One Less Heffren

My sister got married today.

I could write all about the funny and memorable little experiences that Jackie and I have shared over our lives. Like going jogging a few times a week at 11 pm when I was in middle school. Or like waiting forever at Buffalo Wild Wings for our check, only to have a manager creepily slide up to our table and say, "You're waiting for your check, aren't you? Well, no one knows where it is.....but I know where it is" and then running off and pulling it out of some random drawer. Or the numerous tennis matches. Or getting stranded in Shamrock TX because our car broke down in the middle of nowhere. Or watching The Cosby Show late every night for an entire summer. Or driving to school every morning pumping T-Bone in her car. Or staying at the shady Yucca Motel in the middle of New Mexico, where we did have HBO on our six-inch TV screen. Or going to a Relient K concert and trying to avoid being trampled by moshing high schoolers. Or watching "That Thing You Do" or "The Return of the King" or "August Rush" or "It's a Wonderful Life" or "John Q" or all the other scores of movies that I've seen with her.

There are very few people that I look up to as much as I do Jackie. She has a trusting faith that I try to model, and usually fail at. She has more wisdom and practical knowledge than I'll ever have. She has an enormous heart for people that I typically lack. She's the reason that I read what I read and like to write. She's easy-going and finds humor in almost every situation, and there's no way I could count the laughs we've had together.

And at the same time, she's not only my big sister, but one of my closest friends. It seems a little odd maybe that would be the case for siblings of opposite gender that are seven years apart, but it's true for us. When I'm frustrated about something and need to vent or whatever, she's the person I call, and I know that she'll always be there and understand and encourage. But she'll also tell me when I'm being stupid and will set me straight. She's able to relate with the crappy times in my life, because she's gone through them too. She knows my hurts and my laughs and everything in between in a way no one else does.

I've been thinking lately about how relationships change. You might be pretty close with someone, but then they move or get married or start hanging out with other people or just start ignoring you all together. People lose contact, lose frienships, start new friendships, and cycle back around. Two people can be best friends one day, and a couple years later have no contact beyond Christmas cards. And that kind of sucks, I think. Sure, situations and life change, but why are we so terrible at retaining relationships. Why do the good things have to fade away?

My relationship with Jackie has been different though and has been one of the most stable things in my entire life. She's always been there for me, and I know that she'll always be there for me in the future. She's never been embarrased to have me around. When she was in high school and I was a noisy, annoying elementary kid, she wanted me around. When she was in college and I was a pimply-faced middle schooler, she wanted me around. And now that she's out of college and has a house and a job and a dog, and I'm a 20-year-old guy whose maturity does not live up to his age, she wants me around, and that means the world to me.

Things change. I hope that my friends now will still be my friends in five/ten/twenty-five years. But that's hard to gauge, and chances are, our bonds will be somewhat looser down the road. But I don't think my relationship with Jackie will change much. Her last name may, but her place in my life won't. She's one of the most incredible people I know, and I love her a whole whole lot.

Also, I am very awkward and cannot dance.

Next or Now?

Last spring, all of the members of Ozark's camp teams went on "wilderness retreat." It wasn't my favorite weekend of the semester. In fact, it was maybe my least favorite. And I even had it easy, because I got to sleep indoors for two nights while most people slept out in tents. And we did all the normal things that you would expect on such a retreat, like team-building activities and eating hot dogs and standing on planks and being wiped out by 5'3" girls in capture-the-flag. But the first thing we did when we got there was spread out and spend about two hours by ourselves, giving us a chance to pray and read and meditate and journal and all of that. And that maybe made the rest of the weekend worth it. It was at an especially stressful time in my semester when I tend to neglect my time with God, so having that time and space helped tremendously and got me organizing my thoughts and feelings a bit. And during that time, I wrote something in my notebook that I feel like sharing, and maybe I'll comment on it a little bit. So here it is:

My cell phone isn't in my pocket. About fifty times, I've had the urge to pull it out and see what time it is. I have this obsession with time. Not necessarily because I'm so busy and am always on the go. More because I'm always thinking about what's next. I have this attitude that the next is always better than the now. I'm never content with the moment that I'm in.

I remember in high school at worship at CIY, I always hoped that it would never end. I felt I could stand and sing forever. How much I've changed since then. Even in really great worship times, I think, "Hm, the sermon should be coming up pretty soon." And during an awesome sermon: "I think this has been about 30 minutes; he should be winding down here."

I approach everything with this attitude. Even simple stuff like watching a movie or playing cards. And the result is that I end up not really enjoying anything at all. I always think that things will be better later. Why can't they be better now? What keeps me from loving every moment and making the most of every second? I think it's time to leave the cell phone in my room more often.

