Easter relfections

Today is the day we celebrate the crux of Christianity, that Jesus is risen!  I've been trying to get around to writing a blog on this topic all day, but I've simultaneously been sicker than a dog so I've mostly stayed in bed all day and felt sorry for myself.  To give you an idea of just how sick I've been, I've lost 6 pounds in 24 hours so far, and that's without a special diet!  It seems like it's malaria flaring up again, which isn't cool at all but oh well.  Some people have pinched nerves that flare up every once in a while, others of us have malaria.  What are you going to do?

Anyways, back to reflections on Easter.  This is the day that we celebrate the rising of Jesus from the dead.  Sometimes I struggle with this concept.  Some people say you just need to have faith.  There are several books defending the resurrection, some of which I've read and some I haven't, but they do help with certain doubts that I've had in the past.  At some point, though, it is a step of faith.  This is where atheists say we're way off base, but I would argue it takes just as much faith to say we came from monkeys or fish or whatever the newest thing they're going to say we came from happens to be at any given time.  Everyone has faith in something, I would just rather put my faith in a Creator God who knows infinitely more than I do.

What difference does the resurrection make today?  If it's true, than it changes everything.  If it's untrue, than we're all hopeless and might as well give up now.  God has placed eternity into the hearts of man.  That thing that longs for something more within you?  That still small voice that says there has to be more to life than what you're currently experiencing?  What do you think that's from?  You just came up with it on your own? I dare say that is the Holy Spirit whispering to you that you're right, there is more that this life has to offer.  That there is a better way, one that involves losing your life to gain it.

We are fallen creatures, to be sure.  Even atheists and agnostics will acknowledge that there is something terribly wrong in today's world.  Something I've never understood before is how my non-believing friends can pour their hearts into some work in one field or another.  If it truly doesn't matter what you do in this life since there is no life afterwards, than why put forth so much effort in this one?

Mother Theresa is quoted as saying something along the lines of 'in the faces of the poor is where we see Jesus in His most distressing disguises.'  With this in mind, I'm pretty sure I saw Jesus a while back.  He was disguised as a homeless woman who approached me at Walmart and wanted to talk about Christians.  It rattled me to the core.  She was saying how some people just want to worship but what about taking in your brothers and sisters in Christ into your home to help them get back on their feet?  I remember coming up with some lame answer as to why I couldn't host her that night.  It has stuck with me ever since.  Jesus in His most distressing disguises, to be sure.  She asked me that if we were to go to heaven eventually and worship together for eternity, why didn't fellow believers even acknowledge her existence on earth, in the right here and now?  Ouch, right?

So, why'd Jesus bother dying on a Christ, and then rose again?  Why was it necessary for an innocent man to die a criminal's death?  In my limited understanding of the subject, His death was offered as a substitute for the penalty that we all owe God for our sin.  One of my favorite arguments is from people who say they're a good person, so they don't need Christ.  You're a good person, according to whom and compared to whom?  Well, I'm not Hitler.  Well, you're not Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela either, are you?  No one will be able to stand before a righteous God when it's all said and done without a substitute to stand in their place.  If God is infinitely holy and pure, than He cannot stand sin in His sight.  That's why Jesus came, to cover our sin and iniquity so that God views us as holy and blameless when He sees us because we're covered by the blood of the lamb.

Marching for Marriage?

This may surprise some of you, but I get weekly emails from the Heritage Foundation.  The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank from what I can tell and I like to read their weekly emails to see what conservatives are thinking, as if having the majority of my friends be conservative isn't enough.  Many of my friends like to refer to me as liberal, and perhaps I am, but I also think it largely depends on the issue at hand.  For example, on abortion, I would be labeled a conservative.  On healthcare, I would be labeled a liberal.  And so on and so forth.

Anyways, this week's email was talking about how there was a march for marriage at the capital.  People were up in arms apparently at the thought of gay people marrying.  It seems this has been in the news quite a bit lately, which I've been largely unaware of since I don't have TV anymore.  I get snippets of news from a daily email highlighting some articles but am still pretty out of touch as far as TV news goes.  

Last week's email by the same group talked about the importance of children having a man and a woman raising them.  I remember couchsurfing with a gay man back in 2008 or 2009 and having some real questions about gay marriage back then that are surfacing again.  If groups like the Heritage Foundation are so adamant about marriage having to be between a man and a woman; then what about our high divorce rate?  What's worse/better, 2 men or 2 women raising a kid or a single woman or man who is divorced or never been married in the first place?

