Façades and Veneers

In all honesty I’m not sure what to write tonight. Right now I’m wrestling with an issue that I cannot shake. It doesn’t help that I’m terrible at wrestling. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you the same. But as funny and ridiculous, not to mention off-topic as that is, the issue I’m struggling with is not.

Of course, I could try to write a little sermon or devotional, which was the reason I created this blog in the first place. But the funny thing is, the more I’ve searched myself and tried to figure out what I’ve learned, the deeper and more personal I have had to get. Now, I have no wisdom to impart to you, my readers. Just brutal honesty.

I keep getting these messages telling, “Nathan, quit living in the past, ‘cause you might miss what God has for you in the present.” While that is true, it still doesn’t help. In the not-so-distant past I found wonderful friends. I felt like I had a new family that supported me while my family at home was busy. Now, I’m home, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel lost, or worse, trapped.

And let me tell you, trying to explain to your family that you feel trapped is not fun. But that’s the sensation I’ve had, and the thing I’ve struggled with. I want to go back to the past, where my life was freer and easier. Or the future, when I go back to college and can put this summer behind me.  The present is suffocating.

Just the other day, I had to leave the house, very suddenly. I felt that if I did not get out and away from absolutely everyone I knew at home, then I would have a meltdown. I was almost panicking in my desperation to leave and find someplace to be alone. My mother finally let me go and I left in our van for four blessed hours of peace.

First, I went up to the Continental Divide, just a few minutes from my house. There was still snow up at the pass. And surprisingly, or maybe ironically, at 12,000+ feet, I felt like I could breathe. The air is pretty thin up there. But I felt free. Utterly and completely free from all the constraints I felt forced upon me.

I love my family. A lot. So I don’t know how to tell them I feel trapped at times in my own home. Instead, to make sure everyone stays happy, I maintain a façade of happiness. Maintaining one of these façades is HARD! I used to have one during high school, but I had a break from it when I went home. After a few months the façade would drain me to the point where, if I didn’t get away from the people I knew at school, I was going to scream. Now I feel like I have to maintain a façade 24/7, making sure that my family is happy, and that word doesn’t get back to them of any unhappiness I feel. I have to maintain it in front of almost everyone. Keeping up a front for that long wears me out so much quicker than when it was just at school.

I bet it doesn’t help that the easiest lie for me to tell is, “I’m okay.” It’s a neutral position and it’s what people want to hear. No one is ever prepared for an answer other than “fine,” when they ask someone else how they are doing. Plus it allows me to stay “safe” as I call it. I tell them I’m okay, and usually no one bothers to ask any deeper questions. No one but a select few.

Thankfully, I guess God in His kindness, granted me friends that I don’t have to maintain a disguise of happiness with. I have friends I can be honest with and not worry about who else might find out about it. I have friends I can be real with. I swear, if I did not have them, my spirit would have died within me already. I think sometimes I use them as a lifeline to keep me from going under into insanity.

Now there is some good news in all of this. If you remember, I mentioned feeling lost, trying to find the pieces I left here before college. Well, I found a few. Of course, they would be embedded in my workplace. I found quite a few pieces there. And I saw myself giving a few away, gradually, but surely. And I don’t mind giving them away, I just hate it when I can’t find them again. But I’m not done searching. There’s still a few critical pieces I haven’t found yet. Maybe when I find them, I’ll quit feeling so trapped.

Either way, I will praise the Lord. He has given me friends, and also given me a way to survive this summer, when I feel as though I might be crushed under the weight of the façade I wear. For that I will praise him. And for so much more too.

Holy is He and He is worthy of all praise.

Focus

Well, here's the start of the summer. Camp is starting as we welcome the permanent staff to work, then all the volunteer staff later this week. Dean, the camp director, has encouraged us to focus on God this summer, then on the other stuff.

Well, Dean, I'm slightly ahead of you. I want to focus on God a lot this summer. I feel like I've slightly lost focus on hime. During college, I leaned on Chapel times to focus on God, and for my devotions. But, since I'm at camp, I can't really do that any more. Now, I have to do the work on my own.

Also while at college I fell out of personally studying God's Word. I figured, "I have Chapel, and I like to sleep, so I don't really need to spend time on my own in the Bible." Of course, I never thought it in those words, but that was my attitude.

No longer.

I want to make this relationship personal. I don't want to always rely on what other people tell me what God's letter to me says. I want to know what it says, and make it personal to me. I want to know what truths God put in there that He wants me to know, His words I can apply to my life. I bet knowing those truths might have helped me in some of my struggles last year. But hindsight is 20/20.

Something I really want to know is the aspects of God. I don't want to simply focus on His names or peices of his character, such as His strength and His love. I want to know His promises, and His power. I want to dwell on descriptions of God, things like the implied Description God gave of his power and creativity in making horses in Job 39:19. (Of course I found out about this verse by watching a horse movie, Secretariat.)

I love to hear descriptions of God. I love it. Don't tell me God is omnipotent, or omni present. Those words I hear all day long in the Church and they fly in one ear and out the other. I love hearing that God hears the widow's cry of grief in South Carolina, and knows the hunger pains of a child in South Africa--at the same time. That is descriptive. It tells me details, forces me to form pictures in my mind that I can relate with. Things that really show me who God is. God did that a lot when he answered Job. He said things like "Do you know where the storehouses of snow are kept?" and "Do you clothe the horse with his mane and give him his strength?" (Both Nathan-paraphrases, not actually verses.)

Hearing those makes me sit in awe of God. And it gives me reassurance. Reassurance that I desperately need.

