"Well . . . here I am."

Props to anyone who knows where the title comes from.  Its a brilliant moment that I hope I do not regret using here and not elsewhere.

So . . . I have not had a good night.  Nothing particularly bad has happened, but I've been listening to very bad music all evening.  Now this can be seen either as an effect, due to badness already existing, or could simply be the badness in itself.  I guess we'll never know.  Probably the former.

It started with me listening to Led Zepplin, which I don't include in the bad.  Far from it.  I'd say Led Zepplin would be in the running for my top band of all time, despite my deference for Christian artists.  Really its a toss-up between them and CCR in my mind, but I digress.

Then I started listening to the Foo Fighters.  That was my mood.  Their are not particularly bad, but not great either.  A lot of their music, the harder stuff at least, has not aged well, leaving just a few songs that I'll really listen to.

Then I had the urge to listen to Fall Out Boy, which in spite of its catchiness, is surely an affront to music.  And now, well for the last hour and a half or so I've been listening to techno/electronica on Pandora.  Which I'm surprised is not illegal.

BTW, apparently 99% of blog templates come in three types:  niche styles (like technology or baseball blog templates), extremely basic (not classy, boring), and the largest group, female-esque.  The few, let's say four, that I've found that I liked ended up not working.  Poor programming or something.  So . . . for now we remain disappointingly basic.  I'm still on the hunt though, this needs to look more put together.

And now I'm not sure I can avoid the meat any longer . . .

Except to say that reminds me that in high school I dated a vegetarian once, which I loved because it was really inexpensive to take her out.

So after all my complaining the other day, which I've removed from the blog, perhaps to be put back up in an edited form, but its doubtful, it happened.

Today Phil offered me the job as the Director of 912 Park.  So I have an opportunity to have one of my top 5 dream jobs, managing a concert venue.  And . . .

I'm not sure I want it.  Don't get me wrong, barring an act of God I'm going to accept, its just . . . .  I don't feel satisfied.  I'd like something that had less business and more ministry, or more business so I could do different ministry.  I'd like to be in a different place, geographically.  I'd like to have different church options/be set up.  I'd like . . . .   Peace.  I'd like to feel at peace.

But . . . I've prayed for this.  I should be excited.  There is good in this.  And there's not really many other choices.  Besides moving to Florida to work at Southwind . . . which now that I think about it . . . .

Anyhow . . .

Its been a few days since I've written a post, and yes I'm aware.  Its been a combination of things.  A lack of will, a lack of time.  At once I feel I've had quite a bit to say, and yet not much at all.  I've had, and have, lots I want to share about more intellectual topics.  I still haven't covered the nature of individualism and its effect on and influence by the church.  I still haven't talked about this discussion I had the other day on dispensationalism.  And I STILL haven't talked about that Arch of the Covenant book in depth.  Yet everything personal I had to say, really just seemed like old ground.  Covering old ideas with new words and peddling them just to put something out there.

Additionally, I'm thinking of instituting a new rule which forbids me from writing blog posts within a certain time limit of going to an MMA gym.  I typed one out the other night and deleted it.  Sometimes they come of as angry, other times as arrogant.  Either way, not delightful.

My dog is snoring.

So, not that I want to, but because its been a theme of the blog, and its part of my life/and heard no matter what I'd prefer, let's talk about Heather.

The last few days have not been any better in terms of missing/thinking of her.  I've tried to keep up the idea of praying for God to take it away, a tack that has yet to work.  And so out of sheer desperation, I have, of course, resorted to praying for reconciliation, which is a frustrating turn of events for sure.  But it does actually make the feelings/memories go away, at least for a few minutes.  As part of trying to rid myself of those by other means however, I realized something.  At some point I thought of it as a desire problem, so I treated missing her/having feelings for her as a temptation, and tried to combat it.  Unfortunately, every thought to that end is a product or producer of bitterness.  Whatever the actualities of all this are, apparently there is no peace of God in denying Heather's goodness and my desire for her.  Which is probably a reflector of what I should be doing.

Conversely, I've found myself at times wishing I'd asked that girl from Kairos out.  True I still can't help but find Heather a superior specimen of woman, so in a way it would feel like settling, and there'd be an inescapable rumble of disappointment underneath.  True, even if I could deal with that, the way I feel certainly makes it unfair for me to take someone else out.   [Insert hefty sigh].  Even so I wish I'd asked her out.  Call it wanting to force myself to move on.  Call it loneliness.  Heck, call it boredom.  I'm upset I didn't do it.

