Useless On My Terms

Recently I've been a bit overwhelmed and a bit frustrated and a bit relieved.

Overwhelmed because I feel like I've finally peaked in the amount of busyness (to be distinguished from business) my life can take. Tonight was literally the first time I've been able to check email and Facebook since Monday afternoon. That's 3 days ago, in case you are reading this late.

And that's not because of media fasts or smart decisions. The internet dies at 11, which contributes to my deprivation, but mostly this interim was a result of constant activity from work at 8 AM until meetings and commitments end and I go to sleep -- still usually too late to get a full night's sleep.

This week is an exception because I'm on dinner clean-up duty and I had to switch work shifts with a coworker, eating away at the brief snippets of time the evening usually affords. But clean-up duty aside, I feel buried in scheduled activity.

And what it makes it worse is that I'm nearly incapable of assessing my status in life without comparison, and all around me are people without 40 hour/week jobs who have multiple days off every week (technically I do too, with Sunday and another day but Sunday is so scheduled it might as well be written off). And I can't help but feel jealous and slighted when they talk about long times spent in the Word or hanging out on the beach or reading solid Christian books or visiting New York and Philly or just hanging out and bonding with project peeps.

Part of me feels like I'm missing out on what project's supposed to be about. But when I take a step back and think about things (like now), I'm missing out on a lot of fun stuff but besides the Bible and Christian literature, I'm nabbing most of project's spiritual elements so I don't have that much to complain about.

I just feel better when I complain. It's like scratching an itch.

Speaking of which, one of the chief remaining causes of my frustration is a continued bout with poison ivy and ringworm. Both of these are little teases. The poison ivy seemed to be clearing up and the itching was mostly done about four days ago, but then a new wave of bumps popped up all across my feet and the itching began anew. There're actually some neat lines of bumps packed so close that they look like stretches of raised skin, where you can tell that plant leaves ran across the skin. By neat, I mean incredibly itchy and resilient.

And once I got antifungal cream on it regularly, the ringworm seemed to be dying as well. The swelling and reddening faded and the bumps disappeared. Then a ring of bumps popped up around the perimeter of the original site. The internet said four weeks, but I was definitely hoping it'd die faster.

Anyway, as frustrating as that's been, that's just the icing on the cake. The gooey, fattening interior is about my relationship with God, which has been as unsatisfying here as it might have been at home, just without isolation to allow apathy.

I can't help but try to prove myself to God and people through how well I can stay spiritually disciplined, and I have so many twisted motives behind everything I do that I only get to see piece by piece as the Holy Spirit digs into my psyche.

I feel spent and empty and I want an intimacy and reality to my faith that I don't know if I've ever experienced or if it's even realistic to expect. And then I'm quick to turn around and say, "Well everyone else clearly has this thing and somehow they get what the Christian life is all about and experience God in this way that I can't."

And lately the thing I've been realizing (slowly and in a not-fully-internalized way) is that it doesn't matter how I perceive God or if I'm frustrated by my relationship with him or if I'm doing all the right Christian things. Because at the end of the day, I'm saved and Christ paid the debt for the sins I'm doing right now and I'm not responsible for working out all the pieces of my sanctification.

And that's so satisfying and relieving. As important as any of that other stuff is, it's all totally secondary to salvation. Sanctification is great. Whatever. I'm saved.

I forget the Gospel so easily.

All These Firsts

Recently I’ve had a slew of firsts. And they’ve all been bad.

Two weeks ago, I got pulled over for the first time while I was the one driving. And I was doing 61 in a 40. And I got my first ticket. But I have yet to get a speeding ticket because what I wound up with instead was an “air freshener ticket.” That was confusing because I hadn’t heard of that rule before, but it was $54 instead of $200 and the insurance company won’t hear about it so I guess that’s pretty nice.

I looked it up later and the infraction was technically a “Windshield Obstruction” but I’ll forgive the cop for his error because he saved me a lot of money and also responded well when I started throwing papers at him from the glove compartment, sobbing, “I don’t know what I’m doing, this has never happened before!”

Also, I got poison ivy for the first time. Last Tuesday, I caught a glimpse of the sunset between some buildings during date night with Jesus and resolved to get an unobstructed view before the scene ended, so I raced South down the island in my car and wound up hiking through some brush before ending up on a beach next to a huge, open field.

