By the wayside

Okay, I have a problem. Or many problems. Or maybe it's not a problem. Maybe it's just a thing. Maybe even a good thing. But here it is. I think too much. Normally, you would think (ha, ha) that it's okay to think. Think before you speak. Think before you act. But I tend to do so much thinking that I silence myself or immobilize myself. That's why it's best that I get blindsided by life, otherwise I'm bound to get nothing accomplished. What I'm alluding to is my proposed article on Acts 13:48 and Romans 1:20. I was all set to write it one night when I started thinking about it. I had already been thinking on it for a while, and I thought I had it all set. I knew what I wanted to say. Everything seemed logical and correct, and it still is. But all those thoughts led to other thoughts which led to other questions until it has become this gargantuan thing in my mind. Throw on top of it all of my current bible reading and new understanding that I receive daily, and it's becoming so large that my tiny little brain can barely keep up. I'll get to it. I can't say when. Maybe by the end of the week. Maybe ten years from now. But I'll keep working on it, praying about it, asking God to give me wisdom and the ability to convey that wisdom. I'm a young guy. I am. Twenty-five years seems a long time, but I still feel like I'm a teenager. I feel so immature sometimes. And other times I feel really mature. Sometimes I think I'm mature, and I soon realize how naive I am. It's this daily struggle of life. I'm sure you older folk are sitting back and laughing. Poor kid. Someday he'll learn as I have learned. But, yeah. I think and think and think. The main focus of all of this thinking and talking I've been doing is on Salvation. I was pushing along through Romans this morning and Paul was talking about the men of faith in the old testament, before God gave the law to Moses. There was no law when God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. Abraham lived by faith in God and that he would come through on His promise. Faith in the promise. That's how the Old Testament people received salvation. It wasn't by following the law. For the law only showed them their sins and condemned them. But by trying to follow God's law and do the things that God required to atone for their sins, they showed that they had faith that God would fulfill His promise. That was cool.

I didn't write as much as I wanted to this morning, but I wrote more than I had been. I pray that I can finally get through the chapter that I'm on in the morning. Seems like I've been writing this same chapter forever. The story is starting to get real heavy at this point. Spiritually heavy, in other words.

Yes, she has kids. Good job, Inspector. Still don't know if she's married. But...um, yeah...Let me tell you a little story. Actually this story could go on for days, but I'll give the shortest version I can. I met this girl in college. Last semester of my Senior year, to be more correct. I liked her. Imagine that. We were friends. Or rather we became friends, of a sort. We had a class together, so we studied together on occasion. We played tennis together a few times. She didn't have a car, so I took her places a lot. My parents said she was just using me for transportation. They didn't trust her. They didn't trust her kind, I think. She was foreign. But I didn't care. I liked her. We were friends. So we graduated. She went to Vermont. I went back to the sticks. She called me. We exchanged emails. All those things to keep in touch before we realized that our relationship, our friendship, was waning and fading. She had another semester to finish up, so she went back to the University. She called me and wanted me to take her out. I obliged. I drove the hour or so and picked her up and we drove another hour or so to the City and ate Chinese and went to a Korean market and it seems like we did something else. Maybe not. You know, all this time we were friends I kept expecting something to happen. I don't know. That she would kiss me and declare her love for me. My wildest dream. But no, nothing. Then I didn't hear from her for a couple of months. When she finally got in touch with me again, she was living in Minnesota with her older sister. She would call me and we would have nothing to talk about and I would sit there listening, hoping. But nothing. Then I didn't hear from her for a long while. In the meantime, I found a girl, lost her, found her again, and had just lost her again when I got a phone call. She was back at the University. She was working on her Masters. I took her out to dinner. We talked about old times. We always talked better face to face. We just didn't click on the phone for some reason. I guess because you can't have long silences on the phone without someone getting impatient. In her apartment we could sit there and just be and say whatever we liked when we felt like saying it. Then she broke the news to me. She had been raped and gotten pregnant and the child was living with her parents. She had been afraid to tell me. Afraid to tell anyone. She'd wound up around New York in some Catholic thing while she was pregnant and catching buses and trains and what not to get to and from work. I don't remember all of the details. Even with this new knowledge I sat there hoping, thinking, but nothing. We kept in touch off and on. We exchanged a few short emails a few weeks ago. She's pregnant again. This time of her own doing. But she still isn't married. I think she would have told me if she'd gotten married. Now and then I think that she'll call me and tell me all those things I wanted to hear in the beginning when everything was still so full of potential and all the ideals I hold in my mind could still be true. But I know it can't be. If she called me and wanted to marry me and was sincere (she used to ask me to marry her all the time, but I knew she was kidding), would I do it? Would I let this life I have imagined go by the wayside to make this muddled dream a reality? So now I think of this other girl, the one who has more recently caught my fancy, knowing what I know now, what the silent inspector has shown me, always assuming she is unmarried (the inspector is still working on that aspect of the case). Would I let my hopes and dreams go unfulfilled if she were to smile at me beautifully in that quiet way she has and let those tears that always seem ready to fall roll down her face as she takes my hand. I like to think that I wouldn't. But I'm twenty-five. I'm old. Life has to move on sometime, doesn't it?

You know, I just realized that I gave that friend from college the link to this blog. I don’t think she reads it. She might have read a post or two when I first gave her the link, but not anymore. But does it really matter. She would just laugh and send me an email telling me what a child I am. She would tell me that she already knew all those things, those secret desires of my heart, and thought it was funny and pathetic the way I kept thinking, hoping, dreaming. But whatever.