soldier

...great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble...
"i wait for your salvation, o Lord, and i follow your commands..."

dry

honestly...
things have been pretty dry lately.

i dunno why

i wonder if it appears that way?

other people can bring me to life.
encourage me.
comfort me.
spur me on.

but alone...
alone i can look so dead sometimes,
from the way i see it.

i can feel so...
lazy.
things can seem so pointless.

and God feels like more of...
a thought,
a memory even.

i'm starving
but i have no appetite.

i hate it.

scars

so if you read this, then you probably already know about my recent injury

we were over at the wcf cookout the other night. then i was walking back to west campus with molly, chelsea, erin, and a new friend, colleen.
molly wanted to visit some other new friends who had pledged to a fraternity nearby. after circling around looking for the place we were finally on the right path...

sadly for me, that path led right to a pole. i guess i wasn't paying attention, because i never saw it coming. i was just turning and looking up to make a comment when
BOOM.

pole

there was a short moment of "ouch."
and a bit of dizzy.

and then lots of laughing.

then blood.

the girls were concerned.
with good reason perhaps.
[from this point until the "but seriously" i had a pair of guest authors: chelsea and erin. i made a few edits, and left some comments in brackets... but it's mostly their work.]

it was actually pretty bad...
i'm just being modest.
there was blood all over the side of my face and in my hair...
apparently i looked pretty awful.

i was still laughing like i was the coolest person ever [because i have the best embarrasing story ever] when in reality i was standing on the sidewalk outside of a bunch of frat houses with blood plastered [good word choice..] to my face.
needless to say i have some pretty cool friends and they (very wisely) went straight to one of the frat houses to get me some water and band aids and cleaning swabs.

they're so sweet. [:)]

anyways this part is actually kind of funny because all the frat boys were outside dressed up with flowers ready to serenade the sororities, so i had a bit of an audience while i was wiping my face off.

so we headed home instead of to a hospital (very stupid idea) [uh... too bad there's not a hospital to go to....]

chelsea [thinks she] saved erin from walking into another pole [except not].
then as we were passing another frat house, chelsea's nose spontaneously began to bleed, and the familiar sight of blood returned. she was clearly being repaid for saving erin from certain blood [what?]. again we ran to a frat house to get napkins. chelsea then joined me in the very distinguished blood crew.

anyways
i got back and paraded around my dorm sharing my story with residents.
it's a good conversation starter.

i should run into things more often...

so yeah

i figured it was just a little cut...
it wasn't until later in molly/colleen/erin's dorm (to get a brownie that my awesome friend erin saved for me) that we pulled back the band aid to have a better look at the cut. it was WAY deep and STILL bleeding hours later (by now we really should have gone the hospital) [that still doesn't exist] but we settled on fixing it with hydrogen peroxide/neosporin/another band-aid/water/bed.

except...
i actually stayed up til like 1...
because it's fun to tell people that you might have to get stitches for walking into a pole.

i finally got to the doctor the next day after my classes and he told me that in order to sew it up he would have to rip the cut back open first.
and i decided that sounded stupid.
basically i would be paying them to make me bleed more, take up my free time, and remove my awesome scar.

it's pretty neat actually, it's sort of in the shape of a Y over my eyebrow. i'm practically harry potter. i bet i'll be able to sense the pole's presence next time i walk by it.

by now it's not so bad, but I managed to get a sweet picture of my face covered in blood.


but seriously

i decided things in life go this way a lot.
for me at least.

it's easy to just laugh it off when you run into a pole.
to pretend like you're fine.
to get too busy to take care of the problem.

and then it turns out it's worse than you thought.
and covering it up with a band-aid,
and wiping off the blood,
and getting busy with other "more important" things
doesn't help.

it's kind of lame when you finally realize it's a problem.
but you can't do anything.

and the worst part is when you
FINALLY
get to the doctor...
but now the scar is already part of you.
and he has to open it again to fix it.

but you won't let him.

if you had gone at first,
he could have fixed it right up.
and you'd have been fine with that!

but now you waited to long.

you're okay with him helping you when you're hurt.
but not okay with him hurting you to help.

if only, if only...

dying

you're dying to live,
you're dying to know what love is.

and I'm dying to show you something more.

hilltop

hey guys

things have been pretty nuts lately

i moved back to school on sunday, august 3rd if you didn't hear.

i'm now a georgia tech peer leader (PL for short)
basically an RA
except exclusively for freshmen. and therefore our aim is not at all just to be the hall police, but rather to build a community. the main objective of the job is to help freshmen adjust to college and feel at home here.

we had training all last week. which was basically 12 hours a day minus meals and occasional down time between sessions. sometimes boring, sometimes exciting, sometimes useful. but anyways, its over now.
then on sunday we had a free/fun day.

of course up to this point, most free time has gone to preparing the hall and doing paperwork.

but it has been excellent!
PLs are generally pretty fun people i think. which makes sense because otherwise we would be less likely to be hired for the job.
and so becoming friends with these people i'll be working with has been an absolute joy.

there are 20 of us under our hall director, and most of them i can now call "friend."
they're all such beautiful people.
i just can't express how wonderful the time with them has been. :)

so that's exciting.

today was the first day that i could sleep in and do more rest/personal stuff than work in quite a while i feel.

it will be interesting to see how things balance out as the year starts.
this job that i have now is a big one. not in a bad way... it's perfect and i love it.
but it is big. between Navs, PLing, and school i think my plate will be very full...

i'll be learning a lot about managing time and priorities.
i'll be learning a lot about myself.
i'll be learning a lot about working with people.
i'll be learning how to come out of my introvert shell like never before.
i'll be learning how to show people love.
i'll have to learn how to depend on God more.

tomorrow the first small wave of freshmen move in. (a very small handful of band kids moved in today) and then starting thursday they'll be coming in droves. and of course that shoots right into school.

so this moment
now
is like being at the top of a hill in a wagon and getting ready for that one
tiny
push that will inch the wheels into motion.
into one crazy
scary
and exciting ride...