Pocket-Dial

Hey everyone!

I have been having a very stressful week. Trying to get everything ready for my Study Abroad trip brings out the worst in everyone--especially me. If you didn't know, let me fill you in on my trip to far, and maybe you will see why I am so stressed.

For the entire month of June and part of July, I will be Studying Abroad in the Middle East. (Do you see where some of the stress is beginning?) We will be departing from St. Louis and flying into Cairo (making a few stops along the way). We spend about a week in Egypt, then head over to Jordan for another week. After that, we pop over to Israel where we will be working on a Biblical dig site for two weeks, learning all the in's and out's of Biblical Archeology. The last week we spend in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, seeing all the famous Jesus-sites.

Some of the famous sites we will see include the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, the Karnak Temples, The Valley of the Kings and Queens, Mt. Sinai, St. Catherine's Monastery, Petra, Masada, Amman, Bethsaida, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Gethsemane, the Wailing Wall, Caesarea Maritima, Bethlehem, and many more.

Sounds exciting, right? That's what I first thought. I was THRILLED out the whazoo! I was ready to go and experience so much! As it turns out, other people didn't share my excitement.

Some of the people that were closest to me started to doubt the trip. First, it was a money issue. After I told them I was paying for it, then it became a safety/moral issue. Some people that I am very close to think the Middle East is a festering pot of evil: the whole area is condemned by God and that is why there is so much bloodshed and warfare in the region. (Mind you, I didn't know many of these people held these views until I told them I was going over there. I want you to imagine my sinking face as I ran up to them and told them, "I'm going to the Middle East on a school trip!" only to watch their face cringe and brows furl as they unleash on me the reasons why I should not go.) Some people were legitimately concerned for my safety because of the recent political unrest. While these kind people feared for me, they were still excited with me as I was preparing for the trip.

However, the people that I seem to hear the loudest (and the people who were seemingly closest to my heart) were the ones who vehemently opposed my trip overseas. I can't count the number of times I have heard the phrase (or a similar phrase to it), "You couldn't pay me a million dollars to go over there!" Over the past month, I have had to present defense after defense as to why I am going over there to no avail. It always boiled down to, "Well, do whatever you want, Adam, but I will never go over there!" (Which has the hint of an afterthought: "And you shouldn't go over there either!")

*SIGH* This has been the cause of my stress the past week, preparing for a 5 week long trip while trying to fend off the Right-Thinkers. Can you see why I have been a bit testy and jumpy, and overall in a very weird mood?

This is also why it was so refreshing today to wake up to find a voicemail on my phone. The message was left by a  young man I rarely ever speak to, so I naturally assumed it was a pocket-dial (considering my name is the top, if not very close to the top, of everyone's address book). This young man has left many pocket-dials before, and most of them are pretty boring: just background noise and a lot of scratching.

I actually do enjoy listening to pocket-dials. It is like a game to me; I try to figure out who dialed me based off of the voice and background noise before I look at the caller ID. (This time, I cheated and looked first.) Some of the dials are very entertaining. I got to listen to someone talk to the cashier at Walfart for a few minutes about their hair. I listened to some other boys playing Xbox one time. Other times I get to catch up on juicy gossip that I quickly forget once I hang up (because I really hate gossip).

This time was different. As I pressed the phone to my ear, I hear the faint sound of someone's voice. For the first five or six seconds, I strained to hear what they were saying, but then all of the sudden, their voice became very clear as I could hear the phone being dug out of the pocket and set on the table (or chair, or whatever was present). In an instant, I could hear the conversation very clearly.

The person was praying. Not just, "God is good, God is great, let us thank Him for this plate. Let's eat!" These people were in true spiritual warfare prayer. I had no idea who or what they were praying about, but the person praying was praying with deep conviction, quoting the Word of God and praying over this other person with the authority of Christ.

I sat there in that moment, suddenly totally awake as I "eave's dropped" on a prayer from across the country. The reality became so real to me: people around this world are praying right now, and not just simple prayers, but the prayers of warriors. Not only that, but there were a few of them out there that were praying like this for me. The thought sent shivers down my spine as I sat there.

