EMU

Well, moved into EMU, I'm all settled in, finally got my internet working this morning, I my first sort of soccer practice today, made my first actual thing, I'm ready for the year.  I guess.  I'm excited for this year a lot.  I'm excited to be on a soccer team with pleasant guys who have a passion for the game, I'm excited to get started on a new major, and I am excited to meet some new frands.  I am also nervous to meet new frands, cause I almost feel content with the frands that I have.  But I really wanna meet new frands.  I like frands.  Ok, I will stop spelling it frands now.  I will meet some new friends, and I have.  So that is good.
So the doctor hasn't given the official written or verbal permission to the trainers for me to play, so I can't really play yet.  Hopefully tomorrow I will.  But today I got a few touches on the ball and ran a bunch.  I am really out of shape, it's bad.  But that's what happens with 2 straight weeks of couch potatoeing.  I have also never been so self conscious of my soccer playing before.  I want to make a good impression cause I missed all of preseason and just came in with a spot on the team, but I haven't played any quality soccer in such a long time I am rusty and I get embarrassed with all my mishaps.  Such is life. 
I am still alive, by the way.  And I like food.  Speaking of food, here is a picture of my supper.

It was very good.  Hamburger, onions, pees, and an egg.  Yumm!
Have a nice day.  God is good, that is for sure.
Oh, my roommates are awesome, even the one I didn't know and the one that I didn't know I would have.  One reason God is so good.

Movin' Out (again)

So I just loaded up the family car to move out for the third time, but this time I am headed out to Virginia to Eastern Mennonite University instead of Hesston, Kansas.  (By the way, I can type with two hands now!)
I can't even really express my disappointment over the fact that I am leaving tomorrow in the car.  I should be practicing soccer, halfway through hell-week in Virginia already, but instead I am sitting on my butt recovering.  I also should be driving my cycle through the mountains on the way there with just the bare necessities along, instead I packed up all my things into the car to sit in the passenger seat all the way there. (I can't really drive very well with this cast...)  Man, I am really disappointed.  It just was not supposed to turn out this way.  This was supposed to be an awesome year for soccer for me, I was in the best shape of my life, I was kicking a ball around regularly, I was pumped to play with a bunch of guys that will take the game seriously, but instead I got thrown 2 weeks back, physically, and one week back from traveling with this stupid broken wrist.  This wasn't supposed to happen this way.  I am frustrated and disappointed and consumed in utter disbelief at the fact that it happened to me.  I can't help but ask the question, "Why?"  And I have so many forms of that question running through my head.  "Why did it have to happen to me?  Why did it have to happen now?  Why couldn't it have happened at the beginning of summer so I could have caught back up at the end?  Why did it have to happen at a time where it threw all my plans out of wack?  Why did it have to make me leave a week later for college?  Why did it have to happen the very last time I was driving my cycle to church?  Why does it have to cause me so much pain?  Why couldn't I have just missed the car and kept the bike upright?  Why did I have to go at that exact time to the church?  Why didn't I get hurt worse?  Why was it only my wrist?  Why was it only a bone that will still allow me to play soccer?  Why did it happen at home instead of on the way to Virginia?  Why am I so bitter when I could have died?"  I could go on and on with these questions, but I feel as though you get the point.  I am just really disappointed, and I know that I can grow from this experience in my faith, I just can't let the bitterness consume me.
I am reading The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis right now and in one chapter he talks about how humans can be very peevish about this thing called "time." The future is the most unsure thing (the farthest thing from eternity), the present is the moment where eternity and time intersect (according to him), and the past is the most sure thing.  But we have this notion that we "own" our time.  One of the best ways for Satan to pry his way into our lives is by taking our time away.  Whether it is just a few moments of the day which we thought that we would have to ourselves, or in my case, a whole week where I thought I could be playing soccer and meeting new people.  This gets taken away from us and we go into a spiral of frustration and, in my case, apathy.  I am just very apathetic about about everything right now because I am not doing what I wanted to be doing.  If, instead of pouting about what I am not doing and wallowing around in self-pity, I picked myself up and got back to life and looked to see how God wanted me to use this extra week maybe I would have had a different experience, and maybe I still will.  I just need to have patience, and look for God's timing and His work.  But it is hard.
I just thought of all that just now, but it is true.
In other news, I have a doctors appointment in Harrisonburg on Friday at 8:30 to have them look at (and hopefully schedule a surgery for) my wrist.  Hopefully I will be getting my surgery sometime next week during the first weeks of class and then I could be out playing soccer in just a couple weeks.  We will see how it all goes down.  God is good all the time.  And all the time God is good.  I just need patience.
Incidentally, I ran two miles today and started off at my normal pace from two weeks ago, I ended up walking after a mile and a half.  Shoot. 
Make it a good day, and check out this lad taking a super chill picture after such a harrowing experience!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Last Airbender.

