Well, it’s more like an action. It’s the act of saying goodbye.

I loathe it.

I particularly loathe it when the words are said when you don’t know what will happen next. I had that happen not too long ago. The terrible uncertainty that I faced in my life as I walked away from a person I love who I wasn’t completely sure still even cared about me was torturous. I learned to hate goodbye a long time ago, but that was simply the worst one of my life to this point.

Now, things are different. Much, though not all, of the uncertainty has been removed from my life. But I still don’t like the goodbye. I’m sure the Lord has a reason for it… but it’s hard for me to see sometimes.

Tonight, I had to say more goodbyes to people I care for deeply. In another six weeks or so, I’ll be saying goodbye to some people for the first time. One person, I don’t know how long it will be until I’ll see again. Another is one I’m tired of saying goodbye to.

It makes me question why God allows us to care for, or love, people who are so far away from us. Does it grow us? I’m sure it does somehow, though I (obviously) don’t have all the answers.

I despise the act of saying goodbye. It always brings me to tears. I always wonder if the world is falling apart. And then God picks me back up, dusts me off, and helps me walk on. It’s His purpose. It’s His timing. Sure, it’s hard to understand, particularly for someone who gets as attached as I do. But I am confident that it is somehow for God’s best in our lives.

In the meantime, I can’t wait to say hello again.

Yoo, hoo, blog, world! Now that my life has finally settled into some sense of normalcy, I hope to resume regular posting. My life has undergone some HUGE changes… literally mind-boggling.

Where to start… I’m, of course, now a fully graduated, working member of the “real world.” (whatever THAT is). I work a full-time job as a teller at U.S. Bank. I’d highly recommend that you bank there if you don’t, because if you don’t, I’m going to personally come to your house and slap you. (just kidding)

I’m driving a friend’s car around right now… a beautiful Hyundai Sonata (joyousthirst.wordpress.com) is away, visiting her family right now. Once she comes back, I’ll have to buy my own car. *sigh* It probably won’t be as nice as hers. I’m hoping to get a good Toyota or Honda… wouldn’t mind having a Taurus either if I could get a good year. Anybody know what years of the Taurus are safe?

Of course, there is always God’s amazing work going on in the background. Over the past months, I’d become selfish and unfeeling towards others. Only wanting what I think will make me happy and that sort of thing. Well, through a difficult trial in my life, the Lord showed me this.. and now I’m taking steps to fix it. I’ll pay the consequences for my actions for a long time to come, but I am glad God allowed to happen what happened, even if it does hurt. I trust Him that it is for the better in the long haul. (And in the short haul.)

So, normal stuff will be flying your way soon…

Don’t say I didn’t warn you… I haven’t been posting.

Tomorrow… today in fifteen minutes… I graduate… I’m staying up getting some stuff ready for it. I really want to go to bed, but unfortunately, that’s not an option.

Today I sang in a wedding. The song was a duet with the bride’s sister, The Prayer. It was great fun.

Perhaps I’ll have a few pictures from one or both to post eventually.

I was talking to a friend tonight, and as we talked, something began to emerge to me.

Humans are really stupid.

I mean, seriously. We are idiots. We like to strut around and think we’re pretty smart, that we’ve got it all figured out. But, uhh… WOW ARE WE CLUELESS!!! We get mad at each other over the stupidest things. We try things that are impossible and then refuse to do the things that are so simple, logical, seemingly easy. We don’t want to be responsible, but we do want to be successful. We want to get what we want, but we refuse to do what’s necessary to gain it. We want what we think we deserve, but we refuse to admit what we truly deserve. We hide ourselves when we should trust others, and we trust those whom we should be hiding ourselves from.

We cling tenaciously to people who come and go, but spurn our own family. We devour the latest sports or entertainment news, but refuse to give more than a day or two out of our week to Our Savior. We look at complexity and refuse to appreciate the work that went into it, and look at talent which God gave a person at birth and give them far more credit than they are due.

We’re just plain dumb. And it’s time we admitted it.

Lately, I’ve been feeling wiped out. I’ve developed senioritis, which is ironic seeing as how up until a few weeks ago, this was the first year of school I can remember that I actually was really enjoying. However, there are only five more weeks left, and then I’m free for a couple weeks. During that time, I should (hopefully) have no job and be on vacation. I would like to leave my current job just as soon as the school year is up, but I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be done with that. Of course, no school means that I must get some sort of a full-time job… which is a problem. I’d like to do something that I could actually enjoy, even if it is just for the summer, which rules out most jobs you can get with just a high school diploma. The prospects for getting a vehicle so that I don’t have to borrow my mother’s van are slim as well. We shall see how the Lord will provide.