As the last, "Amen!" rang out on the phone, the voices became more distant as the people left the table (or chair or whatever the phone was on) and headed towards more voices in the background. I listened for another 30 seconds to see if I could hear any more, but the phone was silent with the slight murmurs of voices in the background, indistinguishable to my ears.

I lowered the phone slowly from my ear as I hear Lola (my pet name for the affectionate AT&T lady who asks me if I want to save or delete my voicemails) asking me to press seven or nine. Of course I wanted to save it! I was so rushed (and still slightly asleep) that I quickly pressed seven and hung up. (EPIC FAIL!) It took me a few moments after I hung up to realize that I just deleted the message. Dang....

Yet the point still remains. People are praying for you out there who you may never even know. Someone cares about you enough to take time out of their day and pray for you. Even if it seems like the whole world is against you, you always have someone on your side who has your back. Never forget that. God reminded me of this fact today. I hope He blesses you with it as well.

Following His Call,
Adam

(Proverbs 18:24)

Paradox

Hey everyone!

I have been in a really weird mood these past few days. I really don't know what to think of it, and I don't know how it started or how to stop it. It hasn't been one particular emotion that has come through, but several, like my emotions are on hyper alert. I would be really happy, then really sad, then really angry, all within an hour's time. Great... now I'm starting to sound like I have some psychological disorder. I promise, I do not.

After the events of the last few days (and when I say "events" that sounds so ominous, and it isn't meant to be, because, honestly, nothing really out of the ordinary has happened; I have just been analyzing them more), I have really started to contemplate my life so far.

Over the past few years, I have had ups and downs, good times and bad, and made huge decisions that have affected my life forever. Some of these decisions are good (like choosing to go to college), others are bad (like betraying the trust of friends I care about most). By natural inclination, I have been dwelling a lot more on the bad.

My life is an unending paradox: good and bad dwelling together and dueling over who is to win. Most of the time, both live together and will act out decisions as equal forces, producing a result that I don't know how to deal with (and many others do not either). For example, while I may love someone with all my heart (the good living in me), how I act out that love is totally wrong (the evil living in me). I may say things I didn't mean or do things that I believe are innocent until someone comes back later and tells me how wrong I was. Many times, my innocent actions are taken way out of context and explode back in my face, only to show there was deeper, darker motives behind those good actions I thought were so great.

The paradox is that I live my life with major regrets, but at the same time I don't wish to go back to change them because those actions make me who I am. I do regret every poor choice I make; but when people ask me if I could do my life over again, would I change anything, my answer is still, "No."

It's not because I don't regret my mistakes I have made, because sometimes at night (still today) I cry myself to sleep reliving those experiences in my mind as they torture me into unconsciousness. I grieve over how much I have hurt people, and I wish for the life of me I didn't make any of those mistakes I made. But I can't erase them. They are set in stone, and only time can weather away the deep scars they left.

I have hurt people so bad they will never trust me again. Honestly, I do not expect them to; they have every right to be angry and upset and never want to speak to me again. Other people still hold grudges that go so deep I don't think they will ever get over them. I do not fight these people. They have every right to hate me and wish me dead. I will live with these ghosts for the rest of my days I am alive, eating at me and tearing me apart. Thus is my punishment for the mistakes I made. I dug my grave, now I must lie in it.

Conversely, I do not wish to change any decisions I have made because they are an integral part of me; they define who I am and I don't want to change that. While I have made huge mistakes that will forever alter my life and the lives of others, they taught me a great deal. Do I wish that I could have learned it another way? Absolutely! Sadly, how life is sometimes, you can't learn it any other way. It breaks my heart to say that, but it is true for some people; especially true for me.

I have learned so much from each of these mistakes. Not only have I learned about myself and who I am, I have also learned about how to handle difficult situations in the future. Most importantly, I have learned how other people think and interpret some of the things I do. These life lessons are so important, and I treasure them, holding them so tight that I will never forget them, no matter how hard it hurts to keep them close to me.

