Who thought the end of the semester would be as crazy as it was. I knew going into seminary life was going to be crazier with a family, working as much as I do and wanting to have some personal time. But this has been almost the craziness as it has been. Thursday before finals week my daughter came down with a lung infection. She had to be put on a nebulizer and we had to give her a treatment every 3-4 hours. Needless to say that was very time consuming as each treatment took 15-20 min to give. Over the weekend she did not get much better, in fact she got worse. So I kept her home and took her to the doctor’s on Monday (the day a paper was due) and she had a double ear infection as well!! Poor girl!
I tried to finish my prison ministry paper between naps and nebulizer treatments. Tuesday was better with her and Wednesday was my last swimming class to teach and I had to work. Which left me on Thursday with two papers to finish. I finally got the last one done today. A day late but I felt it was an okay paper.
I have one more paper to finish and then I will finally be done with the semester. I should be done with everything by now but with the craziness I was granted a few days extra to get done.
There are still Christmas presents to buy and holiday cheer to muster up. This year has been the first year where I felt so unchristmasy it is crazy. I hope next week I can get in the holiday spirit some more.
We will be leaving on the 25th for New Hampshire. We will spend a few days visiting my wife’s side of the family and then we will travel to Vermont to visit mine. I hope to see some friends over New Year’s but we will see. No plans as of yet.
I don’t have a class until the 21st of January. So three weeks where I will be “free.” I must be careful because my “free” time seems like the most hectic for me.
I have never gotten into the New Year’s Resolutions per se, but I am going to be true to my 100 things to do before I die list and pick 5 to accomplish. The other thing I want to do is to take more pictures. I am thinking about starting a photo blog. I think that would be pretty fun. I really would like to get into taking pictures some more. I might even try dig some old pictures out and post them.
Off to dinner, Franks and beans tonight! mmmmm
While I do have a Bonhoeffer paper to work on, I decided that I would write this down since it is all that is going through my head right now.
I have been thinking a lot about friends lately. Maybe it is because I miss my friends, maybe it is because my friends have been doing certain things that I have not been included on, maybe it is because I am going to miss another one of my friends bachelor parties because I have to preach on that Sunday….Whatever it is I have been thinking about it a lot lately.
I have many different circles of friends and they have overlapped a few times in my life. I have my friends from Rutland– two of which I am still close too. I have my friends from college. I only really talk with one friend who now lives in Cali — it kinda makes me sad that the rest don’t respond to e-mails or letters but I will get over it. I have my friends from camp — these are the friends that I consider my best friends and now I have my friends from seminary. I consider these some of my great friends as well and I know I will have these friends for a long time.
I am fusterated not with my friends from home or college or even seminary but I am fusterated because I can’t see/be with my friends from camp. It is crazy how much I need that interaction with them from time to time. And maybe there is more that I can do, I don’t know. But it seems like lately we have gone in our own directions. I know some are married and now I have a child (only one so far) and life is not like it was when we were 16 or even 20. I understand life changes but there was a certain time when I just felt that there was nothing that could separate us. To an extent that is true and it is more true for some than others. I guess we all have priorities and I never thought that mine would not put my friends near the top of the list.
My question is has seminary taken my friends away from me? Between my family and seminary and work — does that mean that I can’t make time for them? It is hard because there is not only the time factor of trying to get work done and school done and everything else that life demands but there is also the distance factor, some of my friends are a 5 -6 hour car ride and others are a 5-6 hour plane ride. It just seems crazy that this could separate us……
When I sit down recently and think about the stuff that “Bothers” me and sometimes I think that seminary takes the “fun” out of faith for me. I think the thing that my heart longs for the most might not be the faith interaction that I have with the kids or adults that I come in contact with. Even though that is a big thing — I think it is also the relationships that comes with working at camp. It is the nights out, the days off, the goofing off while stealing a 7 foot sign 30 feet up in the air. I miss the long nights talking on the beach or in the dining hall. I miss the hugs and faces of pure pleasure and the thoughts that this is a never ending friendship. I miss knowing that if there is anything that I need, at any time during the day I can call these guys up knowing that they would be at my doorstep ready to fight without any questions asked.
While I don’t fully believe that is gone, sometimes that seems like a distant memory.
Soon I will be celebrating the marriage of one of my friends. It is going to be good to see everyone again, I know that the weekend is going to be full of stories, memories remembered and new ones made. But I hope that sometime soon there will be more opportunities to bask in the glory of friendship, of faith in eachother and love for one another. I hope that I can fill this heart that is not broken, but maybe has a few holes where love and REason once made a home.
I am going to write early tongight since I have not really written anything of substance the last few days. This weekend was good — since it was SO nice outside we went for a walk and then to the playgroud. It was fun. The older Logan gets the more fun he is to play with at the playground. He is exploring the monkey bars, and he tries different ways [...]
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