I've created a rant blogspot, and started posting on my older blogspot.  I think once I run out of time, I'll stick with the one that is still alive, but for now, i'll have time to rant and rave, and friends who challenge me to think and convey my ideas.

I like my new friends.  They are really cool.  I think you never really get over your old friends... you just learn to love them from far away.

I never realized how much the people, the city, and the atomosphere of South Texas served to build me up and support me, until I left. Being in a new, unfamiliar place is a humbling experience. It is like a mirror, showing me exactly who I am when I'm pressed, when I am out of my element. I talk more, out of a need to validate myself and my presence in Dallas, among this new group of people. I joke around and say things I shouldn't, because I haven't taken the time to learn about these people and how I can help them. I just think of myself, seeking attention as a survival mechanism.

In other words, I'm more normal than I thought.

So I've decided, in response to these realizations, to begin speaking less and listening more, asking questions instead of trying to answer questions I know nothing about. I am not a leader here, but I can still love with the love of Christ, and build people up the best I can according to their needs, which I can only learn by listening to their hearts.

This is a new place for me. I suppose this is something I've been needing, since now I understand how others felt while I was pouring myself out. Pouring ourselves out is no great sacrifice... it is, in fact, the most fulfilling and trying thing we could ever do. The biggest challenge, for me at least, is to wait and pray and seek God without the expectations of others.

This is who I really am; a selfish, loud, imperfect and impatient person who desires to serve God despite my shortcomings, and who lives for the moment when God's strength shows through my weakness.

originally posted in The Fountain of Useless Knowledge.

No, I'm not colorblind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind
But I just can't sleep on this tonight

Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly, won't someone stop this train?

So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game
To find a way to say that life has just begun

Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly, won't someone stop this train?

Once in awhile, when it's good
It'll feel like it should
And they're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing
Till you cry when you're driving away in the dark
Singing

Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can
Cause now I see I'll never stop this train

I'm getting to where I am realizing how much I will miss my friends.  I am excited, but I am also a bit down that this will be my last days hanging out regularly with the amazing friends I've made here.  These truly have been the best six years of my life, but I know it's time to move on.  I will know more later about where I'm going to be, for the next year at least, in the coming days.

It's crazy though... I'm realizing how much I've leaned on my friends here in Kingsville.  I've had so many different groups of amazing friends, most of whom are still good friends of mine even though we don't get to hang out much any more.  I'm looking forward to my party tomorrow, to seeing many of them together one last time.  It will be grand.

Here's to the future... the exciting, scary, bittersweet future.

it doesn't feel like the end of anything.  i feel like i should be missing people already, and be really bummed about leaving, but i'm not.  i am looking forward to the future.  i suppose it is time.

i love the people i've met here, my brothers and sisters that have loved me in their special ways.  i just want to go glorify God, wherever he wants me to be.  i suppose i'm ready to start figuring out where that is.

i was explaining to a friend of mine how i knew that ministry was what i was called to do, vocationally.  i related it to when i saw him and other engineers talking about engineering, and really loving what they talked about, being genuinely interested.  i told him that i didn't have anything but Jesus when it came to topics i could discuss all day, to subjects that never fail to excite me.

also, i love making coffee and espresso and such nice things, and sometimes ministry doesn't pay very well, so coffee shops are good part time jobs .

i want to go for God, and go strong.  i'm ready.