A Retrospective

The other day, in an episode of feeling particularly stupid (I burned a pan while making popcorn), I started to read back through my blog, specifically looking for times where I felt especially bad about myself (which were in no shortage). But as I went backward, something else started to happen. I started to become increasingly interested in what I was feeling with every post, whether I felt good or bad about myself. When I got the the end of this blog, I went to my Xanga and read that to its beginning, back to the summer after my 12th grade year, which I have often looked back to as my strongest days of faith, where I wrote about all the huge works God was doing in my life and my expectations for college. But as I read through it all, I realized that that time in my life, which was undoubtedly the brightest and most fiery was not the best or most godly. I was praying and expecting revival at Bethel, which in my mind meant prayer meetings that went on until the early morning with shouted prayers and hours and hours and hours of singing.

Regardless, that's not what my time at college looked like--not normally. And I felt let down by it. For a while, I felt somehow like God had ripped me off. But looking back now, I can definitely tell that there was a form of revival that happened--not a one or three day Spirit-falling-down, everyone huddling at the altar kind, but a four year revival of real growth and real learning that brought some of my very best friends to me and taught me that I must understand love before power and that grace always, always, always triumphs over judgment. I look back on the things God was doing in my life before college, and at times, I felt like I just couldn't contain it at all. It's been a very long time since I felt I couldn't contain my zeal and passion, but I realized the other night that that's because I've gotten bigger. I'm not trying to fit a huge thing into a small container. I have more room for it.

Back then, I was always telling myself it was time to be a man. Now, I am a man. At least, more of one.

Also, I got the job at Bashor. I go in Thursday for background checks and preliminary paperwork. Praise God.