The End of an Era

So I know it hasn't been long since my last post according to my own timeline of postings but my heart has been heavy for some time and this has only increased in the last couple days so I thought I should put down some thoughts.  It isn't all bad and there's some of you who may think they know what the title alludes to but they will find they are only partially correct.  But as they say "first things, first" so without further ado I will queue the rambling prologue.

Since coming to Christ a little more than 8 years ago I've attended a lot of churches and I can remember every single one including the ones that I was only visiting for a week or two.  Most of them were great places in some way or another as I have very discriminating tastes ;) but 3 in particular stand out.  The first is Elmore United Methodist.  This is by far the smallest church I have ever attended and it has one of the biggest hearts I have ever seen.  It was the church that I was going to when God finally got hold of me.  I wasn't saved by the preaching there but rather God was doing a work in me separate from the church and gave me an amazing place to fellowship during the process.  Those people opened their homes to me, offered every kind of assistance should it be needed, befriended the weirdo 20 year old college drop out who was only in town for the summer.  At a time in my life when I had abandoned everything known and comfortable and reliable in my life I found a family that I never knew could exist.  And isn't it crazy how that works with God most of the time?  Giving up the known only to find something way better?  Elmore set the bar by which I would measure community.

The second church on this list is Christ Memorial Church in Essex Junction.  I found these people by sheer accident.  I was looking for another church entirely because I had just moved and was church shopping.  But I got lost and their service time was exactly right for my needs that morning.  They even had their first ever college students and new attendees lunch that afternoon which was serendipitous.  Under the leadership of Wes Pastor (or as some call him, Pastor Pastor) I learned to take my theology seriously.  Most of the places I'd been before were big on love (which is obviously important) but not very strong on getting into what exactly we believe and why.  CMC excels at this.  Wes has a very straightforward way of saying some very deep and important truths.  It's where I learned about church planting and grew a heart for missions.  I made some excellent friends and went through some of the hardest times of my life here.  In short, it's where God started the advanced study on what it really meant to live and think as a Christian.  It's also where I (finally) got baptized after a false start.  It wasn't all rainbows and unicorns but my time there marked a turning point in my walk.

The last place which is the place of honor is Middletown Springs Community Church - my current church and the first church at which I formally became a member.  The last 2 years or so have marked a profound period of growth (in all areas of my life) and intense struggle (in all areas of my life).  Nowhere else have I seen such a remarkable fusion of the qualities of intentional, loving, Christian community and intelligent, incisive, and remarkable preaching.  MSCC has set a new bar in both community and theology.  I've never known a place quite like it.  I'm told that much of that spirit was present before Jared took over as pastor but it is clear even to a relative newcomer, at a church which has been around since the 18th century, that Jared is responsible for really upping the game.  I've never known a guy who could regularly preach in such heartfelt ways so as to often bring me to tears and laughter in the same sermon.  And at the same time what he says doesn't seem intended to ply on the emotions of the crowd but rather he simply shows us God and he manages to show us a picture so clear that it is God not Jared who stirs us so deeply.  I could similarly go on about how amazing the people are and how close and loving the community there is but 2 days ago Jared informed us that he is leaving.

He is going to a new ministry at Midwestern Baptist Seminary to help their mission of equipping young pastors to be Gospel-centered.  A mission which I can say nothing against.  Indeed, I am excited for him and his family that they have such a clear calling from God.  I envy them in a way as I am in a stage of life where most things seem murky and I have to feel the ground to move forward.  But Jared's departure is also very sad for me and for many.  I know him not just as the voice proclaiming God's word on Sunday afternoon but as a friend, a brother, a person who has shared my burdens and who has shared his own with me at times.  I know Missouri isn't the end of the earth but it feels like I am losing a family member.  I have often thought "how does a little church like this manage to get such an amazing guy as the pastor".  Jared has explained his reasons for leaving and they all seem thoughtful, rational, and focused on how to serve God.  But he will be missed.

