"And What's More, You'll Be a Man, My Son!"

anatomy of a lie

2012-02-14T17:32:00.000-08:00

"Hey...what is 'economics of botany'?"

The girl wasn't reading it anymore but i had been curious since i saw the front of the textbook, twenty minutes ago. It sat on the table between us while she filled out a thick stack of forms, while i tapped away on my laptop. Facebook. I was on facebook, putting off my studies.

Her face lit up and she started to explain. Turns out if you're minoring in biology, you can take a biology class where you study plants. And in one class, you read a book entitled economics of botany. turns out.

We talked for a bit and i found out that she worked in a greenhouse and that she named her plants, just like me. We discussed green thumbs and careers and majors and plans after our graduation in may, and what we were doing in the student union on a thursday afternoon outside the starbucks.

She was fun to talk to and i enjoyed the conversation. Eventually i returned to my "work" and she returned to hers. I redeemed a half hour by catching up on some e-mails and facebook messages and then packed up my things. She looked up.

See, i've been reading this book, dear reader. It's called [anatomy of a lie] and it is a woman's exploration of "lies and why good people tell them." I was assigned to read it back in high school, after i betrayed my parents' trust and got caught one time. I remember it being extremely convicting, but in a thoughtful way. Over this past Christmas break, i picked it up and packed it into my bags to go back to austin. I started it a couple weeks ago. I'm a slow reader. It's not a long book.

The author explores the nature of lying from the standpoint of a woman who believes in God and is a Christian, but also believes that Nazis shouldn't be allowed to kill Jews if those Nazis come knocking and demand to know where those Jews are hiding. Who believes that Hebrew midwives play into God's plan by lying to Pharaoh about sparing firstborn male children in Egypt so that Moses can be set adrift in the Nile "in a sweater poorly knit," as the band mewithoutyou sings.

She asks some good questions and invites the reader to wonder whether our little white lies really do matter, with the implication that yes, they really do matter. What if the lies we tell to smooth over conversations or minimize awkward interactions end up robbing us and those around us of authentic, raw, honest encounters in our everyday life? (And these white lies are intended to deceive. There is a "not revealing" information in the moment that is not dishonest; she is not talking about that. Intention to mislead.)

But i've been wondering about when i'm tempted to lie, and when i intend to deceive. Is it to protect me? Is it to protect those i love? (questions the author of [anatomy of a lie] asks as well.) And wondering whether all of these deceptions are just a big effort for me to take control in my life. Because the fact is, when i lie, i manipulate a situation. I provide false information that i want the other person to act on, because i want a certain response, a certain outcome above the one that just might happen if the other person(s) have an accurate view of the situation. I take away others' freedom by lying. They are no longer free to interact on the basis of reality. When some one asks me, "how far have you gotten on [insert assignment/project name here]?" And my answer is an attempt to smooth over their disappointment, i am really taking hold of a situation and attempting to steer it, with participants and all, to a my particular goal. And those participants, those people, i am manipulating them. I am not meeting them face to face. I am not being willing to hold everything that they might feel if they are fully present in the situation. I'm not giving them that chance. And i'm not letting them have the chance to hold what i feel, either.

the idea is that lying to save some one's life may be understandable. but is it right? the question is bothering me, because i know if it came down to it, and there was a secret police officer facing me across my kitchen table and innocent people hiding in my basement and that police officer was questioning me, i would say, "i don't know." or something else. but i'm wondering if that's just me not taking God seriously when He says He works everything out to good. because God didn't say "thou shalt not...except when the other person is evil, or you know they will hurt some one." because what God did do is He gave us rules for living and then promised He would love us and have our best interests in mind, and that sometimes it would be hard, but that He can do anything and that everything would eventually be redeemed.

"Hey. This is kind of random. But can i ask you a question?" And the girl said sure, and as i sat there with my backpack all packed up, ready to walk out of the student union and away from this girl i met a half hour before, i asked her for her thoughts. "Is it ever ok to lie?"

"Sure it is. When your parents are asking about things that are none of their business, and you're 21, so it's legal....When things might be awkward otherwise....Oh yeah. To save a life. Definitely."

She listed off scenarios without hesitation. my frontal lobe disagreed with nearly all of them. And i sat there convicted. Because the principles in my mind were so different from her everyday practices. But i had a feeling that she was probably more honest about her marriage of mindset and actions in her life than i was in mine.

Been thinkin about that. God's forgiveness is awesome. He had it for Rahab, He had it for the Hebrew midwives. He had it for David. He has it for you and me. And I've been turning it over in my head. Where I can be more truthful in my life, more consistent. As Mark Johnson says, to be one man in every situation. I think it might lead to some difficult conversations with friends over this semester where I'm tempted to step back and distance myself instead of stepping in and risking rejection or alienation or misunderstanding while I come clean where it may lead to good. And I hope it will lead to deeper dimensions in those relationships.

2012-02-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

this is to commemorate that i have been to a bunch of coffeeshops here in austin. usually when i study, i gravitate toward starbucks. their decor reminds me of a desk, nice and bland and non-distracting. i've also been to the coffee bean and tea leaf, a couple locations, but i shan't include those in this list either. perhaps i'll put a note by each one, a fun fact. (part of me writing this is so i don't forget.)

lava java- near campus, now closed. a cute girl and a guy who always seemed high worked there in the mornings when i went.

good bike cafe- a trailer in a bike shop parking lot, their loose leaf tea was amazing on freezing winter days. also now closed.

spiderhouse coffee- near campus, a hipster hangout. they have attitude. and it's a little dirty. it's worth going to see whether you like it or not.

cafe medici- across the street from campus. their latte's are amazing. chairs are uncomfortable, and it's not a good place to have private conversations; tables are close and walls are echo-y. nevertheless, a good place, especially if you can grab the couch.

la tazza fresca- this place has historically been my favorite coffee shop here in austin. colored lights hang from the ceiling, old tinny jazz plays through speakers overhead, and weird paintings of cats, women, the moon, or all three hang on the walls. it's small and if they're busy, be prepared to wait for your drink, but they sell wine and beer and also pizza, and sandwiches, and calzones, and cake and pies. and hookah. they have hookah. their chai is to die for. and they have espresso cubano.

jo's- i went to the one on 2nd, they also have a location on south congress, which is a bit funkier. i remember nothing special about the place, but i know somebody who regularly uses it as a study spot. something about the "right level of ambient noise."

jp's java- a favorite study spot near campus, i never could enjoy this place. their drinks are expensive, loud noise level, and their latte was mediocre. my friend likes their sweetened iced coffee.

mozart's- THE town lake coffeeshop experience. if you can, go there. their coffee and coffee drinks are mediocre, and they know it, and they're ok with it. they're a little more expensive because they have one of the sweetest spots on the lake imaginable. you can sit outside or in. a good place to study if you can find a table. when it's raining on the lake though...oh man. then it is a divine place to sit. (note: ordering a cafe au lait gets you a free refill and then unlimited refills on brewed coffee the rest of your stay. they don't tell you that at the counter.)

cherrywood, on e. 38th- a hipster hangout if i ever saw one. pleasant.

cafe bennu- another popular study spot, open 24 hours. their specialty mocha lattes are pretty amazing, made with different types of chocolate and named after famous novels, i.e. "the great gatsby." but they are like $5. other drinks are good too. they have cords suspended from the ceiling, hanging over each table so you can always find a place to plug in your laptop. cool.

quack's- in hyde park, north of north campus. to be honest, i've only gotten a peanut butter cookie here. it was delicious. and i tried cory's...tea. i'm gonna have to go back. it's a bakery/coffeeshop. mobbed with studious macbook users taking up halves of tables.

austin java- they have several locations. they're cool. go there. if you get food, try their spicy african peanut soup. they have vegan cupcakes, too. now you have to go.

genuine joe's coffeehouse- good chai. interesting mix of wall decor. a good balance of different types of seats: comfy chairs, bar seats, little tables, bigger tables...

jeanie's java- on south congress, way south. disappointing. jittery neon walls and two, maybe three tables. though my friend did get their pb&j smoothie, which tasted like...a blended up sandwich.

flightpath coffee- another favorite study spot around here, really retro with 70s style tables and vinyl chairs, and pastel colors. i'm not the biggest fan, but they do sell beer and it's kind of a hipster hangout.

epoch coffee- on north loop blvd, driving distance from campus. another 24 hour place, ALWAYS crowded. but if you can find a seat, a good place to hang out or meet some one. (as in, meet up with some one. not strike up a conversation with a random...)

irie bean- on south lamar. miss-able. the muffins and coffee were good, but the place wasn't anything special, and the semi-rasta vibe was weird. guys at the bar talking to the barista about their latest video game escapades. hm.

thunderbird coffee- i went to the koenig lane one. cafe au lait was watery but the chai and brewed coffee were both solid. baristas friendly. good layout, and they have npr coming through the speakers when i got there at 7 a.m.. bonus cool points for that.

halcyon- downtown, so you have to hunt for parking. but this place is known for having s'mores that you make yourself over a sterno burner, apparently. i went in the morning with my family for brunch, so i didn't experience it. a bit more urban than most coffeeshops, though appropriate for downtown. still cozy. a pitbull dogwalking parade went by in the street while we ate there.

progress coffee- east of 35. my roommate said it's a busy study spot; i found it uncrowded when i went. i'll be back again. unremarkable but in a good way. a good place to sit and think.

dominican joe's- on south congress, dominican joe's can be HARD to find parking at. usually busy. a great study spot if you want to make the drive. if you see a girl with a textbook open there, odds are good that she is a) a Christian, b) a nursing student or c) both. don't ask me why. they partner with a faith-based nonprofit to trade with coffee growers in the dominican republic. their honey nut latte is pretty sweet, but if you're in the mood, don't let that phase you. faze you? fase...

pacha coffee- this place is tiny and crowded and very hard to find open, since they close at 7 pm. they're on burnet and the one time i managed to get inside and get a seat, i was overwhelmed. they have bright patterned tiles up and down their walls, and ethically treated everything. they have bulgarian yogurt from a local farmer's market. my table was microscopic and i kept getting distracted from my reading by everyone who knew everybody else in the coffeeshop. overwhelming and awesome.

houndstooth coffee- i went to the one on north lamar. just the other day. can't believe i haven't gone before. their coffee is expensive; i paid close to $5 for a regular latte. it WAS possibly the best latte i have ever tasted, though. they gave me the choice of two different espresso beans. kind of loud and a bit cramped, but a neat place. next time i'll do the $3 small coffee.

monkey nest coffee- also on burnet, i found this place last year and didn't tell anyone about it for a while. it's like the graduate student study spot, full of older students poring over their books and laptops. their standard chairs are comfortable and their tables are marble, i think, and good-sized for studying with others. a premium study spot, though they close at 10 pm.

still to be tried:

kick butt coffee near st. john's

once over on s. 1st

dolce vita on duval (near quack's)

la boite on s. congress

the science of enjoyment

2012-02-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

to my left, outside the window, a mother is putting her kids in their car seats, leaning over behind the open door. an iced something drink and a juicebox of milk (can i say that?) sit on the hood of their tahoe. starbucks is worth a whole lot of "deft maneuvering," as the band Cake would say. and that mom. although she might replace the noun "starbucks" with "caffeine induced sanity." what am i saying. i don't know her. i'm just a college kid at a coffee shop.

the clouds are white and pale-gold and billowy, and grey and streaky. today is a rainy day, whether or not any makes it to the ground.

our small group read through ecclesiastes 1-3 last night when we met. we took some time to think and journal over it a bit, and then we all shared what we got out of it. ecclesiastes can kinda hit me like a ton of bricks sometimes, and it definitely did last night. it's like all of the pessimistic ideas and negative philosophies i've believed in my worst moments are packed into a wave of overwhelming despair, written by a poet, in words that travel along my neurons and jump synapses in my brain with ease. racing along the white matter and into the grey matter.

(SCIENCE TANGENT...side note: did you know, dear reader, that neurons [read: nerves] have long, sheathed middles? the sheathes are myelin, and they help signals travel along them faster. myelin is white. at one end of the nerve, you have the axon terminals, a little spidery thing that releases chemicals that float to the next nerve. [this is a synapse: the gap that neurotransmitters, chemicals, must float across from neuron to neuron.] at the other end you have the neuron's cell body. so the next nerve receives chemicals at it's cell body, through dendrites. dendrites are arranged in a spidery way as well, around the cell body. the parts of nerves that don't have myelin, the beginnings and the ends, are grey. the reason your brain is called "grey matter" is because this is where many nerves converge, where tons and tons of information feeds into a huge network, where you reason and process and make judgments and imagine. the other place you have grey matter collected all together is your spinal cord. which is why you sometimes find executive decisions made without your brain being consulted, why you jerk back from pain before you have time to realize the pain consciously. the spinal cord makes reflex-based decisions.)

not only that, but solomon has a reputation, to boot. i can't just shrug off his naysaying and say, "yeah, but it's just one man's opinion," because he was termed by God to be The Wisest Man...Ever. i mean, wise men can be wrong, but they're usually not wrong when they're writing a book of the Bible.

so after i started reading, i started thinking. i found some good perspective on my problems. "People will say, 'Here is a new thing!' But it has been before, long before we were born" is how the english contemporary version puts 1:10, i think. it's humbling, thinking that in another time there was a young man pondering his future, wondering about his loose ends and his colors in array, seeking a passionate life and not knowing where it ended...there was a man like this, long before i was born. it has been done before. and before that. and before that. there are people with stories very much like my own, who have come and passed away as God's children, each one feeling fully alive and urgent in the moment, each one wanting specific things for their lives and stories. that's cool for me to read. it's encouraging. and humbling. and it makes me admire God.

AND i noted that the book is not about becoming a noodle in life.

that came up in discussion. i think after i face my fears, voiced in ecclesiastes' despairing verses, after i "look my demons in the eye," as ray lamontagne phrases it, i can track with solomon. because in the end, solomon's words to tear down the meaning of searching for meaning in small and temporary things in life....they're just that. they're to tear it down in the eyes of those who are chasing those things. solomon sinned in some of his search for meaning, what with the multiple wives/concubines business. but take out the sin, and most things he enjoyed and did aren't sinful, you know? i get to remind myself of that. how can it be sinful to enjoy God's creation, to plant fruit trees, to use money that has been earned by honest labor, to find goodness in the way music sounds?

solomon didn't become a monk after he wrote ecclesiastes. he didn't self flagellate, i don't think. and even if he did, Jesus and his oenophile-friendly miracles would indicate that God is pleased with pleasure. He's not surprised at serotonin. dopamine wasn't created in a lab in hell. evil is not original, my friend mark johnson reminds me; it's just twisted. solomon's search for meaning in earthly experiences ended so badly and left him so miserable because he enjoyed things badly. he didn't do a good job at it. he was no good at having fun. like the guy at a party who throws out one last joke that turns a hilarious idea into something disgusting, or just disgustingly worn out...solomon would be that guy. he'd be the guy puking on the roller coaster because he wanted to ride it six times instead of five, while his friends watched from the ground, happy with their five rides. solomon wrote ecclesiastes because he tried to eat a lot of food at a pool party and start a chicken fight in the pool after his last plate of potato salad. he would be the guy that you're at a bar with, and he's not even present; he's looking in his lap, texting people to see if somebody else is coming, or line up a hangout for afterward. as c.s. lewis describes in Perelandra, solomon probably persisted in turning from the good that was, because it is not the good he expected. in this way, the good that was became something not-very-good at all. and from what we read in ecclesiastes, solomon tried alot of things. and he used his money to enable these efforts. solomon was selfishly pursuing his own pleasure for a long time, i think. one translation says he planted orchards. another says he planted a forest. either way, it was a while.

i have a friend in canada whom i went to Bible school with, in germany. his name is steve. steve told me about the principle of diminishing return. it's why he passed up seconds on dessert sometimes. it's the idea that there's a point where having more of something leads to incrementally less enjoyment as you have more. the first brownie is awesome. you want a second one. but the second one will not be as good as the first, and if you try to stuff a third (or an eighth, however you work,) in before your brain gets the signal from your stomach that you're full, you'll end up regretting it afterward. each brownie was the same with the same ingredients, you know? but you tried to make it more than it was intended. you can't stack brownie happiness.

our brains work this way too, incidentally. like...more directly. cocaine users need more cocaine to achieve the sensations they felt with their first experience, and more as time goes on. the cocaine triggers dopamine which rushes into the synapses, but with each hit, your brain releases less dopamine. it's why people overdose. usually it's not because they're greedy. it's because their brain is being rewired and they want what they once had.

so where does this leave me? i don't know. they are good reminders. i want a good job, and i'm beginning to fill out applications for RN positions at hospitals. it's a good reminder as i have hopes and hinge things on those hopes. it's a good reminder for me with food, because i really, really like sugar...and that has come back to bite me at times. and it's good to remember that solomon even said that wisdom was meaningless. i can be worshipful and happy even when i haven't churned my life through the gears of my thinking-head for a while. mhm.

life is best in the snapshots

2012-01-24T16:47:00.000-08:00

life is not best in the snapshots. let me just say that. sometimes the best catchphrases are the most inaccurate ways to describe reality. that said, this is a theme i'd like to develop, and so for now, life is best in the snapshots.

this past sunday, my small group met at zilker park to slackline and play frisbee and kick a ball around. zilker is a large, large city park on the bank of town lake. it's where the austin city limits music festival is held each fall. zilker park is home to barton springs pool, which is an appropriately named swimming spot. i've heard that the water temperature remains the same the entire year because it's spring fed. this temperature is somewhere between appropriate-for-polar-bears and appropriate-for-glaciers. it's freezing. and it's a blast to visit there in the summer. it's also worth noting that year round, from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. nightly, barton springs pool is open for swimming, and it's free to go during that hour (normally it's ~$2). i went once with cory this past fall. it was insane. and it was a sort of exuberant insanity, being a part of the group of people who came to swim at this hour. we were all crazy and we knew it. but at least we were crazy together.

anyways. austin. zilker park. if you come to visit me in austin, dear reader, we can go there. we can even swim at barton springs that night. there are some weird people that swim then. part of the fun of austin is that the weirder your activities are, ("why am i doing this??") the more you find yourself surrounded by interesting people. haha.

but back to sunday. we all hung out there. at one point, this girl was taking pictures of each person who was sitting in a group, talking. we had finished a soccer game, and my team had confirmed that we would indeed be bringing baked goods to the next small group meeting as tribute to the winning team.

the camera moved, focused, and clicked. i watched my friend look at each picture after she took them, commenting or laughing. she pointed the lens at me. i contorted my face into the most awkward expression i possess...and a laugh or two confirmed that indeed, i looked awkward.

but when all the pictures were looked at, we found that i looked quite normal. it happened that the shutter clicked as my face was midway between self-conscious-unsure and self-conscious-intentionally-awkward. the end result was a picture of me with a neutral expression on my face, sitting there cross-legged in the grass.

weird, huh? i knew a friend in germany who posited that life is a continuum of photogenic and awkward moments woven together, one after another after another. this is why pictures taken a half-second apart can be so different, why some photos seem made for profile pics and some are full of half-open eyelids and red pupils.

i recently read In Constant Prayer, by robert benson. it's about the daily office, about praying fixed hour prayers as a spiritual discipline. it was a really good book. i got a book of prayers for Christmas that i started to use for a while. now it's on my shelf, but i hope to revisit the idea again. anyway, benson writes conversationally and humbly about his life as a protestant who prays fixed hour prayers, why he started, and why he continues. he used this phrase that has stuck with me. he said we live our lives "between the daily and the divine."

the idea is that a scheduled prayer will not bring God near, or nearer, at those hours of the day. benson acknowledges that often he prays his prayers without feeling God's presence, owns the lack of control and frustration that often comes with giving time to God regularly, in the hope that He will make Himself known through those times. and benson doesn't limit God, but he does argue that God gives practical ways to offer our worship to Him. robert benson has experienced some awesome things in moments of praying the daily office, and the reason he continues to pray the daily office is because he continues to hope of meeting with the Divine. we would all love to have spiritual experiences every time we open our Bible or spend time in prayer...or even most of those times. it's the daily. we're humans on earth. the idea of a spiritual meeting with our Creator...that's the divine that we hope for.

i love that. it feels so grounded, so realistic--and yet so boldly hopeful.

this idea and a few others which may be written about in future posts have served to shape my new year's hopes. january is nearly finished, but i'd like to explore the idea of treating my relationship with God and other people as a walk. we call it the Christian walk. or we did. maybe michael w. smith still does. him and sandi patty. these days maybe it's called a battle more often. there are implications in these words. i'm almost 24. as a young man, i feel places where i want to fight and i want to win. i want to be adventurous. i have these desires and they're good.

and at the same time, i hear alot of energetic "i'm gonna beat sin once and for all" type language from other passionate, energetic young people around me...i hear it in church. i hear it with friends. i speak it. i hear it in what isn't said. i feel the pull. i've realized i really, really like the idea of leaving struggles behind after a time. i really, really hate the idea that the things i see in my parents' lives, their struggles...those things may be things that have been temptations their whole lives. i get impatient and i see verses that say "more than conquerors" and i wonder how the power of Christ could effect anything less than beating-it-for-good style victories in my life, one after another after another?

[see how insidiously woven together the truth and lies are in those last few sentences?]

i picture myself struggling with different temptations decades down the road. and i'll sigh and be like, "alright, God, chapter 34...i wonder when you'll cure me of stealing. because coveting was eight years, and laziness was twenty..." but i'll feel ok, see, because laziness wasn't 57 and counting. (i don't struggle with stealing, but twas an example.)

and so i can find myself treating myself less like my Father's son, and more like His slave. i get really hard on myself. i get angry at myself and disappointed in my inability to get it together. there's a place for stern attitudes toward sin, but there's also a place for a fatherly love that embraces sinners. i think toward myself, i am far less inclined to take the latter, to be kind.

a walk. a long journey. ups and downs. getting tired. days and nights and days. sunny weather. storm. wrong turns. good nights of sleep. bad nights of sleep. beautiful mornings. snapshots of beautiful and mundane. the daily and the divine. less conquering and more learning? less finding out and more coming to be known. fewer answers and more understanding.

"so you know who you are and you know what you want. i've been where you're going, and it's not that far. it's too far to walk, but you don't have to run. you'll get there in time, get there in time." -boys (lesson one), by jars of clay.

2012-01-18T11:36:00.000-08:00

today was the first day of my last semester of classes as an undergraduate at the university of texas at austin, God willing. it's a curious feeling.

the only class i had was public health, the lecture portion. we'll be doing clinicals in the community this semester too. (one of my clinical instructors last semester said that she thought i would like public health. she said that me and the others in our clinical group had a "public health bent" or something like that.) but for the lecture today, we met our prof and she went over the syllabus and then started into her intro about what public health is and why we need nurses with this focus and what kinds of things they do.

we talked about some health issues that our country faces these days, like type 2 diabetes and drug-resistant bugs, access to nutritive foods for the poor and smoking cessation for everyone.

yeah, and at one point we watched a movie. we had taken a few breaks at that point in the class, little 10 minute breaks where we could get up and go to the bathroom or whatever. i caught up with a few of my classmates about how their break was and told them a little about my own. so yeah, we came back from our last break and our instructor had this youtube video up about being a public health nurse in bethlehem, alaska. it was a few minutes long, and this nurse, who looked maybe a year, maybe two years older than me, had moved from the lower 48 to this area of alaska that really needed public health nurses. it showed her waiting for her little plane on a bench inside some little building while the weather raged by, delaying one of her trips. "you've just gotta be flexible. but it's always an adventure," a woman says. it showed her walking through the mud in this town to meet with the city council, which was a few bearded old guys, one or two of them inuits by the look of it, and an old woman. they were telling her their towns problems, the substance abuse and barriers to hygiene that made up their biggest health problems. she's listening and taking little notes on a pad as her mind works, sitting there at the end of their beat-up old table in her jacket, and scrubs are nowhere in sight.

it showed views from her flights in little cessna airplanes over forests, traveling to the next remote town on the map. it showed her being outfitted for her trips, getting her survival pack, "because you'll be in a plane, miles from anywhere, if it goes down. hopefully it won't!" her supervisor says with a smile.

i found myself smiling as the video continued. "this job will stretch you. you will be amazed, you'll be frustrated, you'll cry, you'll laugh...i think if you want to work here, you should consider it carefully. but i'm so glad i'm here."

alive. i felt alive. the video ended and somebody turned the light back on, and i looked around. there were classmates saying "no way" and classmates saying "oh my gosh" and other things. a guy sitting in front of me, one who is extremely intelligent and also acts extremely bored in most classes, turns and says casually, "i could do that." the girl beside him is also known to be extremely competent, and replies, "oh, i mean i could do that..."

i wonder at the atmosphere that stresses sufficiency above all else. i wonder why i ask the question "could i do that?" when no one is asking me. when some one else is sharing how they come alive in a difficult situation. i wonder why i hinge identity on that. it feels gross. and it feels dishonoring, to hear life shared and hear some one make it about themselves and their competency. that moment frustrated me. because neither of those two people really wanted "that." and i was excited about it. i was excited about the adventure that is possible for a public health nurse in bethehem, alaska.

What Do You Do With Your Sadness?

2011-12-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

i wrote this months ago, and i thought of it the other day, so i thought i'd share it. it doesn't reflect my mood at 2:50 on december 21st, but i've reflected on thoughts like these more than a few times. having emotions that aren't what you want to be feeling is ...pretty common to everybody, i'd guess.

"What do you do with your sadness?
Do you let it wash over you,
Like a wave at the beach?
Do you stuff it down and quicken your step,
Doing other things within your reach?
Do you write it out, alone in your room
With a pen, on a page?
Do you find people or look for empty rooms?
Do you listen to music or listen to nothing?
Do you face it head on, or do you run?
And if you stay, to meet the sadness
Is your jaw set;
Does your lip quiver?
Do you embrace, or lash out--
Desperate to give pain to the Giver?
And if you do not stay for sadness, if you run
How do you know when you have won?
Do you hold it in your mouth, slowly tasting it,
and tasting it,
Or leaning over your knees, take it in both hands as you turn it on all sides--
Do you wear it, to cover something worse for others to see?
Do you leave it in places,
And find it in other places?
Does it surprise you sometimes,
And does that anger you?
Do you offer sadness a few tears and a few deep breaths
Or a decent cry;
Do you barter? The more tears
Shed, for your freedom when it's over
When sadness lets you go?

What do you do with your sadness?"

2011-12-19T14:59:00.001-08:00

When ancient time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall
When men who here refuse to pray
On rocks and mountains call,
God's love so sure shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam's race--
The saints' and angels' song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.

-The Love of God, by Frederick Lehman.

This song has been quieting me recently.

Have you ever known something as both sad and beautiful? In the same breath. I was reminded of that today. It's hard for me to face something that is both good and sad. It's hard for me to appreciate things that are sad-beautiful.

Christmas is six days away. Hopefully I'll give some costly gifts this year as well to those I love, though money will have little to do with it. And also, I'll probably give gifts that as tokens of a relationship would be ridiculous, but as something designed to give pleasure to another will be fitting gifts. Part of the goodness of close relationships is that no proving has to be done through gifts. Presents can be "because I love you" rather than "to show you I love you."
This is something that only recently occurred to me, which made me smile at my analytic ways. Part of the fun of Ecclesiastes is that at the end of the book, Solomon returns to the field laborer, the one who had no existential crises but took days one at a time and enjoyed God's blessings from a humble heart, and the Wisest Man Ever gets to say, "You know, you were right all along. All of my thinking led me back to your simple faith and sincere lifestyle." (figuratively speaking, of course. solomon may or may not have had actual people in mind when he talks about lifestyles in ecclesiastes.) I've felt that. The realization that much thought only made me take longer to arrive at a simple answer. Hah. Makes me laugh at myself, to myself.

Re-reading "Wild at Heart." There are important reminders for me throughout, so far. Re-learning to continue on my journey with God through each experience by asking Him, "What is it You want me to learn? What are you trying to teach me? What do you want me to let go of?" ...rather than licking my wounds and retreating.

Cory has five weeks till he moves. I'm gonna miss that guy. We went camping last week, which was great fun.

Thinking on risk these days. Where I could embrace it more. I've learned to be the dad in risky situations, I've learned to manage risk through control. I've learned to avoid injury, I've learned to watch out for others because "he's the nurse" in certain groups of people. Managing risk will be a great skill for my job in the hospital. And it just might be deadly to my soul if I perfect it for life outside the hospital, life with family and friends.

the end of the semester

2011-12-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

"Daniel is an exceptional student..."

i took the paper from my instructor's hands and read over her comments about my performance this semester in clinicals. i felt blessed by the words on the paper, and a little bit skeptical.

"Wow. 'a vast knowledge of pathophysiology,' huh? That's quite a lot," I half-joked, half doubted to her, as I skimmed the comments and then read them over once again more closely.

"It's because you have it," she responded matter-of-factly, and somewhat curtly as she eyed me over her glasses.

"...oh. Hm." I didn't know how to respond.

this clinical involved two instructors, which meant they both had comments on separate sheets. both were overwhelmingly positive. this instructor and i talked about my semester for a few more minutes, and talk turned to my future plans in nursing and the next steps after my graduation in may.

she walked out the door after we shook hands and wished a "good break" on each other, and i continued with my last clinical day, feeling blessed and overwhelmed with my evaluation.

i was with a school nurse in an elementary school that day, as i had been every friday for this clinical. this nurse and i had gotten along pretty well, and i got to know her way of doing things around the office and with different kids. i had gotten to know a few of the kids in the school, and actually enjoyed interacting with them, to my surprise. turns out kids can be pretty fun. who knew. :)

at noon, the nurse had to leave, so another nurse came to fill in for the afternoon. as the regular nurse worried about details and instructions to leave behind that morning, i could tell she was a bit uncomfortable with leaving her job and everything that entailed to the substitute. she asked me, "can you make sure so-and-so gets her glucose checked before lunch?" "can you make sure all of the medications get charted for the day?" and "i'll put my cell phone number here, so if you have any questions, feel free to call me." i assured her that we would clarify if anything was unclear, that i would help the substitute nurse, and that i would provide for the mentioned tasks. sensing her apprehension, i asked her, "do you want me to call you at the end of the day? i can call you as i leave the school and just tell you how everything went, if you want." she smiled self consciously: "i mean, you don't have to, but if you wanted to...i would really appreciate it."

the substitute nurse came and instructions changed hands and i was introduced to the new nurse. "daniel has been here a while so he knows a lot of the kids." "oh, good. i'm glad you're here," the new nurse told me. the day went well and it was a really cool experience. the substitute nurse had years of experience, yet she let me help her with alot of tasks and bounced decisions off of me as we decided which parents needed to be called and which kids simply needed some empathy and encouragement to return to class. i did call the regular nurse as i left the school for the day and assured her that the day passed without incident.

that day, i took my lunch break shortly after getting my evaluation from my instructor. i walked to the empty break room and stood by the window for a few minutes, watching the rain fall outside and feeling emotions twist inside me.

"And I am wondering what it will take for you to stop shitting on yourself and actually believe you are exceptional." katy's words echoed through my head, from a year ago, written in response to a post about my first semester's evaluation from clinicals. her words had been made into a new year's resolution, eleven months ago.

"There is an arrogance in your refusal to receive good words..." tracy's words also came echoing back unbidden as i looked out at the rain, wondering what to do with my two instructors' words to believe in myself. both of them, writing independently of each other, urged me to have confidence in my abilities in the "areas needing improvement" box of the eval forms. in fact, both forms had only one suggestion for improvement: believe in how far you've come and who you are at this point.

and there are two sides to every coin, even if one side has one student and the other has two knowledgeable nursing instructors, haha. i know the places in my head where i get questions right only by guessing, the places where the computer helps me find correct ranges for blood lab values, the places where my knowledge is spotty and i just barely manage to answer my instructor's questions when she is talking with me about a patient. and i know those places and i know that i need to improve in places, and i know there's alot i don't know. as my instructor and i talked, she asked why i was so hard on myself, and i told my instructor this. and she promptly told me that i was a perfectionist, and i promptly told her she was right. haha.

it was good to have my reasons shot down. it was strange to have my instructor see me so well. it was gratifying to have my nurse trust me, and the substitute nurse trust me as well. i don't really know where i am now. i'm feeling blessed. and thankful for where God has brought me. i'm feeling surprised. i'm feeling scared, with my may graduation fast approaching. i'm feeling more secure these days. i'm feeling eager. i'm feeling hopeful. i'm feeling trustworthy? yes. i do feel that, too.

a friend is not a stair.

2011-11-21T17:46:00.000-08:00

hey.

it's been a while. and some of me hasn't wanted to write the most meaningful things that have been happening this past month, here, on my blog. in community group these days, when we're prompted to share stories of God's faithfulness, i find i am at home in a group of two or three guys. i find i can explain to them God's work these days, the way i feel stretched and the ways i feel strengthened. but in a big coed group...not so much.

two more clinical days and two more class days are all that stand between me and my last semester of nursing school. i've continued to look at my heart during these weeks and the reasons for why i feel inadequate some days and prideful on other days. i've had some repenting to do and some trusting God in who He has made me to be...and i've tried to continue to recognize that there is this game that is commonly played in nursing school, where us students, us nurses-to-be are constantly faced with small successes and failures, whether it be on tests or in clinicals. and it can be easy to look around and wonder, "how did i get here? everyone else seems so qualified." (i've talked with classmates about this "imposter syndrome," where you wonder, "i'm fooling everyone. everyone around me is smarter than me, and i don't belong here.") true, not everyone feels the tug of this game. but at one time or another, most do, i'm sure. and i know i do. part of the way this game is played is that to win, you should think over your classmates till you find one who doesn't seem to catch on as quickly, or has made a potentially-costly mistake in clinical before, or seems in some way to be less progressed than you. and the thought is, "well, i know i'll be a better nurse than them!" and convinced that you certainly aren't the worst in your class, you continue in nursing school, affirmed in your own mind of your reasonable competency.

if this sounds cruel, it's because it is.

i think there's this pressure on us as nursing students to not make mistakes, and i've thought on this before, because nurses are humans, and if humans make mistakes, surely no one expects...? but that's the thing. no one wants the less-careful nurse when they're in the hospital, when their mom or dad is in the hospital, when it's their kid in the bed. no one wants the nurse who has been known to make mistakes. and so there's this drive to be near-perfect, and this distancing from the not-so-perfect, especially in nursing school. because there's alot of fear. we read case studies about medication errors and nurse mistakes and things that happen that end up costing patients their lives or nurses their licenses (or both) and we get scared. and fear can motivate alot of awful behavior, alot of judgmental behavior...can suppress compassion, or understanding.

so comparing myself to a fellow student to boost my confidence may help me stave off doubt, but i just mentally backstabbed a classmate to do it. a potential friend, or a real friend. a person. somebody who has the same goals as i do in nursing school. somebody who is trying hard too, and i get caught up in clawing to the top and i think relationships and authentic friendship get hurt in the process. i don't want to continue doing that. and yeah, patient safety is a priority, and avoiding mistakes is important. but usually when i'm setting myself up as judge in my mind over a fellow classmate's nursing competency, i'm not concerned with the safety of their future patients. i'm concerned with my own feelings of inadequacy.

so i'm praying about it these days and stopping those thoughts of comparison when they come up in my mind these days, and watchful for ways to step out of that mindset. and it is so common in nursing school. i'm serious. i've heard those exact words in many conversations in many different places with many different people over the past year and a half. "i know i'm better than them!" with a laugh.

i don't want to be that. i want to continue friendships in honesty and throw my mental report cards away and pray about the hard parts of nursing school and trust God to bring me to where He wants me, and also to be in control of classmates' futures.

