sacrilegious? maybe

Yesterday while praying I felt God really convicting me about something. I continually find my thoughts operating within the realm of "the present age," my thoughts being squeezed and molded into the shape of this passing world. In this world, your rank, income, success, attractiveness, etc. is what counts; they're that which determine your worth. Now I obviously don't agree with that assessment. I don't put much stock on having fancy things--my car's a piece of junk, but as long as it runs, I could care less about how it looks--or in being successful in the world's eyes; my salary--or, rather, in my case, hourly wage--don't determine my worth as a person. I know all of this and acknowledge all of this, but the problem is that sometimes, in ways I can and cannot see, I allow this corrupt framework of thought to determine the way I see things and to determine my feelings. My focus shouldn't be, as it so often is, "how to get ahead" but "how to be who I am created to be"--namely, a flourishing human being who is advancing God's kingdom (the two go hand-in-glove). It's like what Paul says in Colossians 3: don't focus on the present age but on the age to come, the age that has broken into the present via Messiah's resurrection. My focus isn't to be on my kingdom and my desires and my dreams but on God's kingdom and his desires and his dream of a world reborn. My efforts ought not be focused on "getting ahead" but "getting complete," becoming a fully-flourishing human being, becoming through suffering, diligence, and patience (and, of course, the Spirit) the person I will be when I am glorified in that future day. My mind, as St. Paul says in Romans 12.1-2, needs to be renewed, and this renewing is something that I must do consciously and decisively each day, when I wake in the morning and when I go to bed at night. The present world encroaches all around me, and having lived in its clutches so long, I am easily deceived; but I must look at the world different, the world as is revealed through the scriptures and by God's Spirit, and I must allow my life--my priorities, my commitments, my thoughts and feelings and actions--to be shaped and molded around that. 

The above is out of my journal from yesterday, and it's not something I've forgotten. I continue to think about it, continue to meditate on it, continue to pray about it. And as I do this thinking, meditating, and praying, I don't do it along. There is the Spirit on one hand and Great Lakes Christmas Brew on the other: 

Sacrilegious? Maybe. But probably not. Beer has been a staple of the Christian diet since the birth of the early church (well, before beer, there was wine, but still). And lest we forget, the first building the Puritans built when they came to the New World was a brewery. All this talk about priorities reinforces one of mine: good beer. And Great Lakes Christmas Ale is part of that. Like I told my friend Destini, "After a couple beers, I really begin to be filled with the spirit." All joking aside, I thank God that he created such plants and such minds that beer could be discovered. I imagine that at the eschatological banquet, there will be all sorts of great beers to go around. 

define badass

My five-day vacation ended at 6:00 AM this morning when I went into work. What a great vacation it was! I got to spend time with many of my closest friends, and I even got to catch up with some I haven't seen in years. Good food, good beer, good conversations, lots of laughs. Minus being sick for the last two days--I'm overcoming some sort of cold/sinus infection--it was a much-needed vacation. I feel energized and ready for the holiday season at Starbucks.

Dylan (who came down to Cincinnati to hang out for a bit) said, "I can tell you're happy here." I am. I want to move back. I applied for a couple jobs in the Cincinnati area, and I'm hoping to possibly find a good position with Tazza Mia, a coffee shop chain based in the Cincinnati area. Many of my friends work there or have worked there in the past. If I'm able to get a job, Mandy said I could crash at her place till I get my living situation hammered out. I've been praying about it, and I really want to go back to Cincinnati. I like it here in Centerville, but it can get lonely, because the majority of my friends are in Cincinnati. I love them, I love the city, I love what Cincinnati can be. So having applied for those jobs, I'm just going to see what happens. I'm going to continue losing weight and bulking up; I'm going to continue writing; I'm going to continue praying. We'll see what happens. 

As for the upcoming week, I don't have a lot planned. Payday is tomorrow, so I may treat myself to some China Cottage. I haven't had it in a while. Saturday I'm going to be hanging out with Pat and Pat (Dewenter and Hague), and Sunday I'll be going to church, and then all next week I work, which is nice. I can't stand to have nothing to do, sitting around all day. It wears me out. As introverted as I am--I'm an INFP according to most personality tests--I get restless very easily. 

