I ask questions that I already know the answers to and for clarifications that I really don't need... only to return to the point where I can't share the light I've seen because I'm left in the dark.

This lyric is from a song written by a man who kept me sane when I was younger. Whether reading in my room or running down the basketball court, Eminem lyrics were always playing through my mind. How can one find sanity in the midst of an inconsiderate, cursing rapper who openly admits doing drugs and hating his life? Eminem kept me mentally stable because he was open and honest about his feelings, especially towards his family. He was angry at his father for abandoning him, and he hated his mother for emotionally abusing him. Growing up in a household where I was taught to "honor thy father and mother" and rarely found any reason to do so, I found comfort in knowing that there was someone else who understood my emotions.

When the Eminem phase ended, a new means of maintaining sanity replaced it. My entire life I have been trying to maintain my mental stability while proving to everyone else that I'm not crazy. My family is crazy, my life is crazy, but I- I am NOT crazy. While I am confident that I am mentally stable despite my past experiences, the point that I am trying to make is that I have spent my entire life controlling my outward demeanor to make sure that I come across as being as sane as possible.

Meanwhile, one of my biggest fears has always been losing my mind. I'm returning to my favorite movie as a reference because this scene in Proof often explains how I feel. (If you haven't seen the movie, my other entry entitled Proof has a plot summary.) Catherine is talking to Hal about her work and how she is afraid of losing her mind and becoming like her crazy father...

" Catherine: Sometimes in my head I think it works, and then... Sometimes I just think it's crazy.
Hal: There's nothing wrong with you.
C: I think I'm like my dad.
H: I think you are, too.
C: I'm afraid I'm like my dad.
H: You are not him
C: Maybe I will be.
H: Maybe, and maybe you'll be better"

Oh, how I can relate. Catherine was afraid of losing her mind because her father lost his mind, and she was in the same line of work as her dad. While my mother and I have very few similarities now , I look at who she once was- before she faded into this person that I no longer know- and I see so many comparisons. Our sense of humor, our work ethic, and our faith. Yes, I just said our faith - which is the most important factor in this equation. The problem is that my mom is mentally unstable and has no concept of reality, and I cannot even say with confidence that her faith was ever genuine. She thought that it was. It makes me wonder sometimes if I just think that mine is as well, if maybe I have inherited the family craziness and it is all in my head. I'm so afraid of losing my mind - and my faith- that I make every effort to maintain sanity.

Striving for sanity has lead me to weird research projects, poor life decisions, and chronic insomnia. Tonight I realized that sanity is my idol. I love the idea of making sense of things so that they don't seem crazy to me. I spend my life searching after what makes sense and avoiding everything that seems "out there". This desire has lead to deep control issues because I need to not only control my own mental stability, but I also need to control how other people view me. It is all about being authentic while appearing as normal and rational possible.

The truth is that nothing about life is normal or rational or sane in the eye's of the world- or at least nothing about a life following after Christ appears sane. I am sure the Disciples seemed a little insane when they immediately gave up everything to follow a carpenter. I am sure that no one in those days saw healing people, casting out demons, and performing miracles as being normal or rational. I am also sure that Jesus probably appeared crazy to most of the population. Sanity isn't the thing that defines me.. my identity is in Him and Him alone.

My love of the concept of sanity is holding me back, preventing me from getting closer to God... and my desire to be nothing like my mother is only esclating my fear of losing my mind. I am trying to control how God views me and how He works through me just as I control my image of myself and what others see of me. I can't do that. It is impossible, and it is sinful. I'm breaking my idol, I'm giving up control, I'm confessing that I have tried to put God in my box, and I am asking Him to forgive me and to transform my ways so that I lose my mind and my sanity and gain the mind of Christ.

Let's face it- I'm a little crazy, and I'm only getting crazier... and to be honest, I don't think that I would have it any other way.

