we are laughing!

Someone made fun of me today.
Well, they made fun of my laugh, which is a big part of me.
I'm less sensitive than I used to be, but if there's one thing I'm sensitive about, it's the size of my head. Literally, not figuratively. If there are two things I'm sensitive about, it's the size of my head and my laugh.
So, I laughed really loud today, as I am wont to do, and someone immediately followed with a mock-laugh, intended to sound like and make fun of mine own. (Backstory: I have a really loud laugh.) When this happens - and because of the raucous nature of my laugh, this happens frequently - my immediate physiological response is a rush of blood to the face and a sink of the stomach to the feet which happens because of my immediate emotional response, shame. Then, I look around confused - What is happening? Why is he/she doing this? - after which I put on a smile and/or pouty face to try and save... face.
But this time, as soon as my brain signaled the blood in my feet to start its way to my upper regions, I heard a very quiet Voice say, "I like your laugh," and instead of the shame and the saving-face routine, I kept a real smile, retreated inward to that Place where God is, and enjoyed a laugh with him.
It was crazy!
It is the first time that has ever happened!
God just kind of... interrupted. Which he has been doing a lot of lately.
I've heard people say, from time to time, that God has a sense of humor, that Jesus made jokes, and I always thought it was irreverent. And I've also heard the touchy-feely people talk about God's love in a way that starts to feel uncomfortable, probably because I'm not very familiar with God's love. But now I get it. I got the impression, today, that he was laughing with me. Smiling a deeply pleased smile at me.
So. new.
So then, just now, I was driving to Target, and I did something crazy - I can't remember what it was, but I often tell/remember jokes or practice Irish, Spanish, Russian, and African accents while in the car alone to amuse myself - and I just busted up laughing, because my jokes and accents are very funny, and the same thing happened. It's like there is this new arena in my being into which God has started speaking, and it's wonderful. It feels like finding my identity in him.

i am SO GLAD i'm clean

I was going through old journals yesterday and found this entry from June 20th, 2007, which was at The Start Of It All. It's good to look back and see out of what depths God has brought me. (Psalm 30)

(Begin: journal entry.)
I can't sleep. Things are weighing down on me. I never consider suicide, but I always want relief. I am ever in search of it, some way to kill the pain.
I can't hold a job. I don't want to work but I also don't want to sit around.
I feel most of the time like no one wants to be around me. This is a dark time, and the light at the end of the tunnel winked out. Where is hope? I hope in everlasting life and I know I have it now, but the time from now until I am perfected is too much to bear.
I don't really mean that because I've made it this far. I just want to be okay. I just want to feel good about my life.
There are ways to accomplish this - exercise and eat right, read the Bible - but every time I consider these, I think it's no use starting because I never follow through.
And I'd love to believe that if I just found the right woman, things would shape up, but I'd love to believe a lot of things.
I'd love to believe life gets easier, for instance, that this is simply a depressed slump that has an end.
But it's times like these that I can't remember beautiful things and everything seems worthless and irrelevant.
What can drive me out of this place? People drive me, but most people don't like me. Music can drive me but I don't have the discipline. God can and does drive me, but I feel so sinful so much of the time that it's hard to approach him. This isn't a crisis of belief. I believe God exists, I just can't see him. I feel him pursuing me - the Hound of Heaven - and I'd give up my life except that it's hard to see, in times like these, that the life he offers is actually better. I know it somewhere in my soul, but it's hard to see.
I want to taste the Divine Nature so I can more easily turn my back on sin and folly (O, taste and see that the Lord is good!), but I don't believe I'll get it because he's already given me more than enough reason to believe he is good and wants the best for me.
When does it end? He is the only one who can pull me out.
Oh God! Where are you now?
(End: journal entry.)

Now this.

If you're feeling any of that, there is a Light. I still feel some of these things sometimes, but mostly I'm healthy - mentally, spiritually, emotionally.

One thing I know: I was blind, but now I see.

the great nothingness

I don't have a lot to write about, but I'm in a funk, and usually doing this helps. It's a weird exercise because I never know what's going to come out and it feels a bit like floating in the middle of a lot of water, unable to see land.

I've had quite a few exhausting conversations recently. Do you ever feel that way? I don't mean exhausting in the way that they are hard conversations. I mean you're in the middle of a conversation and all of the sudden you feel like you're bleeding out, and as you continue, each word ruptures another artery and something inside you grows weaker and weaker, or the bottom drops out. Like, why am I talking to [person] about [whatever it is] right now? What am I accomplishing here?

You'll know this has happened to me when we're talking if I hestitate in the middle of saying something passionate, look around like I don't know what's going on, and speed to the end of our conversation in a near monotone, passion gone.

