Something about killing new characters with a huge explosion because of frustration about where they are not going yet.
** ** ** **
What do you do with new characters?
To be more specific, what do I do with those new characters that have become nothing but problems?
In order to fix the problem of a plot that has hit a few hiccups, I decided to introduce a few new characters. Honestly I do not know if this has helped because I have the sudden urge to have all of the new people tied up and placed in a room with a very large explosive device.
Taking some time to think about this a mass explosion may not actually fix the problem. My other solution would be to let them run wild and see what exactly it is they want to do...I mean worse case I can always use the backspace button, right?
So I guess this just means wait and see, maybe letting them run about could be the best thing for my story. Who knows?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Day 10 - Noveling
Day 10
The past few days have been odd and sadly unproductive writing wise. Friday my doctor put me on a new medicine and so far the only effect I've felt from the medicine is extreme drowsiness. Which obviously would make accomplishing my every day life difficult, much less the writing aspect.
I'm forgoing as much human contact as possible today and cutting this short so I can hopefully bring my woefully low word count into the lower ten thousands today.
Here is to coffee, writing and medicine that makes your head feel funny! Hooray!
The past few days have been odd and sadly unproductive writing wise. Friday my doctor put me on a new medicine and so far the only effect I've felt from the medicine is extreme drowsiness. Which obviously would make accomplishing my every day life difficult, much less the writing aspect.
I'm forgoing as much human contact as possible today and cutting this short so I can hopefully bring my woefully low word count into the lower ten thousands today.
Here is to coffee, writing and medicine that makes your head feel funny! Hooray!
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Day Seven
Typically day seven is when the walls start to crash in, the honeymoon ends and the realization of how absolutely insane the idea of writing a novel in thirty days truly is.
And really it is insane but the important thing to remember is that this is the best kind of insanity. The kind of insanity where anything truly goes, the kind where no one can criticize you for being yourself and the kind where the only thing stopping you from success is yourself.
So, what does an aspiring novelist do when the walls of their fantasy novel writing land come crashing down?
Blow something up in the story and then keep writing, no looking back and no second guessing yourself. The only thing keeping this noveling project from eating your soul with a side helping of doubt and self loathing is pure momentum.
I’m telling myself that truly any idea is a good idea and anything that honestly feels right to the story, do it. Otherwise I will be forced to endure chants of “You sold out!” from my soul in the middle of the night.
Writing is a scary enough endeavor without having to have your well meaning but ultimately unnecessary self in the way. The idea is to let the story flow and to let it pour with no regrets or worries over spilt milk.
So before I use anymore clichéd metaphors I’m getting back to work. Have a good weekend and enjoy the free time I don’t have!
And really it is insane but the important thing to remember is that this is the best kind of insanity. The kind of insanity where anything truly goes, the kind where no one can criticize you for being yourself and the kind where the only thing stopping you from success is yourself.
So, what does an aspiring novelist do when the walls of their fantasy novel writing land come crashing down?
Blow something up in the story and then keep writing, no looking back and no second guessing yourself. The only thing keeping this noveling project from eating your soul with a side helping of doubt and self loathing is pure momentum.
I’m telling myself that truly any idea is a good idea and anything that honestly feels right to the story, do it. Otherwise I will be forced to endure chants of “You sold out!” from my soul in the middle of the night.
Writing is a scary enough endeavor without having to have your well meaning but ultimately unnecessary self in the way. The idea is to let the story flow and to let it pour with no regrets or worries over spilt milk.
So before I use anymore clichéd metaphors I’m getting back to work. Have a good weekend and enjoy the free time I don’t have!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
I just sort of keep listening to the same song on repeat...again and again and again.
I'm so tired.
I just do not even want to care right now but I do.
Jesus it gets so exhausting to just wake up and be around people. Half the time they aren't even to blame...even the damn annoying ones aren't to blame...its not even half the time...almost all the time the problem is me. Me being so selfish and unwilling to be used, me being so arrogant and prideful and me thinking the whole damn world revolves around me.
But you know, I'm so tired of feeling alone. I know it is my fault and my choice to keep pushing you away but dammit, I can't take much more of this pain.
I'm sick of the melancholy, the being unemployed, not knowing if I get the internship, not knowing how much I actually matter because I'm too stupid to realize your love is sufficient.
I don't even know if I give a fuck about being happy because of how exhausted I am.
Am I making sense here?