No, that isn't a song title. Just a thought. I'm sitting in class, not paying attention to any of the details of economic security and food distribution. Weird since economic development in terms of basic resources was my central focus at one point in time. Now, I lack the attention span to even listen to a lecture on the topic. Instead, my computer is open.Windows clutter the screen. Facebook. Gmail x2. Google Reader. A.W. Tozer. Bible Gateway. iGoogle... Weird. None of my school work is done. Haven't been doing it in weeks. I'm not concerned, yet. Life is slowing down... yet my mind is accelerating.

Weird. My thoughts have been centralized elsewhere. Focused on one thing. A disconnect from my current location. A disconnect from my current life. Or not? No, this is it. Why, then, does it appear so contradictory?

Admittedly this quote is lifted out of context, yet A.W. Tozer's words are striking a chord right about now...

"If all this appears self-contradictory - Amen, be it so. The various elements of truth stand in perpetual antithesis, sometimes requiring us to believe apparent opposites while we wait for the moment when we shall know as we are known. Then truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in the truth but in our sin-damaged minds."

" I'm in love with God.

God's in love with me.

This is who I am

and this is who I'll be

And that settles it.

Completely."

-Misty Edwards

That song says it all. That is precisely why I use songs as titles. The End.

Or rather, the beginning?

To be honest, I have been an absolute mess lately. If I even attempted to explain why, I would be lying the second I opened my mouth. A familiar numbness has taken over- an oh too familiar numbness. The same, yet entirely different. I am missing something, as I find myself wandering aimlessly through desert chasing shadows across the sand. I have been here before- or at least I feel as if I have, but no one passes the exact same way twice. The difference: this time I'm not sitting on a roof, I'm not alone, I'm not loathing my life, and I'm not the same person.

The feeling is the same. The thirst is the same. The struggle is the same. The warfare is the same. Oh, but the situation is entirely different. If I think it is the same, then I will react the same way. I will pray and seek with a fight or flight response in mind... and that is not what I am searching for this time.

This is different; only God is the same. Once again, I find myself begging for a drink. Just enough to get through tomorrow until I wander out of the arid land. The truth is that I am finding exactly what I am asking for- enough to get by, to sustain my wandering. The truth is that I cannot find a steady stream until I learn the difference between running water and the shadows in the sand.

What is the real thing and what is just a faint projection of one's imagination? Oh, the games that the mind can play. Mine questions who I've been and who I am, and it makes it much harder to figure out where I am going.

Yesterday, I some how found reality. I am that person, this person. This is who I've been, who I am, and who I'll be. I know where I'm standing. Now I need to sort through the shadowy lies and continue chasing after the sound of the stream.... and soon enough, I'll be out of the desert.

One glimpse at the image on the box is not enough insight to arrange thousands of pieces to form a larger picture. Generally we stare at the after shot and work diligently piece by piece to assemble it. I personally like to begin my puzzle by laying down the framework first... adding parameters to my construction project. Then I work inward... pausing when it is more convenient to isolate a particular area or feature of the bigger picture. Sometimes, things clearly, and quickly come together .... everything falls into its place. Other times, it seems like nothing fits together. You find your self trying to shove a piece into place to force it to fit.. some pieces seem to be missing... and some seem as if they have no place at all.. sometimes the hundreds of pieces on the table look absolutely nothing like the box... and we find ourselves wondering if we've found the wrong box. Sometimes we finish... and sometimes we give up and tear everything apart - only to entertain the possibility of starting over again on another day.

Oh, the challenge of a puzzle. The problem is that I've seen the image on the box or at least enough of it to have a good idea of what is being constructed... but I'm looking at the pieces thinking that there is absolutely no way that this is coming together.

It is like traveling from point A to point B. You know where point A is because you are standing on it... .you've seen point B in pictures and on a map.... yet you have no concept of what the road in between looks like. How does one get from A to B when there is no visible path connecting them? Pave a way... and get lost in the process? Fight reaction... or completely go in another direction until one finds a path or a particularly useful map? Flight response.

