http://community321.com/2011/12/04/despair-with-hope-a-way-out/

lean not on your own understanding.

In the past three weeks, I have used the phrases "I just don't understand" and "I need to understand" more than I have in my entire life.

Since elementary school and going through all those years of Sunday School in my home church, I've run across Proverbs 3:5-6 so many times. I've always known what an important couple of verses it is, but only for two reasons: 1) it's on everything: coffee mugs, key chains, a framed thing in my parents' bedroom, etc. and 2) I had to memorize it at least 3 times in Sunday School.

It wasn't until these past couple weeks, though, that I began to finally understand what these verses mean. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight."

I've mentioned before how God speaks to me through repetition. Well, Pastor Kyle's been talking about this verse in all of his sermons in the past month and it took until now to realize that it means something to me.

I'm a pretty rational and reasonable person. I accredit it to my empathy, since it allows me to easily put myself in another person's position and see their perspective on a situation or idea. This allows me to make decisions and take certain actions that'll be formatted to match other people's abilities to understand what I say or do, and make them more likely to agree with me and be on board with whatever I'm proposing.

The downside is that rejection hits me hard. I put so much effort into finding solutions to problems and looking for those solutions that make the most sense, that when someone rejects those proposals, it makes no sense to me. They're being unreasonable in their rejections, and even in their requests or suggestions.

I ask a lot of "why's" because I need to understand where the other person is coming from. What's making them take the route they're taking, and what will it take for me to convince them to do it a more reasonable way?

Two major situations have been especially exhausting me in this way. One of them is sort of resolved (not by my choice) and the other one is sort of laying stagnant right now (somewhat by my choice). They've exhausted me and left me broken and lonely. I feel the rejection and it hurts.

But even stronger than the hurtfulness of the rejection, is the total lack of understanding I have in why these people have chosen to reject me. I know that I need to find closure, but I feel like I can't attain it without first understanding, which is what's making these situations even more burdensome and painful.

God must want to smack me in the head all the time for how obvious He makes solutions to me and how oblivious I am to them. The past two times I've gone to church, Pastor Kyle has spoken almost directly to me in his sermons.

I've never had a problem trusting in God for my future. It's easy. I know that God redeems bad situations and any poor decisions I make so they turn around and glorify Him in the end. But it took me this long to realize that trusting in God with all my heart means trusting Him for the present, too.

It's easy for me to not care much about my grades because I know and trust that God'll use me no matter where I end up after college. But I find it hard to trust God in what's going on now.

I kind of want to smack myself in the head for not listening to God sooner. I always heard Him, but I never listened.

This break I have a lot of time to myself because I'm staying in Bing and working full-time. People keep saying they feel bad for me and that I'll be so lonely, and that may be true at some times, but I'm looking forward to it. I'm in this nice limbo where I'm in an environment without the distraction of friends and family, and I don't have schoolwork to worry about getting done every night.

This break is a break for me, and it'll be a time to refocus myself: putting my eyes on things above. I have to figure out what trusting God looks like, because I know it has to be better than what I'm doing now.

siddhartha.

by Hermann Hesse.
Errbody, go read it. Please.



"When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."


"All forms are transitory."

peace.

The past few weeks have been filled with chaos. Sara and family came to visit, my family is moving out of two houses (not one), and people are crazy. It doesn't seem like that much when it's in writing, but I'm kind of dying, here.

I can't wait to get back to Bing just because I want to get away from all of this - though I know I'll be faced with other forms of chaos there.


Looking for peace.

Youth for Christ.

YFC is so much more chill than IV.
This post started out much longer, but I decided it'd be best to not elaborate.

Also, Wildwood was real good.

summer.

I've started writing at least like five posts since I've gotten home from Basileia, but every time I start, I realize that I'm trying to write about three barely related topics at the same time. Too much is going on in my head and not enough is going on around me. I'm frustrated by how little gets done at home, but how impossible it is to have time to do what I know needs to be done.