I'm feeling this insane mixture of raw pain, depression, loneliness and exhaustion. It makes me swear, it is making me want to scream out loud until my vocal chords bust and explode. I'm hurting so much I would almost welcome the pain, just so I could know I'm alive, so I know I'm not dead and in my very own custom made Hell.
I don't even know why I'm here or what I am doing. All of this become so freaking trite and useless so quickly.
I just wish myself was enough to make people love me, like me and accept me. I don't know why i want any of them to want me but I do. It makes no sense because having others involved makes the pain possibilities so much greater...but I still long for it and lust for it. Lust for the attention and the possibilities of being loved.
And, and what? What now? What now?
I'm so tired.
I just do not even want to care right now but I do.
Jesus it gets so exhausting to just wake up and be around people. Half the time they aren't even to blame...even the damn annoying ones aren't to blame...its not even half the time...almost all the time the problem is me. Me being so selfish and unwilling to be used, me being so arrogant and prideful and me thinking the whole damn world revolves around me.
But you know, I'm so tired of feeling alone. I know it is my fault and my choice to keep pushing you away but dammit, I can't take much more of this pain.
I'm sick of the melancholy, the being unemployed, not knowing if I get the internship, not knowing how much I actually matter because I'm too stupid to realize your love is sufficient.
I don't even know if I give a fuck about being happy because of how exhausted I am.
Am I making sense here?
I'm feeling this insane mixture of raw pain, depression, loneliness and exhaustion. It makes me swear, it is making me want to scream out loud until my vocal chords bust and explode. I'm hurting so much I would almost welcome the pain, just so I could know I'm alive, so I know I'm not dead and in my very own custom made Hell.
I don't even know why I'm here or what I am doing. All of this become so freaking trite and useless so quickly.
I just wish myself was enough to make people love me, like me and accept me. I don't know why i want any of them to want me but I do. It makes no sense because having others involved makes the pain possibilities so much greater...but I still long for it and lust for it. Lust for the attention and the possibilities of being loved.
And, and what? What now? What now?
It is being trapped in moments like these that I find myself,
my true self in all of its hypocrisy and lies.
The part of me I pretend is not real,
the part of me I wish I could kill
and the part of me that makes me cry.
I never find solace away from you
much less in me.
Never can I be apart of that which I hate
instead I am trapped.
Forever me being destroyed by you.
What is the point of this game?
All of this fragrant pain?
Every conversation with you
just reflecting how much it is I hate.
my true self in all of its hypocrisy and lies.
The part of me I pretend is not real,
the part of me I wish I could kill
and the part of me that makes me cry.
I never find solace away from you
much less in me.
Never can I be apart of that which I hate
instead I am trapped.
Forever me being destroyed by you.
What is the point of this game?
All of this fragrant pain?
Every conversation with you
just reflecting how much it is I hate.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Day 6
Day 6
Building the skeleton.
According to my wikipedia based research, basic anatomy states that if we didn't have bones we would be floppy masses of ickyness. Keeping this thought in mind (as well as my ship analogy) I spent most of yesterday and todays writing attempting to make a generalized skeleton outline for my story. Trying to get a better understanding for what the highs and the lows of my novel are.
I'm still not exactly sure what is going on.
There is a lot of general confusion and chaos and in ways I am getting vague glimpses as to what may be going on. On the plus side I'm only a few thousand words behind now and I think I may be caught up by tomorrow...hopefully at least.
Oh well no more time to talk! I'm needed back in surgery!
** ** **
Personal side note: Odds are that Obama is not the Antichrist...just saying.
Building the skeleton.
According to my wikipedia based research, basic anatomy states that if we didn't have bones we would be floppy masses of ickyness. Keeping this thought in mind (as well as my ship analogy) I spent most of yesterday and todays writing attempting to make a generalized skeleton outline for my story. Trying to get a better understanding for what the highs and the lows of my novel are.
I'm still not exactly sure what is going on.
There is a lot of general confusion and chaos and in ways I am getting vague glimpses as to what may be going on. On the plus side I'm only a few thousand words behind now and I think I may be caught up by tomorrow...hopefully at least.
Oh well no more time to talk! I'm needed back in surgery!
** ** **
Personal side note: Odds are that Obama is not the Antichrist...just saying.
Day Five
Day Five
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
-Seneca
I've been told there are two kinds of writers: those who run a planned course and those who run hysterically yelping through the streets wearing only their birthday suits. Personally I like to think I fall somewhere in between.
When beginning a project I like to have an idea about where I am going and what exactly it is I am trying to do. Typically I have a beginning and end already in mind but the problem is navigating between the two points.