2011-10-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

Samantha and I broke up on sunday. it was hard, and it was good. i think we both knew it was coming, but the realization came very suddenly and it wasn't long or drawn out or dramatic. it was quick and sad and sensible. it's been strange, the aftermath. i don't think either of us were ready for it, and it's just weird to have hopes and plans and dreams with some one and yeah, and be good friends with them too, and then have to say goodbye to all of those things within the space of a half hour on the phone.

my friends here have been amazing. my roommates tim and kevin have both gone through hard breakups, (not that mine...well, whatever) and cory has been great about reminding me about truth as well. "a brother is born for adversity," i think it says in proverbs.

God has given me peace, and it's still hard. and He is good, and it's definitely a faith thing right now.

so if you're reading this, pray for both of us. that we would both believe God's truth about the situation, about what He thinks about us, about His sufficiency. about each other. about His plan.

psalm 27:13. (NIV) "I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." 27:14 (ESV): "Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!"

2011-10-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

"There is a possibility that some new thing is about to unfold before you even though you may not yet perceive it, as the prophet Isaiah once said about a deeper mystery." -In Constant Prayer, p. 11

"...when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night..." -psalm 63:6

"I wish I could feel just the warmth of Your breath, around me as I lie on my bed...for the day I await. 'Cause my heart knows I've found You; and I'm still looking for You" -Closer To Me, Future of Forestry.

i'm starting to read In Constant Prayer, and that sentence made me pause, just now. i don't often take the time to wonder about wondering. i don't often think about mystery.

the psalm, along with the verses before and after, is underlined in my Bible. it's a reminder to me that God is uncharted territory, and that yes, He is consistent and we can know Him. but at the same time, if God was simple and linear, there would be no cause to meditate on Him, no fulfillment in wonder, no place for awe. it's something i need reminding of.

the future of forestry song captures that longing well. the idea of losing sleep simply to think about my Creator and His mysteries is wonderful...and foreign. in my world of nursing pathways and charted out vital signs and graphed out developmental curves, it is more and more a conscious effort to recant the thought, "i know what that means" when a Bible verse is quoted or a sermon point is explained. as i learn more, i need more frequent reminders that

knowledge is not the highest good, that

there are unknowable things, and

those things are worth searching out.

"and how can I stand here with You and not be moved by You? would You tell me how could it be any better than this?"

but it could. because He is far more than the sum of our experiences of Him. which is worth wondering about.

like ships...

2011-09-30T14:02:00.000-07:00

there's this song by mat kearney, called "ships in the night." it's so catchy.

yeah, and then the other day i saw the video that mat kearney made, and it's a lyric video, so the words come up artsy and such, instead of shots of him singing and playing or driving in a car or something. yeah, it's cool to watch. and with that, i got to read the lyrics...and i liked it even better.

i'm not married, and i'm not where mat kearney is. i've been in a few relationships and i'm in a pretty awesome one right now. it's awesome because it's between me and an awesome girl, samantha, and it's awesome because i feel God leading us, helping me and letting me know His will a step at a time. it doesn't always feel awesome, but it is awesome. and a lot of times, it feels awesome. :)

that said, there are relational places where i've never walked. paths my feet have yet to tread. i look forward to these. and i know alot of married couples wryly say to young people who want to marry, "oh, if you only knew!" or "you have no idea" or "it's way different than you think" or "it's not all roses" (or whatever. i don't even think roses are that great, so for me some one would have to say something like "it's not all...heath bars" or maybe "rock candy" or "pecan pie" or "smoothies" but even if they said roses, i'd get what they meant). but even with that said, i realize i have no idea how hard being in a committed relationship can be, and i realize i have an ideal in my head that may be very different from most or even all of the reality of the words i use. but i believe that despite this, it is good and right for me to long for this future. paul said it is a good way to glorify God, so if that's not enough reason, i don't know what is. but i also believe that we as people were meant to give ourselves away in love. this doesn't always look like marriage. but it does always follow Christ's pattern. and it's not always spiritual-feeling. but if it's like how Christ loves us, in a sacrificing, vulnerable, make-this-work-no-matter-what kind of thing, it's good! (in it's proper place. i'm talking about marriage here, or close to marriage and marriage. or in some friendships..)

Like ships in the night
You keep passing me by
We're just wasting time
Trying to prove who's right
And if it all goes crashing into the sea
If it's just you and me
Trying to find the light

Like ships in the night letting cannon balls fly
Say what you mean and it turns to a fight
Fists fly from my mouth as it turns south
You're down the driveway... I'm on the couch
Chasing your dreams since the violent 5th grade
Trying to believe in your silent own way
Cause we'll be ok... I'm not going away
Like you watched at fourteen as it went down the drain

And pops stayed the same and your moms moved away
How many of our parents seem to make it anyway
We're just fumbling through the grey
Trying find a heart that's not walking away

Turn the lights down low
Walk these halls alone
We can feel so far from so close

Like ships in the night
You keep passing me by
We're just wasting time
Trying to prove who's right
And if it all goes crashing into the sea
If it's just you and me trying to find the light
Like ships in the night
You're passing me by
You're passing me by
Like ships in the night

And I'm at the airport waiting on a second plane
Had to pack and you had cramps and I was late
Headed to a red carpet, they won't know my name
Riding in silence all that we wanna say
About to board when you call on the phone
You say "I'm sorry. I'll be waiting at home"
Feels like we're learning this out on our own
Trying to find a way down the road we don't know

Turn the lights down low
Walk these halls alone
We can feel so far from so close

Like ships in the night
You keep passing me by
We're just wasting time
Trying to prove who's right
And if it all goes crashing into the sea
If it's just you and me
Trying to find the light
Like ships in the night
You're passing me by
You're passing me by
Like ships in the night

And I'm gonna find my way
Back to your side
And I'm gonna find my way
Back to your side
(the video isn't centered and occasionally a letter is off screen. couldn't fix that; feel free to follow the video to youtube and watch it there.)

gah! so rich! "i'm sorry. i'll be waiting at home." more than i want a romantic, storybook future, more than i want to have people oo and ah over engagement photos, more than i want any aesthetic or ancillary parts of a fun marriage, i want to have this. to say this, to hear this said. to build, to be where this is.

2011-09-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

i'm sitting in my house in austin, and the lighting isn't the best, and no one else is home. am i home? that's a good question.

this morning i read most of a psalm before getting on my bike and riding to the hospital for my day of clinicals in labor and delivery/newborn. it's been a long two days, but also pretty cool. it's an interesting place to be, as a guy, walking in and out of rooms in a nursing student uniform, knowing it's what you're there to learn about, to palpate for the uterus and discuss what a good "latch" looks like when a baby is breastfeeding, what positions are best for the mother to give birth in and then a bunch of other assorted pieces of info about monitoring the baby....and still very aware that i am a man, not much younger than some of these new fathers, (and older than a few of the younger ones,) and feeling like an intruder, interrupting these new families to do my work or follow my nurse around. the maternity part of the hospital is very female-oriented, though i've heard that there are male nurses who end up thriving in l&d.

there have been many times, and yes, seasons of my life where i felt too rough to ever settle down with a family. too stubborn. too plagued by worry. too comfortable being alone. too geared toward long hikes alone. too ok with some of the sadness of being alone. too tempted to idolize relationships. too fickle. too... the list went on, and i think the devil helped me make up reasons why i wasn't "cut out" for marriage, however much i wanted to be. there came a time when God asked me if i thought He could change me, if my faith in His ability to do anything really stopped at where my life ended.

i am in a different place these days. one of hope.

my eye stopped at a verse this morning as i read psalm 68. in the e.s.v., verse 5 starts the thought, "Father of the fatherless and protector of widows, is God in his holy habitation."

and then the beginning of verse 6 was what i reflected on: "God settles the solitary in a home;" and it continues "he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a parched land."

i think of that verse, "God settles the solitary in a home," and i think of a man who has lived a life in the wilderness, rough and weathered, used to being alone and some one who maybe hasn't laughed in sweet fellowship or been hugged or touched in a tender way in years. i think of traveling in storms and tramping through dark woods and waking up in the morning with no human for miles around. i think of places i long for and places i dread.

i think of some one who doesn't really know what they want. God settles them in a home.

i texted samantha this verse this morning and wrote, "i love that picture, God bringing us from pain/loneliness to places to love and be loved, [to] belong."

that, and one line from a worship song we sing at church that goes "the love of God is greater than we dare to hope or dream" have been seriously rocking my world these past few days.

2011-09-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

going back to school was an adjustment. retaking up the school schedule, and readings, and syllabi...i'm sure you all know the drill. my roommates and i have basically finished settling into our house, three weeks after we started settling.

it's been good to see friends in nursing again. i've been praying about how God wants me to use my time this semester, because i think i'll have a little extra, and i had been considering working a little, but i'm not sure that will be the best use of that time. mreh. i have a few ideas. one of them is being a part of a weekly Bible study at the nursing school. there has been one in the past, and i'm not sure it's active at this point. been praying about it, and i'll talk to a few other believers in my classes and see if they would be interested and what time would work, if indeed it's not already in existence.

God's been teaching me alot. about trusting Him, as sam and i parted ways for the fall, (though i've been back each weekend so far...but things have felt different all the same, as school and the fall mean different priorities,) and very conscious of what i might term "growing pains," haha. a summer relationship and a school year relationship are different, no matter how many things are the same. yeah, the adjustment there as the school year started back up, and then having different friends as my old roommates have graduated and moved to other places...and then there's the fact that this semester's clinicals will be in labor&delivery for the first half, until mid-october. so we've been watching birth videos and studying pregnancy in class, which is very weird/emotionally exhausting (i know, i know, it's worse for the women in the videos. but i maintain that it is hard to watch multiple videos in a week as a guy nursing student). and then the re-start of the competitive and performance-based atmosphere that i feel in the air, from the first breath i take as i walk through the automatic sliding door each morning in the nursing building.

yeah, this year's start has just felt very...interesting. we have a class on leadership and management in health care this semester as well, and this past week we talked a little about the expectations and pressure of our first jobs we'll get as nurses in hospitals.

alot of things that feel pretty heavy or uncertain, but God's been meeting me there and showing me how i'm growing, how He's sustaining me and showing me His strength in ways i haven't lived under before.

also, i decided the other day that i'll run a 10K in a few weeks. well, a month. the beginning of october. there's one in austin, and i bumped up my long runs to 4.8 miles a month or two ago, so 6.2 miles doesn't feel all that far away, which is what 10 kilometers comes out to.

oh! rob got home from his yearlong deployment last week. he and tammy spent this weekend in san antonio, so i came home too. it was fun to hang out with them yesterday. samantha and i went with them to lunch and then the mcnay museum afterward. see, tammy and samantha have become friends. so that was fun.

i had other things i thought about writing about, but this will do for now.

2011-08-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

tonight i leave for austin.

i'm leaving in an hour, actually. i spent the morning with samantha, making breakfast, watching arrested development, playing scrabble, and talking. it was a time to savor.

it's hard to leave this place.

jonathan went with my parents up to acu on tuesday, to start his second year there. peter went with mom and dad yesterday early, transferring into letourneau for his second year of college as well. my parents are driving home as i type. they've done alot of driving this week.

tammy, my sister-in-law, moved most of her things into a truck today and drove it up to killeen where she'll join rob as he returns from his year long deployment soon.

and i'm about to pack my things into my small car and drive up to austin, in preparation for my last year of nursing school.

what am i feeling? i'm not sure i know. i'm feeling antsy, expectant. i'm feeling unsure. i'm feeling excited, yes, but i'm not sure about what. i'm feeling the heavy feeling in my stomach that accompanies change in my life, where i take the steps i'm reluctant to take, make the goodbyes i'm reluctant to make, and point my feet where God has shown me my next steps. i was going to say "path," but it's hardly that visible. if nursing school is a path, then i have one. and in ways, it is a path. in other ways, it's like a couple road signs with mileage to another part of the trip on them.

last night was a great time to hang out with tim pedersen, with jon rosen, with samantha, with ryan, with mallory, katie p, with heather and jp, for a bit. goodbyes were strange; i only shared the same city with jon and tim for these past seven days, and again our paths diverge.

i have more to write, but i hope to find time to quiet my soul more in the next few days, up in austin before the school semester starts. for now, i need to go pack.

summer is ending, and it's hard to leave this place.

2011-08-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

i got back from our family vacation a week ago. it was a good, fun time, and i was ready to leave when our day of departure arrived. that day involved a changed flight, a seven hour wait in the airport, and a 4 a.m. wakeup for nothing...it was a long day. God gave us little good things, like a nap in the u.s.o. lounge, (the lounge for military and their families) and flights on more comfortable planes (switched from airtran to southwest).

the next day, i called incarnate word and arranged to work for the next five days, from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. those days were long. yeah, and they were places i had to trust God, and deal with the stress of multiple people to care for and tragic situations around me, the residents who had pictures from their younger days, their other lives, before they started eating pureed carrots on a spoon held by some one else's hand. i had a good talk with my dad about empathy and being a help to people and maintaining focus in sad situations, one night after work. and God showed Himself faithful and i only worked alone one of the five days, and even then, He gave me favor with my coworkers, so they checked in on me and helped me when i was struggling to keep up. yeah, they were long, full days.

two of my facebook friends celebrate their birthdays today. i know this because facebook tells me on my home page. one of those friends is a guy i knew at bodenseehof, in germany. ralph was a guy who was insanely talented at playing the piano, and he had lived in 3 or 4 countries at that point in his life. he spoke english and spanish and german, and he was a bit of a goof. he was pretty silly, and like alot of 19 year olds, kind of seemed to be figuring out how he wanted to approach life. he had a rough past but God did some good things in his life while he was at the Bible school. we went on an outreach at the very end of school, and he and i were put in the same host home. we ended up having some good discussions during those few days, which was a really surprising blessing.

when the Bible school was over, he went back to north america, and i stayed for the summer at bodenseehof. every few months, we'd message back and forth on facebook, and i think once we skyped. it was definitely an unlikely friendship. (though it wasn't unique that we kept in touch after Bible school; lots of friendships sprung up in the wake of returning home after those months in europe spent together with other students, i guess.)

anyways, what am i trying to say? ralph and i weren't the best of friends. but it was still interesting that we talked; him so silly, and me so serious (in general).

the messages stopped a while ago. i guess in march, or april, i wandered over to his facebook page, curious about his life and wanting to check in. i found alot of activity from other people about "get well soon" and "we're praying for healing for you!" curious, i clicked into the past posts until i found some one asking the question i needed an answer to: "what happened?"

he had been in a car accident. there was a local news article about a man who pulled ralph out of a car that had been submerged in a ditch by the road. the article said that ralph was in critical condition.

and the most recent wall posts were months after the news article had been written.

today i wondered whether he would see if i wished him a happy birthday on his wall. i've checked his page periodically since the day i found out. a whole bunch of people have wished him a happy birthday, with a lot of prayers being prayed for him as well. again, i scrolled down until i found a relative's update on the wall, in response to some one's question. words about no further mental improvement, and not responding to commands.

some one had taken a recent picture with him, the first one since the accident that i could find. ralph is in a wheelchair with a strange expression on his face and his mouth hangs open.

my heart broke, and i found myself crying, seeing the picture of ralph, so different from when i knew him. i've prayed about it today, but it still undoes me, to think about it. things like this make me realize that this is NOT all there is to life, that i hope in a love that is stronger than the grave, that one day i'll see ralph in glory, and he'll be gloriously new. there's no way that going to the gym and putting on anti-wrinkle cream and buying huge houses and climbing career ladders is the end of our hope. No. Nope. No way. what a vile thought!

it reminds me of what i quoted from peter kreeft's book here, about the nature of ultimate reality, about an infinitely caring and loving will, that joins us in our hopes of healing, that swells behind us in power, that draws nearer by the day to effecting this redemption. there will be a Day.

in some ways, this is our life. Christ is our life and He lives through us now, on earth. in some ways, heaven is not a "some day" but a "let's step into it now." in some ways, Jesus promised us abundant life in the here and now. it's what mark foreman, in his book Wholly Jesus, terms the tension of the "already but not yet" that we live in. yes, we are free. yes, we are more than conquerors. yes, we are raised with Christ.

and in other ways, this is not life. this is not truly living. in other ways, ralph isn't missing much. yeah, there are pleasures here on earth that he will not experience (assuming he never gets better). things like endorphins are nice, but one day we'll join with multitudes and scream in praise of a Consuming Fire, one that loved us while we were still sinners and effected justice on His holy Son so He could adopt us. yes, falling in love feels wonderful, but it's like a mismatched and forced puzzle piece joint, in comparison with the beauty of the wedding that will take place when every last ransomed soul has taken his place in the bride of Christ. i imagine we will laugh, thinking of the names carved into trees on earth, of those shadows of reality that we will be a part of.

1 John 3:2 "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

pace

2011-07-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

i looked around the room that had been mine for the past year, now empty of my things. i was anxious to get home to san antonio, but had a small thought that reminded me of what i was leaving. 12 months in a house with these six roommates, my first year of nursing school, long nights and early mornings. going to church with friends, talks about sermons and tough passages in the Bible, and girls and jobs, and the latest viral videos. parties thrown. pancake Fridays. singing the stupidest songs on the radio to get them stuck in a roommate's head when he walked by. roommate dinners on thursdays. teasing and jokes and movie quotes and a thousand other little things that made me feel good inside, because it was a language that we spoke to understand each other, and it meant as i understood, i was understood.

i had a thought to write my roommate a note, and knew it would bring up some emotions, with reflection, that i hadn't recognized in the hurry to move my stuff out of this house and into the one that i will live in for this next year. i paused and decided to do some emotional unpacking, after all of my physical packing of the day. i sat down on the floor against the wall and found a piece of paper and a pen, and thought, and wrote. a little about how i had experienced the past year, the friendship i was grateful for. i left my note on my roommate's bed.

slow down.

by my third day of orientation this past weekend, i had a fairly good idea of the way things worked in the nursing home part of the healthcare arrangements at incarnate word. there was alot to remember, and as the c.n.a. i followed around remarked, "you catch on once you know the hall you're working." i reflected that working irregular shifts, (prn, or "as needed",) for these last few weeks of summer, it was possible that i would never feel at home on a specific hallway, being switched around according to whom i'll fill in for on a given day.

"have y'all had alot of guys work here?" i asked the other c.n.a. at one point, after yet another nun living in the nursing home made it clear that she felt uncomfortable having a guy help with bathroom necessities. on some hallways, half of the residents were people i couldn't care for, as a man. "well, we had one...but he didn't work out." the other c.n.a. told me about the last guy who didn't "catch on quick" with the routine and after a few mistakes, was let go. i gulped mentally and wondered how steep the learning curve would prove.

speed in multitasking has always been a challenge for me. on the third day of orientation i was given a bit more autonomy, but the c.n.a. i was following around still did most of the care on the hallway we were assigned to, working with the easy rhythm of a nurse aide with years of experience (and a working knowledge of body mechanics for lifting). at one point she gave me two patients to care for, and i think she took care of four and met me just as i was finishing up my second. it's true that i had to hunt for supplies and clean up an unexpected mess, but still, it's part of the job.

speed up.

a week ago i worked another 12 hour overnight shift with my old job. the hours dragged unusually slow, and none of the books i was reading offered significant respite from my boredom. it's funny, i thought, sitting there and feeling stuck, how time moves at exactly the same pace here, now, as it will on my wedding day. on the day when something beautiful happens, or when something sad is imminent, i guess...

speed up.

tomorrow i leave with my family to see our grandparents, our annual summer trip. it marks the beginning of the end of summer. missing important friends this summer hasn't made the summer pass any slower. samantha and i let out a collective "woohoo!" today for two months of medium-distance dating, which actually has played out to me being in san antonio more than in austin for the past several weeks. hardly distance, really. and summer's barely three months! not even. two months means two months past. dating sam has been a joy. i wonder where the time went. the fall semester will be different.

slow down.

coffee with tom this evening was awesome, and i found myself aware of much unspoken, and the places that had to be left untouched after a two hour conversation over lattes. i tried to hold his words well, knowing that each summarizing statement held weeks of life that i could only wonder at. i shared life at present with him as well, and we reflected on where we were and the last year of school we're both about to start. at 6:30 i had to go and we walked out to our cars to say goodbye for the next several months, after only having a couple hours for the past two months. we dawdled and eventually embraced before we walked away. and then we did.

slow down.

2011-07-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

In love; in love,
in life, in love,
in you, in love,
in death, my Love.
in time, in love,
in place, in love
in form, in love,
in death, my Love.

my God, my Love,
my life, my Love,
is yours, my Love,
my Bride, my Love.

This cross, my love,
is mine, my love;
to bear, my love
to die,
my love

This cup, my love
this bread
my love
my life, my love,
is yours, my love.

Come drink, my love
my blood, my love
my life my love
in death, my love.
My God, my love,
my life, my Love
Is yours, my Love, my Bride, my Love.

This cross, my love
Is mine, my love
To bear, my love
It's time, my love.

to feel

2011-07-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

been kind of wondering, these days, and i guess i can now put words to the question in my mind.

i've been wondering what God wants me to feel.

this summer i haven't had a job. i wanted one. i didn't apply until after finals time, and didn't really put effort into applying until i moved back to austin in june for summer school. these are things that i could have done differently. should have done differently, maybe. yeah, should have. pre-finals, i was mostly interested in doing well in my classes, and thought my time would be best spent making sure i pushed those borderline grades into the next letter grade range. when i went home for two weeks, (3? no...well, two.5) i had thoughts like, "well, i can't go in for an interview and i can't work now, so i'll wait till i'm actually in austin to apply for jobs there. it'll be easier to followup then, too."

looking back, these thoughts weren't really logical. i should have applied places and called even if i wasn't able to interview right then and there. and i did work a little at my old job in san antonio and did enjoy some good restful time, which was something that i hadn't had since.....january-ish.

but the bottom line is that i don't have a job. i've been housesitting and there was that time i drove a friend's car up to new jersey, and then a shift or two at my old job in san antonio, but other than that, i haven't been working. i've been taking these two classes and to be fair, they've kept me busier than i anticipated. and maybe i've been used to running in high gear from 9 months of nursing school, because now when i have discretionary time, i feel like i need to be doing something. the other day i came home from class and a roommate was sitting on the couch, reading a jason bourne novel. i thought, "i wanna do that too," and encouraged by him, i sat down and tried to do the same. he beat me at relaxing, so bad. i think i got through four pages of my book, while he carved through about a hundred. (granted, "leaves of grass" versus "the bourne supremacy" is not a fair fight, but still.)

i went into my old place of work yesterday because i realized that with the ending of one of my classes, i would have thursday thru sunday off each week, and if there was work for me in san antonio, at my old work, then it was better than sitting in austin being poor. plus, samantha and i continue to date, so being in san antonio is just that much more appealing. :)

and my old employer sounded kinda hopeful, and i talked to her again today. but i got off the phone and was discouraged. i feel like i've been kind of strung along, and the "oh i'm sure we could use you" just hasn't panned out into anything substantial, really. and if no one needs caregivers, that's nobody's fault. but. but.

i'm prone to want to meet other people's expectations, and i hate it when people are disappointed in me. i've felt like i haven't met some of my parents' expectations, for working this summer, but it's not something that's been said. and maybe i'm superimposing alot of my own expectations for myself onto them. (this is the part where tim thinks, "ah, transference and countertransference," if he's reading.)

getting off the phone this morning, i felt foolish. and helpless, yeah, because there are only a few more free weeks for me this summer.

yeah. and a few other areas, too, places where i've been dealing with interesting emotions. spiritually, in quiet times, praying for peace, etc.

and i thought about it this morning, something i should ask more often. "what does God want me to feel?"

because really, if He wants me to feel restful this summer, then i should cast off the weight of my own (or others') expectations as soon as possible. burn them in a trash can. stick 'em in a hole and pack dirt on top. if He wants me to feel ready for something in the near future, then i don't need to keep perseverating on my past. i guess i need to do some soul searching on what i really think about plans, whether i'm on Plan B and God is trying to tell me it's still Plan A, and my plan A was only some scribbles on a napkin that didn't even make sense. if He has a grand plan that i don't see, maybe i should start dreaming.

or, own up to mistakes. He probably wants me to do that. and still live in the present. and engage with hope. yeah, exactly what God wants me to feel, on July 8th, 2011. or 9th.

2011-06-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

in a few minutes i'll get in my car and meet an old friend for coffee. ricky is a guy who lived across the hall from me, in jester, two years ago, and it's been nearly a year since we've talked, i think. it should be good.

my roommates tyler and larry got back from europe two days ago. i'm reminded again of how you don't replace friends. having them in the house has been fun, and they have good stories.

last saturday, samantha drove up to austin and we spent the day hanging out. we kayaked on town lake, which was really fun, and watched movies and cooked dinner and such. it was a great day.

one of my classes is ending next week. summer is flying by. it's crazy. i'm still looking for a job, and i'm not sure i'll be able to find one as a nurse aide. which is disappointing. i'm praying about what God wants here. so far He's provided for my needs and given me odd jobs here and there, like that drive up to new jersey. this weekend i'm going home to san antonio and i'll housesit for a few days. that will also be nice. yeah, so God's providing, it just looks different from what i had pictured or hoped for. it's interesting, and kind of cool to reflect on. and i'm still hoping to get a regular job.

been thinking about community, this summer, since my community group is no more, and roommates are in and out of the house. (myself included.) i've been thinking that maybe a mentor figure would be nice again; i think i'm ready for that again at this point. some one older i can meet with regularly and become friends with and learn from. i ran into a guy who works with the navigators on campus a couple months ago and he mentioned maybe catching up again.

yesterday my social work class had a field trip again, this time to a correctional facility. the coolest part of the day was when we sat in on a therapeutic group, where men (offenders) sat in a circle and went over issues that had come up since the previous meeting, the day before. most were pretty simple, involving one guy getting mad and disrespecting another guy by telling him off, or something similar. but they had different "voices" in the "conversation," and within the circle, they were free to mostly say what they wanted, without profanity or verbal assaults/threats. there was alot of shouting and the exhortations to live according to the rules of the facility were really forceful and hard-edged, coming from fellow inmates. many of the men took the correction well and acknowledged their actions, resolving to do better. i walked out and the first words from another Christian guy in my class to me were, "i need some of that in my life!"

i thought similar thoughts. i want to be sanded. i long for a community that cares enough to shout.

music therapy

2011-06-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

God has been meeting me in some interesting places recently.

last wednesday, my "treating chemical dependence" class, which is a social work class that i am taking to satisfy a nursing elective requirement, took a field trip to a recovery facility here in austin. the class has been a pretty interesting one so far, and i've enjoyed seeing health care from a different perspective, and learning about the ways that we as humans have found we can wake other people up and call them to more.

we toured the facility and then experienced a form of therapy they used at the facility, one that is definitely considered "alternative" and is probably somewhat controversial. we were told to bring a pillow or a blanket with us for the day, and the title of the time was "music, breathwork and art therapy."

this lady told us a little about the therapy and its roots, who developed it, who she studied under, and encouraged us to forget ourselves as we went into the experience. she called our selves our id's, of course.

we moved our chairs to the sides of the room and took yoga mats from a bin in the corner. everyone laid down around the room, and we were led in some breathing exercises as the lights were dimmed. we were told to close our eyes.

(it turns out they were trying to encourage hyperventilation, which i would have realized if i had done the reading for class beforehand. as it was, when they told us how to breathe, i thought, "i'm gonna hyperventilate if i do that. surely that's not what they're going for" and didn't do so. the reading we did on "holotropic breathing," as the therapy is called, explained that hyperventilation and the resulting low levels of carbon dioxide in the blood in the brain can lead to mild dissociation and feelings of lightness, and also induces "hypofrontalism." since your frontal lobe is where all of your judgement, and inhibitions, and your conscience sits, it makes sense that music therapy would try to get beyond this, past where excuses or guarding would occur. in a best case scenario, i suppose, that is all that would occur. i happen to think frontal lobes are pretty handy, for the most part.)

we were told to "connect with your Higher Power," and the music started. "alright, Jesus. let's see where this goes."

the tracks that were played took me to some interesting places. places of frustration, places of hope, places i hadn't put words to, places of wonder. yeah, and symbols and scenes played through my mind, and God spoke to me there. i was surprised at first, and then awed and grateful.

at the end, we all stood up in silence and went to tables where drawing media and pieces of paper awaited us. i drew some, using pastels of different colors and designs to help me remember what had gone on in that time. and then we all sat in a circle and showed our drawings, sitting at our feet in front of us. some of us shared with the group. the lady leading the exercise encouraged us to share as we wanted, "but please, keep it honest." i sat in conflict, wanting to share about my faith but knowing that nothing i had experienced during the songs had been directly related to Jesus and His cross, and wanting to honor the lady's request.

eventually i shared, telling about how my drawings represented places where I wanted to find God but hadn't always felt His presence. i explained about the hope and the promises, too, and at the end i felt exposed, but peaceful.

so another guy after me shared, and mentioned that he was a Christian, and explained that he had symbolism that actually represented places where he had been reminded of Jesus' blood covering his sins. i was glad to see him speak, and he did so humbly, too. i met him later and found out that he goes to the austin stone, like i do. he seems like a pretty neat guy, and we agreed to get coffee and talk sometime.

i was very thankful for the time. it was a blessing.

my friend wesley miller got married this weekend. it was a fun weekend. i went home to san antonio and had some good time with my dad, who got back from iraq this past week, after a three month deployment. that was really great, too.

so there's this girl samantha. to some of you, this is not news. but yeah. we met through tim and jon, back in april. when i came home to san antonio after the spring semester for a few weeks, i saw her again and we started talking. i didn't have much time in san antonio before i returned to austin for my summer classes. but by the time i left, we had decided to keep in touch and hang out when i made it back to san antonio throughout the summer.

she's pretty great. she works at starbucks and goes to utsa. turns out we used to live on the same street on fort sam houston, years ago. she loves Jesus and likes to laugh. she's super pretty and communicates well, and gives thought to important things, and drives a honda fit, like i do. :) we've been having fun, and God has let me know, in no uncertain terms, that i need to trust Him with the whole situation. so i'm learning to do that. and it's been nice that from my house in austin to san antonio, it's about a 1:15 straight shot down i-35. so it's less like long distance dating and more like...short distance dating. or medium distance.

roh-d trippe

2011-06-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

just a few weeks ago, i wandered onto my friend dave's fb page and reminisced about our friendship. dave was a guy i went to high school with, and spent time with him when he came home in the summers from nyu, where he went after high school. we had alot of fun and after we were 18, we'd smoke cigars and pipes and talk about life and traveling and theology and music, and whatever else came to mind, as we sat on his patio till the early morning. and then we'd flop into bed and in the morning, i'd drive home, sometimes still smelling like smoke.

but our friendship has been more than late night imitations of The Inklings. for a while, senior year of high school, we met weekly with a few other guys, doing a sort of informal Bible study, asking and answering questions like "is it ok to say 'shit' when you're describing the muck Jesus pulls us out of?" we met at a gelato place. they were good days.

we caught up when we could, but he got married last year and stayed near new york after graduating this year. i saw pictures on facebook a few weeks ago, and realized i really missed him. so this was just a few weeks ago. i remember asking God, as i wrote "congratulations!" on his wall after he graduated, "God, when am i gonna see him again? how many years will it be?"

last weekend, dave's mom got in touch with me via facebook, saying that she heard i didn't have a job currently, and they needed somebody to drive dave's car up to him, from san antonio to new jersey, over three days. we talked, and we firmed up plans to have me leave from san antonio this past friday morning, and then have a flight back to san antonio on sunday afternoon, from new jersey. dave and i talked on the phone beforehand, too.

so i did. i drove home from austin to san antonio thursday night. i left from their house on friday morning at around 9:30 a.m., and stopped for gas, food, and sleep over the next two days. i drove around 14-15 hours on both friday and saturday, thru austin and dallas, into arkansas, past little rock, across the mississippi into memphis, tennessee, and into nashville on friday night to sleep. (the first hotel i asked about a room at told me, "sorry. and you're not gonna have any luck around here. the c.m.a.'s are going on right now so everybody's pretty full on this side of town." of course. the country music awards. i'm in nashville. hm.) on saturday i drove to the end of tennessee and drove through virginia, passing along the appalachian mountains for a while, and then north thru washington, d.c., to baltimore, maryland, up through the tip of delaware, along the edge of pennsylvania, through philadelphia, and into new jersey, getting to dave's house at around midnight, saturday night. around 1800 miles total, google maps says.

(i had some excellent company on the drive. i listened to a few sermons i had downloaded, and discovered florence + the machine's "lungs" album, which i downloaded beforehand. this girl samantha burned me two mix cd's, which i listened to until i had favorite songs picked out, and then listened to those again. and again. and...yep. also, cory called me a couple times, as did my mom, and samantha called me multiple times, too. i was really grateful for their calls.)

dave and i stayed up about another hour that night. the next morning we had a couple hours until he drove me to the train station and i took a train to the airport to catch my flight. we played some guitar together and he showed me some music he'd been writing. we talked about his job, about his life in new jersey and new york, and some about my life in austin, too. i had prayed about a meaningful time with him, despite the brevity, and when we hugged at the train station, i was really grateful that God had given us good, meaningful time indeed.

the weekend was crazy. it was a huge adventure. i enjoyed it alot. i was grateful for the time alone. God got me to be honest with Him about some things i guess i'd been keeping unspoken for a while now, He poked and prodded at some of my discontentment until it spilled out and we had a good honest conversation, driving from washington, d.c. to baltimore. ha. and then i only had time to wipe the tears off one side of my face with one hand before i had to roll down my window and give a lady $2 to cross a maryland toll bridge. oh well. don't mind the guy with a scruffy beard on his emotional cross country commute.

yeah, i was super thankful for the answer to prayer that God brought this weekend, seeing my old friend so soon, having an adventure and ...yeah. also gaining patience, perhaps. i answered the question, "can i do this?" because i had wondered. it would have been nice to have a few more hours to stop at beautiful areas, because i passed plenty of awesome scenery, but had to maintain cruise control at 75 mph to make it when i did. yeah. it was a good weekend.

oh. also, i got my braces off. :) hooray!

have i written about this before?

