On regrouping.

"Reform the line! Reform the line..."

On the battlefield, after a charge or just after a certain amount of time, things tend to get messy. Soldiers tend to go astray in their pursuit of the enemy. If they are allowed to stay like this, it is easy for the enemy to overtake many of these stray soldiers and kill them.

However, a wise leader will call for his soldiers to regroup. Soldiers are stronger in groups and far less likely to die.

Reader, I have been a warring nation. For the past seven years, I have never gone beyond perhaps a month without declaring war; I have always known what I wanted and been willing to try and take it. But I've only ever won a single war. For ten and a half months, I held my ground until I decided that my army wasn't compatible with the land and I abdicated it.

Since that time, things had gone very badly. I doubled my efforts. Tripled them. And still, somehow my charges would be broken, or the enemy would overcome me, or all would be lost in some confusing melee. And when all seemed darkest, I finally declared peace. For nearly 6 months now, I had fought no wars. I have often wrote of this in my blog. Sometimes when I wrote of it, I was happy. Sometimes, I was ambivalent. But at no point did I declare it a bad idea.

Recently, I fought again. Out of nowhere, it seemed, which made it all the more compelling to me. It just seemed right. I had lost a lot of confidence in myself, but I didn't want fear to hold me back. There were some confusing things going on, but even those I set aside, all for the sake doing what seemed natural. I had doubts about victory, and was at times certain that this, too, would end badly, but there were other things that encouraged me and made me certain that I would win this one. "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight," says the Art of War.

But, as suddenly as it started, the war was over. I lost. And now my soldiers are scattered everywhere, dazed. It's up to me now. I must regroup. I must hold the line. Other people are counting on me to hold everything together, so that bandits don't burn my crops, or kill my people, or pillage my goods.

But it's hard. I wasn't sure that I could handle another defeat. I was sure that another defeat would destroy me for good. But here I am. As I've written before, I'm like the Gunslinger from the Dark Tower. "You darkle, you tinct. May I be frank? You go on." I will go on. Like before.

But to what purpose? Is this what my entire life is going to be? Here the allegory ends, and I will be frank. My job is to help people through their problems and for them to feel better. And among my friends, that is what I do, too. But at the end of every day, I am alone. I have no one. Everyone I ever had has left me behind for greater purposes, and I must accept it. But it just feels like no one really cares about me. For a little while, at least, that seemed about to change. But they're gone too. They have to go. And if they're reading this and not taking a break like I would, I want them to know I'm sorry, too. Maybe someday things will be different. But I don't know when that will be, and I don't care.

I just need to regroup for a while.

There was a dream that I dream, a dream of sure victory.

Continuity of life.

I've been contemplating something lately.

I've been very happy here in my new home. There are easily multiple reasons for this: financial security, routine, the dignity of work, new friends, the excitement of relearning how to live and have fun. And I do have lots of fun.

But I think there has been a hidden reason, one that came to me after conversations with two friends. Both of them are old friends, both of them I enjoy talking to, but the difference between them is that after talking to one, I feel happy, and after the other, I feel sad. I think neither of them read this blog, which is why I feel safe saying this. But I talk to a lot of people...maybe they'll not know for sure who I mean.

Regardless, because of my history with one of them I always reminisce about what passed between us...and with the other, I reminisce because that is our relationship and what we talk about. The combination made me think about how life had gotten where it is now. I realized not only that I was not yet over what happened between my friend and I, but that I had forgotten about it for a time while I've been here. In fact, I've started to think of my life here as a new life, and not a continuation of the old. I broke the continuity in my mind, and so the painful, hurtful past felt like it never happened.

But I can't forget the mistakes and the silly things I've chosen to do in pursuing what I saw as my future. The future was never mine to choose even with all my effort - God had already picked one out for me that I clearly love. So be it. How do I keep this future bright?

I had already chosen to fast from dating for a time, likely several months, before I moved here. Recently I've added the decision that my new attitude towards dating is that I would avoid it altogether even after the fast is over. Since this future I'm living happened to me through God forcing it on me, and all of my failures were due to my efforts to prevent a future God planned for me, why not apply this to dating, and avoid women altogether? Whomever I am meant to be with will be thrust upon me whether I like it or not, and I can save myself the pain I put myself through over and over again.

Still, it's not a comfortable way to do things. I wonder if I've gone too far. I wonder a great many things. And this wonder has reduced me to silence the past few days. Thinking about this, thinking about my old life and my new life, and how it is really one life and I'm the same fool I've always been. I made my new friends uncomfortable a few days by saying almost nothing. It's eye-opening to discover by their discomfort how much I actually talk in a group of people when I am struck silent by my thoughts.

I wonder if I'll ever really figure out the grand scheme of this life, and how to get where I'm going.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to contemplate the stream of this life.

This side.

"It's foreign on this side,

And I'll not leave my home again.

There's no place to hide

And I'm nothing but scared."

So, I'm all unpacked and settled in my new home. It's a nice neighborhood and I have a decent job that I'm starting tomorrow.

But I don't feel good.

Last week I left what I considered my home behind, something I always knew was going to happen. You can't just go to school forever - the point is to learn how to become a productive member of society with a job...and that's what I am now.

The hour when I need to be courageous and put behind my college days for good has finally come, and I'm scared. I feel so alone in this new role and I don't want to screw anything up. I wish I had a friend - any friend here to live with me and comfort me. But what choice do I ever have except to pull myself together and do what needs to be done? It's the only choice I've had for a long time now and I don't see a day coming soon where it will be any different.

I don't understand these feelings and I'm ashamed of them. But at least the path ahead is clear, even if it's dark.