As of now, my desire is flight. I want the exit door, not because I want to get away from what will inevitably come into the picture, but because I cannot see the path ahead and want to find a better way to get to point B then bushwhacking or treading water.... I want to transfer... to quit.. to be anywhere but here... I'm okay with the destination, but I want a new path .. a new process.

I either need to pursue a way here or completely purge my directions and start from a new angle.. and I want to take the path that I was designed to travel along...

Oh the puzzle...


"I hate feeling like this.
I'm so tired of trying to fight this.
I'm asleep and all I dream of
is waking to You"
- Skillet.

There is a unique movement within our generation, a movement to get back to the ancient. a movement towards the upper room, a movement of radical obedience, a movement of constant prayer... a movement of the next wave of Jesus Freaks.

I was first introduced to this movement a little over a year ago when I heard about a crazy 24 hr pray house started by a campus ministry in the Midwest. My initial thought was: "Man, these people are insane!" I listened to their testimonies, heard how God was moving... and knew that they had found something special in the place of prayer.

A year later, I find myself longing for one of those crazy rooms in our city, on our campus. I'm not alone. God has been stirring many of our hearts to increase in prayer... we've had prayer meetings, 24 hr prayer on Thurs, went to prayer conferences... committed to a sacred charge of a lifestyle of prayer... we have been praying to see prayer increase in our hearts and within the Church. Charles Spurgeon once said that "Prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Spirit can teach us. Pray for prayer. Pray until you can really pray" Oh, how we have been and will continue to be praying for prayer...

The prayer movement is growing around the world. College campuses are creating prayer rooms, churches are planting prayer furnaces, cities are hosting prayer meetings... a global movement to return to the place of prayer is well underway and increasing everyday. Across continents and denominations, the Church is returning to the upper room...

For the last several months, I have been contemplating a poem that has emerged out of the prayer movement called The Vision. Every time I read it, my eyes well up with tears... because- to quote a Jonah 33 song- "I want a faith like that". I want to be apart of that generation, of that army, of that movement... sign me up. Here I am, and I am grabbing hold of the vision.

The vision is for this generation to cry out to God 24/7/365.. every moment of everyday... to serve in the temple day and night like Anna the Prophetess, to be the voice in the wilderness like John the Baptist, to wait on the Lord and respond with radical obedience like Peter and the early church... the vision is Jesus, the vision is His Church, the vision is allowing the Spirit of God to work on us and in us and through us in this generation.... This is the vision and I'm claiming it.. because I want to be one of those people, 100% bonafide Jesus freak..


"The Vision:
by Pete Grieg

So this guy comes up to me and says, “What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open up my mouth and the words come out like this…

The vision?
The vision is Jesus:
obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is of an army of young people.
You see bones?
I see an army.

And they are free from materialism—
They laugh at nine-to-five little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind.
They belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting, dirty and dying.

What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimal integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, from every conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps—their Satan games.

This is an army that would lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day, its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great “well done” of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don’t need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”
And this is the sound of the underground, the whisper of history in the making, foundations shaking, revolutionaries dreaming once again.
Mystery is scheming in whispers, conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground.

And the army is disciple(in)ed—
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulfuric tears and great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting.
Watching.
24-7-365.

Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules,
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide,
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
Laughing at labels,
Fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late-night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive on the inside.
On the outside?
They hardly care!
They wear clothes like costumes: to communicate and celebrate, but never to hide.

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their lives, swap seats with the man on death row, guilty as hell: a throne of an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as though it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses Jesus.
He breathes out.
They breathe in.
Their subconscious sings.
They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don’t you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdoes!
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes!
They walk tall and trees applaud.
Skyscrapers bow.
Mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.

Their prayers summon the Hound of Heaven and evoke the dream of Eden.

And, this vision will be.
It will come to pass.
It will come easily.
It will come soon.

How do I know?
Because, this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is His today.
My distant hope is His 3-D.
And, my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking, great “AMEN!” from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself.

And He is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed."


The Vision

Some encouragement for all those with a heart for prayer on college campuses:
Picture This- Campus America


Any thoughts?