Real Life in Draft: I Don't Want To Win This Time (but somehow I did)

Blog from when I was using MySpace.

Current mood:

excited

It’s a fight between my heart and mind

No one really wins this time

In the endless fight of grace and pride

I don’t want to win this time

~Copeland

I hope all of this makes sense. There may be a lot of gaps. But if it does make sense, I think it is well worth reading. It’s what God’s been showing me lately. And it’s really great if you can read it all. I’m sorry that it’s so long. I hope you guys get to read it.

Wow, God’s been revealing some awesome stuff lately. It might take a while to cover. It started with the Casting Crowns concert Saturday night. It wasn’t too good until the lead singer gave his testimony about having ADD. He used 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 to express how God uses his ADD to glorify himself (God) (and don’t read that in a bad way). 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 reads (NIV):

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God used the lead singer’s ADD as a thorn, so that he had to fully rely on God to be able to survive a live show. Just imagine being on stage trying to sing with beach balls flying around and everything else that goes on. The thorn is there so we have to rely on God. That was where all of this started. This is like a giant puzzle, and I didn’t piece these pieces together until today (Wednesday). But here are some other pieces of the puzzle that have been revealed to me, and I will explain how God has shown me that they fit together as best I can.

Sunday afternoon sometime around dusk I suppose, I read 1 Corinthians 1. The second half of this chapter was awesome, speaking about the wisdom of God being foolishness to men (without God), and the wisdom of men being made foolishness by God. It was great, but then I had to get back to homework, and sometime after midnight a bunch of chaos struck me. I wrote an email to a friend that demonstrated the chaos in my emotions (thank God I didn’t send it). Monday I went to school, normal day, until I left school. I left school and went to see my dad and just hung out with him for maybe an hour or two watching a guy dig up the septic tank (great fun). I left just before they popped the top. I stopped by Lowe’s to check on my application and they said they’d call me back within the week ‘cause the guy had been out of town over the weekend and hadn’t checked the applications yet. So I left and stopped by Wal-Mart and bought Josiah a birthday present (Monday the 12th, was his birthday). I bought a Gatorade and went back out to my car. Driving home, I had this honest urge to seek God. I just wanted to know all I could. I was driving slow too, that’s odd. I’m usually going 60 to 70, and I was going 45 to 55. It was a great feeling. Not being in a rush, and desiring to seek God.

