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Currently Listening Why Should the Fire Die? By Nickel Creek see related

Rose Reflections Part 4

Well time to finish out with my last year.  I feel the first track on the currently listening sums up this period of my life pretty well: “When In Rome”

The summer before my senior year I had my first internship.  I did as the Romans.  It was a summer plagued with boredom and the wasting of time.  The work didn’t really help with the boredom as that’s where much of the boredom came from; yet despite that, I exerted myself enough in trying to space out my work (so I wouldn’t run out) that I didn’t really want to do much when I got home.  So UOP seemed like a decent enough company and all, but they didn’t give me enough work;  I don’t think that they realized that I work best when swamped in work, and they also had trouble figuring out what I could do since I hadn’t worked there before.  That summer I also switched to an attempt at daily manuscript bible study starting in Genesis 1.  But that destroyed the routine of meeting with God as it took more motivation to manuscript than it did to just read some passages and think and pray about what hit me hardest.  So began the next season of my life.

This past year has been full of instances where I felt very distant from God and had to struggle to get back to Him.  I got back several times, only to feel like I would just drift away again after that.  It wasn’t that I was backsliding in sinful behaviors any more or less than usual (for the most part), it was just a very neutral year.  Not much movement either way.  That’s one of the reasons why I felt that I should return to the trek this summer, to help myself to regain some of the focus and dependency on God that I feel I lost this past year.  Probably one of my biggest issues this year was the Juniors who lived across the hall who liked to treat the floor as their own and get drunk and rowdy on the weekends…I didn’t even think about the animosity that I was holding towards them until about half way through the year.  After I asked God to help me forgive them, I got better at letting it go and thinking of how I could have made it better from the get go; but I had already given them looks and I felt that trying to reconcile would be too difficult to be worth it with the time we had left; so I went on my merry way and tried my best to forgive them.  I realized even then though that I would need to get away from there and their noise before I could fully forgive them, so that contributed to my distance from God that entire year.

So now I prepare to enter a new season.  And I am very glad that God has given me the tools to enter it well.  By starting with the trek, I know I will be able to search harder for a company that cares about people and the environment from more than a purely economic perspective.  I just pray that God would provide me with that opportunity and that I would know which opportunity to go with so I’m not stuck with a company that I’m not really happy with but need to stay with as it will allow me to pay my bills.  But hey, after a few years (probably 5-6 max) I should be out of debt, so then I can feel that freedom in being able to pursue God without feeling obligated to others with my life.

Currently Listening Fall and Winter By Jon Foreman see related

Rose Reflections Part 3

The next portion of my life and schooling can probably be best described as beautiful sleep-deprived insanity…but I’m getting ahead of myself…

In the Winter Conference of my sophomore year I heard the call to go on a Global Urban Trek.  I say heard because that is the best way I have to describe it; I heard an internal voice in my mind that did not seem to originate from myself.  Based on that initial call and the subsequent hammering of it into my mind during the main session that night, I knew I had to go.  I called my parents the next day to tell them.  And then I fought through lots of issues in preparing as I was almost always behind schedule, but God would make sure that things worked out on time.  A few examples began with applying later so I didn’t get to go to Lima, but I’m pretty darn sure in hindsight I was supposed to go to Mexico City instead; I was late in getting fundraising started, so I didn’t realize that I was supposed to have $1000 the week after I was sending out my letters, but all of the money came in before that deadline thanks to my grandma; and my passport application was supposed to be borderline in getting done before leaving for the trek, but I received it a couple weeks before.  I freaked about all of those things, but in the end God came through on every one.

After that extensive trust preparation time, I got to go on the Trek.  The trek opened my eyes to many things.  I had a great summer of not having to be a leader (and the associated stress), and I began to learn of God’s heart for the poor and downtrodden.  I began to learn about the new empires of the world and those on the margins.  I found where my heart could most easily connect with that of God without my head getting in the way.  I learned what it was like to have my heart break for another’s situation.  I found a passion that I did not know existed.  And during all that time God also began preparing me for a new role I would have in leadership as overseer for our InterVarsity Chapter.  For a more detailed version of what I went through on the trek, check out the blog I kept while I was there: http://www.urbana.org/feat.trek.2006.cfm?recordid=839

I also met a girl there that I felt I could not go without expressing my feelings for her, and we departed as friends agreeing to make sure that we kept in touch.  Thus began my second official relationship when a couple months after the trek we decided to try a long distance relationship that we have kept up (over 2000 miles) for over a year and a half now.  It has had its rough spots with plenty of annoyance and sadness at the fact that we can’t be with each other for many goings on in each others’ lives.  There were countless hours of phone conversation (amazing for two people who don’t really like talking on the phone) and some letters and gifts, and a couple visits where we actually got to do things like hold hands.  My junior year consisted of going to Urbana together, meeting each other’s families, and ended with us realizing we wouldn’t be able to spend most of the summer together.