So, first off, I have had an immobilized wrist for 6 days and am already entertaining thoughts of cutting it off.  The cast, of course, not my wrist, for how would I be able to the things I love with no wrist?  Twould be a difficult life, 2 hands and 1  wrist, and doesn't sound like the life for me.  I also hear that amputees have this thing called "phantom limb" where they can 'feel' the body part that is no longer.  Naturally, that scares me, although it is an interesting phenomenon to my brain.  Also, my writings are wanting to be shorter and farther apart, for it is difficult to type with one hand.  However, this helps my thought process and I thoroughly have enjoyed my past 8 posts, so I must bear the pain.  Rawr, like a bear.

So, I just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky in the past 4 hours, and talk about an interesting book.  I just now saw that it is being made into a movie to be released September 21.  This must be seen.  I see that Emma Watson is in it as Sam (if you have read it then you know who I am talking about, if not, too bad, you need to read it) and I was a little confused because I thought she has some importance on modesty (greatly admire that if true) and the book is quite risque, but I also see that it is rated PG-13 so I am going to look at something really quick...
I went to look to see if Chbosky (who is also directing the film) took out the sketchy parts to make it more suitable and it sounds like he did.  Watson is quoted as saying, "I wouldn't say it's too risqué, but it's definitely more Hermione than you've ever seen before."  So take that for what you will.  Here is the link for the trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dY5EbgJTvI.  Anyway, onto the book.
Most all of it left me feeling weird and confused, so let me explain.  The lifestyle's that the book portrays are definitely not lifestyles I would approve of.  I will do my best not to provide any accidental spoilers.  The confusing thing is that I really appreciated it.  I shouldn't really be so confused because I have frands that have lifestyle's I don't approve of, but I did.  The story is about a kid on the fringe of life who is taken under the wings of a group of seniors and his thought process through the whole thing.  It is a very real book about the issues everybody (at least every guy) faces but from a very unique perspective.  I appreciate it's realness, but I didn't know if I would like the book til it was done and I decided I really did.  It's a hard one to put to words.  I guess my feelings about it can be summed up a couple of ways, starting with this quote, "So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons.  And maybe we'll never know most of them.  But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.  We can still do things.  And we can try to feel okay about them."
The next way is, simply to face ourselves, view ourselves from the outside.  I tend to do this too much, however, but this book made me think.  Do I do it too much or in the wrong way?  But facing ourselves and our pasts is important.
The last way is the paragraph directly following the last quote I shared, just a different idea with it.  "I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset.  And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.  Good and bad."  This is a very different concept than how we often think about the world, but it makes us think about love and what our love is like.  I don't know, it's just interesting.
"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

This is me after I read this book.  Yay.

So now Avatar: The Last Airbender.  This series made me feel a couple things as well; like I have no life was one, but also confused.  I didn't get confused until the last few episodes, but I will explain that later.  I remember wishing I was an Airbender, and dreaming about it all the time as well.  It was cool.  I think I said before that this was the one series I wished I would have watched this series in its entirety before, but I finished it yesterday, so I guess late is better than never.  Okay, here is why I was confused, bash me for this all you want, it's da twufe.  So, I am a pacifist, and I suddenly realized that the culmination of this series was the death of the Fire Lord.  I often thought much about how they did a good job not showing death in a kids movie, but I never thought about the end.  Suddenly they entered this whole ordeal about Aang killing the Fire Lord and I got scared because if he would kill the Fire Lord then I would be really disappointed in this series for my own reasons and they built it up a bunch like he was going to (sorry for the spoiler).  But then he didn't and I was happy, there is always another way, it may just be really hard to find, you may need a Lion Turtle to show you, and you may have to go against what all your friends say, but there is another way.
I wish I had a Lion Turtle.  Make it a good day.

Interesting picture of bending...

Recovering.

