Almost Over

Tomorrow morning at 8 AM, I load up my truck and make the four-hour drive up to Bellingham to begin my training as a resident advisor for Beta/Gamma in the Ridgeway Complex at Western Washington University.

I remember that one of my first posts asked the question "Who am I?" While I don't particularly feel any different after my summer as an intern at Glenwood Community Church, I know that I am and I know that I've grown in a few key ways.

1.) I'm a leader. I'm ready to face it. I didn't even realize it, but I've been a leader for most of my life. I just have really hated formal leadership. So I'm now ready to own my inner leader.

2.) Everyday I feel more and more as though I am not to do history for my occupation, at least not as soon as I get out of college. So I have no idea where I'll end up, and I'm ok with that. I just have to remember to live life to the extreme and not be worried about my future.

I'm very ready to go back to Bellingham, and after doing some more music stuff this afternoon, I'll pack up the rest of my stuff and be ready to leave first thing in the morning.

I will be starting a new blog within the next few days. Due to scheduling, it may take me awhile to make my first post, but it'll happen at some point. The link is
http://chachinator-secondround.blogspot.com/

Random thought

If people stopped pooping in toilets, what other role would they serve?

A super light duty washing machine?

A water bowl for the household animals?

a garbage can that you don't have to take out?

Any thoughts ? ...have fun with this one.

Really?

Due to a task I was given at work, I have looked at a large number of chord charts and lyrics lately. I'm not much a fan of the typical "Christian worship" songwriting, so I was looking at a lot of songs I didn't know, and picking songs that I had heard from the few artists that I knew. I do like Chris Tomlin, because I feel that once I've heard one of his songs, I've heard the general gist of all the "hit" songs on Christian radio (likely because he wrote most of them, or so it seems.) While I enjoy playing worship music, I don't particularly enjoy listening to it.

This brings me to a few questions.

1.) Why does this stuff all sound the same? Given that God himself is the author of all creativity, you would think that the "christian" genre would be so much more diverse. And yet bands such as Switchfoot, while not falling into that category, claim to be Christians and their stuff, from the beginning of their existence to now, continues to change and find new ways to reach their audience rather than settle for the same mundane 1-4-5 chord changes and guitar effects. And while some would say that Switchfoot has sold out in not DIRECTLY addressing their faith in their songs (while the references to scripture suggest otherwise, at least to me,) I would argue that the worship musicians that fail to push the envelope for the sake of record sales are the greater sell-outs.

I must say, though, that people worship differently, and lyrics and songwriting technique reflect different worship styles. I am not attacking the way people worship by any means. I am simply trying to figure out why the stuff doesn't speak to me the way it seems to speak to most people.

2.) Like I said. I read a lot of lyrics this week. I can't count the number of times I read something referencing how "all we need is Jesus." For some reason this bugs me. Because while I feel that we should come to Christ first to express concern and seek council, I also believe that we were designed to have needs besides those that are spiritual. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, of course, you were to lock yourself in a room and have no way out or in. There would be no light, no refrigerator, to water. Theoretically, all you would have would be God himself, in the form of communication through prayer. SO, if we have no other needs but God himself, we should be able to stay alive forever (or at least until our old age) through prayer. This, to me, sounds like sheer madness. While God could sustain us for that long. We were created to be relational, not just with God, but with other people as well. Our bodies do not function without water, food, rest. Does this train of thought follow with anyone else, or am I overanalyzing things?

Cheers
Brandon

Ugh

Today was hard for me. As was yesterday. And I have been a total weenie about it too. Realized how freaked out I am about everything has led me to some interesting conclusions and questions.

1.) How does one just stop worrying? I know that Jesus loves me and that he has a plan for me, even though I have no idea what it is. But knowing and believing are two different things. People may see my lack of direction and try to convince me that I'll end up ok, or try to push me in one direction or another. But I'm doing the best that I can...

2.) I am forever reminded that I am nothing. The only reason I'm alive is because God sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of me and help me through stuff.

3.) I continue to grow restless. And I continue to feel that my vocation will not be in history, as my degree will state as my area of expertise. And I have no idea what I will do after that.