I've started by throwing my hapless heroes onto this alien world and their simple goal is to find one another and get back home before everything they know is destroyed. To me what makes a story good is what happens between the beginning and the end. The goals they have to make, the challenges they must overcome and the tensions in their relationships with one another.
But even the best charted course can be thrown off by ill favoring winds. It is looking like I'm going to have to break out the oars and manually row myself to some literary island where I can find some inspiring material...and maybe some pineapples.
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
-Seneca
I've been told there are two kinds of writers: those who run a planned course and those who run hysterically yelping through the streets wearing only their birthday suits. Personally I like to think I fall somewhere in between.
When beginning a project I like to have an idea about where I am going and what exactly it is I am trying to do. Typically I have a beginning and end already in mind but the problem is navigating between the two points.
I've started by throwing my hapless heroes onto this alien world and their simple goal is to find one another and get back home before everything they know is destroyed. To me what makes a story good is what happens between the beginning and the end. The goals they have to make, the challenges they must overcome and the tensions in their relationships with one another.
But even the best charted course can be thrown off by ill favoring winds. It is looking like I'm going to have to break out the oars and manually row myself to some literary island where I can find some inspiring material...and maybe some pineapples.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Day Four
Day Four
My momentum has been derailed by having too much time to work on my novel. Instead of creating I spent most of the time compulsively eating mints and hating my writing.
One of the most difficult things for anyone to do is to genuinely believe in themselves while still retaining a sense of perspective. However, NANOWRIMO is all about loosing perspective because when you start talking about writing a novel in thirty days you might as well be trying to rob a bank using sock puppets.
* ** ** **
Version two:
Day Four
My writing momentum has unexpectedly slowed down. One of the more important keys to Nano success is momentum. Momentum that is caused by having a jam-packed schedule that forces you to set specific time for writing. Because of life circumstances I have way too much time on my hands and consequently I spend most of that time in self loathing and obsessive worrying.
I’m worried about my health, finding a good job, finishing school, fear I can’t write, worry about producing an original plot (as if that actually existed) and in general running around like a headless Chicken Little squawking about the sky falling…and it is fixing nothing.
The problem with worry is that the action by itself fixes nothing. The only way to fix an actual problem is by doing something, not by sitting and worrying. By this I mean taking action and not simply waiting so that I can become a reaction to some event.
So this is today’s plan: I decide to make lunch and eat it, I decided to go vote and I voted and now I am deciding to plant myself firmly in my desk chair and force myself to write any and every thought that comes to my head and count it towards my goal, because even if this is the worst crap I ever write I am at least going to die typing with a keyboard in one hand and my sense of inadequacy locked in my closet!
My momentum has been derailed by having too much time to work on my novel. Instead of creating I spent most of the time compulsively eating mints and hating my writing.
One of the most difficult things for anyone to do is to genuinely believe in themselves while still retaining a sense of perspective. However, NANOWRIMO is all about loosing perspective because when you start talking about writing a novel in thirty days you might as well be trying to rob a bank using sock puppets.
* ** ** **
Version two:
Day Four
My writing momentum has unexpectedly slowed down. One of the more important keys to Nano success is momentum. Momentum that is caused by having a jam-packed schedule that forces you to set specific time for writing. Because of life circumstances I have way too much time on my hands and consequently I spend most of that time in self loathing and obsessive worrying.
I’m worried about my health, finding a good job, finishing school, fear I can’t write, worry about producing an original plot (as if that actually existed) and in general running around like a headless Chicken Little squawking about the sky falling…and it is fixing nothing.
The problem with worry is that the action by itself fixes nothing. The only way to fix an actual problem is by doing something, not by sitting and worrying. By this I mean taking action and not simply waiting so that I can become a reaction to some event.
So this is today’s plan: I decide to make lunch and eat it, I decided to go vote and I voted and now I am deciding to plant myself firmly in my desk chair and force myself to write any and every thought that comes to my head and count it towards my goal, because even if this is the worst crap I ever write I am at least going to die typing with a keyboard in one hand and my sense of inadequacy locked in my closet!
Monday, November 3, 2008
"Las Vegas?!?! Why in the world Las Vegas?"
"Las Vegas?!?! Why in the world Las Vegas?"
Wonderful question, amazing question actually. A question I am still asking myself.