The deeply selfish part of me went straight to "how does this effect me personally".  And I found plenty.  Mostly I thought about how everything else in my life was crumbling around me.  Everything but MSCC the one fixed point I have.  And then that fixed point moves.  It's unnerving and frustrating and depressing.  But to Jared's credit I could not land on that thought for long.  Jared has ingrained in us the idea of hunting down and smashing our idols so well that my next thought was that I had made an idol out of him and the church.  It's not a pleasant realization.  I was holding to the way things were as a source of security rather than to God.  So being a person who thinks in terms of logic my next thought was that if Jared and stability were idols then God was doing me a favor by stripping it away from me.  The Gospel is not reliant on Jared talented as he may be.  MSCC is not reliant on him either.  God's truth and God's church both hang on God not the men who serve him.  And seeing all of the other amazing things God has been doing here in southern Vermont I can't now help but be excited to see who God sends us next.  This battle is ramping up on many fronts and that's when you send in your best troops for support.  So while this doesn't stop me from being sad about the departure of a brother it gives me something to look forward to.

In many ways all of this also brings into focus my own life.  The title could refer to the changes at MSCC but it doesn't. It refers to me.  So many things in my life are changing as I've said.  I can feel the tide turn on a level that I can't explain.  God is preparing me for something new.  I have no idea how my life will settle out in the end but it will be different from what I've known in the past.  That is my only real certainty.  And I have felt it coming for almost a year now when the changes first started.  And up till now I have mourned what has been and what will be lost.  I'm a very nostalgic person so losing what was is a hard thing me most of the time.  But all of the logic I used to talk about Jared can equally be applied to my life.  I am sad for what will be lost and what has been already.  But maybe for the first time in a while I am starting to be excited for what is coming.  It is beyond my ability to imagine but I've found in past experience that such times are always the best when they finally arrive.

Houston, we have a Problem.

This post is a reflection on the failure of a paradigm.  Just a heads up this will likely be a long one and it will be a little different from my normal inward focused posts.  It seems like I can't get away from talk about Robin Williams even this long after the event.  Don't get me wrong, I was saddened to hear about his death.  I have very much enjoyed his movies since as far back as I can remember and even if I hadn't it makes me sad to see a life lost to despair.  I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about suicide but that isn't what I want to talk about really.

As I think all of you reading this will know, I am a nursing student.  I am currently doing psych clinical.  Today, our ward had a discussion club and what we were discussing was an article that was a reaction to how people are talking about Robin Williams.  More than that it was about how to see and address suicidal thoughts in other people.  I wasn't impressed by the article but it had some good points to consider.

During the discussion I asked a question and the responses (from personnel on a dedicated psych ward ranging from LNAs to RNs to residents) left me feeling troubled.  The question I asked was this: What basis do we have to tell our patients that suicide is bad?  We may not say it like that but all policy and treatment orbits that idea.  We can hold someone against their will if we have reasonable suspicion that they are actively suicidal.  We talk about suicide being the result of disease processes rather than a choice (a position I cannot fully agree with).  We are doing everything except saying outright "killing yourself is wrong" because we aren't supposed to impose value judgements.  Which is exactly what we are doing and we are scared of admitting it for some reason.

I didn't ask because I don't have my own answer.  I do have several responses in fact for why I believe suicide is wrong.  Most are tied directly to my faith, some are tied to my view of what suicide is, and some are positions of logic.  Again that isn't what I am going to discuss.  The reason I asked is because our teaching tells us to be moral relativists for the purposes of therapy.  And we work in a system that seems to assume we agree with naturalistic evolution.  In fact many of the ways that God speaks to me would be classed as "magical thinking" which is a symptom of psychosis amongst other things.  We are told religion is a good thing to encourage because it has been proven to be protective against suicide and yet its said in a way that shouts the thought that religion is a pleasant lie that patients need to cope with reality.  Which is funny because in all other cases we are told not to play into delusions.

The reason I asked the question was because I was genuinely interested to know how a relativistic framework deals with such an important question.  As far as I can tell there is no way to legitimately ban suicide without either minimizing individual rights or appealing to a transcendent absolute.  And nothing that was said at that group has convinced me otherwise.  The consensus was "we can't really make that claim".  I got the feeling that the room as a whole was actually troubled by the question.  Are we being hypocrites to say on one hand "suicide is bad" and on the other "it is not our place to judge"?  I was troubled that in an age when suicide rates seem to be on the rise, the professionals who have dedicated their careers to helping the mentally ill have no convincing answers to that question.  If I was suicidal and ran into this it would encourage me to continue.