2011-06-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

i may have. i'm reading this book fundamentals of the faith: essays in Christian apologetics by this guy peter kreeft. he's a philosophy professor in boston, and my uncle gave me this book for Christmas. (my uncle passes along great books. his recommendations are consistently excellent.)

anyway, it's a book made up of little essays that are anywhere from 2-7 pages long. and they're all stand-alone, you know, so you can read one and come back a month later, and read another two. so i've been reading them, trying to read about one a day. lately they've been super encouraging. it's theology stuff, but he thinks alot like c.s. lewis, so he breaks things down into good analogies. also, he's a catholic, so it's cool learning about the things that catholics hold to. (and since he's an educated catholic, it's church history and stuff too, and well thought out. sometimes it's hard pinning down what the catholic church's stance on something is, when you're asking your neighbor, or the guy down the hall from you in the dorm, and whatnot. there's alot that gets mixed up, methinks.) incidentally, the book was written in 1988. still good.

yeah, lately they've been awesome. just great hope for heaven, in the pages i've read in the past few weeks. this morning i read an essay on "hope," as part of his addressing the "theological virtues," faith, hope and love. kreeft references lewis's "if i find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy, i can only conclude that i was not made for this..." (i'm quoting from memory of brooke fraser's song, not lewis himself, so it may be a bit off.) and continues about longing for the restoration of broken things.

"Thus when I hope against hope that my friend will recover from a disease the doctors assure me is fatal, I am not playing the game of predictions and statistical averages against the doctors but prophetically asserting something about the nature of ultimate reality: that it is on my side in willing life over death, that death is the rind or epidermis or outer appearance of life, not vice versa; that ultimate reality is not this indifferent cosmos but an infinitely caring and loving will" (Kreeft, 1988, p. 180).

i read this and i find reason for my anger last semester in psyc clinicals, seeing patients crippled by mental diseases...anger for them. my emotions didn't always end at anger, sometimes my desire to help was suffocated in helplessness, hopelessness. sometimes my emotions went unrecognized. i didn't always will life over death. i still don't. sometimes i resign to seeing people in "bodies of death," as paul refers to them, and the comfort that the next life will be much different.

i like that phrase, "death is the rind." it doesn't give death credit, nor originality. no one eats fruit for the rind.

and there's a place for focusing on how to help people in the here and now, instead of focusing on what i'm feeling in the here and now. i'm still working on that. that's a big part of nursing, the "stop freaking out. people need you, so think. what can you do?" but i guess i don't want to forget that i feel...? because if my life is one big series of problems and solutions, things thrown at me and my reactions to those things, i'll be a spring, not a person. i don't know how to support the idea at the moment, but i think God called us to more than reflexes. more than a kick when somebody taps our knee with a hammer.

suh-merr

2011-05-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

"Maybe the soul is the soil that holds the fallen seed,
Or the light pouring down in between the rain clouds,
Daring life to reach;
Or maybe it's the rings in the trunk of the tree,
A birthmark time will leave
To measure the past."

this song has been resonating in my head the past couple weeks. i can't tell whether the two guys who make up "sleeping at last" are followers of Jesus or if they just flirt with spirituality and like themes of redemption as much as they like the ideas of pantheism, and humanism, and other various philosophies that seem to be woven into song lyrics in their album "storyboards." can i like a band with bad theology?

yes.

also, it's been very, very humid here in san antonio for the past few days.

i've been reading "deep church" by jim belcher, and lemme tell you, it's good. i've enjoyed the ideas in books by rob bell, and donald miller, and even mark foreman....and not to bash on these writers. it's just that their ideas are so different from any i heard in church growing up. so the ideas intrigue me and get me excited but there always seems to be a breakdown because as much as i love the idea of a "wholly Jesus," a few months after reading the ideas, my life is no different than pre-book. well, belcher does a great job finding common ground and gleaning truth and good prioritization from both the emergent and the traditional sides of the american church. i like it because his goal seems to be finding a way to flesh out "redeeming all of creation in moving toward the Kingdom" while not losing the foundational importance of "Jesus came to die for your sins so you wouldn't have to." so i'm enjoying this book. his insights seem spot-on.

lastly, some one found my blog through googling "how to give a good presentation on trach care." huh! who knew, huh? i guess when you're up late doing a project, even a random blog seems entertaining, if it'll get you away from your dry and still-to-be-written presentation.

who am i kidding though. i've enjoyed random blogs too many times to count.

2011-05-13T10:01:00.001-07:00

I'm done. I'm done. My last final was this morning, and in a bit, I'll get in my car and drive south, past san antonio and down to the tip of Texas. It's the weekend, and my friend wes is getting married. The bachelor party is going on currently, and I'm joining tonight, late.

Yeah, it’s a beautiful day. The last final was ok.

A few weeks ago in mental health, we had a few lectures on domestic violence. This lady came to speak who works at a domestic violence resource center here in Austin. She knew a whole lot, and she had us play out scenarios that were more than just silly plays at the front of the room. They involved making decisions and having awful options all around, putting us in the shoes of a woman with an abusive husband, while trying to take care of the kids and hold work, friendships and safety all together. It was a memorable class.

The lady started off her presentation by explaining to us that the whole issue of abuse and domestic violence hinged on the concept of control. That women who were victims of domestic violence were often kept close to home by the fact that they had kids. If the abuser could use the kids to keep the victim (except they're called "survivors," which admittedly sounds more respectful) near home, or keep her from leaving, then his control was maintained. (could be a her/him situation instead of a him/her situation, but it isn't usually.)

That the greatest time of danger for a survivor was after she has made the decision to leave her abuser. Because if the abuser feels like he is losing control of her, he will do whatever it takes to maintain that control. And that's why things get worse, and she could be killed.

It was a sobering time. And also really helpful.

The lady presenting was loud and assertive. She had attitude, and she talked about her Mexican culture throughout the lecture. She had our attention from the get-go, and you could tell she was passionate about what she talked about. At one point in the beginning, she was telling us about the importance of control in the situations, and the manipulation pervasive in the abuser's behavior, whether physically violent or not, and she was emphatic, "Because I am the only one who should be controlling me. You have no right to control me, and whoever I date has no right to control me. No human being has a right to control another human being."

I thought about that. I thought about friendships I've had where I've taken control and been the one who drove conversation and set the tone for interactions consistently, selfishly. I thought about friendships where I've felt manipulated, felt less than free to disagree or do what I actually wanted to do. I thought about my agendas and places that I've avoided social interactions because they made me anxious, because I didn't know people, because they didn't know me, because it would involve a lack of control, sitting awkardly at a table and hoping conversation flowed.

I don't think that's a right way to live. I think there's a place for intentionality, for wanting something and setting the tone at times. But I think intentionality can also be a cloak for desiring and maintaining control...yeah, and maybe that's not true for you. But it's true for me.

...I don't know what to say here. It made me think. And I don't want to keep doing that. I'm seeing it around me more too. If this were a conversation in person, I'd sit and watch your facial expressions, and then pause here for your response.

on reclaiming the present

2011-05-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

the year is coming to an end. i am nearly halfway through nursing school.

this morning, i had a skills test. i did not pass my last skills test on the first try, back in february (or march) and i had to try twice to pass a skills test back in J1 as well, so these tests always are a bit stressful. however, i practiced at the nursing school last week, and this week as well, so i felt reasonably well prepared for this test. this semester, in J2, our skills tests are over 5 different skills each time. so we walk in and draw from a hat, and on the slip of paper is one of these five skills. so we have to be ready to do any of them according to a step-by-meticulous-step rubric, but we only end up getting tested on one. we receive a mock chart, with a "patient's" information inside, and the scenario we are walking into, and then from there, we go to a table with supplies on it, and gather what we need. then we walk up to the mannequin in the hospital bed, and treat it like a person as we test. the instructor sits in front of a computer and clicks away while watching, and yeah, you just hope that the clicks are good, haha. for the most part, though, the instructor will help you if you forget a step, and give you a little hint, like, "do you want to do anything else before you do that?" and you pause and hopefully it comes to you, and you can say, "yes, i do, i want to listen to the lungs to make sure i don't need to perform suctioning before doing trach care."

i was scheduled to test at 9 a.m. this morning, and i got to the nursing school at 8:40, since they tell you to be there 20 minutes early, just in case the student before you doesn't show up, or something like that. so i biked there and got to my classroom just in time for the student before me to finish; she had gone 20 minutes early, so my professor said i could go right then, or take a few minutes if i needed to. i told her i needed a few, since my mind was still dodging traffic from the bike ride over. she laughed and said something like, "ok, but just so you know, it probably won't help," and i laughed and said, "yeah," but after the door closed, i wondered what she meant, because she hadn't said it in a mean way, but it wasn't a comforting comment. i think she meant something to the effect of "you either know it, or you don't." so i took it that way.

after glancing over some of the skills rubric sheets, i went in and drew my skill from the hat. (you know, people talk about drawing from a hat because it's an expression. for these tests, it's not an expression, but the funny part is that it's the plastic collection "hat" that you put across the toilet bowl in the hospital when you need to measure your patient's urine, or collect a sample. haha. of course it's one that stays in the nursing school and has never been used, but i find it funny all the same that we draw from this type of hat.)

my skill was caring for a tracheostomy. so i did it. it took me a few minutes to get into the swing of it, but i did, and finished within the time limit, which has historically been my problem. (both of the times that i didn't pass skills tests were due to me running out of time; we're allowed 20 minutes from receiving the chart to finishing the documentation. when i'm nervous about making mistakes, my way of being careful is to go slowly.)

my instructor told me where i missed steps afterward, but i passed. i thanked her and told her goodbye, as it was our last class day. walking out, i looked at my watch. 9:02. i had finished by the time i thought i would begin; a good feeling.

so all that remains is 2 lecture classes tomorrow, and 2 on friday. then the final for one on wednesday, and the final for the other on next friday. no more clinicals. our last day in the hospital was yesterday. it was a good day. i took care of two patients and we went in "cold," as we have been doing. going in cold is going in the morning of clinicals, and getting report like a regular nurse, and starting to care for your newly assigned patients without any prior knowledge of them. (for most of the semester, and all of last semester, remember, i had been going up to the hospital the day before clinicals and picking patients, then going home and writing out everything about their health problems, their medications, their plans of care, etc. in preparation for the next day in clinicals. twas time consuming, to say the least.)

yeah, so we went in cold. i was hurrying to get up to speed on my patients before it was time to give 0900 meds, because we started late and my patients were in two different hallways, and a few other factors. my instructor found me around 0845 and we talked over the medications i would be giving. like i said, i had been rushing. as she asked me questions to make sure i knew what i was doing, i found myself relaxing, and realizing that a) i did know what i was doing, and b) my instructor trusted me. really, really good feelings.

there are still things that happen where i have no idea what to do. things still confuse me when i'm looking at the chart and see a word or phrase. i still see lab values that make me say, "huh?" but alot of times, i find things connecting in my head, light bulbs going off where the wiring has been in progress for the last nine months. patients who have had post-operative bleeding would have low RBC's/hemoglobin/hematocrit, and then the red blood cell distribution width (RDW) value might look high too, because after bleeding, new, immature rbc's are released into the bloodstream, which are larger than normal. these and other things.

i'm ok with where i am. i still have alot to learn, but there's another year of nursing school. even after that, it'll be crazy for a while as a new nurse. but right here, right now, i'm finishing up my first year of nursing school, and i've come far.

2011-04-17T16:07:00.001-07:00

at epoch coffee. it is a breezy day, and therefore, the weather is beautiful. i'm sitting outside and this moment is incredibly nice. adding to the moment is a chai latte. iced chai latte's make lots of things better.

the girl beside me at this bar thingie just told her friend about an antibiotic she's just started taking, and how she's allergic to penicillin, and how the pharmacist warned her that sometimes people who are allergic to penicillins become allergic to this kind of antibiotic, "a 15% crossover" and i thought to myself, "she's taking a cephalosporin." thanks, nursing school. that doesn't always happen, but it's really nice when it does. affirming, if you will.

on friday i went to the student activity center, a new building that is full of comfy chairs and a few restaurant spaces, and a bunch of different rooms with funky couches and seats and tables, and even an uber modern gas fireplace in one room, all boxed into a dull black frame, and the little gas pipe rationing its line of fire, two inches high all the way down, in the lower middle of a wall of brick red. (not brick, mind you; that would hint of something quaint or at best, classic, and this building has none of that. brick red, no brick.) an interesting space to be alone, and very different from the student union, which has a ballroom and hallways with thick rough wooden rafters and chandeliers, and other rooms with murals of mexican history, and others with leather chairs with metal studs down the sides, and heavy wooden tables. i usually prefer the union.

anyhow, i was at the s.a.c.. feeling bleh. i'm a sucker for comparing myself with others, and talking to my classmates in other clinicals, i've been getting the impression that some of them have had more opportunities to practice their nursing skills, like putting in nasogastric tubes or giving medicines by PEG tubes, or doing more IV's, etc etc. yeah, and we have two and a half more clinical days until the end of the semester. two and a half. crazy! and next year we only have one more semester of doing floor nursing for adults, because the first semester of senior year is for doing labor & delivery, and pediatric nursing.

yeah, and i was just getting overwhelmed, and frustrated that i didn't feel more confident in my abilities as a nurs(ing student) at this point, because talking to other classmates, i got the sense that they did. (maybe they did, maybe they didn't. i didn't outright ask.) part of the whole "missed opportunities" thing has to do with the fact that the hospital i'm at is a small one, so we don't get a huge number of patients to choose from to care for, and variety of situations to learn from. it's that and a few other things.

so i sat there and then eventually it came into my thick head that i should probably tell God how i was feeling, and listen. so i did. and i wrote a poem that i felt like reflected the truth that God was trying to tell me in that moment. maybe if you read it slowly, maybe if you're in a similar place, maybe it will be good for you, too.

"Come to Me, all you who are weary and carrying much,
And I will give you rest.
Not false rest, but Truth rest.
Not ignoring where you are and what's around you,
But rest because I have truth for you--
Truth that will set you free.
Tell me what you think, what's been said to you
And then let Me expose lies
Give you perspective
The truth is that I'm with you
The truth is that your Now is temporary,
And I want you to know that your Soon will be glorious.
Take heart
Because I'm leading you
Because my grace is sufficient for you
Because I want you to trust Me,
Because the truth is
I delight in your trust and hope
Not sufficiency or accomplishment.
I'm your Dad
And I love you alot
I really, really love you alot."

2011-04-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

"hi."
"hi." ...
"it is beautiful, here. america is so beautiful."
"it is!....are you from somewhere else?"

i had gone to mount bonnell, a park with a lookout spot that is a few miles from my house. i had never been there, and had just bought some outdoor sandals from r.e.i.. mount bonnell is one of those places that everyone in austin has been to at least once. with this in mind, i drove there, to break in my sandals on a trail, however short or paved, and to explore a new area in peace and quiet, in aloneness.

my day of rest. today. plenty of people were at mount bonnell, and i enjoyed the view of the lake stretching out below me, winding its way into the greenery skirting the skyscrapers of downtown austin. i had been warned that in the evening, its reputation as a prime sunset spot made mount bonnell a good place to avoid if one wasn't in the mood for couples or public displays of aff.. it turns out that even in the afternoon, couples found it justifiable to take side paths and stop ten feet into the path to coddle and do their thing...no matter. i steered clear and turned back when necessary.

as i followed the wide main path downward from the top, a side trail in the dirt looked inviting, so i turned off and found myself on a cliff overlooking the lake from a different perspective. enormous houses with immaculate lawns stretched out below me, with docked boats at the edge of their yards. as i stood there, sweating in the heat and enjoying the sun and the panorama of a new place, a man came down the dirt trail and stood beside me. he was black, and thin, and wore a polo, and had a camera around his neck.

"hi."
"hi."

he was recently from kenya, and told me that he had become a permanent resident of the u.s. just two weeks ago, and he told me with a smile and the words came out quickly, like good news.

"well, welcome!"
"thank you very much."

it was one of those times, one of those times where i felt like i should bring up spiritual things. a blessing to live here, i said, and i caught a quick and natural "amen" before he replied. his name was haba, and he told me of how he had a family he lived with now, and that he had started working, too, and how grateful he was to be in the u.s..
he told me he would find me on facebook, and i told him my last name. he told me that his first name was fully "habakkuk." "ah, like in the bible!" "exactly. and daniel is in the bible also."

then we talked more, about how daniel followed God well. about God's provision and plan that brought haba here. about how he had asked God to give him friends here. about the ways God had led and used him back in kenya. the whole conversation was really encouraging. he said it was encouraging as well. he was hopeful that we could "connect" once we knew each other on facebook. i'm hopeful as well.

yeah, it was a good time. it was joyful. to rejoice in where God had brought habakkuk so far, five minutes after i met him. he had split off from the group he was with, there at mount bonnell, and wandered down that path that i had chosen to wander down, a few minutes before he came. God knew what He was doing, knew to bring two of His children together. right. there.

2011-03-22T18:53:00.001-07:00

spring break was full. on saturday morning, tim, cory, a friend named eric, and i drove out of austin at 6 a.m. and drove into big bend national park around 2 p.m. that afternoon. we backpacked and camped around until wednesday morning. it was difficult, it was good. it was full. yeah, and God used it to pull me out of the heaviness i let accumulate around me from the responsibilities of nursing school, which had become pretty significant by spring break, mid-semester. being out away from it all, sweating and engaging in simple tasks of making and breaking camp, carrying daily needs on one's back, estimating water needs and enjoying canyon views, rio grande swims, and starry skies above sleeping bags at night...these things helped me re-place my faith in the Lord, who turns our planet so that the moon sinks low in the sky and disappears around 5 a.m. so that the stars get a turn to show their brilliance, until the sun rises again.

i went home later in the week for a day or two, and that was enjoyable too, seeing brothers and my mother. we went to see a play one night, "the lion in winter," put on by a small local theater, and that was fun, too. it's the type of thing i don't slow down for, when i'm stressed, but that i really enjoy, that colors life well, when it is enjoyed.

heidi and i had an uncomfortable talk at the beginning of spring break, and then some time to think over our relationship over the course of the week. that colored alot of my time in big bend, but God gave me a pretty good perspective on that, too, on the trip. i was grateful for His peace. heidi and i talked two days ago, on sunday, and we were both of the opinion that friendship is hoped for between us again, in the not-too-distant future, and that our relationship was over.

sooooo...yeah.

today in clinicals, i spent the day in the ER, following around a nurse. that was pretty fun. i got to draw blood from a patient, and give some IV meds for the first time, and learn a little more about what real nurses do, which can be pretty different from what our instructor has us doing on a typical clinical day. i look forward to the day (still years away) when i can care for patients and work efficiently like i saw a few nurses do today. giving meds and drawing blood had me a little nervous as i did them today, but as i saw the nurses have confidence in me, i gained confidence. i wondered about the implications of this later, as i considered how little we're trusted to do on the med/surg floors usually, and how nervous i get with my clinical instructor watching my every move to perform skills.

interested to see what God has planned for this last half of this semester. time will fly, i know. dreams/possibilities/hopes/creativity/progress/perseverance/growth/beauty/stories/deliberation/wisdom/value/search. a small chain of themes i want to explore in my life, in the coming weeks.

2011-03-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

this past tuesday, i had a good day in clinicals. i managed my time well, and felt like i was on top of my responsibilities for the day. it was a satisfying feeling at the end of the day.

on the sunday before, i felt fear. fear that i wouldn't be able to handle what came my way. that my patient would have a jillion meds that i would get mixed up in front of my instructor. that i'd fall behind in my workload. that i'd forget to do something really important, and realize it after it was too late. i failed a skills test last wednesday, and that, combined with a few discouragements from our last clinical day, had me feeling unsteady about future challenges. (it is worth noting that i passed the re-test for that skill two days after, but it is also worth noting that the joy from the re-test was less than the disappointment from the first test.)

that sunday afternoon, i spent some time before God and read psalms 33 and 34, which God used to speak peace into my chaos, and reassure me of His presence and power. it was so great. particularly 33:5, "He loves righteousness and justice; the earch is full of the steadfast love of the LORD," and 33:22, "Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you." verse 22 just struck me, and i've paused over this verse before, the picture of david counting on God's steadfast love, asking for it, depending on it, and moving forward as he does so. like peter stepping out onto the water, i see david asking for what will hold him up, "even as" he hopes in Him. this is courage i want to have.

this afternoon i went running, and my ipod shuffled "God will lift up your head" by jars of clay into my song sequence. i let it play, though the tempo was less than ideal for motivating my tired legs to continue their rhythm. the first words got me thinking. "Give to the wind your fears. Hope! Be undismayed." why? because God will lift up your head. as i ran, i wondered about giving fears to the wind. like pieces of paper in a fist, held out the window, driving on the highway...slowly giving them to the wind.

reading darin cabell's latest entry, i saw his words about taking God at His word, letting go of our stupid notions of love and embracing His, receptive to the Truth. believing (and letting that belief bleed its implications into our actions and thoughts, and feelings) that His love is with us and is more powerful than angels, than death itself, than rulers, than "all of creation" (translation: everything i can see)...

and still i feel a gut reaction to look down and around me and think about how uncomfortable it can still be, even if His love is with me.

...i've seldom been this sure about anything; i'm sure that this is His lesson for me, what He wants me to learn, something important enough to keep coming up. yeah, and i am aware that He is asking me a question, through all of this, through this sequence of events.

"Will you take Me seriously?"

it's the question that He asks me in reply to my "but God" statements. to my looking down and around, after hearing a promise of His. it makes all the difference in the world! "Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." i know these verses, and can recall them in a moment of panic. but there's a question that needs to be answered.

"will you take Me seriously?"

2011-03-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

today was full. and it's not over yet. we took care of two patients in clinical today, up from just one, which kept us busy. which was nice. but also a bit stressful at times.

getting ready last night, and this morning, too, i'd be thinking about the upcoming day, and a knot would start to loop itself into tight coils in my stomach, and on more than one occasion, i experienced God's voice in my mind, telling me the truth i find in His word, reminding me, "dan. don't be afraid."

yeah, it's been something that interrupts my anxious thoughts often these days, a reminder to step out of it, to not choose fear.

i'm reading out of the silent planet by c.s. lewis right now, and i'm almost done. i'm near the end, and just read a part where ransom, the main character, a regular fellow from earth, is getting ready to part with a spirit he had come to know on this planet he landed on. the spirit is speaking truth into his life, and he says, "'You are guilty of no evil, Ransom of Thulcandra, except a little fearfulness. For that, the journey you go on is your pain, and perhaps your cure; for you must be either mad or brave before it is ended.'"

this made me still, when i read it just now. i'm guilty of fearfulness. and i don't want to call it a little evil, or a small evil, because fear is related to hopelessness, and it should be said that these two are things that definitely get in the way of loving God and righteousness.

but the journey. yeah, i'm feeling like i'm on that journey.

"don't get it twisted"

2011-02-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

last year, i made a friend named eugene. he is a guy who is graduating from UT soon. he recently won some award for like, oh, i don't know, "UT uber-involved and soon-to-be-successful and/or be influential in modern society student of the year." or something. he's super involved in leadership organizations, and involved in a council for student government ethics issues for the yearly elections, and has his fingers in multiple other pies. he knows a jillion things about a jillion frats and sororities, knows a billion people, and is impossible to have a conversation with while walking through campus, because he seriously will talk to every third person. which is insane at a campus with as many people as we have. in. sane.

we still keep in sporadic contact. i appreciate some things about him very much, and enjoy his company. also, he has some good insight that comes to the surface when we talk. and he has some rough edges, of course. interesting man.

anyways, we were talking last semester, and i was getting the picture about student organizations and people who make them their life (he claims a balance, despite his involvement...for me, balance looks like distance. for him, balance looks like...i guess what his life is like. i dunno). we talked about fraternities and sororities and hazing, and volunteering, and internships and elected student government offices, and election campaigns and ethics in all that, just campus life, i guess. and i guess my head was spinning, because i remember remarking about all the games people play within organizations, and maybe the falls people take for their greek organization, etc...and i remember him remarking that yeah, you have to realize that it's enjoyable now, these things you can get involved in, but you can't come out of college with a low C average because you were there for your organization, or you got that specific person elected by manning their campaign team, and made it your life. that you have to remember that no one will care about those kinds of things if you forgot that college was for education, after you graduate. "yeah, enjoy those things, but don't get it twisted," was how he put it. put it in perspective. maintain a knowledge of what is most important, what will matter.

i wouldn't normally use that phrase, "don't get it twisted" in normal conversation. however, it has stuck with me. it pops up in my head when the principle surfaces in interactions from time to time. i like it. it reminds me to let go of some things, and hold on to others, to grab hold of what is most important. to call it like it is, when everybody around me is playing the same game, and i feel swept up.

i'm trying to do that these days. it surfaced the other day. we had a monstrous test in adult health last week. our grades were posted on monday. i heard other people complaining about their grades. i checked mine, and i did really well. especially with friendships developing among fellow nursing students, it's hard to keep silent or yeah, not be aware of grade disparities. there's a pride issue, too, a temptation to feel self-satisfied in a bad way, superior.

it surfaces around skills tests time too, when some people fail and have to re-test for skills. (we have our first one of the semester coming up next week.) which is ridiculous, because i had to re-test for a skill last semester; i haven't had first-time success every time. it happens other places.

"don't get it twisted." i know for a fact that some who got lower grades than i did have a better grasp of some material where i don't have a good grasp. yeah, nursing as a nurse will be veeeery different than what we go through in nursing school. failing a skills test once has absolutely no bearing on future nursing skills. i know that practice as a nurse will be the thing that leads to excellent nursing. yeah, and i think the pride probably feels so appealing because it's a cover up for insecurity. if i succeeded in everything, it might not be so tempting to be smug when i do well.

yeah, i'm just kinda walking through this. i continue to have failures, and there, too, i have to remind myself that i'm learning, that i'm a nursing student, which is why i'm working under an instructor who has to tell me to do things or stop doing other things.

[it's worth noting, katy johnson, that one of my new year's resolutions, which i continue to follow, was to stop shitting on myself, and believe that i am exceptional. :) so yeah, that plays into the progress in success and failure and learning, too.]

i wonder if you'll walk with me here. if you'll look at what gets twisted, what you give your strength and your attention to that deserves far less. or what needs more. and if you hate stories with morals, then ignore these words, and just say, "hm." :)

"don't get it twisted."

2011-02-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

well. this entry will be short.

i'm exhausted right now, on the tail end of two days of 5 am wakeups, and long days of studying. my birthday was on saturday, and a large part was studying for a massive test we have on thursday, unfortunately. but i had some fun, too.

yeah, exhausted, so if my tone is not elated, it's because i'm about to crash for the night. nevertheless, i am really happy about what i will now tell you.

yeah, after a good, hard, good week of God showing up and causing me to trust Him, last week, heidi and i talked over the weekend. the short of it is that we're going to try to take things slower, and just be ok with a relationship that isn't super involved when nursing school gets crazy, or she has sorority stuff, etc, but also trust God that He won't let us sink. yeah, and we found neither of us were willing to call it quits so soon after all. so. more than friends.

so that's happening! i'm grateful. it feels pretty good. and thanks for walking with me here, in a hard place. i am indeed grateful.

and that's all i'll write about that, because i sometimes go into alot of detail in blogs, and i'm thinking maybe i'll tell heidi about my blog before i write about any more of our interactions. blogs are so weird. sometimes they invite personal thoughts, yet tis a public place.

2011-02-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

there are these places in my life that make for good blogs, and some places make for good blogs sometimes but don't make for good blogs other times. i don't want to write this blog, because thinking about it enough to explain it is getting me twisted up inside. it's been off and on twisty, and it isn't always something painful to consider. maybe it's the cold and cloudy weather, maybe it's the empty house right now, but for whatever reason, right now it aches.

but i need to say it, and i've been resistant to telling friends. cory doesn't know yet, because he's been gone for two weeks, and i haven't let my parents know anything. my roommates know, and that's about it.

last week heidi was acting pretty weird, towards the end of the week especially. i knew there were parts of her life that have had her pretty stressed, so i thought it was probably mainly this. by saturday night, i was pretty sure that it wasn't just my worrying mind that was inventing weirdness between us.
yeah, and i want to be kind, though she doesn't know about this blog, because i never told her. but yeah, a summary.
we talked on saturday night. she had been thinking and praying and such. it had recently hit her, through our time together; that this relationship was beginning to happen, i guess. she told me that she realized that she wasn't ready to dive into another relationship at this point. and that she was hoping to be more involved in her sorority in the upcoming future, and that nursing school was already stressful. that God had put these two in front of her, and she knew she wouldn't be able to have a relationship and do all three well. that her answer was not "no" but "not right now." and some other stuff.

yeeeaaah. it explained things, it let me know that i was not crazy for worrying about her acting weird. after the week, it felt like closure. i had felt the stress of studying for J2 (supposedly our hardest semester) and the mental energy of a relationship and trying to pursue her well...and then time with God and with current friends, etc.

it all made sense. her reasons were reasonable, and even right. but watching her talk, (i did zone out, yes i confess,) i thought, "i'm going to miss this girl." and she wants to stay friends, wants to enjoy a friendship in the near future, and again mentioned her hope of a possible future relationship. but i guess i've hoped that "timing" was a self-correcting problem in past hopes for relationships, and it's really nothing to support any significant amount of hope.

the friendship has a better chance. larry, my roommate, pointed out that if we wanted to be legitimate friends in the future, it would probably involve dropping the hopes of friendship-that-leads-into-more-than-friends... i think he's right. one of my roommates had a messy breakup this past year, and he wouldn't let go of her, wouldn't give his heart time, and their friendship space, and he was torn up for a really long time. when he was going through that, i could see perfectly what his course of action should be. and now here i am, and wondering whether i should take this advice.

i've written about hope before. about it's roots, how it spreads and you don't even realize how far it has spread. how it's hard to keep it on the back burner, how you feed it or you kill it. heidi and i only spent time together in person for 3 weeks. but there were 7 weeks before that of emails back and forth, learning about each other as we both thought and prayed. yeah. those things under the surface, they may take time. i'm trying to be ok with that. a few people have tried to cheer me up with a "at least y'all didn't date for like a year!" mhm. it could have been worse. and it still happened, and that hope counts for something.

at this point, i'm just kind of sitting, wondering what to do with my hopes.

on sunday, the day after, i walked along a trail here in austin for a while. then i went to a coffeeshop to write and think, and pray, and read. i missed most of the superbowl because of this. it was worth it. God has been good. He has made it pretty clear that His purpose for me right now is to be present in J2, and i've had to cry out to Him to ask Him to give me the ability to focus on what's at hand, whether it's a new patient in the hospital or getting to know another nursing student as we work side by side in the mental hospital. on thursday the 3rd, when i was home for my orthodontist appointment, we celebrated my birthday, since i didn't know when i'd be home again. so 9 days early, i opened my birthday presents. as i wrote in my journal, "one of my birthday presents was a small square stone plaque thingie with proverbs 3:5 on it. i had put it on the bathroom sink. yeah, God knew that i would need it, a gift that only seemed cute when i unwrapped it. 'Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.'"

i've told you guys about my way of making the crazy feel sane. i think about it. i process. i fumble with it until i get a handle on it, somewhere. alot of how i become ok with a bad situation is to understand it. yeah, that's when i let my heart rest, usually. i lean it on my understanding. laugh. God is so good! it's hard. but He's teaching me.

yeah. this is a dimension of dan these days.

what is written on a day with no time to write

2011-01-30T14:27:00.000-08:00

today is sunday. it is not my day of rest, for i enjoyed that on friday. i have alot of studying to do, alot, and none of it is coming along as fast as i would like. fortunately, none of it is urgent; that is, none of it is directly related to an assignment due tomorrow.

and here i write, because i'm not sure when i'll be back, and i want to commemorate some images from my life lately.

on friday, i went to the hospital and the surgeon looked at my mouth and proclaimed his work done. (now for the orthodontist's...) he cut the splint's wires and took it out of my mouth, and i brushed my teeth at the sink in the room, feeling the back of my teeth again and finally cleaning those spaces with a toothbrush for the first time in over six weeks. i walked out of the hospital jubilant, praising God and continued by singing loudly along with music as i drove home on the highway, with the windows down.

i had another appointment at bamc afterwards, and when it was delayed, the receptionist told me to "go get something to eat and come back in thirty minutes," as it was around lunchtime. i mused on this as i walked down to the ground floor of bamc, aware that the first food i would chew was to be something snack-y, and probably not rich with different flavors and textures to chew through.
still, sitting down with my coffee and biscotti a few minutes later, i gingerly brought my teeth together on the cookie, and did it again, and again, and again. i looked over at the woman sitting beside me in the hospital chair, awed and delighted at the ability to chew, but she sat with her head bowed miserably in a classic hospital waiting room position. "there's no way i could make her understand," and so i sat and continued drinking my coffee, eating the biscotti, and reading my novel. i was aware of being very grateful for something that i have taken for granted for the better part of 23 years. yes. a good moment.

it's still not normal. my teeth don't all meet yet, and the surgeon said that's what the orthodontist will fix. he said i shouldn't go eat jawbreakers yet, and the first day was tiring. my front teeth can't take alot of pressure without hurting, at this point, and this morning i sliced up an apple and ate it, which took longer than i anticipated. it's crazy to look in the mirror and see where my front teeth go over my back teeth...i guess they looked like that at one point before, when i finished with braces in high school, but i can't remember them then.

heidi and i went on our first date last night. we both had alot of fun. things continue to move forward. she's a pretty great girl. i've mentioned a few things about her before, small parts of her character that i've seen. she sees things around her, which is really important to me...she notices what people mean when they're not saying it. she fights for her friends' hearts around her, wrestles with how to do that best, whether it's speaking up in a group or confronting later...she works hard and yeah, inspires me to study wholeheartedly, if i'm studying, to not mix studying and taking it easy and then just lose my relaxing time like that. she's interested in guarding her heart, that i can see. she likes languages and she likes travel, and she likes spontaneous things, surprises. she's a really pretty girl, and she loves Jesus, and it's pretty clear to me. we have fun together, too. :) yeah, so we're starting this relationship, both praying about it. i'm mindful of a question that mark and tracy posed to me two years ago, that i found in an old journal this past weekend...i was dating heidi peterson, and tracy asked what she stirred in me.