But the answer goes back a few years to around 2002, the year I discovered the online ministry xxxchurch.com. Incidentally it was their first year of life. They started out as a completely outside the box ministry dedicated to spreading the simple message that "Porn is a bad thing but Jesus loves you" and their goal was to spread that message in as unconventional as possible, trying to add a bit of humor to an otherwise awkward and at the best of times a disturbing topic.
As the years grew so did the ministry, they started traveling to porn conventions around the world and setting up booths inside of them handing out Bibles and tshirts with the words "Jesus loves porn stars" and began to build relationships with those in the industry. Eventually this led them to setting up a fund to help the actors and producers get out of an industry that for most people becomes inescapable because of debt, drugs and no one wanting to help them get out.
Flash foward a few years into early 2009. xxxchurch will be setting up the first church on the actual Las Vegas strip itself, wedged in between casinos, strip clubs, bars and whatever else is there. The closest churches are a few miles away, tucked safely into the suburbs. This going to be their first actual church plant where they will be having daily services and setting up outreaches to the area targeting things such as business conventions, offering support for those visiting the city and are afraid they may fall into temptation and of course they will be reaching out into the depth of darkness to those who are being trodden down by the world and told they are worthless and have no future.
Where do I fit into all of this? I mean, it's not like I actually have a hidden past of being a ex-porn producer or something but the burden on my mind that doesn't let me sleep at night is that there are so many people shunned by church as a whole. How many of us actually go to churches that would welcome prostitutes, AIDS victims, porn stars, people openly homosexual, people who lost their entire lives to porn, people that grew up being sexually molested and have no idea what a normal and healthy relationship, those who molested those kids and those still shaking violently from coming off their last high? How many churches would actually risk getting the blood on their carpet and having their lives 'stained' by accident, simply because they came into contact with these 'undesirables'?
I don't say this to simply provoke feelings of pity because the last thing these people need is pity. They need justice, they need the love of Jesus to help them sort out their hellish lives so that they might actually be able to leave the past behind. Pity by itself is useless. They need emphatic compassion, the kind Jesus would show if he was here in person. He would walk up to these 'lesser ones' and hug them and tell them he loves them and that even before creation and he spoke them into existence he was madly in love with them and just wanted them to be his and for them to love him back.
It is this 'furiously passionate love' of Christ that they need and what we so often just neglect and at times forget completely. It's easy to develop a callous heart and an apathy to those that it hurts to look at it from out mid ranged level suburban prison we look ourselves in to keep the bad people out.
Everyone has different gifts and callings for different people and places and one of the few things I know for certain is that I'm being called to go and live in the darkest places to try and actually make a difference. I have only been sure of a handful of things in my life:
-Jesus loving me and calling me to be his
-Jesus telling me to get off my lazy butt and go tell others about him as a life and occupation
-Jesus telling me to go to the University of Mobile
-Jesus telling me to go to the loveless and love them
-And from what I can tell he told me to apply for an internship with xxxchurch
It is moments like these that life makes the most sense in but at the same time it scares me greatly because it means my life isn't mine and I'm simply on borrowed time. That everything physical is fleeting and the only way I'm going to be able to serve is by sacrificing every personal comfort and being willing to loose what I have.
This past year has been an incredibly frustrating one because although I did a semester of seminary it felt so cold and alien. It felt like I was slamming my head into this glass box and I was wanting to cry because I didn't fit. It's like everything except me was perfect and that I was the crazy one. And so after a semester I took a break and entered the work force migrating from one depressing sales job to the next, not sure what in the heck I was doing and why I was doing it.
"Work to eat and eat to work."
After a few months of this I started devolving excruciating stomach pain which resulted in the removal of my gallbladder in June and at least a dozen blood tests and another dozen assortment of x-rays, cat scans, endoscopies and many other things. Eventually I had another minor surgery where I had my bile and pancreatic ducts messed with and what would have been eventually a massive liver failure was averted in the nick of time but still, I am having problems with pain in just every day life and most of the time have no joy in eating food.
Throw in another stress factor of my family just being so wrapped up in their own problems (ie my step dad regressing back into alcoholism all gung ho style and trying to kill himself and me and my mom having to 'deal' with him and me and arguments, yelling, headaches, tears and just the insanity of it all was about enough to make me have another nervous break down all by itself) to really feel much sympathy for me. Thankfully I have had a close group of friends around here to support and encourage me and even though I don't know why this is all happening, it IS for some reason.
