I'm sick of school...

and it hasn't even started yet.

I really want to just skip it... I want to just go and do something that will mean something in the end. Sure, i can do ministry now, but i hate having to tote this bag around with me the whole time.

My friends Adam and Mary Dawn got married last night. I'm so happy for them, they are close friends and i've known Mary Dawn since freshman year of high school. So its kinda weird her beating me to marriage. Now, Adam took his sweet time getting there, but i'm stoked for them both. So, congrats to the Carriers!

I really need money. Insurance, school, guitar stuff, bike trip. Needs to be paid for....

Speaking of bike trips. I need to get on it more about planning mine. Me and Tim need to get back on the proverbial and not sure metaphorical wheel of training...


And it seems at this point our trip will lead us through the town of a very-close friend. Well, at one time close friend... Its quite the fiasco of events and feelings. Me and my friend haven't been close for the last two months for many reasons on many different levels... And at first i thought i wouldn't miss my friend as much as i think i do now... I don't like what happened between us. I freaked out, and raised hell, and my friend broke down or so it seems. And now we are here...And i wish we weren't.

So many things changed in my friend...Well maybe not changed, I don't believe character to change, but shift. I don't think character changes, but is always there. I think that your character can be bad and your behavior still be good. It has to be i think to lead to better character. So perhaps my friend just had a shift in behavior and my friends character is still weak at this point. I don't want to be a name caller or make my friend sound like an asshole. But i am in the same boat with weak character. But as you build character these shifts don't happen as often.

I have been able to, in the past, continue some form of stable friendship even with character shifts like this, but not with the same kind of person. So i don't know.

This isn't the first time this has happened like this... Since it really isn't the first time something similar to this has happened. But, it has given me perspective about how i handle my friends when something like this happens... I notice the consistent pattern; 1. Disagree 2. Argue/plead 3. commit to some form of righteous silence. and finally wonder if i really handled the problem well...

I often wonder if i am treating the situation with enough gentleness and grace. Well...I know i haven't. I have tried to repent for the obvious times, but what about my methodology? I have began to wonder if my response lines up with what Jesus would do...except I don't recall Jesus having the same dynamic in a relationship as this instance. I'm going to begin to ask God if i should do something different.

It is very tough. Watching someone you have been so close to throw a fist of disregard into the face of God. Not only has the door been open but my friend is walking through it. I worry. Alot. Its a mix of a sort of postmortem regret and the sense of being on train that has no brakes and being tied to the front end of the locomotive. But those feeling must be met with prayer, with God, with my willingness to abandon control. My friend and I may never reconnect, but that is far from the aim anymore. Those who understand the seriousness of the situation i think would agree that there are far more important things at the forefront of the subject's battlefront than satisfying my desires.

I believe i was kept out the informational loop between friends when it comes to me and my friend's nearing-regress relationship. Which has caused me different kinds of griefs. Its one thing to not be able to control a situation, but when you don't know the whole or even majority of the information related to the person its a different beast. Its like when we hit algebra in school. We all thought we had it figured out when we had a decent grasp on pluses and minuses that when we were introduced to unknown factors and what ever the heck that animal stick figure was we wet our pants at our lack of knowledge when we believed that we knew the subject of math so very well.

That sort of reaches the level of what i feel towards this.

So what am i to do? I'm not sure. I don't want to claim to know everything about my friend's issues, though i have the evidence in my head to understand at least a few of them, that i end up spreading rumors...I won't be that foolish again...

I think it really does come down to my desire to see my friend far more alive in Christ than i see my friend being now. It out cries my desire for relationship and my desire to be "justified" or what ever lamenting bitterness that broken relationships generate.

"I just want you to come home honey. Maybe not mine, but at least His. Our houses are still built on sand no matter what we want to say and the waves are getting higher... "