Appreciating Who People Are Becoming

One of the hardest things about coming home for the holidays is that each time I exit the tollway at Lovers Lane and pull onto Purdue, I have grown and experienced things that have shaped my outlook and one way or another, I am not the same person and my friends, they're not the same either. Am I usually drastically different, no, but I've lived stories that my friends in college station and Norman haven't. My community is shaping me and my interactions with my friends and community at Baylor are something that no one can understand except those who are in the middle of it with me. It has taken me heading back to Dallas a couple of times over the past three semesters to begin to learn to appreciate my friends for who they are becoming. This means that I have to change my expectations and learn to listen to their stories and realize that the way that we view things might not be the exact same. My experience in my fraternity at Baylor, KOT, is going to be totally different than my friend Will's experience with Sig Ep in Norman and the things that I love about Baylor probably don't translate directly into Will's experiences at OU.

It is a hard lesson to wrap your head around because growing up with my best friends from HP we all did the same things with each other. All of our stories were woven together and we saw life the same way because for the most part our experiences were paralleled with one another. Learning to appreciate people for who they are becoming is key to maintaining friendships that you have had for years even after spending large spans of time apart.

I have been unbelievably blessed to walk shoulder to shoulder with men of great faith throughout high school and college and this is so important because our common bond is not something that is fleeting. Our stories don't have to sound the same because I know that at the heart of our friendships is Christ and the common love for Christ among a group of friends gives friendship more depth than any common hobbies or stories ever could. I am able to pick back up with the guys I did life with in high school so well because I know that at the end of the day we are brothers in Christ and our love for Him is what we built our friendship on.

I'm not encouraging you to watch your friends make destructive decisions and not get involved in their lives, but what I am encouraging you to do is to realize that no one is perfect and just because your friendship with someone doesn't feel exactly the same as it always has doesn't mean it can't still be something great. If we stop expecting people to complete us and make us totally satisfied and approach each day with more grace than criticism I think that we would be shocked at how much richer all of our relationships would be. For the group of friends you are doing with right now, on the daily, be intentional about building then up as brothers and sisters in Christ so that one day if you aren't roommates and the days of fraternity life seem like a lifetime ago, you will have a bond that is eternal because Jesus is forever.

A Birthday Worth Partying For

I don't know what kind of semester you are coming off of, but if it was anything like mine, there was probably highs and lows and everything in between and over the Christmas break I'm pretty positive that when asked how college is going you will smile and say "great, I really love 'insert your university here'...." Personally, my favorite response is: "college is great, it's the school part that I'm having a hard time with." Guaranteed to get the typical I-used-to-party-dad to say "God, I remember the days" followed by a hearty laugh. For the past two years Christmas break has been a really interesting time for me because I go from being insanely busy to school zone slow and the hardest part is that when I start slowing down I begin to digest what I have been learning and that is often scary. One of the most daunting realizations that I have come to is that time isn't slowing down and I'm growing up.
Pretty obvious observation I know, but I'm in the time of my life that you hear people tell stories about from the time you are a little kid, that your middle school and high school counselors have tried to prepare you for for years and the era when decisions matter. It gets overwhelming sometimes and while people think back on their college years and remember the really good times, they seldom tell you about the really hard growth periods. The tough thing about growth is that it's not painless.

With christmas tomorrow, I've been reflecting on what the birth of Jesus means and trying to not be so numb to everything as I approach my twentieth Christmas. As I was looking through scripture it hit me though. In Matthew 1:23 it says "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel." Immanuel means "God with us." Do you get what that means? It means that God sent his son into the world as a way of proclaiming as loudly as possible that when the test results get back and they are positive for cancer, God is with us. When you aren't sure if you and your girlfriend are going to make it, God is with us. At your frat party, God is with us. When you come home and things don't feel exactly like they used to, God is with us. When you're studying in the corner of the library, God is with us. When you're procrastinating and sitting around hanging out with your roommates, God is with us. In the midst of trying to figure out what your purpose is and how you are going to charge into the future, God is with us.