This week's email quoted some 11 year-old as asking the question who didn't she need - her mom or her dad?  Their point was that no one could answer her.  Did they bother asking the kids whose parents were divorced who they didn't want when their parents split up?

Perhaps we're asking the wrong people in the first place.  Maybe people groups who have an amazingly low divorce rate should be asked what they think as they're obviously doing something correct with their own marriages.  As a single, never-been-married person, it shouldn't matter what my opinion is on the matter.  Similarly, someone who is up in arms one way or the other and yet is divorced doesn't necessarily have an opinion that matters much either I would argue.

Why is homosexuality such a big deal when it comes to churches?  We seem to have no problem whatsoever inviting people who are divorced, even for non-Biblical reasons, into our churches.  But those gay people, keep 'em out!  If they want to come to Jesus they better change their orientation first.  Right?  Because for every other sin we're so concerned about the person cleaning up their lives before coming to Christ, right?  What if we just accepted people right where they're at, for who they are right then and there?  What if the Church became known for offering love and acceptance, rather than hate and rejection?

Do I support gay marriage?  Who cares?  I know I'll have friends who are appalled at my flippancy on the subject, but I really don't care one way or the other.  Several years ago, I had a Sunday school teacher say that every nation that has embraced gay people has then fallen shortly thereafter.  I'm pretty sure if America falls it won't be because of allowing gay marriage.  It will be because of our debt and the way we treat the least of these.  There are some pretty harsh words throughout Scripture for those who are rich and do nothing for the needs of those around them.  Fat cows of Bashan and so on.  There are also quite a few words for debtors as being slaves to the lenders and I have a hard time thinking that doesn't or won't apply to us as a nation in a fairly short time and perhaps it is already happening now.

FOCUS!!!

Sometimes, like today, I get frustrated with some of my students for their inability to focus on simple tasks.  There are several of them that I feel like I almost always have to give directions to at least twice, sometimes more like three or four times before it starts to sink in.  Often times I wonder if I'm nothing more than the teacher in the front of the class on a Peanuts cartoon and all the students are hearing is "Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah."

Part of the reason I feel frustrated is because I see myself in them.  Lately, and during other episodes of depression, I have an extremely difficult time focusing on simple tasks that shouldn't be difficult to complete.  This can be completely exhausting to put it lightly, both because I know I have work to do and because I know it really shouldn't take me as long as it does when I do finally get around to completing it.

The answer, for both my students and myself, is elusive.  How do you focus when it seems as though your brain simply won't allow you to?  You could drug students, and many people do and I've even recommended that at different times.  I'm on drugs myself for the bipolar stuff, maybe I'll make it rich someday by making a drug for bipolars that helps with mood stabilization as well as helps one focus.  Probably not though, if I were to guess.  Call it my lack of basic chemistry knowledge, but I don't think I'll be creating any pharmaceutical drugs anytime soon.  

What I see in some of my students that struggle with focus is a lack of stability in their home lives.  The ones who seem to have the most difficulty focusing are the ones whose moms had them when they were 15 or 16 and are now 20 or 21.  That is simply too young to be having a child of your own since you can't possibly be expected to provide a good solid structure at that age.  

What about my own life, though?  I have a solid place to live, I have a fairly regular rhythm and routine every week.  Could it be that I travel every summer and somehow that disrupts my rhythm so much that I'm thrown off for the next school year?  I would hate to have to give that up.  Travel is what adds excitement to my mostly boring life the rest of the year.  I'm known as a traveler, it's just part of who I am.  What if I were to strip that away though, in hopes of finding more stability?  I think my life would be miserable if I were to do that actually.

Focusing is difficult on both ends of the bipolar continuum.  If I'm really manic, I can't focus a string of thoughts coherently to save my life as I'm constantly bouncing from one idea to the next.  If I'm depressed, I have a hard time concentrating on work or other important matters for very long periods of time.  Hypomania would seem to be the best in this regard, I'm able to focus well and exert a ton of energy on a given topic for an extended period of time.  Hypomania by the way is the opposite of a mild depression.  It's halfway to full blown mania but not quite there yet.  It's a really good place to be, if it weren't inevitably followed by mild depression.