Anyhow, getting back to the introduction to this entry…Junior year was the year of Thermo and being Overseer.  Thermo alone takes loads of time and adding InterVarsity stuff on top of that resulted in a lot of sleep deprivation (5-6 hours was great on a night before thermo homework was due); sleep deprivation resulted in slight craziness, but it was very fun.  Being slightly crazy can really take the edge off of many things and can be very enjoyable.  But I kept consistent with my time with God and took long walks in the forest on Sabbaths and it was a great year exploring God and His will for the poor (read a bunch of books about that).  I was with my normal roommate, but I also had two InterVarsity leaders as my apartmentmates so the rooming situation was by far the best.  It was definitely my favorite rooming situation in college and though I think that certain aspects of this past year were nicer, my Junior year may have been my best year of college…as much as I like to say that every year gets better, there were a few things that took away from this past year…one of which was more of a distance from God which I will get into in the next (and probably last) entry about my time at Rose.

Currently Listening Never Take Friendship Personal By Anberlin see related

Rose Reflections Part 2

Towards the end of my freshmen year I was uncertain as to where I was going.  I knew that in the short term I wanted to be involved with stuff with InterVarsity, so when leadership applications came around I signed up for being a small group leader.  Not too long after that, our chapter president approached me and asked me to consider outreach coordinator instead.  Now I’ve never been good with discernment.  I feel it is probably one of my greatest spiritual weaknesses that I really wish was more of a strength.  I thought about it prayed, prayed about it, and since nothing shot out to me saying ‘no’, I decided to go for it.  Was that the way I should have done it?  I don’t know.  That was pretty much the same process (in addition to not having plans for the summer) that went into my going to the School of Leadership Training after my freshmen year; and that I received fairly strong confirmation when I had none of the $1000 raised a couple weeks before it and then had all of it.  I suppose fundraising can be a strong indication of whether or not those of us who can’t fund raise well should do things.  That is to say that when someone who can’t really fundraise well at all gets the funds they need, it can be a strong confirmation of what they are fundraising for.

Anyhow those decisions both did cause my faith to grow in amazing ways.  It was during that summer at SLT that I got hit with my lack of trust in God.  I have since made many creative ways to get around making a lack of trust in God…but no matter how I paint it, that’s what it really comes down to.  It still persists.  And it’s mostly only in attacks that it is bad, but I still wrestle with that.  It was during that time that I first started to recognize it through many thoughts, happenings, and failures during SLT.   I think I did start to better understand the concept of failing forward.  That is taking my failures and realizing that they’re not all bad if I actually learn from them.  That certainly continued into my time as outreach coordinator.  In my first leadership role, I planned ahead well at the very beginning but then allow many things later in the year to creep up on me.  I certainly saw God working through things that I planned though.  So I learned that He really does use our weakness to show Himself Great.

It was during this season of college that I began a quiet time study pattern that kept me very consistent which I kept up through Junior year at which point I wanted to switch stuff up…I get to how that turned out later.  It was also in the middle of this year that God started directing me towards the next season of my life as He called me to go on a Global Urban Trek…

Currently Listening Blackbird By Alter Bridge see related

Rose Reflections Part 1

Seeing as how I’m winding down my last year at Rose-Hulman I figured I should write at least one entry on my time at Rose.  Then I figured that I would have to write at least a couple so without further ado I bring you some reflections (note: these reflection entries may not all be one after another I may have some others in between):

When I entered Rose in August of 2004 I don’t think that I really knew what I was getting into.  My brother had been involved in InterVarsity at his school and had just gone to the School of Leadership Training (and had met half the leadership team from Rose there).  I had just had a summer of working at Argonne National Lab.  I entered into Rose as a Mechanical engineer and quickly switched to chemical once I had to sign up for second quarter classes (I wanted to keep taking organic chemistry of all things).  I was fairly irresponsible my freshman year.  I wasted a lot of time and started my homework very late at night (though still got a decent amount of sleep in comparison to my junior year).  I went to every large group, but I didn’t get involved in small group until October (because I didn’t actively try to figure out where they met) and I didn’t go to church until late November (because I was too stubborn/scarred/I don’t know to find out where the church I wanted to go to was).  I did start journaling then though.  I had forgotten that I started that before I went to Exchange…so I don’t know where I got the inspiration for that…it may have been my youth group in high school (since they gave me a journal when I left there).  My faith certainly did grow through that first year as I began to understand better the relational aspects of community in Christ and many other finer points.

This was also a time of ending my first romantic relationship as I lacked the maturity to keep it going when I was a full 4 hour drive away (teehee now that’s rather pitiful when compared to the 4 hour flight I have now).  I’m pretty sure though that I was thinking about possible relationships with other girls fairly soon after that break up…silly confusing relationships.  I guess I hadn’t really been contented with singleness for quite awhile, but I also didn’t really know how to be in a relationship.  God has helped my with that certainly; though I’m sure I still have issues as I try to understand the full breadth of what a relationship is.

Well I think I’ll cut this one off at this point and continue later.