Tonight when you hear the Christmas story, try not to tune it out or brush past it because you have heard it so many times, look at it from the fresh perspective of hearing about how God didn't give up on us, how in the midst of all of our shortcomings, he is riding shotgun with us through all of life's ups and downs and that Jesus was born to die a death on a cross that would give everyone the freedom to come into an abundant relationship with the creator of the universe. Merry Christmas.

To Borrow a Few Words From "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta"...

Earlier this week I mentioned how I have just felt off lately in terms of my spiritual life, but today things began to click again. Today I felt God answering my prayers. He has been helping me to look beyond the temporary things that I put so much of my stock in and to start seeing all of the great things going on in my life beyond the classroom. My experience has been that I get most down when I have "peep hole vision." I realize that the word "peep" is often associated with lewd shows performed on Bourbon street, but that is not where I am going with this...What I'm trying to say is that when I view the world out of a peep hole I miss 95 percent of what is going on. The 5 percent that I do see is usually extremely temporary circumstances that I make a way bigger deal than I really need to. The 95 percent that I don't see are the people around me and the opportunities that I have to love them in a way that might help them pull their heads out of "peep vision" as well and the chance to point them to the cross.

Following Jesus is backwards, because it is not a checklist, there is no formula and it is totally reversed from anything you have ever heard. By putting all of your energy towards being the hands and feet of Jesus and meeting the needs of others, there is lasting satisfaction that cannot be found within yourself. Frat gear goes out of style (well not really, chino polo shorts and button downs are long lasting, just not eternal), Wranglers rip, houses burn down, GPAs become trivial things of the past, big titles don't go in the coffin with you and even supermodels become old, wrinkly ladies, but Living for the Lord lasts. (pretty sure I jacked that phrase from the song "Damn it feels good to be a gangsta" made popular by the movie "Office Space"...Verse 2 "But this gangtsa here is a smart one Started living for the lord and I last.") Point being that the only things that we can take into eternity with us are the things we do out of our love for Jesus.

We're gonna make it

It has been a solid 2 months since I have hopped on the blog and for that I apologize. Over the past 60 days I built a judge's award winning float and danced in Pigskin with my fraternity, started dating an amazing girl (thought that would never happen) and have held my job at the backpacking, camping, kayaking store here in Waco. In the midst of all of this, God has been there, but to be honest with you, I have struggled to see him. Maybe it is because I have been too busy checking all of the items off of the post it note lists that I habitually make and arrange strategically around my desk. This year has been tough. I started off the year, biting off more than I could chew and have been paying for it lately, trying madly to catch up with school. One of the biggest lessons I have been learning is to say no so that I can really say yes. I blogged about that earlier this year, but it is a lesson that I have had to re-learn at different seasons and it is always a painful one to be reminded of. When I am spread thin I have trouble making everything work together and the quality of my work often suffers. Why do I over commit? To shoot you straight, it is because I am a people pleaser and I want to serve and help out as much as I can, but taking on too much has it taken its toll. It's hard to saddle up and ride when the ground you are riding on seems to be shifting and sliding unpredictably.

Lately, my biggest battle has been finding my worth in the Lord and not in my accomplishments or lack of accomplishments in school. I can't seem to find traction in my classes and every time I get back my work and it is not where I want it to be I question whether I am cut out for the academic rigors in college. From there I play the "find the most unintelligent person I know who graduated from college and compare myself to them game." Ultimately that never helps. I don't know what it is going to take for the cross to be enough, for me to understand in the depths of my heart the magnitude that Jesus loves me. I think that the place I am in right now is one that will continually come back at every life stage. I'm going to have a full time job in the future and there, my challenge will be finding my worth in my salary, work projects or title, then I will have kids and the temptation will be to find my worth in how they turn out. With this mentality I am going to miss the abundant life that Jesus promises those who love him. I am trying to wrap my head around how much Jesus truly loves me. It is in this life long journey to understand how great our Saviors' love is for us that our identity in Christ becomes more clear. It is in this understanding that we begin to understand how incomprehensible Jesus' love is for us.