Maybe that's why I'm feeling the way I am. I have these things to talk about, but I can't talk to all of you about everything. I talk to some of you about some things, and others of you about other things, and I'm just starting to become comfortable with this. I used to think that, in order to be authentic - a word that leaves a bad taste in my mouth nowadays - I had to be an open book to everyone. It was really tiring and really unhealthy.

What is the impulse? What motive births it? The desire to be known, probably. I want so badly to be known. And to know. I love getting to know people. But there have to be boundaries, right? I'm bad at boundaries.

one.five years

I've been clean for a year and a half today. That's 547 days without using. 548 days ago, I didn't think I'd be able to go for 1, but 545 days ago, I checked into Teen Challenge Chicago anyway. After 56 days at Teen Challenge (and 2 days of hanging out with Caroline and Alex and Paul), I spent 165 days in the Master's Touch program at Wayside. I stayed there for another 99 days before I moved out and became house manager at Wayside's transitional house in Batavia, where I've been for 223 days.

Those big numbers make it seem like a long time, but sometimes when I look at my veins, my heart starts beating and it could've been yesterday. It's close and far away at the same time, which I don't quite understand. I go weeks without even thinking about it, but when I do, I start feeling crazy again.

I'm not trying to make anyone worry. What I want to say is this: there, but for the grace of God, go I. I need Jesus very much. Actually, I suspect sometimes that my past is a grace given to me because it enables me to see my neediness so clearly.

I was relating my story to some friends yesterday and was reminded of the day and time that God just picked my addiction up out of me. For 56 days at Teen Challenge, I wanted to get high. In fact, a couple hours before I left on the 56th day, I was scheming with another guy in the program about how to get some dope. Then I heard about Wayside and I left TC and I spent the night of the 56th day in a homeless shelter. When I got up on the 57th day, I walked past a group of guys who were selling pain pills with money in my pockets. I was blocks away before I realized what had happened.

Day 56 - Trying to get high.
Day 57 - Money in my pockets, walking past an opportunity without a second thought.

Now tell me I had anything to do with that.

don't you know who i AM?!

If you are in a small coffeehouse with wooden floors and sheetrock walls and you are on your cell phone, you should not pace up and down the length of the coffeehouse in your JCPenney wingtips talking loudly about your business plans. We understand that you are important, and that the call is perhaps important, but we are in a coffeehouse, after all, and some of us are trying to listen to Simon and Garfunkel, trying to build a bridge over our troubled waters.

La Primavera!

New season, new colors.

I've attempted writing a few times since March 22nd, but my well of wondrous whims has been dry. This is probably attributable to a number of different things, but one that occurred to me just now is the color of the blog. The background was a very dark grey, which was perhaps a play made by my subconscious trying to tell me how I felt back when I created it. Well, Subconscious, I don't feel dark grey anymore. I feel, as you can see, soft greeny.

I drove up to Minneapolis yesterday. I'm here looking for jobs (ahem) and reclaiming the Twin Cities in the name of Jesus and sobriety. I wasn't as nervous about the trip as I expected to be, which is in line with my quitting-smoking method - that is to say, if I don't make a big deal out of it, it's not a big deal. It's working so far, though I don't expect to successfully employ this principle with all my troubles.

Some of you are asking yourselves, "Why is Ian looking for jobs in Minneapolis when he lives in the wastelands of suburban Chicago?" Well, first of all, suburban Chicago is not a wasteland. Secondovly, I've decided to attend Bethlehem College and Seminary this fall!!!!!!!! I'm pretty excited. I've missed school for the four years I've been out.

Four years. I'm still getting over these sneaking suspicions that people who went straight through their four years of college after high school throw secret parties for each other where they make really funny jokes that only they can understand about us non-traditional students.

In other news, I'm staying with my friend Ryan while here, and Ryan has a dog named Chloe. She is second in line to Best Dog in the World, which designation belongs of course to my dog Samson. Right now, she's staring at me imperiously - imperiously, I say - because I've stopped scratching her ears to continue typing. In a couple minutes, she'll lay her head on my arm until I give in and start scratching her ears again. I know her well, but I suspect she knows me better.

As for this spring, mine's been a mix of fall's cold and mid-summer's blistering heat. But am I overwrought? No. We midwesterners are a stout folk.

ashes, ashes, we all fall down

Dear Sufjan,

Maybe words are futile devices because you use too much of them. I know I do, so I think I understand the sentiment. I mean, there you are trying to express love, and it's not happening. Here I am, staring down my screen, reaching deep, nothing.

That's it, right? Nothing. That's what is so scary. The Great Nothingness. The suspicion that way down deep... what? What is down there? Void?

I sure hope not. But as long as you and I keep covering it all up with words, where are we getting, really? What are we discovering?

Your laconic fan,
Ian

processing

Here are some things I've been thinking about recently.

