Latter Rain

Upturned eyes and outstretched hands
Lips parted to kiss the drops of
Latter Rain.
Here, yearning and eager I stand
Waiting for you to fill me with
All You became.

Dance for joy in streamers of living waters
And sparkles of treasured moments with
Your lambs.
Look, the hills once red with the slaughter
Are now white with the harvest of
A new land.

De Brief

I just had a really amazing weekend. A lot more amazing than I expected it to be, considering the circumstances (or one circumstance in particular). Camping in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with a group of friends harkens me back to those first years of LYC, when I was just learning to express myself socially.

Everyone has their sense of tragedy that they cling to, and mine is that I’m an only child who frequently moved and changed schools as a kid. I rarely had a group of friends for longer than a few years, and always I was facing the harsh judgments and critical eyes of a new set of classmates. My first years of camp gave me a safe place to test my personality amongst others, and to learn that I could contribute to a group. Each year saw more of my shyness (almost crippling at the start) and insecurities fall away.

I still don’t get many opportunities to spend time with groups of friends, or at least, less opportunities than I’d like. So, often after one of these experiences, I expend a lot of energy on self-reflection. I wonder how others perceived my actions and what impression I left. I think about what I’d like to do differently and who I’d like to be in the future.

Usually social situations still give me slight anxiety, but strangely, I had none this weekend. I felt more comfortable with myself than I remember ever really feeling for such an extended time, and as a result, I think my personality came out much more than usual. I think this was because of a combination of factors. Having moved to another country and back, lived on my own, and shown I was willing to make life changing decisions has left its mark on me. It’s made me feel more like a capable adult and less like a child. But another factor that seems to be prevalent is a particular person, and this perplexes me a bit. I’ve never experienced someone bringing me out of me (perhaps even the best of me?) without actually being present. How can someone effect me so drastically so quickly? This is kind of one of those “does not compute” moments and I think I’m better off not trying to analyze it too much. I can’t decide if I’m thrilled or terrified.

Getting back to my reflections on my personality, there are two main areas that I tend to be insecure about. One, which I’ve blogged about before, is my worry that I’m not feminine enough. I know a lot of my interests and hobbies tend to be ones associated with guys and I wonder if some of my personality traits have that tendency too. The other thing I worry about is coming across as annoying or bothersome. I tend to be an extremist with things, so when I’m in to something I’m 100%. I can also be a bit crazy sometimes, especially when I’m happy and hyped on caffeine. I don’t know if this can sometimes become overbearing to others.

I probably spend too much effort thinking about how I’m perceived through the eyes of others. It seems that this could easily be vanity but it could also be consideration for others. Don’t you have to do this to an extent to avoid offending your brother? We are told to examine ourselves, but that is in the context of setting Christ as the example. Hmm. So I guess the difference between staring in the mirror for vanity’s sake and staring in the mirror for self-examination is whether you have Christ standing there behind your shoulder to compare to. That changes the perspective a bit, and maybe instead of focusing on whether my personality is socially acceptable, I should be considering whether my actions are godly. If I strive to treat others with the fruits of the spirit, then the rest should just fall into place.

Grasping at the Wind

So I've discovered that working out like a mad person pretty much negates my need for sleep. It all seems very counter-intuitive to me, but the more energy I expend during the day, the more wired I am at night. I wonder if there is a limit to this?

Anyway, I'm down to about 3-4 hours of sleep a night. That means a lot of time to talk to people, read, play video games, etc... I alternate between distracting myself from the the contemplations of life and lying on my bed in deep reflection. So I can't say I'm indulging in escapism, just breakism.

Do I feel guilty about how my last relationship ended? Yes, if I'm honest about it. I don't like knowing I'm the one who did the hurting at the last. I'd much rather have been horribly mistreated so I could feel free of any responsibility. But that just isn't how it happened. My own personal hurt was slow and steady, culminating into a gnawing need for something to change. But who was to blame? When compatibility is the issue, when you discover maybe you didn't fit someone as well as you thought, who can you point the finger at? Especially when at the end, you still consider the other a good person.

All this makes self-reflection rather difficult. I want to see clearly the mistakes I made, to know how to avoid a repeat future, but I'm having a hard time pinpointing it. If I had to do it all again, I think I would probably do everything exactly the same way, because my feelings were always genuine and I think my actions always honest. So what now? What do I take away from this?

And how many times to I go through this same line of thinking, to come again to an answerless dispersion of thoughts. With Passover coming, I feel desperate to see my sins clearly, to make things right somehow. What is the conclusion of the matter?

