The Anniversary

Today is an anniversary. Well, "today" being Friday. I can't remember off the top of my head which anniversary it is, though.

I mean, I know what it's the anniversary of; I just don't remember how many years it's been. Give me a moment...

Let’s see. Met in fall ’02, started “dating” in spring ’03, so that must mean that the first occurrence of the event which I “Celebrate” every 28th of December was in 2003. What was it that happened…only 4 years ago? Well, the evening (the 27th, actually) started with a movie, then I drove her to her house to drop her off. After hanging out for I have no idea how long, we migrated outside to visit before I left to go home. For the longest time, these words had bounced around my head (hers too, I knew), but they had never been said. Until early that morning when she practically blurted out “I love you, Brian.” I got real quiet, and then continued the conversation as though nothing had been said. I knew she meant the words. I knew that I wanted to return them, but something more than “I love you too” was warranted. It was probably a half-hour later before I finally told her, “I want you to know that I love you too.” It wasn’t a matter of being scared of saying it; it was a matter of how important to me it was that she know how deliberate the decision to say those words was.

We talked later about that night – on many occasions. There was nothing we didn’t discuss at times. We’d critique one another’s gaffes, blunders, and complement each other’s shining moments. We’d discuss what we were thinking at past times of strong emotions, and generally try to analyze everything past and present to help the future.

Anyway, that previous paragraph isn’t really germane. What is important is that you know how strong those words were. Both of us knew that in uttering those words, we’d be making a commitment to the other person. It was a commitment that we each knew would be as strong as marriage vows. Not as strong as marriage vows are legally, but as strong as they are if the wording is to be taken literally.

What commitment was implicit in this statement I made?

This one: I will be patient with you and kind to you. I will not envy (you or others), nor boast or be proud of my own accomplishments. I’ll not be rude or more concerned for my well-being than for that of others. I’ll not be easily angered and I’ll forget past wrongs committed against me. I will always protect, trust, hope, and persevere. This I promise unto you until one of us dies or you release me from it of your own volition.

Every one of those statements was in my conscious mind when I uttered those words 4 years ago. And I meant them with all my heart. In case you’re wondering, she has released me from that commitment (of her own volition), but it hasn’t helped me to feel any less obligated to keep those promises I made. I know that I’m not responsible for them in the same way that I once was, but I still find it difficult (to say the least) to “move on” with my life. I’ve not yet learned how to reconcile my past commitments to ‘her’ with potential future commitments I may want to make with another ‘her.’ I’ll have to release myself, I suppose. Mostly I just hope that I never have to confront that situation. I know there’s more than a few of you out there who hope/pray/expect that I’ll meet a girl in the near future and it’ll all be roses and we’ll get married and then my parents can have grandchildren…but I think I still hope that I’ve already met her and that it won’t be very long before she realizes it.

Goodnight, all. Farewell, December 28, 2007.

Your Love...

By Darrell Evans:

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, intimate
I find I'm moving to the rhythms of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place
Your love is extravagant

Spread wide in the arms of Christ
Is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known
For You considered me a friend
Captured my heart again

Your love has given me a freedom
Like I've never known
And Your love is bringing me home

Your love is extravagant
Your love is extravagant

I love what You're doing in me, Lord
And I'm thankful, Lord
What You're doing in my heart
You're changing me, changing me...

Deeper than the deepest ocean
Higher than the highest mountain
Reaches higher than the heavens
And still it finds its way to me...

And You're patient, Lord
And You're kind to me
Though I'm failing You sometimes
Your love never has failed me

Sometimes at points in life I don't know what to say or do. So when I have sufficient presence of mind, I put on a song. Sometimes I just give it back to God, sometimes I write the words down to help me see what's actually there. (I've got a notebook here with plenty of these scribblings - though I doubt anybody but I could easily read it.) This week has been one of those times where I see in life how much I've put my dependence for so many things on people where that should be placed in God.

The first time I sat down and read Judges, I was incredulous. It's the story of Israel under the direction of a series of judges over the course of a few hundred years. There were several judges at a time in power in Israel - each one had authority over some region. Under God, these judges were the highest authority in the land. It was their job to finish the task that Joshua had begun, clearing the land of the people that God told them to drive out.

The part about the story that left me incredulous was the continual fluctuations between prosperity and depravity. Consistently the Israelites would fall into sin, and then a righteous judge would lead them out of it. While in sin, they would experience the consequences of that sin. When led out of it, they experienced the prosperity, success, and they flourished as God had promised that they would. The part that I couldn't understand was how they could go through so many of these cycles so fast. Reading the book, it's clear that within a single generation the people would fall into and be raised out of sin multiple times. I asked how a people could be so stupid as to forget how God rewards righteousness and how sin results in misery.

I could ask the same question of myself now. How does it happen? Gradually. With small compromises. With apathy.

That last one...apathy. That is probably the most underrated sin in the world. It's not hate that's the opposite of love. Apathy is. It's written (in Scripture, no less) that God would prefer someone be actively opposed to Him than that the person simply not care. When You're the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of the universe Who has empowered a piece of that creation with the choice to love or hate, it's obvious that He would prefer we love (one another and Him). If that Creator would have preferred His creation to hate Him, then it seems reasonable that He hates them - and why create something that He hates and let it continue its meager existence making Him miserable?