Using dreams

For the last year, when I had using dreams, they would be about how I really wanted to use, but I never could. These are similar to other dreams I've had where I was assigned a task and couldn’t do it. One time I had a dream that my family was at church and at the end of the service, Dad asks me to go get the van, so I do, but when I get in and start driving, it's like I'm on ice, can’t go anywhere, and I’m slipping all over the place and then there’s an old woman and her grandson in front of me and I plough over the old woman and Dad’s running up to the car and screaming at me to get outta the car and let him drive and I’m feeling so anxious it's crazy.

That dream was at least four years ago, and no, I don't want to hear your analyses.

So these using dreams. I've had more in the last couple weeks than I've had for the past nine months. I mean, every night. Not so much anymore, but it was terrible waking up every morning and thinking I'd ruined everything. And these recent ones were different, too. The way they used to be was I’d either have the drugs with me but no rig, or I’d have it all with me but people would keep walking in and I’d have to shove it in the drawer til they left. I couldn’t ever get high. Now, the dreams are about me having the opportunity – different from having the drugs – and, praise God because this is a new development, I’m praying and asking for God’s help! I don't want to use in these recent dreams, which is huge, because that means my subconscious is falling into line with my conscious. But it still feels like I’m on one of those moving sidewalks, being pulled to this unavoidable destination at which I’ll get high and fuck everything up. The one redeeming aspect: waking up in the morning and realizing I didn't.

Reflections on this last year

It’s been a year. Sometimes I hear people, after a long amount of time doing something, say things along these lines: “It feels like just yesterday, I was blah blah blah…” That’s not how it feels for me. Well, wait a second. If I think about the details of coming in – driving with Alex and Caroline, walking in to Wayside's front office and staff telling us we can come back in a little while after we’ve eaten lunch, the elated feeling I had when they said this because it felt so different from Teen Challenge – it seems a little closer, but not much. It definitely doesn’t feel like yesterday. It feels like a long time.

Those feelings I had

Things were hazy for me at the beginning. I mean, the longer you’re at a place, the more definition it has. Think about the first time you sat down behind the desk at which you now sit, at your work or whatever. Things were hazy, right? You didn’t know the place yet, or the people. That’s what it was like. I wasn’t high or anything, it just felt weird. I remember odd little details, like this Native American-looking-guy with long black hair behind the desk, whom I now know to be Tom, telling me, “Yeah, no problem, go get some lunch, come back whenever,” and me in my head, thinking, “This place is different and not militaristic,” and Alex and Caroline and me going to eat at this Mexican joint up the hill that was very oddly decorated, me folding and refolding the paper wrapper from my straw and moving my wet-with-condensation glass to and fro on the wooden table, wiping the water trail I’d just made, repeating this ad infinitum, Caroline saying, “OK, well, we should get you checked in,” me feeling reluctant but knowing I had to, driving back to Wayside, Ray and me going back to his office so we could interview, me asking him, “So what is the staff like around here,” him responding, bless him, “Well to be honest wich you Ian, I don’t know that they’re all saved, but I buhleive God is sovereign and there’s a reason they’re here,” and me just thinking, “Wow, I love this place and this man Ray.” It was so different from Teen Challenge, where that question was answered thusly: “Oh, you’ll really like it here! All of the staff have been through the program! They know what you’re going through and they’re really helpful!”

You know someone’s full of shit when they use italics and exclamation points in conjunction and unreservedly.

Ray wasn’t like that. And soon we’re talking about how I’m reformed and he’s telling me the director of the program is reformed, that I can choose where I go to church, and man, that was really something. The rest is kind of a blur, except for this feeling: there’s grace here.

What else?

Phase One at Wayside was monotonous but had its moments. Ah man. McGravey-train. James vs Vaughn arguments. Gary’s high-energy, in-your-face passion. Jeff’s heart. It was good.

Phase Two – the “Nix preamble” to the ninth chapter of Romans (which of course is really the Pauline preamble). Ran-dee “air-tight” Toe-mahss-ee. Smoking ban. Deon wheezing. Carey “you a bum” "Eminem" "Smiley" DeAnda.

I was staring off into space for a good while, there. Processing is strange and good.

living

So I moved into that house in Batavia.
I got anxious while moving, because even though I'd spent a solid month or more in deliberation, it still felt like things were happening too quickly, like I hadn't been patient enough. Maybe it's just something that happens when big decisions are made.
And now I live here. All of my stuff is here. It's not at Wayside anymore. None of it. Between Teen Challenge and Wayside, I spent eleven months living with forty to ninety other guys. Now, I live with four, and it's so quiet.

