Brain Fart 6: A for Effort! No, really.

**Testimony of Winter Retreat 2010**

Why am I here? Why am I doing this? I’m too tired. I’m too busy. I don't feel like it. This is how I think oftentimes when it comes to anything about my faith – reading the Bible, going to church, praying, testimonies… These thoughts then turn to, Maybe I won’t do it right now. I can do it later. I can do it next time. You would think that I would feel guilty about skipping out on doing these types of things for my faith. And I did. But, I would then comfort myself by telling myself, Well, if you do this when you don’t want to, then it’s not from the heart, and that would just be going through the motion. God doesn’t want THAT. But then, all of a sudden, I realize that I haven’t done anything for the past six months, and that I have moved much farther away from God than I thought I had. Even at these times, im still saying the same excuses. well, I would have done my quiet times/gone to church/prayed, but I didn’t feel like it. God doesn’t want us to do these things without a willing heart. But, after retreat, I learned, through Pastor Jason, and through a bit of my own inner searching, that although God may not want an unwilling heart, he still appreciates the effort.

Pastor Jason talked about two main things: thirsting and struggling. At first, I thought that you had to thirst in order to struggle. You had to want Jesus before you could fight for Him. But, I have since learned that it works both ways. One of the games we played taught me this. It was called “Amazon Women.” (I think?) Basically, guys all linked up together while the girls tried to pull them apart within 15 minutes. It basically turned into a huge wrestling thing. Everyone ended up on the floor, there was pulling, pushing, head-butting, and even the occasional biting. It was long, and it was vicious. I personally targeted this group of around 5 or 6 guys. I stuck with that group the entire game. Disappointingly, there were still two guys at the end that I hadn’t been able to pull apart. I was proud of myself for not giving up the whole entire time, but I was just SO frustrated that I didn’t win.

Then, I realized, “wait. When did I start caring?” In the beginning, I didn’t really care. It was just another game we play at retreat. But, when I started, when I put myself in there and got involved in that long battle, and started struggling, that’s when I started caring, which kept me going. It surprised me that I didn’t start with caring, but with struggling. I guess, that’s how my faith is. I may not start my walk with Jesus by caring too much. It was mostly going through the motions, it was just for fun (seeing my friends at church, playing dodgeball, getting ice cream afterwards, etc). I know it sounds bad, but I think that’s how it happened for me. As just a motion, or maybe just for fun. But, I think God saw me there anyways, and He starts lighting a fire within me, my faith. Then, I started caring about my relationship with God, rather than just going through the motions. Of course, things slow me down. School, friends, work, life. Then, my relationship with God started turning back into simply motions. This is the part when I say, “God doesn’t want an unwilling heart,” and decided to skip out on church for the umpteenth time.

But.

He still wanted me to struggle, wrestle for Him. Like in the game, I struggled. I wrestled. For a long time. There were times when I asked myself, “why am I still trying? Isn’t there something better/more fun/easier to do than this?” I could have given up. Just said, “ok whatever you guys win.” But because I struggled, God gave me a passion to keep struggling even further, until the end of the 15 minutes. Well, God instilled the same passion on my relationship with Jesus. Because I struggled. I read the Bible. I sang worship songs. I prayed. And, I went to retreat. And at retreat, as pastor Jason introduced the topic of struggling, he told us the story of when Jacob wrestled God. God came to him, and wrestled him. Jacob didn’t know who He was, but he kept struggling throughout the entire night. At the end, Jacob knew it was God, and left feeling all the closer with Him. This is what happened with me, what is still happening to me. I didn’t really know God, but I went through the motions. I struggled. And I didn’t give up. And in the end, I came out with what I’d been looking for: my passion for God, my thirst.

Brain Fart 5: My Idea of a True Friend

**Originally written for my UWP 1 class blog**

Everyone has different ideas about what a "true" friend is. Is it someone who is always there for you? Is it someone who knows you backward and forward? Is it someone who you trust beyond all others? What is a "true" friend?

I was chatting with one of my closest, truest friend today. I was talking with him about his troubles, and I was having a very hard time with it. I just kept thinking, "Why can't I understand? I don't understand him, he is so...complicated!" At that moment, I made a realization. The only people I ever think are complicated or complex are people who I'm really close with, my "true" friends. "Well, that doesn't make sense," I thought to myself, "why is it the that the people most complicated to me are my closest friends? It should be the other way around!" But...maybe not.

We, as individuals, know that we ourselves are very complex creatures. We know our own life's story. We know what experiences we have been through, and how they have shaped our thought processes and personalities. Because so many things happen in life, these experiences create very complex personalities and thought processes. And, very often, we hide many of these complexities. We're embarrassed by them, are too hurt to share them, and/or think they won't accept them. In a way, it's very much like wearing clothes. We wear clothes to hide parts of ourselves that we're not sure we want other people to see, because we don't trust them to be able to handle our complexities. However, sometimes we find those true friends that we can shed our metaphorical clothes in front of and say, "Here I am, all of me," and trust them to accept us anyways.

However, we tend to forget that other people, our friends, are just like us--real people with real life experiences. We see them, and say, "Okay, that's them. That's all there is to see." We forget that these friends of ours are just like us, complexities included. However, we become closer and closer, until reaching "true" friend status, where we both start to trust each other enough to show our full "naked" selves. Then we start to realize that, yes, they also have lives. They have been living lives just like we have, have had experiences just as we have, been hurt and gone through hardships just as we have, and have been having their thought processes be shaped according to those unique experiences. Then, these life experience-shaped thought processes start leaking into our conversations, and we start seeing them as complex beings, just like ourselves. We may not always fully understand them, because their experiences are different from ours. However, if they are "true friends," you learn to accept that anyways, just as they learn to accept you, too, complexities and all.

So, I think "true" friends are the people that you acknowledge as actual, living people. You acknowledge that they have been living complex lives, just like you, and you accept them anyways (and vice versa), complexities and all.