The sky was lit up in every direction and it was magnificent and seemed totally worth the work to get a good vantage point until about four nights later when my feet broke out with a smattering of incredibly itchy bumps that leaked gobs of clear pus when popped. Never had that experience before.

Since then, the bumps have spread to places on my thighs and arms and I caved and bought some ivy spray but they still won’t go away. Plants suck.

In that vein, I also got ringworm for the first time – at least the first time that I remember. Perhaps I was a fungus-ridden little child, but it seems like a first to me.

A staff member’s kids wound up with ringworm a couple weeks ago and he warned us to avoid hanging out with moldy towels to avoid a similar predicament. Once the staff left, the alarm faded. But a bump on my hand that I attributed to poison ivy formed a ring of blisters yesterday, confirming that our fungal friend is still a member of project.

Today another ring crystallized from the mess of poison ivy all over my ankles and I’m now on the alert and smattering my limbs in antifungal cream in between dousings of ivy spray.

Fun times on summer project!

On a more spiritual note, there have been some other firsts and I’m going to rescind my initial statement that all of the recent firsts have been bad.

On Monday night, I was discipled by someone my age for the first time. His name’s Jake and he’s from UCLA and let me explain. The staff that were running project left last Thursday, turning the reins over to the students (we were all given roles to keep things functioning, like I mentioned before). A lot of roles were practical, like running finances or planning the weekly meeting or keeping the house intact (my role) – and then there’s also Action Group leaders who work on Bible studies and disciple other students which is sort of a weird dynamic, let me tell you, but also really neat.

I feel a bit naked without a wise, experienced staff member at my beck and call to give me advice on a situation or call me out on sin in my life, but it’s been humbling to see what a fellow student has to offer, which is a lot more than I expected.

And it’s also been neat to just talk about sin in my life with other students – or things that I’m struggling with in my relationship with God, like a consistent drive to prove my worth to God and other Christians by my own effort – and to see how much experience they have dealing with similar things and the great advice they have even though they haven’t been formally trained or whatever. It’s a good reminder that growth happens even absent of older, more mature Christians intentionally pouring into me.

So I guess it’s the first time that I’ve been on Summer Project in Ocean City without staff around and have seen growth in my life nonetheless.

And this is the first time that I’ve written a blog post in a Wendy’s in Ocean City, New Jersey.

And that was the first time I used the word ‘Wendy’s’ in a blog post.

I’ll stop there.

God’s good and I forget about him a lot in the midst of trying to be spiritually disciplined and I have a lot of things to learn, but I think I’m in the right place to learn them.

How It's Going

I definitely thought I would be updating more than this. I knew Ocean City would be busy, but I didn't think it would be this crazy. Also, I didn't think I had no self-control.

To make up for this, here's an update about everything!

Days in Ocean City are awfully full. Time has flown by. It's weird because at the end of every week it's like "What. We just started this week." But then I think back to when we first came to OC less than a month ago and that feels like half a year ago.

Days at work are the opposite. Time drags by all day while I try to find ways to entertain myself. Then at the end of the day it's like "Well, literally nothing happened all day. These last eight hours might as well have not existed."

Anyway. So things are busy. I have work five days a week, and I'm proud to say that I'm still very much a robot. Recently I've started to take a little more control of my work place. I've learned that time passes slower when I stand behind the register looking at the clock every few minutes, so I've been making an effort to get on the floor, especially to straighten my sunscreens. Time flies when I straighten those sunscreens.

Also, me and my coworker Hannah have started a game where we mispronounce words when we talk to customers to see how they respond. We have pretty consistent mantras for every customer, so we practice saying those phrases wrong and then we can pull it off without snickering. "Do you want the rissit in the bayg, ma'am?" "Do you want some maytches?" "Do you have a Roit Aid cod?"

To be honest, most people aren't phased by our tricks. But every now and then someone's like, "Hmm? What? Maytches?"

And then I'm like, "Yeah. Some maytches for your cigarettes."

And then they just stare. And then they're like, "Oh! Matches! Oh, no, I'm fine."

And then me and Hannah smirk ridiculously until the customer leaves and we start laughing.