Another troubling thing that came out of this meeting was an observation.  It was pointed out that Robin Williams had in many ways achieved the American dream.  Fame, popularity, riches.  He was a Success.  And yet that brought him no peace, no answers.  At least not the peace that means something.  I find that unsurprising.  The American Dream is a flimsy idol.  What I did find surprising was hearing that many people are reacting by getting angry at him.  I don't get that.  Why anger?  The only thing that occurred to me was that in his death he removed some measure of hope.  I think that people look at his death and feel on some deep level "So what you are saying is that it ultimately doesn't matter how successful I become.  There really is no light at the end of the tunnel just a different sort of darkness and a darkness that leaves you with nowhere else to go."

And so we arrive back at the beginning of this entry - the failure of a paradigm.  I have long believed that American culture has been heading for a cliff.  Individualism and capitalism are failures.  Our leaders have mostly failed or fled, corruption is assumed to the point where it is hard to even work up the energy to care, our resources go towards propping up the institutions that grind us down, there are precious few things that are still accorded any trust or respect, we devour our youth and now we cannot even find a solid reasons to give our citizens to keep on living.  One of the stages of the death of a civilization is intensification.  The things that are seen as societal ideals are pursued much harder in the hopes that adhering to the guiding principles will save you.  Our current political scene reflects this.  Polarization is consistent with intensification.  The conservatives become more conservative, the liberals become more liberal and there is less room for discussion because there is a perception that compromise will bring the whole system down.

I'm not original in any of this.  I have heard various versions of this from many voices in greater or lesser amounts of coherence and sanity.  Until today I don't think I realized how bad it's getting out there.  Maybe I'm overreacting, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm delusional and should be the guest of a mental health clinic.  All I know is that despite the fact that today was actually a very good day by other measures I have this unshakable uneasiness.

I remember when I was a teenager and had just read Dune for the first time I really bought in to the idea that a revolution every now and then is good for society.  In more recent times I have said that it might be good for the government to collapse so that something new can be built.  Also, I have said that I actually hope that Christianity becomes truly unacceptable to society so that our light might be less obscured by the portion of so-called Christians who are doing the culturally expedient thing and because that famous saying about Christianity flourishing in persecution does seem to be true.  My views of life and, more importantly, of people have changed a lot since I was a teenager.  I don't hate everyone like I used to for one thing.  So, while I still believe that most of the above is actually true, it is more resolve than eagerness or curiosity that I find when considering the consequences.  Truth is often unpleasant.

Well, as I promised in the opening this definitely ran long.  And I don't know a good way to wrap up because right now I don't feel like I have answers or solutions other than the Cross.  If it wasn't for God I doubt I would have hope right now.  I think some very difficult times may be in store for us in the next couple decades.  I hope I'm wrong.  It happens with more frequency then I'd care to admit.  But right now I'm exhausted from increasingly regular sleep deprivation.  So until next time, may you find the Peace that surpasses all understanding.

YOLO!

You Only Live Once.  The battle-cry of the fool-hardy and those who wish they had the courage to be.  It is pure bravado in sentiment.  It says "Life isn't worth living if I live in fear of anything!".  Which of course is absurd.  But that is not really what I want to talk about right now.  The kernel of this post has been kicking around in my head for about a month now but the idea has effected me in one way or another for most of my life.  The fact is that you or I, that is the individual person, does only live once.  I could make a theological wise crack and point here but I won't.  You only live once and so I think it is important that you are living as you.

There is a trap into which I have frequently fallen that looks something like this:  I have friends and family who have been blessed in ways which I could wish for myself or perhaps they do things in ways that I wish I could emulate and so I am tempted to try to become them.  I mean this in very small but significant ways.  Perhaps I know someone who is very cultured and I wish to be more so myself so I will try to read books which they think are important or perhaps I will pick up a mannerism of theirs.  And we all do this of course.  There is a kind of rank discontent buried deep inside each of us that says "I need to be other than I am".  And so we look for examples to emulate.  We find those people who have the things we want or who are what we wish we could be.

