college. Life moves on, and so is it really right to keep looking back at something that was and not focus on what shall be? Romance is an advancing idea, not backwards thinking. You grow in a relationship. Stendhal basically said that once you kill love, or love is stunted from growing at a certain point, then it's too late. It will never grow to fullness. I don't get it. I want to move on. I have faith that God will bring a real WOW girl that will knock me out because she's that awesome and I'll go "I WAS SUCH A DUNCE" and my life will be full of the things of God, but apparently my mouth or my subconscious hasn't quite got it.

One is a boy. This boy I haven't even known for a year, and no, I am not romantically interested in this boy. Randomly, we met, and he's a pretty cool guy. Smart, and he seems to have a better grasp of certain concepts that I've never been able to wrap my brain around, and he gets them just like that. His essays are mindblowing. Intelligent is a pretty good descriptor. Like the girl, he's got a fantastic focus on God. He's a little snarkier about it than most, but still wonderfully himself.

I don't know. Sometimes he feels distant. When he is, it makes it tough, just like it does when I miss the girl. Life is easy, but without these two, or even one of the two, it's difficult to be focused on Him.

And I don't know why.

Day 30: Deeply (dis)Satisfied

Ok I'll explain the title first. I'm deeply satisfied with my life. Even though I don't have my WOW girl, I'm not out of college, I really don't know for sure if I'm on the path that God wants me to be on even though I feel like I seem to be, I'm not where I want to be, but in spite of all this, I'm still satisfied with my life. Content. Choose a word. My thirst for living is sated.

But in the same sense it's not. I don't feel entirely like I'm giving 100% to God. It's more like just 0-70% depending on my mood. This I do not settle for. And it just seems like I could be doing more. In this sense, I am dissatisfied, and it drives me insane.

I still can't work on my CD because I'm waiting on the mic from 3N1, which since they're recording their demo, can't really get a hold of it. Not that I have a whole lot of free time anyways now that school's started back up, but still it'd be nice to get it out of the way. Idk, I could babble incoherently for a long time on this blog but I'll keep it short for my sanity and yours.

I have two mantras. "Soli Deo Gloria", which I stole from CHL, and "Life sucks, but God is great".
Soli Deo Gloria = Only God Glorify
Life sucks but God is great = The truth. Life sucks, but God is still greater and demands a greater focus.

Day 29: The Confusion.

I was talking family with a co-worker, and this was a slight summary of their religious beliefs according to her.

Christian belongs in quotation marks like such: "Christian".
Their family is "Christian" (using the quotation marks).
They don't attend church or anything.
They got religion.

First off, I believe it's a first that I've seen someone claim something and then undermine the title/group that they're affiliating themselves with by putting it in quotation marks. That's like saying, "Oh! I'm a 'Republican'." It smacks of "Republican (Whatever that is, it sounded cool at the time when we signed the paper)". Interesting in itself.
I won't make anything of what she claimed, for I am not a judge. But to take this an interesting turn,

Christianity, depending on what study you follow, is claimed by the majority of the population of the United States. If you include Catholics, that number shoots up a bit, especially if we're counting illegal immigrants. I think it'd be safe to say, at least 65%. But to ask Wikipedia's opinion on the matter, the number is roughly, 58.3% to 82.3%, including Catholicism. The exposure of Christianity is pretty far reaching. Most kids by the age of 12 can tell you who Jesus was. "He's that guy that had the cool cross necklace that carried the Bible, right?" Because a lot of times, Christianity is brought into debates such as abortion, gay marriage, and more, more beliefs are presented to the general public.

I think the United States suffers from Christianity Fatigue. We're tired of hearing about Jesus. Think about it. If 82.3% of the US were really Christians (that number seems a bit high to me), then Christ would be talked about by pretty much everyone, and hearing the Gospel message would be boring because most of us don't need to hear it. However, because so many people hear it, and they see no change (The crime rate is rising along with the percentage of Christians). DCTalk (I'd love to cite the writer and not the band, but I do not know which came up with the line, or if it's even original to them) wasn't far off when they opened "What if I Stumble" with 'The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.'

