Memories are Stupid

It's been a while since the last post! First things first --

Cole had a tablet lying around and during my transition between Nebraska and Evanston, I borrowed it. This has two advantages over buying a new pen. First, it's borrowing and not buying, so for the moment it's free. Second, my computer's in its screen-flickering death throes and its successor won't be a touch screen so a separate tablet makes life a lot easier.

I'm in Wheaton right now, getting ready to go back to school tomorrow. Tomorrow! It's hard to believe. Mid-September sounded distant a month ago, but I guess it's here.

The last three weeks I was in Nebraska, doing construction work and trying to see as much family as possible in a brief time. I told myself I would work on recording songs and writing some fiction during my evening downtime but didn't do nearly as much as I wanted to. What's new.

After three weeks, though, I walked away more convinced than ever that if I don't wind up particularly equipped or passionate for ministry in any specific locale, I'm going to live in Nebraska.

I love the openness. I love looking in every direction and seeing horizon, speckled with the odd farmhouse or short treeline -- windbreaks. It's people existing in the middle of an unending plain. Or plane. The sky changes color at the horizon. You don't see it when buildings are in the way, but it's lighter and yellow at the bottom.

And as much as I instinctively feel that buildings obscuring 10% of a sunset should diminish its awe by 10%, that isn't the case. An open sunset is matchless. Sunsets or sunrises over the ocean are alright, but it's about drinking in fresh air, seeing sky meet land on every side and watching the texture of the endless cornfields blend together while the light fades.

Basically.

I love dirt roads, when it's rained and the tires slowly accelerate you beyond safety and the ruts in the road throw the car around but if you don't panic and oversteer, the ruts hold you on the road too. I love picking a dirt road and following it past civilization while night sets.

I love the stars beyond light pollution, when you have to take deep breaths because that's infinity and you can see the clouds of the Milky Way all in a line. And it's cold because nothing blocks the wind and there've been bobcat sightings but you still sit on top of the car and try to find constellations. The stars are so bright.

I would live in Nebraska. I miss the land and I miss the relatives there and I miss leaving the car unlocked parked on Main Street because no one steals anything.

Anyway, enough about Nebraska. This post is about memories.

I drove on a road south of town two weeks ago. The interstate is north of town so there's never any reason to go south unless you're going to the town 25 miles in that direction. I was, to visit some friends. And the summer before I had driven on that same road for the same purpose -- and during the year in between I had never touched that road because the turn to my grandparents' house comes just before it.

As soon as I started driving down that road, all the memories from that car ride last year swam back -- the dense fog, so that the lights from cars in the other direction lit up the air like daylight. My stop next to the irrigation company's building to sit in silence and try to feel God. It was as clear as if it had just happened a week ago.

That was the first time I experienced such a clear memory from a location, but I get glimpses like that pretty often from songs.

Me and Cole listened to Live Your Life by T.I. dozens of times on the last family vacation before he went to college and it still recalls snorkeling in bright blue water on perfect beaches.

On our way to church, our family would listen to Casting Crowns and The Altar and the Door puts me back in the light blue Sports Rider, driving past Carrefour week after week.

Anything by the O.C. Supertones reminds me of living in Dallas back in 2002 and playing street hockey on the neighbor kids' driveway.

And there's plenty of others. The new song The Proof of Your Love by for King & Country I can already tell is pretty tied to these three weeks in Nebraska because there was nothing else on the Christian radio stations.

But here's the part where things suck, and the reason memories are stupid. Every time I listen to one of these memory-bound songs and relive those experiences, the connection gets a bit weaker. And the song starts to get tied to the point in my life when I'm listening to the song, instead of the past memory it was associated with.

So now The Altar and the Door is as much about learning guitar as it is about driving to church, and Live Your Life is about sitting on my bed with headphones in.

They don't recall the experiences as vividly -- and sometimes, if I'm not paying attention, they don't bring back memories at all.

And that sucks because my memory is awful and having these songs was a neat trick to circumvent my inability to retain memories by power of will. Every time I enjoy a memory, it weakens it. That's stupid.