I believe that this desire has a legitimate source.  That is I believe that all humans are broken and hurting, as we have been born, and that discontent is ultimately founded in a longing for God and to be made into the image of Christ.  But, I know for myself anyway, I settle for much smaller and easier targets and I focus on all the wrong things.  I even sometimes find myself thinking "If I only had this one thing my life would be so much easier and more joyous".  Perhaps not those words but definitely that sentiment.  And the thing is I know it's false.

The way I see it, one of the most beautiful aspects of Christianity is that God does not make us drones.  Over and over I have seen both in scripture and in life how God uses who we are specifically.  We all have a unique personality with instinctive likes and dislikes, passions and aversions, talents and struggles.  We are all truly unique snowflakes in the particulars of who we are.  And yet somehow we are all also very similar as humans in our needs, our problems, our failings, our pain and our joys.  We are like threads in a tapestry to use a common literary metaphor.  There are many colors and patterns of weaving for individual threads and yet all the threads share a nature (they are threads) and a purpose (while one thread is part of the sky and another is part of an eye they all create one work).

So, when I look at a friend or family member and try live as they do I am missing the point.  I am exactly as I am because I have been created that way for a purpose.  A purpose which no one but me can fulfill.  And furthermore, as a Christian I believe that the creator of the universe loves me AS I AM.  This is not to downplay the role and need for sanctification and becoming more Christ like.  But even with all of my failings, my sin, and my ugliness (in every sense of the word) God does not say he loves some future version of me.  How everything works together I may never know but when I look at my social awkwardness, my tendency to over share, my aversion of most sports, my love of adventure and the fantastical, my nerdiness and many other things some of which I love and some of which I really wish were different I can think "I am exactly who I am meant to be. I will not always be this way because life is change but here in this moment in this place I am exactly what God wants me to be for his purpose."

After all that I am not really sure what my point was meant to be.  Except that you should live your life as yourself and not as some cheap knockoff of someone else who is smarter or stronger or prettier or in some other way superlative.  After all you only live once.

Until next time God bless.

Dispatches From Fort Dix

Hi everybody!  I'm just having a great Army day here in lovely New Jersey.  So this post has been in the making for a couple weeks now but every time I sit down to write it something interferes: I can't log onto the internet because people are stealing it from me, I'm tired, my computer is nowhere in sight, I can't get on the internet because it's down, I'm tired, people have stolen all my internet, I'm tired.... You get the idea.  But I am writing it now finally.

So, the original seed came from an odd moment I had in Honduras.  I was walking between the construction site and the house where we had a VBS set up and I was by myself.  And I had a crystallizing moment.  I was reverting to a mode of thinking and being that used to be all to familiar to me a few years ago when i was still travelling the country and volunteering.  That is I was starting to isolate myself in the meaningful ways and I was starting to think of myself as the loner cast adrift in the world.  That used to be fun actually.  Just me and God travelling around, having adventures, doing awesome stuff with cool people and then moving on to the next adventure.  But the reason I moved back to Vermont was that I got tired of being the loner.  I wanted a sense of permanence and community.  I wanted to rest.  And I was even partially successful.  I eventually found a certain measure of success with that.  I got my sisters here, I got in a unit that was amazing, I got back in college, I made friends, I found a church, I was building a life.

For the last....almost a year, its felt like a lot of that has been dissolving around me.  I was given notice that the army is firing me, I was set back a year in college, Sarah moved to Arizona, Rachel got married and got pregnant (which, don't get me wrong, is fantastic) resulting in a certain amount of predictable distance in that relationship, I moved to Fair Haven which is completely away from the center of all my friends and everything that goes on.  There are other things which I won't go into because even though I don't have a filter I figure might be better not put into a public forum or which I can't really explain.  My world has felt very unstable lately and it doesn't seem to be firming up much.

