Nathan - it means "Gift from God." The question I end up asking myself, though, is "Who sees me as a gift?" I asked that as I cried myself to sleep at twelve years old, trying to figure out if I could actually call anyone I knew a true friend. I asked it at fifteen when I sat at a table by myself during lunch break each Friday at homeschool co-op. I ask it at eighteen as I try my best to serve as a prayer leader at Liberty University and struggle to connect with the people in my group. It's the question I face every time circumstances in my life tell me I'm worthless or unwanted. I tell myself I'm loved, and I can list many people who I know truly do love me, but I still find myself asking who would consider me a gift in their life.
Maybe it's not just about me always being a gift in others' lives. The longer I live, the more I realize the way God has created me is very much a gift to me. Yes, I have to deal with my emotions and stress and a relative lack of meaningful relationships, but there is a hidden advantage. It forces me to focus on my relationship with God because I have nothing else to rely on. It means I place way more emphasis on strengthening the few friendships I do have because I can't just jump to someone else if I lose a friend. I may not have much to offer, but everyone in my life is going to get my all.
I've come to recognize the value of Psalm 84. The Psalmist, in his praise to God, says, "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools." The Valley of Baca was a real place in Israel along one of the roads to Jerusalem, or Zion, where God's people would go to worship. It literally means "valley of bush." However, the Hebrew word for weeping, while spelled differently, is pronounced exactly the same as Baca, or bush. This Psalm is an incredible analogy, comparing times of distress followers of Christ go through to a physical desert those traveling to worship in God's presence would pass through. Pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem would occasionally dig wells in the desert to make their trip easier and find refreshment. Those wells don't just disappear, though, so everyone who walked through that desert in the future would have water. In the same way, every will face trials and grief in their life. However, those who have their faith in God will find a relief in spite of their struggles. They won't be magically lifted out of the valley, but they will be given ways to fight through it. Those wells they dig will be there for others who face the same issues.
I face things in my life I wish I never had to deal with. I wish I never had to pray for someone to come into my life so I could actually share what it's like to feel friendless. I wish I didn't feel anxiety and distraction so bad I can't sleep some nights. But I can't wish those things without wishing God would pull me out of the valley where He put me to dig wells. I may not feel sometimes like others look at me as a heavenly gift that God's set in their life, but I think that, right now, I'm a gift still being unwrapped. I'm still in the Valley of Weeping, and, with the world I live in, probably always will be in one way or another, but, while I'm here, I have wells to dig to leave as gifts for everyone else.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015
Who Am I? I Got No Clue
My name is Nathan. It's Hebrew for "Gift from God." I fully understand that God put me on earth for a reason, but I sure don't know what that reason is. I don't have a lot of friends, though, for most of the few I do have, I trust completely. I enjoy a lot of things, but don't find true joy in anything except the occasions where God forces his way into my messed up heart just to give me a hug, tell me He loves me, and drag me back onto the path I'm supposed to be following.
To throw a quick intro about myself out there, right now, I'm an 18-year-old freshman at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, which is almost 600 miles from where I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. I'm the oldest of five kids, and I was homeschooled all twelve years, which had a lot benefits, but also hurt my chances at developing true friendships. I study math and sports management because I want to be a baseball statistician after school, but I spend a lot of my free time reading, writing poetry and prose, and playing music. I played baseball for ten years and loved it, but it was very obvious that playing it was not God's plan for my life after high school. I've always been good at math, but it was my junior year of high school in calculus that I fell in love with it. One the most incredible feelings to do in my life is solve complex integrals, forcing my brain to piece together a strategy and attack the problem head-on, brandishing my feeble concept of a solution as if the mechanical pencil in my hand can become a weapon against anything my professor can throw at me. Thus, baseball statistics is a pretty logical decision, at least for someone who defies logic as swiftly and smoothly as I do. So, yeah, I'm weird, and there are plenty of times that sucks, but there is still an amount of pride that comes from not fitting in any kind of box society tries to put over my head.
My biggest passion in serving God is helping hurting, underprivileged kids improve their life on earth, but, more importantly, find a real relationship with Jesus Christ. I love tutoring and seeing kids succeed in school, because I enjoy learning so much and want to see others experience that same feeling.