How do you atone for something you don't regret? Do you? And am I wrong to have no regrets? I loved with all my heart, I learned with all my heart, and I made my choices with all my heart. But at the end of it all, there is hurt, there are scars, there is the need for healing. Logically, my mind tells me that pain is the evidence of something done wrong. And herein lies my dilemna-my need to discover what my fatal mistake must have been. Because my internal logic doesn't just believe that pain is the evidence of something done wrong, but something *I* did wrong.

Ah, vanity. I'm grasping at the wind.

Hello World!

Hello World! Could you please provide me with a printf of my life? I’d like to evaluate the output and revise the code accordingly. (//Adding comments for clarity). Several do-while loops are running simultaneously, and it’s hard to keep track. Blowing bubbles with my gum while typing on my keyboard (if jaw is sore, then spit out gum and end loop). Flexing my leg muscles in sequence while rotating my ankle (if something pops, end loop). Reflecting on my past while contemplating my future (infinite do-while). Renaming machine learning attributes while listening to emo/indie/alternative/rock (if emo penetrates skull, end loop). Perhaps I need to go through this line my line, defining all variables and checking for errors. Sometimes I miss a semi-colon or two, such a minute detail, and I find myself completely derailed and on the floor in a heap. The next step is to run diagnostics on my knees, and recompile. I’ve been a bit slow getting to diagnostics mode this time, and my finger is sore from jamming the compile button so many times (Fatal Error!). I’m getting there though, and it will be time to write new code soon, but there is evaluation that needs to be done first, structure defined, clear logic planned. There are risks to take… if I get it wrong the crash could be damaging. Truncated logic bits scattered amiss. But I have to try anyway, to get the architecture right.

Because what’s the point of a program of do-while loops that doesn’t actually DO anything? I aspire to be more than just a “Hello World!”.

Oscillations

I oscillate between moments of contentment and extreme emotional distress. I wish I could control it better, but I suppose I've always been one to go to extremes. I don't really know how to halfway do things, so I'm either in turbo drive or I'm not going anywhere. I haven't figured out yet how to harness my energy and make it consistent. This is particularly a struggle in spiritual matters. I find myself going through periods of zeal and vigor followed by shear ladeocean laziness.

I also find that I seem to be out of sych with people sometimes. Something that seems like a fair sacrifice or a worthy challenge or an obvious reaction will seem like going overboard to others. I don't mind this, but I do wonder if I really am a bit crazy.

If I could just permanently switch myself onto extreme God-seaking mode, I'd be golden. In the meantime, I'll continue to struggle with myself.

The Race

The sun will rise again, and I'll wake to its warm yellow-joy rays shearing the night from my skin.
The rain will fall again, and it will rinse clean the blood spattering of my sins (they're living waters, you know).
Another Passover, another Pentecost, another re-affirmation of covenant and promise.
Take the momentum and run,
There's a race to be won.

Demand Response

Well cyberspace, what shall I tell you today?

I haven't a clue. My brain is clogged with unfinished thoughts. And I really, really want to go skydiving. That probably sounds completely illogical, but emotional strain makes me crave extreme, adrenaline-pumped, experiences. Perhaps it's escapism. Actually, scratch that, I know it's escapism.

I wonder sometimes if my fundamentals for evaluating the world are wrong. That's mostly because I know I don't yet have enough of the mind of Christ in me so say that I'm not missing anything crucial in my assessment of situations. I think I'd rather be dead than imprisoned. Doesn't that sound horrible? When I feel held back and my growth stunted, I'll viciously fight to break free--that is, when there's a clear challenge before me.

Relationships are hard because I can't always identify what the challenges should be. I have a tendancy to bend around people, to try to make myself what is needed, but sometimes I bend too far and then I snap. I did this recently, and now I have to figure out how to tell the person involved that our synchronization wasn't natural. I want to be a giver, and I'm striving to learn what Godly femininity should mean. Submission is important to me, but I also think it is important for me to encourage whoever I'm with to be the best they can be. But if the person doesn't want to be pushed, I have to submit anyway, and that has a tendancy to leave me frustrated. In a way, I guess I feel it limits me, because in driving others I can also drive myself. Maybe I just need to learn to relax. But it's that whole finish the race, fight the good fight, thing. Sometimes I get the urge to reach out to others and drag them toward the finish line with me. Meanwhile I often find myself neglecting the things I need to do to ensure my salvation. How hypocritical of me. But I often feel it would be so much easier to surrender completely to God if someone were holding a gun to my head and demanding I curse Him.

So how was that, cyberspace?