I Couldn’t Sleep Last Night

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     Yesterday was my day to wake up at 6:30 in the morning and go to work, which if you know me well enough than you know it’s not my thing.  Anyways, I did it with a happy heart or should I say a sleepy heart rather, because the night before I got home after 11pm from work.  Needless to say, I made it there on time and was ready to work. I work in a garden center and I had a good day.

     When I got home from work, I was a little tired as you may think, after all I did get home at 3pm. I managed to stay awake on about 6 hours of sleep (I usually get a good night’s rest ok!) until about 8pm. I was browsing (who says that anymore, browsing) the internet for a while and just decided to go to sleep after trying to fight off the inevitable.  I slept until about 11:15pm (3 hours later) and then I was awake. Shoot. My night is shot. I got up and watched some tv and did some laundry and whatnot and went back to bed at about 1am.

     If you are still reading this article on my sleep cycle, major props to you! But before I completely loose your focus, let me get to the point here.

     It was 1 something a.m. and I was tired but I couldn’t sleep still. So naturally for me when this happens, I just start thinking about stuff, regardless if I want to or not.  I thought about life and God and about anything that came to mind really.  (On a side note I had terrific idea for a song and I thought I will just write it down in the morning. When I woke it was gone. Really?!?)

     I went to my default and though about how I am getting closer to moving away from home. I don’t know if you can relate to me on this one but I feel CAGED in the town that I live in.  I want to go out and explore the world, or at least know that Europe exists and that it’s not just something that everyone talks about if you know what I mean.  I need to have my worldview shattered by the culture shock of another country.  Dare I say it, but my heart is more involved in this issue than my mind is to some extent, or at least in my sleepiness it is. Really you don’t think straight when you’re half asleep. To make things more interesting, being half asleep doesn’t help when you have such grand ideas as mine. All of your ideas become lined with dreamy ecstasy which makes them more thought provoking, more interesting, and most importantly I guess more real. I was in Inception my own way.

      I kind of make it sound like a bad thing that I couldn’t sleep. The truth is that it is just more motivation for to live out my “dreams”.

     I told myself that I was going to get up and go for a bike ride at 2:30 a.m. if I couldn’t get to sleep. There is a spot in my town that is somewhat forgotten about that has some very cool scenery. The picture that I have for the caption of this article is unfortunately not it, but it is quite similar.  At night the spot turns into pure peaceful bliss. It feels cool to to know that everything is coming and going through my town. It has the same excitement to me as an airport, only no air. I was going to go to my train spot if I couldn’t sleep and go through my thoughts and let my tireless brain rest for once. I fell asleep before 2:30.

I woke up the next day, feeling like Leonardo Dicaprio and started my day.

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Keep the Earth

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Keep the earth below my feet

For all my sweat, my blood runs weak

Let me learn from where I have been

Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn

Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn

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Mumford & Sons

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I Corinthians 4:1-6

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I Corinthians 4:1-6

1 This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.

2 Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.

4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.

5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.

6 Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against

the other.

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Bonhoeffer

It is a rainy Friday here in Willmar, MN, probably more like a rainy day in central Minnesota.  A light breeze seems to be in the sky. It seems to be more like a book reading day. We’ll see..

I have to say though that I will try to blog when I can, but it something that I have to really try at and really make an effort, hopefully some of you can relate to me.  But amidst all of the time and thought process that goes into this, I have to say that it’s well worth in the long run.  My need for a creative outlet is being met here.

NOW. To what I have been reading that last couple months or so, “Bonhoeffer – Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” by Eric Metexas. If any of you are Bonhoeffer fans and have read this book or some of his others then you already know what a joy it is to read his works.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone because even though I am only on page 50 or so, it challenges you to what your faith could be, or at least maybe in some cases what it needs to be.  Yes, I am only on page 50 something and I have been reading it for a few months, no typo here. I have to say that I am definitely not the fastest reader in the world BUT in my defense, I am not reading it every night. Right now my work is my priority because I am saving money to go back to college and maybe do YWAM program or something like in that realm. Although I don’t get the pleasure of reading a lot, I would say that reading is one of the most relaxing things that you do for yourself.

Trust me, I don’t know a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But if you don’t know a lot about him or this book I’ll catch you up. The book is a biography written by Eric Metexas based basically on all the knowledge that we have of him, from his letters to his friends and family’s knowledge of him. It goes into the littlest details explaining who he was and how he came to be.  Now, if you really anything about him, he was killed at the hands of the Third Reich.  I don’t like to think about this yet though because I haven’t finished the book yet and I don’t want to “spoil” the ending.

So if you haven’t read it and you need to get off the couch you know what to do. Let’s just say it wasn’t a New York Times bestseller for nothing..

Welcome

Hello there!  Welcome to my blog!

