Adrenaline Addiction

Just finished a 60 hour work week. And no, I'm not including InterVarsity and, actually, I'm not including lunch breaks. The School of Psychology just finished its largest event of the year, the Integration Symposium and I'm wiped.

Actually, I know I'm tired, but I don't feel tired yet. Yes, the ever-pleasant and delightful 'adrenaline rush' is what I'm still experiencing. I worry about how my body will respond tomorrow when there is suddenly so much less work to do, will I crash? [and on a complete tangent, do you all remember how "adrenal glands" made your zerglings go friggin crazy fast?]

I don't think that I have tapped into the adrenaline reserves this deep since I was in college, and I am surprised to remember how addictive it is! I forgot how good it feels to have your mind completely clear and ready to go at the end of an 11 hour day. Knowing that if you tried to rest right now, your brain would be moving at a mile a minute. I remember how I used to feed off of this. I would eat adrenaline.

When I first began interning, my supervisor, Elizabeth, pushed the disciplines of the Sabbath rest and of daily rest in supervising me. What was hard about that, at first, was that taking sabbath rest cuts you off from the Adrenaline diet. It forces you to need normal amounts of sleep and get appropriate rest. And so first I fought against it! It wasn't until I took a prayer retreat halfway through my first intern year that I realized how instable (and unhealthy) the adrenaline diet is. As I tried to pray and rest, my body showed how empty it was! Sabbath rest is now an important part of my life.

And so I reflect on rest, more for my own memories sake. To remind me not to get back on the adrenaline diet. I need good rhythms of rest and work... I need to be nourished by God's presence in my life, an altogether different and much more sustaining diet than Adrenaline.

What separates the boys from the men

I played volleyball in high school under the severe tutelage of Coach John Marc. He was a funny Canadian man, born and raised in Cote D'voire and moved to Thailand to teach. He worked us and in the late hours of practice as our dives and serves became half-hearted he would intone, "come on guys, this is what separates the boys from the men!".

What really does separate the boys from the men? I was sent a link to an NPR broadcast yesterday about "young men stuck in adolescent limbo". The author intoned that men these days "linger -- happily-- in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance." Namely, they have the freedom to do what they want, and they, well, do what they want. The writer desired to see men "grow up", raise a family, learn to take real responsibility. In her mind that is what separates the boys from the men. In some ways I agreed with the thrust of the article. I see men who cling to 'freedom' and I observe a society that allows them to do that (encourages it even). While I don't think getting married solves the problem (!!!) I do see a difference between my friends who are getting married earlier and later, esp. as I think about their maturity in decision making. It's a decision that can mark a separation 'between the boys and the men'.

I'm learning that perhaps being a man involves the will to make decisions and to live with the consequences. Something I struggle with as I fight my tendencies to explore every angle of a decision before the angst-filled moment of choice. Perhaps that is the separating step...

Or perhaps becoming a man can't be defined in such strict terms. Or at least the growing into it...

I played basketball with my cousins this past winter break. They're a senior and junior in high school and so I've always been the "older" cousin. They now can both match me, heck, work me at the sport I used to call my own. But what struck me was the change that I saw come over my cousins, especially the younger one. Normally a quiet, amiable and friendly, but reticent guy, he changes when the basketball is in his hands. He's what they call, a natural, his movements are fluid, almost ballet like. He and his brother compliment each other as his brother is the workhouse, boxing out and cleaning up. But while his older brother displays a similar determination on and off the court, his countenance shifts. He gets the gleam in his eye. The gleam that says, "yeah, you've done college and all that stuff, but I could totally own you right now." There is a cocky new step, an assurance that he is better than you, it's the gleam that leads a team to win. The gleam tells me that, in the small ways sports can do this, my cousins are stepping over to the side of the men.

This is an idea post... I don't feel like i've tied these thoughts together... but they felt in the same vein.... what do you think?

Straddling the present: A foot in the past and one in the future

I went 'home' for Christmas. Home is itself a transient location, packing up bags and following my parents wherever they are. So this Christmas home was in Thailand. It was good to go to this home, a place of many memories and thoughts.

I am narcistically amused at myself in Thailand as I am catapulted back into the world of my high school days and I try to act grown up within that context. I laugh at myself as I interact with old friends, talk about days gone by, and try to find things to do besides go to movies, eat food, and hang out in malls.... like we did in high school. I had never thought about how places and the experiences that formed those places push certain expectations upon you.
I went to a reunion of sorts, on top of a hotel by the river to celebrate new years. These friends had stayed in touch and were still close, probably closer in some ways than the friends they had all made in college. Not my experience and yet I found myself drawn back into the world they had always lived in. It was nostalgic for me, yet present for them. I come back the one looking the same on the outside, yet feeling different in temperament, cares, concerns, person. How to interact?

I visited lexie keller in Bangkok to and saw into the future. Lexie is working with Servant Partners and has planted herself in the Bangkapi slums, living incarnationally. She has intentionally relocated to Thailand with the goal of long term ministry to the Thai people. When I hung out with her, she had only been in Thailand for a month, a lifetime in her new 'home' ahead of her. I envied her sense of purpose while I was encouraged by her zeal and faith in a God that works. The future... a future I don't usually experience in the 'home' of my past. But I guess 'home' will always be associated with past, until home does not pack bags and move with the fam... when home is where I plant myself.

I connected with an old friend who is moving to Turkey soon as a lifetime minister w/ AOG. Making new homes, the future.

I wonder what future is in store for me, what homes I will create, leave, plant, and thrive in? I wait expectantly as God begins to unveil these things.

New Beginnings

After many years of loyal xanga blogging, I've finally decided that it's time to start again.

I have a bad habit. I have moments where I see something, I hear something that makes me think. But I'm a lazy thinker and so I don't let myself really reflect on what it is that I am realizing. So this blog is going to be a place to let those thoughts unravel, unfold... and come to whatever end they will, either inane or insightful.

I find that the truth often is in the cracks between the maxims by which I interpret and live my life. Truth, in some ways, is too strong a word. Perhaps reflection is a better posture of seeking things out.

Well, let's see how this goes... along with reflections will probably be dilbert cameos amongst other things. cheers!