I just want to interject that I feel that God has deeply blessed my life.  I see his hand everywhere I look.  I still have amazing friends who somehow put up with my ridiculousness.  I will never understand that.  I was given a living situation with FREE room and utilities.  I'm going to be an uncle.  I have a new brother-in-law who is great despite our occasional differences of personality.  I passed my sophomore year despite being a screw up.  I have an awesome cat (who I haven't seen in a month).  God has given me some incredible and incredibly unlikely witnessing opportunities.  I have never been hungry for lack of funds to buy food.  I have a car that runs despite its best efforts to not run.  God is incredibly faithful and he is kind to remind me of that when I forget.

That being said I have felt increasingly uncomfortable for months now.  I couldn't put my finger on exactly why until recently.  That moment in Honduras was like an epiphany.  Even in a setting where I am essentially living and working with a group of my brothers and sisters doing missions work I could feel myself pulling away and withdrawing inwards.  For an extrovert that feels almost painful but I think that something inside me was retreating from the potential pain of uncertainty and lonliness and change.  I still don't know what I think of that.  But in the midst of processing all of that God surprised me again.

My unit was recently assigned a chaplain and he seems like a really great guy.  He has been organizing a small prayer group every night at 1900.  When I say small I mean like 7 people including himself and one of the 2 chaplain assistants down here.  And that may very well be the full extent of the devout Christians in this unit but even that was extremely uplifting.  I was expecting 2 weeks of spiritual dryness in the midst of my struggles.  Not only that but I discovered that our new company commander is a sister (she's one of the seven).  And this afternoon God arranged for me to have the chance to talk about God for a few hours to an audience of like 5 people.  It was awesome.  One of the things I was praying for in Honduras was a sense of peace and here in Fort Dix, in a stressful Army environment, with the threat of discharge hanging over my head and with the commander yelling at me for nonsensical reasons he has given it to me.  I will never understand how He works and I will never cease being amazed by it.  But I've got PT at 0445 tomorrow so I'm going to bed.  Until next time, may you find true rest in Christ.

On the Nature of Being Alone

Hi all!  I know its been a long time but I was swallowed up by nursing school and managed to survive another semester (yay!).  Yesterday in church I had some thoughts which I figured would be perfect for a blog entry.  So after a long hiatus NFOOTFT (or as I call it in my own head N foot squared) is back.  And hopefully the entry will not be as depressing as it sounds.

As a mild extrovert I have often given thought to this issue.  It is something we all deal with sooner or later.  Some people (like Rachel) decide they like being alone.  Other people (like me) go a different route.  In today's culture it is easy to feel a superficial connection to people.  Facebook.  Twitter.  Insta-thingy.  Snap-doohickey.  Blogs.  Email.  Front Porch Forum.  Etc.  And yet I actually feel like in the midst of all this communication we end up being more alone than ever.  Community is a much less important concept in any expression that would be recognizable to pre-industrial societies.  And I think that overall it is a bad thing.  We need that human connection.  But this blog post is not meant to rail against the failures of individualism or the crumbling psychological status of many Americans. NO!  While I certainly could carry on about such topics this is more meant for the reverse problem.  Today I am going to discuss a problem which I struggle with - fear of solitude.

The past 6 months or so have really confronted me on this subject.  I was living alone for the very first time in my life.  And I mean that.  I have always had roommates or a crew or campers or...someone.  It surprised me when I realized that.  And those of you who know me well know that I at least claim that I do not function well when I am alone.  I derive energy and motivation from being around people.  Part of that is the fact that I rarely manage to find a reason to do something on my own behalf.  If I had no friends or family to care about my successes and failures I don't know if I would ever be capable of even trying to succeed.  I don't fully understand that particular piece of myself.  I have theories on where that comes from but I'm not entirely certain.  But none of this is new so why comment on it now?

