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| | Experiencing VomitAbout two weeks ago a buddy of mine, Joe, asked me to Hooters with him and some of our other friends for All You Can Eat Wings night. I agreed.
That was kind of like saying "A free ticket to stay in the lowest level of hell for a night? I'll take it!"
I'm not too sure what kind of an experience I would call that night. It was full of laughs. I bought a ping pong paddle. I saw a guy I hadn't seen in a while. Stories were shared. Company was enjoyed. I met some new people. And I experienced great pain as I stuffed chicken wing after chicken wing down my hatch. I ate forty wings that night, and I was the baby.
Between me and two other guys I was with, Joey and Brent, 210 wings were eaten. If you know me at all, I'm sure I have already told you all about it, but it needed to be written down. As I said, I ate forty wings. Brent came in second with a whopping eighty wings, and this was his first time doing this, as was it mine. Joey, on the other hand, participates in this activity far too often, but you would never be able to tell. He is a veteran wing devourer. He took in ninety that night. You read correctly... ninety wings.
As we arrived at Hooters, I said a little prayer in hopes of guarding myself against little orange shorts and tight, low-cut tee shirts. Like any good man, it didn't really work. But that's beside the point. We sat down and met, um... our waitress, whose name started with a K. We put down drink orders, and our first order of wings (15). I had mine breaded and mild- mistake. Mild wasn't even mild. There was no sense of spice. It was like killing a chicken and rolling it in butter. The worst part, though, was the fact that the breading filled me up faster than I should have filled up.
If you drip water in a bucket, it will be full of water after a long time. If you stick the hose in it and run it on full blast, it will overflow in less than a minute. I think I've made my point clear.
A few order of wings later, I began groaning and feeling the pain. The humbling sensation of becoming aware that you're stomach could rupture at any second, and you'd be so grateful if that happened. So I kept on eating. I hit 30, and declared it was quitting time. So I ate some more. I get to about 38 or 39 and Joey says to me "Come on, Clay, just a couple more, buddy!" At this point, I looked up at Brent. Both of them were about 30 wings ahead of me at this point, because I'd had to take digestion breaks. Brent looked at me, eyes drooping, head slightly bowed, cigarette smoldering in hand, mouth lightly agape, and he shook his head. Me and Joe cracked up and Joe asked him "What's wrong with you?"
"I'M MISERABLE!", Brent responded. That, for me, was the quote of the night. We've eaten ourselves to the point where we're totally miserable, and we keep on eating.
We drove home on curvy roads, all the while wondering if we'd toss our cookies or not. We made it just fine... somehow.
I got in, just chilled out for a little bit, and sooner or later decided to go to bed. Full of carbs and heavy-eyed, I slept fine. And then I woke up. Aaaahh.... it is a new day, and I may not have to eat all during all of it, I thought to myself. I put on my glasses and looked at the clock, not noticing that it was dark outside, to see that it was 5:30 AM.
To make a not-so-long story a bit shorter than not-so-long, I spent the next half hour in the bathroom, and at some point started puking for about 10 minutes on and off. I have no idea how long it had been since I had an up-chuck like that one. It had been a while, that's for sure. It was quite sensational.
My throat began to burn as stomach acid was tossed up and burnt my tubes. My stomach had an uncontrollable pulse. It jerked and lurched on its own accord, pushing vomit out of my mouth every time. It tasted terrible, of course. It stunk. Strangely enough, I kind of enjoyed it. It was utterly disgusting, but I get fascinated by all of the strange things the human body does, like the puking reflex. My journal says something about how cool it was. I'm super strange, I know.
The Hooters story was amusing, yeah, but I wanted to talk about the vomiting bit the most. It makes me focus on the ways we experience God. We talked about this at my church, Soli Deo, last night. We discussed Moses experience with the burning bush. Is that how we experience God? Not me, that's for sure. I just don't think that's the way things are now. That old covenant stuff was needed. They were a different people who God had to appear to in a certain way for them to know Him. Today, I find the situation much different.
We're a new covenant people. We have different things. We are about to celebrate Pentacost, when the Holy Spirit was given to us. We have The Gospel, the hard truth that God killed himself to forgive every single one of us scum-sucking, disobedient, unfaithful cheats.
All of us find our different ways to seek and find God's will in the life He has planned for us. I've talked about how we aren't in control before, and to realize how uncontrollable our lives should be, we try and find what God wants us to do. I stray from that all the time. I want to find ways around it. I want to be the little fun fresh graduate. You know, the one that can be fed of mother college's breast-beer. That phrase even makes me quiver with discomfort.
Anyway, we all look for God's will. Some people say God speaks to them. Some people pray for the stuff they want to happen in their lives.
I think and pray at the same time. I'll talk in my head and out loud to God. In those times I'll these thoughts, these revelations about the questions I'm asking. I'll see what I'm doing wrong, or tell myself what I should do to honor Christ. I think that's how I get word from God. It's not God's voice, it's my own. God knows my love for myself, and I think He uses it, ironically, to guide me.
I don't find great experiences, experiences as sensational and strange as my puking, with my God. I don't find him setting my hair on fire, or shouting at me out of the wind. I don't have prophetic dreams that really have any significant meaning, especially any meaning pertaining to God.
I think God knows each and every one us, and he knows how we should best experience Him. He's not Chris Angel. He doesn't do magic tricks on a Vegas stage to make everyone oo and ah and believe in Him.
My God knows me. My God knows how to talk to me.
| | | Posted 5/31/2006 9:40 PM - 7 comments
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