Gethsemane and a dumpster

A year ago--literally to the day--I found myself curled up in a ball outside a bar in Clifton, wedged between a moss-covered brick wall and a graffiti-stained dumpster. The months leading up to that had been ridden with despair, hopelessness, and all sorts of sadness, and it all came out that night. I had gone to a bar to pick up a friend who had drank too much, but she didn't want to leave. Surrounded by all the people, I felt entirely alone. The build-up of emotions overcame me, and I left the bar and walked down the street and started crying. I sought to escape by holing myself between the wall and the dumpster, and I fell down and leaned against the dumpster amidst the discarded beer bottles and wept and prayed but more-so wept. College kids walked by and saw me and laughed and that just made it worse. I've never felt so ashamed. I yelled at God, albeit through tears, and demanded to know why, despite all my prayers, he wouldn't help. More than a few foul words escaped my lips (none of them cursing God). My friend came looking for me and called me and I stood and brushed myself up and dried my eyes with my coat-sleeve and I found her and I took her home. The weeks following that event, things just got worse. Flipping through my journals from that time, I was reminded again of the darkness that enshrouded me:

I pray for deliverance, but I am met with an impenetrable silence; and this begs the question, "Why pray? Why seek God's help?" And thoughts rage through my head. Why pray when God won't answer? Why pray when he seems not to care? Why pursue a life of honoring him when he has seemingly abandoned you? Why seek to fall in love with the one who is deaf to your cries and blind to your tears? I've wept and screamed and fallen apart. I have cried out to God again and again and received nothing but Silence. I have pounded my fists upon God's door, so hard that they've bled, and it seems as if he is standing inside the door with no intentions of opening it. But I continue to pray, and I continue to pound. I continue because I still have hope. I have hope that God will intervene and show me mercy and grant me grace, peace, and joy. It is hope in God that keeps me going. (Nov 4, 2009)

Does God care? Or is he simply not there? No, I know he's there. His existence has never been in question. What's in question is his disposition towards me. No, I know he cares. But it's so hard to obey him when it seems that he has forsaken me... Have I become so disillusioned by my pathetic life that prayer seems fruitless? And yet the thought is, "If God won't listen and help, why pray at all?"... I started to cry, so I snuck out of the house and got into my car and drove and wept and cried and smoked. When I went to bed I cried myself to sleep. The words keep repeating over and over in my mind: "God has abandoned you." (November 11, 2009)

Life teaches us not to hope and not to believe in fairy-tales. Where am I to go now? To a God who ignores me, a God who seemingly has it out to get me? It's nearly impossible to trust God--to hope in God--when it seems he doesn't give a damn. (November 21, 2009)

For years and years I've prayed, and for what? To receive a door slammed in my face. The apathy of God. Every new hope as empty and futile as the last. It's gotten to the point, steadily crawling towards it, that I cannot even hope in hope. What can I hope in? God? It seems like he's just out to get me, just out to torture and torment me. It is numbing and nauseating. I am in school to be a minister, and I am too broken and bitter to even say God's name with a smile on my face. He repeatedly ignores my cries for help, and I am just submerged deeper and deeper into this hellhole of my life. I want to return to those old tried-and-true methods of escape, but that would just answer God. But here's what I know to be true: everything I've hoped for has been a dead end, and the answer I receive from all my tear-laced prayers is that hope is empty. And if there is no hope, then what do I have? Nothing. Nothing to look forward to, nothing but this unceasing and broken anguish, my own personal hell from which there seems to be no redemption. There's nothing I can do escape continue to weep, continue to pray, and as the darkness wraps tighter around me, I fear there will be no light to be found. (November 25, 2009)