Unfortunately, it appears as though I may not get a chance in the near future to ask someone else out.

Tonight I was talking to my friend Amanda and she asked me when and why I quit fighting for Heather.  I started to answer, but realized I couldn't.  I had no real idea.  So I went back through the blog and my prayer journal trying to pinpoint it.  On the upside, I found the exact day, more or less.  Though there is a certain amount of fluidity to the whole thing, and though I was struggling within a few days of the whole process fighting, there is still a pretty clear line.  On the night of May 25 I was praying and God, showing patience with my doubt, told me again to fight for her.  And after that, there's one mention of it until the conversation with Emily covered in this post.  So that's the when.

As for why . . . I couldn't find a reason.  I suppose covering that was that a little over a week later I got interested in somebody else, and then God told me to ask her out, so I figured that was it.  But alas, even that doesn't necessarily mean what I thought it did at one time.  I can't remember who, but somebody said recently that going out with someone else could just show me how much I wanted Heather . . . and they didn't even know about Amber.  I really wish I could remember more of that conversation.

So that's when, and a very rough answer as to why, which doesn't make me feel very good.  So now I come back to a question I've been asking myself for the last two days.  Is God not saying more because He's already said it?  Should I STILL be fighting.  Crap.

But we see its been a month since that conversation with Emily, with no real progress.  In fact in some ways regress.  Now I have feelings for her again.  Now . . . blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.  More stupid crap that doesn't matter.

Also, Amanda happened to compare to Abraham leaving Ur.  Which Emily did not 4 days after I was told to fight for Heather to tell me not to give up.  And that was not Amanda's point, ostensibly, which leads me to wonder if it really was.

Not that it means anything, but how do I feel?  I want to be with her, I won't lie about that.  But there is no part of me that wants to go after her or fight for her.  I get angry when I think that I might have to humble myself and pursue her, letting her know how I feel, having a sense of how she'd react.  Pity, slight anger, regret over having been with me at all.  The result is that in a moment of either harbored desperate loss, or blinding clarity, I told God if He wanted us together she was going to have to be moved to contact me.  Oh yeah, this is all quite healthy.

Truth be told I doubt I'll do anything about any of this.  I'll just keep waiting for another sign.

And that, my dear friends, is a collection of things I wish I could go back and erase.  I wish I'd never written it.  I wish I didn't have anything to say or think or feel or remember about her.  But I do.  And it has to be put down here.

I am seething frustration.

So, now on to stuff that really matters.

I'm still screwing around about finding a church for Sundays or just going back to CIL.  I blame it on helping with the renovation, which is taking forever, which I do, but . . . I know I could get out of it.  Its a good excuse.

And its not like I'm not getting fed.  I've got Kairos on Tuesday nights, which is incredible, and I've still been praying and reading the Letter everyday.  But I am missing community, even one that wasn't that deep.

Now, another product of my conversation with Amanda, and another recent conversation with someone else, is the realization that apparently I need to make a clarification about the blog.  A number of the things mentioned here are not constant thoughts but rather mobile thoughts.  Some I fight against, if I have God direction heading the other way.  Some just go on their own.  Some I put here as interactive conversation pieces, and some I make knowing that the opposite is really true, using them as a literary device to better explain my state of mind.  Not literally but through more intricate exposition.  This blog uses many different literary elements.  It uses narrative.  It uses internal display.  It uses intellectual/spiritual discourses.  Sometimes I provide stories.  Sometimes I provide answers.  Sometimes I ask questions.  And sometimes I just show you the ugly innards of process.  This is high-minded writing.  Remember that.

In other news, two times this week people have come to me seeking advice and have thanked me after I tried to keep from giving any.  I just asked some God questions.  What's interesting is the essential subject matter.  Staying true to the course.  In one case trusting God while facing troubling and uncertain times.  In one case following God's will as it has been revealed, despite present circumstances that seek to draw you elsewhere.  And those sound so familiar.  I'm tempted again to relegate them to pieces of the past.  Or places where lessons learned are past on.  But I can't help but wonder if they should apply to the now as well.

Tomorrow will start early, end late, and be exhausting in between.  Nice.

Here's hoping I didn't forget anything.  Here's praying I draw nearer to God.  My one and only.