it's a complex question, and one with no easy answer. i like tim's "there are no easy answers to hard questions" maxim. but i'm reflecting and enjoying. i'm getting some ideas, but i'm in no hurry. :)

2011-01-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

so there's this little tab on google's tabs at the top of the home page for blogs. it says, "stats." and i'm aware that i used to avoid it like the plague. i write for readers, and i write for myself. but if i were to write something that i really found great, whether in importance, or significance, or therapeutic value, or remembrance, or whatever...and my readers were to come to me in a group and say, "dan, don't write like that again. if you do, we'll leave," then i'd have to let the readers go. because at the very bottom of my reasons for writing a blog, the reason closest to the tap when the spigot is turned on and out rushes raw dan...that reason is that i write because i enjoy doing it for myself.

now i'm pretty sure that will never happen. unless you guys all know each other and one of you gets the sneaky idea to coordinate a practical joke. and so that's the worst case scenario. but there are other small compromises that i think i can be tempted to make if i know that writing about such-and-such will bring so-and-so to my site, or mentioning this person will make my blog a result in a search engine, hence more people reading my blog. so in the interest of pure honesty, i have historically avoided this "stats" tab. but i've recently looked at it, and i guess i've felt like it was ok. the thing that i found most amusing was the fact that alot of times, people find my blog by mistyping in words to rudyard kipling's "if" poem to a search engine, because you see, i don't have the exact words at the top of my blog page. it is supposed to be "which is more," not "what's more." that's ok with me, though.
ok that wasn't the thing i found most amusing. that was amusing, but the sub-thing that i found most amusing, related to the aforementioned mildly amusing thing, is that there's this russian search engine that apparently refers people quite often to my blog when they type in those words in kipling's poem. so google has me in the results somewhere, i'm not sure where, but somewhere because it is listed as a referring website...but doubtless my blog is pretty far down on the list of google search results for these words. but this russian search engine is one of the top referring sites to my page, which made me wonder how readily my page came up on it. so i went there and searched the poem text in question, and my blog was like result number seven! six other websites were listed, and then martindaniel9.blogspot.com was there in the top ten, on the first page. so no wonder i get so many hits from russia, and from this search engine. laugh. it's quite humorous, i think. do you not?

school has started up again and i feel that this semester will be hard again. but i don't feel fear, only anticipation. i know that at times i'll feel battered and defeated by stuff that happens at clinicals, or with week workloads for classes, etc....yeah, so i know that's coming. but God has given me peace. i felt just a lack of readiness to return for another helping of nursing school at the university of texas at austin, until maybe two days before i left san antonio. i went hiking at government canyon on a rainy friday, and went alone. it was glorious. i had to gingerly step along large parts of slick rocky trails, and especially with rain muddying the firm ground, (falling and jerking my jaw out of position at this point would be a tragedy of epic proportions, seeing as how i'm so close to the end of the 6 weeks...) but it was peaceful and beautiful and alone, and wild and cold and....beautiful. it was restful and helped me to prepare for another semester of being heavily reliant on God.
also, i've been walking to the nursing school this past week, which has afforded me nearly 40 minutes of time in silence while the day wakes up, time during which God invited me into conversation with him. this was really great, and yeah, He gave me alot of peace for first days of classes through this time.
i decided to re-read In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day by mark batterson. i packed it into my stuff as i was leaving san antonio on a whim, and the distinct impression that i need the reminder that lions are to be chased, not to be chased by. i read the first chapter this morning, and i'm hopeful for where this truth will affect my weeks and months of J2.

i talked to meg mcreynolds on the phone the other day, and it was extremely encouraging. we talked a while, and i told her about this girl heidi that i'm pursuing. i was feeling weird about the whole thing because i ...just was, i guess, wasn't trusting God nor rejoicing in uncertainty. and she reminded me to enjoy liking and pursuing heidi "in peace and freedom." those words stayed with me, and yeah. i dunno. walk with me here, because this idea of enjoying peace and freedom in Jesus has been echoing in the halls of my day-to-day for a few weeks, at least, and has felt significant. God has given me this little bit, but also the sense that He might show me this in new ways this semester. i'm looking forward to it.

i need to go study. six more days till i can chew!

colors in array

2011-01-13T07:41:00.000-08:00

Today is more than me.

there's this band i recently stumbled across, in november, and their name is "future of forestry." i found some catchy songs, and then read the lyrics, and was curious. i read some of the frontman/vocalist's words about some songs, the band name, and his life, and the more i read, the more i was sure i would be friends with him, if i knew him. he writes honestly, and reflects on life around him well, and the spirit of a poet who sees beauty well is just so apparent in the words he writes and the music he helps create. his name is eric owyoung.

the band's name was taken from c.s. lewis's poem, "the future of forestry," which starts,
"How will the legend of the age of trees
Feel, when the last tree falls in England?
When the concrete spreads and the town conquers
The country's heart..."

on their amazon store page, owyoung is quoted as explaining that the meaning they came away with was, "not about saving trees but about saving our lives from being taken over by technology...It's about asking if we are still able to see beauty."

and this is where my soul nodded in agreement, as nursing school pulled me closer at the end of the semester and downtown austin felt anything but restful.

future of forestry put out 3 ep's most recently, "travel," "travel II," and "travel III." that's another story, and a good one, but i won't put it here, in this post. if you want to read yourself, go to www.futureofforestry.com and click on "travel I," the first ep, and then "traveler's song," and it'll play and you can read his words on this theme of travel there too.

i listened to "travel" on the way home from a hospital appointment this morning, specifically "colors in array." it's one of my favorite songs, and owyoung comments that the song is about the "messiness of life," and at the same time, how it resembles a mosaic we live in. "What has seemed like chaos becomes a work of art." (Knowing owyoung is a Christian makes these lyrics meaningful, as well, and not just vague.)

i want to realize these words at the start and the end of my most stressful days this upcoming semester. the song has different melodies, and throughout, different notes and progressions played into the harmony of sounds that makes up the song. owyoung paints a musical picture of a chaotic, fragmented mosaic that is quite beautiful when seen as a whole, as a song. in this way, the music reflects the message of the lyrics.

chaos can make me stressed, and when nothing makes sense, i find security in being able to match pieces together, in bringing nonsense into sense, in grasping situations, in being adequate despite confusion. but that's not what God promises me. i think what i love about this song is that there are so many different parts musically, and many that would sound silly or strange by themselves, but together, it is awesome. it sneaks up on me and takes me by surprise, and owyoung's high notes sound triumphant, joyful. that's what i want. not just to admit, "today is more than me," but to agree joyfully, "Today is more than me," and actively take hold of the truth that somewhere, maybe from far away, all around me looks beautiful, and is beautiful. it reminds me of that passage in romans about all things working together for good for me, or good for somebody like me, somebody who loves God.

Today is more than me
The disarray of things that I can only hold or see
For today you shine your light
What you say is more than words is spoken in your eyes

Colors in array
Will show themselves before we fly away
Colors in array

For love and for the day
For love, for truth, for life, and all eternity
For this song you shine your light
For this song that's more than words will reach into your eyes

Colors in array
Will show themselves before we fly away
Colors in array

the new year

2011-01-03T10:50:00.000-08:00

***it's the sixth of january, no longer the third, when i started writing this post. it got long, and i gave up in disgust. but i came back, and i'll post this much. yes, it's another marathon post, and for those who want to read it. i didn't realize how much 2010 held for me until i looked back. and i think that's important, too. cory dimler has told me multiple times about how he has been struck by God's instructions to israel in the torah, especially deuteronomy. repeatedly, God told them to "remember." and the fact of the matter is that when we remember, we see what God has done for us. when we remember to others, we testify to His glory. it's good for the speaker and the listener. with that in mind, i push the button, "publish post."

it's the new year. i meant to write on the 31st of december, last year, or the 1st of this year, but i missed both and so here i am on the 3rd of this year, 2011. this year i will turn twenty-three, this year i will end my second-to-last year of college and start my last, this year i will no longer be on my parents' health insurance plan, and this year i will continue the process of claiming austin, texas, as my home.
i had hoped to study abroad this summer, in guadalajara, mexico, taking a spanish class and doing some work in a mexican hospital, as part of creatively satisfying some of my nursing school degree requirements. however, i found out that the study abroad program isn't going to happen this year, so that hope shan't be fulfilled. i'll likely take the spanish class over the summer, at UT, as well as a nursing elective class that i'll have to take at UT...(the study abroad program would have fulfilled the spanish class and the elective.)
i have hopes for living arrangements for the fall and the spring thereafter; after the lease expires for the house i now share with 6 other guys, i'd like to live with 2 other guys in an apartment or something. one guy asked me if i'd be interested in living with him and his friend. i don't know if it will....i dunno. he can be pretty messy, and i really appreciate orderliness, and i want to be smart about pairing up with roommates. however, at the moment, i don't have any other options, really, and i like the guy, so it might be really good. so. i'm sure there will be more on that as the fall approaches, but for now, suffice it to say that i have hopes for living arrangements for then.
where was i, new year's eve in 2009? i was with my family in flagstaff, arizona, on vacation to visit the grand canyon. i had hopes for a relationship with megan...i spent time at her house in california at the beginning of 2010, and we realized we were best as friends. i forgot to pay my spring tuition in time, and i was dropped from my last semester of pre-nursing classes, needed to apply for nursing school for the fall. in the first week of classes, the LORD answered my prayers and my guidance counselor got me into all of my classes again, informing me that i was lucky that there was one seat left in one of the classes i needed, before giving it to me. i praised God, and at the same time, worried about my roommate, khoa, who had a mental breakdown during the first and second weeks of school, becoming unresponsive and really weird to be around. my community group and i prayed for him, and i struggled to remain fully in the situation, trying to care, as well as start the new school semester well. God was tremendously faithful during those weeks, and looking back, it's awesome to see.

on january 24th, i wrote, "classes have started off quickly. God has been faithful, showing me little things throughout the week, about how He cares for me. i feel like i had the chance to walk barefoot through most of this week, my feet on holy ground."

on february 5th, tim wrote for me, ending with, "setting matters, and yet it doesn't. it's vital, without it you are merely waiting for godot, and it shapes you. if my setting never changes, it's hard to tell what is true about myself, my heart, versus what my environment breeds in me (for better or for worse). and above all, our Author is faithful in every setting, from adam's to job's to the last day.
here's to integrity of heart and character in all settings."

on february 27th, i wrote about an angle of repose, which is one of my favorite posts.

on march 12th, i wrote about how khoa had called me, close to two months after he had suddenly left my life, and asked me to recommend a Bible verse for him to read. i ended by reflecting on how many people had prayed for khoa since God put he and i in the same room. "we ask an infinite God to rescue. prayers powerful and effective, to a God who is there.

ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name."

i also found out that i got into nursing school, in late march.

april gave me a new roommate, and my friend sam and i got to know each other better, finally following up on all of our "we should hang out" statements we'd made across the hall to each other in jester. he's been a great friend and brother, and i'm grateful to God for putting him in my life to encourage and be encouraged by.

may found me wrapping up finals and praying for a friend with him as i had to trust God, feeling stretched thin by his confession to me that he was struggling with the temptation of suicide. about the hardest night, i wrote, "we stayed up late that night, sitting in my room, praying, talking, carrying the burden. we fought for his heart. yeah, and the storm was pretty heavy at different points that night, but by the time he left my room, i could see on his face that Jesus had won the battle we fought."
may also involved looking for a summer job, watching my little brothers graduate high school, and saying goodbye to my backpack, taken from my car on the day i left austin, along with my laptop, full journal, bible, and a few other things.

june and july had me taking an anatomy class at san antonio college four days a week, and working three 12 hour night shifts in an alzheimer's unit as an aide for a former priest. it was a full time.

august meant i said goodbye to friends as i went back to austin for the fall semester, including a goodbye to katy as her family considered leaving san antonio before she would have time to return from tennessee. i thought about what it's like to be needed in parts i, ii, and iii. and i started nursing school....

2010-12-30T20:33:00.000-08:00

that last entry ended in a bit of a rant. it was sincere, but maybe a bit pessimistic. i'm not sure if it needs balancing, so i shan't try. only i'll add to it by saying that Christmas was enjoyable, and reflecting on what was wrapped for me under the tree afterwards, i thought again about material things as analogies...true, they don't do at all. and, in some small way, i saw my parents' love for me through Christmas presents.

my mouth pain these days is really good. i'm only taking some sort of pain med (ibuprofen or tylenol) about three times a day now, which is a whole lot better than what it was. three times a day meaning morning and night, and usually once in between. i hope the days are gone when i have to set my alarm in the middle of the night to wake up and drink a glass of milk with a pill so i don't feel like misery personified in the morning, so the pain isn't killing me when the morning wakes me for the day.

Man Day was today. it was excellent. i was exhausted, from staying up late and waking up early yesterday, partly because of preparation for man day last night, partly because of a hospital app't early this morning. at man day, i sat out during all of the physical activities, (which was a large chunk of the day,) but i reflected that in four weeks, i'll be able to do all of that physical stuff. it's just for a short time that they don't want me to do very much.

i played guitar for some praise songs before we took communion, which was fun, as it had been more than a year since i led worship for anything. it feels good to use a gift God gave me in worship.

yeah, man day was good, and full...and i didn't really click on the "new post" button to write about man day. so i won't. suffice it to say, what i've already said. :)

i wrote heidi, the girl i'm pursuing, the other day. i wrote some words, and after i just sat and turned it over in my head for a minute. i can ramble on alot, especially in this blog, and it's not a good habit. but the words were not rambling. these words appeared in the email, at the direction of my fingers on keys, and i sat there for a moment, wondering if i wanted to give away this part of me in this particular email, to this particular girl at this particular time. i'm sure you've felt this before; in telling some one something, and especially in a written correspondence, something comes out that you know is valuable, that sums you up especially, that is so much like you that it is you. it's telling. the kinds of words that are not told, they're given. and i suppose this is what the songwriters mean when they dedicate their albums and write that their songs are a part of them, that they are gifts.

i gave these words. "i've had to drop my expectations of what my break looks like...this surgery and the recovery, and the diet, and the exercise restrictions...just all of it has shaken up my aspirations. i won't be in shape going into the spring semester, and i won't work any shifts over the break. i looked forward to a restful break between semesters, so that i can go into J2 with energy. that still might happen, but currently, though most of the time i'm well-rested, i wouldn't say i feel restful. there's a difference. i'm hoping to recharge between now and january 18th in ways i haven't so far."

in a way, they are the kind of words that are given among my close friends and i on a regular basis. but in another way, they are not. because it's one thing to give words among close, trusted friends. it's different when the person you give your words to is not a close friend... and the last sentence holds promise for me. part of its value is that i don't know what those last words mean, exactly.

why am i writing this? i'm not sure. maybe i look forward to a relationship with a girl who sees the value in words that are given, one who can pick out given from spoken. this may be heidi, and it may not be. i am seeing, bit by bit, that heidi sees alot. it makes me curious. i'm enjoying pursuing her, though it's still fairly early. she's an interesting girl and...yeah, reading through well written and descriptive lines of text she writes, i'm still left curious. it's like the more she writes, the more i don't understand her...which is crazy! crazy. but intriguing. so i say to myself, "let's see where this ends." and keep hope alive.

Christmas day

2010-12-24T23:08:00.001-08:00

merry christmas!
it's 1 am, on christmas day. everyone else is in bed, sleeping. i should be, and will be, soon.

the surgery went well. when i woke up, multiple people were changing my gown, commenting on how i had sweated so much...i drifted out again. when i woke up again, a mask had been put on me, giving me oxygen, because i guess i wasn't breathing as much as they liked...i drifted again. i came to, and a nurse was trying to keep me awake, telling me to "remember to take deep breaths." i would take one or two, and then drift off into barely breathing and sleep. she would wake me up and tell me again, i would attempt it for a few again, and so it went.

that was in the post-anesthesia room, where they bring you after surgery. i think it's pretty normal to have o2 given to you, because after the ventilator and with the anesthesia, you don't breathe normally. an o2 mask usually indicates that they're giving higher levels of oxygen, as opposed to the nasal cannula, the little two-pronged nose tube thingie, but they could have been using it to do low-dose stuff anyways. (we learned about oxygen therapy last semester, though i have yet to start oxygen therapy on a patient in a clinical setting. though i've messed with them plenty.) and they try to keep you awake, and breathing on your own...with higher doses/volumes of oxygen, it can cause oxygen toxicity, which basically means you stop breathing. since your body regulates your breathing based on the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide, putting too much oxygen in some one's lungs can give the signal to breathe less...and less..
all of this flashed through my groggy head as things were happening to me. it was pretty amusing. i doubt the nurse was worried about oxygen toxicity. she was probably just trying to get me to wake up more from the anesthetic.

the rest of my hospital stay was uneventful, really. the dr.'s said everything went well and that the x-rays taken the next day looked good. i had a follow-up app't this past tuesday, and the surgeon walked into the room and laughed when he saw me. apparently, my swelling had gone down unusually fast, so from the outside, in the words of one of the doctors, "it looks like the surgery was 6 weeks ago, not 6 days." which they were happy to see. they gave me some pretty tight rubber bands which i've had to lace around the wires in my mouth, and have proven a nuisance at best, and painful at worst.
so it's been 10 days now. i'm still taking pain medication. that's been the worst part. the first four days after the surgery were incredibly miserable. the pain medicine helped, but made me sleepy, and i didn't have an appetite for a while, and blended food just tasted gross. by this past tuesday, though, the pain was ok, though i mapped out those 4-6 hour intervals and diligently staggered my percocet and ibuprofen to keep the pain from getting out of control.

the tight rubber bands added a new kind of pain, but that's been getting better, too. i still need pain medicine, but i'm easing off some of it. some of the numbness in my face is fading, too, which might account for some pain these days. i'm getting used to blended food, and tonight we went out to dinner, and i had huevos rancheros, which i was able to just swallow. oh, and rice and beans, which i mixed up and swallowed as well. that was really good.

so yeah. 5 more weeks-ish. oh! and this tuesday i can blow my nose again. they told me after the surgery that i couldn't for two weeks. at first it was awful, but after a while several blood clots came out and that helped me breathe. gross, huh? yep.

christmas. reflecting in starbucks, i realized today that it doesn't feel like christmas to me, this year. i'll be happy tomorrow, and enjoy the day, but i'd be ok if it were a month down the road, instead of in 7 hours. i think this whole jaw surgery thing, and being in so much pain the past week, and also drifting in and out of sleep for those days...and eating weird meals, and seeing Christmas cookies but not eating any (that changed yesterday, when i found some soft cookies i could hold in my mouth and then swallow) ...all of it kind of messed with the momentum of the life of daniel martin. or stopped it. i dunno. and it's just an odd realization. that i was more excited about christmas one month ago, than i am now. and it's hours away.

thinking about christmas and gifts and the season. i heard a really thought-provoking sermon a few weeks ago about giving costly gifts, like peace, or forgiveness, or just time, with some one. the pastor made some sarcastic but insightful comments like, "we have these love languages, and some people have 'quality time' as theirs. and we learn about these things, and christmas comes along and we throw it out the window and say, 'i love you. here's a plant.' or a gift card..."
it got me thinking about those in my life and it got me to take my little brothers to see "the voyage of the dawn treader," because i realized that to at least one of them, quality time is what is important to them, is what is meaningful, when given. it was a really good night, and i was glad i did it.
and sitting by the tree tonight, i just don't want to be a part of spreading the lie that a cd wrapped in patterned paper is analogous in any sort of way to God, the LORD, giving the life of Jesus, His Son, away to some humans who were deep in shit, too deep even to be able to ask for a Christmas present like that. when i get a cd, i smile and say thank you to my mom, but it doesn't make me stop and reflect and realize that, wow, my mom really loves me. maybe it should. i guess i don't deserve a cd, i'm not entitled to that cd, but i'm not aware of that as i pull the paper off of it. it feels like i'm entitled to it. particularly if i wrote it on a piece of paper with the title "Christmas List," or, as my brother peter put, as a brutally honest subheading to his list, "of things i will eventually buy if i do not get them." (which made me laugh.)
there's nothing about Christ that we could have done ourselves if God hadn't given us what we could not afford.

so i split peter and jonathan's presents up into partly that movie night and then something small to wrap up and stick under the tree. i gave dad a book which i actually gave him the night i bought it, in november, while i was home for thanksgiving. it was a really funny book that made me laugh, and i knew he would like it, so i gave it to him and we spent some time laughing over it at the kitchen table together, reading. my dad and i share the same sense of humor in many ways, which is really enjoyable. i didn't plan that to be time spent with dad, but i liked the way the gift turned out, shared with him like that.
i want to give costly gifts.

2010-12-14T20:24:00.000-08:00

tomorrow morning at 4:55, i will drive with my dad to the hospital. i will check in at 5:15, to be prepped for my jaw surgery, which we think will be around 7:30. if you are thinking that 5:15 seems awful early to come in for a 7:30 surgery, you're not the only one.

i finished classes on december 2nd. i went to a party thrown by some fellow nursing students in my class on that friday, which had alot of my classmates (20 and 21 year olds, for the most part) drinking large amounts of alcohol. it was interesting. i prayed about it alot before going. it's no secret that jesus was in sinners' houses, at sinners' parties, and making more wine even after wedding parties were well underway, which, if one takes a half second to think through, probably meant that that water turned to wine was served to people celebrating, people who were tipsy by the time the first wine ran out.
i stopped drinking after it started getting loud and the alcohol flowed more freely. some girls whom i'm friends with, who are christians, asked for solidarity in my companionship: "so we're not the only ones not drinking..." and that felt cool, to support them silently, and thank Jesus for their self control (as they're not yet 21) in a potentially hard situation. i also talked to classmates i've gotten to know, and when i left the party, some blessed me with their words, their tongues loosened by their drinks, haha. really, though, it was neat to see where God has given me favor, in those places with people who don't believe in Him. one guy in particular has been in my mind, and i hope God continues to move me into a place where i can love him well, and where he lets me speak into his life.

i went camping with cory on that monday after. we went up to lake georgetown and hiked around, camping one night and hiking more the next day. it was fun, and freezing cold. we did have warm enough sleeping bags, so we were fine once we dropped off to sleep. the hikes were fun, and it was a good time spent with cory. God uses him in my life, yes, yes. it's clear, whenever i stop and think about it.

there's this girl, and i decided i would mention it on here. her name is heidi, and yes, i know how rare that name is, and how strange that i should like a girl named heidi now, when i liked a girl named heidi two years ago. she's in my class in nursing, and goes to the austin stone too, and is in the sorority that's basically the sister sorority to byx, the christian fraternity that my housemates are all in. she's a really cool girl, from what i can tell, and i've seen small parts of her character that are neat. we went slacklining on the sunday before cory and i went camping, and it was just a good time. as the sun ducked behind a building in the late afternoon, it got colder, and we put our socks and shoes back on, took the line down, and walked through the park we were in till we found a sunny patch somewhere else, to sit down and keep talking.

yeah, i dunno. we've been communicating, by texting and such, and i switched it over to email earlier this week, so that it could be a slowed pace of communicating for this 6 weeks of break, time to enjoy with family, in the here and now, and in the meantime pray and think about what we both want. so we'll see what happens. it's funny, i was thinking about hope, and it's not something you can put on hold, or switch on and off. you either kill it, or you keep it alive. at least, that's been my experience. if anyone knows different, do tell. but i was thinking about how i don't want to run away with possibilities in my mind with this girl, because there is still some time that needs to be spent as friends, (or as close to friends as is possible when you're both aware that you like each other,) before...yeah, before dating. and it's really hard to just...think about something else for six weeks, slash impossible, and tune back in, in six weeks, and expect to pick up my hope where i left it, after that last hangout. nope. it's mine to carry, to enjoy, yes, to care about, care for, yes. the hope means i'm involved, invested, that there's something to lose, and that something went on the line the moment a hopeful thought came into my head. and something to lose means there's also something to gain.

yeah. just things that have struck me, this two weeks of break. we'll see what happens. :)

tomorrow is my surgery. i'm not looking forward to the pain that i'll feel for the next few days. nor am i looking forward to the blender diet. it's been hitting me in waves, basically just this past week. i've wondered lately if i don't weigh the cost, often, going into something big. the cost or the implications, or the what-have-you. because it just doesn't materialize for me, "oh. three meals a day, seven days a week, no breaks, for six weeks. no crunchy anything. just applesauce, and pudding, and shakes, and pureed soups, and oatmeal (no chewing), etc." tonight i went to chipotle with peter and jonathan, and thought multiple times, "man. this is gonna suck." but everybody's been telling me that. it was the same with nursing school, i think. it hit me in waves, and after the start, of how intense it would be. it was that way going to europe, i'm pretty sure. it all started hitting me in the car on the way to the airport that day.

and...i dunno. i think part of why i haven't dwelt in how much this will be unpleasant, these next six weeks of meals, is because thinking about it beforehand is unpleasant. i saw a charles spurgeon quote a few weeks ago that said something like, "anxiety does not rob tomorrow of its sorrow, but only robs today of its strength."

mreh. i don't know. i think i'm just rambling. i wonder what tomorrow will be like. it will probably be groggy. and swollen. they are gonna keep me in the hospital tomorrow night, i guess just for good measure. i'm pretty fine with that, except for how i'll probably be wearing one of those gowns that doesn't have a back. they're so weird. but it'll be kinda cool, though, being cared for by a nurse. i hope i'm alert enough to watch with interest, what she does. i am interested.

well, see you guys on the other side of a LeFort fracture. they're gonna cut my top jaw, along the top to where the nose hole in my skull is, in the center, you know, and then move it (the whole cut piece, the top jaw) forward a few millimeters, and then screw L shaped plates to it in four places to keep it in place. yep. yep.

2010-11-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

there's this song that i downloaded on noisetrade the other day, in a Christmas song bunch. it's by a band called "maeve," and the name caught my eye, because it's so much like mae, another band i've enjoyed.
this song is called "benediction," and it's wonderful. it spoke to me last night, as i sat in my room, studying, and thinking about my last day of clinicals for my first semester of nursing school. which was today. i sat there, thinking about the possible chaos that today could bring, and the stress of learning how to be a nurse. and these words came lilting across the air, and across my consciousness.

may you find your worth from your Maker
and live in freedom all your days
may you grow in the sense of who you really are
may His life show you the way

may you know that you have the power
to add grace and beauty to this world
may you discover all your gifts and give them generously
may you listen for God's every word

"the power to add grace and beauty to this world." it sounds like something a few of my friends would say. it's a heather kelley line. it's something i usually nod agreement to, readily. but in the hospital, when i feel the stress of memorizing side effects and things-to-keep-in-mind for different drug names, with my instructor breathing over my shoulder as i uncap the needle and my patient looks away and holds her breath...when things won't fit together right, in my organized time, in the things i need to get done...when a patient told me "yes, i can feel when i've gone to the bathroom," and then the nurse lets me know that there's diarrhea in that patient's bed, and i realize that confused patients don't always act confused when faced with ordinary questions, and i feel stupid, and have a mess to clean up...
"the power to add grace and beauty to this world."

and i sit in it, and it gives me peace. but soon the questions form. where? how?

maybe it comes small, maybe it comes slowly. and i do see it, yeah, in small ways. is beauty and grace given or advanced when order is restored? is it more beautiful when some one is clean? beauty and grace. i suppose the concept of care can be both beautiful and graceful.

i don't want to stretch the application too much, so i'll stop there. but i was convicted, and God told me to slow down last night. He was gentle and good. and i'd like to be more aware of this part of my day, rather than stressed because i'm aware of the power to mess something up, or cause a terrible reaction, or give poor care if i fall behind.

"may you discover all your gifts and give them generously, may you listen for God's every word." and again: how diligent have i been about continuing to be aware of my gifts, about taking time to see where i am in life, (more than just "nursing school sucks, and i don't have any time,") and considering how to give from my gifts?

and some giving from God-given gifts is natural, fortunately. looking back at my semester, i can see where i've given of my gifts without deliberating; natural giving is some of the best, and certainly a good sign of God directing and me listening. but in the same breath, i have to admit that i've felt very inadequate this semester, and if i'm honest, that has probably affected my willingness to offer parts of myself in discovering and giving generously of my gifts. "affected"="hurt," in this case. hindered. (i'm talking about spiritual gifts, here. other gifts, like physical resources, are important, but that wasn't where i was convicted. i'm talking about mercy, encouragement, discernment, etc..)

blech. so i'm left with a reminder, and a desire. it's a good place to start.

all that said, we got our grades for clinicals (the whole semester) at the end today. she gave me an A. i think everyone got A's. it's interesting, because i've seen classmates work, or heard of other J1 students, and i know that there are A students who are exceptional, and earn those A's. and i don't feel like i deserve an A, beside them. not in clinicals. it's not that i haven't tried, or that i haven't done my work well. i think, despite my nervousness and the pressure i put on myself, i did well, overall, in clinicals this semester. but i dunno. i just know of students who really deserve their A's, i feel like, and i probably deserve a B, because the grading rubric says A's are exceptional work, and B's are satisfactory work, and C's are "needs improvement" or something like that. so i see exceptional work, and i...i don't know.

and i'm balancing it, or trying to, with the fact that my instructor's assessment of my performance in clinicals is a vote of confidence. that we learn under her because she is knowledgeable and able to prepare us and assess the way we work. so at the end of the day, her confidence in me is actually a big deal. that the reason i'm in her class, in nursing school, is because i have decided to trust her. trust her to prepare me and be honest with me and help me along to become a nurse. i can second-guess her grading of me, but at the end of the day, i know very little about nursing, and she knows a ton. so. yeah. exceptional vs. satisfactory is sometimes subjective, and i know that i can be my harshest critic. the bottom line is that she feels that her work is done in preparing me for J2 clinicals.

2010-11-26T16:50:00.001-08:00

starbucks stays busy, and tables are full
la tazza fresca had a lady putting up lights outside, and she waved me away, motioning,
"we're not open right now."
after turning in a few different directions, i found
the coffee bean and tea leaf
open, waiting to give me a decaf pumpkin latte.
i sat
and watched a fellow man's things, the table next to me
while he went to the bathroom.
sitting there,
i heard french, spoken low and naturally, behind me.
sitting quietly, i soaked it in.
earlier today, the cold weather and the sun hitting the trees
reminded me of days in germany.
i wondered who i was back then, and who i am now.
God reminded me that days were not perfect then,
just as they are not now.
so the memories are the gift, then?
so the memories are the gift.

the guy came back from the bathroom, and i recognized him from hyde park baptist church. we started talking, and it turns out he works at a hospital near here, and is also working on initiating a program to encourage activity in the elderly. we talked about my aging class, about nursing, about the hospital, about aging, about the church, about programs, about hyde park, about the austin stone. turns out he works with a good friend of cory's, whom i've met. this friend's name is andrea, and she's a nurse who graduated from UT's nursing school in december of '08, and promptly went with a mission organization to work in egypt for a year. i've been meaning to meet with her and discuss what nursing was like in a different country, in a different language, and what it was like transitioning back to nursing in the united states. but i haven't yet. but i will.

thanksgiving was fun. peter and jonathan's birthday fell on thanksgiving this year, so we celebrated that as well. on thanksgiving morning, my dad asked me if i wanted to go with him to make rounds to check on a few of his patients in the hospital. so i did, especially since he told me they have wound drainage systems in place, something we've studied in class but i haven't seen in person. i enjoyed watching him interact with the patients and listen to some of the things said at the bedside, and questions they asked the nurse, and later he filled me in on activated pancreatic enzymes and skin vs. faschia stretch and other interesting, confusing things.

we all got to skype with rob for a bit on thanksgiving, too, which was fun. tammy, our sis-in-law, is staying with the fam in san antonio while rob is in iraq. she misses him alot, of course, but its neat to see that she and my parents get along well.

yesterday, there was a terrible football game. a terrible end to a terrible UT football season.

i need to study, because i have four tests in three days this coming week.

my jaw surgery is scheduled for december 15th. i'm not looking forward to a liquid diet for 6 weeks after surgery. i was thinking about that on thanksgiving. and then i went in with my dad to check on a lady who needs to have her food put in her by tube, for the next 10 months. maybe a year. when my dad told her that, i realized that six weeks isn't so long, after all. and i'll still get to taste my food. she won't.

alot of things fill my head. perhaps they'll come out later.