Nearly every following that event (and preceding it) is a testament to the darkness that enshrouded me. You might call it a "dark night of the soul," or a "crisis of faith." I never abandoned God through all of it, and I obeyed him with gritted teeth and weakening resolve. I read page-to-page many times over C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed," taking comfort in the fact that I was not the only Christian who had to walk through his own Gethsemane. I did find some comfort, every once in a while, through the reading of C.S. Lewis, of talking about these things with loving and concerned friends. I wasn't judged for what I was going through, as so many Christians would be so eager to do. Instead I was embraced and loved, and the command in Galatians took on new meaning: "bear one another's burden." This was my burden, but God in his grace gave me great friends and family who helped me push forward. And, amidst my feelings of being abandoned and ignored by God, the Spirit was there, oftentimes in the quiet.

I wept and wept last night. Amanda came into my room and gave me a hug. She cried with me. And as we cried, I prayed that God would at least comfort me. And at that moment the tears stopped flowing and a wave of peace swam over me. (November 12, 2009)

Those moments were far and few between, but the power within them was undeniable. In those moments I was reminded, again, that God had not abandoned me. I didn't have answers but I had the unmistakable presence of God. It wouldn't be long, however, until the power of those moments broke, and I was again overcome with the despair. This lasted for several months, through all of which I continued to pray, and to weep, and to curse, and then it reached a pinnacle and I broke like I never broke before. Unable to handle it, I got shit-faced alone in the dining room and with the world spinning I collapsed upon the chair and begged God to help me. I begged him like I've never begged him before. All the prayers over the last months came to a head. I was drunk, alone, out-of-control. And the next morning he delivered me, a deliverance which I did not expect but a deliverance that took place nearly overnight. I found myself again laughing, singing, and dancing like I used to; I praised God day in and day out for the deliverance, tasting again the sweetness of joy, peace, and hope. 

All of this harks back to what I wrote yesterday. Does God involve himself in our private, individual lives? Yes. I remember the dumpster night often, and I remember every day how God came through right when it seemed like there was not an ounce of hope left. My praying, my crying, my waiting shriveled hope and trust to a bare meager line, and right when that line threatened to snap, God stepped in and, in a way I never expected, delivered me from the mire and the clay. The words of the psalmist in Psalm 88 were a constant prayer; and then my prayer became that of Psalm 42: "I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD." God has a knack for waiting till the last moment to deliver us. He's waited till the last moment time and time again throughout history, and I ask myself, "Why?" Maybe so that our patience and endurance are developed, or maybe so that our trust in him can be strengthened. But I think, most of all, that he does it this way because then, when he does it, we will not be able to deny it nor explain it away. His power is revealed, and what he does he does for his own glory. 

In the end, I thank God every day for that half-year of pain and misery. I thank him because through it all, my devotion to him was tested. I remained devoted to him even when it seemed like he had abandoned me. I continued to trust in him--even if it took all my weak strength--even when it seemed that he had slain me. I thank God for it because my relationship with him was deepened. I thank God because wrestling with him is one of the surest signs that you have met him. I thank God because through all of that, my world-view was challenged, broken, and then rebuilt. Although there are certainly negative developments in my thought that came about because of those days--not least my cynicism towards, well, generally everything--the benefits far outweigh them. I thank God for those months and I pray that I never experience anything like them again.

questioning hope

Everything seemed so simple and bright when I lived in that house. I grew up there and made so many good memories, and it was from there that I headed off to college where I found myself sure of everything. I knew that within four years, I would be married (or at least engaged) and working at a small church. When I visited C.C.U., I felt a strange peace about the place unlike any other college I visited; and my mother told me, "When we got there, I knew this is where you were meant to go." Goaded by my hopes and dreams, and confident in a God who would make all my dreams come true, I attended the college expecting to meet a wonderful, beautiful, godly girl; expecting to deepen my intimacy with God; expecting to come out changed, transformed, intelligent and wiser. I met many beautiful and godly girls, but I met more back-stabbing, betrayal, and cheating than I ever expected. My "intimacy" with God plummeted amidst cycles of barbaric depression. I came out more intelligent, wiser, changed and transformed, but not in a way I had expected. Hit with depression like a sledgehammer, brought to my knees in shame and humiliation, questioning everything I had ever believed in, I graduated the school with a bitter, cold, and calloused understanding of the world. I went from a hopeful Christian theism to a deism, then to a nihilistic deism, and then back to regular deism and into a new, revised, and updated understanding of God, Jesus, the church, the world, and not least, myself. Wiser? Yes. Happier? No. But ignorance is bliss, but bliss at the cost of ignorance is foolishness. Much better to face the world for what it is than to stick your head in the sand like some fucking ostrich and ignore the world around you.