I don't know what your struggle is right now. Maybe you're like me and you question whether you are going to make it in school or maybe you just started a new job and it is not everything you dreamed it would be. You could be battling addiction and keep failing, or maybe you just feel down. Jesus cares about you and wants to listen to what is on your mind. My experience with prayer has been that when I am in prayer about my troubles, the Lord doesn't usually make them disappear, but he helps me to tune into what he is doing in the big picture and gives me an attitude that allows me to see the eternal in the midst of the temporal. Life is tough, we're all trying to make it. Take a minute and care about those around you, just smile at them, it could make all the difference.

Oh SH....the couch is about to fall out the back

School is back in full swing but I am not. Can anyone out there relate to me? I think that every semester I say "heck yeah," this is my time to do school right, to go to bed on time and to be super intentional with the group of guys the Lord has placed me in. I go out and buy a planner and make lists of people who I want to dig in with. In my head/on paper my plans and tactics are flawless, but then something called life happens. My roommates are up late hanging out and I can't help but do the same, I see an opportunity to take on a job and I do it, people around me need help and so I drop my own agenda and help them and in the process of all these great interruptions, my grand plans are diminished.

This summer when I went on my epic craigslist adventure to pick up the vending machine and the massive sectional couch we almost had a catastrophe. We made it to the hottest, most miserable place on earth, college station and loaded up what I call the pink monster: a 5 piece sectional couch complete with a folding bed, recliner and one dysfunctional recliner that will end up never getting repaired (maybe after float season). After manhandling the couch onto the trailer, we headed to Houston to pick up the whale of a vending machine. Along the way, Kip, Will and I were talking, laughing about the adventure when out of the corner of my eye I saw the pink monster begin moving. Straddling my vision between the road ahead of me and the crisis behind me, I observed the wind pick up one of the sections of the couch flip up and begin waltzing toward the end of the trailer. I had a sudden flash of the calamity behind me which was potentially about to ensue; an oversized, bulky couch section punching through the radiator of the sedan behind me or even worse, the windshield destroying the drivers. None of this was happening at breakneck speed, but it was definitely something that needed to be dealt with. I made the call to pull over and rearrange and re-strap everything on the trailer. From there, it was smooth sailing.

Right now, in slow motion, the pieces of my life are shifting around and some of the sections even want to flip off my trailer. For the most part I have kept driving, keeping an eye on the status of everything, but pretty soon, if I don't pull over, I'm going to pay for it. Does this mean that I have the wrong pieces loaded? No, it just means that I have loaded my pieces incorrectly. (I realize that this analogy only really makes sense to me and the handful of people who have loaded a trailer down with ratchet straps.) The idea is not necessarily that I am involved in the wrong things, it's just that I am missing the essential element for balance in my life, my own personal time with the Lord. My faith is what holds my life together and as I get busier and busier, the ratchet straps that hold my life together begin to loosen.

For me, I know that this is happening, because my life is full of great things and great people, I am not facing any major crisis right now and I have every reason to be totally satisfied with life, but I'm not. I accomplish a lot every day, but it is not enough. I need to get away and spend time with Jesus on a daily basis. That is the only way that the air will taste sweet again and the only way that I will be able to love those around me the way that Jesus has called me to, Live the dream, life is too short not to.

Just a little off

Do you ever have those days where you just feel a little off, where the day just doesn't go quite the way you wanted it to or maybe it was one of those "blah" days where nothing really good or bad happened? Today was one of those days for me, I had a packed weekend and then woke up on the Monday of a three day weekend, two hours before heading into work and then from there my day was just kind of got sucked up. (the hours from 9 to 2AM seem to get away from me every night) I don't know why "blah" days bring up an array of odd feelings or what even sparks them, but they definitely exist and they are definitely normal. I think that that part of the problem with these nonchalant days is that we find our value in what tasks we complete or how full or fun our day was. It is normal to have these feelings and I think that they are a result of overworking.