We’ve been planning my graduation with the other three homeschoolers at my church who will be graduating this year. It’s starting to take a definite shape, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Finally, back to being drained. I’ve been discovering something in the last couple weeks, and that is that I’ve been relying too much on people and not enough on God. Yet, on the other hand, I’ve also recognized that I’m incapable of handling solitude. I’ve been experiencing a lot of it lately. Most days I seclude myself in our basement, in the office which my mom and I share but she never uses. I take my computer and my textbooks and go to work. I pretty much spend all my time at home (other than when I’m sleeping, and most of the time when I’m eating) at this place. My desk is kind of tucked away (under the stairs) and so I’m not necessarily the most accessible to the general public (a.k.a. my family and anyone else who might happen to be in the house at the moment). This is something that is resented by those around me, but it’s a necessity until I finish school.

It also used to be that I would talk to friends online a lot. Over time, it became a sort of a substitute for face-to-face interaction, but lately, this hasn’t been occurring less and less. For one, being online keeps me from getting a lot of school accomplished, and for two, the people that I would talk to are not on as much. Busy with their own things, no doubt. And that’s where I found myself struggling last week.

As busy as I’ve been, I haven’t realized what I’ve been doing to many of those around me. What it took for me to realize it is everyone else doing it to me. You see, it’s a difficult thing to realize that most people are more concerned with the things they have to do than the people around them, especially when “people” includes yourself. That’s been me for a while, and since the shoe is on the proverbial other foot now, I’ve come to realize that things aren’t all that important. Sure, it’s important to accomplish the tasks you’ve been given, but it’s more important to focus on the people around you. Only focusing on the things that you must do will drain you, but even more, it will drain those you hold most dear. After all, Scripture does say “Love your neighbor as yourself,” not “love your jobs as yourself.”

The extension of this that I’ve made is that I’m more concerned about my tasks than my relationship with the Lord. This is a big mistake, no doubt. Today, Pastor preached on how to become effective at evangelizing. He pointed out that when Jesus called the disciples, He said this: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He said that if we take care of the following, the Lord will take care of the fishing. Read it closely and you’ll realize that’s really what it’s saying. Follow the Lord, and HE will take care of the things that you have to get done. So, I’ve resolved to make a better effort at the following, and let the Lord make the better effort at the tasking.

As I finish this post, I realize that the things I’ve written are indeed lifting my spirits. Now, perhaps a long night’s sleep will help even more.

“Lord, give me eyes and ears to know YOUR desire for my walk with You. Help me to know that You come first, people come second, and you will take care of the mountain of work that I face.”

Since I don’t have the brain capacity at the moment to actually post something original, this is one of my favorite Josh Groban songs, from his album “Awake.”

She stares through my shadow
She sees something more
Believes there’s a light in me
She is sure
And her truth makes me stronger
Does she realize
I awake every morning
With her strength by my side

I am not a hero
I am not an angel
I am just a man
A man who’s trying to love her
Unlike any other

In her eyes, I am
This world keeps on spinning
Only she stills my heart
She’s my inspiration
She’s my northern star

I don’t count my possessions
But all I call mine
I will give her completely
‘Til the end of all time

I am not a hero
I am not an angel
I am just a man
A man who’s trying to love her
Unlike any other

In her eyes, I am

In her eyes I see the sky
And all I’ll ever need
In her eyes time passes by
And she is with me

I am not a hero
I am not an angel
I am just a man
A man who’s tring to love her
Unlike any other

In her eyes, I am
In her eyes, I am

So I haven’t been keeping up on blogging as you all know… and I log into my wp tonight to discover a completely redesigned dashboard… this looks kinda sweet.

Anyways, the purpose of my actually logging into wordpress was to inform everybody what I’m up to and let you know that posting will be spotty at best, but more realistically non-existent for about the next month and a half whilst I complete the mad sprint to the finish line of high school… particularly because I’m the lazy hare from the parable who took a nap the first three years (memo to anyone in the lower levels of hs or not yet in high school: don’t do that).