I questioned everything, but most of all I questioned hope. I came to picture hope as nothing more than a fanciful illusion, an escapist strategy to avoid facing reality in the face and acknowledging what all the signs are telling us. I compared hope to barbed wire: the tighter you hold on, the more it hurts, and the more you bleed. Convinced nothing good could come out of hope, I abandoned hope altogether. And that in turn led to different escapist techniques, more damaging and hurtful techniques. While hope may not be true-to-life, at least it didn't cause people I loved pain. When I began rethinking Christianity rather than discarding it--although, to be honest, I'm not sure what I "did" with Christianity; I still clung to it, albeit in a shrunken form, but never gave it much thought--I found it ludicrous that the scriptures talked so much about hope. A hope that doesn't disappoint? Hell, I've only experienced hope that does disappoint. And then I began doing some studying more, and I learned--"learned" isn't the right word, because I knew this all along, but I hadn't really known it, if that makes sense--that the hope spoken of in the New Testament is not the same kind of hope that I had been disappointed by again and again. While my hope was focused on life in this world, the New Testament's hope is focused on life in the world to come. It has an eschatological focus. But hope in heaven? Come on. We say we hope for it, but we all know we're a bunch of hypocrites and liars, self-deluded and self-deceived. But I learned again and came to knowing--really knowing--what "heaven" is: it's a recreated physical world free of death, decay, sin, and evil. It's everything we've always wanted, the existentialist's wet dream. And studying this, thinking about this, meditating on this and praying about this, I found new energy in my bones, a new level of endurance, a hope that spawned joy.

If our hope is to be eschatological, does that mean that this life is nothing more than a "vale of tears"? It's easy to drift back into deism: our hope is in the future, not the present; therefore we should hope only in the future, and not the present; and because our hope is in what God will do in the future, we shouldn't hope for what God will do in the present. While distancing ourselves from the deist conception of a god who creates the world and then sits back with his arms crossed, we can easily become a sub-deist by believing that God is interactive with the world, but only in big events. The Exodus, the exiles, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the future consummation of the kingdom of God, etc. But if this is true--that is, if God's interaction with the world is done so only on global, or at least societal, scales--then where does that leave me? And you? And everyone else as individuals? Is God not involved? Is it foolish to pray that God bless you in certain ways? Is it foolish to pray for certain temporal events to come to pass? Is everything that happens just a conglomerate of our choices, the choices of others, and the roll of the dice? Does God not intervene? I know that God does intervene, I know that God does answer prayers--even selfish prayers over against selfless prayers (if there is such a thing)--but I've found that pragmatically I am leaning towards the "God in the gaps" theory (I use that phrase knowing that technically it refers to something entirely different; but bear with me). 

I don't know why I want to think this, but I do. And I've been thinking about this, and praying about this, and I think it all boils down to this: when it comes to my personal, selfish prayers, God hasn't really answered them ("Well, he did answer them: he said no!" you might say; come on, give me a break). It's frustrating, because when it comes to my prayers for other people, I see God working and answering them again and again, and often in big, dramatic ways that make the people I pray for go completely white-faced. An example: five years ago, six of my friends and I made a pact that we would pray that God would bring us wives (or, in the case of the girls, husbands). Within a year, all we single, hopeless romantic were engaged. Three years later, five of us were engaged. Four years from the offset, five were married and one was engaged. And at this point I was still picking the knives from my back delivered by cheating, back-stabbing girls. Now I've watched them all get married--except for one, who is having quite the long engagement--and I find myself faced, in my own selfish prayers, with silence and doors slamming this way and that. I feel--and I know this may be quite foolish, but it is also brutally honest--that God ignores my prayers for myself but happily answers my prayers for others. This doesn't mean that I have stopped praying that God would bring me a wonderful, godly girl; it just means that I am like the woman in the parable who begs the king again and again for something, and the bad king eventually just gives in and gives her what she wants. Except in my retelling, the good king is more withholding than the bad. Again: this is just how I feel, I know it's not true.