Anyway, so that passes the time alright and even when time's dragging it's still a great job because it's bringing home the bankroll and also it's in the air conditioning and these have been some hot days for people who have jobs outdoors or in places with no A/C. The only downside is that I work 40 hours a week, and project has been very good about filling in the rest of those hours.

Most days go like this: Wake up way too early, roll around on the bed for 15 minutes until it's time to rush to get to work on time, get to work at 7 or 8, work until around 4, take a nap until dinner at 5, eat and fellowship, have a project activity, get back to the Inn around 9:30, play games and have significant conversations until late at night. Then there's an option because most people go to bed but a small group stays up to have deep talks and it's either bedtime around midnight or a series of bad decisions and bedtime in the wee hours of the morning. I've picked the latter almost every time.

But despite running on almost no sleep and feeling strung out and constantly busy and craving alone time, project has been awesome.

I've learned a lot.

I've learned that the Holy Spirit should be a constant part of life and that it's also the engine behind any real change. I've learned that we should be confessing sin whenever we see it. I've learned what it looks like for a community to push each other toward improvement in dealing with sin.

What sucks is that I've also learned that despite how mature I see myself and despite how much growth I've seen recently and how proactive I've been in confessing sin -- and how together I like to think I am -- I really suck.

I lie a lot to present a better image of myself -- little subtle lies that cover up me being an idiot. I have loud, strong opinions about things I'm wrong about, and things that don't matter. I'm arrogant. I look down on most people I know in one area or another. Actually, I would say I probably consider myself superior to every single person I know in at least one area, whatever that might be. I judge people a lot and most of the time I'm wrong and other people are a lot smarter and a lot more sincere and a lot better communicators than I am, even though those are areas I pride myself in.

And that's just a sip from the basin of sin in my life. And that apparent basin is just the sin that I can see and there's a lot of uglier stuff in there that I'm not even aware of.

And it's not easy because as much as I can sit here and write this and pray about it sometimes, someone will say something and I'll snap right back into thinking, "Oh wow, you're super Jesus-y when people can see you, aren't you?"

And this next week the staff are leaving project and the students are going to be in charge, which means we're going to be assigned roles to run the remaining five weeks of project. And some people are going to be leaders and some people are going to have cool, sweet jobs and some people will have quiet background job that don't get noticed and that seem to indicate that the staff don't think they deserve leadership.

And I know that regardless of how things shake out, I'm going to feel shafted and I'm going to feel jealous of people that I don't think deserve leadership -- and I can already taste that bitterness on the back of my tongue. It's that funny place where I can see the sin in my life but I'm not dealing with it.

Thankfully, according to the scriptures we've been reading recently, that's on the Holy Spirit's plate and not mine. He's going to pull this heart change off if that's in God's will / if I'm open to his work / I'm not really sure what my role is and what God's role is in all this but I know that the brunt of sanctification is his job.

Anyway, so here's hoping I'll put into practice all the sweet stuff I've learned this summer and crack down on some jealousy and bitterness over the next couple weeks.

By "here's hoping", I mean "you can be praying that", but I'm allergic to Christianese.

To wrap things up, a broader scope of what project has looked like recently. Two weeks ago was Killing the Giants week, like I said before. We shared the Gospel a lot. It was very numbers focused and probably not healthy for me in some ways, but it built all of our confidence walking up to snarky punks and saying, "Hey there, have you taken this quick five question survey yet? ... Oh, you have? Oh. Okay. Have a nice day."

Then last week was All For One week where we built unity by telling secrets and harassing the staff before losing a staff versus students softball game.

And this week we're wrapping up World Vision week, where we've focused on what it would look like to reach the world with the Gospel. The staff are big on using interactive methods to present their lessons, which in some cases sucks but in other cases is pretty eye-opening. It's making me a lot more confident that I want to do full-time ministry in the future, probably overseas.

But I'm also kind of worried because I feel like I don't have as much of a heart for the lost as most other people seem to. But then I'm like, "What does that even mean?" And I do want to go to other countries.

So there's been a lot of thinking.

Alright. That's long enough. Sorry if you started to read this wanting to catch up on my life and then I wasted a lot of your time, or if this post was prohibitively long and you still don't know what's going on. Thanks for praying, if you've been praying. Things have been sweet.