I don't know how long I've been out here. I think at least an hour. Maybe less. Maybe a lot more. And I don't know how long I'm going to be here. I'm sick. I'm cold. I'm uncomfortable. My butt kind of hurts. But let this be a time that I make the most of and that has an impact on the rest of the semester, summer, and my life. Live in the now.

That was all about sixish months ago. And I haven't really changed all that much. Actually, I wear a watch all the time now, so maybe I'm even worse about this than I was. It's like, every day, my goal is just to get by--to survive. I'm not too concerned about doing anything too positively or negatively. I just want to get through so that I can get to the next day, hoping that maybe it'll be a little better than this one was. And what a dumb, dumb way to live.

I have things very good. I go to a school that I love, and right now there's no where else in the world that I would rather be. I have the greatest friends that I could every ask for. I have a phenomenal family. But all the time it seems, I walk around wishing things were somehow different, and I think that difference will occur someday down the road. Granted, there's things in my life that I genuinely wish were different, but most of it is really nothing. I have a fantastic life now, and I don't appreciate it or use it. I'm so busy wigging out about whether or not I'll be happy tomorrow or next year or in five years that I don't open up my eyes to the opportunities that in front of me today. Is the next really better than the now? Only if I keep on treating the now like it sucks, when it really doesn't at all.

Wish You Were Here

It's been quite the weekend. I just got back from a trip to Albuquerque NM with Caitlyn, Charlie, and Ryan. It was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. We saw a whole lot of hot air balloons, sat in a car a lot, fell asleep in movies a lot, and all kinds of other things. And all those hours in the car (especially at night, when I wasn't allowed to drive because of my poor night vision) gave me time to think. So here's the fruit of that.

I've been thinking about missing people. Not people on the back of milk cartons, but how two people are separated for whatever reason, so the resulting emotion is that they miss one another, generally. Usually, we think of this as a negative thing. Whether it be a friend that moves away, a girlfriend that goes to college out of state, or a parent that dies, we miss those dear to us when they're not around. We know that things aren't as they're supposed to be. They're not as we would have them be.

Understandably, we don't like this. It's not fun to miss people. We want them to come back. And so what do we do? We try to fill up the vacuum created by their departure with something else that will distract us or make us feel better. We create a new relationship to take the place of the one that's been interrupted. We bury ourselves in music to drown out the silence. We sit comatose in front of a TV to keep our brain for focusing on what's missing. And to a point, I guess that's all useful, and necessary even. We obviously can't just wallow in pity because of changed relationships. But we shouldn't necessarily do whatever we can to keep these feelings away. Basically, we loathe the negative emotions that come with missing someone, so we do whatever we can to eliminate them.

Maybe we shouldn't run from "the missing feeling" the way that we do. Maybe it's good for us to miss people. Maybe it's an emotion that can can be used and should not be only avoided. Maybe God wants us to feel this in our guts. Maybe it can push us closer to him.

Do you miss God when you've wandered away from him? I mean, we freak out if we go two days without talking our sweetheart, but we don't even blink if we don't spend time with God for a month. When we miss a person, we often do what we can to fix it. We'll call each other or plan a trip to visit or whatever else. But when we don't spend time with God, and don't miss him, we just keep going as we are. I imagine he probably misses us during such times more than we can fathom. So if you have been distant from God, GET BACK TO HIM!

There's another way that I think how we miss people relates to how we miss God. Even if we are nurturing a close relationship with God in our everyday lives, there is a sense that things are not as they should be right now. Even though we can talk to God any time and we have the Spirit living within us, there's still more to come in a fuller sense. We can look forward to a day when we'll be face-to-face with God, and the gulf that exists between us, though bridged through Christ, will be erased completely. So while we're living here now, we should be missing God. Missing someone connotes a feeling of yearning. Our insides ache because we want so much to be with that other person. And that's how we should feel toward God.

I was reading Philippians 1 yesterday, where Paul is talking about how being in prison has given him a chance to witness to all kinds of people, and then he starts going off about whether or not it is better for him to go on living and serving the church, or to die and be with Christ. He writes, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain...I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body" (Php. 1:21; 23-24). Paul feels that yearning. He misses Christ. His desire is that he can leave the world behind and be united with God as he is meant to be. Do we miss God like that? I'd say most of the time, no. And that's not good.

I miss people. I miss my family back in Topeka. I miss my friends that live across the country. I miss my Ozark people during breaks. I miss my family members that have died. And that's ok, I think. It's alright to miss people. God teaches us through it. It doesn't have to be something that we bury deep down, but it can be something that we experience and deal with. Let it bring us closer to God.