Yesterday Jared was preaching on Noah.  And it was a really great sermon too.  Jared in typical fashion managed to illuminate the Gospel in surprising and uplifting ways.  But at one point he quoted one of my favorite scenes from the Narnia series.  The scene from the Silver Chair where Jill is confronted by Aslan at the stream (side note: this also reminded me of my other favorite scene wherein Lucy asks if Aslan is a tame lion).  And they go back and forth - Jill afraid and Aslan calm but unyielding.  And from there I can't remember exactly the journey that my thoughts took get here but I ended up thinking about a song from Spamalot.  Arthur starts singing this song about how he is all alone.  While his traveling companion is trying to point out that he is not all alone.  There is a larger comic and social commentary point being made by the song but they are not entirely relevant here.  And it struck me that I do this all the time.  Except with God.  As Christians we are never truly alone.  And I don't mean that in some mystical sense.  God talks to me, he carries my burdens, he guides me, he even plays with me sometimes.  Yet I am unwilling or unable to recognize his companionship much of the time.  And more importantly, until I can feel complete when it is just me and God, I will never find fulfillment in human companionship.  I was made for God.  All human relationships no matter how real they feel are almost illusory next to my relationship with God.  "I will never leave you nor forsake you"  Even the original language declares the closeness of that relationship.  In english we no longer have an informal version of the word "you" but we used to.  When we still did it took the form of "thee". "thou", "thy", "thine" etc.  So if you open a King James Version some time, everywhere that you see one of those words it is God speaking to us as a close, personal, and intimate friend.

I had some other things I was going to say when this was floating in my head yesterday but sadly those thoughts are currently hiding from me.  Anyway I guess I spent a long time getting to the point and then not much time actually talking about it but you know what that is the freedom of free-writing your own blog.  ;)  The same 12-17 people will probably be reading it regardless hehehe.

Until next time, may you find rest in the presence of God.  

Changing of the Guard

I feel like I've been neglecting my blog and there are a lot of reasons for that which I probably won't go into right now.  But I thought it was time for a post.  Sadly, before I sat down to write it I received the sad news that the awesomest dog in the world died today.  I am referring to my dog Toby.  The news put me in a more contemplative mood so I decided to discuss change.

I've been going through a lot of changes in my life lately in almost every area.  I'm living on my own for the first time ever.  I'm starting to tackle some of my oldest and fondest demons.  I got a cat.  My very existence right now is dependent upon the goodwill of my friends and family between Rachel paying most of my rent and the combination of Rachel and David Carr helping me continue to have access to a vehicle.  Even my current position in the army is by the grace of having an amazing sub-company level chain of command that is willing to go out of their way to help me.  And don't even get me started on how dependent I've become on my friends for emotional support.  I finally have a job as a medical professional.  My concepts of patience and faith are undergoing radical redefinition.  I'm back on medication for my ADD despite how proud I was of learning to be functional without it.  For the first time in my life I feel like I have a home.

All of that and more that I didn't list is a lot to deal with over a short period of time.  And I'm not always able to handle it well.  Change is hard.  In the past I have prided myself on my resilience and adaptability and now I am struggling just to maintain sanity while I transition.  But it isn't all bad.  I'm learning how to truly be dependent on God.  I'm learning how to deal with my failures and incorporate them instead of just shutting down.  I'm relearning the value of having a community of friends and family in close proximity so that we can share one another's burdens and build each other up.  I'm learning, wait for it, how to study.  I know, shocking.

I feel overwhelmed and as I look to the near future I can see more dramatic changes on their way and it is sometimes hard for me to maintain my attitude of everything just being a new adventure.  I don't think I've even thought the word adventure in weeks and that used to be my first response to anything new.  But I think the most important take away from all of this is seeing how God uses everything.  He uses my depression, my unintentional outbursts, the struggles of my friends, the weather, and even inconvenient visits from the company commander to accomplish his will and speak to his children.  He even uses atheists to witness to me about the amazingness of himself.  I can't honestly say that I like everything going on in my life at the moment or that I have been a shining example of finding joy in trial but I am humbled that God continues to speak words of love and comfort into my life even as I run from him in shame.  And I am amazed at just how strong he is in my weakness.