Those of us who do more than answer "Christian" on surveys, those of us who attend church, those of us who really want to take it seriously, really need to stand out from the hypocrites. Ted Dekker in his book "Heaven's Wager" had a character jokingly suggest that Christians should walk around pulling on their skin in the neck or arm areas. It'd look ridiculous, and it'd be shameful to most, but those who really wanted to live it out would do it. I don't know if I'd go so far as to suggest stretching out your skin, but it's the little things that count. Find ways to live that stand up with the Bible. Really respect people, regardless of what they do. We are not measured by the cards that are dealt to us, but rather how we decide to play our given hand. It takes a huge act of faith to really live out the Christian walk, and sometimes I think we're all a little underplaying it. How many people do you know really stand out? Are we really radical? Who would rather go minister than watch a game of football, or hold a worship service in a Starbucks without once thinking it strange.

Who does that nowadays?
Few and far between.

Day 28: The Peace that Wasn't

I don't know who came up with the idea originally, but there's that saying in weddings where it's like "Speak now or forever hold your peace". This saying equates silence with peace in some manner, but regardless I disagree.

There's this cycle that is my love life, and it goes as follows. Know girl --> Become close friends with girl --> start to like girl --> admit feelings for girl/ask her out --> Be given a reason as to she can't with me, or anyone else --> a week or so later, find out that reason was complete and utter birdseed, usually when she starts going with another guy or tries to anyways. It's one lie after another. Every time. I don't know where humanity got this idea that telling the lie helps guard people from pain, but it's pretty obvious you're lying when it's all over facebook.

Now the cycle has varied in the past, but never successfully. But of course being the guy I am I don't name names.

However, the cycle has not repeated itself in the latest situation, and to make it worse the other guy happens to be a good friend. So I've kept my mouth shut and tried not to get in the way. But it's not helping at all, because it's a test of whether or not I can still be a friend if I feel betrayed. And as much as I hate it, something's changed, and I don't know what.

"Referred pain" is a term used to describe a situation where you have an injury on your hand, but instead of feeling pain there, you feel pain in some other place, like your shoulder, even though it's probably perfectly healthy. I don't know if it works exactly with emotional --> physical pain, but lately I've had a randomly horrible toothache, even though I have no real tooth problem. I only have this mystery tooth ache when it really bothers me or I'm really upset. And that's almost 100% when I'm talking to them or thinking about it. I've done my best to try and keep quiet about this, and I've certainly had my fair chances to vent at her, but I refuse to do it because I know no good will come of it.

It just makes it so hard to feel God when I feel so unholy.

Soli Deo Gloria

Day 27: The fix isn't the fix.

OK, so came into the summer going, you know what, my life with women sucks. They either turn me down, call me their "best friend" (which for the record I don't mind at most points), or it ends up badly because Stendhal's approach was not followed, and I have no reason to believe anything short of an act of God will be successful outside of his theory.

My proposed fix was to make a list of all potential candidates. Find the good girls, and if something happens eventually, then great. But if you make the list (Sorry Santa, stole the idea. I still want presents this year) it makes it much easier to decide if a girl is worth it or not when the opportunity arises.

The problem with this fix? That list is burning up faster than napalm-drenched cardboard. They're all taken, and will be for a long time. I mean, there are couples that look good together, but when you see someone genuinely happy and glowing, you don't want to mess that up, and it's likely to go on for a long time. So if you're not one of the two, you're hung out to dry.

And it's like that. At every turn. And it sucks.

I hate being on the outside looking in.

Day 26: The Summer Review

I came into this summer with a great desire to correct that which was wrong and untrue in my life. Through June, I was able to do a decent job, but this was due mainly to my busyness. Every spare moment of my time was taken up by math, spanish, work, and the Kellon-Caile project. I had no free time to deal with anything else. Since that section of my summer school finished up, I've had more free time in July and August, but less to apply it to. While normally a social life wouldn't be a bad thing, those I am choosing to associate myself with are not helping me move forward, but backwards. Jace was supposed to be a lesson to learn from and never repeat, yet I was on the verge of doing it all over again, thankfully the keyphrase is "was on the verge" and not "am on the verge". Small things to be positive about.

The summer mantra:

Respect Women

Respect Parents

-Respect & Follow God-