2010-11-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

today is a restful day.
i have some of these acceptable sins, and i forget about them when i see more visible sins. i worry and don't trust God with things that other people don't worry about. i have trouble letting each day worry about itself, and just letting go. sometimes this translates into un-restful days of rest. as in, i don't let go of the things that God wants me to let go of. yeah, and then i see somebody who drinks irresponsibly, and i think it's my job to disapprove, you know? like, be the meter-stick when i find out. that's absurd. here's me, dan, saying it aloud, so hopefully it sticks better. that's absurd. as a brother, i can urge, or confront, yeah, or exhort, etc etc, but i am not the straight line. (i also have visible sins, but i don't forget about those as much. and. yeah.)
if you're thinking, "dan, where's the application to all this? where does this plug in to your life?" then i answer, "first of all, plug in should not be uttered in christian circles for at least twenty years. then maybe we can resume responsible use. not overuse, mind you. because that's where we're at. but, to answer the question, i'll tell you in conversation between you and i...maybe. but i'm not gonna write it on my blog. there's no danger that the applicable parties will read my blog, but i want to be kind...yeah, and i think i'll leave the more immediate situations to personal conversations."

nursing school has been calm for a week and a half now. it's going to be another busy(er) week coming up. i've looked around me several times recently, wondering how my fellow nursing students experience stress, how they deal with it, and just what they feel in certain situations. because i know for me, clinical days are stressful. just the idea. just the whole day. but i think for others, that's not so. they get excited. or just take it as it comes. i dunno. maybe i get white coat syndrome, in a weird self sort of way, as i wear a white coat. (i don't wear a white coat. not on clinical days...its some sort of white top.) but yeah. i dunno.

a few weeks ago, i got an email from a nursing professor, to all of us J1 nursing students, about an opportunity to help with assessments at a homeless resource fair on some distant saturday. i thought, "wow, how scary. and how cool. i bet you'd see some cool stuff. and...still scary." and didn't respond. a week ago, our assessment instructor reminded us about the fair, and said it was a neat opportunity, and reassured us that we would be near more knowledgeable nurses and nurse graduate students if we saw anything abnormal, while helping assess the homeless who came to the fair. so i told her (my instructor) that i'd like to do it, and she said ok, because she was going to be there. (i was feeling bold.)

fast forward to thursday. we didn't have assessment class, and turns out that distant saturday was...november 13th. today. so i emailed my instructor, and said, "hey, i never bugged you again about volunteering this coming saturday. is it too late? i haven't heard anything about it by email or anything." and she wrote back, "yeah, sorry, too late. maybe next year." literally, like three lines, two words each. four, if you count "sent from my iPhone," which of course, i do not count.

so i was relieved, actually, because as i said, it sounded scary. i have...i dunno. we could sit down and discuss how i get performance anxiety, and have alot of self doubt, and how it affects the way i step up to challenges or react to difficulties or setbacks or just see myself, in general. and if you're reading my blog, this probably isn't some huge out-of-the-blue piece of news for you. you've probably seen some of it, or shades of it. and this plays into how i get stressed about nursing. and clinicals. because clinicals is like a textbook example of "show me what you got" performance and grading. you know, like in "boys (lesson one)" by jars of clay, there's that line, "not to undermine the consequence, but you are not what you do." and that's the scandalous thing about grace, and Jesus. because His identity, effected by His sacrifice, and our adoption, is a thorough working-out of "you are not what you do." or did. and continue to do. anyways.

so yeah. man. and that's been a huge thing for God to come through for me on, so far in nursing school, and i anticipate His reminders and providence for another...year and a half of nursing school, and probably a solid year after that, as a new nurse. and part of God's goodness is that my clinical instructor this semester really likes me. i've told you guys that. so i feel comfortable around her. and i think this leads me to be confident in asking her questions, and enjoying the learning process more in general. (more = more than not at all, haha.)

anyways. back to homeless resource fair volunteering and my assessment instructor saying no. so she said no, and i was relieved. but also a bit let down. because i would've liked to be a part of that, and practicing assessment would just be really helpful. more practice leads to more confidence.
i texted this girl who is in some of my classes, and asked her if she was volunteering, and she said yes. she asked me, i explained what happened, and she was like, "you could always email [insert name of instructor who had emailed us all in the first place, the one who was in charge of that part of the event]"....
so i sat on that for a while. do i want to do it, even if i'm scared?...i'm already stressed enough, probably...dan, don't avoid it because you're afraid! fear is not a good primary reason to avoid it. if you want sleep, or don't care that much, or feel like you don't really need the practice doing blood pressures, because you've done them a bunch as a CNA, then ok, don't email...it's at 9 a.m....it would be an early morning....but that cute girl in your class is going...but cute classmate is another bad primary motivator for going...ok. i'll watch the videos for some basic skills, like taking blood glucose levels, and then i'll be ready. none of the other J1's know any more than you do, dan.

i emailed the instructor in charge and explained that i wanted to do it, if she had space for me. i told her i'd check my email at 8 a.m. in the morning to see if she had responded. i didn't say anything about my assessment instructor already telling me there were no spots. if there were spots, the one in charge would know best about last minute cancellations, etc....i sent off the email, and reviewed some skills. i went to bed and steeled myself for a "yes" email in the morning. i woke up and found the "yes" email in my inbox. i went.

it was fun. from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.. i helped fill out paperwork most of the time, then spent a little bit of time in the "foot care" area, and washed one man's feet, and then had the opportunity to watch a grad student do an assessment, so i watched that and copied results on paper. the foot care area was interesting. the feet i washed were pretty smelly. and i felt awkward, and he did most of the washing. when it was done, he said something like, "so, there's no like, pedicure or something?" nope...sorry. we were cutting toenails if they needed to be cut, but his didn't. i think i would have gotten comfortable once i washed a few more feet, but as i said, i went to watch something else. but i've washed plenty of feet in the nursing home, so i don't feel like i missed out on this incredibly novel experience. a girl who is a christian, and in most of my classes, told me about her feet-washing experience. she said she was cleaning some reeeaally nasty feet, and getting disgusted and fed up, and the person remarked, "you know, Jesus washed people's feet!" ....timely. i liked hearing that story.

doing paperwork, i saw more than a few people who looked like they could be my parents' friends, not dirty, with articulate speech and good posture. i sat in on an assessment with a man who vented about formerly being an industrial roofer in new york, and his seizure disorder now keeps him from being hired at burger king because he might fall and burn himself, and they don't want the liability. that felt really heavy, sitting there as he told us that he's prone to seizures when his life gets shitty. like when his mother died in january. or when his wife divorced him.

it was a well spent two hours this morning. i'm glad i wrote that email.

somewhere, a shift occurred.

2010-11-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

i enjoy going back to san antonio. my bed at home is roughly ten million times more comfortable than my bed here in austin. it's psychologically peaceful, being 90 miles away from the grind and school obligations. my mom's cooking eats my cooking for lunch (if that makes sense). there's a cute dog who hangs out in our kitchen who loves attention. my parents and brother are there, and now my sis-in-law.
all that said, i recently realized, in the past few weeks, that i am home in austin. i don't know when that happened. i know that last year, i felt more like it was a home away from home toward the end, but ...even so, it was more like i had a small space of my own in a different city, with a routine and people i knew there. its hard to explain. and over the summer, i didn't make a single trip to austin, i think. i had chances. but i just felt no need. austin was there when school started, and there was no need to hurry the process of tearing away again.

i've gone home this semester quite a few times. alot of those had to do with my upcoming jaw surgery, which might happen over Christmas vacation, and it might happen later. we'll see. it's been really nice. and it's also felt nice to return, for the most part. i know people who just love austin, who soak it all in and are super enthusiastic about it, who love to say the word "austin," you can just tell. i'm not there...but i'm glad to feel settled in here. when i was driving to the orthodontist in san antonio this past week, on bitters road, i reflected on how bitters is full of familiar trees, curves, and stoplights. i know very few streets in austin like that; i know so many in san antonio like that. but i'm looking forward to more of that here, in austin.

tim was driving back from oklahoma yesterday evening and he stopped by my house for 45 minutes, and we caught up over coffee drinks on my porch. i had alot of work to do, but it was a good break, a blessing. he mentioned looking forward to Christmas vacation, when tom, jon rosen and i would be home in san antonio. i do look forward to that. and also feel like it will also involve leaving home.

this morning, it was my turn to drive for carpool. four of us drive to roundrock for clinicals together. we meet at 5:55am, (-ish,) and get to roundrock a little before 6:30, when the day starts. last night i finished my patient write-up (c.d.b.) at 12:45, and got to bed around 1am last night. 4 hours of sleep was not fun, but it was fine...a girl in our carpool finished her c.d.b. at 4am, which left her 82 minutes of sleep before getting up for clinicals. usually we work in the hospital until 12:15pm, then we break for lunch, and then have a post-conference, which just involves talking about our day, sharing things we learned, and our instructor gives us feedback and such. this week, one girl asked if we could leave at lunch and go to the salt lick, a bbq place near the hospital in roundrock. she said yes, and so we all met there and had lunch. and didn't have the post-conference. but yeah.
we drove back from roundrock, and i think everybody felt pretty peaceful. we have a few tests this week, and had a few last week, which have left us all pretty drained, so the time at lunch was a good time hardly thinking about our workload. i left the windows down as we drove, and the others in the car were up for it too, even on the highway. we talked about what superpowers we'd like, and how pumpkins feel if no one buys them for halloween. the sun was out, and it was pretty warm, with a good bit of humidity, but the wind in and out of the windows was cool. somewhere in between ranch road 620 in roundrock and 38th 1/2 street in austin, the girl who was up all night fell asleep, and the other guy did, too. the other girl and i sat in silence. i couldn't help feeling like a dad, driving while others fell asleep. (that happens on our family trips.) and it was a neat feeling, too. obviously the two were sleeping because they were exhausted. but there's also something nice, knowing that they felt safe enough to fall asleep while i drove. i know when i fall asleep on car rides, it's because some one else has control, and i can relax and leave it in their hands. and...their falling asleep made me more alert.

it was a strange feeling, and i guess it might have been a bit of a stretch...but i dunno. i just felt gratified, and thanked God for the moments, and for being trusted.

2010-10-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

1) i just wrote a long email to a friend in canada, a friend who is now married, a friend who borrowed my tie at bodenseehof one time to do "foosfest news," announcing the results of our weekly foosball tournaments in the basement of bodenseehof. we were roommates the first semester.

2) i feel drained, but am disinclined to leave this coffeeshop to relinquish my day of rest to the night.

3) i am thoroughly sunburnt, from watching UT lose another football game today, from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.. this prompted the purchase of sunscreen, while i was getting groceries this evening.

4) i am cooking acorn squash for dinner this week. i saw a recipe and remembered that my mother makes acorn squash sometimes in the fall, with raisins and brown sugar. since i'll probably miss out on that this fall, i resolved to buy an acorn squash and console myself with a solo acorn squash dinner. i have never prepared squash. (not even zucchini, come to think of it, though that's on my list to make eventually, too.) it feels adventurous. sometimes my housemates hover around my food when the smell fills the kitchen, when it's almost ready, and i am usually flattered, but perhaps flattered the way a sheep feels when the circling wolves say whatever the equivalent of a loaded-kitchen-statement like "that smells really good" would be. maybe some comment about the sheep's well-fed figure. anywho. but odds are that there won't be many comments about the squash. they tend to shy away from vegetarian-type things. i don't really understand this aversion to things without meat.

5) there is violin music playing in here. i had two shots of espresso, though decaf. the first time i tasted espresso, it tasted like ground up tree bark. it's growing on me.

6) i have had very little time to process, since nursing school started. i don't really know how i feel about this.

i look forward to marriage, but today in the grocery store, i walked by a woman who was in the process of tearing her husband apart. i was reminded of the enormity of a commitment that goes on till one or the other dies. huge opportunity for joy. but also for ache. it was just sobering, because there are alot of songs on the radio, and just in general, on my ipod, etc, about love, or relationships, and about falling in love. but there's a gritty part that i forget about, in my hopes for a happily ever after.

i failed a skills test two weeks ago. it was for giving injections and pills. for administering them. i ran out of time. or ran over time. i finished, and she (my grader) told me i'd have to do it again because i went over time. i haven't had alot of failure in my life, where i was striving, struggling, honestly trying my best, caring about it, and i still came up short. i was aware of this as i rode my bike home that day, struggling to differentiate between the fact that i failed, but i was not a failure. i prayed about it on our porch for a bit, and my housemate, tim, came home, and kind of interrupted my reverie, but it was good, too, because he offered a good perspective about how the hope for eternity kind of makes a single test just a tiny dot on the radar. and yet it's good to care and apply one's self fully to do well. i re-took that test this past tuesday. i forgot part of a step, but i passed. God let me feel that grace.

i had an assignment due on this past thursday, a big thorough analysis of a patient's hospital stay and diagnostic tests, labs, treatments, care plan, medications, and medical history..and kind of how they all tied together. it's called a CDB, a client database, and we'll be doing them throughout nursing school. we picked out a patient to do it on, in clinicals on monday. i happened to pick a patient who had a jillion medications, and the doctors were still trying to figure out what was wrong with her. so some of my fellow students had pretty straightforward write-ups, tying everything together, like a gallblader operation or something. i got sooo overwhelmed, because its awfully hard to tell your teacher what a test result means, when the doctor in charge of the patient is still trying to figure out what it means for the patient. so i worked on it a long time, trying to tie possible ends together for elevated c-reactive protein levels, low basophil counts, (but high neutrophil counts, and low lymphocyte counts,) and low potassium, etc etc.... and i emailed it in on thursday. today i got it back from my instructor, by email, with a "very well written!" on the top. that was a really good end to a very confusing and uncertain effort. these will get easier throughout nursing school; it's just this steep learning curve currently.

these are some still photos from the movie of my life. i guess i shared about 10...maybe 20, because some were sequences. still, they say the human eye sees motion at around 18 fps, though it depends on what you're seeing and the differences in the pictures. either way, i probably need to write more, since i just condensed the last couple weeks into about a second of video. there are obviously missed moments. mreh. that seems inevitable, though.

it has been a while

2010-10-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

since i last wrote. let's see if i can pick this up again...
it's a sunny day, with breezes. i ate lunch with cory at "texas french bread," a place that reminded me of a less commercial panera, maybe a mix between panera and broadway daily bread, which is a bakery my mom used to buy bread from when we were younger, that i remember had samples of cookies and breads on an enormous cutting board on the counter near the cash register. (no samples at texas french bread, but a similar atmosphere, i thought.) i saw scones that i shall have to return for, at breakfast one morning.

on thursday, i volunteered to cook for roommate dinner. we do it on thursdays, usually, and i made pot roast from a crock pot. God was good, and it was a great dinner. i made baked potatoes too, and had a loaf of french bread, and ice cream for dessert.

i slacklined yesterday, for the first time in two months, i think. i love slacklining in a park, because there are always the curious kids whose mom encourages them to try it, and it's fun explaining and watching and smiling and laughing with the unsteadily brave. and sometimes the moms try too, and that's fun too. slacklining is fairly outside of most people's normal comfort zone, and i find it strange that when i put my foot on the line and shift weight, it feels like stepping into my comfort zone, or a comfort zone. i feel like quite a hippie when people are watching and asking questions and watching me, sizing me up, wondering what possesses a person to tightrope barefoot between two trees on a sunny day in the park. i've heard people say slacklining is peaceful, and i didn't understand, but i do these days.
and i love hearing the excuses that people give when asked, "do you wanna try it?" and love waiting for the excuses to melt away. usually the curiosity is too much, the protests too stale after being repeated a few times. yesterday one girl said, "i don't want to fall." i laughed and told her that she would definitely fall, waiting for her response. she said she was about to go to basic training to start in the marines in two weeks, and she didn't want to hurt herself before then. she was eighteen, we found out. (cory was with me.) i assured her that she could hold some one's shoulder to stay balanced while she walked, and that would keep her from falling too badly. after a bit, she walked the line, clutching my shoulder and trying to still the shaking line, with no success. she watched cory and i for a while then, and we could tell she had liked it, and i asked if she wanted to try again. the first words out of her mouth, without a pause for thought, were the same, "i don't want to fall." after a reassurance or two, she got up again, and the line held much more still this time.

a mother, grandmother, and two young kids came by, and the mother got on the line first, to embolden her son, who was pretty shy. i walked beside her, too, while she held onto my shoulder. the daughter took a picture on an iphone, and they showed me afterward, and asked if i minded if they put it on facebook. haha. so that's somewhere out there.

i got a test grade back last week, from a test i hadn't studied enough for. it was pretty bad. i felt like it was a rebuke from God, because really, i had been lazy, and should have studied more for that test. hopefully i'll bounce back from it in the class. and at the same time, all of my tests have been stressful so far. the questions are intended to be in the style of NCLEX questions, the licensing test that RN's have to pass to get their license after nursing school...and so it's been rare so far this semester, that i've taken a test and walked out feeling good about it. even so, it's been ok. with the exception of that test grade mentioned above, i've been doing fine. it's exciting to see God working in my mind, when little things click, and i see or think in ways that are different from before starting nursing school, before mid-august. and then other times my instructors will be teaching, and asking questions of the class, and i can't think of the right answers or prioritize things right, and i realize i still have a very long way to go, before i am ready to walk into a hospital room and be a nurse.

this morning i went downstairs to eat breakfast at 9:30, and there were two guys sleeping on our couches, neither of whom i knew. nor had i seen them before. this isn't the first time that's happened. housemate has friends, housemate has friends visit him, housemate goes out with friends until late, friends sleep on couches, and dan finds them there the next morning. it's a mild inconvenience; i have this philosophy that with couch-surfing, you're just up with the first person who's up, and you're not really entitled to "sleeping in." but in reality, i try to keep my breakfast making noise down, from the microwave door to the creaking pantry hinges...and then think mildly resentful thoughts. this is not a good system. anyways, i made my breakfast and went out on the porch to eat, and read my Bible for a while. unfortunately, these couch sleepers occupied the couches until 12:30...which i feel is excessive. one of those things that come with the territory of having a house with 6 other college guys, with comfy couches in the main area.

yesterday morning, joe and tyler, two of my housemates, and i, made pancakes for breakfast. i brought the mix, joe brought his cantaloupe, and tyler brought the syrup and griddle. we planned it the night before, and as we were making them, we decided to put in chocolate chips and bananas. it was splendid. these moments make me incredibly grateful to live in this house, with these guys, this year.

2010-09-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

i pushed play, and heard the beginning sounds of "spanish sahara," from the band "foals," off of the abum "total life forever." kris haughton, a good friend of mine who goes to school in tennessee, gave me this cd. so far, so good.

the rain left streaks on my bedroom window, and the sky is still grey. cars go by every few seconds, and bikes pass periodically, as well. i'm sitting at my desk. my nose is stuffy, and i clear my throat from time to time. being sick isn't fun, but right now it's not bad.
it's only six, but it feels like the sun is an hour away from leaving for the night. it's friday.

yesterday afternoon, after class, i drove home for an appointment. my mom scheduled a second opinion app't to see if i really should have jaw surgery to correct my underbite. since i turn 23 in february, and afterwards am no longer covered by my parents' insurance, the idea is that whatever we do, that it be done quickly. it 'twere done, 'twere best 'twere done 'twonce.
i barely made it to the appointment on time, and i hurried inside, with the secretary's threat on my mind, "if you're fifteen minutes late, don't bother coming. reshedule. but if you're really only five minutes late, then ok." i reeeaaaally didn't want to drive from austin to san antonio only to have to reschedule that appointment. fortunately, i didn't have to. at 4:05, i opened the door to the right office, on the right floor, in the right building.

when i got home, i told my parents what the doctor had told me. so. we're gonna do it. i have another appointment on tuesday, with my orthodontist, because i'll need braces to tweak my teeth into the best position for what my new bite will look like. so on tuesday we'll find out if its realistic to hope for the surgery over Christmas, the surgery where they'll cut through the bone in my jaw from the inside of my mouth, and move it around so i can be one of those model cadavers in a medical school 70 years from now. i'm kidding. but it's funny, isn't it? one day, not too too many years from now, there'll be a perfect jaw in a skull, in a box in the ground somewhere. that's kind of morbid. but i assume whoever is reading this knows me. and if you don't, you just have to start at square one, and unfortunately for you, square one is this square.

mreh. that's assuming the surgery goes well. which is what the hope is for all surgeries. i'm not worried about it not going fine, i'm just saying that a perfect jaw is the hoped for outcome, but its not the automatic outcome.

so that's on my mind these days. not apprehension, but its just this idea that takes up a significant portion of my thoughts. i hope my facial profile doesn't change, but talking to the guy yesterday, it's reasonable to expect a correction in my (mild) underbite, without a change in facial features. but yeah. i like my face. i don't want to wake up on a day after the swelling has gone down, and see a different looking face in the mirror. i just want to be able to bite sandwiches better.
braces are a bummer, but with any luck, it'll only be four of five months of braces. and with no luck, it'll be longer, and that'll be that. so. this will be happening.

i had coffee with cory this afternoon. nursing school has been alot of studying, and kept me pretty stressed out. being in a house with six other guys has been nice, and not nice. the other guys are cool, and funny, and fun to be around, but deep conversations just haven't happened that much. they might in the future, but it doesn't seem to be a thing alot of these guys are used to having that often. the tv stays on alot, and alot of jokes fly. good things, but if i'm not careful, i'll spend alot of my free time interacting with them, on this level, and then i have studying to do, and then i get stressed, and overwhelmed, and i wonder why i feel like i have no solid supporting relationships. and its because i've used my time on casual interactions and work, and not been intentional with relationships with friends outside the house, people who live other places, people in other majors with other schedules, people with whom its harder to arrange spending time. so i'm gonna try to change this. and i'm grateful for the time i do have with better friends, like cory, and sam johnson, last week.

my mom had an extra crock pot, which she let me take back to austin. i will have to make pot roast sometime. maybe for roommate dinner. maybe for myself. maybe for both. with some good crusty bread. yes. that sounds good.

i think i can safely say i miss every person who reads my blog. i write these words and i wish i could sit with you while you read them. as i said before, if i don't know you, then obviously i don't miss you. but if you read my blog and you don't know me, i think i'd still like to be there while you receive my mind, and some of my heart.

it's raining again. i feel like soup and a movie. i think i'll do the soup, but i have work to get done. last week i had an assignment that took me 11 hours. i worked from 10pm-4am on friday night, and then from 3pm-8pm on saturday on it. it took my fellow students about that long, too. somebody else took over 12 hours on it. this weekend, i have part II of that assignment. i'm looking to get it done in less time. we'll see. it's due by email, sunday morning.

still raining.

the johnsons

2010-09-09T20:33:00.001-07:00

i'm listening to "call my name" by morgan page right now. i'm wiped out. i intend on crashing soon.

i realized on saturday that i had an appointment on tuesday morning, the 7th, in san antonio. fortunately, labor day weekend enabled me to have both a day off, and an evening to drive down to san antonio on monday. i spent several hours catching up with my family and having dinner, and then texted mark johnson to make sure i could drive over to their house that night and say goodbye.

mark and tracy, and, for all intents and purposes, the rest of the johnson family, moved to michigan, driving away from san antonio on tuesday. it didn't really hit me, monday night.

i walked into the van vleck's house on monday to be tearfully greeted with a hug from tracy. soon after, the conversation resumed from the pause my entrance created, and loud laughter filled the spaces. at one point, steven asked why the conversation was so animated, silly, too, and bethany told him that the only alternative was tears.

i thought about that, sitting beside steven, for a little bit afterwards. the conversation carried stories about mark and tracy, about the call, about the others at the table. i found it easy to quietly listen and take in what was said. i thought a little about what bethany said, and about how strange it is to only be able to choose between mourning and enjoying, in certain moments. i thought about how few years had passed since i met mark at chester's for our first time in the roles of college kid and college pastor, for though i'd met mark before, it was through katy, and he was a friend's father, not a future friend. i thought about what had happened around the johnsons during their years in san antonio, and how i'd only been a part of a small part of that. maybe i felt a little out of place...or rather, maybe i would have felt out of place, had it not been for tracy's hug when i came in. tim sat across the table from me, mostly silent as well. maybe he felt as i did, maybe.

stories drifted the conversation, and soon i was able to relate to things being said, recall messages or mark's ministry themes. and that made me glad, but it was a happiness that didn't come from being able to take part, so much as give part. glad to have something to say in conversations about the johnson's impact in the past years.

driving to the van vleck's beforehand, i turned the radio off and drove in silence, thinking about my life and what role mark and tracy have played in it. it's awfully hard to look back and see how God has used them in my life, mainly because there are so many ways, and they're subtle, they're persistent...i feel like my experiences in community, my expectations in honest relationship, my views on authenticity and strength and risk and life...all of these things are laced with beliefs that trace back to interactions with a family who, until recently, lived on heimer road in san antonio.

i read a devotional from "my utmost for his highest" the other day that mentioned how Jesus promises to bless others through us, if we abide in him, and oswald chambers said that we rarely see the effects of what God is working through us, for others. i think about this, and i think about how much i know mark and tracy have seen, and i just wonder how much more is unseen. for every tim pedersen, for every dan martin, for every darin cabell, how many more?

when i said goodbye to mark, he brought up next summer as a time to hold out for, to plan a road trip to visit them in michigan. my heart sank as i thought of other promised trips to visit other friends, not yet realized, still in the back of my mind.

i drove home, and getting into bed, i heard it start raining. i peered out of the blinds on my window, and watched it fall on the street. i told God that it would be nice if it was still raining when i woke up. it was. in fact, it rained all day the next day. it made it hard to drive up to austin after my appointment, but it felt appropriate to my mood. my evening and morning home in san antonio was a strange visit; i felt strong emotions about home, and comfort, and the memories that things left in my room at home re-awakened, and then said goodbye to the johnsons as well. and then i had to drive back to austin to re-engage with life in a house with 6 other guys, as well as the start of another busy week of nursing school.

katy and allison, if you read this, i'm anticipating seeing you around Christmas, at least. tim, whom i affectionately refer to as "the rumor weed," mentioned that you guys were considering it. (i don't refer to tim as "the rumor weed." though i do sometimes refer to him as "jim.")

shertsch

2010-09-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

i went to hyde park baptist church, last weekend, to see if it would feel like a better fit for my church home this year in austin. the people were nice, and it seemed pretty traditional, so its hard even to consider the austin stone and hyde park as versions of the same concept.

i heard the words "get plugged in" several times at hyde park, and i internally gritted my teeth. it sounds so modern, so churchy, like the church is a source of electricity, and i'm an appliance, and so the power of Christ comes from plugging in to his generator, which has something to do with buildings with high ceilings and crosses on the roofs. i guess i dislike the emergent church movement, this unified "we're tired of being so together and organized," but then i go to a church that's new to me, and resorts to certain terms that most Christians understand, and i dig my heels in and find myself chanting along with the emergents. that rhyme comes to mind, "here is the church, here is the steeple. open the doors, and see all the people." nope. nope nope.

and programs are great, and programs are a great way to have organized activities and events. and when you're part of a program that serves, its easy to have friends that can check up on you. "dan, you weren't at habitat for humanity the past couple weeks. how's your heart?" but then something inside me hates the idea of organized service projects just to give some one control, to be able to see what Jesus knows.

people talk about the early church in acts. its a great starting point for discussion, because it does get us out of the church that has to pass fire safety codes, and into the church that comes together and breaks apart in a thousand ways every day. not the church that has a number to give to cashiers so that we don't have to pay tax on pizzas for youth group, but the church that has a part with a hand, that signs the receipt and gives the tip.

but the early church, while we're on the subject, didn't sign up for meals on wheels. no, they made sure that the widows around them had food. there was no habitat for humanity, so the early church didn't do that stuff. when it says that the church served together, it wasn't that they signed up and got "plugged in" so much, as their hearts were in the right place, and they were glad to serve. service wasn't this event that you set apart a saturday a month for, or even once a week, really, no, i get the distinct impression that it was a lifestyle.

which is harder to see, right? harder to check up on. with no attendance sheet, its not as easy to keep tabs on who's doing stuff and who isn't. unless, of course, the church is unified enough so that everyone is connected in some way or another, and the "checking up" is more like a friend holding a friend accountable. and in the end, playing church may require control, but Jesus sees that stuff best anyway.

and i know that times change, and with the suburban lifestyle, and driving to church like we do in america these days, things have changed to fit this way of life. i'm turning all of this over in my head, and aware of the basic premise that "i am a part of church." which leads me to "i live with six other guys who are part of church." which leads me to "can i skip church? is that even possible?" and my thought is that there is a way the church is intended to live, and i can skip out on that, i can choose not to live out of the way the church is supposed to be..that is possible to do. and it is a given that one of the central parts of church is together. which is what sunday is all about...or what sunday is partially about. or can be about.

this morning, i decided to go to the austin stone again. driving there, i felt pretty reluctant, partly because i was going by myself, and as i've said before, its a huge place. i passed a park a few blocks from my house, and a fleeting thought to enjoy God in silence and nature passed through my head. i remembered the idea of a particular poem, which i looked up when i got back from church.

Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church —
I keep it, staying at Home —
With a Bobolink for a Chorister —
And an Orchard, for a Dome —

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice —
I just wear my Wings —
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton — sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman —
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last —
I'm going, all along.

i only remembered a phrase or two, and i also remembered that emily dickinson was a transcendentalist, or a unitarian, or the two, or something else, but the bottom line was that i realized that i could spend my morning in the park, but i couldn't say it was church, if it was only me and God. i kept driving.

i'm wondering about churches that other people love, and that rub me wrong in some way, and wondering if those amoral issues are what God wants to use to move me to the right place, or if i should just get used to these particular imperfections. i'm wondering about, and will be praying about my heart, because i'm not trying to revolutionize church, but i am trying to stay away from routine and move closer to whatever "life to the full" looks like.

once upon a time

2010-08-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

as you all know, readers, i read "a million miles in a thousand years" by donald miller this summer. parts of it resonated with things i'd noticed in my life, and things noticed in other lives. the concept of a "good story" is a pretty sweet one, and i've done a good amount of thinking about it these past few months. and i also know that most, if not all of the people who read my blog are in tune to the idea of Christ giving us a story to live, and the idea of a life of risk being the kind of life that paul led, that Jesus led, and that the other disciples led. now, there's the concept of risk and life with God, and there's the idea of being your own action story hero. One is awesome because Jesus calls you to it, and the other is terrible because it's so-very-close to what we're meant to do with our lives, but still a wasted life.

anyways. i'm getting tangentrified. (i just made that word up.)

this morning, i had orientation for the class that will have me making a drive up to roundrock on monday mornings to get there by 6:30 am. my teacher is this lady who is incredibly goofy, and sincere, and just comfortable in her own skin. she doesn't try to scare us, the new nursing school students, and has this disarming sense of humor. (this afternoon, in a large group, she had us stand up and swing one arm around, back and forth, as a way to loosen up from sitting for a long time. "...and keep flopping it around, like a big noodle!" as most students looked around, laughing and embarrassed.) she has told us, her students, (there are only about 8 of us in this particular class,) that she will work as hard as we will, or harder, so that we'll succeed. she said it simply, too, not boastfully, or sternly. like an assurance from a friend.

this morning we met at 8 a.m.. the other morning clinical classes met at 11 a.m., but she called us in for the extra three hours because she wants to make sure our orientation isn't rushed, and she's convinced that it will better prepare us for our first weeks at the nursing home, for our clinical.

at one point, we went around the tables and, one after another, shared our names, and why we decided to go to school for nursing. that's pretty typical, and it didn't surprise me. the surprise came a little later.

she told us that she would give us notecards, as many as we needed, and started the notecards around our tables while she explained to us that we, as humans, are unique, in that we live stories. and we know that we do, we know that we have stories that start when we're born, and we're aware that someday we'll die, and our story will end. she told us that she wanted us to write on the notecards, and write the story we want to live with our lives. she explained that it would help her to help us throughout the semester, if she knew where we wanted to go in life.

"katy would love this -- and tim, too. and most of my other friends," i smiled, and inwardly thought. its not uncommon for a teacher to ask us about career goals, but i loved that she built our thoughts around stories. our teacher said that she had had this idea before, but that she was driving there, this morning, and listening to NPR, and they were talking about that very thing, about humans living out stories. i wanted to ask her if she had read donald miller, or if they were interviewing him on NPR. but i took a notecard and sat looking at it silently.

she (my teacher) left the room and gave us twenty minutes. a girl near me put in headphones and used multiple notecards, starting to write first, and passing hers in last. others around me tentatively put their pens to paper.

i wanted to write something about being happy if i died tomorrow. or not knowing what i wanted, but God did and that was ok. and those things are partly true, too. they wouldn't be dishonest, i don't think, but they'd look pretty lame in response to the question. like when you can't get somebody to tell you what they want for their birthday. when they won't stop saying stuff about kids in africa who are starving, and they have no needs at all. "true, but i'm still asking you this question." so i put down the flag of modeling a proper mindset about life and death and what's truly important.

"My story. Hm..." there. a first line. i skipped two, and started writing to a teacher who cared enough to listen.

my words still didn't fill the whole side of one notecard, but it felt significant all the same. i ended with, "hm. i'm going to think about this more later."

i think i have this temptation to let go of what i'd like my life to look like. tempted to hedge on my desires, write them off as small, or just "interests," maybe, or tag them with "but i'd be ok if..." tempted to be so engaged in the present moment that i neglect both my past and the future. i'm still thinking about this.

2010-08-27T18:23:00.001-07:00

hm. like tim, sometimes i feel like my words are spent. or...like tim, sometimes i have no words for my blog. sometimes its a feeling that i've spent them somewhere else, a message to a friend, a conversation in person. yeah, and maybe i wish that i had spent my words somewhere else, alot of times, because that would imply that yes, i had those words in the first place, and that they're not here because they went somewhere else. instead of having no words, and knowing its not because i'm running low for that day, or week, etc. i guess i find myself without the words i want, and have to face the fact that they haven't been spoken into existence. or something. am i making myself clear? you see, you'd understand me perfectly if it weren't for this earlier conversation that took all of my clarity and sense...bleh blooh blah.

nursing school has started off with a bang, back at UT. i have alot of reading to do. i'm actually a little stressed about it.

i spent a day with cory on tuesday, and we went walking on a trail, in a park. it was quite fun, and its been awesome to be reunited after three months, and see places where God has been working in his life, just see Jesus in new places. i haven't told him this. hm. i think i will. its encouraging when people tell me this.

sunday, the day my parents and i drove up to austin and moved my stuff into this house, came too soon. my brother and his wife were in san antonio at our house over the weekend, so while visiting time with them was pleasant and yes, valuable, i found it difficult (read: impossible) to find discretionary time. because the moments i wasn't spending with them, or with the family and them, i had to pack. so i had no reflection time before re-entering the part of my life that goes on in austin, through a burnt-orange tinted lens. that felt pretty crazy, and gross.

i moved into my room, and larry helped me move my stuff up. and the other guys who were at the house. turns out all the other guys are friendly and it seems like it will be a good living situation this year. God has been good. i was apprehensive about moving in, and wondering whether i would like everyone in the house. it seems too good to be true, but i like all the other six guys. they're pretty different, but i enjoy them.
our house is big and box-like, and the outside is wood, you know, like boards going across in rows...i don't know what that's called. and its painted red. like a barn, but a little darker. there are three houses that are identical, arranged in an "L," and ours is one end of the L. the house right next to ours is painted blue, and the house at the other end of the L is painted yellow. they look like beach houses, especially since they're all on stilts. we park our cars underneath our house. there's a stair up to the patio that we, the red house, share with the blue house, directly across from us. the yellow house has its own patio, sharing with no one. however, the yellow house's patio is uncovered. ours has a roof connecting our house with the blue house, which keeps the patio cool: pretty nice in the summer heat.
we have a living area, and a kitchen, and then six bedrooms. its pretty great, especially compared to my dorm room last year.

the day after i moved in, i biked to campus and took care of some pre-class details, and then went to sit in the union, in this pseudo-quasi-meta-starbucks area, where i used the internet, (for we had yet to set it up at our house,) and read for a bit, grateful to be alone.

today i went grocery shopping for the next week. it was interesting...i look forward to the day when i can easily locate key foods in an HEB. i still never found unsalted cashews. (not that unsalted cashews is a key food...)

God was also good on the day of my first nursing class. i walked into a huge room and saw some familiar faces, but no seats near them. i sat down at a free seat, and soon after, a guy came in who i knew, who i had become friends with last semester, in our nursing ethics class. he's a christian, and in BYX, the christian frat that my roommates are all in. it was calming to talk to a person i knew, and also a person who didn't have any answers about nursing school, either.

my desk is in front of a window that faces the street, (speedway,) and when i look out, most times of the day, bikers and runners go by several times a minute. at dusk, the runners go by every few seconds. speedway is a pretty long street in this neighborhood area, and it has bike lanes on both sides of the road, which of course attract the bikers, and the runners. and since my and larry's room is on the second floor, if you add the stilts in, i'm three stories high. i can see over the apartments across the street and a little ways, and i'm facing east, so the sun comes up in my window in the mornings. its pretty nice.

so. a few snapshots of my life currently. i'm really grateful to be living with people who believe in Jesus. i guess i found out last year how strange it was living with people who didn't believe in Jesus.