Anyways, once the school year is over, and I’ve taken my week or slightly less than a week-long vacation to either Branson, MO, or San Francisco, CA I imagine posting will resume its normal course, at least for the summer.

Speaking of summer… today was the first day I wore shorts this year! Yahoooo!!!

Well, he’s just the current poster child of this particular clever word framing by the liberals. They’ve been doing it for a long time now, and I’m tired of it. It’s a load of words I cannot utter.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh speak to this yesterday, and he was saying that “unification” is essentially nothing more than liberal code-speak for “you forsake your convictions and let us do what we want.” He talked about the Founding Fathers and how they managed to hammer out agreement on a Constitution and other such things despite rampant disagreement… well, it was through determination and compromise, not “unification.” Reagan, the great hero of the Right, did not accomplish what he accomplished by “unifying” with any liberals.

Yesterday, I was debating on a blog with some people about Barack Obama’s speech, and one person trotted out this “unification” line. Here’s what I say to that. Fine. Let’s unify behind Barack Obama. No one’s allowed to disagree with him, and then we can call it civilized dialogue. NOT! The very instant that we do such a thing is the instant we have finally signed over our freedom as Americans. It is important that we disagree, and that we express those disagreements.

Which brings me to Obama’s speech a couple days ago. I read the transcript, and I hate to admit it, but it struck me as pretty well done at first. He addressed a lot of issues that a lot of liberals won’t touch. He paid at least token acknowledgment to the fact that white people’s concerns about race aren’t based in fiction. But when it came down to it and you erase away all the nice shiny rhetoric, it was the same. In the end, it’s still the white people’s fault. In the end, we still don’t get it. And in the end, he wants to solve all of these problems, whether real or perceived, with the same liberal policies. And, he could find it in him to offer as much or more condemnation for his white grandmother who was “afraid of black men on the street” and “uttered racial stereotypes” (go ahead and count the stereotypes that Obama made in that speech. I dare ya. There’s quite a few.) as he offered for his “Pastor” who rants and raves and calls for God to “damn America” (which is something that no Pastor, preaching God’s Word, would ever pray for). Among other things, Barack Obama was one of the loudest in the call for Don Imus to be fired. What does that say about him?

Obama has a lot of nice words, but even a cursory examination of his record, and the facts of his policies, reveal that he is just another liberal, just one who talks nicer. Don’t think for a second that he’s going to disown affirmative action (even though he paid lip service to white people’s concerns about that) as a policy, despite the fact that it is a racist policy. I mean, after all, his church preaches racism.

Against everything the media tells us, against all the appearances, against Obama’s rhetoric of “change” and Hillary’s devious ways of stealing elections, the truth is, John McCain may pull off the win after all. While it’s obviously premature to say that anything like a prediction can be made, an interesting trend is showing up. The Democrats continue to strike blows at one another, and every indication is that they will continue to do so until the convention this fall. Hillary Clinton does not give up a chance at power unless you drag her away under threat of the law, so she will likely fight this all the way until the end. (I believe it will be political suicide if she does, but that’s a good thing.) Whatever her chances, her presence in the race demands that Obama will have to deal with her. He seemed to be trying the tactic of ignoring her, and that clearly isn’t working.

If you buy into polling data, which does fluctuate, yes, but so long as it isn’t an exit poll, I believe, tends to provide at least a somewhat hazy picture of the facts, then this new poll by Reuters and Zogby will look very interesting to you. It shows Barack Obama’s national lead over Clinton down to just three percent, which is, of course, inside the margin of error of any poll. However, the more interesting trend is that McCain has now opened up a wide lead over Obama in a national election, and while his lead over Clinton has diminished somewhat, it still holds fairly strong.

A scenario seems to be emerging in which the Democrats fight it out until their convention in late August, while McCain can build his national support. His recent move of taking a trip to the Middle East almost as soon as he locked up the nomination is a stroke of genius, as it cements the image of McCain as a presidential figure in the minds of many, since that is the sort of thing that Presidents do. While the prospect of Hillary Clinton beating McCain in a head-to-head battle seems unlikely give how polarizing she is and how few right-leaning moderates would vote for her, a matchup against Obama means that McCain must start gathering support from that group now, which having the nomination locked up will allow him to do. IF McCain can capitalize on this built in advantage, then we may be looking at a President we can live with after all.