I never liked writing because the only writing I have ever done has been handed to a teacher who told me what I did wrong. I hate writing about something emotional, which is what all of the teachers wanted, because when I would get the grade back on my paper, I would feel bad that I "wasted" such an intimate point of my life (the subject of whatever paper I wrote) only to be met with a mediocre grade.
Paragraph added Nov. 1: If we're going to dive into self reflection so the reader can know more about me then here goes. I have an incredibly close group of 6 other friends who share phenomenally similar values and senses of humor. I have a girlfriend of 3 months whom I am a fan of. This summer I recieved some pretty unsettling news and my faith was completely stripped because of it. In the same summer I attended two incredibly powerful trips with my youth group (my youth group deserves an entirely different blog because of how much i love it. maybe it will get one) and my faith at the moment is the strongest it's ever been. After i got back from my second trip i had to go work at a camp without phone reception for three weeks. My experience at camp was three sided: Work was fun but challenging, the community was incredible and i had phenomenal conversations, and the third side is incredibly personal and roughly involves poor decisions made by me in reference to a girl at camp. The third side will weigh me down for quite a while i unfortunately think. After I got back from camp i hung out with my (now not then) girlfriend and we realized we were crazy if we didn't date, so we did and do. I learned about grace at camp from a pretty ghetto person which was ironic giving how ghetto she was teaching me about such a beautiful subject. If i were eighteen and had a little more thirst for adventure, and a lot more money I'd like to believe I'd get a tattoo of the words grace and love on my left and write wrists. College seems terrifyingly close and painfully far. I know where I'm going to college but I don't know if I've been accepted yet, which puts me in an awkward position in how much of my current schoolwork I can completely disregard because I've been accepted to college (which I haven't (yet)). I'm white, 165lb, 6'1". Live with only my mom, sister is in college and dad lives in Indiana. I personally believe i am whatever the opposite of photogenic is. I like watching The Office. My mom doesn't know I watch Game of Thrones. I think my strongest quality is my humor. Humor is something I value pretty much above all, but if I had to have a small list of qualities that were mandatory for my future kids to have, among humor would be articulate, respectful, and loving. Since i hold humor so tightly, I pretend like it doesn't bother me when my friends steal my jokes and pretend other people made them up. I say it doesn't bother me but it does. I do that a lot. I don't think it's necessary for people if I'm upset or angry or sad, so those types of things aren't usually broadcasted. I'm tired a lot. I'm not incredibly academically motivated this time of my senior year of highschool, which means my homework is being pushed late, which means sleep suffers. I love football. I played it until the community surrounding it became too uncomfortable for me. Now I play spikeball. I think i dress OK; khakis 24/7, usually long sleeve or cozy sweater. Size large long sleeve size Medium short. My feet are massive, more specifically my left foot is big and my right foot is massive. They average to a 13.5. I'm much more vain than I'd like to be. That's why I started blogging today (November 1, 2015), because I was just going through a mental mid-year crisis. My eyes aren't too great but i refuse to take time out of my day to go see an eye doctor so I can get some overpriced glasses that I'll wear too infrequently to make them practical.
I'm picking up this blog post 6 days after I started it right now, sitting in my Economics class. I don't know what to write about but I don't want to get in trouble for doing nothing so I thought I might as well contribute to a blog a handful of people with ever see.
I attended a new Bible study last night (October 27, 2015). It was new to me at least. It had been established 8 weeks ago I believe and there was a very clearly intimate and small group of people who had consistently been attending, including Nicole and Sydney. This week was exceptional because they had all agreed to bring a friend or two. No one was surprised when Sydney brought four.
I sat down in this new (to me) circle with new (to me) people and sang familiar songs. One of which included my favorite, Oh How He Loves. We read, I believe, Mathew 17:16 or something. It dabbled on the concept of the church being build on a rock, and on Peter, which coincidentally means rock. We kinda threw around the 2015 impression of a "church" and why it is and isn't what it should or shouldn't be. I was fairly timid because I was in a group of people unfamiliar to me and visa versa, so I didn't feel I had the social qualifications to input what I was thinking into what seemed to be "their" conversation rather to "our."
