I’m saddened and disturbed…

Apparently, someone managed to find my xanga on google by searching for “prickly feeling prostate”. Given my dad’s present condition, I’m most definitely saddened by the reminder that he does indeed have prostate cancer and also by the knowledge that many men experience the same thing. I’m mildly disturbed that my personal blog comes up on google with a search such as that… worse… its on the first stinkin’ page of the search. I suppose its something that this page disallows any search engines (that play nice with the internet) to crawl it… but it doesn’t help that I’ve crosslinked it with my xanga.

Well… school is over. I am officially a college graduate. The last two weeks of school were more stressful than I think I’ve ever experienced. The idea that one professor with a mild amount of spite and an ego that might rival Steven Hawking’s could dent my academic record in a way as to give me unpleasant questions later or even prevent my graduation put me under a pressure that I’m sure at least started the development of ulcers. The moment I got my grades back was like having an air craft carrier lifted off my dead carcass and somehow being brought back to life. I hadn’t slept more than 4 or 5 hours any night in the prior two weeks, my back had knots in it that felt like bones, and I was getting migraines on a daily/hourly basis… I suppose that situation augmented my feelings of graduation a bit… it was nice either way though.

I get to do nothing for a couple months, save stress a bit over finding an apartment in North Carolina and pay a $2000 medical bill to the OSU ER. It will be nice… perhaps I can finally go find some dirt to drag my truck though… at very least I’ll finally get some time to spend with Tim and March outside of our [almost] annual summer vacation. It looks like I’ll get to go down to NC in July to look at apartments and again in August just for fun. No out of country touring like I wanted to, but I’ll save that for next summer when I can afford to do something interesting and hopefully take someone with me (no requests, invitation only 🙂 ).

Graduation Party tomorrow. I hope to see a lot of you there.

Just a day ago… my problems seemed so significant.

I apologize to those who care enough to read my journal for not posting in a while. Life likes to get complicated and on occasion I find it hard to write something cohesive enough to be worthy to post here.

School is over. Not for good, but at least my undergraduate degree is. I crossed that threshold at about 11:45 this morning… I didn’t even pause when it happened. Of course I’m happy that this stage of my life is over. The last 5 years have been littered with innumerable experiences that have taught me so much about people and life. Sure I’ve learned a lot about computers and programming, but that almost seems secondary.

The last couple weeks have been ridiculously stressful. I had a project in my security class that was supposed to be done on a cell phone platform. Long story short: Even up to last Friday, my group was unable to retrieve phones to test our code on; We didn’t get the API until the 3rd week of the project; The professor for the course ignored our concerns, refused to relax the project guidelines, and became hostile and insulting towards my group and many others in the class experiencing the same/similar problems. Conversations between us actually degraded to a point where I felt it necessary to contact the associate director of my degree program. We’re not sure how that went off, but we should see some grades tomorrow.

Like the title says… this isn’t exactly a concern today when faced with the concerns of others. My beloved’s mother is very ill and may not have more than a few years left with us. And today, I found an old friend, after fighting so long to not be what was expected of them, has nearly hit rock bottom. Given the promise my life seems to have… its hard for me to concentrate on my own problems.

Life is messy. I can’t think of any other way to put it without sounding ridiculously pessimistic.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately… well… I usually think a lot so I suppose I should say I’ve been thinking about things I don’t typically think about.

I am oddly distracted lately by life. Obviously, its about to hit me like a freight train and I’m getting a weird feeling about moving away. I don’t know how to prepare for moving away from my family and friends, worse, I don’t think I can prepare to move away from Theresa. Dad Martin (yes, I call him dad) gave me an observation: many marriages fail because couples invest their identities in something other than each other (I’m rewording and paraphrasing…). I thought for a while that I could be whole on my own, that if Theresa somehow just went away I’d be ok. As my graduation looms closer, I feel a tugging on my heart that I find very hard to explain and I know before very long it wont just hurt to be away from her.

Please pray for Theresa’s family. They will need it as they get some medical tests back this week.

Warning… blasphemy: God owes us an answer.

I have a question… actually a few questions and specifically for the Christian theologians… if they would be so kind.

Can the damnation of one soul directly cause the damnation of another? Specifically, if one person decides that they do not want to believe in Jesus Christ and they teach another doctrine to as many people as will listen, are those who believe the “heresy” doomed as well? I know the answer that many Christians will give me so don’t bother there… but answer “why?” A Muslim is raised to believe that Muhammad was the last prophet of Allah. They’re even taught that Jesus Christ was a prophet of Allah. Muslims are as adamant about Islam as Christians are about Christ… this is a deep seeded belief that can not be unlearned save some fundamental contention within themselves that sprouts doubt. In this situation, even though the Muslim may be introduced to Christianity he will likely never convert. Can a man be punished even when he never had a chance to believe?

Now, before you answer, I ask you to expand your thoughts a little bit more. What if someone raised in Christianity has fundamental problems with the faith, problems at the deepest level of their persons, and subsequently leaves the faith? Whatever the reasons these problems were caused by, who is to blame? Is this person damned for all time too? The Holy Spirit is supposed to be our moral compass, a voice inside telling us the truth… so why is this person doomed?

You can argue that the devil planted all of those seeds of dissension… but how then does a person remove those seeds if at a base level they already have an opposition to the “truth”?

What about the billions of souls who lived and died without ever hearing the name of Jesus Christ? Men and women who also likely brought up in a “heretic faith” who were never given the opportunity of something else? Are they expected to read the Bible in the clouds… discern the name of Christ from the trees? The point of Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ. The son of God only came to Earth once and traveled very little (compared to the rest of the world). If you don’t even know who He is how can you develop a relationship?

Christ paid for the sin of all man kind and then offered salvation to the same. That offer is reading a bit like a mortgage contract… one that is biased in all the ways that an omniscient and omnipotent god shouldn’t be. Why should one man pay for the sins of another… after God’s son already paid?

After all of that, I’m going to have the audacity to ask for your prayers. My faith is still strong… I’m just working some things out.

A week from Friday I should be driving my dad to Cincinnati for a surgery related to his prostate cancer. He told me the doctors say they caught it pretty early and that this surgery should be all he needs… but I’m still very scared for him.

Some fears confirmed

My dad has prostate cancer. As far as the doctors can tell it hasn’t spread and is definitely not metastasized. Its also a fairly early stage since he tested negative 15 months ago but he has to go for treatment very quickly. Please send your thoughts and prayers.