2010-08-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

sugar highs don't protect you from the empty feeling after saying goodbye to friends.

i walked back to my car, weaving through diagonal rows of land rovers and lexuses (lexii?) in the parking lot of central market. i had just hugged katy johnson goodbye, as we both are soon to be moving back to college. summer, in the way the term "summer" is applied to the period between academic years, is ending. as the johnsons are poised to move out of san antonio in the near future, i'm not sure what the next reunion will look like. and the brutally honest side of me is of course trying to strong-arm hope into my outlook at this very moment, reminding me that even if the johnsons move away, it is likely that katy would visit san antonio at christmas, even for just a short time.

this is true. and

i wrote in my journal this morning about these past few days. i can't shake the feeling of "lasts" from my last week before moving back to austin. even for friendship with tim, as we (tim, katy, and i) hung out at the table outside central market, each enjoying our strange/delicious odwalla drinks. does it matter that there will be a next time? yes, it does, and at the same time, it doesn't. it doesn't make it any less true that the summer is ending. something that i hadn't realized i had enjoyed so much is going with the summer, namely, face to face friendships with tim and katy. i mentioned to them that it felt sad, but not discouraging that we were going our separate ways now. and i still believe that.
"hey...keep in touch, k?" i was walking away from katy after having hugged goodbye. i looked back and saw her expression, waiting for an answer. i smiled, and agreed, "alright." i laughed to myself: i am one of the worst people at keeping in touch. did she know this? did she suspect? that was what i needed: not a hopeful directive as i walked away, but one that prodded me to answer. funny thing about friends. they start figuring you out.

i had shared with tim and katy today that i should be looking forward to living in a house off campus this year, with six other guys, but i'm not. i should be excited, but i'm only curious. like i'd like to observe what goes on, for a few hours, or even a few days, and at the end of the day, walk out of the aquarium and to my car and drive home. get off the glass bottomed boat and breathe the air and be grateful i'm not a fish. but i am a fish, and i'm about to go live in that aquarium. i think the idea of living with so many guys whom i don't know is intimidating. if i knew them better, i would more look forward to moving in on friday, or saturday, or whenever i move in. it'll be fun in a few weeks, i bet. but its hard to see now, i guess.

walking to my car after saying goodbye today at central market, i reflected on how weird it is being human. somebody is telling you about what it was like when their husband was dying of brain cancer, and simply because it is 3 a.m., you take it all in matter-of-factly, aware that this is serious and sad, but somehow not feeling it. (as happened to me at work the other night, listening to another co-worker.) it's not that you don't feel because of sin...its because God made us to sleep at night, and also made us weak, and unable to handle every situation adequately at will, and unable to will yourself deep into deep empathy, simply because you're pretty tired. so you do your best and are serious anyways, and listen to the sad story.

yeah, so i walked back to my car, and thought of how sometimes, i don't weigh situations well. like a hug goodbye after a great summer. so i stood for a moment, looking at the roofs of incarnate word next door, the flat top of central market, the clouds in the blue sky: not imposing, in their enormous size, but significant. felt the sweat from the hot sun, and the breeze folding and unfolding my shirt around me. i wondered what God was thinking. and let myself smell the parking lot, the cars, and the air blowing impetuously past. the taste in my mouth was thick from the drink i finished. it was bright. and hot. so i weighed the moment.

part iii

2010-08-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

I called work after our vacation to check on a few days I had told my boss that I could work. On my last night, the night before vacation, I had trained a guy to take my place, so I was confident that if they had work for me, it would be with another resident, another shift.
On the phone, Lulu, my boss, explained that the other guy “hadn’t worked out,” and that she had me on the calendar to work those days from 7 pm to 7 am. “We’re having a hard time finding someone we like to replace you,” she said with a rueful laugh. I thought back to my “interview,” which consisted of my getting lost looking for the office of the place to pick up an application, and being offered work before I had even filled it out. I thought about how I had often told myself that the job I had was one that anyone could do, a body in a seat. I remembered Lulu’s face when I told her I was quitting to return to Austin. I wondered why the other guy hadn’t “worked out,” especially since I had thought he would be great. Grateful for the extra shifts, I told her that was fine. I hung up the phone with mixed emotions.
It feels good to be needed.

part ii

2010-08-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

Kris had a day left in San Antonio, and he and I were hanging out one last time before he left for his college in Tennessee again. We were driving on 1604 when we realized we had both forgotten to eat lunch, so we exited and decided to follow a sign’s promise of bagels nearby. A kink in traffic enabled us to cross over three lanes at once on the access road, and looking behind us, we saw that a woman’s minivan was sitting still on the access road, causing the disruption. Her flashers were on, but she hadn’t even made it to the side of the road. I wondered aloud if kris and I could push behind the van to get it into a nearby side road. Kris pointed out that the road sloped upward at this point, and we sat parked in a nearby parking lot for a minute while I silently deliberated. We were both in flip flops. We got out of the car and walked down into the road and down to the lady’s van, and she rolled down her window. “Sure, if you could, that’d be great!” we got behind it, cars turning around us as we bent against the van’s back.
The lady took her foot off of the brake, and I felt my flip flops sliding backwards on the pavement as the van pushed us. We knocked on the window, she re-braked, and we apologized at the window. “I have roadside assistance, it’s ok.” Kris and I walked back up the hill and got in the car, where we sat silently for another minute. I found it difficult to detach myself from the situation, although afterward realized that the woman seemed more accepting of the situation than I was.

It feels good to be needed?

part i

2010-08-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

I had worked from 7 pm to 7 am, drove home, ate breakfast, and had until 2 pm, when we were to leave for the airport. Exhausted, with a few hours that should have been sleep time before I had to leave, I sat down to check my email and facebook one last time. It had been (what I thought was) my last shift sitting through the night, the night before our family left for the east coast, to visit our grandparents, like we do every year.
One message on my facebook had a title that ended in exclamation points. It was from a german girl who is staying with a host family in Austin, whom I had met at bodenseehof in ’08. Her message didn’t have a calm tone, and she wrote about a dramatic experience at her host family’s church, complete with people all around her falling on the floor, under the influence of a divine shove, I suppose. Her host family had acted like it was normal, and she had never seen anything like it. I thought back to my outreach group’s visits to churches within Germany, and the way that upbeat, American-style praise songs had been the most dramatic expressions of worship that those hallowed halls could stand…
As I wrote out my thoughts, I tried to think helpfully, and not dramatically, or creatively, or self-righteously. Or foolishly. I was at the point where sleep didn’t seem to matter anymore; my eyes were past the point of wanting to drift shut, but I knew that my judgment wasn’t always trustworthy after that many hours of being awake. Still, though, this was the only time I could respond before my 10 day vacation.
I thought, and wrote. When I finished, I looked over my words, and changed a few words. I had prayed about it a little, while writing, but more importantly, I felt like God had smiled at me when I looked up at Him. “yeah. go ahead, dan. she’s not supposed to feel panicked among family, you’re right.” He didn’t communicate the theology of what “slain in the Spirit” is, but he gave me some calm words and a couple ideas for her to find a certain measure of peace.
On our vacation, I got to check my email and facebook after all. She wrote a message and was really thankful for what I said, and the peace she felt after being able to vent and then pray about it later. “a friend in texas.”
It feels good to be needed.

fin

2010-07-31T06:14:00.000-07:00

today i will go with my family to maryland. a few days after, we will go to delaware. grandparents inhabit both of these states, and so we will visit them.

i wrote the following last night, my last night of work at incarnate word, in the alzheimer's unit. actually, i told my supervisor that i had a few days available to work after i got back from vacation, but since i trained a guy last night for a couple hours on what's involved in my 12 hour weekend shifts, i doubt, if my boss has work for me, it will be what i have been doing, with whom i have been doing it. so last night was my last night of work this summer, for all practical purposes.

i write it because its a good way to cap off my week of blogging, to end my week before setting off on vacation, and to breathe through a summer job ending.

"...thinking about lasts. tonight is my last night here, my last night working with [the resident], probably my last night working with Sisters Care. interesting feelings, and training gabriel, the new guy who'll take over for me. he'll be great. compassionate, tactful, smart.

leaving places. i've had a good number of lasts in my life. interesting, that the word "last," in one form, lasting, means, "the last isn't for a long while," or perhaps, "the end doesn't come too soon."

"it'll fly by," is a reply [my resident] has given me more than once, one of several remarks he has for our oft-repeated chat about my remaining two years of school. i wonder if i'll miss our circular conversations. "you'll be here all night, then?" "yes, sir." "mm...well, sure glad to have you." "thanks." "mm."

i've known time to fly. donald miller tells of his friend who says that since every cell in the human body dies and is replaced by a new cell at least once every five months, you today is a different person than the person you five months ago. of course that doesn't follow any logic except the most primitive... new cells have the same genes the old ones had, and that carries you forward, if anything. though it's an intriguing thought.

and then running through a life are the lasts that shape you, and the firsts, and the others."

one line of a poem isn't really a substantial blog post

2010-07-29T20:48:00.001-07:00

there's this coffee shop called "the foundry" that is within biking distance of my house. i met tom pedersen there this evening, and we moved into a room where the live music (live music on thursdays!) wasn't so live, where we could sit and discuss ponderings in relaxed tones.

toward the end of the night, tom went to the restroom, and i got up, for we were about to leave. i glanced over the art on the wall, and there was alot of it. one painting caught my eye, and i came closer to read some writing inside the painting. it was the first line of a poem by e.e. cummings, and it intrigued me. i looked the poem up when i got home, but unfortunately, i think the first line is the best line. the poem is good, but its just that the first line is best, i believe. well, the first and some of the second.

"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)"

yes. but alas, one line of a poem isn't really a substantial blog post, (though these days, i know, i am anticipating and welcoming change, so the restrictive adjective "substantial" really should be discarded in favor of something else, or nothing at all,) and i was wondering what i should express or share just now, when i read a reply to a message i had sent yesterday on facebook.

you remember a girl named laura. she and i dated for seven months while i was at bodenseehof, in germany. we broke up over that summer, and she started dating a guy who also went to bodenseehof, whom we both knew, shortly thereafter. a few months down the road from that, they got engaged, and this guy tom and her got married last august, nearly a year ago. so tom is canadian, and he joined the army recently, which fits into their plans for a number of reasons, one of which being the expedition of naturalization for tom, tom of our northern neighboring-country. from time to time i see status updates from laura, and thomas has been doing basic training for a bit now, so they're still in the early stages of army life, namely, the part where the soldier goes through hell for a number of weeks, while the spouse waits at home, lonely and a bit bored. it didn't really register with me, when i heard that he joined the army, that minnesota (where laura lives, and tom joined her,) isn't really a big army place...i don't think. now that i'm opening my mouth, i'm realizing how little i know about the military across the country, despite being an "army brat," since i've been in san antonio since i was 5. anywho.

facebook decided to kindly place one of laura's recent status updates at the top of my newsfeed under "top news" yesterday, which is normally something i regard as one of the most useless features of facebook. probably quite by mistake, facebook actually put top news at the top, this time.

her status said something about a busy day, and some mundane activities listed, and then listed something about packing, and something about a move. curious, i read the comment some one had written below her status. something was said about, "if you want, i can give you the name of some one who used to live in fort hood..."

dan sat looking at the screen, re-reading the words, double checking his understanding of the words.

if you remember, fort hood is in killeen, texas. it's where my brother, rob, and his wife, tammy, now live. it's three hours from san antonio, and an hour and a half from austin. its an enormous army hub, and a whole lot of people come and go from fort hood, in killeen, texas.

i went to laura's profile, looking for more evidence of what was implicit in the single status and friend comment. and found none. so i sent her a message, assuring her that i was not a stalker, but facebook decided to put it out there, and asked her if they were indeed moving to killeen.

i kinda sat there for a while, just processing, thinking, letting things wash over me. call it what you will, there was me, outwardly still, inwardly...active. inwardly alot of things. happy. ambivalent. awkward. i did not miss the irony that the girl i used to date, whom i met in germany and who lived in minnesota, was now married to a man who she also met in germany, and they were both probably moving down to my state, texas, two years after things ended with me and her.

i don't have feelings for laura anymore. mercifully, those left within six months of our breakup, i think. i think a big part of that was the fact that she has been absent from my life since that day in march when we parted at the friedrichshafen airport, both of us crying, already looking forward to that august, when i hoped to visit her. that day never came, because we broke up in late june. memories faded and the distance was healthy when we were no longer dating. so yeah. and i've accepted her marriage and wish her and thomas well. i looked at some of their wedding pics and they made me smile, it was pretty cool to see, honestly.

i have wondered what it would be like to see them again, but thought i never would. one doesn't fly to a state where the only real friend connection is an ex and her husband, even if your motives are friend-driven (and curiosity-driven). one's ex and her husband don't receive you if you do, i'm confident, haha. i have reflected on the strangeness of claims on other people's lives, and how you can lose all claims to a person's time or friendship or whatever just because you used to be romantically involved together and now you're not.

that hasn't always been the ending for me, thankfully. just yesterday i had coffee with heidi, the girl i dated briefly around Christmas of '08. yeah. and there are people who say it's never the same once you get out of the relationship. maybe they're right. i think they might be. but there are other people, or a smaller group of people, within that group, who say that because it's never the same, you can never be friends again, that "just friends" is a false hope and unrealistic. i continue to fight this opinion, and act in spite of it. i don't know if its wise or unwise. i've just realized that it's worth it.

i've had feelings for others since laura. she, obviously, has had stronger feelings since, as well. i thought about this last night, and concluded that if nothing else, laura and thomas are friends from bodenseehof who it would be awesome to catch up with, if they'd be up for it. still feeling only slightly more excited than weird, though, i decided to wait for her reply to my message before telling friends.

i told tom tonight; i couldn't wait.

laura replied to my message tonight. thomas and her are indeed moving to killeen, in september. "I hear it's not far from San Antonio.. are you still living there?"

2010-07-28T19:56:00.000-07:00

i know. i know.
you don't have to tell me that i said i would write every day. dan, hat in hand, comes to the keyboard. and...puts the hat beside the keyboard. because everybody knows that you can't keep your fingers on the home keys when you're holding a hat.

last night i had a conversation with mark, tracy, and katy johnson. among other things, we talked about anger. currently i'm examining the place anger should have in my life. and if you, dear reader, just thought in your head, "none," well, then, we would have been on the same page prior to last night. as of last night, somebody poured water all over my page,

and rubbed it till it rolled up into little pulpy white bits,

(kind of like what's left when you're folding your clean laundry, and you think, "hey, i think left a receipt in the pocket of these--- oh.")

and pushed the debris together into a wad,

and then kindly informed me that the lines on my page were only simple answers and blanket statements, (and not universal truths and instructive guidelines, as i had thought,) and so it was time for it to go.

so yeah! turns out there are places where it is ok and even appropriate to get angry. i don't have answers as to where, at least, not many, so it's fortunate that this is only some personal ramblings, because i can say to you, "reader, join me in my journey." and i'm pretty sure it'll be a long one.

one of the first places that i think anger is appropriate is in the face of injustice. yeah, yeah, here's the path. let's walk.

2010-07-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

oh shoot. on my way to bed, and i remembered. time to blohg.

i just got off the phone with cory dimler, who is a good friend and one in austin. we've kept in touch sporadically over this summer, but its been good when we've caught up. always encouraging. yeah, its amazing how hearing about and sharing about Jesus feels refreshing and just good.

a current favorite song of mine is "good life," by onerepublic.

donald miller, in his book a million miles in a thousand years, talks about life with a good story, something grand and exciting to get out of bed in the morning for. i don't think he has it all figured out, but he said some things that made me think. for instance, he talked about when he goes to see a movie, and it's a crappy movie, he doesn't leave the theater convinced that movies are meaningless. he leaves and thinks that this particular movie was meaningless. and he likens it to life; some people will say that life is meaningless, but maybe when they're feeling this way, what they mean is "my life is meaningless," or feels that way. that is, "there's nothing for me to get out of bed in the morning for," not that "there's nothing for anyone in the world to get out of bed in the morning for."
hm. astute, i think. it is funny, though. come to think of it, i've realized that my doubts about God and Jesus and a spiritual dimension to reality are most persistent when i'm mired deepest in guilt and shame over my disobedience, the distance that i've created between God and i. it's like when i want to believe the lie that "God is dead," what i actually feel is, "i feel death, and it's because of [the existence of] God."

weird. and convicting. and yeah, i don't often struggle with doubts about God's existence. but when i do, it's uuuusually because of my subjective experience, and feeling guilty and discouraged and distant.

weh. this was not where i wanted to go with this. i wanted to go into the lyrics of "good life," how it appeals to me, because travel in my mind equals adventure, and adventure equals good life story. oh well. another time. now it is time for my eyes to remain closed in a dark room. O night. you were created for sleep.

2010-07-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

alas. my time is short.

you know what is complex? the fact that our bodies synthesize vitamin D in sunlight. the fact that sunlight also makes serotonin travel from neuron to neuron, making us feel good. i think about these things when i have a few hours of daylight, like today, waking up around 4:30, and riding my bike around for a while, for exercise, and for sunlight. truly, these things are amazing.

i feel like i'm running on empty, nearly, all the same, and for that reason, i'm about to end this post, quite soon after it began. i need some time with God before work.

i just started alas, babylon by pat frank, last night. the top reads "the classic apocalyptic novel that stunned the world." the cover is pretty cool, of course, a modern edition of the book, since it was written in 1959. sometimes...i'm a sucker for books simply because they're labeled classic. and sometimes the title grabs me. this was a bit of both. my little bro's had to read it for school one year. so far, its pretty good.

see you tomorrow.

day one.

2010-07-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

i had the idea to write something on my blog every day for a week. i think part of me hopes that the blog will change, my feelings about my blog will change, or i will change. am i dissatisfied with my blog as an occasional update on my life? .....kind of. it's ok, and yet it can feel pretty newsletter-ish.

i am dressed in a blue shirt with a v-neck, and a pocket on the chest. the shirt is not stretchy at all. the pants i have on are the same color, and a bit baggy, though a drawstring keeps them around my (modern) waist. i put that word in there because they're below my belly button, but i've become used to my hips being my waste. this color coordinated outfit fits into the category of clothes affectionately termed, "scrubs."

for i am going to leave for work in twenty minutes.

a twelve hour shift. and then tomorrow another one. and then i am off for a few days.

i finished donald miller's a million miles in a thousand years today at starbucks. it was a good read, and made me think, which is what it was supposed to do, i think. think. think.

tim just left for another week-long mission trip yesterday. i will be gone, or leaving, by the time he gets back, for my grandparents'. our family's annual east coast visit will start next saturday. that should be fun.

katy is in colorado with her family. in other words, the entire johnson family is in colorado right now.

in other words, friendships have felt strangely sporadic this summer. my mom challenged me the other day, and said i should catch up with more than just one or two friends this summer, and that maybe i've let some of my friendships go just because its hard to maintain them. and those words made me pretty uncomfortable while i wrestled with them the rest of the day. but i'm glad she said them.

time to eat and pack my midnight lunch. and then leaf.

thoughts that may or may not have a tangled ending.

2010-07-12T18:25:00.000-07:00

it's monday.
i know how it feels, dear reader, to see that your friend has written a new blog entry, but not feel like reading some super-deep packaged product of their brain, even if it is a masterfully written blog entry. i know how it feels to not want to read something serious, and there's a bit of guilt, too, because the blog entry is there and written for you, the friend. i know how that feels, and so if you're not in the mood for something serious, something from a thought, then go on to other pages and save the deep for another time, when your deep can respond. i understand; feel, above all else, freedom.

and know that sometimes thoughts pop into my head that i don't want to keep to myself. :)

i've been working as a nurse aide, and in home health, too. praise God, it worked out.

my job is to take care of one man, who is a "fall risk," which means that he's unsteady on his feet, but still likes to use them. his feet, i mean. and his legs, and everything else involved in walking and moving around without a chair with wheels. he has a wheelchair too, and he uses that some.
he has a bed alarm, and a wheelchair alarm, so most of the time i sit outside of his room and give him some space, and then when i hear the beeping, i go in and turn the alarm off and make sure he doesn't fall. how do you make sure some one doesn't fall, you ask? good question. with some one who values their independence, like this man, you can't do much. you can be near him, and stay out of his way, and try to be as unobtrusive as possible, and put a hand out if he totters a bit too much. and that's what i do.
i was hired to work on the weekends. so i've been doing so. it worked out with my summer class schedule...yeah, so on friday night, saturday night, and sunday night, i work from 7pm to 7am the next morning. it is a long time, and i am allowed to doze a bit, and other than that, i read books, and walk around in the hall, and pass the time doing small time-wasting things while sitting in the hall. the guy only gets up about 4 times each night, so i have two or three hour blocks of time where i have no job-work to do. while my summer class was going on, i used the time to study, which was really nice.
it's hard to switch to sleeping during the day on weekends. but its nice to get 36 hours of work done in the lesser portion of my week. and i have these kinds of shifts to look forward to once i become a nurse, so there's no harm in doing a few now.

oh, one other thing. the man i take care of lives in an assisted living facility, because he has alzheimer's. so as i sit in the hallway outside his room, other residents, (who all have alzheimer's,) walk by, and occasionally ask me questions, which i never can answer to their satisfaction, like where their children are, or whether the cows have been milked.

it reeeeaaaally makes me think about memory, and identity, and a sense of who you are. i wish i could go into more detail about the residents i see and interact with every day. it's super hard, at 3am, even if you're awake, to be patient with some one who continues to ask you the same nonsensical questions each time they see you, as they walk up and down the hallways because of their insomnia, and try to touch your face, because they think you're their son...yeah. it's just a strange situation, sometimes.
one time, a woman who often approaches me in this way started crying when she saw me, and tried to embrace me. yeah, and i calmed her down and succeeded in escaping the hug, as i a) felt like the hug was not for me, since i am not her son whom she was so glad to see, and b) didn't really want to hug her, to be honest.

i thought and prayed about her, and all of the negative emotions i feel when i see this woman shuffling down the hallway towards me. now that i'm putting all of this into words, i'm seeing how far i've been from loving her well. i've been justifying my lack of love as logical, or as a result of this or that thing she does.

dan sits in silence.

thanks to Jesus, He's been giving me small love for her, what love shows. i've been torn between always giving true answers to the residents' questions, (which most always are, "i don't know,") or being ok with interacting with a woman as "william."

last week, this same lady burst into tears again as she saw me. i let her hug me, and hugged her back. it felt good to be a source of comfort in that moment. but its not about me, because as i said, there's still alot of ugly stuff that i've let stay inside toward this woman. the convicting thing is that when i thought about how Jesus would take care of alzheimer's patients. He'd let them hug Him, even if He was clean and they probably weren't and they didn't know who He really was.

seems like that was alot of his ministry, stories the gospels tell. Jesus, letting people embrace Him, though He was clean and they were dirty, and they didn't know who He really was.

memorial day

2010-06-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

it's weird having a dad and a brother in the army, when you're not sure how war fits into God's plans, and how peaceful we should feel about the idea of being contracted to fight for one side in conflicts.

it's weird sitting in church on memorial day as a slideshow plays with sandy boots and upright M-16's, and khaki helmets, and american flags, and people talking about "greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

it's very possible that i've lived in the comfort created by other people's sacrifices too long, and take it for granted. but it's also possible that the closer you get to war, the less clearly you grasp other things. i dunno. as i said, it's just hard. i don't believe that war is always wrong. maybe i think america is too accustomed to seeing itself as right. or american churches, seeing america as right.

this poem might make you mad, i don't know. it might make you think. it might make you think i'm foolish. anyways. i wrote this on a blank page in the back of my bible as the memorial day slideshow played in our church, wayside chapel, a couple of weeks ago. i hope you see that i'm not finished thinking. i'm just feeling some tension in this middle.

Memorial Day.
Freedoms. This isn't us against them.
Thousands die for freedoms for those living inside certain geographical boundaries.
Freedom isn't free. No, it hasn't been--
Not since we took hold of ugly independence at the Fall
And I'm grateful for the rights I have, here in the United States,
But God,
Men wearing my country's flag were killed for my freedoms
And they killed for my freedoms.
What's done is done.
I'm not sure what's right or wrong
But I know American values
Are worthless compared to
Jesus saving a terrorist
A wretch like me
A murderer asking Jesus for mercy with his dying breath
And getting it.
Bad guys in the desert
Have hearts that only Jesus can change
Just like me and you.
So the purest end for loyalty
Probably can't be seen in a rectangle
To hang on a pole and blow in the wind, after all.
I pledge allegiance...

2010-05-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

this blog has ceased feeling like an outlet, for me. since this is what it originally was intended to be....i don't know where this leaves me. perhaps i'll take a break for a while. if i don't post for a week or two, i feel this nagging reminder in the back of my head, like i need to sync my life and blogspot. this is ridiculous.

summer has started. the night i left austin, i parked my car, full of all of my stuff, near cory's apartment and went up to hang out a bit one last time before i left austin for the summer. when i got back to my car an hour and a half later, some one had broken the passenger window to reach inside and grab my backpack, which held my laptop, ipod, book i was reading, bible, journal from the last year, (2 blank pages at the end still left unwritten, my year's ending thoughts yet to be put down,) and some other stuff which i missed later, when i needed them, like a flash drive, my sunglasses, etc.

that felt pretty gross. and if i had written shortly after that had happened, some of those gross emotions might have been typed out here. and i had a good conversation with somebody in the auto-glass-shop-place, waiting for the window to be fixed, two days after. i tried to engage another man in the waiting room about why the heck Jesus tells us to be generous to thieves, sitting with my bible open in luke, wrestling with the fact that my stuff had not ceased to exist, but it was taken forcefully and the person probably made a decent amount of money on craigs list as a result of their decisions...decisions which also cost me time and money and trouble, sitting in the waiting room that morning while a new window was being put in. interestingly, though, the man i talked to didn't really get on board with the idea of being nice to mean people, but he did teach me a thing or two about letting go of what's already been done.

and God built off of that when we talked in the days that followed.

summer has started, and i hate, absolutely detest, looking for a job. a home health type of job i had been hoping for might not work out after all, i found out yesterday, which means i need to go look for a job. and i don't know if i've told you this or not, but i reeeeaaally don't like looking for a job. it feels alot like searching out pain, or looking for something undesirable. the other night i opened my CNA book and looked over some of the different skills and routines that i'm expected to know and carry out as a nurse aide, and memories of stressful moments last summer came to mind pretty readily. meh.

my little brothers graduated high school. both sets of grandparents visited this past weekend, and rob and tammy. twas an exhausting weekend.

i'm trying to work up to running long distances, and on monday, i ran 5 miles. the longest distance i have ever run, ever, was 10 miles, and that was because our wrestling coach made us run 10 miles, one saturday after a tournament in which our team didn't do so well. he was convinced that we didn't give our all, so as he put it, we had to "earn the right to be wrestlers" again. so we ran 40 laps around a quarter mile track over the course of a couple hours. i was a freshman, so...fourteen, fifteen years old, i guess. haha. a friend of mine was on the team, and it was his birthday that day. he wore a "it's my birthday!" pin, in the hope that perhaps the coach would go easy on him. haha...yeah, no luck. anyways, but yes. i'm tired of running two or three miles at a time and being exhausted by the end. so i'm working up to something more.

i'm reading "the shack" by william p. young right now. its pretty good...i like it.

tim and i hung out at starbucks yesterday, among other places. at one point, we were sitting outside, and a large, dark stormcloud was moving toward our area. we kept talking, and soon the wind was blowing, and large raindrops started spattering on everything. people around us hurriedly folded their laptops up, gathered their things and went inside the store. one of us, i can't remember who, said, "it's beginning to rain." the other said, "yes," and after a few moments, tim, still in the same relaxed position, remarked, in a reflective tone, "i need to do laundry, anyway," and we let the rain cover us while we sat there, talking. it was cold for a bit, but then the rain and wind eased up, and a drizzle continued until right before we left.

i was grateful that tim was there, because i think by myself, i wouldn't have even considered staying out in the rain. the thought wouldn't have crossed my mind; i would have hurried inside like everyone else. i think i forget that rain doesn't hurt.

life all packed up

2010-05-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

i'm sitting on my mattress. in a little while, all of my bags will be put into the car which i drove up here yesterday. the floor is swept and rugless, and the minifridge has both freezer and fridge doors open, the cord hanging limp from the back, white and still, and silent.

the genius mixing my itunes playlist plays mellow songs, one after another, and the sun is making shadows outside, but its just before the shadows feel like evening shadows.

these past few weeks have been full. a full end to a full semester, to a full year. i'm sorry for not keeping in touch more, for not writing more, for not being able to pause as much as i would have liked.

i feel stretched, by God. it feels like He is taking me places that i have never been before. and other places where i've been, but as a boy, or as some one younger, some one else, perhaps some one on the other side of questions.

there's a small sick feeling in my stomach, because i know that in a little while, i'll pull the blinds and close and lock the door to 0821 jester east. and it feels conclusive, in a strange way. i plan to go to a coffeeshop to reflect for a bit, before i drive back to san antonio tonight. i have two blank pages left in the journal that i started back in september, and a week and a half of thoughts and emotions to process. and then the summer will be a perfect time to start a new journal.

my microbiology final was this afternoon. i had so much trouble focusing, and studying, for that final. but in the end, i got to review most of the material, quite alot of it, and i had a good grasp of alot of the main concepts, because its interesting to me, in some ways...so it was good to be able to review, and then just fill in small blanks, like what cytokines do when T helper cells recognize the antigen presented by a macrophage or a dendritic cell in a lymphoid organ. sometimes its good to be a nerd. :)

i went to a "muslim connection" conference put on by the austin stone two weeks ago. it was really, really good. God knew what He was doing when He told me to go with cory. cool to talk to like-minded people, young couples and single people, and some older couples, who are praying over moving to a different country because Jesus told them to. i'd like to say more about that weekend, but there's so much. i think this will have to do, and then hopefully you and i, reader, can talk in person about it. i'd like that.

i bought a road bike two weeks ago. its so fun to ride....i got if off of craigslist, and it makes me pretty happy. i think the bearings wore out in my mountain bike, because it was unreasonably hard to pedal and such, leading up to getting this new bike. i had been thinking of getting a road bike for a while, as my old (mountain) bike's frame was too small for me, anyways, and i wanted to spend my income tax refund from last year, and and and. the night before my last english test, two weeks ago, i knew i should study, but the sun was setting and the shadows were sloping and i just knew that the sunset on town lake would be awesome...and so right after dinner, i walked outside and weighed all of these factors in my head, along with the joy of riding my fast new bike, and made the excellent "life choice" (as katy johnson would say,) to grab my bike lights and a bag and ride through downtown to a bridge over town lake, and watch the birds fly and the boats go by and the colors change in the sky, and the tall downtown buildings light up, yes, and it was an excellent choice. it was a great great time, drinking in the beauty.

a guy on my floor randomly asked me if we could grab coffee last week, and we talked about christianity and such, and he told me about him and his girlfriend, and then asked me how one goes about being a spiritual leader in a relationship. it was a great talk, and God gave me humility to be able to admit my large amount of ignorance, and just be able to bounce ideas off of him, and watch his brain work as we talked through dating and church stuff.

on that same day, another guy on my floor told me that he was having suicidal thoughts and was struggling. i told him i'd pray for him, and later in the day, called my parents for advice. they spurred me on, and that night i prayed for a right heart, and then went and talked to the guy. we stayed up late that night, sitting in my room, praying, talking, carrying the burden. we fought for his heart. yeah, and the storm was pretty heavy at different points that night, but by the time he left my room, i could see on his face that Jesus had won the battle we fought. i went to bed both burdened and exhausted, but cory prayed for me and the guy the next day, and i knew my parents were praying. yeah, we were gonna go to the UT mental health office, that day, but he wanted to talk to his pastor first, etc...and he's going to see a counselor when he goes home, soon. it was an exhausting couple days.

dj, my roommate, left yesterday. he's been pretty interesting, and on the whole, enjoyable.

its strange saying "have a good summer" to the freshmen on my floor, but knowing that next year as i start nursing school and live off campus and such, that for most of the guys in rooms around me, we'll make new friends and not really hang out again. i dunno. perhaps i'm cynical. but its rarely the same.

yeah, busy couple of weeks. and now i'm headed home. its been a full first year at UT, and i'm really thankful for where God has brought me. yeah. have a good summer, austin. i'll see you once or twice before the fall, i'm sure.

top o' the morning. is that like the cream of the morning crop?

2010-04-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

i think i will write a title once i have finished this entry. put a cap on it after i've filled it, so to speak, rather than...m. yes.

i just got back from spending the weekend with my brother and sister-in-law in killeen, texas, where they live. they moved there from florida, where they were last stationed. rob is in the army, see, so now he's in killeen. they picked me up on friday night, we went to dinner, and then drove back to killeen. it was a good little getwaway, and i'm struck once again with ...well, its pretty silly. how a car makes one feel. walking and biking around is great, but there's something about being able to get back in a car when you need to leave a place. its hard to describe. i wonder if any of you are tracking with this.

so weekend with rob and tammy. its interesting because it wears me out to be around them for too long. i've found this true on family vacations, too. their relationship dynamic is so different from romantic relationships i've been in, just their style of relating to each other, and for some reason, i get tired of it. and they don't have a church home, and it frustrates me because they need one. we all need one. but i'm not sure how much is appropriate to say, to an older brother who is married, and isn't asking. and we did have a frustrating morning today, driving out to one church they were interested in, only to find a sign saying there were no services today, only a church picnic in another location, (which wasn't mentioned on their website when we checked that morning,) and then we drove to another church that they had found before, and it was around 11:10, at this point, and we walked in and a greeter welcomed us and told us that they were having combined services today, from 10-11, so church was just finishing up. so nearing 11:30, we just drove back to austin to drop me off. what a strange sequence of disappointments.
so i'm a bit worn out, but i was grateful for our time, and it was relaxing in a different way, being far away from my day-to-day, since killeen is an hour and a half north of austin. and rob and i had some good conversation, and the first night we stayed up and smoked pipes and cigars while sitting in the yard, watching the storm clouds blow by in the night sky. then an enormous cloud blew into sight, and within 20 seconds, it was overhead, moving faster than any rain cloud i've ever seen before, and we were driven inside by the rain. :)

i have a considerable amount of work to do today. i also have a decision to make, how to spend my next weekend.

my situations with friends are calming down. my roommate is here, and the first night when i met him, i got the impression that he was a bit arrogant...a bit self-satisfied. but on thursday night, he brought a friend of his back to the room, and we hung out for several hours, and he's a cool guy after all. still, dj doesn't spend many nights in the room; he informed me that he would spend the majority at a friend's house, where he usually sleeps. during the day, he'll come in for a few minutes, put some stuff down, pick up some other stuff, and then be gone for several hours, or the day. a pretty painless roommate. 3.5 weeks left anyways.

with the girl jackie...she wasn't in class for several weeks, and i didn't initiate any conversations with her. she came back, but we don't hang out. we don't really talk, but i don't think she hates me; i think it's just one of those attempted acquaintance things that apparently happen pretty regularly in college, and when they don't work out, its not a huge deal. thinking about it, i've had similarly short-lived friendships here.

with the guy eugene...its weird. i don't really have the time for a close friendship with him, in the way he wants, and he feels judged by the fact that i'm not ok with drinking with him, as he's 20, and his "all-or-nothing" mentality with regard to pursuing close relationships and hating shallow or occasional friendships have all combined to a strange sort of friend-break-up. its the weirdest thing, but i'm trying to keep myself from getting emotionally in knots, because this past week he initiated a sort of ultimatum conversation, almost like a DTR, but i guess a DTF, and it was established that we wouldn't be close friends. over the next few days he sent me some pretty manipulative guilt-inducing texts, which i had to pray about, and find ways to respond in kind firmness. so....we could continue to occasionally hang out, but i doubt we will. its a strange happening.

i'm sitting next to a ginormous pile of laundry on my bed, which i need to arrange in rectangular patterns and then order in vertical sequences, to be stored in this wooden(ish) sliding box arrangement that i've found is especially useful for keeping the clothes just as i left them. that way, in the morning, i can slide the shirts and shorts onto my limbs, to hang about my frame. though my clothing includes no dresses, still its called dressing myself, and that sliding box arrangement is termed a "dresser." hm.

i am at the height of my ridiculousness.