I live in a constant state of paradox: living with the decisions I made, thankful they taught me deep lessons, but also living in pain and agony of regret. I live with what philosophers call the Hedgehog's Dilemma: even though the hedgehog wants to get closer to another, but the closer he gets, the more he tends to hurt the other. Thus is my life. *sigh*

My one advice to any younger people reading this: Do not make life-altering mistakes, especially if you don't know you are about to make one (Wait, what?). Learn lessons the easy way. Predict the future and know what decisions are going to alter your life forever so you don't make those mistakes (Huh? How do you do that?). Don't question my logic, just do it. (This is a little sarcasm to help lighten the very dark mood I painted earlier.)

So what about you? Have you ever messed up so bad that you were ridiculed or it changed the way people looked at you? Have you ever made a mistake that ended up hurting other

Blogger

Hey everyone!

I have a confession for you. Well, actually, I have a few confessions for you. But before I get to them, I have to give you some background.

It's obviously been a long time since I have written a blog. I have had several ideas in my head I have wanted to write about, and I have outlined some of them, but I have been too emotional to clearly write out the full posts. I have about six or seven blog ideas I have hashed out in outline form just waiting to be written, but for some reason the past few weeks, I have been over-run by emotions.

In order to get back into the swing of things, I am taking a break from some of my more serious concepts and trying to write some more fun-loving and light-hearted blogs to get me back into it. So here are my confessions:

I am addicted to blogs

I never really realized this was a "problem" until today. After going through my list of blogs I follow and opening up all the links in my browser in separate tabs so I could let them load and flip though them at my leisure, I realized the tabs on the top of my browser were too small to even read what each headline was about. It was at this particular moment that the thought occurred to me: I may be addicted to blogging. Oops. Oh well. Everyone has some addiction, at least mine is not harmful to me. I am actually learning a lot. 

I am not that great of a blogger

Okay, before everyone starts thinking that I am knocking on myself and devaluing my writing ability, hear me out. (I already know some people reading this are going to be like, "Adam! You are a great writer! I love your blog! Don't hate on yourself like that!" Insert Charlie Brown adult: "Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha!") I do understand that people are nice and want to encourage me on this. I REALLY appreciate the encouragement, more than they will ever know. At the same time, since I read so many blogs, I just get overwhelmed by the beauty and eloquence of the other bloggers' writings and think, Wow... I wish I could write like that... So, while I may be a "good writer," as some people say, I'm not as good as other bloggers.

But that is okay! Hear me out here; I am not jealous of them in the slightest! (Alright, maybe just a little bit, but not enough to get angry or change what I am doing with my blog.) I love reading their stuff! I love basking in their awesomeness. It doesn't upset me in the slightest. I just live and learn. I won't try to emulate their writing styles or copy some of their themes, but I do learn more about the formula of writing from their blogs. All I want is to follow my plan as outlined in EDGE-X, my very first blog. I pray it blesses its readers and glorifies God in the process.

I am still have a lot to learn

I had a rather humbling moment to confess to you. I am still rather obsessed with statistics. I know I confessed that statistics weren't everything, but I won't lie, I haven't been writing as much because my blog has been getting a lot of traffic the past two months and I felt I didn't need to write anymore. I used to be all about numbers, but not anymore. I had a rather humbling experience that set me straight.

According to Goggle Analytics on blogger.com, my blog is currently sitting at 5,400 views, with my leading blogpost, Love, sitting at 3,110 views. The page views have been increasing exponentially over the past two months, and at first I was ecstatic! My blog is finally being recognized! People I don't even know from India and Germany are finally reading my blog! I am reaching out to people I have never even met before! 


Then I realized what was happening in a moment of humility. People weren't looking at my blog, they were looking at the pictures on my blog and copying them off of my website for their own use. One look at the Referring URLs told me everything I needed to know. The most clicked link was a Google Image search for the word, "love" and the coffee mug with the cream in the shape of a heart image.

How dis-heart-ening (like the pun?)! It actually wasn't. Okay, I won't lie, it was disheartening at first, but then I got over it. I realized once and for all, it isn't about the statistics, it is about doing what God has for me to do. That is my plan this summer: to grow so much closer to God and share my heart on this blog about what He is teaching me. I hope you want to follow me along on the journey.

Following His Call,
Adam
(1 Corinthians 13:1)