The Future

I have a lot of stuff going through my head lately. I feel like I'm coming out of this pit I've been in recently. Not a whole lot has changed in most of the areas of my life, but I just feel better about the issues I've been worried about.

I'm still living a home, and I have no full time job but I'm feeling more at peace with those things. I have a prospect for an apartment and by the time it's available I'll hopefully be more financially secure and better able to afford my own place. And, yeah, I'm not exactly at the world's most challenging job right now, but I have no doubt that it's just temporary and God has a reason for me to be there. I don't have any regrets about leaving my old job. That's not where God wanted me, so I'm comfortable saying that leaving was a good move, spiritually speaking (though the money was nice). I agree with my pastor's view on careers. I want my job to be my passion, not just my paycheck.

I have some good stuff coming up. There's a career fair next week at Clemson and I'm going to meet with one of my old professors who wants to help me figure out a path for my life before I go to that. So, all in all, there's some exciting stuff coming up.

Though the light hasn't turned green yet, I feel like God is giving me a small peak at what the road ahead is going to look like. So I'm pretty excited. And I'd much rather be excited than worried.

Oak

Right now I'm starting to read through Isaiah, which is a pretty stinking long book of the Bible. One part of chapter 1 stood out to me the other day.

Verse 29 says "You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted." You see oak trees were considered to be sacred to this society and because of that, they were sort of a hiding place for sin. Things like pagan sacrifices and sexual sins were performed in gardens under oak trees because their "sacredness" made the acts okay.

One thing I have to make myself do when I'm reading the Old Testament is to not look at the Israelites while shaking my head, thinking about how dumb they were to keep screwing up. Because, when I really look at how they acted, I see a lot of myself.

Too often in my life I find myself hiding under my own oak tree of God's forgivness and grace, where I feel that it's okay for me to sin. My prayer is to view sin in the same way that Christ does. Not continue to do the things that I do and think that its okay because I'm forgiven. My goal is to hate sin instead of finding ways that I can get away with it.

Apathy

Today's been an amazing day. Problem is, I think I've forgotten how to enjoy good days. I feel like I'm a little numb to the amazing things going on around me.

For instance, nearly 300 people gave their life to Christ this weekend at my church. I was amazingly happy about it all, but it felt more like, "Well good for them" than the type of amazed joy I should have had.

I wish I knew how to soften my heart to the amazing stuff in my life. I want to be more excited about life and never be used to the awesome stuff that's happening.

I need peeps, yo!

I'm pretty sure that my number one fear is to be that guy in his 30's living with his parents. There are probably worse things in the world, such as being the guy in his 30's living with his parents after losing his arms and legs. Actually, that's probably above living with them healthily. There's something that seems almost irredeamable about about living at home for too long.

At this point I'm only 22 and fresh out of college, so living at home isn't that big of a deal, but I fear succumbing to the comfort of having no rent or mortgage and staying there longer than I need to. I have two main thoughts in my head regarding why I need to move out as soon as possible.

-I get along with my parents better when I'm not living with them. I love my parents, but, for some reason, I get annoyed at every little thing they do while I'm with them. I think that the pattern has always been that I get closer to my parents throughout the school year, and then get more distant during the summer.

-I need to have people my own age in my life. I've spent the past two and a half months surrounded by either my parents or people old enough to be my parents. I need to have some regular access to my peers to get along better. The problem here comes from the fact that everyone that I could live with is currently in school, therefore they have no need for a roommate seeing as how they already have one.

So, for the sake of my sanity, if you need a roommate, let me know!

Freaks me out!

Every other miniature horse I've ever seen looks disproportionate. It has a big head and a small body. But this sucker looks like it used to be a real horse, then it got shrunk. I have to look at this thing every time I look out the window.

I suck!

So I haven't actually written anything in nearly two months and I'm sure my readership (Theresa, Ali and Mom) feels betrayed. The whole reason that I started a blog in the first place was to keep myself from getting lazy about writing. I'm no longer required to read or write anything so I wanted to set myself up to continue reading and writing and to prevent myself from getting bad (or worse) at either of them. I've been okay with the reading, but, as you can tell, the writing isn't working out quite as well for me. So my declaration now is that I'm going to try to blog three times a week from now on.

So I apologize for my lack of commitment. That will change from now on. Maybe with this kind of commitment I'll get my readership up to four by the end of the year!

Do it yourself...

So I've been away for around a month. A lot of cool stuff has been happening. I got a great job, so I've been doing training for that for a couple of weeks and I was away for a week working at a youth camp for my church. And this was a busy first week on the job. So that's why I've been gone for so long.

But here's what on my mind. I've noticed lately just how much talk envelopes this world. Everyone seems to have an opinion on everything and everyone thinks they know a better way to do something. I count myself among these people because I'm guilty of it too. But I'm getting kind of sick of hearing people, especially myself, talk about how to make the world a better place, so I'm just going to stop.

If I know that something's wrong and only say that it's wrong, then I'm more than a little pathetic if I don't at least try to do something about it. Instead of complaining I'm going to try to make a difference in the things I have opinions about. I might not change the world, but I might be able to make a small difference. Alright, I'm going to shut up now.