I have this annoying tendancy to worry, to the point that my mother likens me to an Irish Grandmother. It doesn't help that I'm good at stressing myself out with worry. But hearing God say "Look at what I can do, and often actually do," that gives me peace. Not a lot, because after a little while my fears and worries soon do their best to crowd out the assurance, but it does give me peace. And it gives me a promise and weapon to use agianst the fears. It tells me about who He is.

So that is my focus for the summer. I want to focus on who my Savior is. Now, I just need to find a place to start.

Holy is the Lord, and my heart shall praise his holy Name.

Pieces

WARNING: This post is less me telling you a lesson I've learned as much as it is me processing and figuring things out. Or at least attempting to. Random changes in thought pattern and/or reasoning may occur.


Anyone who is a fan of the group RED might notice I borrowed one of their song titles for my post today. Well, it is somewhat on purpose. Lately, I've been struggling here at home to figure out where I belong. As one friend might say, I'm restless.

I have longed to come home from college since Christmas, and now, here I am. And now, I wish I was back at TU with my friends. I miss them. I feel as though I don't really belong here in Buena Vista, like the solid roots I thought I left here were shallower and more fragile than I knew.

I feel like I left my heart, or pieces of it, back in Indiana. And as the saying goes, "Home is where the heart is." Ironic how now I wish I was back. I missed my family here in Colorado, but I also feel like I left family back at Taylor. It's strange to think of myself as having at least two homes now. I've only ever had one before now.

Although I think there is something I need to say real quick though. While I believe I left some pieces at places, I also believe some of the pieces I left with people.At least I think that's where some of the pieces from Taylor are. I left them with friends I made there.

But even knowing that I left pieces of my heart in Indiana, I know that I left pieces of it here in Colorado too. Now I have to find them. I wish it were easier, but at least I know now where to start.

Tonight I worked in the Kitchen at Spring Canyon, the camp where I live. Working there felt normal, routine. Wonderfully familiar. At home, I have to live in the basement since my grandparents are staying with us for a few weeks, and then my uncle will come out with his family for a visit. My normal room was turned into a guest bedroom, so I live downstairs.

Now, why all the background there? Because having said all that, My house feels abnormal now. Strange. Unusual. I try to remember that it is home, but it doesn't feel like it. I feel, well for lack of a better term, displaced. So working gave me a sense of normalcy again. And I believe I found one of the "lost pieces" there.

I know there are more though. I pray God will help me find them. I pray I figure out who I am again. I used to have an identity here in Colorado before college, now I have another one after it and I have to reconcile the two, preferably before I go back to Taylor.
So I guess it's like part of the chorus from the song.

"I come to You in pieces, so You can make me whole."

That's where I will find wholeness, really. I need to go to God with these pieces of my heart so he can put them together again. He saw me when I left it and know exactly which piece goes where. But it's hard. I know some pieces I have left and I can never get them back, like the pieces I left in Romania when I went there last year.

But I will choose to have faith in God. He will bring my heart back together. I will find wholeness and rest from my restlessness in Him. I hope. I pray. God is faithful.

He is holy and He is worthy of my praise.

Leaving

Well, it's official. I have finished my first year at Taylor University. I am now a sophomore. Now, admittedly, I should be rejoicing, but I'm not. In some ways, I am happy. I finished one year of college. That in itself is an achievement. But there's something else that overwhelms the miniscule feeling if victory. It is the feeling of loss.

This year, I made quite a few friends. Some of them were freshmen. Some were graduating seniors. All of them I will miss. Especially those graduating. While I have some assurances that I might see some of them again, it still feels like in some way, I'm losing my friends, like I'm losing a piece of myself.

It hurts. I see my friends go, most of them still living in the Midwest, while I have to pack up and return to Colorado. I feel the separation ache. The pain is too mellow, too slightly expected to cut or stab. It throbs instead.

Facing this pain, which is all too familiar I must confess, I find myself asking, does saying goodbye ever get to the point where it doesn't hurt, at least as a college student?


Does it ever get any easier?

I wanted to go and ask a professor or one of the seniors this question, but I never did. I never asked while I had them here to tell me. However, after slightly stewing on this question for a few hours, I discovered the best person to ask this question would be myself.

Now before you think I'm getting pompous or arrogant, let me tell you why I think that.

I'm a military brat, and I have never lived in any one place longer than 4 years. You say goodbye often that way. For the four years I went to high school, I lived at a summer camp. Every single I would say goodbye at least twice. Once to the first month's summer volunteers, next to the second month's volunteers and the paid staff.

I also graduated High School a year ago, almost to the day. I had many goodbyes to say then. I had to say goodbye to my parents when they dropped me off at college.

Suffice to say, I've had to say a lot of goodbyes in my life.So, if you all are still interested in my answer, here it is.

It never gets easier to say goodbye. In fact, the more you invest yourself in your friends and the deeper the bonds you make, the harder it gets to say goodbye.

I say this from personal experience. I missed my friends from camp a little, But as I look forward to the summer, the more I wish I had my friends with me physically. The more I long to have my close friends near.

So this summer might be hard. I have to go back to good friends, but I'm leaving some of the best friends I've ever had.

However, before my heart begins to despair, and thus make me begin my summer the crappiest way I could, I need to remember something,

Now, forgive me for sounding cheesy, but the truth is the truth, Jesus is the friend who will never leave me. Never. I can't move away from Him. He won't graduate and be forced to move on past college and thus past me. He will never be living anywhere I'm not.

He is always with me. I tend to forget that so easily, possibly because I have this nasty tendency to rely on myself.

But there is nowhere I can go to escape His love. While all my other friends must move on and we must spend our summers apart, I will remember that God is still with me. That Jesus is right beside me, being everything and more that my friends can't be.

Holy is He and Worthy of praise.