God gave us this choice to decide whether to love him or to despise him. Being a God of love, He has created a home for both groups of people. In one (termed Heaven), humanity will know intimacy with God unlike anything we've ever imagined. We'll no more be His equals than a 2-year-old is the equal of his parents, but the relationship will be similar. For those who have chosen disdain over love, God provides a home as well. It's the only place in the universe where He shields His presence, allowing the people there isolation from His presence. This is what Hell is. It's not some burning pit with a demonic overlord who takes joy in the plight of all the captives. Hell was created as a home for those demons who felt that they could aspire to the position of Almighty. No piece of humanity was ever intended for Hell, but to bring a person into Heaven who isn't in love with God would be more of a punishment to them than Hell would be.

This all relates back to that apathy thing, I swear.

Because humanity was never intended to go to Hell, but because we made choices that alienated us from our Creator, and because He loved us so much, He enacted a plan to provide escape. He took on the guise of an ordinary human, but lived a life fully honoring to the Father. From birth until crucifixion, Jesus lived His life under the exact same power that every human on this planet has access to. He did it by living a life in harmony with the will of the Spirit, continually in communion (not the bread & wine ceremony, but "state of communing") with the Father. He was fully God in every way, but He suppressed his divinity to provide a perfect example of how we should live our lives. This resulted in a death of significant pain, indignity, and misery inflicted upon Him by all humanity. He did that because He loved us so much that He was willing to endure absolutely anything if only one person would use that to spend eternity with Him.

How can one look at that with apathy? You can look at it as a myth if you want (though nobody can reasonably deny that a man named Jesus lived and died in this manner - there's far too much evidence to deny that). You can claim that the tales of the supernatural in the Bible are just stories that don't have relevance today. If you do that, then you would have to look down your nose in derision at this man Jesus who went to a very painful death for no reason at all except maybe some mental deficiency which convinced him that he was the son of a nonexistent god. At the very least you would have to scoff him. After all, who would hold someone in high esteem who stepped in front of a runaway train to stop it with his bare hands before it careened off the side of a cliff? Is that a mark of honor or abject stupidity?

If that man is the Son of the One True God and is capable of successfully stopping the runaway train with his bare hands, and He does do so - who would react with apathy? Who would look at that and just not care?

How is it that people have been convinced that it's perfectly natural to be apathetic towards God? There isn't anything more unnatural I can think of. Either God is the One most worthy of our adoration and love or his existence is a myth that only serves to stagnate our culture.

More ramblies! Yay!

Some fun things I found on the internet today:

Double Fine Productions' News page (there are some really hilarious entries in here - especially if you've played the excellent Psychonauts)
Double Fine Productions' Job Openings page (it gets pretty funny towards the end)
GrumpyGamer (Ron Gilbert's blog)

Ok, so after those two random but yet semi-related links, I present the following: Introspection. Today I realized that I haven't much talked about any of the peculiarities about myself that I have observed set me apart from how it seems other people act/think, but that may not be apparent from merely observing me. First, I would like to point out that I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies. It's not debilitating, I'm not Monk (in terms of level of condition or genius), and I've never suffered from it - but it does affect me. For example, I have a very strong (but not absolute) aversion to stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. Unless something is actively drawing my attention away from my footsteps, I will make significant effort to pace my stride in such a way as to look natural and avoid the cracks. If for some reason I become conscious that I'm doing this, I usually continue to do it while chuckling at my own silliness, but I have been known (even today) to consciously step on a crack. I've heard of my mother's back suffering no ill effects.

I count steps. Usually in multiples of four or twelve. If the bell tower is chiming, I count the number of steps I take between tolls - I try to time my steps so that I have exactly ten. There's nothing special about ten except that it's the number of steps I naturally take in that period, I simply attempt to adjust the cadence of my footsteps so that the tenth step falls exactly at the time of the bell. When counting my steps in multiples of four or twelve, I'm simply counting to myself "one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four" over and over. Rarely do I keep track of how many times I count to four or twelve. Also, I count the number of steps in a flight of stairs. I am annoyed to no end when confronted with sequential flights of stairs which do not have the same number of steps - ESPECIALLY when the difference is an even number (usually 2). Why didn't the designer simply move one step from the flight with more stairs to the flight with fewer? Then they'd have the same number of steps. Then I could count to the same number both times. *sigh* Some things I may never know.

I cannot wear long sleeves without wearing long pants. It makes me feel top-heavy. Of course, this rarely is a problem because I am rarely without long pants (and when I am, there's probably no good reason to have long sleeves on), but still it's something that I have noticed. A friend of mine (some of you know him as Uthalinus, others perhaps as Jerm) used to regularly wear shorts with a sweatshirt. I would boggle at that because I could not under any circumstance imagine voluntarily choosing that outfit for myself. Clothing has a hierarchy - shirts are dependent upon shorts or pants (it is improper to don one's shirt before one's shorts or pants), long sleeves are dependent upon long pants, and also: long sleeves should not ever be worn unless there is a short-sleeved shirt underneath. You will rarely find me breaking any of these conventions.

And, in case you're curious for any reason - I won't be found existing in the state of shorts or pants without a shirt. That is simply a temporary state that I go through when getting dressed or undressed (the shirt comes on first, goes off last). Some may prescribe these things to "habit" - but I consider it to be stronger than habit. "Habit" is which sock I put on first. I actually don't know which one I put on first. I probably put one on first more often than the other (probably by a significant amount), but I don't know which one it is. If I were conscious of the order I normally do it in and reversed it, it wouldn't seem odd to me at all. That is not at all how these other things feel - there is something in my mind that compels me to obey these very arbitrary principles. I can break it if I choose to do so, but I rarely do because I rarely have any non-arbitrary reason to do so and I am overly conscious of being in violation of my own arbitrary rules - and that distracts me from whatever it is that I'm trying to do with my life at any given moment.

So...there you have it. Paragraphs of my personal quirks. Enjoy.