I feel like I am on the crux of something big. A large change that has been a long time in coming. I've never been the best at evangelism but I do know I have had times where God put me in places to talk to those who were downtrodden and even just being able to say "I'm sorry but I do care and Jesus does" is enough reason for me to go. Being able to share in peoples sorrows and pain and FEEL their pain with them is so draining...seeing peoples tears and feeling the knives being drive into their hearts will never become easy but it is a gift I have been given.
Just like any gift it has be used, the gift of love, the gift of faith and the gift of compassion. They have to be exercised like any talent and any muscle or they will become unable to function and die.
The natural desire we all have when we face pain is to run away and hide and to a lesser extent I've tried that for years. Who in their right mind wants to accept a calling where they know they are heading for a beautiful contradictory life of hardship and misery with the only reward being honest love? I mean, it sound ROMANTIC, don't get me wrong. That's one reason I love calling myself a "Freelance Minister", it sounds wicked awesome and makes people think I actually am something cool...but in reality it just means I just am not sure about aligning myself with any one particular denomination because really I don't care about the 'how' and 'why' as much as actually getting into the mess of life and doing something for once.
See? I'm running into another one of these crazy contradictions about myself. I want to serve and I don't want to serve, just like how I wish I could just get an IV of morphine pumping in my body 24/7 so I could be pain and stress free but at the same time I know it is PAIN that shapes us, that defines us, that makes us, that crafts us, that refines us and DEMANDS who we become.
I feel sort of like I'm crazy, of course anyone who knows Jesus knows that feeling, but despite the craziness there is this giddy excitement of psychotic horrific dread that my great uncle must have felt when he jumped out of a perfectly good landing ship and charged up the hellish Omaha beach on June 6th 1944.
It's paradoxical, this love and desire for love, being loved and still searching for that love but that is sort of what life is. Fitting together all of these little pieces and knowing that most of them won't fit but still trying, knowing that little we do matters in the long run but what matters is knowing we do the right thing for its own sake.
In a nut shell I think that is why. Partly because I feel called to do this, partly because I have to do this and partly because it is the right thing.
The most I can ask is prayer. I know how absolutely insane all of this sounds and I have no clue how, why or many details but I feel this is something I need to throw my life into.
Thanks for reading this ridiculously long thing.
Wonderful question, amazing question actually. A question I am still asking myself.
But the answer goes back a few years to around 2002, the year I discovered the online ministry xxxchurch.com. Incidentally it was their first year of life. They started out as a completely outside the box ministry dedicated to spreading the simple message that "Porn is a bad thing but Jesus loves you" and their goal was to spread that message in as unconventional as possible, trying to add a bit of humor to an otherwise awkward and at the best of times a disturbing topic.
As the years grew so did the ministry, they started traveling to porn conventions around the world and setting up booths inside of them handing out Bibles and tshirts with the words "Jesus loves porn stars" and began to build relationships with those in the industry. Eventually this led them to setting up a fund to help the actors and producers get out of an industry that for most people becomes inescapable because of debt, drugs and no one wanting to help them get out.
Flash foward a few years into early 2009. xxxchurch will be setting up the first church on the actual Las Vegas strip itself, wedged in between casinos, strip clubs, bars and whatever else is there. The closest churches are a few miles away, tucked safely into the suburbs. This going to be their first actual church plant where they will be having daily services and setting up outreaches to the area targeting things such as business conventions, offering support for those visiting the city and are afraid they may fall into temptation and of course they will be reaching out into the depth of darkness to those who are being trodden down by the world and told they are worthless and have no future.
Where do I fit into all of this? I mean, it's not like I actually have a hidden past of being a ex-porn producer or something but the burden on my mind that doesn't let me sleep at night is that there are so many people shunned by church as a whole. How many of us actually go to churches that would welcome prostitutes, AIDS victims, porn stars, people openly homosexual, people who lost their entire lives to porn, people that grew up being sexually molested and have no idea what a normal and healthy relationship, those who molested those kids and those still shaking violently from coming off their last high? How many churches would actually risk getting the blood on their carpet and having their lives 'stained' by accident, simply because they came into contact with these 'undesirables'?
I don't say this to simply provoke feelings of pity because the last thing these people need is pity. They need justice, they need the love of Jesus to help them sort out their hellish lives so that they might actually be able to leave the past behind. Pity by itself is useless. They need emphatic compassion, the kind Jesus would show if he was here in person. He would walk up to these 'lesser ones' and hug them and tell them he loves them and that even before creation and he spoke them into existence he was madly in love with them and just wanted them to be his and for them to love him back.