I'm supposed to be "working for my parents" this summer. As in, I do work around the house(s) for them and they'll pay me for it. We agreed to do this for the summer because they need my help with moving out of two houses and into one (which means consolidating a lot of stuff, emptying the Chenango house, fixing up/painting in the new house, and fixing up/painting in the LI house so we can eventually sell it), and because they recognize that I could've gotten a job to resuscitate my bank accounts but instead I'm helping them out.

So I'm supposed to be getting tasks and projects to complete over the course of the summer, but so far it's only been shredding very old pay stubs and bills with my mom and finishing 5-minutes jobs for my dad. Not only is this frustrating because the jobs are tedious and make me feel unaccomplished at the end of the day, but it's frustrating because I'm tied down and confined to the house while these tedious and unfulfilling jobs are assigned to me. The highlight of my time back at home has been assembling and mounting a new ceiling fan for our dining room, but even that was slow-moving.

I need projects! I need work. I need something for my hands and feet to do while my mind is going crazy. I can't relax at night if I feel like I haven't accomplished anything during the day. And, so far, this summer has me feeling anything but accomplished.

I know that this'll change. My mom keeps telling me that when I get upstate, there'll be plenty for me to work on. I'm somewhat worried that I'll be spending a lot of time up there this summer instead of home relaxing, but I'd rather spend the majority of my summer there, getting things done, than here, feeling useless all the time.

I'm also going to Wildwood (NJ) with the high schoolers from my youth group and the other Youth for Christ affiliated youth groups on LI for the last week of June. I'm excited to go because I've gone on the trip as a student three times and I know how much fun it is to basically live on the beach for a week. But I think it'll be a great experience as a leader, too. I'm looking forward to seeing how I can relate to these kids and help them in getting to know God better. I think it'll be refreshing to see how these kids experience and relate with God and aspects of Christianity, compared my interactions with God over the past year.

I have high hopes for the trip, and I don't think I'll be disappointed. I think preparing myself for coming back home afterward will be what determines whether what I learn on the trip will actually stay true in my life or not.

I had a dream...again.

While I was home for our first spring break, last week, I had more Jack Bauer minivan dreams.

I love driving the minivan at home. This is for two reasons: 1) I like being higher up when I drive. It's better visibility for driving, and everything just looks better when you're higher off the ground. 2) It means I'm home. And I have a deep attachment to that car after it pretty much being my car for more than a year.

The second reason is better than the first. Not in legit terms, though it probably is the more legit reason, but just that it was really, really good to be home.

For my first year of college, I wanted to do whatever I could to leave campus as late as I could for vacation, and come back as soon as I could. I went back to school like a week before dorms opened during my first winter break just because I wanted to. And it's not like home's a terrible place. My family's real good and loving and all that, and I like spending time with them.

But this year, I just loved being home. It made it really difficult to come back to school and all the responsibilities that didn't exist in West Babylon. While I was home, my time was split between home, Steff's house and Grandma's house.  I'd chill at home and read for school while being with family. I even made bi bim bap one night for dinner (Sort of. I had to improvise with some things, I'm white.). I'd go over to Steff's house, usually in the afternoon, and just talk with her while holding her baby for an hour or two. There's something about holding a baby that's just comforting and calming. And makes everything better. Like when you have a cup of good, strong coffee when you have have coffee in like a week. And then I'd head over to Grandma's house and make the Easter chocolates with Aunt Theresa.

If people ask me how my break was, I'll answer with "nice and relaxing." And it really was. I feel like if I had another week or two of that, I'd be golden for the rest of the semester. But I didn't. And now I'm just tired. Mad tired.

For my Russian lit class, we recently read Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which is a pretty crazy book, but it's a real good read. So here's the noteworthy quote:

"Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace."

I don't think I'll be giving myself into the hands of death to relieve it, but I'm weary.

Mad weary.

star trek.

[My apologies to all the die-hard Star Trek fans out there, this is edited and set to some music. The entire episode is on youtube, though, if you want to hear what's actually going on in the episode.]

If I was committed enough, I'd start a blog with all the life lessons and things my dad teaches/says. Tonight while driving back from an Islanders-Senators game [Sens won :)], my dad randomly starts describing this scene from Star Trek to me. All throughout, of course, I'm thinking, "What on earth were we talking about before that this relates to?"