Typing again at 11:51 on November, 1 2015. I learned what a "buzzword" was this year in a hallway of a dorm in the University of Tennessee from a guy about 6 years older than me. He explained that a buzzword is what word stands out to you after someone finished a sentence. For example that sentence's buzzword for you (e.g. the reader) was probably "buzzword."A pretty smart guy told me how to listen to people, and how to interact in a conversation that exhibited good listening skills. He told me to listen to what someone is saying, and force your response to start with the word that they ended with. Doing this forces you to acknowledged every single word that comes out of the speakers mouth, because you worry it would be the last one, and thus the base of your response. You are probably reading this very carefully now, having intention behind each word you read. This is kinda the point. He said too many times people listen or retain just buzzwords in what people have to say.
I happen to have a passion for words. More so spoken than written but this (e.g. blogging) is the best i can do for now so it will just have to do.
I wrote down the word "relegate" in my bible the last bible study because it was a buzzword that i didn't know the definition of. I have that single word scribbled in bad handwriting at the bottom of some page in the book of Mathew and a few words (myopic, bustle, insidious) writin on the cover of my Environmental Science folder.
So I just got back from HiLeague on January 31, 2016. HiLeague is the name of our weekly youth group. Today’s HL was hilarious. It was funny and spiritual and impactful and convicting and so filled with love and so perfect. I don’t often describe things as perfect because I am a pessimist, however tonight was perfect. There was good food and good talks with good people beforehand, I am wearing a hat I custom-made for my dad 6 years ago and I just found it 4 hours ago and I love it. The game we played was very exhausting but I had so much fun. The conversations I had were so good. Vanity and self-consciousness usually steal 10 minutes away from me when I’m at youth group but not today! Once everyone piled into the couch room all equally incredibly sweaty, we worshipped. 4 good songs were played and sung. There was a sizable turnout of people there, and when more people sing people feel they can sing louder, so everyone seemed to sing louder and louder and laugh more and more when Colby messed up the chords. We meant the words we sung so profoundly and we know that even though the chords were wrong that didn’t take away an ounce of the love we felt and showed while worshipping.
Sara(h?) spoke about the “beauty of singleness” after worship. She seemed to make her case around the misconception of what marriage is or needs to be in God’s eyes. I have been dating my best friend for 6 months (technically in 2 days) and my faith and love for others has never been higher. This is not a blog to talk about how much I love and appreciate my girlfriend, even though she has been so monumental to my faith and personal development this last year. I am so blessed by her. Anyways, the sermon on the perks of being single. I loved the points Sara(h) made and I couldn’t agree more. Too many people get in relationships for the wrong reasons and people get hurt by that. Even though Sara(h) never explicitly said it, I understood that there is a way to have a relationship done correctly and I love what that is all about. How it revolves around God. How two people, together, can love and worship God better than apart. That message I love, because those spiritually synergetic relationships don’t have to involve kissing or sex or instagram pics, they just need to involve faith and love and vulnerability, and that seems to be the only qualifications of a healthy “relationship” in God’s eyes.
Sara(h)'s talk was also incredibly convicting for another reason too. She said a lot of things I very much do not agree with. I am a fairly open-minded person, and tonight was the first time that I was being spoken to by an adult and sincerely disagreed with what they had to say, and I don't know what to do about it. It is certainly not my responsibility to call Sara(h) and express my frustration/quarrels with what she had to say. What she said was very true to her and just didn't happen to be true to me. That talk, I guess, just wasn't for me. There were probably other kids who were very very open and receptive of what she had to say. She had a strong message that didn't cooperate with what I believe and this is new to me, especially in the youth group setting where the adults are supposed to be the ones who have figured everything out and who tell you all the right things because you're to young to have known them yet. I'm 17 and Sara(h) is no older than 20. Where is the line between adult and youth? Is the line between adult and youth synonymous with the line between mature and immature? Between wise and inexperienced? Between found and lost? If so, where even is this line. When do I become the one whose opinions are cemented and consecrated with the credibility of an "adult." And when do I get to talk to an adult as if I were his or her equal? The answer is probably whenever. The answer is probably that my insecurity is the only thing holding be back from sitting across Sara(h) at Starbucks civilly talking about what she had to say tonight. But right now the most important thing to me is sleep. Writing about my conflicts with confronting "adults" with differences of opinions and where I come from as a peer will have to rest for now. Gnight.