2010-04-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

i'm not really in the mood for writing, but i haven't written in ten days, according to the infallible calendar of....blogspot, or blogger, or this google blog site. i'm not sure what exactly it is, i guess. at any rate, i'll sum up some recent happenings, and i'm sure i'll be back within a couple of days, or maybe even a couple of hours, in the mood for writing, and you, reader, will find another marathon post, like the ones you've become used to from me.

i'm getting a new roommate. he emailed me, and said is it ok, and i said yes, and then i got an email from the division of housing and food saying he was coming. its interesting that he emailed me; it was unusual and strangely considerate. i've been expecting him since thursday night, and i imagine he could move in today, tonight, tomorrow, or monday or tuesday after that. or i suppose wednesday. but i believe the housing stuff gives him a certain amount of time, a window of time in which he has to make the move, if the move is to be made. i'm surprised he hasn't come yet. to me, the weekend is the perfect time to make a move. perhaps he still will use the weekend. at any rate, we'll be roommates for four and a half weeks, including finals. haha. so. yes.

i'm around 100 pages away from finishing the portrait of a lady. you know its a great book when you come to see it as a companion, of sorts, one you'll miss when you have to close it and put it on a shelf. or...a library drop shoot. :( ha.

its been rainy these past few days. i'm ok with it.

yes. more later, probably.

another poe-ehm

2010-04-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

so life hasn't been as busy, lately. thanks for everything you said, friends.

i've come to the conclusion that sometimes i don't need as much time to myself as i think i do. and other times, i find myself reaching into myself to give to others, maybe with a friend over coffee, or a guy on my hall in my room at night...and there's not much left to give. and i had a great conversation with mark johnson over this past weekend, while i was home, about being there in relationships, face to face.

it made me think about long texting conversations. actually, false. long texting conversations were what sparked the conversation. i think i know now why i hate long conversation done by text messages. mark challenged me with very significant thoughts to ponder, about giving up control versus yielding control in a friendship, out of love. about being most kind to others when it means challenging them. various things. but i realized some very good things.

i think one reason i hate long text conversations is that they keep me from being in the moment. they dilute the gift of some one's full presence. if i am with a friend, text correspondence with another keeps me from being fully with that friend. even if i am with no one, though, relaying one-sentence messages seem to undermine everything about communication within a relationship. i thought we had progressed past the telegraph! short thoughts add to a relationship when you know the person well, when you get the effect of their tone, of their expression, when you hear the way they say it, when you know what was left unsaid.

unless you just need to relay information. and then texts are great. they're perfect for raw info. but oh-so-insufficient for any kind of significant dialogue.

anyways. i wrote a poem today at the union, sitting outside at a table, just thinking about college friendships.

I would like the same, you know
To talk to you more,
For our friendship to grow
What's that? Of course!
I have ideas, and you ask to hear
But all can't be spoken in speech or a verse
No, all can't be summed to a listening ear.
And I certainly don't intend to be rude
But you won't know me well
After an hour, over food.
So I'll tell you stories
And listen to yours, too
Opinions emerging, the beginnings of crude
Inadequate sketches
Of me, and of you.
And I squeeze you, too; I do it, too!
With questions built for answers, and you start to feel,
More a sponge than a person;
More material, and less real
So our friendship has taken the form of a trial
Where rough edges
Beg explanations, or denial
And this is what's gotten me so uptight
And this is what's wrong, though I haven't found right
I don't make much sense, I'm gentle, I'm rough
I have contradictions
I'm a person
That's enough.

hm. maybe you like it, maybe you don't. either way, feel free to say, if you want. i think it's ok. i think it turned out the way i wanted it to. or it turned out close enough.

argh. a lesson to learn, and i don't even know what the lesson is.

2010-03-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

i got into nursing school! hooray!
i think everyone who reads this blog knew this. but just in case. yes. i found out when i checked my mailbox on sunday, getting back from spring break. it was quite an exhausting day, sunday. i unpacked, wrote on here, processed through some of those emotions, did some studying, got the letter, thanked and praised God for a bit, and then that night, a guy on my floor came in and we talked for a while, and he opened up to me quite a bit... and yeah. it was sam. i can't remember if i've said anything about sam on here before. i might have mentioned it to some of you in conversation. but if i didn't, i don't want to say too much here...sam is a Christian, though, and so on sunday night it was a pretty good open, honest conversation between us. so we prayed at the end, and then it was after midnight, and i went to bed. but i was just exhausted. just emotionally worn out. it was a full day.

but. i think sam is going to be a friend, which is good. he is cool, and seeks the Lord sincerely, and is encouraging to watch. so, yeah. though i'm not sure how much i'll be able to hang out, how much time i'll have...

eugene is a guy in my english class who started talking to me one day. he's pretty cool, and he is one of those social butterflies who knows about every third person he runs into on campus...its interesting. he's a tall black guy with glasses, outgoing, smart, and i suppose somewhat impetuous, because apparently one day he decided to get to know me, and then started talking to me. he's involved in a jillion campus organizations, or so it seems, including the election supervisory board, that just ruled on a bunch of campaign infractions for student government elections for UT...as i said, he's super social, and well liked. but both him and sam...see, this is what i'm getting to. friends, and time.

and then add this girl jackie, who apparently one day decided she wanted to get to know me too. she's in my english class too. she found me on facebook, (which is impressive, i think,) and started talking to me. and inviting me to stuff. i haven't been able to go, but i feel somewhat obligated...and i feel a bit weird about walking into new social situations knowing one person, and not even knowing that one person that well, except that they found me on facebook and invited me. well, i guess i wasn't able to go enough times that she thought it was a message to stop bothering me, (which it wasn't, because i wouldn't have been able to go even if i was dying to say yes to doing this or that, but maybe it was reinforced by my awkwardness, who knows,) so she hasn't invited me to anything for weeks. and she's skipped class, so we haven't talked. and part of me wants to be like, "hey, what's up? haven't seen you in class a while," but another part of me wonders if these weird things just come and go. maybe i move slower in friendships than other people do.

part of me suspects that jackie and eugene think that i'm cooler than i really am. i'm serious, i think they might be curious about me, but i think they...i dunno. i mean, i'm just a guy. i don't have something witty to say all the time, and i drool when i sleep. i get awkward in weird situations. stuff like that.

and...i think...i'm not sure...i remember in germany, i'd talk to one of the staff, dan jonnson, who worked in the kitchen, was one of the head cooks, this younger, smart, likable, and intense guy who told great stories because he lived a crazy life. and he also had some wisdom, some by doing the wrong thing, some by watching and learning. at bodenseehof, or any of those torchbearers schools, of course there are alot of guys and girls who end up dating, and a few who end up marrying. so when i was dating laura, and at the school, occasionally i talked to dan jonnson about it. he married a german girl...(was she german, meg? i think she was. is.) anyways, he met her there, so he's swedish and she's german, i think. and at the torchbearers schools of course there's alot of cross-cultural dating and stuff, by the nature of how many different countries people come from. but he told me once that two years was a pretty good length of time, for dating, or yeah, for knowing somebody...that two years was best, before you had seen them in several different seasons of life, had gotten to know them in different situations, learned more about their different sides.

and i thought that was pretty wise. and of course its not required, and two years might be longer than some people need. but just the nature of the advice; that people have different sides, that people behave differently in different situations, and that you can't assume you know some one very fast...

and i think it can be the same for friendship. i guess one of those most frustrating things i've found in friendships is when i hit it off well with some one, and then a few months down the road, i find that i slip into a particular side of myself, when i'm with them. when i find that there's another part of me that i've never showed them, or they can't see, or they just brush off when they see it. and i know i'm guilty of this too. i know i presume to know people sooner than they deserve, alot of times. i joke about something they do, when instead i should just watch and take it in.

because i want my friends to know me. i want my friends to understand that there is a part of me that comes very alive when i have my food and bed in a pack on my back, and i'm sweating and walking through a desert. that there's a part of me that wakes up when i'm dirtier than usual and i stand on a ridge as the sun lays long shadows across the dry land of big bend, and i walk down to where my dad sits near a propane stove as our dinner cooks. and see, that just might be missed if your question was "how was backpacking?" and my answer was "awesome." i don't think its the same.

i want my friends to know that i feel supremely happy when i can sit on an afternoon in the sun and open a good book, especially one with good words...like a dickens novel, or something...and just enjoy what the writer put forth.

that for some reason, i keep up a semi-regular workout routine, running, swimming, and lifting weights. and its definitely semi-regular, but it makes me feel alive, and i miss it when i don't do it.

that sometimes my own thoughts crowd in so tight that i need some one to tell me what's true and what's not. and it'll happen with the simplest things. and it makes me feel pretty helpless.

i want my friends to know these things about me. and i welcome new friendships, as much as i have time. i have God, who is the Lord, and i need to spend time with Him regularly. i have school, which is what God has prepared for me to do right now, to press on and work diligently. i have my community group, which is my spiritual community, and the most important group of friends here in austin right now. and i have Christian friends who i keep up with. and i have friends who are not Christian. and then i have people who would like to be my friend, who are not Christians, or who are, but aren't in the right place with Christ, who've stopped giving up and giving in to grace...

and i feel guilty when i need some alone time. and i don't really know how to balance. i suppose that's what this post is about. i don't know where my call to love others leads me. i don't know what's realistic, what's spreading myself too thin. i don't want to be selfish with my time. there's always less time than i think there is. and i've felt recently like i've traded in a voicemail for text messages. because somebody can say something, and its sitting there on your phone, the next time you check it, or it vibrates in your pocket, like, "hey! don't ignore me! i just got to you by pressing buttons on my [glorified pager], and you are free to respond...now."

i think another thing that bothers me is friendships that are forced too quickly...with jackie, i felt that. with eugene, i'm feeling this. you know? its like, "good, let's hang out. but don't pretend you know me. how about in two years, we can talk about knowing?" ...and that's not just them that make me feel like this, and in some ways, its hardly them.

i don't know what this is exactly about. i guess there are a number of issues in this post. any words would be welcome. maybe i'm feeling stretched too thin. its ironic, that i am feeling like i have too many friends at this point. last semester it was slow and lonely for a while.

so. yeah, any words are welcome. advice, encouragement, correction, thoughts to ponder...yes.

a poem made beautiful by honesty, not careful crafting

2010-03-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

it feels
or maybe, i should say, i feel.
back in my room, i'm unpacking, slowly but surely...
i left a number of things at home in san antonio. my life is quite spread over two different places
and you know how some brilliant greeting card writer once said
"home is where the heart is"?
i don't even know where my heart is. it feels stretched, it feels divided, it feels...lost, maybe.
it's like i woke up during a surgery, the doctors and nurses taking a coffee break across the room,
me on the table, my insides still mixed up, and i...not even knowing where anything goes, inside of me.
it's me! this is myself! how can i not know my own self!?! but i don't--
i don't.
perhaps this is what results from a great backpacking trip over spring break with one's father and little brothers,
a surprise day visit from one's older brother and sister-in-law,
a healthy measure of God showing one one's need for a savior, via several eye-opening, unflattering angles,
a few catch-ups with friends,
an extremely absorbing novel,
a number of small pictures of what makes a home welcoming,
and musings on what makes one in one's element,
and an old friend's wedding to attend.

so...i have work to do.
all of these things left me little time for studying.
and there are places in me that i wish to keep sitting silently for a while,
not them; i wish for silence for them to muse by for a bit; like a library
or a garden
in the morning.

2010-03-12T20:16:00.000-08:00

nearly two weeks later, dan posts after the first day of his spring break. that is right, dear readers, i got done last night, and my mom came up to austin, i loaded my stuff into the car, and by 8:00pm thursday night, i had officially begun my spring break. that gives me ten days. :) today over, still 9 left.

i'd like to do something. i'm trying to get my dad to take us hiking or something for a couple days. its pretty last minute, and we'd been trying to plan something for a while, but see, my brother and his wife are moving back from florida, to fort hood, in killeen, where they'll be for the next while, and we didn't know whether they'd want to come with us, and they did, depending on what we did, and then mom and dad went to christian doctor retreat thingie they go to every year, at glen eyrie, two weeks ago, and then dad had a crazy busy week last week...so...nothing got planned. here we are, trying to do something. correction. the desire is mine. i am the only one, i think, who feels desperate to go far away from san antonio (or austin) and get out of the city for more than a day. since i have no car in austin, my idea of a getaway on my day of rest is shrunk down to a long bike ride to a semi-distant coffee shop. that's my idea of a getaway. so now that i'm home, i'm aching for a real getaway. in a wilderness sort of way. in a far-from-city-lights sort of way. and my dad likes to do that stuff, and likes to hang out with us, and my brothers like that sort of stuff, too, so though the desire is mainly mine, its not as though i'm convincing them to take part in something distasteful.

this past week was pretty peaceful, as far as school went. i had a microbiology test, which was difficult, but i think i did ok on it. i have two weeks until i'll know whether i'm accepted into nursing school, and i wouldn't say i'm nervous, but i'm tired of waiting. i want to know. i want to be able to tell people what i'm going to be. i'm tired of qualifying my intentions with a "hopefully" or a "assuming i get in." and i suppose if i get in, then i have to pass the NCLEX after graduating, before i can claim nursing as my career. but. this is the next step.

on tuesday, i got out of a class, and my phone rang. it was khoa. i hadn't written him that letter...we hadn't talked. i answered, surprised and curious. he asked how i was doing, and i asked him, etc.. he said he was at home, taking care of his health for a while, and then maybe returning to school next year, hopefully, but we'll see. he asked me about a time during that week, when i started crying after reading an email on my computer, when khoa was in the room. i explained to him that i had read something my dad had wrote, remarking about God's goodness to us, and it struck me, and i cried about it. (i remember when this happened, and i had explained it to him at the time...) and he was confused: "wait. so you were crying because...you were sad that God is good?" and i laughed, said no, crying out of happiness, "haven't you ever had that happen?" and he said no, "...i mean, maybe if i won a million dollars or something," and i said, "yeah...it's kinda like that."
khoa also asked about a phone number i had given him that week. when i called the behavioral concerns line, they gave me a phone number to give to khoa, for telephone counseling, if he wanted to talk to somebody. i had given it to him that day, back in january, and explained who it was, "if he wanted some one else to talk to." so i explained it again, on tuesday on the phone. it was strange; it was like information had gone in, you know? it was like he was aware of what had happened to and around him during that week, but he was just now processing it. after i explained it (tuesday), telling him about calling the line because i was worried about him, he thanked me, seemed grateful that i did those things.

we talked a bit, and he asked about nursing, and i told him the latest. and then he started to say something, and i could not believe what i was hearing. as i listened to khoa's voice through the telephone, i could not believe what was happening.

he asked me to recommend a bible verse for him to read. just out of the blue. he added, "i don't usually ask for recommendations, but you seem like you know alot about the bible, so..." unspeakably happy, staring wide eyed with wonder at the sky, i told khoa that john 3:16 was a pretty good place to start. he wrote it down, and thanked me. we talked a little longer, and i told him of the letter i had intended on sending him. i think i'll still send it; he was pretty happy at the prospect of mail from me. at the end, i told him that i hoped we'd keep in touch, and to feel free to call again whenever. after he hung up, i walked a little ways from the building i had left, and prayed in a small park nearby for a while. a mental breakdown: priceless, if God uses it to bring khoa to Himself.

i don't really know what else to say. we prayed, and God is chasing khoa. please continue to pray for him. it strikes me that khoa has had people praying for him since i met him in august. my parents have prayed for him. i have prayed for him (inconsistently). members of my community group have prayed for him, last semester, and then when he was having a mental breakdown this semester, we prayed for him again. my parents prayed. my parents' friends prayed. my friends prayed. we ask an infinite God to rescue. prayers powerful and effective, to a God who is there.

ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name.

for a moment

2010-02-27T15:53:00.000-08:00

around 3:40, i left jester dormitory, my cell in the midst of many, to find a place to do work and study in this beautifully mild and sunny day. if you remember, it snowed on tuesday. it has been cloudy on and off these past few weeks, emphasis on the "on." today was great, and though i had to study, i had decided to take advantage of it.

i wandered into a large triangular area of grass between jester and the library. a bit closer to my point of origin than i intended, but the sun slanted across the winter dead grass and there were a few people sitting, dotting the grass. i walked to a good spot, the grass crunching under my shoes, and sat down, the sun immediately starting to warm my back, through my shirt, as if to welcome me and affirm my decision to stop here.

a girl a little ways from me was sitting there, reading something. i sat looking at the perfectly blue sky for a bit, basking in the idyllic nature of the afternoon. a side walk runs along one side of this grassy triangle, connecting a dead end street to the busy Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, where, for all intents and purposes, the University of Texas at Austin relinquishes its claims to buildings, tree-lined walks, and the bustle of higher education, and the rest of the city gladly takes over with office buildings, a museum here and there, a small park or two, and various restaurants and music venues, as you go further downtown. but from where i sit, even MLK is hidden from view by the Blanton, a museum that is part of the university and consists of two buildings, symmetrically arranged benches and geometrically arranged trees on either side of this sidewalk...and then two often overlooked works of art behind the main building, two strange "sculptures" made of slate, and made of small shrubs, and whose redeeming quality in my mind is the benches around these sculptures that are seldom noticed and even less often visited, and so make it a great place for prayer or thought.

so i sit on the grass, and its a quiet afternoon, and the sun is warm, but not hot, and there's an evening chill forming, too, so that i can feel it when i change positions and one side of my bare foot is cold, and my shoes make shadows in the grass beside me. the girl near me lights a cigarette, and the smoke must blow in my direction, because i can smell it strongly. part of my studying is for my "masterworks of american literature" class, and we'll be discussing "daisy miller: a study" by henry james this next week. i start reading, and everything, everything together, in this moment, takes me back to europe. henry james writes of a young american in switzerland, living there, and this man meets another american family, a mother, a boy, and a daughter who is a "very pretty young woman." the story was written in 187...8, i believe, and james wrote of high society and his writings reflected his life; he had a wealthy father who educated henry and his brother across the two continents, to accustom them to international culture, and in his thirties, henry james moved to england, and aside from one lengthy stay in america, he never went back to america after moving to europe.

for a moment. and i thought about austin, how i like some parts of austin very much, but i like some parts of san antonio very much, and i liked some parts of friedrichshafen, germany, very much. there are plenty of different things to like in plenty of different places, but i wondered, as i sat there, if i was born for somewhere.

and yes, my citizenship is in heaven, and i am an alien and a stranger to this world. i'm not talking about that. this isn't me losing focus, this is me wondering about something else.

last semester in my "myth of the west" class, we read angle of repose by wallace stegner. its a pulitzer prize winning novel, its extremely long, and its excellently written. the story is about the narrator, a wheelchair-bound old man, a former history professor, i think, and in his last days of independence, living alone in his old house, he decides to write his grandmother's history. his grandmother left the life of a 19th century socialite in new york city to move west with her husband, in the days when the west was still untamed....the narrator realizes that she and her husband, the narrator's grandfather, had some difficulties, but something had happened by the time the narrator came around, because his grandparents were fine and his grandmother was content where she was. wallace stegner, through the narrator, uses an engineering term that the grandfather would have employed frequently as a mining engineer in those days, that of an "angle of repose," that is, the angle of a slope where detritus, debris, stops sliding. wallace stegner crafts a novel about an old man who looks curiously into his grandmother's life to find her angle of repose, where she came to rest, and what that looked like, and this narrator seeks his own in the meantime, as we learn about why he's in a wheelchair and why he's had a wife but doesn't have her now.

maybe that's what i'm talking about, an angle of repose. and maybe i'm talking about nostalgia. i think its a little of both; certainly my angle of repose might have nothing to do with cigarette smoke or long shadows from a warm late afternoon sun. i don't know. maybe i just wanted to let my mind wander in beauty and seeking for a while.

[if we were sitting, talking at a coffeeshop somewhere, this would be where i just sit silently for a bit. if you had something to say, you would say it, and i would listen. if not, it would be ok just to sit there.]

a song and a new.

2010-02-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

is its a bunch of new things, its called news, right? but if its only one? "i have new for you!"

this song is worth soaking in. "safe to land," by jars of clay.

getting tired of all this circling
not much grace left on a broken wing
i feel the wind trying to push me down
it happens every time i get to town

i search for shelter near the mines we swept
i guess forgiveness hasn't happened yet
there are no words that i can say to you
to turn this careless sky from black to blue

so i'm asking you
is it safe, is it safe to land?
'cause i'm not going far on an empty heart
is it safe, is it safe to land?
cause the long fall back to earth is the hardest part

i'm in no weather for apology
i need your runway lights to burn for me
and if you say that i can come around
i'll love you right, i won't let you down

'cause i'm coming home, if these wheels touch down
i'm coming home, i'm waking you up
in the middle of the night, i'm not giving up
i'm gonna stay, till we make it work
we're not going down even if it gets worse
we'll work it out, yeah, we'll work it out
i need your light, guide me in
is it safe?

the song is excellent. today an RA knocked on my door, because it was her job to make sure the empty side of the room was cleared of stuff, for the new roommate. so i took all my stuff back, and now my side is cluttered again, as a college dorm room normally looks, haha. she said that they would send housekeeping in to clean that side, and then it would be ready for him, whoever he is. i'm assuming tomorrow, or at the latest thursday, i'll have a roommate. i wonder how it will be. i wonder if i'll be able to make coffee in the room in the morning, i wonder if i'll be able to play music without headphones. these little things that you don't realize add up to a considerable amount of comfort and sense of home. i guess we'll see.

ok i was wrong, i do have news, because another thing i share. it snowed today! and it even collected a little on the ground. its all melted by now, but it was quite nice. on the tables outside jester, i saw little foot-high snowmen people had made, complete with noses made out of orange flyers, eyes and mouths too. snow in austin, twas great.

david bazan, and a paper

2010-02-17T08:05:00.001-08:00

yesterday in my "ethics in health care" class, we got back an abstract we wrote a week or so ago. our professor graded it in an interesting way; we peer graded other classmates' papers, and then our grades were based on how well we graded other people's papers. so we graded other people's papers in class, and see, on the paper i graded, i stumbled through lining up APA (american psychological association, the writing guidelines we use in nursing, and i'd guess medical in general. no more MLA for me, nor chicago style, at that.) and content and syntax and structure and all that, and ended up giving the paper in question a 93, i think. well, my professor graded afterwards and found that she would have given it a 90. so how she calculated my grade, (keep tracking, i know this is complicated. we got like three sheets back in class. it was madness.) is that she subtracted the difference of the two grades, (93 minus 90,) and then divided the difference by two. the difference in my case was 3 points, then divided by two equals 1.5. this she subtracted from 100, and that's my grade. so i got a 98.5.
the person who graded my paper was, i think, not a very good writer, because she had trouble deconstructing my wordy sentences. which is also my problem, so i need to write more concisely and with fewer stylistic flourishes, if that makes sense. but there's a difference between saying, "you're too confusing. these clauses are unnecessary" in specific instances, and saying, "this word doesn't make sense here." this is what makes me think my grader wasn't a very good writer, because i read back over those parts, and they were wordy, but they were still coherent, and the words still made sense in their places within the sentence. so when i got back my paper, there were big ugly marks all over it, and at first i was angry at my grader for putting all of these little opinions in her grading and micromanaging my writing style, (because there's a difference between grading and re-writing, and it took me all of high school and part of college to figure that out, i think, proofreading other people's writing,) and at the end my fellow classmate grader gave me a 70, which was kind of insulting. but the prof went back through and her grade for my paper was an 82, so i did have to take a deep breath or two and submit to criticism of my paper. sigh.

i know i write well, (which you wouldn't know from this blog, i know,) and so it frustrates me when some one is like, "this paper is crap," as opposed to "this paper needs alot of work." and my student graded paper essentially said "this paper is crap" whereas my professor's comments, while still critical and humbling, said, "this paper needs alot of work."

and i know this is all complicated, because you're like, "dan, i thought you got a 98.5." and i did. see, she gave us hypothetical grades for our papers, and showed us the hypothetical student grader grade, and their comments, and her comments, and then gave us our actual grade, which was according to how well we graded some one else's. but see, nobody probably got below an A, because even with the girl who graded my paper, she gave it a 70, my prof gave it an 82. difference of 12, divided by 2 equals 6, so she got a 94. i'm sure everyone did fine.

on alot of people's papers, the professor wrote at the end, "go to the writing center for next paper," because there's this Undergraduate Writing Center on campus where you can go and they'll help you with your papers. and you can walk in. and its free. and apparently the writing center sends an email to the professor when you go for a paper for their class, saying, "hey, this student cared enough to get help," or something. so she'll know if people actually do, and she said after reading the abstracts, that most of the class didn't know how to write, hence the writing center directive. our professor was pretty disappointed overall. i was thankful to find that she had not written that on my paper. though she did write, "are you reading articles/text?" haha...hm. yes. the answer is yes, most of them, but i guess i need to ask more questions in class. because i thought i understood communitarian bioethics, but apparently, by my paper, she didn't think i got the gist of what the author was saying.

it is true that i get hung up while reading these articles. i get distracted because ethics is impossible to delineate without Jesus, without the Father. but i suppose that doesn't mean i can't write good abstracts about these articles. i dunno. i guess we'll see how this goes.

david bazan. his cd is interesting. tim pointed me in the right direction last night, because i hadn't read up about him, besides a little blurb on amazon about "honest questioning of his faith." well, its more than that. he's an agnostic, and content to stay that way. he used to claim Christ, but now he's just so far away from that, and i read an interview of his, and he's pretty satisfied singing about how faith didn't cut it for him. his break with Christianity didn't seem especially ugly, and there was nothing dramatic like a disaster where he shook his fist at God and ran. he went to a bible college, got a degree in religious studies, i believe. his wife is a Christian, his daughter is. he reads the Bible as an "important document," and there's alot of distaste for some of the modern church today, as well as a distaste for a God who sends people to hell if they don't choose Him. he referenced bart ehrman, who i found out about and read about only a few weeks ago, through a comment on a reformed pastor's blog i occasionally. david bazan is a poet, and a great songwriter. if you are struggling with doubts about Christianity, this probably would be an album to steer clear of, in the dark night of the soul. there are just too many "almost but not quite" Christian concepts in his songs, and yeah...you can know the truth, but ...or maybe i should say, you can be able to say the same exact sentences as some one who knows the truth, but they are different coming from some one whose heart does not grasp the truth. and so yeah...this is present in david bazan's songs. and his interview showed that clearly. some of the lyrics are great, but behind them...there's no eagerness to understand.

that said. i enjoy the cd, for now at least. not all of the songs are explicitly religious...so maybe one or two aren't. ;) and there are probably one or two of the religious ones that i'll skip when listening to the album. maybe i'm a weaker brother, easily affected by the mindset of the singer, once i know why he's singing the words in more insidiously defiant songs. but i dunno. as i said, most of them, i enjoy. this is one of the songs i enjoy, called "hard to be." and i like it alot. it is pretty insightful, and he talks about good stuff, and how, yeah, there's no ignoring how it's "hard to be, a decent human being." i love that lyric.

you've heard the story, you know how it goes
once upon a garden, we were lovers with no clothes
fresh from the soil, we were beautiful and true
in control of our emotions, til we ate the poison fruit

and now its hard to be, hard to be,
hard to be, a decent human being

wait just a minute, you expect me to believe
that all this misbehaving, grew from one enchanted tree
and helpless to fight it, we should all be satisfied
with this magical explanation, for why the living die

and why it's hard to be, hard to be,
hard to be, a decent human being

childbirth is painful, we toil to grow our food
ignorance made us hungry, information made us no good
every burden misunderstood

so i swung my tassel, to the left side of my cap
knowing after graduation, there would be no going back
and no congratulations, from my faithful family
some of whom are already fasting, to intercede for me

because it's hard to be.....

but yeah. see, the last verse is about him getting a religious degree...and getting to where he is now, and a bit of an an indirect joke at the expense of his family and their concern for him, as he thinks he's perfectly fine. but yes. thought i'd share. you can search "hard to be" on youtube if you want to hear the melody, but i believe there are only live versions.

february 14th.

2010-02-14T14:07:00.001-08:00

jack johnson quietly and persistently gives a melody to my room, as i sit on the bed across from mine in 0821 jester east, on 201 east 21st street, in austin, texas, one of the united states of america.

i had a dream last night that i got back to austin and i had a new roommate waiting for me, and he wasn't very nice at all. i woke up and remembered, and hoped desperately that my room would be empty upon my return. it was. i threw away the "if you're reading this, you're my new roommate. welcome! see you sunday. -dan" note i had left on the unused bed, unpacked my stuff, and sat down to write an entry here.

you see, i went home for the weekend, for my birthday. it was a good weekend. i met good friends and spent time with them. i spent an evening with my family. i had breakfast with the johnsons on saturday morning. i came burdened with questions that have formed over the past few weeks, and last semester as well, and felt peace as i listened to them and their friend cindy offer wisdom into places in my life. i can't really explain more; i know i'm being vague, and i'm sorry. its just that its not really mine to share.
i went to wayside on sunday morning, and endured through the 45 minutes of time designated for "worship," and actually found a song or two that i could sing and give to God, and really found myself engaged by the message, which has not typically been my experience at wayside since last summer...then i slipped out, having said hi to two friends, got home, put my things in the car, and my dad drove me back up here, to austin, just in time to watch cory get baptized.

now i'm back in my room, as i said, and mae is singing about an old oak tree where two or more people can swing and sway, and throw their guards away. "just let go," off of singularity. i like the song. :)

i got switchfoot's "hello hurricane" for my birthday, as well as thrice's "beggars," jars of clay's "the long fall back to earth," and one i've been especially curious about since stumbling upon it on amazon, david bazan's "curse your branches." i'll let you know how it is, since i haven't listened to it yet. mark and tracy got me a french press, which i had been wanting, and i tried it yesterday. i imagine i'll get to be a pro at measuring coffee-to-water ratios for the press by the end of this semester, but my first step is to get some coffee next time i buy groceries. (thanks, mark and tracy. :) )

yesterday i knelt down to pet my dog, sadie, and she suddenly, in the spirit of affection, i guess, but not a well-thought out expression of that affection, put her paw up and into my eye as i was beside her. her paws were muddy, because she had been out in the yard earlier in the morning, and i felt like she had put something in my eye, so i went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. i took out my contact, as well as a piece of my contact. a small triangular piece of my contact had been ripped out of the middle of the lens, and my contact had a nice triangle of negative space where it happened. it was the strangest thing, that sadie's paw had done that. it didn't even really hurt, when it happened, but my mom and dad both remarked that it could have been my cornea, if my contact hadn't been there. hm. i wore my glasses for the rest of yesterday, and today, too, because my extra contacts were in austin.

i'm twenty two now.

its valentine's day. happy valentine's day, dear reader.

my phone has been slowly breaking, the hinge cover cracking more and more. i switched the SIM card into my dad's old phone over the weekend. it is a bit older, and the buttons are a bit harder to press, but it's simple and feels tougher than my old phone. good fix.

exploring the idea that love is costly, these days. the idea won't go away. God is pounding into me, and i'm a slow learner. that, and the statement, that came into my head as i was doing my bible study a couple weeks ago: "God's desires for us are relentless." the concept of Him steadily hoping for us. even when we've given up hope, or lose sight of it.

i shaved my beard.

its been cold and cloudy, rainy lately. i miss the sun, and its hard to be optimistic when keeping your chin up only lets raindrops slide down your chin and get your neck cold and wet.

setting - where i am

2010-02-05T16:47:00.000-08:00

grey and rainy. the internet said so and my walks from class to class through ut's maze of buildings confirmed that reality. it's a perfect day for coffee - rainy day coffee. that'd be a good name for a coffee shop and i smile when i think about the clientele that we'd find there. no ugg boots. no northface fleeces paired with short nike athletic shorts. wool, denim, beards. hats hiding hair that has skipped the last two showers. maybe someone who legitimately owns a fleece, even of the northface variety. i write as a man who is sitting in that cafe right now.

tim would probably enjoy this place too, but i secretly suspect that a big part of that comes from the fact that he thinks he might meet donald miller here. fair enough. tim sometimes talks about don as if his books were written just for him. don proposes the idea that our lives are stories, that we are characters and we are written and are being written. it is a comforting place to rest, even when our stories aren't.

so, setting. i am not in a fictional coffee shop. i am tucked away in a quiet corner on campus, away from the noise so i can breathe better. i am thinking about home. where the heart is. wear your heart on your sleeve? your home on your sleeve? (would this shirt look good with a lintel?) hm. i digress again.

a setting can have a way of defining you if you're not careful and it can also have a similar way of not defining you by the same method of unawareness. the chameleon and the american, haha. somewhere in between the two you find the characters that have integrity, the ones who you begin to care about who will save cats any day of the week and who also understand that there are different kinds of cats and varying rescue situations that require new and sometimes bold approaches.

i wonder sometimes, how well i do at being the same character in every setting while still allowing the scenes to change me. you can't always know what the next page will require of you. i've found myself feeling differently about life in one place than i had just the day before. and it's often funny to me that the Author would find it fit to write our stories the way He does. His grace is so abundant, though. a character in the middle of a story does not usually get to read the chapters written already. (perhaps only metafictional characters get to interact with their authors they way we get to.) the pages of my blog and my journal and the stories told to me by friends tell me that my life has been more glorious than i often allow myself to feel.

setting matters, and yet it doesn't. it's vital, without it you are merely waiting for godot, and it shapes you. if my setting never changes, it's hard to tell what his true about myself, my heart, versus what my environment breeds in me (for better or for worse). and above all, our Author is faithful in every setting, from adam's to job's to the last day.

here's to integrity of heart and character in all settings.