Maybe there are some ways that I can help myself focus.  I do better when I write things down, as in a to do list or something similar.  I do okay with written goals and the like.  A self-help book about depression I've recently picked up again talks about writing an event down, writing your automatic thoughts down, and then putting them on trial so to speak by coming up with a more rational response to them.  Writing has always helped me, whether that be to vent or express myself or persuade someone.  Maybe that's part of the answer.

I think part of the reason I struggle with focusing though is because I've been programmed to do so.  I read a few books this past summer about some of the side effects of technology and one of the main side effects is that we're in essence training our brains to be rewarded when we click on a hyper link on a webpage.  This, in effect, rewards distraction, so is it any real wonder that we're in a constant state of distraction?  What would happen to a high school student if you took away their phone for a week?  What would happen to me if you took my phone away for a week?  Well, I have done that on different mission trips and it's really freeing somehow.  You feel more plugged into what you're doing at the moment and closer to the people you're spending time with as opposed to always feeling pulled in different directions.

I long for the ability to focus on several things.  From focusing on my school work to focusing on conversations with others to focusing on God in my quiet times, my life cries out for focus.  Focused intensity can change a person's behavior completely.  The most important thing to focus on, in my humble opinion, is Christ.  If we focus on Him, everything else falls in place.  I don't know about you, but my mind wanders everywhere when I try to focus and pray.  Why is that I wonder?  It's not that I don't want to focus on Christ, it's just that I have a million things running through my mind at any given time.

Well, I've purposely tried to stay focused on this topic for this entire blog entry, mainly to prove to myself that I can focus if I put forth the effort.  Now I'm going to go write some goals down and try to focus on other areas of my life.  Hope you enjoyed the read!

roller coaster week

So, this week I've been all over the map as far as my emotions go.  Tuesday was probably the low point, as my previous blog shared about.  Early Wednesday morning, around 2-3am, I got to talk to my new friend from Switzerland.  She's a friend who I met through couchsurfing and we just really got along well and it was great to hear from her.  She's a ball of energy so I always get my spirits lifted when I talk to her.  Plus she's coming again in April for my birthday so I'm excited about that.  She will be visiting Florida for a month, then in August she goes to Australia for an exchange program for her school.  

For some reason I love being around people who travel more than I do.  For some people that might be difficult to imagine, but I do have a regular job and hence it slows me down way more than I would like.  Not that I don't love the job because I do, there are just times when I'd rather be traveling.  A couple years ago I took an around the world trip and was sharing with an old friend today how I miss it sometimes and would like to do it again.  When people ask me what I like to do for fun, I always answer with traveling and then when they ask what else it's like an auditorium full of crickets as I try and stumble to find other things I like to do for fun.  It would appear I need to find more fun things to do around here to help pass the time when I don't have the means to travel, like currently during my spring break.

Simultaneously, I have a desire to settle down, sort of.  I just mean with a woman, not necessarily settle down from traveling.  I have friends who have assured me that if I'm in a relationship then I can just travel with them.  I still have my doubts but am trying to see the light haha  I have a good friend at school who has literally traveled the world with her husband and so if I ever get settled down with a woman I'll definitely be asking her for travel tips of how to travel with a significant other.

Yesterday I was on a natural high from talking to my Swiss friend and thinking about traveling all day.  I also had talked to several other friends on facebook whom I haven't talked to in ages so that was really nice too. Today has kind of been an in between day.  I got to catch up with a dear friend for lunch and it was great to be able to catch up over the past few years.  She has recently lost her dad to a massive heart attack so we talked about anything else to keep her mind off it.  

After lunch and coming back to Sarasota, I was really tired from driving as I think one of my latest medications has a side effect of making you drowsy when you drive.  I used to be on a medication that did that as well, then I was on some that didn't have that effect, and now I'm on ones that have that effect again.  Pretty frustrating to say the least.  I laid down for what I wanted to be an hour, even set my watch alarm, but it ended up being 2.5 hours.  Guess I was more tired than I thought.  Like my roommate said though, I need more than a watch alarm.  Next time I'll set my big alarm, but even then sometimes it's not enough.

Also, I seem to be leaking money the past couple of days.  My birthday is coming up, so that always means it's time for car insurance and my taxes on my license plate that come up due, happy birthday to me.  Thankfully I had been setting aside money for the car insurance thing so it wasn't too bad, it's just that it's a fairly substantial amount of money to see go out of your account.  Thank God I have a job and can afford some of the everyday realities of owning a car and other bills.