Change ultimately means challenge.  If our life circumstances never changed we would learn a casual accommodation to them.  Even the worst circumstances at least become bearable and almost develop a kind of comforting familiarity if they persist for long enough.  But fluctuating circumstances keep us on our toes.  They force us to learn that great motto of stage technicians: semper gumby - always flexible.  And if we rise to the challenge, refuse to become bitter, learn to survive each new wave, and learn from our mistakes, we become better, stronger, smarter, more humble, and incidentally more interesting people from all of it.  And that is all I have to say about that.

Until next time, go with God and abide in His peace.

There is Grace

So I was considering titling this post "Oops" but decided to go with a slightly classier, more enigmatic title which can also be turned around to make a bigger point.  I suppose the inspiration for this post is my rather unfortunate lapse.  I was supposed to be posting an item of thankfulness every day on facebook but when I got busy with the holidays I sort of stopped.  And the reason its taken this long to get back into it is actually the story of my life.  Namely the reason is that I find failure to be crippling.  Not total failures mind you.  When I have totally failed at something I am good at sweeping up the broken pieces and figuring out the next step.  In that sense I am resilient.  It is partial failures that I haven't learned to cope with and it seems like the smaller it is, the less likely I will respond appropriately.

To put some flesh on this I will give an example.  Last year I got a bit behind in my nursing class.  A funeral, some computer trouble and some good old fashioned procrastination lead me to get behind on my clinical paperwork.  No problem.  My clinical instructor was very forgiving and merciful and understanding and told me to just make it up by next week.  Very reasonable and not really that hard.  But the failure to get it in was weighing on me a bit and made the procrastinator in me worse.  It kept snowballing until I was 6 weeks behind, couldn't think of anything else and yet couldn't force myself to sit down and just do it.  The further ramification of this was it effectively distracted me from the massive case study paper that I had to do.  Anything associated with nursing just reminded me of my failures in clinical so I kept finding excuses not to think about that course.  In the end I DID get my clinical paperwork in but I was unable to complete the case study.  Without that paper I was shooting for a solid C and anything below C+ is failing.  The irony is that if I had even half-assed the paper and got maybe a 50% on it I would have passed the course.  I'm not exaggerating I run those numbers in my head all the time.  But my relatively small initial failure effectively paralyzed me.  And then I got to have the lovely discussion with my faculty of where do we go from here.

By the grace of God I did something somewhere somehow to endear myself to them.  I had not 1 but 3 faculty members working with me on this and we came up with the best solution being a medical leave of absence for the semester which prevented the failure from becoming part of my record in any way.  I did have some strong signs of clinical depression so the medical leave could be justified.  Once my failure last year became complete I found it much easier to deal with, my depression improved, and I saw hope in the distance.  I got my act together.  And I gave myself an entire extra year of school.  One of my consolations at the time was thinking well at least I won't see my former classmates too often to remind me of the situation.  Wrong.  I get nearly daily reminders of the fact that I slipped back a graduating year.  Following this rabbit trail (a phrase I've picked up since I started attending MSCC) the reminders have actually been very sanctifying.  Instead of increasing my sense of shame, I have come to accept what happened, forgive myself, and move on.  I can actually see God working through my failure.  Every now and then I catch glimpses of the plan unfolding and I remind myself that God is sovereign.  If he can take a murdering, stuttering, coward like Moses and shake a world power to its foundations what are my problems and failures to Him?  Did it surprise him that I didn't get my work done?  It didn't even truly surprise me.

When I started this post I was not intending it to become what you have already read.  I was intending to apologize for my error and post some items which I am thankful for and move on.  As I was writing something occurred to me.  I believe in grace for sin and freedom from my guilt and shame and yet so often I DO NOT LIVE LIKE I BELIEVE IT.  The system of law is so deeply ingrained in us that it feels wrong to live according to grace.  When I missed a day before I would do 2 items to make up for it.  Having missed a couple weeks I was going to do a blog devoted to making up all the missed days.  I wasn't going to do this because doing it would give me joy I was going to do it for a sense of absolution.  Which is stupid.  So you know what?  I am not going to do that.  Not because I am not thankful or because I couldn't think of enough things to make up the lack but because thankfulness is ultimately about my relationship with God and I am not going to reduce how I deal with God to being an obligatory chore done out of guilt.

Good talk.  God be with you till we meet again.