this is how i’m doing: in case you were wondering…

Well, I’m back!  I spent the weekend in Tyler with the family at my brother’s place; such a great time.  I’m also back “from the dead” - apparently that 2 percent of sickness was the worst 2 percent.  Thursday was my ONLY good day last week and Friday was probably the worst.  I had a horrible headache ALL DAY.  I got home from work at around 6 because I had to sit in traffic which made Friday the longest day of the year so far. When I got home I took a shot of Nyquil (it’s gotta be good, it comes with it’s own little plastic shot glass…) and proceeded to sleep for roughly 10 hours. My body was still exhausted and for some reason my lower back and hips and neck hurt like crazy. I stumbled into the shower around 4am which didn’t help, I think I went back to sleep for a few hours after that, woke up at 6am, took some meds for the pain but I didn’t fully see relief from my misery until I some how ended up on the floor of my closet curled up praying/sleeping (I can do both haha) and when I woke up around 8am I felt fine. Unbelievably fine. Like “did I just dream all that up?” kind of fine. Man, God is good! And so are pain meds, but God is way better.

So now that THAT is over I hope to be able to get back to life as usual - I’m a little bit more thankful for the predictable and the mundane although I’m grateful for the testing of my faith which “develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” -James 1:3-4.

so that means I’m still about 2 percent sick. Today I finally feel human again.

I learned (or relearned) something about myself during my sickness - I am a selfish, selfish person. In my “suffering” I saw how quickly I’ll ditch God for comfort. This illness caught me completely off guard and it showed me another glimpse of the condition of my heart; I’m still more in love with the created things (mostly myself) than I am the Creator. Don’t read all this with a negative tone - I’m not loosing any sleep over this. I’m really thankful for the opportunity! Like I said, it tested my heart and revealed it’s weaknesses. My problem is not that I don’t read the Bible like I should, or that I don’t pray as often as I should, or that I don’t get involved enough at church - my problem is my wicked sinful heart. When I stop thinking that my heart is the problem I start trying to treat all the symptoms. “I better stop doing this” and “I better start doing that” - I can change my behavior all I want but if at the end of the day I am no more in love with God than when I started it was ALL worthless. It looks the same way in CR. Sometimes I can get so wrapped up in recovery that I lose sight of Jesus. Jesus is the whole point; if I clean up my act but don’t love Jesus I am worse than when I started - because then I think that *I* did something great.

This past weekend a guy named Ben Stuart filled in for Matt and he said something that really gave me some peace in my heart. He said something to the effect of “our greatest assurance that we are on of those who were rescued [from sin] is that we see progress and that we are struggling.” It was great to walk out of church feeling like I’m doing SOMETHING right in my life for once; I can see progress and I’m struggling!  He also used a word picture that really stuck in my head. He described a battlefield, like the opening beach scene from Saving Private Ryan. Bombs exploding, bullets flying - he said there were two kinds of soldiers on the beach. One looked very peaceful and tranquil, carefree and subdued - the other was nervous, anxious and terrified. The first kind of soldier was dead. Dead men don’t react to bombs exploding and bullets flying. He went on to say that in the same way if we are unaffected by sin, have no hatred or desire to see it broken in us or in the world, have no desire to flee from it, it is because we are spiritually dead. But if we are conscious of sin and the battle that goes on and it makes us anxious and scared and we struggle with it - THAT is our assurance that we are really saved.  Our assurance is progress, not perfection.  Our assurance is that we are BEING transformed, BEING sanctified - not that we’ve achieved holiness or righteousness.  Oh the peace that brings to my heart!

new photos, well actually they’re all old photos but whatever.  crappy photo gallery layout but i’m too tired to fix it right now…

So it turns out I was ACTUALLY sick - like not stress induced mental fatigue but actual virus attacking my body kind of sick. This weekend was horrible. I think I’ve traced it all back to Friday afternoon when one of my students informs me (while shaking my hand) that he’s been sick the past few days… I feel mostly better now. I missed a day of work yesterday so I’m trying to get back into my routine again. And the WORST part about it all was that my Internet went out yesterday! It was horrible - I was reduced to READING books and such. All in all it was probably good for me. Just thought I’d give y’all a quick update. Back to work!

If only they really tried this hard…

Oh how they make me laugh :-) - http://www.baratsandbereta.com