I wonder sometimes: if there were a test for being a youth pastor that you had to take before they would let you into the International Society of Youth Ministry (or ISYM), would i have passed it? methinks probably not.

So i'm back in my little house on the far side of the world, sitting at my computer at noon with my coat on, and still being able to see my breath, and my mind is still a million other places, but figure that unless i write something everyone will think me dead. or people might start wondering if i've had a debilitating accident involving a box of weasels and meat paste and as a result have lost all my fingers and am unable to type. Have no fear!!

Christmas was an odd time for me. it was great to be back in portland, for the most part. i thought i had prepared myself for all the people wanting to know "how" i am, but i really wasn't. i'd be sitting eating or drinking coffee with someone that i am actual friends with, and someone who's name i don't really remember would come in and say "HEY!!! you're back!!! How're things going over there?" and because i'm a wimp, i would interrupt my actual conversation to tell them pretty much the same thing i told the last person, 5 minutes ago. it started to bother me a lot, so in the end i tried to stay off campus as much as possible. which is sad, since there's still some people that i would have liked to run in to. sorry, friends.

Then justin's wedding, which was the best wedding i've ever been to or in. makes me want to have a similar type wedding. bonus points for my mom saying that if any of us ever have a wedding like that she'll disown us. us guys were sorta 70's themed, with brown-ish leisure suits, and the girls wore some dress things. nothing really "matched" in the martha stewart way, but everything defiantly fit in the "justin and gwen" sorta way. it was low-stress (for a wedding), and low-budget (which helped with the low-stress), but i really didn't feel like anything was left out, or the "poor man's" version of a real wedding. it was fun and nice to be there and help put stuff together for them, which i think is a sign of a great wedding. and now they're sex fiends, so i guess it all worked out!

Then home. the potter house in tacoma (well, it's actually in university place, which was too cool for tacoma to handle, so they seceded, and it's much nicer there now. except that nobody knows where it is). and that's where everything started going wrong. well, not really, just not right. clarification: i love my family. i got to see my older brother doug and his wifey candice for the first time since last Christmas, and i got to see their child, kiera, for the first time ever, as she's only 8 months now. i got to see my parents and give them a hard time about trashing my house when they left, i got to see brent, who is living out part of a poorly defined dream of mine by vagabonding it around europe when he's not going to Bible school, i got to hang out with ro and cami, who i'd seen more recently. but a strange thing happened at that house- nothing. in fact, when i went back down to portland to fly back to japan, me and cami went out to coffee with eachother- we both felt like we hadn't spent any time together. really, we had just never went out and talked. neither of us had taken the initiative.

And that's where i ended up running into trouble. i usually make sure to help out around the house over Christmas, i usually prepare myself to take initiative with my siblings and parents, to do things and have conversations with them deliberately. this Christmas i was on vacation. completely. i did have good times with my siblings, and me and cami had some good frisbee/sharing time, but it really feels like i wasted some of this time, that i could have done more with it. it's not like i see my family that much anymore.

Which got me thinking- my life now necessitates discipline, necessitates being mature, forces me to be someone i'm not. which is good, cuz there's things about myself that i want to change. there's things about myself that i'm not that impressed by, and living here, being an "adult" (whatever that means) really makes me become more of the kind of person that i want to be. i don't mind the person i am now, but he has problems and issues and doesn't really analyze things and is immature, and INCREDIBLY selfish. i think i'm beginning to realize that making a big difference in this world by being a goofy fun-loving guy doesn't really work. i'm not planning on getting serious and boring, but i do want to make a big difference in this world, and the me from college just isn't the kinda guy to do that. he's sorta shallow, to be honest. he changes depending on who he's around, and what's expected of him.

Coming back here to the ministry was hard. not because i didn't want to be here, but i'd forgotten how to do my job. here, i read the Bible like it's my lifeline. my relationship with God is what keeps me going, fulfills me, even when i spend 15 hours writing a talk that rips my heart out and only 5 kids show up to youth group. here i NEED God. i need Him to give me patience when my high school kids suddenly close themselves to me for no reason. i need Him to give me understanding when my kids have really good reasons for not doing things that i think they should do. i need His wisdom when i realize that i'm probably impacting these kids more than i could ever know, and i'm faced with my own inadequacy and inexperience. i need His strength to get me through 4 meetings a day, to get me through sunday, which is a 14 hour work day. here i am nothing without God. i'm faced with pressures everyday that i can only take when God is with me, or rather, when i am with God.

So i think i read my Bible like twice over Christmas break. i didn't really talk to anyone (outside my family) about the youth ministry. basically my relationship with God became too difficult to maintain. and when i came back here, i felt like a fraud. i looked at my calendar and wondered how in the world i was ever able to keep a schedule like this, constantly pouring myself out. i felt like my life was running away with me, and i was barely holding on. like things weren't so much running, they were sprinting, and headed for a cliff. i'm doing a lot better now, and i blame God for that. it's been really good to be back with Him.

I've decided to become who i want to be. first, of course, i need to figure out who i want to be. i know that i want to change the world, to do ministry. i've known that forever. but, even though i went to Bible college, i never really went there for that. i was just thinking how ridiculous it is that i would go to a class like Anthropology, Christology, and Soteriology (or ACS), do as little homework as possible, cram for the tests, and somehow come out of the experience thinking that i had learned something. part of me thinks they should make multnomah really hard to get into, so only those who actually want to learn and make a difference would be let in. but then where would i be? i think i should write a letter of apology to a lot of my professors for probably making them question their teaching ability. but, i digress. in my mind, i want to go to the olympics. if we hang on to the spiritual training/physical training metaphor, i'm demanding that i be put in the game, but almost never practice, or work out, or train. it's no wonder that i feel frustrated by the ministry. i think it's time i started acting like i'm living for God, like He's what actually runs my life, not just when i need Him to. now i'm just rambling.