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.