Early Mornings and Silly Young Ones.

I woke up this morning. “Surprise!” my alarm clock shouted. It was 4:20AM and time to start my day. After a frustrating day I awoke far too early and ended up having far too much fun….hmmm. Let me tell you about it.

Yesterday was kinda rough. Not the morning. Scott Fillingame and I had breakfast. I value his friendship. I am impressed by our mutual resolve to have breakfast once a week. We’ve done it almost all year, every week. High five to Scott. Breakfast with him is always good. I hopefully get to live with the man in a house next year after Costa Rica. It will be Bomb.com…Yep, that’s what I said.

After Breakfast with Scott I had 4 hours of class (11-3) and then 2 hours of work. I have decided that I need to eat more food. When I get to work I tend to be angry and hungry (the two seem to be interrelated). That was the start of my frustration. What added to it was the following situation:

I rented a 24 hour bus pass to a young man who needed to go somewhere. He paid for it (somewhat begrudgingly) and then left to catch his bus. 15 mintues later he was back asking if he could trade his bus pass back for his 2 dollars because he now had a ride. I said I was unable to do that, because he already bought it. I couldn’t just give him his money back in reverse exchange.

Tangent: I mean really. When you go to the store and buy milk do you ever assume the store to be willing to trade you money back for the milk if you’ve already bought it? Maybe if it’s an appliance or something along those lines…but really. It was 2 dollars. Suck it up guy. You make decisions in life. You can’t take them back. Let’s learn about life together. In general I just didn’t think I was allowed to give him his money back, and I was gumpt at the same time from a long day.

Back to story. So then he left. About 5 minutes later he returns with his ride (a friend of mine who is a girl) whose self-appointed job it is to apparently convince the asshole at the desk (me) to give him his money back. At this point I start to become pissed off. A) I feel I have a legitimate point. B) The fact that a friend of mine is more or less acting as not really a friend in this case and more of a person trying to get greedy uncle scrooge to open up his wallet makes me angry. I am not a billionaire duck. I am a frikkin’ office assistant. I am not greedy. The money is not mine. It goes to ASSP. Thus it goes to the student body. C) My friend upon learning by means of my resulting unpleasant demeanor that I was not going to back down just because she’s a friend and attractive girl asked for a hug saying something along the lines of “You’re not going to be a huge douchebag and not give me a hug are you?” (note: She did use the phrase douchebag, sorry. I understand it’s vulgar. Sometimes I use the phrase too…)  The implication I read from that was: “You’re already a douchebag for not giving his money back to him, give me a hug or you’ll be a bigger one.” I gave her a hug, but I was not a happy camper for the next 4-5 hours of life afterwards. Low blood sugar and absurd situations where I am made to feel like I’m Al Capone stealing from the poor people just pisses me off.

I went to the driving range with some Emerson lads and it was a good time. It served to take my mind off of my lingering frustration. I then went to Group (on-campus worship Wednesdays) to hear Dr.Nienhuis speak. He leads my bible study. I am a blessed man to study the bible with someone like him. He knows things. The result of me going to Group was not a blessing of icecream from the Lord (like the ice cream social I attended prior to group), but rather a realization of several things:

1) I felt really lonely.

I felt lonely because for a long time I realize that I feel lonely only to say to myself “But God’s still there, I shouldn’t feel lonely.” or that “Does that make my friends who spend time with me worthless?” The result of these things was that I’ve been guilt-tripping myself into not feeling lonely. I decided to be done with that. Here world. Listen up. I’m lonely. Not to say that I need a girlfriend. I’d like one, but it’s not necessary. I think what I mean by that is that there’s something inside me that is never satisfied with anything I experience. I move through life only being fulfilled by my relationship with God and other people. Nothing else works. Even these things that fulfill me only leave me wanting more. I want deeper relationships with God and people…but the deeper I get the more I want. I am never satisfied with any of it because of the resulting desire for more depth. Sigh. Maybe another part is that I want someone to be able to be a part of my life enough to challenge me to be more than I am…I want the sort of relationship that king David had with Jonathan. I want a friend like that.

2) I felt broken.

I got really tired of having to interact with Jesus in a broken and imperfect fashion that is so inhibited by my stubborness and frustration. At the same time I know that I don’t get to have a perfect relationship with God and I’m not pleased by that. But Mr.Bonhoeffer just said in the book I’m reading that :

“What we cannot do, we must now simply let go of and limit ourselves to what we can and should do, that is be manly and strong and trust in God in the midst of our suffering.”

He makes a stirring point.

3) I felt pissed off.

You heard the story. That plus frustration with 1 and 2.

4) I was not having a great day.

Everything added together.

I went back to the floor after that and after spending some time (not as much as I’d like) with my boys I went to bed so I could get up at the butt-crack of dawn and initiate the new Emerson hall PAs.

Nate Goodwin and myself woke up our replacements in hill. I woke Michael Willcockson up by saying “there’s pancakes downstairs.” (shoutout to Drew Kreeger) He responded by exploding in a flurry of punches and kicks. I got kicked in the shoulder. I wasn’t hurt. He woke up all the way and we left. After blindfolding the PAs Nate and I drove them up to Ashton where we said they should shout “I am a beautiful animal!” all the way down the hill. Which they did. It was awesome and hilarious.

We did some other things that I won’t mention so that future generations of Emerson PAs don’t get any ideas before its time. But in general it was really fun. Way more fun than it was a year ago when we were in their place. We stopped in for food in Susie’s apartment and suddenly I found myself at the cusp of the past and the present. The young ones were all gathered together, building new relationships and we were there as the old timers. The people passing the torch to a new generation of leaders…It felt strange. But good. I think they’ll do a great job. The guy PAs are pretty awesome (way to  go Aaron. You’ll do very well). Lots of the girls are cool too. As I passed the torch this morning I realized that I had never had that much fun before 8AM before…