So my question is: "Is it foolishness to pray for such things?" Is it ridiculous to pray for God to intervene, to bring a wonderful girl into my life whom I can marry and raise a family with? It's certainly not for lack of trying. All those knives in the back came after I stepped out there and trusted in God, and they usually came days after I thanked God for answering my prayer (which, on another note, has made me fearful of thanking God for things, because the moment I do, I fear he'll snatch them away). Of course, when we find an answer to prayer being taken away, the answer is usually that it wasn't the answer to prayer we'd been waiting on, and the answer to the circumstance is to just wait longer. Nevertheless, I find myself questioning, on a pragmatic level, whether God does care, whether God will answer this prayer. It's all very frustrating and saddening, and I'd be lying if it didn't bring me to cuss a few times. These are questions I've been asking not just myself but God as well. I don't think that God "speaks to us" all the time, but I do believe that by his Spirit we can see signposts to an answer. Is it mere circumstance that as I've been praying about this, I've been seeing "signposts" towards hope: a random note from a friend, a random scripture reading, little things like that. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I just want them to be "signs from heaven" because it would bring some comfort. But I just don't know. 

What I do know is that I'll keep praying for this, as I have been for the past seven years.

I'll keep praying, and praying, and waiting, and waiting.

And maybe I'm waiting on a resolution that will never come.

Because nothing--nothing--is guaranteed.

Dylan told me when I moved back home, "You're such a cynic, but I think your perceptions will change for the better." I hope he's right. I want to experience God answering my prayers. I want to experience God moving in me, around me, amidst me. But sometimes life is marked by depression and futile dreams and emptiness. But then again, there's always the eschatological hope, the hope of glorification and resurrection, and that keeps me going even when the darkness wraps around me so tightly that I can't see nor hardly breathe. 

house church contemplations

Tonight at house church Mandy read an excerpt from N.T. Wright’s “Surprised By Hope” regarding the bodily ascension of Jesus into heaven and his subsequent relationship with the church and, consequently, how that informs and directs the church’s mission. I took some notes and allowed my thoughts to develop. Jesus is in heaven in bodily form (heaven is simply the realm of God, and the classifications between physical and spiritual are leftovers from Platonism and Gnosticism and shouldn’t inform our understanding of what heaven may be like). The church is the community of God’s people in the world, redeemed in Messiah Jesus; the church is constituted by its placement between the Now and Not Yet, by its placement between Easter and Consummation. Jesus is bodily in heaven and yet present with us; my best understanding of how this works is that Jesus is in bodily form in heaven, reigning in heaven and over and against the church, present with his people through the Spirit. In heaven Jesus reigns. He is Lord, which means that he is both the Judeo-Christian God YHWH (the Greek kyrios was often used in the LXX in place of YHWH) and the King, the Emperor, the Master—Caesar’s rival, the king of which Caesar is a mere shadow and parody. Jesus is king, and the church is comprised of his loyal subjects. As loyal subjects, the church is to serve the role of advancing the kingdom of God which Jesus inaugurated in his death and resurrection. We are to be his emissaries and ambassadors, his agents in his kingdom-work, summoning the world to obedience to the rightful king and putting into practice his kingdom of justice, peace, beauty, hope, and love. When it comes to our relationship with God (and Jesus), the Bible is full of metaphors. Jesus is our friend and he is our King. The friendship we have with Jesus, I think, is founded upon the status we have before him: he is our king, and we are his subjects. I’m not going to bow down before any of my friends, but one day I’ll be bowing down before Jesus (Phil 2.10-11, I believe). 

