Its approaching 1 a.m. on Sunday morning and I can't shut my mind off which means I can't fall asleep. It might have had something to do with that nap I took this afternoon as well. Therefore, you're getting a story I've told several times before of the first time I got into this terrible habit of napping in the afternoon and not being able to fall asleep promptly at night.
As I was finishing high school, I decided I wanted to get away and start fresh for college and so I left the confines of Northwest Washington for suburban Chicago. It took a couple weeks for me to establish friendships, but once I did, my freshman year was fantastic. My parents, however, were so distraught at being that far away from me that they decided to move to Michigan that following summer. At least, that's the reason I choose to believe. Either way, once spring semester ended, I got one last week in Washington and packed up and headed out to Michigan and it flat out sucked. It was pretty terrible for all of us out there to start. We didn't know anyone, we didn't know what to do and for the first few days I was out there, we didn't even have most of our stuff. It was boring. I missed my friends from high school. My best friend from college was in California and my girlfriend was in Wisconsin and I started a countdown until I got to go back to school on day two of summer vacation. The only thing getting me through were the nightly AIM conversations with my girlfriend.
Fast forward a couple of weeks to where I've at least got my job at Soundoff, which is a testament to prayer in itself, but that story isn't being told now. I've also moved out of my bedroom on the top floor and onto a spare bed behind a curtain (sheet?) in a corner of the basement. I couldn't tell you why I did it; I couldn't have told you why I did it then, but its what I preferred. Perhaps its just what I was comfortable with since my room at home in Lynden was on the basement floor as well. Anyway, I was working first shift with my hours being something like 7:00-3:30 and then since I had nothing to do, besides the occasional run or shooting hoops by myself, I'd take an afternoon nap. This became a vicious cycle I couldn't get out of. I took one nap and then couldn't fall asleep that night and end up with only four or five hours of sleep. Soundoff was definitely a job I needed, but it certainly wasn't work that was going to challenge me so my energy was spent just getting through the day and then I'd come up home and end up napping again. I tried so hard to break that cycle. I consciously fought the urge to nap, but it didn't matter. Even on the days when I was able to keep myself awake all afternoon, there was still an ingrained tiredness that I had to fight through and when I got through that, I'd be awake and the next thing you do, I'd be laying in bed, staring at the clock as it tells me its one in the morning and I have to be up at 5:30. It was a miserable experience and I hated it and about the only thing that could compare since then would be the loneliness of my first year of grad school. That summer was even the first time I struggled with a nihilistic worldview. Why fight this when life is ultimately meaningless? However, even in that vortex of suck, something wonderful emerged. In the times when I felt like I was hitting rock bottom, I still turned to prayer and a tremendous tranquility and the most assured peace I've ever felt would come over me. I would literally (yes, literally) feel my soul and my entire being being held oh so gently in the palm of God's hand. I could feel the curves of his hand as I nestled there and He assured that me that even though everything was awful and nothing like what I wanted it to be, that I was taken care of and that nothing could possibly come between Him and me. The nights when this would happen had such a powerful effect on me that when I first recanted this story at a GradIV Bible study some five or six years later, I had to fight back tears as I told it. To this day, its still the closest I've ever felt to my creator.
Experiences such as that are the reasons why no matter how deeply I ever get involved with science and all of the people there who want to wish away God, I never will join them. I had one week in grad school where I had the audacity to tell God that I was going to just stop believing He existed. That lasted for about an hour. I've had a good friend ask me if I would be a Christian had I not been raised one. Honestly, the experience most likely would have been different had I not been a believer at the time, but why change history? With the experiences I've had and the knowledge that God can manifest Himself to us in any way He so desires, I know that He's there and He's in control.
That's my story. I'm going back to bed. Good night all.
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