EWTN, yo.

So last night I finally had my November breakdown. At least, I think it was. Last year, it was a bit more...violent? in the bathroom of the honors lounge. This time it wasn't so much, but oh, it was awesome.

Have you heard the story of the little boy who walks in on his mom crying? I can't do it justice, but the gist of it is that the boy knows that his mom is basically super mom, and can do anything, but then one day he walks into her room to tell her something and sees her crying. He goes to his dad, because of course the kid is perplexed, and his dad tells him that God gave Mommy lots of gifts, strength and hardness and sensitivity and endurance and so on, but he also gave her a tear to use whenever she wants, because more is packed into that than many can understand.

I don't know what it is about November. This time it was all a combination of missing home and feeling lonely and getting sucked into routine and the surface life and feeling the strong pull between two lifestyles, two choices. It would deem to rip me in half, if it could. So I cried. Oh, it was lovely. Just to set yourself down and cry about everything, your own problems, the state of the world, the lack of love everywhere, for yourself and for everyone.

And then I started channel surfing. Yeah, weird. And even weirder, for some reason I stopped on ETWN. PRobably because Groeschel was talking. Even though I didn't realize it was Groeschel for a while. He has a nice voice, and I figured I'd give it a shot at comforting me. It was him and some other people talking about vocation, I think. But with that going on in the front of my mind, for the first time in a long, long time I really felt alone, truly alone, but alone with peace residing within. So not really alone. No one else in the room but myself and God. My non-believer friends, I'm sure you can't even fathom how it works, or that it's even possible. But it's what I experienced. *shrug* My believer friends, hey guess what! God let me feel something for him, gave me the gift of his peace and presence and consolation for an evening!

I thought of Phillip Blyss' poem: "It is well with my soul."

Now I get to go eat Andy pancakes. But before I do (I'm already late, of course), I'll throw in one more point. I want to live higher than the norm. I see a life, a whole world of lives living through the adrenaline, the thrill, the sexual pleasure, the occaisonal reckless adventure, the world bubble the encompasses the present and the past, a little bit of future, that only goes horizontal through everything. It's fun, I can't deny that. SO, so much fun. But it isn't enough for me. Then there are people who want to live for the heavens. That's a radical lifestyle that IS the Christian, the call to holiness that goes beyond and above what's here and around us, begging us to self actualize into what we can be. These people are my heroes, the ones who deny themselves and take up their crosses, and desperately try and try and fail and try to live for something more. Something more than....*looks around* this.

Now I'm going to eat Andy Pancakes.