Those were the notes I took down during the actual discussion. When we went into prayer and meditation, the Spirit spoke to me. Amidst my studies in repentance, I have written a lot about what God desires and demands of us: loyalty. The crucified and resurrected Jesus of Nazareth is the world’s true Lord, reigning from heaven; and one day the veil between heaven and earth will be ripped asunder, and all those who refused to put loyalty in him will experience death and all those who put their loyalty in him will experience resurrection, glorification, and participation in the new heavens and new earth. What God demands of us in faith isn’t merely mentally assenting to the truth of the gospel. Nor is it simply trusting in him for our salvation. It isn’t the legalism of being good enough to merit his grace. It is loyalty, and within the pail of loyalty all those other aspects of faith come together into a beautiful panorama. Amidst all of this talk about Jesus being King and demanding loyalty from his subjects, one can easily slip into the mindset of perceiving Jesus as this cold, sterile, angry King who is eager to punish. Many kings in the world are quite like that, and our historical experiences of kings can and do influene how we understand Jesus and his kingship. I thank God that I don’t picture Jesus like that; I used to (as my friend Mandy said she did, too), and it was hell. 

That Jesus is King is wonderful news. The world’s true king is not like all the other kings that have gone before. Jesus is characterized by self-giving love: self-sacrifice. He is compassionate, merciful, slow to anger and eager to forgive (I have always suspected that God is more eager to forgive us than we are eager to receive his forgiveness). We who have put our loyalty in him will, as James say, stumble many times and in many ways. Amidst these stumblings and sins, God doesn’t reject us. He drowns us in his love and grace, refreshing our broken and wounded hearts, mending us and healing us, lovingly guiding us and directing us. He knows that we are not yet glorified; he knows that we are accosted by all sorts of temptations and that we are made of dust. He is understanding and graciously, generously, and lavishly forgiving. His disposition towards us, even sinners as awful as me, is one of love and benevolence and favor. It is comforting that the King of the World is the one who healed the lepers, forgave the adulterers, and embraced the unclean. He is the one who begged the Father to forgive those who executed him on a shameful cross. He is the one who offered himself on a cross not for the faithful but for the faithless. The kings of this world are self-serving, brutal, two-timing and manipulative, caring more about their thrones than about their subjects. And even if an unjust king can be patient and graceful, how much more a king who stepped down from the throne to secure the rescue of his subjects, even taking his place between the rebellious and their fate, going through their fate and carving a path straight through it. It is a joy and a privilege to serve a king like Jesus. May we gaze upon the cross and bow down before our gracious, loving, and merciful king, submitting any part of ourselves that we have continued to hold back from him. 

happy halloween

The party last night was fantastic. I got to see so many good people whom I haven't seen in a while. I enjoyed three different Trappist beers, and ended up being one of the few who didn't end up getting drunk. However, apparently Trappist beers have higher alcohol levels, and I did feel quite buzzed for a while. I spent most of the night around the fire out back. Beer pong, Rock Band, and all sorts of other party tricks were going on inside, but I'm the type of guy who enjoys fireside conversations much more. So I sat out by the fire for nearly five hours and drank my beers and swapped stories with people I haven't seen since sophomore year of college. Eventually it got too cold and I went inside and sat in the living room with some other folk, and I enjoyed watching them and their drunken antics. Around 2:30 I headed home, giving Jobst a lift on the way. I passed out in bed nearly immediately. All in all a good night. The highlights are always the conversations and the laughter with people you haven't seen in a long, long time.

