The Complicated Process of Leaving

“He turned the handle, cracked open the door.. Caught my eye with a quick smirk and nod.. And was gone.”

Why has leaving because such a complicated process? Well, I guess it really isn’t. I mean, you go somewhere, hang out for a while, then leave.. Simple enough. Bing bang boom.

But I guess there is “leaving” and “leaving.” I’ll just cut straight to the chase. I’m leaving for Africa in 4 days.. One of the biggest leavings of my meager 27 years. And I find it wearing on me. Not really in the way the I don’t want to leave. This has been something in the works for almost an entire year! Something that I have prepared for, tried to wrap my head around (or not, trying to leave most expectations on this side of the plane ride). But the awkwardness of this is driving me crazy.

Have you ever seen the movie Elizabeth Town? In the beginning of this movie, he is in the process of getting fired. He has authored a new design for a shoe, and it fails big time. Costing the company roughly $1 billion in losses. In the scene of his last day at the office, he says that he has become a recent connoisseur of “last looks.” You know, the kind of look someone gives you where they know that they are pretty sure they will never see you again. I can relate to this. Not really in the “last looks” category, but more in just the “awkward moments” category.

This was HUGE when my mother passed away. Someone that I know would see me, they’d come over and say “hi”, and then proceed to awkwardly stumble over their condolences.. It was always appreciated.. Often endearing.. Occationally annoying.. And after I had experienced this for many months, it started to become funny! Oh, I would not show any hints of humor on my face, but I had experienced so much of it I could pretty much predict the moments where people would struggle for words. And it was funny! I know they were being sincere, and I was sincere in my acceptence of their care and concern. But I had become a connoisseur of these moments. And I think it’s pretty much the only way I could manage these moments is through a healthy buffer of  humor. Anyways, I digress.

I’m kind of hitting the same point with my leaving thing. I have been saying my good-byes for MONTHS! And the frequent moments of awkwardness is seriously wearing on me. Dispite my connoisseur-ness.. I really want people to start acting normal again. For friends to be friends. For family to be family. Long story short, I don’t want to be reminded that I will be away from everyone for the next 6 months. Because I like normal moments with friends, and these are the moments that I think cherrish the most. All in all though, I think it’s just the duration of the leaving that has been the bad part. Friends being sad or awkward seeing me leave is in itself a really awesome thing! God has provided a lot of people that love me! How can I complain? But leaving in itself should be quick. Decide where you’re going and who you’re going with, pack your bags, kiss your loved ones good-bye, and shove off from the dock.

Please forgive me if I’m coming across snide or ungrateful. I’m just frusterated with people seeming to miss me before I’m gone! Can I hang out, enjoy your company, talk about our present life without making my leaving a constant topic? Let me love you today while I am still here. Save up my present moments with you, so I can remember them when I’m gone.

I’ll be sure to shoot you that smirk and nod on my way out.. And yes, that was a tear in my eye..

But I’ll be back before you know it.

Starting Small.. Again..

Suppose it’s time to kick start this.. Again!

But less expectations of myself, of my writing.. Less serious.. Yeah, that sounds good. :)

The setting? My messy desk, with plans of cleaning it, and with Julie & Julia playing on the upper monitor.. While chopping away at the relentless block of stuff to do, which is are my Congo plans. Sure, this is starting out great!

I seem to have a chronic problem with messiness. Seriously. Not uncleanliness, but messiness. Just kind of the acumilation of mess. Then trying to find the energy to tackle the mess. The battle.. Again.. And the one you always know that you don’t have to fight if you’d just keep up with the mess.

Well, I’d better get to it. I forgot where I heard it, but I heard somewhere that while you clean your house, you are cleaning yourself.. I like the analogy. :)

Quick update on the Congo stuff.. Still trying to get my immunizations going, just sent off for a price quote on the plane ticket (if I left on January 22), and trying to answer all the e-mails.. I really hope this is easier for those volunteers coming behind me.. Right now it’s crazy. And not the fun kind.

G’night everyone!

-Drew

Random YouTube Vid

Okay, I just had to share this with you guys because I feel that just by watching this, it totally made my day better :)

ENJOY!

(And for those of you who care about who plays what song, the song is Centrifuge by Pomplamoose)

Big Deals

Big deals are strange things, aren’t they? Overall, the perspective of “deals” is an odd thing because what is a big deal today may be forgotten tomorrow. Or what is a very small deal may turn out to crush you with it’s impact. Or the big deals of yester-year may be eclipsed by the deals nearer in the rear view.

I bring this up because lately, I’ve felt more shaken by “smaller deals”. During and shortly after the events that happened concerning my Mother, I found my character and faith solidified in a way that I had never experienced before. I had seen such travesty, brokenness, and loss…. And yet saw such love, grace, support, and… well, God through it all. It was all so, so Big!! Ha! It was like I was stuck in the orbit of something so big that nothing else had much pull.

Other things that were usually big deals were almost laughable! Grade, finances, work, etc. Worry about these things? Why? Gas for $4.35 a gallon? Why are we talking about this? THERE IS HEAVIER STUFF GOING ON!!!

In many ways I want to go back there. Ha, obviously in some ways I don’t. But I guess that’s one reason why I really like weddings, and hearing about friends having kids.. Because these are the big deals, the weighty things. The things that make you stop worrying about your waist size, or if your steak is done the way you want it, or if the cute girl in the corner noticed you.

I don’t really know where I am going with this. All I know is that I was suddenly in a place where I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that God loved me and my family. And my confidence in that made me… well, confident! I knew that I didn’t have control, but I knew the Dude who did.