-----

sigh. this, my friends, is a post that was written by tim. we've joked for a while about writing a post for one another, because in several areas, we think similarly. he sent me this, and after reading it, i was very quiet. i felt like some one had paid me a great compliment, or given me a vision. or told me an important message. tim wrote about me, he wrote to me, and he also wove himself into the tapestry. it is intimate friendship, its startlingly close to something i would write, down to the lack of capitalization. :) but in the end, i'm proud to both put my name at the end, and credit my ghostwriter as well. leave thoughts, if you are thinking.

2010-02-03T14:53:00.000-08:00

of note.

exercising. it is a terrible thing. i have not done it much at all recently. and right now, i have time to go run. but instead i'm sitting on a chair.

housing for next year. i purposefully did not reapply for on campus housing, for next year. larry, a friend of mine here, albeit one i only see every couple of weeks, persuaded me into a group of him and five other guys. an attempt at securing a six bedroom, three bath house failed late last semester...(if the house seems huge, keep in mind its near a huge university. they know it's only college students, so other than the bedrooms, you get a kitchen and living room, and that's about it.) but on sunday a group of the guys found another six bedroom, three bathroom place. we all filled out applications. i haven't heard whether the place is ours yet. at any rate, its looking like it will be seven guys in a house for me next year. it will be...active. :)

it will be very much unlike my current situation, where i am still living alone, until the university of texas, division of housing and food should decide to implant into my little cell, another organism, specifically of the human variety, and even more specifically, male, like myself. (i say "specifically human" because the division of housing and food has implanted other organisms into my quarters before, though perhaps "implant" denotes an intentionality which, to their credit, the aforementioned division did not display in the arrival of additional life forms in my humble abode, M0821 Jester. i refer to ants, primarily, but also, i suppose, bread mold fungus, another vivacious [and spontaneous] creature i've come across in my cabinet, on my bread, and another sort of fungus which khoa and i were forced to acknowledge when it became fruitful and multiplied on khoa's strawberries, last semester. i doubt not, if he could have found a way, that fungus would have put up a sign "home, sweet home" on the lintels of the doors of his strawberry house. alas, strawberries were not made to house anything that would need lintels, nor anything that would make itself "at home" in embracing domestic tranquility on the surface of said fruit.)

that one, lintels, is a new word i learned within the past week, thanks to my american literature class, and also thanks to ralph waldo emerson and his highly unfocused and rambling work, "self reliance." he used the word. and as for the rest of the silliness of the above paragraph, i am without excuse.

i think i will go run.

the second week.

2010-02-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

on monday, khoa stayed in the room all day, i think. at least, whenever i came in, he was there. he left for dinner, but other than that, it was long periods of staring, on his bed, at his desk, staring at his computer...it was pretty unsettling, and yeah, when i went to bed, he didn't respond, and nothing indicated that he realized that i told him i would turn off the light, and nothing indicated that he realized the light turned off, as he remained, eyes wide toward the ceiling, fully clothed, visible by the light of his computer screen which sat open on his desk.

i decided to call the behavioral concerns line again the next day and give them his name, to have them look into his behavior, check up on him, etc...so on tuesday, i resolved to first tell my RA that i was going to call them again and have them check up on khoa, and then do it. as i walked back into my dorm that morning after my first class, though, i got a call from the dean of students office, which is connected to the behavioral concerns line (B.C.A.L.). they called to tell me that khoa was in the office with them with UTPD and mental health personnel, and that they were going to get him the help he needed. they told me that khoa would not be back in the room for a few hours.

i don't know how khoa ended up there, because i hadn't called them yet. maybe he called 911 and hung up again, like he did on sunday, and the officers who came to check on the call saw that he was clearly not right, and took him there. i asked my RA later if he had called on behalf of khoa; he hadn't called. i don't know. yeah, i might not ever know. that night, tuesday night, i was sitting in my room, and khoa's keys were on his desk, his wallet was there, even his glasses by his laptop, his half-drunk water bottles scattered throughout the room, his pants crumpled on his ever-unmade bed, just as if he slipped out to go to the bathroom. i got a call as i sat there, from a head guy in charge of the entire jester dorm and he told me that khoa was in the hospital, that some decisions had been made, his parents were involved, that he'd been withdrawn from the university, and that his parents would come and get his stuff on saturday.

i hung up from talking to him and just felt overwhelmed. it was all so sudden. and khoa's stuff still sat like he was at dinner, or in the shower. the man's comment echoed in my head, and i think he just didn't consider that i might care about khoa, because if i thought of my roommate as a nuisance, or his behavior as something only significant in that it threw me off, then hearing "you'll probably never see him again" would be a relief. but it wasn't.

i prayed, and called my dad, and talked to cory...and doing my Bible study that night was nearly impossible. my dad suggested that i could get khoa's address from his parents on saturday, to be able to write him a letter, to achieve a certain amount of closure on my part. no one told me what had been wrong with khoa, which is normal; its a privacy issue, and i'm his roommate, not his family. and on wednesday i went to my classes and tried to refocus and put my mind to studying that i had fallen behind on over the previous 5 or 6 days.

it wasn't until sunday night, when i asked for prayer, as well as prayer for khoa, at my community group, that i began to feel peace, the weight lifting, some semblance of a calm, despite the apparent senselessness of all that had happened. on thursday morning, i had time to sit and do my Bible study before anything else in the day, and i felt like it was going to be ok. its interesting, because closure exists, i just don't have it. its not as if khoa ceased to exist; he's in a hospital somewhere. there's an ending to this story, a resolution, even if i don't know it. khoa is where he needs to be, surrounded by people who know what they're doing and how to help him. i found peace in this. closure would be nice. but yeah, i don't need it. i pray for khoa and know that he's still alive, that the situation isn't terrible. and after he gets out of the hospital, he'll live life.

this past weekend has been busy, catching up from work i fell behind on. but things are calming down now. i saw khoa's family on saturday, and they gave me his address. apparently he's in a hospital here in austin. cory suggested going to visit him, but i think it would be awkward for him, if he was lucid, which may or may not be the case at this point, depending on exactly what was wrong with him. i asked khoa's mom if it was depression, but she didn't understand me, as the parents spoke very little english. and yeah. it would have probably been uncomfortable for them to talk about exactly why their son ended up in the dean of students office and now the hospital, especially if it was drugs. so its alright.

so now i have my own room. i'm using the other desk chair as a footrest as i type. i keep the blinds open so that the light will come into the room in the morning as i wake up. i turn on music sometimes as i get ready to go to class. i can pray out loud anytime now.
i was told that no sooner than a week, but probably shortly thereafter, i would get a new roommate. if some one has roommate trouble, or wants to move, or whatever, then they get in touch with their RA, and i guess there's this method of matching the evacuee to a new roommate. i'm praying for my new roommate, that he would be a Christian. but meh. either way...yeah, it would be nice. but i could see the good in another non-Christian roommate. i'm assuming that as of today, its open season, and i could have to give up my falling-asleep-on-the-floor-with-the-lights-on habits any day to a new roommate. (not that i do it often, but it is pretty fun, every once in a while, to read while laying on the floor, till you get so tired you just lay your head down, and wake up an hour later all groggy and stumble through brushing your teeth and fall into bed. :) )

these past few weeks have been ones of big changes, stresses, uncertainties...i think of the verses in james about how perseverance works, and its finished work is maturity, not lacking anything. i don't really know what that looks like, but its good to know that the things that have weighed on me are working something into me.

probably the last of the things hanging over my head these days is my nursing school application. i had a meeting with my advisor this morning, to review my "completed application," which means this weekend had me working furiously to write a coherent essay and compile my extracurricular activities into a certain format, haha. the application is due february 15th. this morning she looked over things, and was hopeful, even confident of my chances of getting into the nursing school on the first try. she encouraged me to elaborate on my duties as both a CNA and as an attendant for david mick last spring, because they both are classified as work in healthcare, saying, "these meant alot of responsibility, you need to tell more about them. these are the things that are significant."
it struck me, and i smiled up at the sky as i walked back to my dorm after the meeting, because God knew what He was doing when He pointed me towards working with david mick. i didn't know it would be classified as healthcare, that it would be a significant addition to my resume in my nursing school application, that it would teach me communication skills and patience. i had no idea of the significance of that job at the time. i just did it. i am the most accidentally prepared, the most unintentionally competent student i know...i don't play the game of "strategic extracurricular activities" very well at all. just like my year at bodenseehof turned out to be a study abroad experience that i could use to tell of learning lessons about cultural sensitivity, independence, leadership, service, etc in my UT essay, and it was actually true. God amazes me, and He plans, and blesses. or, as one songwriter put it, "great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father." :)

i still have to write a solid essay, she said, because she's not allowed to look over applicants' essays. but provided that i do, she was hopeful. and so i'm hopeful. so we'll see.

the first week of it.

2010-01-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

the sun sinks lower on my first week back in austin, at the university of texas.

i got into all of my classes. God is so unbelievably good. the first day, i tracked down my nursing advisor, and listened to her lecture me for losing all of my classes and not telling her in time, or something of the sort. i submitted to the aforementioned rebuke, and then humbly asked for help. she had one...spot...left...in the last of the three nursing courses. (i'm taking three courses specifically relating to nursing, like pre-nursing nursing courses: ethics of health care, communication in a health care setting, and nursing research. then i'm taking an american literature course, and "microbiology, immunology and pathology." or something like that.) so she had one spot left. and she said somebody came in earlier that morning and she (my counselor) almost gave her the spot. but for some reason, she didn't. she held out. because she, as a nursing advisor, controls the waitlists, monitors them, moves them around...in the most basic sense, as i'm waiting for the waitlist to move, she is pulling the strings behind the scene, manipulating things to get people into the right classes.
anyways. but she gave the spot to me. and i was walking back from the nursing building that morning, afterwards, and i was overwhelmed. because my dad and i had prayed the morning before, as i worried about classes and things, and my dad had prayed that God would give me a sign, just something in the first couple days, to show me He cared about me, was looking out for me. just some sort of sign. and i was struck with how God decided to give me that sign, showing me, through a nursing advisor's casual comment, how He reached down and said, "here, Daniel, here's what you want. you can apply for nursing this semester after all. i love you." and gave me the last seat in the class, against all odds.
i was also on the waitlist for microbiology, and i went to an office at the recommendation of my nursing advisor, (who i've realized must like me, because she doesn't hate me, after all the trouble i've caused her. that, and i asked about her Christmas, and she actually stopped and told me a bit about some stuff, trusting me enough to open up more than the casual answer, "pretty good,") and the other office was like, "wait for the waitlists," and so i went to the first class, and talked to the professor, but there were like 5 of us, up there talking to her about getting in off the waitlist, after class. so she was like, "just hope for the best," basically. and then on thursday, i got an email saying i got into the class! i think i could have taken that course at sac over the summer, but it would have been more complicated, made my summer busier, and was not the ideal situation. so i rejoiced over this, as well.

i have a rug in my room now. it is dark brown, and pretty nice. that, as well as a small basket that i think i'll keep fruit in, that my mom got from some free trade store, and a new picture frame thingie, (thanks tim,) make me feel pretty comfy in my room. its still a dorm room, but it doesn't look so..."clean." :) haha.

classes have started off quickly. God has been faithful, showing me little things throughout the week, about how He cares for me. i feel like i had the chance to walk barefoot through most of this week, my feet on holy ground.

its also pretty cool to meet other nursing majors. its like, "hey, you're in my other classes! are you applying for nursing school this semester?" "yep!" "me too! i'm dan." "i'm....bertha." i haven't met any bertha's, but i think they've all been girls, all the same.

i was just outside at this out of the way table, behind jester, an hour or two ago, and this guy walked up to me, and asked if i would mind if he "posted up and smoked a 'j' for a bit." apparently it was where he smokes joints...and i said, yeah, sorry, i did mind, and he said, alright, cool man, and i said, is this your spot? and he said sometimes, and i said sorry, i'll keep that in mind. and he said its all good and disappeared. some guys on my hall have mentioned that they smoke weed occasionally. and i ask why. and they shrug and say they don't do it too much. it just seems stupid to me. but i feel like its something that's outgrown in a few years.

if you all would pray for my roommate khoa, i would appreciate that. and that i would have wisdom on how to love him well. without going into detail, he's been acting incredibly strange recently, and it might be depression, but it might be something more. i told my RA, and he recommended i call a behavioral concerns line, which i did. its just weird. i don't know what the heck is going on with him, and i asked my parents to pray for me, and him, because i just don't know what to do. yeah...i don't know. its weird living with some one who is deep in something, but won't talk about it. it actually makes me uncomfortable, and i have to consciously engage in the emotions it brings up, and not draw away because i'm uncomfortable, but lean in, because in leaning closer, i care about him, and that's where the hurt is, where i feel it. but its right, you know? to live in that...to still feel joy, to still wonder at God's blessings to me, but to engage in costly love. hm. (and i preach to myself. smile.)

Life Lately

2010-01-17T15:48:00.001-08:00

hello, whoever happens to read my blog. i know i've been pretty irregular lately. as in...absent. :) i cannot promise that will change. hm. maybe i'd like it to, though. i'm not sure.

lately, my life has felt...weighty. perhaps that's the word. things have weighed heavily on my mind. allow me to explain.

i haven't explained much about my friend megan on my blog at all....i think that the few of you who read my blog also know me, and have heard something or other about it at some point. but i'll give you a summary of the past, because it bears heavily on my emotions in the present.

megan is a girl i know from bodenseehof. after i left bodenseehof, we settled into a fairly regular correspondance. meg and i emailed each other over the next year, which is ridiculous for me, because i have a hard time keeping in regular contact with anybody, and i'm sure...yes. some of you know this. :/ and so we emailed, and talked on the phone when the time zones lined up, because she stayed in germany from when i left in august, till march or april, somewhere around there. it was friendship, but it was deep, and, yeah, i wondered off and on about residual feelings, or residual ideas, or hopes, or whatever they were, that whole year. but we didn't discuss them.
so i transferred in the fall to UT, and then aj, a friend from vancouver, whom i met at bodenseehof as well, invited me to visit, and got a group together. meg went up there, too, and we talked about stuff there, and we both had feelings for each other, but were unsure of what they meant, and didn't feel like we knew each other as well as we once did. the basic thing we had hammered down when we left vancouver was that we were "not dating."

yeah...but full of hopes, you know? and so we've kept in contact for the past four months regularly, (more regularly,) talking on the phone and emailing, praying about hopes, and hoping about each other, keeping in touch, and it felt pretty stable, which made me even more hopeful. in november, i decided to buy a plane ticket out to california, where she lives, in january, and see her.
its funny about hope. you don't realize how deep its roots lie, until something threatens it, its fulfilled, or its uprooted. or transplanted, maybe. for four months, in a new city, a new school, hoping and praying.

so i left last saturday, and was at her house till thursday. but on thursday before, my tuition was due...and i forgot. for my classes. so i got up on friday, remembering about it, and found that i had been dropped from all my classes...and i need these five classes, because i'm applying to the nursing school this semester. after i had freaked out sufficiently, i looked all over the website, and saw i could re-register on thursday, (six days later,) and hope to get into my weird five class irregular schedule. yeah, so i definitely prayed alot about that, and that was weighing on my mind as i left for california.

so yeah. i got there on saturday. i met her sister and her dad, and later that night, her best friend danielle. the entire trip was a ton of fun. we did low-key stuff, and went to the beach a couple times to walk around or climb on rocks, went to coffeeshops, hung out with her friends, ate at lunch spots she likes, etc...

megan is an amazing girl. but we realized after the first two days, that we were just friends. pretty disappointing, for both of us, because we had both hoped about it for a long time...and as i said, those roots go deep. i have no idea what God is up to. and i thought it made sense, the way things progressed.
this weighs on my mind, and each morning i have to spend time in prayer and think on God's goodness and love, because otherwise this large knot in my stomach never goes away.

oh, yes. and another thing. so i got into three out of five of my classes. i'm on waitlists for the others, but i dunno. and so i'm forced to wait. i've talked to two friends at UT, and they assure me its not impossible to go the first day, talk to the professor, and find a way into the classes. i hope they're right, and its encouraging.

so...yeah. uncertainty about classes. leaving home again for austin, and i've gotten used to having a family around, eating good food. :) ha. and then God's gentle but clear answer about a relationship with meg that we had been hoping for. i'm certainly not writing for sympathy. but yeah, just like i said. things have been weighing on my mind. alot to give over to God, and just feel emotion and wonder, and sit in the conclusion that it must be for good, and that things don't happen for no reason. and wrestle with that conclusion till it is my peace.

yeah, and when i think about it, its like, "of course. 3 years of long distance relationship? that's ridiculous. and you'll be fully immersed in nursing school, which, if anybody i've talked to is half right, is not gonna be easy." now i am free to pursue relationships here wholeheartedly, live in the here and now, pursue God wholly, and sit in the shaping.

but its hard to look at that truth, sitting in my room, watching the sun set on my last day at home with my family in san antonio, marking the end of the Christmas break, as my things lie scattered about the room, in various stages of packing.

this is my life lately.

2009-12-26T20:05:00.000-08:00

i have a piece of paper where i wrote things one night as i prayed several months ago. and it was pretty stream-of-consciousness style...but yeah. i just thought it was neat. around that same time, i was pushing the idea of the sublime around in my head.

"This is the part where i give myself over to You, O God. i make such a mess when i do good without You. And yet. You are kind. Lunch with a friend. Seven hundred and nineteen dollars in my bank account. Even if it is gone tomorrow. Where do you want me to put it? The parable of the talents. Mine is yours. Boy with a coin. That is a moment to prove a God.
Do You have use for me? Yes. Of course. Give me Your heart. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Restore in me a worshipful lifestyle. Sublime. Have you given me sublime, awe-inspiring moments here, in Austin, at UT, that I've missed? Weeping in worship at "Austin Stone on Campus." Many beautiful moments. Sublimity would not be something requiring pursuit if it was commonplace...Would it? The holy prayers in community group after confessing sin. A note played in its perfect place, during a song to You. The finishing moments of The Ball and the Cross. Perhaps a man's soul lives in a shell, and sublime moments are all around. To pursue is to refocus, not like a runner who has forgotten his main goal, but like one who realigns the lenses, to reawaken wonder in sights of magnificent things that are deeper and bigger than even a properly focused lens can show. If we rightly named all deserving the term "breathtaking," if we walked around without breath, would everything be breathtaking, or would nothing be breathtaking? We term "sublime" the moments that are rare, that are not commonplace, but only because we fail to see commonplace as valuable. Try as we might, the moments our souls reach out to stay our hearts from another presumptuous beat, to pause side by side, in awe...these moments are not constant, even if we constantly encounter the everyday sublime, things worth that awe.
God's hands are everywhere, which means his handiwork is everywhere, or as one writer put it, "The whole earth is full of His glory."
These musings are not circular, are not coffeeshop intellectualism. I write as I sit on a wall, with the sublime night sky stretched out like a canvas in front of me, though within the UT campus. The wind dries out my right eye as it blows across me heading left, and north. I hear strains of music, the distant yet persistent whisper of the highway, and the stadium looms, lit, off to my right. But I feel...exposed here. Like --almost like i'm being held up in the air. like a dad might do with his child. that's exactly what it is. everything i would feel, uncertainty with open space, but held strongly and looking into a face that knows me and loves me and...won't....stop...looking into my eyes.
There's nothing i can do.
This is why i've come."

a pharmacology phinal.

2009-12-11T22:11:00.000-08:00

its after midnight on friday, the 11th of december, 2009. or rather, since its after midnight, it is saturday, december 12th.

i have a final exam on saturday, december 12th. you see, i only have this final. besides my term paper for my "myth of the west" class, which i turned in on wednesday, i have no other finals or major grades. in developmental psychology, we only had four tests, and the last one was last week. and i did fine. in nutrition, the final made up our fourth grade, and she drops one of them. so with my other three grades, i had a grade i was happy with, and since the three were all within a point of each other, they solidified my average, that i'd need a 97 to bring my average up the required 3 points to the next level in this plus/minus GPA system that they've started using here, this semester. so i did not take the nutrition final, and it would have been this morning.

i have been studying for this pharm final over the course of three days, for several hours each time i sit down. admittedly, three days isn't alot; i studied over four days for my second pharm test. but since i had my term paper to do until it was due on wednesday, i worked on that right up until i printed it out and walked to my prof's office to turn it in. so. wednesday, thursday, friday. i'm happy to say that it feels like a review, alot of it. i've put the drug info into my head. i've forgotten most of it, but its not as hard the second time around. though there were sections that i didn't grasp well, and suffered on the tests for it, and i need to learn those now, because they add up on a cumulative final.

so at the advice of my friend megan, i turned to little mnemonic/memnonic. nmemonic. hm. memory devices to turn meaningless letter combination into meaningful connections. aaaand they're pretty dumb. but they help. for instance, enteric gram negative rod bacteria...its a class of bacteria. and included in it are enterobacter, escherichia, klebsiella, and proteus. these words mean almost nothing to me. and i don't think that knowing their classification will have a real world application when i'm a nurse. but it might. it might. so i imagine some one saying, "enter, Escherichia, (i think its a female, but its a pretty ugly name for anyone,) club Siella, and speak prose to us!" i don't really know why Siella gets clubbed. i get the impression that perhaps she's the not-too-bright sidekick who gets hit alot, you know, like in all the disney movies. and i can't explain why the speaker has to stipulate that Escherichia speak without rhyming. maybe they're in an epic. that would explain the weird names, too. enterobacter, escherichia, klebsiella, proteus.

another is "Pam's lint hides Dan'l in an attic." to remind me that pramlintide is an amylinomimetic. oh, lint. and you thought you took it out of the dryer screen because it was a fire hazard. think again, dear reader, lest you end up in an attic as well.
you know that NOS fuel injection system they put in cars sometimes? well, neither do i, but i've heard about it. so i immediately thought that "musty cars won't get NOS put in" when i had to get it into my head that "carmustine" is a drug in the "nitrosurea" class of cancer drugs. as long as they're in the same sentence, i'll get it.
also important to remember is that "only valiant men oppose generals." in this way, i know that valproic acid is the only anti-epileptic drug indicated for all types of general seizures.
and it sucks when you're absent from class. (at least in college. too much stuff to fall behind on, i'm finding.) so ethosuximide is the drug of choice for absence seizures.
pyrazimamide can cause gout. gout is associated with the crystallization of minerals in your joints. mineral crystals are always geometric, angular, you know, like the little diagrams they included with the rock candy kits you used to grow as a kid. (anyone? anyone?) pyramids are angular and geometric, and for some reason this abstract connection is enough for me to remember the gout connection with pyrazimamides.
warfarin is an anticoagulant that is contraindicated in pregnancies, because it can cross the placenta barrier. instead, pregnant women should get heparin, another anticoagulant. i reinforce this in my mind by a wise saying that i coined myself, "warfare is not for babies." copyright. daniel martin, 2009.

and there may be others, but i'm getting tired. i hope i do well on this final, and i'm gonna study some tomorrow before noon, at the latest 1pm, and then i will find other things to do with my time. i've found that the less i stress about tests like this, with massive amounts of info, the more i actually recall, instead of generating a storm inside my head by panickedly reviewing right up until the test is on my desk.

i'm looking forward to 5 weeks at home, and i'm looking forward to returning here after those five weeks. does this make sense? it doesn't to me, so i wonder if it does to you. but its true.

khoa is getting more comfortable around me, i've realized this the past few days. sometimes this manifests itself in being talkative and wanting to talk, sometimes when i don't want to talk, or am trying to do something. sometimes. :) but its a good thing. he's less....deferential. which is good.

the food has been getting progressively worse at the dining hall. i will be glad to leave that. it clicked in my head, early in the week, after wondering at how, when they run out of a food, they'll serve something completely different, and i'll see like three different main dishes at different times while i'm in there eating. and then it made sense, that they must be using the last of things, the things that are frozen, the odds and ends. its a bummer when your options for a meal are fried fish or chicken nuggets, or, as i faced this evening, chicken nuggets (with 31 grams of fat, bleh. 31 grams is around 50% of your DV of fat,) or vegetarian chicken and dumplings, but sigh. the body is more important than food, indeed. and it will make my own home and pantry ten times more desirable.

i need to sleep. its cold and rainy outside. i drank an energy drink in two parts today, to keep me awake and alert. it was free. and it was sugar free. and it kind of left me focus free, for a while, all jittery and not able to concentrate.

"thing are not always how they seem"

2009-12-01T13:37:00.001-08:00

these words are from the refrain of imogen heap's song, "2-1." her newest album, "ellipse," is excellent, and she played most of the songs during her concert two weeks ago. oh, i didn't write about that. well, i mentioned it on facebook at one point, which, i admit, is a poor substitute for reading my own words about my life.

yes. i went to her concert the week after going to larry's ranch. i bought a ticket the week before, and it was expensive, especially since the first two artists were ok, but not phenomenal, but it was worth it just for imogen heap. there were a few other guys on my floor here who planned on going with me, but they didn't get their tickets in time, and when they checked three days before the show, it was sold out. i went by myself, as a result, but it wouldn't have been a whole lot better with friends, since everybody was just squished in the room and the music was still awesome...imogen heap is a pretty brilliant musician, and has a personality made for the stage. outside the place, after the show, i saw a girl from my pharmacology class, and then on the way home on the bus, i met and talked with another guy who was at the show and who goes to UT, and who enjoyed similar things as i did about the night.

at one point, imogen played a song called "between sheets," which is a really good song. www.myspace.com/imogenheap has it if you want to listen. the music reminds me of waking up in the morning, waking up with some one, and not a one night stand but something deeper than that. anyways, she prefaced it with "something i'd like a bit more of, in my life," and then sat down at the piano and played. perhaps she was thinking of sex, but i'd like to believe that what she wanted was not just rapidly repeated messages of pleasure sent by nerves, but things more complicated, intimacy and moments of trust and vulnerability and shared moments of tenderness. there were alot of guys at the show, (ha. including me,) and i think one or two must have whistled or cheered when she played this, but i don't remember exactly. i just thought about this as she played, and it was quite beautiful. one of the things i love about different songs of imogen's is that she strays into the poetic rather than the cliche to articulate what she is feeling about life or an experience.

the reason i wrote that lyric as my title was for something completely different, but it doesn't matter. funny how writing will take you different places than where you first planned to go.

i just got back my nutrition test, and i have an A in the class! an A-, to be exact, which means, since i'm happy with my grade, that i don't have to take the final. this is a huge praise, because i have wondered at various points in the semester if i would get any A's at all, and they're kind of important to my UT GPA, which will consist only of this semester's classes, before i apply in february to the nursing school. so. that is great. i'm still gonna take the final, because i only have that final and my pharmacology final, anyways.
i have a test tomorrow, a presentation of a term paper tomorrow, and a test on thursday. psychology test wednesday, "myth of the west" presentation tomorrow, pharmacology test on thursday. listen to this ridiculous sentence that was involved in the lecture today. we don't have to memorize this specific point, but it still made me laugh. so i'm combining a couple of bullet points to make a sentence, but its still in there. "eptifibatide is a glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor, which means it inhibits platelet aggregation by preventing the binding of adhesion ligands to the glycoprotein IIb/IIIa receptor on the platelet." if that sounds like nonsense to you, join the club. haha...oh man. i kind of understand some of it, but only vaguely.

katy johnson, in reply to my comment about something written in my blog, said to me on saturday night, with a pained look on her face, "but your blogs are long." haha, it made me laugh. you're right, katy. you might never read this, because its quite hidden, midway through this long entry. i thought perhaps i would have a short entry this time, but nope. not by the looks of the scroll bar on the side of the page as i type.

today in austin, it's been cold, rainy and grey, so i've been in a wool sweater that has kept me warm. last night, after midnight, i was still up, so ricky, (guy who lives across the hall from me,) and i discussed various beard designs as i got ready to shave mine, since yesterday was the last day of november. the end result is a small mustache, with a soul patch part and then a bit still on my chin. it looks humorous on me, i think because i'm used to seeing thick dark beard growth. it makes me laugh when i look in the mirror, but it might stay on a few days.

i didn't even write about my thanksgiving, nor about being home for a night and a morning before coming back here. perhaps in the future, but probably not. i look forward to going home again in two weeks, to spending a month with friends in san antonio. but driving back up to austin on sunday, i was aware that i looked forward to returning to my life here in austin after the holidays. these are tensions. opening the door to my room, i saw evidences of my life, but nothing really cozy in 0821 Jester East. hm. maybe a rug will fix that. :)

a ranch, beauty and a sabbath

2009-11-15T14:16:00.001-08:00

man, what to say? i haven't posted in a while. school has been keeping me busy. i have a term paper first draft due tomorrow...which i'm a bit worried about, because it didn't turn out like i wanted it to at all. we'll see what happens. hopefully i can work on it some tonight.

i just got back from a weekend at my friend larry's ranch. they went hunting; i did not, at least, not deer hunting. larry's dad did give me a rifle with a smaller caliber than a deer rifle, and said i was welcome to shoot ferell [sic?] pigs, which apparently are unwelcome in ranch country, and you don't need a license to kill them, and coyotes, if i saw them. i saw a couple of deer, but none of the others...in the meantime when i was in the deer blind, i brought my bible, and read some, and prayed some, and sat in the silence and enjoyed it some. it felt good, and the quiet of land far outside of any cities, not near any highways, and at sunrise and dusk is quite refreshing. it was sweet hanging out with a family, too, even though it was not my own. (katy, i had some of the same parts of me refreshed this weekend; i just read your latest blog entry. in different ways.) the lucks, (larry's family) and my family have been friends for a long time. larry showed me around here at UT, back in april, when i was deciding where to go to school. now that i live here, we actually don't hang out that much. larry is an officer in a christian fraternity here, as well as a biomedical engineering major, so he stays busy with those two.
larry invited me to come with them this weekend, and so i did. it was good, and i made saturday my day of rest, and stayed away from studying, and read, etc...it was good to get away from jester for a while.

on wednesday i took a break from academics, after taking a test, and before getting back to writing this obscenely long term paper, to bike to heb to get cereal and fruit and such. the basic foods i keep in my room. it is so enjoyable, man. i biked there, feeling the freedom, and got what i wanted, and packed it all into my backpack, and got back on my bike and pedaled home. i think google earth or google maps or something said it was about a mile and a half one way to the store, so its not far. on the way, there's this fairly steep hill that one would never notice in a car, but by the time i get up it, my legs are burning, every time. from there its fairly level, except for the last street before the stoplight across from the grocery store, which is a large hill down and a large hill up, except by this time my legs are used to the pedaling and the uphill doesn't seem so bad.
on the way back, i have two choices. i can go back the way i came, which only has one hill, not two, and its early on, so i can coast and towards the end can go pretty fast. its an easy ride. then there's another road which has ups and downs, none of them terrible, but its not effortless. this other way also has no bike lane, and its a bit busier, so its not as calm. but, this other way goes along the top of this golf course, and these hills which i have to go up and down are part of this part of austin, and as you come out skirting the open spaces that make up the golf course, they slope away from you and you can see the UT tower a ways off, and then the silhouettes of the tall downtown offices and condos. (would you call those skyscrapers? what are the qualifications for a skyscraper?) at night, everything is lit up, and its great. during the day, you can see all of this, and its just as great.

haha. so i set out going back to UT from h.e.b., loving the break from studying. i got onto the street and thought, perhaps out loud. "do i want the speed, or the view?"

i took the view, and i'm glad i did. i passed the trees that hid the scene along the road at first, and the sun was throwing long shadows and yellow light on everything, the whole scene i described above. it was one of those, "i cannot believe this is my life!" moments. i drank deeply. i tasted, and saw that the Lord is good.

the pastor at the austin stone preached on the sabbath last week and the week before. it was really good. the sabbath is pretty under-valued, these days, i think. the sermon, combined with reflective thoughts leading up to this, and searching, have led me to be intentional about my sabbath these past few weeks. its been hard to let go, to trust God with letting an entire day go by without working on a research paper, or studying for a test, or whatnot. its been hard to let myself rest in His way of living. "You are loved because of who you are, not what you do." the world turns, and i am reminded again that i do not have control of things i think i control, (like grades,) and He says, "see? this is the rhythm i have designed for your life. work six days, rest one." the telltale sign that i need it more than i can see is when its so hard to rest. it shows i've already started to believe my life is for meeting performance expectations. that my life was made for meeting deadlines. much like a machine, incidentally. ha, what a gift. on the sabbath, God restores our humanity. remember what he said? the sabbath is "made for man." a gift.

matt carter, our pastor, said how the sabbath is not meant to be a list of rules. it is meant to be a departure from the do mindset, to just be. to rest, to enjoy. to partake in things that make you feel human again, as he said, "you engage in what gives you life." he said on his sabbath, he works out, because he doesn't feel obligated. its not work. it makes him feel alive. then he goes to whole foods. he goes on a date with his wife on the sabbath, he spends time with his kids on his sabbath. he has ice cream, because, in his words, "ice cream is good." he doesn't check his e-mail. he might take a nap. he takes time not only to rest physically, but rest spiritually. because you can rest physically without spending any time in God's presence, letting Him give you a sabbath rested soul. (this is part of what i mean about trusting God with my tests and papers and GPA.) matt said that God blessed the sabbath because He intended it to be a blessing. in matt's words, "God gave us the Sabbath to save us from ourselves." i also wrote down something he started off the topic with. he said that those little energy drink shots, you know, not the full cans but the small ones on the counter in the store, the "5 hour" ones, he cited a figure that said that 4 million of those are sold a week, i guess nationwide. four million. his words were, "we are starving for rest."

but yeah. it really made me want to go seek out my sabbath each week. on my last one i spent several hours in a coffeeshop. on this past one i spent several hours in a blind, on a ranch in silence. it means i have to work pretty hard for those other 6 days, because i can't spread my work onto my seventh day anymore...but it also means once my day of rest comes around, i can relax and not worry. i can enjoy life without guilt, but with trust. its pretty a pretty awesome gift.