Lost and found in the Streets of Chicago

The title of this post is a reference to one of my own songs, is that sad? haha.
Today has been a good day. Let me back up, though. This past week was midterms week, and it was horrible. I had two papers, and 4 tests in one week. One of the papers and two of the tests fell on Thursday, so needless to say Thursday was a bad day – too much to do in not enough time. By the time Friday rolled around I had slept an incredible amount the night before and was back to being sane again, which is why, in general, I am doing great, but last week was, as I said, horrible. Yesterday I hung out with Matt Rhea and just enjoyed being, and not have to anything, it was great. Today, though, brought maybe the one of the strangest and yet totally expected adventures of my entire life – bold words, I know. Today I tried out a new church, I had done a little research on it before I actually went (I mean, I'm a modern day church goer, we don't do anything without googling it first, do we?) so I kind of knew what to expect: high church, older congregation, more "conservative" than I am used to, and a ministry to the Dinka Lost Boys that came in 2001, which has since become a ministry to all refugees that come through their doors, or into their view. The church service itself was pretty cool, it reminded me a lot of my experiences at the deepening from back in the day when I was still in youth group, rather than leading it, which was cool. They had an intense amount of incense, which really doesn't bother me anymore, if anything it just enhances things for me. During the service, it was probably the first time I've been in church in a long time and actually been able to just let the service happen and not have to worry about how "cool" something is or how "frustrating" some part was, and I was able to just be, which is the whole point anyway, right? The beautiful part about the church came afterward though, when Matt and I were invited up for their "coffee" hour, which actually turned into lunch, and the meeting of about 100 new amazingly interesting people. First came Abraham, he is a Dinka Deacon at St. Paul's, turns out he knows my mom and is related to one of the priests at St. Bartholomew's, which is absolutely amazing to have that connection, there was another woman who is involved in Sudanese ministry, as well, who also knew my mom, so that was funny. The most random of all the meetings though was this girl, she apparently is the child of Wycliff missionaries and spent time in the Philippines, and grew up in Dallas, TX. Do you ever have the feeling, when you look at someone, you feel like you know them, but you know that you don't, but there's just someting about them that reminds you of something, something inside of yourself? Well, to be honest, this rarely happens for me, because I rarely get the chance to meet people who grew up in similar circumstances as me, but in this case, she has lived a similar life as me, and actually knows people that I know from when I was a child, and that is just absolutely amazing to me, to be able to connect what I am with what I was when I was child.

I was thinking about it, today, and I was wondering how different I am now, as compared with how I was when I was child, and I think I realized that I really haven't changed that much. I am still the observationally inquisitive boy always watching, imitating, learning by modeling, never really doing more than I see around me, being shaped by my environment in every way that I can. I am still the quiet kid, and I am still trying desperately to understand what is happening around me by watching, rather than acting and influencing. I honestly think that that will kind of be true for the rest of my life, and there's not really anything that can be done about it, besides pretending to be something that I am not. Someone told me recently that the classic definition of a hero is "standing up to fate, and in spite of the tides smashing against you, you still do what you are supposed to do", well, I'm not sure I've ever gone against the tide, and I'm pretty sure I've always just gone where I feel that tide take me (its taken me all over the world), and I don't really know if that will ever change, either.

I took a pretty unbelievably refreshing walk today, but that, is for a later time.
I hope you all are well,
peace.