The summer passes by so fast, and yet so slow.  Only a month and a half and college will begin.  Its stressing me out already... I don't know how I'm going to handle adding to the already perilous path I am on.  Finances will be tight, emotions will run high, and fears will be faced... hopefully one at a time, but there's no guarantee on that.

It has been the summer of learning to be strong.  Strength of heart, emotion, will power... I have thought over these many times this summer and deducted that I am not as strong as I wish I was. I see in front of me many chances to improve, many chances to grow.  Perhaps this fall will be the fall of the rubber meeting the road... the chance for me to prove my quality, if only to myself.  I have found myself wondering what tests I've had that I've come out on top, being the man I want to be... and I can't recall any.  Nothing definite anyway.  I find myself wanting to go climb Mt. Everest, or journey to a foreign land with no return ticket, or join the marines, or at least get mugged and beat the crap out of the mugger... just to pass a test.  A right of passage.  I suppose its sad that I am just now looking for this, instead of years ago when I had much more youth in my blood... when I could train and respond with more agility, and bounce back without so much drama.  True, I am still very young, but I don't feel invincible anymore, that's for sure.  The warrior in my heart still screams like a jaguar to be let out.  I want to be a man of great focus and purpose... and to devote my whole life to it, and to bring others along with me on the way.  Yet I can't even get myself to focus many times.  How will I have the patience and endurance to bring others with me?  Oh to be internally driven like so many great men of history were.  I want to be William Wallace, or Dick Winters, or Abraham Lincoln.  Men who had nothing, yet found it in themselves to make something out of nothing.  I am fortunate enough to be a sibling to a man of great quality... maybe being of the same blood will be enough.

Sunday...

With good people...

We laughed and talked and had fun... it was a very good day indeed.

Timing is everything...

   ... when telling a joke, when playing a Nintendo game, when shooting a buzzer-beater in the NBA playoffs, when signing up for the military, when choosing to try to make it through a yellow light before it turns red, when thinking about asking someone to marry you, when telling someone their yogurt has gone bad...

Timing is everything.

I'm learning a lot about relationships.  Blood runs thicker than water.  No matter what I do, no matter where I go, what I say, how hard I try not to be... I am still my father's son.  (My father is wonderful by the way, I'm only making a point.)  I could claim to "un-son" myself like the prodigal son from the Bible did... but he was still his father's son ...and the father couldn't and wouldn't retract his "fathership".  So it is with my heavenly Father... He can't and WON'T give me up... ever.  I'll always be His, and He'll always be mine.

Salvation is here today.  Timing truly is everything.

So I'm dreaming about being on the road nearly every night.  Thinking about it during the day a lot.  My heart hurts most of the time.  I know I don't even exist to TM anymore... which is a knife in the back.  I don't even know what to do...

... my heart hurts.  I've been chewed by the machine.  The machine that we can all become if we're not careful.

Beware... living for the "greater good" does NOT mean that we cannot take care of each person individually.  Do not try to be who you are not, do not try to be eloquent, do not try to be spectacular... be the prodigal son, who desperately needs his Father no matter what he may think.  Be the "Christ-like" person who's heart bleeds for every single person individually... because His does.  Because He would never sacrifice 1 sheep for the 99... His heart is for the 1.  Because 99 turns into 1 individual at a time... given the right perception.

Beware of the machine.  Be aware of your individual identity.  Don't become lost in pressure from peers, or capitalist ideals, or business schemes.  Be yourself.  Do what you know how to do, do it to the best of your ability, and then be satisfied.  You don't have to be anyone except yourself, and you don't have to do what everyone else is doing.  Be who God created you to be... have a relationship with Him... not a performance for a peer, or leadership, or anyone else.

I'm feeling the weight of a future entirely up to me... it's kind of odd really.

Part of me sees this magnificent future and gets excited and can't wait to start the daily grind of working towards my dreams for real.  This is really going to work.

The other part of me sees the magnificent failures that are possible and starts dreading and wanting to run away from these dreams that haunt me.  This is never going to work.

I ask myself, "do I have what it takes to do this right?"

Sometimes I think so.  Sometimes I know I don't.

My past failures, and even things that were not real "failures", weigh down my hope.  Good intentions have gotten me no where thus far.  I wonder if maybe this time I'll be able to translate my good intentions into something tangible.  I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

That really is the question though isn't it?  Can my good intentions be anything more than that?

And that's what worries me... I was found wanting the last time I had good intentions.

"Keep your chin up" echoes in my head... thank you for saying that.  My chin is heavy these days.