A Suicide Note

   To the christian community:

   At first I was scared that you would react angrily and violently against my personal struggles. But when I shared them with you, I was greeted with warmth and acceptance. I liked that at first. But I slowly learned that the acceptance was, for the most part, fueled by apathy. You have said on numerous occasions that my sin is like a disease, and that is why you still love me. But when someone you love is sick, you go and visit them to make sure they’re doing okay. You’re not afraid to hug them. You spend as much time as you can with them because you fear that the disease might get the better of them.

   To the gay community:

   You told me that you were accepting of everyone. You said that I had a right to do whatever I wanted with my life. Then I told you that I wanted to fight my sexual orientation. With a confused look and a discontented sigh, you withdrew from me even further than the people at church. The only time I ever see you anymore is when you rise up to mock the faith I that gives me hope. I understand that you have been hurt, but you use that hurt to fuel a hatred that tears everyone down, whether they are on your side or not. You have become so focused on winning political battles that you have begun to inflict the same deep hurts that make people like me want to end everything.

   To my friends:

   Your hugs made me feel safe. The conversations we had made me feel loved. Don’t feel like you weren’t enough to keep me here. It wasn’t your fault. By the time I met you, I was already too far gone.

   Good bye.

Drunk Girls

   I haven’t quite worked out myofficial moral position on drinking. But I do have some strong feelings regarding it. I, for one, do not intend to start drinking, and if I ever see a leader of any christian organization drinking, I get very upset. But when I see drunk girls, I become furious. And it’s not just because they are girls and they are drunk.

   Ususally, when a girl is drunk, she is at a party. And when she is at a party, she is surrounded by guys who want to do stuff. I hate guys who want to do stuff at parties . . . especially when its with a drunk girl. It makes me feel like an overprotective dad who is about to go insane and destroy all the stupid guys who get near his daughter. It also makes me feel sad because no matter how hot a girl is, I never find her attractive while she’s drunk, and I just want to get as far away from her as possible.

   So, whenever I’m around a drunk girl at a party, its usually after she’s started puking and I stand quietly a few paces away from the bathroom offering her water and finding her a ride home. And whenever some other guy walks by with other intentions, I tell him she’s going home while supressing the impulse to punch him in the face.

Another New World (Josh Ritter)

   I often have the impulse to quit everything I’m currently pursuing in order to be a missionary or something crazy in hopes that I will discover something more real and worth pursuing with every fiber of my being. This song captures some of those feelings and even though I’ve always hated stories about ships and explorers in the arctic, this song makes them all sound really epic.

Dew in the Grass (Sea Wolf)

   After a party at my fraternity, a lot of old emotions and ideas came to the forefront of my mind. Soon after that, I listened to this song and they all came together into one of the weirdest most intriguing stories I have ever thought of.

 

 

Dry Bones (Gungor)

   Sometimes in the winter, it is midnight and even though I’m tired and I have a lot of work to do, all the emotional things I struggle with keep me from thinking straight. Then, I’ll go out into the dark and cold and run as fast as I can through the woods. And whenever I’m running during these times, this is always the song that blasts its way through my head.

 

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Monkeys in Trees

   Once upon a time in High School, I was talking with one of my friends. He had a crazy girlfriend, and I kept telling him to break up with her. He refused (at the time), and as an explaination, he gave me one of the most memorable analogies I have ever heard.

   “I’m like a monkey in a tree,” he said. “And if I get jump off this tree I’ll be on the ground. I don’t want to be on the ground. I’m not going to jump off of this tree until I see a vine I can grab onto.”

   I quickly responed by telling him that was to most ridiculous dating advice I’d ever heard. But over the years, I’ve realized I tend to do that a lot, only in different areas. For example, this summer I got invited to help set up a Christian concert for a week, and it sounded like a good thing to do. Only, I didn’t want to leave home for a week. I’d had the most horrible time building relationships with friends at home over the past few months, and my work was finally starting to pay off. And now I’d have to leave to go to work at this concert with people I didn’t really know very well.

   I thought of the monkey analogy, and in my desperate attempt to do what God wanted/prove my friend’s point wrong, I decided to go. And in only one week, I got closer to the strangers around me than I had gotten with my friends all summer. Moral of the story: jump out of the tree, and God will catch you.

    Have you ever decided to leave a place you loved? What made you make that decision?

Me Against the Wolves

   Today I had dream. I took a 5-year-old kid to Legoland, and while we were getting off one of the rides, I noticed the kid was tired. I picked him up and put him on a wooden post, where he sat eating ice cream or something. Then the sky got all dark and I realized that wolves had overrun the park. I saw the big, black creatures tearing through the trees, getting closer, with saliva dripping from their teeth. Then I saw a whole bunch of strong men running after the wolves with rifles.

   I was relieved for a little bit, until I could see that the wolves would reach the boy before the men could shoot them. He sat on the post before the forest, eating his ice cream. The wolves were just about to reach him, and I stood right behind the post. I knew I had to protect the boy, and get between him and the wolves. I rushed to get in front of the post. I had to stand between the wolves and the boy. But just when I was next to the boy, ready to step in front of him, I froze. It was like my feet were glued to the ground.

   Usually, this happens in my dreams when I’m running away from monsters, but this time I was trying to move toward the monster. And to make it worse, as soon as I froze, the little boy’s family appeared around me. They watched with horror, yelling at me to protect the boy, but I couldn’t move. The wolves burst from the forest with open jaws, and just before they could kill the kid, they were riddled with bullets and fell dead at my feet.

   I woke up frustrated because this mirrors a problem I have in real life. I have things I want to do, like run a certain distance or some other daring thing. I know I can do it, but when I come face to face with the situation I was thinking of, I chicken out, and I don’t go on. I slow down before the finish line. I chicken out of jumping off the high dive. I think that’s why I love rollercoasters so much. Once you decide you want to ride, and the restraints go down, there’s nothing you can do to change your mind. You have to stay on the ride till its over… and you’ll probably enjoy it.

   So, I can only hope that when it comes to big decisions in my life, like choosing to follow God or dying for someone else, I have the resolution to go through with my decisions. Or else I pray that God will be like that restraint on a rollercoaster that, once I commit, won’t let me go until I’ve gone through with my plans.