It seemed short lived though. In the same summer I was placed in the position of pursuing a girl long-distance, and had a great many obstacles in my path. But like I said, I was confident. :) So after four months of bridge building, of patience and prayer, of personal investment, she ran for the hills. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, she ran. And after seeing over a dozen of my close friends get married, with no choice but be saturated by the “romantic energy”, I watched as my pursuit went up in flames.

Honestly, I felt like I was on the short end of a cosmic joke. I even had a friend with the same name as the “pursued girl” who had a running joke that she was going to marry me, and thus started every conversation with “Hey hubby!”. Oh, I still did my best to navigate through this with my sense of humor, but things weren’t funny anymore. And if the God who loved me was in control, what the frick was He doing??

I was left shaky, and the big deal that had shown me such a clear picture of reality was now being eclipsed and obscured by the flair of a failed romance. Which in the grand scheme of things, is not really that big of a deal (sometimes). But it had pulled me away from confidence, my peace, my assurance that God was really good. Why had He let this happen? And it really wasn’t the fact of it happening that hurt the most, but more of how it all happened. The sequence of events seemed to be almost deliberately horrific.

That all happened quite a long time ago it seems. I didn’t talk to God for a while after that, but things got better. He, above anyone else, understands our angst sometimes even when we ourselves don’t fully understand. I did the usual mulling over all the possible “reasons” for God allowing what had happened to happen, and am content in saying that I still don’t and may never know (while here on this earth). And God has slowly healed me from it, even though I’ve had several other scrapes since then. It’s kind of an older, yet still significant topic we talk about from time to time.

I’m finding that my main struggle with my faith is basic trust. I’m one who likes the answers. The methods or sciences behind why things are the way they are. I’m okay with the big things. Like when I die, I know where I’m going, etc. But what do we do when the world seems to shatter? When the fragments of our life are hiding the face of God, and the demons are screaming lies in our ears? What do we do?

There is a passage of Psalms that comes to mind when thinking about this.

To you, O Lord, I called; to the Lord I cried for mercy: “What gain is there in my destruction, in my going down into the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me; O Lord, be my help.” You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.    – Psalm 30:8-12

Just so you guys know, there are no breaks in the passage. It’s those four verses, straight in a row. Now, I don’t know if David wrote this in two separate sittings, but between verses 10 and 11 there is a dynamic shift in attitude. What happens in between these verses? I really want to know! What led David back to his hope and joy in God?

Ha, I could write about this for a while. Because like I said, it’s an old yet significant topic. It’s a rough topic though, because most of the time all we have to work on is speculation, so there are few solid answers. Even in Job’s case, he didn’t get a straight answer to his questions of God (at least not in the scope of the book). But coming to a place of understanding that God’s lofty yet intricate perspective is not understandable is…. difficult, but necessary.

He does tell us, “In this world you will have trouble.” But He also says, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (Haha! Is it possible for discouragement and encouragement to equal out to just “couragement”?) I think it all just takes time and growth for this “trust” thing to take a stronger hold. Oh, but I do long for the day when I can throw up my hands in joy and say “All this is too wonderful for me”, and settle into a solid orbit around the “big deal” of God.

Chapter 32

I have a secret….

I really want someone to ask me about my Mom. And I don’t want them to ask for my sake, but because maybe they never met her, or only met her a few times. Because they’d want to find out more, to have me introduce her to them in a way. To tell them the stories that maybe most people don’t know. It would be an honor for me to do that.

On a side note, for those of you who are Don Miller fans, his new book “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” is one of his best works yet. I’m currently having a hard time getting through chapter 32, and those of you who own it can guess why.

Intro

Why the heck am I so afraid of writing?

Well, maybe it’s not fear, just a strong sense of avoidance, like it’ll invade my schedule and I’ll have to drop something because of it. But then a lot of the things I do aren’t nearly as therapeutic as when I write. It’s like whenever I do write, I come away with a sense of “Really? Why don’t I do this more often?”, but I still avoid it. Push it back. Push back the “writable” ideas back into the pot to stew for a few more weeks. Why? What the heck is wrong with me?

Anyways, as the title indicates, this is the introduction to this new bloggorama I’m attempting. It’s probably going to be a little more rough than my stuff on Xanga, but that might be a good thing :) (I just imagined wordpress crashing because I linked something to Xanga; like the whole searching “google” in Google, but not like that at all, lol. )

I really don’t know what this thing will look like, but I’m not really worried about it. I’m guessing it’ll be a mix of thought snippets, random ideas (in the process of being processed), and “lifey” essays. As per a usual blog, right? But I’m guessing that most of you reading this will be people that I already know, and I’m thinking this will be a good connection point. Enough of this not seeing one of you for ages then trying to remember all the stuff that happened over the last four months. I’m going to do my best to update this thing as life progresses the way that life seems to. For my sake as much as yours.

And, as this is the introduction, I feel the blog title and tag should be explained. First, I chose the title “Cracks in the pavement…” because I want my words to be a reflection of reality, a result of life and experience. Not just some pretty words I whipped up. Second, I chose the tag as “When you can’t hear anything but the beating of your heart against your ribcage…” because this is something that I actually experience. When crazy stuff is going on and/or I find myself taking crazy risks of the heart, I can actually feel my heart thumping in my chest… all the time. All I need to do is stop whatever I am doing, and I can feel the thump and pulse of blood throughout my body. Okay, I can’t literally feel my heart beating against my ribcage, but it’s comparable. And it was a sweet line I came across while reading Corina90 :) PS. To those in the medical field, should I be worried about this? lol

Alright, I think that’s it for today.

Peace out everyone!

-Drew

Fortune Cookie #1

In reality, there is no dancing with monsters and demons.

You are either slaying them, or they are eating you…

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