I wanted to bust out the good ole book when I got home, but I walked in the door and fell asleep on the couch almost instantly. I had left the window down on my car, I hadn’t brought anything inside, and I hadn’t even turned on the AC, so I woke up quite sweaty. But I also woke up mad as anything. I didn’t know why, but I was furious (I dented my computer by kicking it because it locked up). Then I directed all my anger toward Satan and I started to feel better. I headed out to the Baptist College to visit Josiah. He hadn’t been feeling good that day (and it was his birthday). Help him carry on his changing of the tradition. Now, instead of getting gifts, give them on your birthday. It’s not all about you, you know.

~~~~!!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSIAH !!!!!!~~~~

Anyway, I talked to him a bit about the letter I had written, and he agreed that I was right in not sending it. We hung out for a while, and then I eventually left. I had been thinking about the friend I had written the letter to, and it reminded me of my friend Lui. I called him to tell him that I remembered the day that I visited him at school at the end of last year (school year). We talked a little while, and then I stopped at Wal-Mart for milk and gas ($2.66 with a Wal-Mart shopping card). Then when I got back on the road, I thought about calling my friend whom I had written the letter to, but I called Megan instead (we dated briefly in March). It was completely random. We talked about things that were going on in life and all and I greatly enjoyed talking to her. She needed to get to bed, so we stopped talking, but by then I was home. I was wondering around the house, doing things I needed to do, and talking to myself about things that were going on, realizing things within myself. I remembered Tony’s blog entry “Nice Guys... Ha!” and I was talking to myself, and thinking about that. I had to tell my friend something important that had great potential to cause problems between us, but I needed it to be said. I like the way Lui explained it after I had written and sent what I needed to say,

“I think that it’s good that you said what you NEEDED to say though. Yeah, I believe that it needed to be said. Better than to be thrown out and causing problems, than to be kept inside causing problems. See! Either way there will be problems. What’s done is done. Now we must move on towards the future. We have the power!”

Tony’s blog had hit me hard, and I had to grow up. God was calling me to grow up. I sent the letter that I had written. Aside from the ability to cause great problems, it could have been nearly flawless. It was definitely one of those rare moments where I said exactly what I meant to (although there was one small typo where I wrote “and” instead of “than” and that could have completely changed the meaning of what I was trying to say, but I think what I meant to say would have stood out with the meaning of the rest of the email). I went to working on my homework after sending the email.

I woke early the next morning and decided to sign online. I checked my MySpace and decided to go to Tony’s blog and comment on the “Nice Guys... Ha!” entry. I didn’t know exactly what I was saying at first, I was just writing. Then it became a call: a call for us boys to step up, and grow up, and become men (1 Corinthians 13:11). On the way to school I saw an eagle on the side of the road, but it flew off. I continued to have a great day. I wrote a lame poem which had to do with the “Nice Guys... Ha!” entry, and that poem’s up in my last blog entry.

My sister had a night class, my dad was sick, and my mom had thrown out her back, so I got to baby sit my nephew for a few hours. Basically after my sister fed him, she left for school. I got him a bottle of juice and took him up and laid him down. I red a small book to him, and then I lay down and actually fell asleep before he did, but I knew he was laying down. He was tired. I woke up a couple hours later, and he was still asleep. I got him up about 15 minutes before Heather got home, and then when she did get home I left to come to my house because I had homework to do.

I got home, ate a sandwich, and got straight to reading for English. My contacts had been dried out from falling asleep earlier, so my eyes were irritated being kept open and focusing on small print. I wasn’t half-way through my assignment when I decided I needed to take out my contacts. I put down my English book, reached in my backpack and pulled out my Bible. I went straight to reading, never taking out my contacts. I read 1 Corinthians 2-4. There was a lot of great stuff in there too. Oh, I also need to explain the way I was reading. It wasn’t just reading straight through, it was reading one paragraph at a time, and then rereading the paragraph until I understood it, and then moving on. When I would finish a chapter I would reread it as a whole. I was only going to read chapter 2, but then I decided to go on to 3, and then after that on to 4. It was great.

Then today, Wednesday, I’ve had another amazing day. Stuff was making sense in school, I wasn’t afraid of asking questions, and I scored highest on the science test (sad to think a 92 was the highest grade in a class of at least 30 people). While I was waiting in line to get food between two of my classes, I was flipping through my notepad (which has maybe 2 pages left). I came across a poem I wrote back in early June (blog entry: June 27th). When I got home tonight I noticed that my favorite part of that poem (the end) was on my friend Amanda’s AIM profile. Here are the lines she quoted:

Why do we ask “Why?”

When we could be asking “What?”

“What is it I can do to help me to serve you?”

When our hearts have been laid down to rest

And our bodies relieved

The organs we didn’t need

Oh, when all I want is to want one thing

That could be the day

Oh that could be the day...

I’m freed

Before I signed online tonight though, I went by the lake and swam out to the floating dock. The sun had already passed the horizon, but there was still enough light to see by. I played on the dock a bit, doing push-ups, and jumping on the corners making them dunk under water. I swam back to shore and came back home. That’s when I signed online and saw the poem in Amanda’s profile. I talked to both her and Katie for a while, and explained everything God had been doing with those two emails I had written, and now I will explain what I realized today when I pieced the puzzle together.

Today between the time that I was driving home from school, and the time I was driving home from the lake (from about 17:30 to 20:00 fast time) I was thinking. It hit me that I didn’t fully understand why I had NEEDED to send that email to my friend. I realized that it was not I that had needed to send it, but God had needed me to send it. He had needed me to say what I said and to put that friendship that I loved so much on the line. God’s been working on me for a while with letting everything go. Remember a couple weeks ago when I had my little “break down” thingy? I wrote a short explanation saying at one point “...a desire to give up on my life. It’s not worth living. ... It really isn’t that interesting.” Josiah had said that that is a place in life that God will bring us to. God was bringing me to a place where my life was worthless. Everything I had was worthless, and everything I did without him was worthless. It was so that when I realized that I had NOTHING, I could give EVERYTHING to God. I guess this one friendship was one thing I wasn’t giving up.

Sad to say, but I realized just after that break down that I had done it, and submitted it to my blog for attention. Even sadder to say (especially to the friend I wrote the letters too) but I had done it for the attention of that friend. I went a week mad at God, and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Later I realized that I had been mad at God but didn’t know why. Now I know why. I had blamed God when I felt I didn’t get enough attention from my friend. God had to eliminate my dependency on this friendship if I was going to be dependent on Him, and he did. Saying all that I meant to in that letter, I had matured in an instant. The next morning, commenting on Tony’s blog; it was a comment from someone mature, not who I had been the morning before. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all mad at my friend, I still dearly love my friend, but I may just need some space.

I’m sorry that I can’t reveal everything that was brought up between my friend and myself. All of this would make more sense if you could see and read how I put the friendship at risk, but it’s just not something you all need to see. Hopefully all of this makes sense.

“Your Face Here” upon my heart with love

Matthew (Mahi) Shane E.