first-world problems.

over the life of this blog, i haven’t been able to decide whether i want to type with proper capitalization or to stick to my comfort zone of all lowercase. there have been times where i wrote a few paragraphs in lowercase, then realized that i’d been writing with proper capitalization in past entries and went back and corrected it all. it’s quite stressful. life is hard.

school has officially begun. the first day back, i thought i was going to die. by 9pm, my whole body was aching as if i had completed an extreme workout. but no, my body was just adjusting to not being in bed 12 hours a day. having only 6 hours of sleep and standing for part of the day really took its toll on my body. life is hard.

i’m going to oil tonight for the first time in six years. i’m actually pretty excited, which i’d usually not be since retreats are not my favorite things in the world, but the primary thought running through my mind is: when will i have time for a nap? how will i make it through these services that are at least thrice as long as what my mind and body have adjusted to over the past years? my friends and i have been e-mailing back and forth about what saturday’s plans are, and i think all my contributions and ideas to our thread have included some discussion of when and where a nap could take place. we haven’t decided on a good location yet. life is hard.

first-world problems, i tell ya. make me feel like ugly-crying. much like my good friend, mr. van der beek.

twenty twelve.

I know I have made many a commitment to blog over the past years and that these commitments have ended in miserable failure. But o yes. Get ready for it. I’m doing it again. Steadfast blogging 2012, I’M DOING IT. (Or trying and feeling scared.)

I’ve learned a lot over the past semester, more than will fit into one blog entry. To summarize, I basically realized that there is a continuity in character that cannot be ignored. I cannot compartmentalize my life and think the patterns I build up in one area of life will not inevitably alter every other aspect of life. When I turned off my mind and stopped thinking a few years back, this didn’t solely color the part of my life I was trying to forget; it erased my ability to insightfully analyze, to deeply believe and feel, to understand clearly things that had been muddled before. I lost my potential for depth.

The problem with all this is that this ability to think through things and to deeply analyze is the most essential part of me. Losing this meant losing my core, and this loss debilitated all other aspects of my life. It stunted my relationships, my emotions, my work, and, most importantly, my faith. If I cannot access my mind and have difficulty sorting through the complexity of thoughts that float in and out of my mind all day, I cannot engage deeply with anyone or anything.

I used to wonder why this gap between myself and God felt ever-increasing and unable to be closed.  I’ve had brief moments of inspiration and conviction over the years, but they never lasted beyond the song or the service or the weekend. And what I’ve realized is that, until my core begins to work again and my mind is able to be engaged, it never will. Right now, my mind is completely trapped by the devil. There is no Word in me, nothing fights the sinful thoughts that arise in me, and my mind is completely out of control, relying on itself and the world to know what is right or wrong.

On Sunday Dr. Steve was saying how it is so easy to get jaded by the annual new year’s resolution hoopla. It happens every year, we fail and feel disappointed over and over, what’s really the point. Why battle our sinful urges for a mere month only to eventually quit anyway? Then he said this: “Yet there’s something about staying in the fight, isn’t there?” Why, yes. Yes, there is.

So I’m beginning 2012 wanting to fight for my freedom. And the thing is, I don’t really have a choice. If I don’t fight for freedom, it’s lost.

In defiance of tyranny.