the dayton days [41]

one of my infamous butt texts to Blake

Monday. I met Mandy at 10:30 for sushi from her work: Soho Sushi, located in Carew Tower downtown. I had a california roll and a spicy tuna roll with edamame. I visited Rob down the street at Tazza Mia. "Apply here," he said. I might. I hung out with Cory & Blake at the Claypole House and perused Newport on the Levee before meeting up with Mikaela at the Mariemont Starbucks. It was good catching up: school, relationships, stoicism. We parted ways--"Keep in touch!"--and I hung out with Ams, Blake, Amos & Tony before heading back to Dayton. I'm going to apply at Tazza Mia. Rob said I could maybe get on full time at the Carew Tower location. It'd get me back in Cincinnati. 

Tuesday. I went and voted because Mom said I had to or she might lose her job. Dylan came over, and we smoked pipes and played Wii and had chicken and potatoes for dinner. He has a Peace Corps interview on Monday. I rejoined Plenty of Fish and OKCupid. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a great girl. But probably not. Tomorrow's my last day of vacation, but I'm ready to go back to work. 

Wednesday. I spent the day watching TV and running errands. Sushi for dinner. Mom had her small group. Not a thrilling day, but a good end to vacation. Wisconsin may not have happened, but it's been good nonetheless.

Thursday. Tony B. at work has been promoted to a shift. I worked there months before him. Jessica came on after me, was all but immediately promoted. Had I been promoted, I could've gotten my own place. Obviously there's frustration: I've consistently gotten great reviews, am one of the strongest baristas, am well-liked, albeit not well-liked enough. Promotion is, as is generally the case, about who's the most popular. Faith & Jessica were like pals right off the bat. Tony's beloved by all, very outgoing. I'm not frustrated with Tony or Jessica, more-so with how promotions are orchestrated. I'm introverted, and that's my downfall. Anyways, to the point: I've been letting this consume me, anger me, depress me, and God just said, "STOP." I'd like to think he has his own reasons for keeping me out of the loop, but I'm a cynic and won't go there. The Spirit convicted me of allowing my mind to continue operating in lieu of "this present age," where one's rank, income, and employment determines worth. My focus shouldn't be on "how to get ahead" but "how to be who I am created to be"--namely, a flourishing human being who's advancing God's kingdom (the two go together). It's like 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. My focus shouldn't be MY kingdom and MY desires and MY dreams but God's kingdom, his desires, his dream. The goal here isn't to "get ahead" but to "get complete," becoming a fully-flourishing human being, and becoming this through suffering, diligence, and patience. My mind, as St. Paul says in Romans 12.1-2, needs to be renewed.

Friday. Mom & I got steak dinners at Lone Star Steakhouse. Dad's out of town for a race. We made a pit-stop by Starbucks on the way home, and she got herself a green tea latte (she's obsessed with them). Rob called me, told me to send my resume to Bob, the owner of Tazza Mia, right away, so I did. Fingers crossed. I'd love to move back to Cincinnati and be with everyone again.

Saturday. I opened with J.J., the shift starting out slow, but then we were slammed. Dewenter came over, and we got lunch at the Sushi Cafe by the Mall and went to DLM for some Chimay beer and drank it at the house while playing Mario-Kart. He left and I read for a while with a beer by the fireplace. So cold outside! Mom made potato soup and I fixed a grilled cheese and we watched "Zombieland." 

Sunday. I grabbed an iced soy chai from work before going to Southwest. Church was great, but I miss the days when I taught; maybe I can shoot for youth ministry? I miss those innocent days, when I was so hopeful. I was going to get married, work at a church, build a family. I'd get close, and then it'd slip through my fingers. If not for fucking things up with Courtney, we'd probably be married with a baby by now. Damn it. I went by Dewenter's after church. His dad's selling a car, a 1992 Toyota Celica, and I might buy it. Only $1000. Dewenter came over to my place for some Wii and beer. Aunt Teri & Grandma are here tonight; great aunt Ethel's in the hospital again. Mandy told me that Bob from Tazza Mia asked Rob about me, and Rob said, "You should hire him." Maebe's scared shitless by Tanner.

on envy

One of my friends had as a status update on the beloved-yet-hated Facebook: "Envy rejects the good life God has given you & obsesses over the good life God gave to someone else." It's been said that all evil often finds its root in another sort of evil. Pride, for example. Or in the love for money. We may as well throw envy into the list. It's what we find in Genesis 3: the envy of both Adam and Eve, the craving to become like God. In Paul's recapitulation of the Fall in Romans 7.7-13, he harks the same theme: coveting. Envy and coveting and all such synonyms point to the desire, the craving--the Greek word Paul uses for "covetousness" in this passage speaks of a burning, insatiable desire--point to the fact that we are, more often than not, ungrateful for that which God has given us. We always want more, and this no doubt is associated with Luther's description of the human condition, homo incurvatus en se: humanity turned in on itself. We're selfish, ungrateful creatures who so often forget the benefits of God towards us, creatures who fail to see the countless blessings he pours out because we're so focused on that blessing (which is always the one we don't have). And then when we get that blessing, we focus on another blessing. It's quite ridiculous. We are unable to be content, we are unable to be satisfied. 