I used to drive a four cylinder hunting jeep and it was great for dirt roads and it could not be beat crawling around rocks, but when I hopped on the highway and needed to pass someone or gun it to get onto the freeway it topped out at about 60 and that little engine would scream for fresh air until I downshifted and reached a comfortable cruising speed. Blah days are the downshift period. We spend so much of our lives speeding to get where we need to go that when we finally downshift and our speed begins to level out, we feel uncomfortable because our pistons aren't pumping quite so hectically.

I don't know where you are, if you're at a place where you look at the road ahead and say wow, I'm about to dive into chaos or maybe you're at a place where all of the sudden you have a significant amount of time on your hands, maybe you just got out of a relationship with a long time girlfriend and now you feel weird because all of the time and energy that was directed there has no where to go. Maybe you just graduated and being in the real world all of your best friends are not around and your bed time has been bumped back from 2AM to 10PM. I don't know, but whatever it is, God cares about you and wants you to live fully and desperately wants you to know that you aren't in this thing alone. Life is beautiful and it is meant to be lived, so wherever you are, be grateful and through the good and bad, praise God, because he has always loved you and always will. Live the dream. My roommates just told me to stop blogging and start living, so I guess I need to get to it...

Say No So You Can Say Yes

Today is only my 12th day of life at the Estate and in this short amount of time an enormous amount of life has taken place. I recently started working at an outdoor gear store, bought a deep freezer and gun safe with my roommates, built 2 lofted beds, fraternity activities and intramurals have kicked into high gear, I have been connecting with friends who I didn't see all summer and somewhere in the midst of all of this flurry of activity I have an academic record to build. I was pondering the freedom that comes with age the other day and I think that it can be compared to a tightly tied shoe. As I have grown up from grade school through high school and now into college the laces on my shoes have become looser and looser, offering more and more freedom, but with freedom comes new adjustments. I am almost to the point in my life where I have the choice of whether I want to keep the shoes on or slip them off all together and see what walking barefoot feels like. It is a scary place to be in. Credit card bills are real, relationships are real, school matters more than it has in the past and I am seeing the weight that my actions today are going to have on tomorrow. I spent an hour on the phone with the cable company today trying to figure out why our bill was so high and once I figure that out I have to bring it to the attention of my roommates and reach an agreement about how to get paid back for various start up fees. I tell you this because it is easy to lose sight of things and forget whom our foundation is found in.

Our foundation is not in how well we please others, because there is not enough of you or me to go around to meet everyone else's needs and wants. I am learning to say no for the first time in my life. It's tough, because I really enjoy being needed, but I have had to come to terms with the reality that there is only so much time in the day and that when I never say no I cannot really say yes. "Simply let your yes be yes and your no, no; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." Matthew 5:37. Seems harsh doesn't it, saying that if we flake out and don't really mean yes when commit to something it is from the evil one. Why would Jesus put that in such harsh terms? Because when we over-commit we are limiting our God given potential to do the things that God has called us to. Saying no is definitely an act of faith. It puts us in a vulnerable place because people might not like us if we decline an offer they give us.

Matthew 7:24-27
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

When we over commit we are making the choice to build our house on the sand and that is what it feels like doesn't it. The
exterior structure of our life is all together, but with the wrong wind or even the wrong footing inside the house, everything could come crashing down. To build our house on the rock, we must constantly be in prayer, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." (Phil 4:6) Honestly, I have never really been good at constantly being in prayer, but when I think about it, I spend a lot of time managing my lists inside my head and those concerns could be much better managed by giving them to God. My challenge for myself and for anyone who finds life even just slightly overwhelming is to say yes and really mean it and to find the freedom of a house on solid rock.