I'll get used to this side.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for this side to become home again.

Over the bridge.

I wish I felt like I had a little more control over my own life.

Nevertheless, I am resigned to this path that seems chosen for me. It makes me feel a little awkward when people congratulate me on "my" success. My career and education are like a a body slide. If I try to slide off to the left or the right, I'm going to slip back into the middle and keep sliding down. So when people congratulate me on my new job and upcoming graduation, I feel like they're congratulating me for staying in the middle of the slide. It's not like they're doing anything wrong - quite the opposite, I appreciate the sentiment - it's just awkward for me, because I don't feel like I really worked for it at all. I've fought this path and lost. I put most of my effort into things that didn't work out. You won't hear anyone congratulating me on that!

Now I am coming to a bridge, much like the one I crossed six years ago. Back then I was a naive 18-year-old, scared to leave home but more scared not to, lonely and ignorant. Now I'm 24, confident and capable, anxious but unafraid. It feels a lot different than the last bridge. The last bridge's crossing felt like an escape, and though I didn't know what was coming, I knew it had to be better than what I came from. This bridge feels like the end of a long movie...a movie that I really, really enjoyed. Although I don't want the movie to end, I know it's over. There's no more plot, nowhere else for the movie to progress...it's over. The sequel looks promising, but I really don't know much about it at all...there's no promises that it will be better than this movie, or even that it will be as good. Life in this town was the movie. Life where I'm going is the sequel. This is the bridge I'm crossing.

I don't have any choice, so I'm going for it.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to put all bridges behind.

Die to live, die to death.

I think heroes prove that God exists.

There have been many times in my life where I was either not sure why I believed in God or just simply did not believe at all. But when the time came in my life where I was certain I wanted to find out why and mature enough to actually do it, I discovered a few things about my faith journey that made me realize I had been searching a lot longer than I thought.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...well actually, in our own galaxy, I was an eight-year-old being introduced to the wonderful land of Star Wars. Action, adventure, heroism...Jedi Knights and Rebels...I loved it. There was something about it that made me so excited. Made me want to BE Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo. I thought it was the action alone...just the cool fights and all that. But what do all my favorite characters in the series have in common? Obi-Wan lets himself be killed so that the young heroes can escape. Luke Skywalker refuses to turn to the dark side, and instead invites certain death at the hands of the evil Emperor, inadvertently causing his father's redemption as he saves his son's life. Han Solo forsakes a life of greed and risks his neck to give Luke the chance he needs to blow up the Death Star. All of this from a secular writer, and all of this appealing to a very wide audience. Why would we admire those who do these things if we are supposed to be eating, pooping, mating animals with no God?

Then there was Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was Catholic, however, he explicitly stated that Lord of the Rings was not an allegorical tale, but an applicable one. But yet, his belief in God leaked into his story anyway. The heroic Aragorn risks his life time after time for his friends, for his love Arwen, and for his fellow men - and towards the end of the book, he even assaults the gates of the middle-earth equivalent of Hell when he is quite certain he has no chance of surviving (though he does win, anyway). The wizard Gandalf actually DOES die to save the others, however, comes back to life to complete his task. The hobbit Frodo selflessly takes on the terrifying task of destroying the One Ring, an artifact of pure evil whose very existence threatens all good...and very nearly dies many times in this task. Does this all ring a bell?

And then there's Dragon Ball Z. Oh yes, I know many people consider it a childish kid's show with a bunch of men yelling and fighting each other. But beneath the surface of ignorance there is so much more there. The main character Goku dies and has his life restored not once, but TWICE, only to risk his life again and again afterwards, and once put his very existence on the line to save the world. He's directly responsible for the heroism or complete conversion to good of at least six other characters, who look to him as an example when they make the difficult decision to put their lives in jeopardy, sometimes for just a small chance that their friends might survive. There are so many examples of emulation of Christ slipping into this work I struggle to pick just one...Possibly the best one is when Vegeta, a character who is, for most of the series, an incredibly evil anti-hero, decides to fight for someone other than himself for the first time, at the expense of his own life - after being told by a reliable source that he would likely not receive any reward for it because of his previous selfishness. Sound familiar?

And if even in secular works we can admire those who are willing to die to save the lives of others, what sense would this make if we're supposedly just animals...what animal would die to save the life of anyone other than children or close kin? These animals - Obi-Wan, Gandalf, Vegeta - they die for their friends...and sometimes, for people they don't even know. If we have this desire for more meaning to our lives, than there must be something...someone to fulfill this desire.

All this time, I'd been searching for proof that God exists, and here it was right in front of me, all along. The characters from these shows that I admired so much, were mirroring traits of Christ's love...Christ's death on the cross...and not only that, proving that there is more to life than living.

There is a point in Dragon Ball Z where four evil android creations of a mad doctor threaten to destroy the world. One of these, Cell, is thought to be stronger than all of them, and wishes to absorb Androids 17 and 18 to make his power complete. If he succeeds, he will be unstoppable by the forces of good. However, Android 16, who is an earlier model of android, unable to be absorbed by Cell and thought to be weaker than the rest, steps in to stop Cell. The quiet Android 16, who had previously refused to do anything but follow Androids 17 and 18 around, reveals that he is just as strong as Cell and can save Android 17 from being absorbed, which is just what was about to happen. Android 16 says: "I will kill Cell. This world is a good place. Cell wishes to destroy it. I will not let that happen." Android 18 warns him: "Come back! You'll be killed!"

But the brave android replies: "That does not matter. Life is good, but living in fear is not my idea of living." And then he goes to fight...but I won't spoil what happens. :)

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was that heroes lived forever.