That reminds me, I haven't explained the situation into which I've moved. The house is for Wayside graduates, providing another, higher level of transition into The Real World. Rent starts out very affordable at zero dollars for the first month, and then increases over the next eleven months to five hundred, at which amount it stays. There are five bedrooms. Mine is the only room, presently, that has two beds, but that'll be changing shortly.
Oh yes. Another tidbit: I've been made the house manager, effective 7 January 2011. The guys who live here are all fifteen-plus years my senior and have been living here from one to four years (set in their ways, they are) which makes things somewhat difficult, but - and this has been my cry for the last eleven months - nothing worth doing is easy! As the new sheriff in town, I'll be doing things like making more of the rooms doubles (which I believe fosters community), instituting a regular cleaning schedule (which I believe is a necessary part of mental and emotional health, as well as physical), replacing the cushiony toilet seat (gross) with a normal toilet seat, and maybe even repainting (spice it up a little, you know? It's a boring pale yellow which could totally be replaced with, oh I don't know, emerald green).

So back to what I was saying: It was - is - an odd transition, living with so many guys for so long to living with so few. I mean, I have my own room (until Joe moves in), a place to put my toiletries (other than my toiletry bag), a place to hang my towels (other than on the front of a locker), a door to shut when I'm ready to sleep. I have a refrigerator, a stove/oven, a dining room table. It's incredible. I'm still giddy about it.
But it was hard moving out of Wayside, which phrase I never thought I'd utter. It was hard moving away from the guys. There was a lot of emotion in the move. After all the rush of packing things and then taking them over to the new place, it hit me: I'm leaving. And praise God for that! But I invested all this time and energy and emotion into that place - and from that place so much was invested into me - that I'm a part of it and it of me. And now I'm leaving.
It was heavy.

I don't know. Maybe as humans we're just really, deeply averse to change. (Maybe I shouldn't make blanket statements like that, should talk about myself and not include you.) I used to be that guy who just loved spontaneity and flying by the seat of his pants, and I'm not anymore because it's so damn exhausting. I like a schedule. I like to know what's going to happen tomorrow and the next day. Of course, I can't really know these things, but you know what I mean. And people who live that way - "spontaneously" - are extra-defensive of their way of life, which just makes me think they don't want change, either, would hate to make a plan for lunch.
I don't think it's just change, though. I think what's behind all the heaviness is just that: heaviness. Brilliant, I know. It's the same old saying-goodbye-pain that everyone's been dealing with since God breathed life into us, and it still hurts.

Anyway:
-Pray for me, and let me know how I can pray for you.
-Sorry for the parenthetical overload.
-A good winter's day to you.

moving

I finally made a decision, you'll be happy to know. Well, maybe you didn't know I was facing one, but I was.
I really wanted to move into the city, to be closer to my friends and family there, to live in community with them. Before this last few months, I was unable to give anything to them, only to take from. And I wanted desperately - still do - to give back, now that I'm able. On the face of things, great reason to move into the city, right? But something interesting kept happening: every time I talked to someone about it, they would ask immediately, "Oh so you'll be leaving the Oasis (church)?" To which I'd respond, "Noooo. I can make it out there on the weekends!" I'd then lay out my plans, how I was going to move the students I teach out here in the suburbs from Thursdays to Saturdays so I could come out here Saturday, teach, spend the night, and then be here for Sunday morning.
A conversation with Alex was perhaps the most helpful. He said, "You know, Ian, the city is a lot different from the suburbs."
"You don't say," said I.
He went on to explain, after that sarcastic remark I didn't really make but added because I like to think I'm witty, that in the city, one can find a church service at any time of any day, that it would be a monster inconvenience for anyone to travel out to the suburbs every weekend. Of course, there are people who do - Hannah, for instance - but on the whole it's just not practical.
This was the last of several conversations I had about moving, and, as I said, every last one of these people took it for granted that I'd not be continuing at the Oasis. Even after I laid out my plans for them, they would stare off into the middle-distance, trying but unable to make my plans make sense.
So what do you do when everyone around you (including yourself, though you don't readily admit it) is apprehensive about a particular choice you're considering? You don't make that choice! At least, this seems the sane response. Mark you, it wouldn't have stopped me before - several times it hasn't - but God is changing my heart. (This is happening by such infinitesimal gradations that, to me, it has gone almost unnoticed, would have but for my dad, who directed my attention thereto.)

So, I'll be moving to Batavia, which is a mere fifteen minutes from Aurora. The house is in a great location - walking distance from downtown Batavia, which is quaint, and right up the hill from the bike path, which I can follow along the Fox River straight into downtown Aurora. Also, I'll have, as my mom so delicately and hilariously put it, quiet neighbors, as the house abuts a cemetery.

That reminds me: I'm going to commit right here and now to use this new location next to the cemetery as a reminder to think much, in the words of Jonathan Edwards, on all occasions, of my dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.

Next year in Jerusalem!