My emotions have been an issue for me most of my life. A big problem with that is that I try to bottle them up until I just can't hold it back any longer and go off, usually against my family. The easiest emotion to store is anger, because it's compact and powerful, and can be stored for a long time. Thus, I just turn most of what I feel into anger and frustration to hold it in longer. Just like anything else under pressure, though, my anger eventually bursts, and whatever emotions I should have originally felt come blasting out as nothing but hate and bitterness. Knowing this also increases my stress level because I'm worried about losing control and saying things I can't take back. This stress is just like putting a seal on a pot of water. It makes it harder for the water to boil by increasing the pressure as the temperature goes up. It also makes the explosion way more powerful when the water finally does reach its boiling point.
I ask a lot of questions about myself, and usually find that the more I look in the proverbial mirror, the more what I see becomes blurry. The trick to becoming even more confused about who I am is to bottle up my emotions, then, right before they turn muddled, let them come rushing out and erode the shell I'd built of what I though I was.
I never really liked writing in school, especially high school. Everything was formal, but not precise. I had to find the box I was supposed to be in, then stay there. It wasn't math, where my only job is to find a straight line and follow it, but it wasn't pure creativity either. Then, I tried poetry, which spawned writing for the sake writing. Being able to just write whatever comes to me, then revisit those thoughts later to see how I actually think and feel is incredible. There aren't words to really describe what a person feels emotionally and spiritually, but I've found that just trying makes everything that much easier to, if not simplify, at least comprehend.
My goal with this blog is to take whatever comes to me and let whoever accidentally finds this page read it. If God uses it to help someone, then that's great. If nobody ever has the time to read what I write, then this is just me hitting a send button after typing what I needed to write anyways.
That's basically all I have right now, so I'll stop before I start rambling.
To throw a quick intro about myself out there, right now, I'm an 18-year-old freshman at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, which is almost 600 miles from where I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. I'm the oldest of five kids, and I was homeschooled all twelve years, which had a lot benefits, but also hurt my chances at developing true friendships. I study math and sports management because I want to be a baseball statistician after school, but I spend a lot of my free time reading, writing poetry and prose, and playing music. I played baseball for ten years and loved it, but it was very obvious that playing it was not God's plan for my life after high school. I've always been good at math, but it was my junior year of high school in calculus that I fell in love with it. One the most incredible feelings to do in my life is solve complex integrals, forcing my brain to piece together a strategy and attack the problem head-on, brandishing my feeble concept of a solution as if the mechanical pencil in my hand can become a weapon against anything my professor can throw at me. Thus, baseball statistics is a pretty logical decision, at least for someone who defies logic as swiftly and smoothly as I do. So, yeah, I'm weird, and there are plenty of times that sucks, but there is still an amount of pride that comes from not fitting in any kind of box society tries to put over my head.
My biggest passion in serving God is helping hurting, underprivileged kids improve their life on earth, but, more importantly, find a real relationship with Jesus Christ. I love tutoring and seeing kids succeed in school, because I enjoy learning so much and want to see others experience that same feeling.
My emotions have been an issue for me most of my life. A big problem with that is that I try to bottle them up until I just can't hold it back any longer and go off, usually against my family. The easiest emotion to store is anger, because it's compact and powerful, and can be stored for a long time. Thus, I just turn most of what I feel into anger and frustration to hold it in longer. Just like anything else under pressure, though, my anger eventually bursts, and whatever emotions I should have originally felt come blasting out as nothing but hate and bitterness. Knowing this also increases my stress level because I'm worried about losing control and saying things I can't take back. This stress is just like putting a seal on a pot of water. It makes it harder for the water to boil by increasing the pressure as the temperature goes up. It also makes the explosion way more powerful when the water finally does reach its boiling point.
I ask a lot of questions about myself, and usually find that the more I look in the proverbial mirror, the more what I see becomes blurry. The trick to becoming even more confused about who I am is to bottle up my emotions, then, right before they turn muddled, let them come rushing out and erode the shell I'd built of what I though I was.
I never really liked writing in school, especially high school. Everything was formal, but not precise. I had to find the box I was supposed to be in, then stay there. It wasn't math, where my only job is to find a straight line and follow it, but it wasn't pure creativity either. Then, I tried poetry, which spawned writing for the sake writing. Being able to just write whatever comes to me, then revisit those thoughts later to see how I actually think and feel is incredible. There aren't words to really describe what a person feels emotionally and spiritually, but I've found that just trying makes everything that much easier to, if not simplify, at least comprehend.
My goal with this blog is to take whatever comes to me and let whoever accidentally finds this page read it. If God uses it to help someone, then that's great. If nobody ever has the time to read what I write, then this is just me hitting a send button after typing what I needed to write anyways.
That's basically all I have right now, so I'll stop before I start rambling.
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