After describing this battle scene (featuring Captain Kirk, of course) to every last detail, he says:

"And why do I remember this one scene from a random episode after decades and decades of time that's gone by since I first saw it? Because it teaches you about problems. When you're faced with a problem, the solution is always around you. You just have to look for it. God never faces you with a problem you can't overcome. He's provided everything you need to get past and conquer it."

He then went on to say how Star Trek was a key player in his spiritual development (along with everyone/everything else on the list, including Bob Dylan, road trips, etc.). And I learned new words tonight (as I always do when talking to my dad): indomitable and campy.

last night.

I had a dream that I got my nose pierced, in between trying to keep three bombs (planted in minivans) from blowing up various parts of downtown Binghamton.

Let me explain.

Large group's theme for this coming semester is 24 - that explains the bombs and me being Jack Bauer.
It was spring fling in my dream so piercings and tattoos were heavily discounted at the time, and I'm secretly addicted to piercings - that explains the nose piercing.
However, I'm not really sure why the bombs were in minivans and why I thought it was okay to get my nose pierced while there were still two more bombs/minivans to find and disarm and/or drive somewhere to safely detonate.

goodbye, blue monday.

It's starting to bother me that all that I soak up, all the life lessons and morals and cool credos to live life by from reading never seem to be applicable. I just read Breakfast of Champions and Vonnegut makes fun of our society (or the society of the 70s) and has all these cool points that are tweet-/facebook status-/gtalk status-worthy that I can say, "hey, you're right. I'm going to start applying this to my life," to, but I still don't. There's nothing to apply it to.

Maybe that's why I felt the need to write this. To somehow make what I've soaked up tangible and [semi-]permanent. Otherwise I feel like it's lost and forgotten. What are the chances that I'll encounter some situation in my life in the future and I'll be able to recall when Vonnegut describes the plot of one of Kilgore Trout's many short stories and its deeper meaning, to somehow aid me in that situation? I like to think that it'll happen but based on the quality of my memory at this stage of my life, I'm not too hopeful.

Anyway, I really like it. I like Vonnegut, too. Knowing that my dad and I have similar tastes, I should have realized much sooner that he'd already have a lot of books I want to read. I'll have to keep searching around the bookshelves of my house to see if any more of his stuff is hidden amongst all the other timeless treasures of our household.

In any case, since I need to keep a record of Vonnegut's stuff somewhere, I'll share some of the quotes that I might have otherwise devoted a status or tweet to, here:

"Trout became a fanatic on the importance of ideas as causes and cures for diseases. But nobody would listen to him. He was a dirty old man in the wilderness, crying out among the trees and underbrush, 'Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease!'"

"'The picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal--the'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us--in a mouse, in a derma in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. Our awareness is all that is alive an maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

I have just heard from this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, a story about her husband and an idiot who was about to be executed at Shepherdstown. Very well--let a five-year-old paint a sacred interpretation of that encounter. Let that five-year-old strip away the idiocy, the bars, the waiting electric chair, the uniform of the guard, the gun of the guard, the bones and meat of the guard. What is that perfect picture which any five-year-old can paint? Two unwavering bands of light.'"

"I had nothing in my hand, but such was my power over Trout that he would see in it whatever I wished him to see. I might have shown him a Helen of Troy, for instance, only six inches tall.

'Mr. Trout--Kilgore--' I said, 'I hold in my hand a symbol of wholeness and harmony and nourishment. It is Oriental in its simplicity, but we are Americans, Kilgore, and not Chinamen. We Americans require symbols which are richly colored and three-dimensional and juicy. Most of all, we hunger for symbols which have not been poisoned by great suns our nation has committed, such as slavery and genocide and criminal neglect, or by tinhorn commercial greed and cunning.

Look up, Mr. Trout,' I said, and I waited patiently. 'Kilgore--?'

The old man looked up, and he had my father's wasted face when my father was a widower--when my father was an old old man.

He saw that I held an apple in my hand."

"What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this: [illustration]

This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this: [illustration]

What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe.

And so on.

Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes."