Laying my cards out for all to see and leaving myself incredibly vulnerable comes naturally to me. Not necessarily in that awkward emotional way, although I have done that as well, but rather in that I let everyone know that although I’m a Christian, I’m still kind of a dirtbag. Immediately, any expectations held over me fall to the floor and I’m free to be me. I’m free to be rough around the edges.

When I very first became a Christian, I had the “holier than thou” attitude, it didn’t work out well for me. I ragged on my family and friends for their own vices and was generally, a massive pain in the posterior! My witness had been rendered ineffective because of the fact that I managed to point out every one of the flaws in those around me, but wasn’t honest about mine. Attitude played a huge role as well.

That’s been about four years ago now, and I’ve mellowed out. Not on my standards, but understanding that God loves us as we are, and that I can’t expect anyone who doesn’t believe what I believe to live by my standards. When they fall in love with Jesus, He’ll change them, not me.One of my most recent best witnessing moments was born from my own wretchedness. I was walking across campus with a classmate when an ex-girlfriend walked by. I was dating this one right before my conversion and had decided right away that we didn’t need to be together anymore. She’s an amazing person altogether, but our relationship wasn’t Godly, and we were truly just bad for each other.

She walked by us, and I guess I still had some bitterness left in my heart because I just spilled my guts to my classmate about every seething little detail of what she did wrong when we dated. I made this child of God look like a real piece of dirt. Jesus told us that defilement comes from within. The bitterness about our relationship was inside of me, and it came out of my mouth in words of depreciation and death.

The Holy Spirit convicted me later that day as I was driving home. Conviction is always a two-edged sword for me. I hate every minute of it because God puts my imperfection and wretchedness, my heart in a display case and forces me to examine what I see. It’s never great because I understand that in spite of the fact that I have the Living God of the universe dwelling in my heart, I allow the blackest, filthiest mess of crap to stay there. The positive side to conviction is that I hear my God speaking to me. Even when I’m receiving correction I feel His love, and I love His voice. I’m glad that I have a relationship with the one who changes me and grows me. Nothing can bring me more joy or peace than that.
So I tossed and turned a little that night, prayed, confessed and woefully pleaded with God to help me make it right with the girl on whom I had vomited all of this nasty gossip. I got my chance.

At school a few days later, we were there making our trek across the quad when I stopped. “Terra, I have to apologize to you.”

Head cocked to the side a little, “Why dear?” Terra always called me that, I never understood why.

“Because I screwed up and made another person look like a wretched mess to you…”

From there I explained that I can’t live like that, but I’m not perfect. That as I Christian, I should be above that reproach but I messed up. I’m a work in progress, and that was a huge mistake. After she pulled her jaw up from the ground, my friend explained to me that she hadn’t thought of it, but that she considered that confession and apology to be one of the coolest things she had experienced in a while.

I had planted seeds in Terra when I was talking crap. I was allowing her to see how awful Christians can be sometimes, but with guidance from my Lord, I fixed a wrong, and was able to present a side to Christianity that a classmate had no clue about. She still tells me that she has a lot of respect for me after that, and I hope that through continued efforts in witnessing, I can eventually see the fruit of salvation in this girl. Jesus loves her, I think she’s great, and hopefully someday her life will be changed by God and she’ll live for Him.

A funnier example of my rough around the edges manner of life happened last night (Probably several times) at our intern graduation. One of the kids put together a video as a gift for his peers, and he did an amazing job. The video included photos from their adventures, of which I was fortunate enough to be a part on several occasions. He also had video from their trips, as well as interviews from many of them about their experiences. I taught a couple of classes this year and so I was included in this video as well.

Every Friday morning, I would walk into the classroom, sit on the tall chair that made my legs dangle, and start yelling at people to sit down and shut up. It typically didn’t work, so I generally resorted to threatening lives and car tires, and generally they would all find their way to their seats. All that is, but Kenrick. This amazing individual would sometimes furtively, typically just directly make his way over to where I was and not only hug me, but try to squeeze into the chair with me, and pretty much just touch me a lot. I have this problem actually, people really do just touch me. A lot. I don’t know if I invite it, perhaps due to my 5′-7″ stature, or because I’m amazingly good-looking, but everywhere I go, people want to touch me.
For my part of the interview, I talked about this, and how Kenrick just likes to touch me, followed by him walking onto the screen and hugging me, then lingering for a few seconds, then pretty much it all ending. Well, show this video to a bunch of people who didn’t really get it, (I’m fairly certain that this included my senior pastor’s wife who already thinks I’m strange) and I looked pretty much… yeah. It just wasn’t funny. The whole congregation of people at the graduation didn’t need that information.Fortunately, the video had a few awkward moments aside from that one that didn’t include me (The interns and their teachers all laughed at them while the remainder of the crowd either giggled in that fearful kind of way or just sat there, silent). There were a lot of inside jokes set out in the open for all to see.

Wisdom tells me when I should and shouldn’t say things, due to audience or because it’s just bad. Sometimes I get it, but as the past two stories have indicated, I generally don’t get it until it’s by far too late. I’ve been praying for wisdom. She’ll not only make life easier, but she’ll really help with my reputation with people that don’t know me incredibly well!

The remnant of sunlight burst off the horizon leaving us in an amazing twilight scene with only a touch of orange-red that quickly gave way to purple and black accented by the stars. This time of night is my favorite; you can still see and run about in short sleeves, but the dark is quickly encroaching and bringing with it the cool of night.

As romantic as that sounds, nothing of that sort was going on tonight. I tromped over to Shane’s car with my little spring-loaded airsoft pistol and protective glasses, in the mood to shoot someone. Anyone. A bunch of my friends get together every Sunday night to have an airsoft war and shoot each other up. It’s fun. I haven’t made it in a long time for two reasons. The most important being that I generally have to be at work by four-thirty in the morning every Monday. The next that I have a puny little gun compared to pretty much everyone else. Shane was sporting his automatic machine gun-looking piece that I knew I would end up on the wrong side of. I just knew it.

There were relatively few people here tonight compared to usual, but that was fine by me, the other people that come to this shindig also have really nice guns that would more than likely leave their mark on me.

Before we even really got started, a lady rockin a mini van showed up. She and her sweatpants got out of the van, saw a couple of guys with guns and masks on, ducked and ran. We’d discover within minutes that she had called the cops. Their arrival marked that this truly was a Christian event. Somehow, whenever we have fun, the police show up. I think it’s an interesting commentary on our society because nobody thinks that good, wholesome fun can be accomplished without doing something stupid or illegal, so the fuzz always shows up. We were just told to keep it in back though, which was fine. The games then commenced, and we were shooting at each other.

I’ll begin by confessing that I’m just not good at this game. I’m typically not good at anything even insignificantly athletic, which is sad. I just never have been, and it sucks. So we get playing, and every game I got shot by Shane. At least I think it was him. It was bloody annoying!
I’m 24 and honestly think that I’m fairly mature for my age, but when it comes to competition like airsoft and dodge ball, the bratty little child comes out in me. I get shot and honestly want to cuss. I can’t help it. It’s especially bad when the shot actually hurts.

Airsoft pellets, BBs whateve they’re called don’t hurt from a distance, but up close they can make you bleed if you have a nice enough gun. It feels almost like one of those dreadful “horse bite” pinches that kids used to give each other. It hurts, then you’re instantly angry. You want explosions and calamity as a result of them. You wan to hurt the person who did it to you too! I’m merely being dramatic when I say this, but I really genuinely hate it for a few seconds, then I’m better.

At one point, I was hiding behind a stack of wood, waiting for someone to get out to where I could bust a cap in their sorry backsides when over the loudspeaker system where we play, I could hear our host informing us we had thirty seconds of game left.

With pressure like this, demonstrations of bravery aren’t uncommon. The opposite team rushed out from behind their wood piles and other hiding places and scampered to where I and my teammates were. I leaned out to my right to shoot someone, again, anyone. Suddenly who pops up behind me but Shane. He unloaded five rounds right at my backside! Instantly I started flailing and screaming “HIT! HIT! HIT!” I wanted to amend that word with one more letter to make me feel better, but I managed to avoid it. What followed still has me feeling sheepish, I kicked the pile of things that had until then provided shelter from the barrage of little plastic balls that wanted to hit me and started yelling at my assailant. I wanted to pistol whip him!
Again, after a pretty childish display and a strong desire to beat the snot out of someone, I was fine. It was just me, in the heat of the moment. I’m really not violent, I promise. I’m not coordinated enough to be successfully violent.

Back inside, I told Shane how many times he shot me, and by this point we were both able to laugh about it, although more so him than I . It was already midnight, so Nate had to close his shop and we were all on our happy little way home.

After a closer examination of my posterior, I considered sending a picture message of the damage, but my imagination got the best of me. No need to have scandalous photos of my backside in circulation!
…especially after I become a famous TV evangelist with gold jewelry. Lots of it.

Driving to church can be one of the most infuriating drives for my week. Only on Sunday, it’s never as bad any other day of the week. I feel like that one guy in the beginning of the movie Office Space, only minus the swears.
There are two main roads that I take to church: State Street and Eagle Road. Both have a speed limit of 55 mph, but getting to that point is always such a struggle. I weave in and out of cars as much as I can, I yell over the Sunday morning worship show that the Effect plays each weekend, clench my fists on the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles turn white, and grit my teeth between yells. I’m only mostly kidding. I just don’t understand why it’s so difficult for people to do the speed limit in general, but I feel like this issue becomes worse when it comes to Sunday morning.

I bet that’s when the Carrie Underwood chick wrote that wretched song, Jesus, Take the Wheel… Originally the following line was, Because if You don’t, I’m going to blast this expletive-blankety-blank in front of me to... Yes, she does seem like that kind of girl.
While we’re talking about crappy music, what is it with bros driving around ghetto-blasting Fergie …”G-L-A-M-O-R-O…first class…” or “Keep bleedin, keep keep bleedin on? in love?” I get the words to that song mixed up. What I’m asking is an incredibly sexist question, why are these guys who are rolling around with popped collars and giant fake diamond earrings playing what I feel is chick music so bloody loud? I would be embarrassed if I were them!
Anyways, nothing is better than getting to the front of a line of cars who aren’t doing the speed limit. Every time I get there, I sigh, wipe the sweat from my brow and think, “This is what breakthrough is like.”

Think about it, when we experience breakthrough in our lives, it’s after we can’t get past someone… who potentially has a 2c license plate or something. You have to live in Idaho to get that joke, which is only mildly amusing because of the truth behind it. In spite of the abuse it’s gotten over the years.

Here are just a few examples of breakthrough that we can experience…
Financial breakthrough: finally you can pay off those credit cards you shouldn’t have signed up for and still have some extra cash.

Relationship breakthrough: finally she understands what you mean when you say…
Procreative (is that even a word?) breakthrough: you two are going to have seventeen babies at once.

You see, breakthrough is getting through what might have felt like a glass ceiling, or a membrane. Something that you might or might not see, but it just wouldn’t let you move any further than you were. Like cars in front of you that don’t move fast enough. But once you’re past it, you move so much faster than you were and do so much better than before.
What’s sad about this though is I’ve probably cut off at least three different cars that are heading to the same place that I am. I see them as I walk through the parking lot and decide I had better run. They’re still annoyed and haven’t got their Jesus for the week and quite frankly, I might die.