I will survive.

Two Weeks

I have two weeks left before I load up my truck and travel the 200-some miles to Bellingham for begin my training as a Resident Advisor in Ridgeway Beta/Gamma. As I start thinking about all that I have to do (stuff I need to buy, stuff I should pack, stuff that I probably should start thinking about sometime soon...) I almost feel a sense of panic. In some ways, I am beginning the last year of what I consider to be my youth. It has been said that the college years are the best of one's life. Yes, I begin this one knowing where stuff is, knowing what hoops I have to jump through, and so on, and yet I am so clueless as to so many things. I am stoked to meet my residents, but I have no idea how much time I will get for myself. I have committed to playing bass on the worship team at Christ the King Community Church. Anyway, there's a whole new set of unknowns involved.

That's pretty much it. I miss Bellingham.

This lyric keeps coming back to me. It has nothing to do with anything...except...just about everything.

Jesus paid much too high a price for us to pick and choose who should come
-"If We Are The Body"- Casting Crowns

Old People

Today is my great-grandmother's 95th birthday, and it would have been my great-grandfather's 98th. Driving down to Eugene to visit for an hour and a half with other relatives and family friends, I don't think anything could compare to what I saw when I walked into the room in which my great-grandma greeted (well, sort of) guests. She sat in the corner of the room in her wheel chair. Her hair line had receded since the last time I had seen her. Many of her teeth had fallen out. As I smiled and said hello and happy birthday and gave as much of a hug as I could without feeling like I was going to crush her now-frail body, she either didn't recognize me at all or straight didn't know that she had a red-headed great-grandson named Brandon. I would bank on the former being the more true of the two. Anyway, aside from a similar goodbye, that was the extent of the contact I had with her all afternoon.

It absolutely tore me up to see my great-grandma. I thought of all the conversations I wanted to have with her and my great-grandfather when he was still around. They had lived through two world wars, the "Cold War," Watergate, Vietnam, the protests of the 50s, 60s and 70s. They had heard the news that Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. And I didn't care enough to ask them about such things when I felt I could at least ask a question of them without wearing them out.

Each time I see Great-grandma, I think it will be the last time I say goodbye. She's given 95 years of her life to the God of the universe. And she's confined in a body that is no longer functioning as it's meant to.

Visiting Great- grandma reminds me to live life to it's fullest, to not be afraid to take risks, because one day I may find myself in an assisted living facility with nothing to do but sit, pray, and reflect on all of the risks I should have taken.

It also reminds me how much I really hope I don't live to be so old I have to have someone help me go to the bathroom.

Last night, as I visited the park near my house, walking on a piece of tubular climbing webbing cinched to tension between two trees, I realized how much I worry about stupid stuff.  Stuff like "Where will I be in a year?" or "Will my history degree actually mean anything?" I focused on the tree and the moment, doing my best to smoothly link turns on the 1/2" thick slack line. After a brief break to do some journaling and realizing I had nothing to say, the picnic table a few yards away looked like a splendid place from which to view a sunset.  The sunset only made me worry and think more.  As my iPod played mostly worship songs, I stared blankly, alternating between the colors of the sunset and the movement of the grass that blew in the breeze.  

I put my slack line away, keeping an eye on the sunset.  It was in many ways ridiculous that something so beautiful could cause such tension in the moments in which it was viewed.  My music failed to distract me from the thoughts of anxiety, up until one particular song came on. I smiled and cranked it as far as I could without feeling like I was going to blow my headphones in half.  

Anxiety is a choice. It basically comes down to whether or not we trust God enough to get us through things that may or may not be affected by our futile attempts to change our circumstances.  It's a hard choice to make, at least for me.  But at the moment that Listening to Levon by Marc Cohn popped up on my playlist, I was over it. Worrying will not stop something from happening.  You won't live any longer by worrying about some minute detail of tomorrow.  And I was done, at least for that moment.

I turned off and threw my phone across the park, which was mostly symbolic of my mindset because I picked it up when I left, put it in my bag, and didn't look at it the rest of the night.