The Journey

I havent posted in a while. I’m so tired when I come home from work I usually lay in bed at about 8:30. But throughout this week I’ve had a huge revelation.

To put it bluntly my job sucks. I wake up at 5 in the morning to right to work with mom where I meet a guy who takes me to the job site. I work from 7-5 (unless we go over which we do most days) no matter what the weather is outside. Most of the guys I work with, especially the two I spend most of my time around, are complete jerks and being the new guy, I catch all the crap anyway. For the first week and a half it wore me out in every way. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and unfortunately I took the biggest hit spiritually. The two guys Im around most, Jacob and Essex, (not to sound like Im better than them) are high school burn outs. They played baseball and ran track and Jacob played football and basketball too. However since then they’ve not done much and all they do is relive their glory days and talk about all the games, the parties they went to, all the girls they’ve had sex with, all the times they’ve been drunk, you get the picture. Jacob tries to include but I don’t connect with them at all. I’ve tried to act like them a couple of times and unfortunately I’ve told them things that weren’t true. That brought me down big time. 

Not only all that, but they have both been doing this for a while. They know how to do things, what to do, plus theyre a lot stronger than me. Working on a pipeline takes a lot of strength and I’m not the biggest guy. Plus I can’t hear well as it is, but when there as machines running and welders welding and grinding wheel’s going I can’t hear much of anything so I do a lot of things wrong. It seems like I’m constantly messing up. Jacob isn’t too bad about it and he partially understands but he gets mad easy. Essex is just a complete jerk. I won’t go into detail or stories, but he is constantly getting on me for something and acts like I don’t do anything. 

After a few days of this I started getting really negative. I made the people around me upset and I didn’t care because I was so mad all the time. I was sad and angry and it rubbed off. Wednesday was the longest 10 hours of my life. Then wednesday night someone sent me a scripture about rejoicing and being positive and being a light and it hit me I had completely forgotten God. I hadn’t read anything from the bible and the only time I was praying was before bed. I changed my ways. Thursday and Friday flew by. I prayed all the time, especially when someone made me mad. I tried to be positive and I asked God to make the days go by quicker and they did. 

Friday night at a youth night someone from church held, our preacher taught a lesson from Philippians and it was all about rejoicing and the reasons we have to rejoice. It’s so amazing when you think about it how we let the smallest things get to us when we have the greatest reason to celebrate. We have a hope. The greatest hope the world has ever had. We have a Savior that died for us. He nailed our sins to cross and rose from the dead. It is because of this that we have hope. We can rejoice because when our lives end and we enter judgement we can hear the great saying “Enter in good and faithful servant.” If thats not great news and reasons to celebrate then I don’t know what is! 

I really miss my grandma tonight.
I really wish I could tell her I love her one more time.
Back in January or December after she lost her strength to walk she was stuck in her bed. We got up to leave and she grabbed my hand. I knelt down and kissed her and told her I loved her. Then I pulled my hand away.
Why did I pull my hand away? I knew it wouldn’t be long before I could never hold it again. I even asked myself if that could be the last time. I’m glad it wasnt. But I wish I could hold it one more time. I wish I could tell her I love her. Hear her say “hey baby” one last time. Not even to me. But to Elaine or ally or one of the kids. I wish I could hug her. She her laugh and full of energy. Remember her for how she was. Not how she was forced to be. Not tired, sore and stuck in bed. But the way she joked, laughed, encouraged, danced around and entertained everyone.
But I can’t.
Ill never see her again. Ill never hear her laugh. She’ll never again speak the comforting words that will stick with all of us. She can’t encourage me anymore. She can’t be proud of me. She can’t see the kids grow up. She’s gone.
Cancer sucks.

It still feel weird that this is my last night here. I’ve grown and experienced so much more this year than I have in any year in the past. It’s been such an emotional year but when I look back I loved almost every minute of it. A longer post is coming in the next few days, but its 3 in the morning and I have to get up at 7:30 tomorrow. 

     Yesterday was a rough day. It started out great, but things got rough around 6:00. It went up for a little, but down, as you all saw. 

     But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every bad day, there is a good one. It might not be right after, but in this case it was. It was actually the opposite of yesterday. It started rough but got better and better and right now I am on such an endorphin high that I feel better than I have in a long time. 

     I had the hardest time sleeping last night. I tossed and turned till about 3:00, then I woke up about every 20 minutes and I’m pretty sure I had a conversation with my dream out loud at one point. It wasn’t until 5:30 that I got up, went to the bathroom and turned my clock around that I finally got to bed (btw if you can’t sleep that is a great way to. You free yourself from time and it’s easier to sleep.)

But throughout the day I’ve realized how different I am then I was at this point last year. At the risk of sounding egocentric, I’m better in so many ways. I have more self-esteem, I’m more social, I’m happier with who I am, I have more and better friends, I’m becoming more independent from my parents. Most importantly I’m stronger spiritually. Life is moving in the direction I want it to, and I still have a lot of growing to do, but that will come in time. The first domino has been struck, and although it looked like it was going nowhere it effected me in countless ways. And although in some weird way I still feel trapped in the past and everything I said last night was true, I know and have almost come to completely accept that this is what God wants and that this is for the best. 

Me, my sisters, my aunt and my cousin are all doing a color run in June. It’s just a color run and its not serious but for a while I’ve said I’m going to use it as motivation to push myself and compete against my family (all of them are in better shape than I am.) I’ve been counting calories for the past 2 or 3 weeks, but today I started running. I’m using an app called couch to 5k which trains you little by little. Each day you train for 30 minutes. Today I walked for 5, alternated jogging and walking for 20 minutes, then had a 5 minute cool down that I ran for the first half, then walked and stretched the last. It was hard but it felt so good. I pushed myself but not to the point that I was in pain. It was just the right amount. I came in and the first thing I said was “Dude, I just did two and a half miles and I feel great.” I sat down for about an hour and then I got up to stretch and I took a nice long shower and I still feel good. My legs feel like jello and my heart is still pumping, but man does it feel good. 

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every good thing, there’s a bad thing. For every sin, there is forgiveness. For every loss there is a gain. I’ve lost a lot in my life, and now I feel like I’m gaining it back.