 I don’t know if you are a new blogger that has stumble upon my blog or if you were interested in my blog and was redirected here.

Regardless this my new blog and the only change I made was the domain name, nothing. I hope you all enjoy

-Josh

Under Construction…

If you are looking at my blog today, I am doing some construction stuff on here..  DON’T JUDGE!

It should be done by Monday, Ok? Ok

Thank for being a champ..

The Crossroads

Right now I am sitting on a chair, at a table, in a coffeeshop (typical blogger location, I know..) of my small town of Willmar, MN. It is a busy Saturday afternoon here and things seem to be happening all around me here. Today is a great day simply because I am alive!

But, with that, there has been a lot has been on my mind in the past few days or so that sort of tie in with the image I have up top. I don’t know if this happens to everyone at some point in their lives, I don’t know, but it seems like I have hit a crossroads in my life. I know I’m only 21 years old and I have my whole life ahead of me to do whatever I want to do. But recently, to make a long story short, I came across a lady that I was interested in, but things didn’t work out.  We were in different seasons of life and going in different paths.. etc. you get the idea.  Anyways, she had an adventurous, traveling, and yet God-centered spirit that was infectious! I have always wanted to be the type of person, you know, go on hiking trip, then spontaneously drive to Seattle with some friends, that kind of person! I am sad to say that I am not this person by action but I am by heart. I kind of got caught up in my frugal living style of my parents and my answer to driving to anywhere far away was “why? What a waste of gas!”. This person re-introduced me to this free-spirited and adventurous lifestyle that I was aching for when I was in high school. Somewhere in between going to college and living at home to pay off college debt, is where I lost this very foolish (in a good way) and yet seemingly God-created heart alignment to explore his beautiful and glorious creation.  I think God thoughtfully created and designed the longing and desire in people to have a “heart” for missions, the big city, exploring etc. Philippians 3:13-14 has in there 13) …Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” If you put that in the context of salt & light and being adventurous about it, spreading the gospel to the corners of the earth, there just seems something so heavenly and so God glorifying about it. Maybe, just maybe,  this is a model of someone after God own heart. This has been “on” my heart for a few weeks now, and been “in” my heart since I was born.

So now I am at a crossroads here.  I have to keep paying off the debt that I have accrued over the time that I was in college, not only do I not want bad credit because I do want to be faithful to the higher cause of obeying the Lord for his glory’s sake.  I feel like the picture up top in the train station but don’t where to go next. This is why I have the “show me the way” on the side of my blog with the road as the picture. I feel like everything crucial happens within the next five years or so. Marriage, career, where you call home, and life basically. It seems like everyone is getting married around me, graduating college, and starting to take their different directions in life. For whatever reason, it makes me kind of sad, people are moving on. I just don’t want to miss anything, you know and I feel like I am. Hopefully you are starting to catch my drift here..

But another factor for me is as much of an introvert that I am, I want to meet people.  There’s something in me where I just want to meet everybody out there or at least all of the Christians my age, I guess I am an introverted extrovert! So with that, I want to go on some short-term missions program like YWAM or something like that.  I don’t know if I’m the only guy out there that thinks like this, but it honestly makes me sad or at least just a tiny bit depressed that I can’t go out on summer camps and Christian programs and just meet all of the young Christians out there.  Maybe that’s me being the fact I am more like a girl in certain areas haha, the fact that I am still a little bit in rebound-mode from this person I met, or maybe my not-so-mid-life midlife crises, I don’t know. There’s a number of possibilities.

I think that my life is in the terminal, waiting for the train to take me to the next place in life.  I have a feeling that this chapter is coming to a close in my life though, and the next chapter is building it’s opportunity for me.  The only thing I can do right now is pray to the most high and ask for clarity and remember and realize that nothing is more important than him, not even my adventurous heart’s desires.

Who knows where I will be in a few months. I just hope that it’s not here b/c I feel caged in this small town.  But I want to do something that I can cross off my bucket-list that I will not only remember, but change me and my direction for the rest of my life.

Oh, how my heart burns with passion for this exciting next chapter where ever it leads.

God bless

-Josh

Testing the waters

So I am still getting used to everything in the new little world. I have mostly been customizing my profile and just starting to really get what I want here. But I’m still learning so please give me a break for at least another 3 years or so..

While I’m still in the building stages of this I will start writing to get something out there about myself and the life that God has gifted me with. I am a Christian, not perfect, but someone who desires more of him and to learn more about him and to give him my utmost, because he loves me and he simply deserves nothing short of that.

I only hope that you enjoy my blog and if nothing else, learn about God right along side of me

-Josh

I’m just trying this out

I’m not the type of person to do this whole blogging thing, but it seems like everyone and their mama has a blog these days.  I need a creative outlet, so here goes nothing..