I wrote about this in an earlier post, but it happened again last night. Maybe it was being around people whom I haven't seen in a while--including her ex-roommate who actually introduced the two of us--but I've been thinking about Courtney a lot. It's been three and a half years, and the "thinking" isn't the kind that it used to be. There's no pain, no remorse, no nostalgia. More just thinking about the memories, memories which have become so warped and distorted that there's no litmus test available for knowing how things really went down (except for my journals from that period in my life, but I haven't looked through those in nearly a year and a half). I guess I've thought about it more these days because it seems like everyone I know is getting married. Kyle, Caleb, and Ben are all engaged now. Most of my friends from college are either engaged or married. Hearing them talk about it, going to the weddings--being in the weddings--makes me think of her, because we were going to get married, but that never happened. The living dream turned into a living nightmare, and I entered one of the darkest periods of my life thus far. Nevertheless, it was a great growing experience, as they say, and God really used that to help me grow into a better human person. Does that mean I wouldn't go back and do things differently? No. I'd try to salvage it all if I could. Not that anything I did brought about the end of the relationship; it was her doing. But sometimes--like right now--I would gladly go back and do things over again. But, then again, I wouldn't be able to love her like I did. Love doesn't work like that. I'm not depressed or sorrowful, more-so contemplative. And today hopefully I won't think about it as I hang out with more friends and visit some amazing coffee houses. 

the dayton days [40]

@ Fountain Square

Monday. Lunch: spring rolls from DLM. Dylan & Tyler came over. We played Wii and Tyler ordered pizza. Dylan burnt himself something awful on melted plastic.

Tuesday. I dreamt about Courtney last night and woke depressed. It passed with coffee and a cigarette. Massive storms came through. The tornado sirens went off, so I went to work for chai tea. The storms rolled through quickly. It was a monsoon, so much rain and flooding. I may have pink-eye, so I called Jessica to see if I should still work. She said I could, so I am: I need the money. My call woke her up, and she sounded cute on the phone. Too bad we'd both be fired if we dated. She's a cute, fun, sassy girl. But it's all just wishful thinking.

Wednesday. My eye irritated the hell out of me all through work. I was supposed to teach Dad's small group but my pink-eye was giving me hell, so I declined. Jessica's got a sore throat, 10x worse than it was yesterday; when I went in this morning, she was in the back crying. Luckily Wade came to her rescue. Tonight she texted me: "I'm awake and if you give me pink-eye, I'll die."

Thursday. These eye-droplets really do wonders. Mom made pancakes for dinner: she always does them well, I always fuck them up.

Friday. I worked 6:30-3:00 and then jetted straight down to Cincinnati for my FIVE DAY VACATION! I was supposed to be in Wisconsin visiting Mandy K., but she's got a boyfriend now so that got wiped out. Cincinnati shall suffice. I hung out with Tony & Amos at the Claypole House, then went to The Anchor for eggs and toast with coffee. Rob, Mandy & I went to Kroger and The Party Source; I got some good Trappist beer for tomorrow's one-day-early Halloween party. Ams showed up, and we went over to her place, and Dylan joined us for a sleepover. Sarah got home from work dressed up as a cat.

Saturday. Dylan & I picked up Jobst at 11:30 and met up with Blake & Ams on Fountain Square for lunch at Rock Bottom Brewery. I got nachos and a beer. We walked around Fountain Square and Jobst got picked up by a friend. The rest of us went to the Halloween store on Glenway for costumes. Dylan went back to Dayton and I took a three hour nap and then headed from Ams' apartment to the party at the Claypole House. So many great people: Blake, Amos, Coop & Laura, Nate & Kirby, Ulrich & Blayne, Josh & Esther, Joel & Joel (one Mikaela's brother, the other Amos' brother), Andy Waugh, tons of other people. Even Gambill & Faikham showed up, and that was great. I had my three Trappist beers, got pretty drunk. We sat around the fire out back and by 2:30 I was sober and after talking with Sarah on the porch for a while I went back to Ams' and crashed.

Halloween. I woke early and went by Mount Echo, stood looking at the city and praying for a bit. My prayers in that place used to be so heart-wrenching. Sarah, Ams & I went to The Anchor and it was hipster central. Sarah & I went to Refuge and Andy hooked us up. We parted ways and I went back by the Claypole House, and we had spaghetti before House Church. It was pretty great, on the kingship of Jesus. Gambill came over later and Mandy wanted to smoke pot but I didn't feel like it.