Spring break is almost over already.  This year I decided not to go anywhere so it's been a fairly long week in some regards.  The past couple of days have picked up a little bit so that's good.  Now it's time to get back into a work mindset as I have some work to do for next week before we return.  Then, school will be over before we know it and I'm going to Haiti and Myanmar this summer so I'm stoked for those two trips.  Haiti will be with a group from church as well as some other people and Myanmar is just me going but I have a friend there who has started an entrepreneurship school that I'll be helping him with.  I'm really looking forward to both and know that God will use those times to stretch me as one of His children.

feelings, and other bs

So, I went to see my therapist today.  Yes, I see a therapist, and would happily recommend one to any normal adult who could use a little objective feedback on their lives (aka everyone).  I realize there is probably still a stigma about seeing a therapist, with people thinking it's only for people who are crazy, which I am as well, but I would argue everyone could use a good round of therapy every now and again.  I am very grateful that my insurance covers my therapist appointments, and honestly if they didn't I probably wouldn't go.  However, since my insurance is awesome, one of the few benefits of working as a teacher as far as pay goes, I do see a therapist on a fairly regular schedule.

Anyways, she asked how I was doing and I decided to unload on her.  I told her exactly how I was feeling, a lot of feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness.  She then asked what some of the lies were that I was believing to be true and I listed off a ton until she made me stop.  The problem with lies is that somehow they're so believable when I'm in the midst of depression.  My therapist encouraged me that sometimes our feelings are simply wrong and that they are not to be trusted.  I knew this of course, but it helps to be reminded of some obvious truths sometimes, especially when you're going through a valley like I am currently.

Thankfully, my therapist is a fellow believer and so I'm glad we have that in common.  If you took spirituality out of my feelings and out of my life in general, there wouldn't be a whole lot left.  I happen to believe everything is spiritual, whether we acknowledge it or not.  Our spiritual lives are in fact our whole lives, and we do ourselves and others a great harm when we try and compartmentalize our spirituality to our Sunday morning lives or just our private times with the Lord.  How we act and what we think deeply effects our spirit, as well as the spirit of those around us.  We do not live in a vacuum, and we need to stop pretending that our lives have no impact on the lives of others.  In political terms this would be called libertarianism, the idea that I'll do my thing and you do your thing and we'll all just be happy as a result.  That is simply not true. Your choices, my choices, all of them, effect someone else.  Do we choose to buy fair trade?  Do we choose to buy local?  Those are choices that effect the people around us, neighbors near and far.

Sometimes I get so down on myself it's almost comical.  I can look back on these times at a later date and see the ridiculousness of the thoughts I was having.  In no way does that make the feelings seem less real, however.  Today in particular, I have struggled with the idea that I'm bipolar and as such I will always have times like these throughout my life, so what's the point?  I wish I had a ready answer to this question, but honestly I don't.  I don't know how to answer others when they're going through similar struggles, nor do I know how to answer my own heart's questions when struggling through a difficult time such as this.  Sure, there are cheesy Christian cliches that everyone knows but usually those just piss me off more than anything else.

And so I'm left wondering aloud, what's the point in all this?  As a Christian, I believe my purpose is found in glorifying God, but what about times like these?  When my heart and soul cry out and I don't sense that God is near nor do I see any worth in myself or that I have anything to offer to others?  What's the point in pushing on if I know I'm going to struggle through times like these for the rest of my life due to my illness?  In my times of stability, I know God uses my weaknesses to help others, but why are we so broken and weak to begin with?  I know, I know, because of the fall.  How long ago was that, though?  And we're still facing the consequences of a bite of a fruit and subsequent sins that we're all guilty of?  Why doesn't God just get on with it and kill the whole human race again?  I struggle to believe that the hearts of men were much more evil prior to the flood than they are now.  Slavery is at an all time high these days, and we're so obsessed with ourselves that I bet if you ask 100 Americans if slavery still exists a majority of them would say that it doesn't.  We're more concerned with the latest celebrity gossip as opposed to trying to change ourselves or the world we find ourselves in.

All that to say, sometimes life really feels pointless.  Sometimes I fail to find a bigger purpose that is out there.  Being a Christian doesn't mean people will never struggle, in fact, we're promised the opposite of that.  Where is Jesus in the midst of my suffering, in the midst of my darkest days?  Scripture says that God draws near to the broken-hearted, but it has been my experience that while I'm going through times of heart break I feel like God is the farthest away.  Why is that?  Why is it so easy to find my identity in anything but Christ?