I know, in my own life, that I often fall victim to envy. I fight against it, I really do, but it still creeps in. Granted I'm not as awful with envy as I used to be, thanks to the work of the Spirit in my heart. But that's not to say that envy doesn't get the best of me sometimes. I look all around me at my friends, and I see that they have great and fulfilling jobs, fantastic wives, even children. I want all of that, and I become envious. I covet what they have, I covet the blessings God has given them, and I become bitter, a sour-puss, moaning and complaining at the throne of God, wondering why he hasn't done likewise for me. And amidst all this, I fail to see the things he has given me. I have a job that pays my bills; I have friends who stick closer than a brother; I have a school debt that's nearly paid off; I have a warm bed and a roof over my head and I live in a safe place. I have been given so much, but in focusing on all the blessings God has given other people, I fail to do what Psalm 103 demands that we do: bless the Lord, remember all his benefits (not least how he has forgiven my iniquity, who has healed me of the most critical diseases, who has redeemed my life from the pit and who crowns me with grace and mercy. 

The Bible says that God blesses his children. It doesn't say that he makes them prosperous like Joel Osteen and others like him say; but it doesn't say that all we can expect in this world is to hurt and be hurt in a myriad of ways. There's plenty of blessings and plenty of suffering, and often the two are inextricably connected. The way that God blesses me is different from the ways that he blesses many of my friends. And as much as I may look at them and what they have in envy, they, too, are not free of this plague: they, too, look at others--perhaps even at me!--and envy. It just goes to show how narrow-minded and inwardly-focused (selfish and self-centered) we truly are. And yet God embraces us and lavishes upon us all sorts of good and wonderful gifts. It's really a testament to his grace, mercy, and love more than anything else. And you know, I may not have that which I desire so strongly--a powerful ministry, a loving wife and wonderful children--but that doesn't mean I am not blessed. I am blessed beyond measure. And to top off all the "material" blessings, there's the greatest blessing of all: I can stand in the throne room of God, forgiven of all my sins, my status before God that of a covenant member, a righteous person, a beloved child. That I can stand in the throne room despite my selfishness, greed, and envy is a testament, again, to the great love and mercy of God.

At the Claypole House in Cincinnati, the house church has a white-board with prayer requests written on it, and the very last one reads: "Thank God for something. And don't say 'everything.'" I have been putting that into practice for the last several weeks. It's so easy to just say, "Thank you, God, for everything you've given me..." but to actually sit down, examine your life, and to point directly at something, and say, "Thank you, God, for this..." Not only, I think, is that more desirable of God, but it keeps fresh in one's mind all the countless benefits that God showers upon us, benefits which we don't see because, all too often, we are blinded by our jealousy and envy. Thank God for something particular today. Imagine life without it. Realize how little you deserve it. And see how graciously and delightfully God bestows it. Thanking God for certain benefits its refreshing, an antidote of sorts to envy; and I think keeping in mind an eschatological world-view helps, too. When we focus solely on the "here and now," and when we make our lives with God all about what takes place in this present age, we miss that the ultimate salvation, the ultimate deliverance, the ultimate redemption has yet to take place (although it is secure for those in Jesus). A day is coming when all we will experience is blessing, blessing, and blessing, a day when suffering will be no more. A healthy antidote to envy is good eschatology, and when we frame our thoughts, stories, and praxis within the framework of inaugurated-yet-not-complete eschatology, then we can direct our attentions and energies to that which will last rather than to that which is passing. 

words unspoken, tales unwritten

The last 4-5 months have had their ups and downs. I lost another 25# and reached my freshman weight of 135#. I never thought I'd be able to pull it off, but thanks to hard work and determination, I did. I "dated" two girls, but none of it went anywhere. One was kinda crazy, the other just had different plans and goals in life, and thus we were incompatible. I have hope to find The Winner soon, the one whom I'll build a family with. "Soon, soon..." I am trying with diligence but finding all avenues closed or dead-ends. I still don't know what I want to do in life, but I'm eager to see what happens. This situation can't last forever. I believe one day I'll fall in love, get married, and have children, which is what I crave more than anything. Selfish? Of course. But at least this selfishness is coached in selflessness: I want to be a good husband and a good father, with all the sacrifice that involves. But until then I'll just roll with the punches. Each new journal is, in the words of Natasha Bedingfield, "where your book begins." I haven't heard "Unwritten" in a long time, but on my way home from work, the words just struck me, unusually so, as a new journal--which will probably span many more months--begins.

Staring at the blank page before you

Open up the dirty window

Let the sun illuminate the words

That you could not find

Reach for something in the distance

So close you can almost taste it

Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin

No one else can feel it for you

Only you can let it in

No one else, no one else

Can speak the words on your lips

Drench yourself in words unspoken

Live your life with arms wide open

Today is where your book begins...

It's not a "guilty pleasure" song, because I don't regularly or even willfully listen to it. But I'm forced to listen to the radio in my car when it's cold, because my CD player doesn't work when the weather drops below forty. Regardless, a new book is beginning, and I don't really have any "ambitions" except to (a) maintain my 135# while building muscle, (b) enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas with tons of family and friends, and (c) figure out which next step to take in my journey. I would throw in (d) (move to Cincinnati) but that looks unlikely unless I catch a break. Oh, and speaking of Inhibitions (see N. Bedingfield), this Great Lakes Christmas Ale is quite nice and I've had three and I think they may be getting to me...

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.