I started a word document a few months ago where I tried to write down all the memories I could remember. The deeper I tried to remember, the deeper the memories went. I filled four pages with a smattering from a couple very specific points in my life. I think it would take years to write down enough memories to feel even partly satisfied.

And I've tried taking pictures, but I'm not disciplined enough so what I wind up with is a couple random and unexciting pictures from big events. But I want to remember the little events too.

As I forget more and more (off the top, I can't remember more than a few main events even from two years ago, and it gets egregious past that), I feel like I'm losing part of what's made me me. I guess on some level I have to trust that my awareness of my development isn't integral for my development.

Anyway, that's why memories are stupid. Because they're hard to remember.

What Just Happened?

Except in rare, pensive moments, I can't believe Summer Project's over. The project's participants are scattered across America (mostly in California and the Midwest). I'm in Illinois, at Danny's house in Hinsdale.

We're not living in a ramshackle, jam-packed house with a hundred college students anymore. We're not spending our evenings on a crowded boardwalk trying to get bratty high school kids to talk about Jesus with us. I'm not working at Rite Aid (ever again).

Sometimes I feel like I get to my emotions late. I didn't cry when everyone left, in a series of scattered waves that got easier each time. It didn't seem real.

I mean, it seemed real that they were leaving. Cars kept driving off and friends kept crying for friends. But somehow the whole summer didn't seem real. I had formed some deep bonds with people, but I almost couldn't admit that to myself. It happened too fast -- as a friend put it, "You know peoples' deepest sin struggles but not their favorite color."

And I had learned so much about God and life and myself, but part of me wanted to say, "You just had a weird experience. Let's be real, you're the same person you were on June fifth, clambering into that silver Cavalier between stacks of suitcases."

Everyone stood on the sidewalk of the Ambassador's Inn bawling their eyes out at the loss of something indefinable that an intentional summer with a hundred intentional people had created, but I couldn't admit that we had ever had that in the first place.

It's only later, in little nuggets, that I get to see that indefinable something that I had been too busy experiencing to notice. Like telling home friends about project friends -- they never quite get it, but I wish I could pull them in and have them listen to Armani's laugh or see Peter in a rambling mood. If only they could have been there when we turned off all the lights and pretended to be zombies for hours on end.

And it's weird because the things I miss most aren't the things I expected to miss. And the people I miss most aren't the people I expected to miss. And I feel like even if I had back the people whose company I miss, it still wouldn't be the same indefinable project something. I don't just miss their selves -- I miss the way they told jokes in a group or sarcastically bantered with someone else, or the way their voice rose when they shared a story in front of the whole project after a night of outreach.

The more I realize how impossible it is to fully capture the essence of what project was, the more I feel an empty longing.

But at the same time, I wouldn't go back. Project was great and I learned a lot and spent tons of quality time with great people, but it was as stressful as it was fulfilling. Since I had so much work, I felt a constant pressure to use the free time I had well -- being intentional with relationships, evangelizing, having quiet times. And usually I felt like I wasn't efficient enough with my time and didn't achieve quite as much as I should have.

And it was also too surreal. Everyone was so interested in everyone else and so jazzed up about Jesus and just wanted to talk about Jesus-y things and prove that they cared about evangelism and get more into Christianity and read all those books and listen to all those sermons and things. It was crazy Christian.

The real world isn't like that and, more importantly, those same people in the real world aren't like that. They don't confess their sin so quickly at home, or build into other guys so much, or fight their pride so hard. It's sweet that that happened on project, but I'm ready to return to the real world and learn how to be a self-feeder when I'm not surrounded by guys obsessed with Jesus.

Project was awesome, but I can't wait to be back at Northwestern.

**

It's hard to think of all I learned when I reflect on project. I feel like I was a youth before project and now I'm an adolescent, but the specific lessons are hard to put a finger on. Here are, to my best recollection, my takeaways:

1) I suck in a lot of ways. I have crappy motivations for even the good stuff I do. I'm judgmental and mean and sarcastic. Even after a summer of growing, I couldn't even start to make a list of all the ways I come up short. I'm arrogant and usually think I'm right and I have a tough time thinking well of other people or being encouraging. If there's one thing I want to remember four months from now, it's how crappy I am.