It is this 'furiously passionate love' of Christ that they need and what we so often just neglect and at times forget completely. It's easy to develop a callous heart and an apathy to those that it hurts to look at it from out mid ranged level suburban prison we look ourselves in to keep the bad people out.
Everyone has different gifts and callings for different people and places and one of the few things I know for certain is that I'm being called to go and live in the darkest places to try and actually make a difference. I have only been sure of a handful of things in my life:
-Jesus loving me and calling me to be his
-Jesus telling me to get off my lazy butt and go tell others about him as a life and occupation
-Jesus telling me to go to the University of Mobile
-Jesus telling me to go to the loveless and love them
-And from what I can tell he told me to apply for an internship with xxxchurch
It is moments like these that life makes the most sense in but at the same time it scares me greatly because it means my life isn't mine and I'm simply on borrowed time. That everything physical is fleeting and the only way I'm going to be able to serve is by sacrificing every personal comfort and being willing to loose what I have.
This past year has been an incredibly frustrating one because although I did a semester of seminary it felt so cold and alien. It felt like I was slamming my head into this glass box and I was wanting to cry because I didn't fit. It's like everything except me was perfect and that I was the crazy one. And so after a semester I took a break and entered the work force migrating from one depressing sales job to the next, not sure what in the heck I was doing and why I was doing it.
"Work to eat and eat to work."
After a few months of this I started devolving excruciating stomach pain which resulted in the removal of my gallbladder in June and at least a dozen blood tests and another dozen assortment of x-rays, cat scans, endoscopies and many other things. Eventually I had another minor surgery where I had my bile and pancreatic ducts messed with and what would have been eventually a massive liver failure was averted in the nick of time but still, I am having problems with pain in just every day life and most of the time have no joy in eating food.
Throw in another stress factor of my family just being so wrapped up in their own problems (ie my step dad regressing back into alcoholism all gung ho style and trying to kill himself and me and my mom having to 'deal' with him and me and arguments, yelling, headaches, tears and just the insanity of it all was about enough to make me have another nervous break down all by itself) to really feel much sympathy for me. Thankfully I have had a close group of friends around here to support and encourage me and even though I don't know why this is all happening, it IS for some reason.
I feel like I am on the crux of something big. A large change that has been a long time in coming. I've never been the best at evangelism but I do know I have had times where God put me in places to talk to those who were downtrodden and even just being able to say "I'm sorry but I do care and Jesus does" is enough reason for me to go. Being able to share in peoples sorrows and pain and FEEL their pain with them is so draining...seeing peoples tears and feeling the knives being drive into their hearts will never become easy but it is a gift I have been given.
Just like any gift it has be used, the gift of love, the gift of faith and the gift of compassion. They have to be exercised like any talent and any muscle or they will become unable to function and die.
The natural desire we all have when we face pain is to run away and hide and to a lesser extent I've tried that for years. Who in their right mind wants to accept a calling where they know they are heading for a beautiful contradictory life of hardship and misery with the only reward being honest love? I mean, it sound ROMANTIC, don't get me wrong. That's one reason I love calling myself a "Freelance Minister", it sounds wicked awesome and makes people think I actually am something cool...but in reality it just means I just am not sure about aligning myself with any one particular denomination because really I don't care about the 'how' and 'why' as much as actually getting into the mess of life and doing something for once.
See? I'm running into another one of these crazy contradictions about myself. I want to serve and I don't want to serve, just like how I wish I could just get an IV of morphine pumping in my body 24/7 so I could be pain and stress free but at the same time I know it is PAIN that shapes us, that defines us, that makes us, that crafts us, that refines us and DEMANDS who we become.
I feel sort of like I'm crazy, of course anyone who knows Jesus knows that feeling, but despite the craziness there is this giddy excitement of psychotic horrific dread that my great uncle must have felt when he jumped out of a perfectly good landing ship and charged up the hellish Omaha beach on June 6th 1944.
It's paradoxical, this love and desire for love, being loved and still searching for that love but that is sort of what life is. Fitting together all of these little pieces and knowing that most of them won't fit but still trying, knowing that little we do matters in the long run but what matters is knowing we do the right thing for its own sake.
In a nut shell I think that is why. Partly because I feel called to do this, partly because I have to do this and partly because it is the right thing.
The most I can ask is prayer. I know how absolutely insane all of this sounds and I have no clue how, why or many details but I feel this is something I need to throw my life into.
Thanks for reading this ridiculously long thing.
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