2) Jesus died for my sarcastic insults and judgmentalism. God doesn't see me as an egocentric jerk, most of whose nice actions are motivated by self-interest. He sees me as perfect and humble and loving and kind. That's ridiculous.

3) Evangelism is as simple as it is necessary. All it takes is stomaching the awkwardness of the initial encounter and then being interested in what the person has to say. When I care more about Doing Evangelism than listening to the person, it gets weird. Evangelism isn't as hard as I make it out to be in my mind.

4) The majority of my sarcasm is unacceptable. I think it's all just jokes and laughs, but a lot of times it hurts more than I imagine.

5) I'm not a very encouraging person, but being intentional about noticing things to encourage in other people deepens relationships in a way that inside jokes and playful taunting never will. My lack of encouragement is not okay.

6) The quicker I confess my sin, the better I feel. And confession to Danny and God doesn't always count. If I'm harboring resentment toward someone, I need to confess it to that person. As much as that sucks.

7) I need alone time and I need time with God. If I short myself on the first, I get moody and irrational and I have trouble knowing what I'm thinking. If I short myself on the second, my life gets off track and it's difficult to remember my life goals -- I end up doing whatever feels best. But one commodity I need less than I thought is sleep. Turns out I can function alright for an extended time on six or fewer hours a night.

8) I could never work as a cashier for any length of time.

**

That was a life-changing summer. Definitely a one-of-a-kind experience. Thanks for your support, whether that was money or prayer or encouragement.

I'm excited for the year ahead.

New York City and Winding Down

Yesterday we went to New York City. It was a pretty hot and muggy day but worth it because it was the first time for a bunch of us. We took a ferry over from Staten Island to gaze at the Statue of Liberty and the skyline but there was a lot of fog and the statue was also much smaller than anticipated.

If you haven't seen it before or interacted with its reality, the statue is much less impressive than you think it is if you're the same person as me. It's not the size of a skyscraper. It's not that well proportioned. 70% of the statue is its base and the statue starts large and ends in a tiny head that doesn't look that intimidating.

I know the French spent a long time on it, but I just think they could have done better if they'd drawn up a sketch first or spent more time planning.

Anyway. After that anticlimactic intro, we hit up all the big scenes -- the Twin Towers Memorial, the Empire State Building, the New York Public Library, Grand Central Terminal (not Station, don't you dare), the Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Central Park, Chinatown, Times Square.

It was a blast.

By three in the afternoon we were ready to call it quits but we chugged some iced tea, rested in the toy store that the one in Home Alone 2 was based on, and pressed through until the 10:30 ferry granted our aching feet a reprieve.

All this to say, we had a pretty good trip.

And my boss has all but guaranteed that I will be putting in 40 hours for both of the next two weeks, right up until I leave. And given scheduling history, I'll probably be working on my birthday. And my day off this next week is going to be a cleaning day.

All this to say, New York City was the last little hurrah of my Ocean City experience.

And also to say that I'm still not over the fact that people are finishing their jobs now and I still have to work for two more weeks and they're going to be having fun times and every day all I can think about at work is, "Oh great, a bunch of hours of boredom and then tomorrow there's going to be more boredom." And there appears to be no chance for ministry or entertainment at work so I become bitter and resentful by like 8:30 AM.

All this to say, I've identified another heart issue to work on.

In other news, I'm also starting to gear up for not being at Ocean City anymore in a couple weeks and the weeks right after project seem incredibly scary because I know that when I come off of the high of being in such tight and constant community, I'm going to feel dead and apathetic and I'm going to waste the time that I could spend reading all those good Christian books that I'm not reading now.

But then the weeks after that when we hit campus again and can dig back into the community of friends that we've already gone deep with and can start doing ministry with the incoming freshmen seem like awesome weeks and so I would go so far as to say my feelings about the future are ambivalent.

That's not correct grammar.

I would go so far as to say I'm ambivalent about the future.

Good night.

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.