Sitting in my dad's Lazy Boy, feet up, listenin' to music, chillin' alone in the home, writin' a blog, doesn't seem like this life is too bad.  Cept it is.  Cause I was going to leave yesterday for Virginia, so I should driving my motorcycle down the Pennsylvania turnpike about now.  And yet, I sit here wrapped up in bandages and a big black cast taking Advil and antibiotics, typing with one hand.  On the bright side of things, I am almost finished with Avatar: The Last Airbender, I am in book 3, The Fire Kingdom, and I believe Chapter 12: The Western Airtemple.  It's getting pretty exciting, I regret never having finished it before now.  So that is the good side of this, I get to finish Avatar.
Once I get Avatar down I am going to start reading, first I am going to read Conrad Grebel; Son of Zurich by John Ruth and then A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller.  I have read both books this past year, but it was during school so I didn't get to read it the way I would like to read it, so I am going to again.  Speaking of Don Miller, I need to read Blue Like Jazz.  So yeah, that's my life at the moment.  I am going to bake cookies today I think.  We will see how Avatar goes.  I also switched my major to Business Administration, so I gotta figure out my classes and books for that.  I'm still planning on doing youth ministry, I am just broadening my bases I guess.  We will see where God takes me with that.  You know, this may suck, having to sit here all day and for an extra week (I am also getting surgery once I get to VA) but I still feel more blessed than ever before.  I could be sitting here cause I can't walk (which reminds me, I should climb our stairs or get on our eliptical machine or something, keep my shape), or I could have broken my arm, instead of my wrist, or both wrists, But here I am, barely broken, and God is good.  It is hard for me to think about serious things now, like college and my future, because I am too happy and pleased living in the present.  I want to write something meaningful for me, but it is hard for me to think about something. 
Oh well, it will come.
I enjoy this gif.

Motorcycle Accident and God's Protection

So, many of you may not know, I got in a motorcycle accident on Monday, Aug. 13, 2012 at 2:30pm, close to home in Michigan.  It was pretty intense, and here is the story so people can stop asking what happened and read it themselves.

So yeah, I wrote a fake story first, you can scroll down if you want the real one...



It was really a pretty average drive, and by average I mean that I drove that exact route 6, 7, or 8 times a week, all on my cycle. It was average, that is, until i looked like this -

Rockin' the ER with my chiseled bod... Or my bloody bod, whatever, same thing.

Well, if we are being precise, which I am, it was average until 2 hours and 32 minutes before this picture was taken, give or take 30 seconds. Here is what happened- (I am typing with one hand so who knows what kind of typos there will be)

At 2:30 I was headed down to the church to give pastor Alvin a final evaluation for my internship at the church there when I noticed a white vehicle speeding up behind me.  I slowed down a bit to let them pass and as they pulled out to pass, two of the occupants leaned out the windows.  I could see this in my mirror and got pretty scared at this cause I thought they were going to try and hit me or knock me off the bike or something, but what happened was worse.  They were all wearing black helmets with dark black visors so I couldn't see their faces and then it was kind of like The Fast and the Furious, except different.  Anyway, the two occupants leaning out pulled out some pistols and shot out both of my tires!  At this I went down immediately, got thrown from the bike and rolled across the pavement.  As I was rolling I thought of two things, one - Thank the Lord for helmets, and two - If I can walk when I stop rolling I am going to force these guys to build their own coffins.  Luckily, I couldn't walk (I say luckily because I am supposed to love my enemy, and that wouldn't have been very loving now, would it?), but I could see what these fellas were all about.  Turns out that they were just professional motorcycle thieves!  I saw them lifting my cycle into the bed of their pick-up and I first I was relieved because that meant they weren't kidnappers, which was my first thought. Then I remembered something, "My new sunglasses and clip!!"  You see, I had just bought an exquisite pair of $10 sunglasses from Walmart and a beautiful $5 sunglasses clip/holder from Macy's!  No one in their right mind would want to watch those two immaculate items to fall in the hands of dirty scoundrels such as these.  I had to think fast, the cycle was almost onto their pick-up with my items inside.  Suddenly I had a great idea.  "WAIT!" I screamed as I laid there, broken and hurting from both the thought of not seeing my sunglasses again and the broken bones.  "Wait, you can have all my money in my wallet if you will leave my bike here, for surely that would be a much greater loss to me." You see, I caught onto the fact that these were not just dirty scoundrels, but sadistic kleptomaniacs and were in the game to do as much damage to the victim as possible.  So the ringleader of the trio struts over to me and grunts (clearly trying to mask his voice, think of Bruce Wayne in Batman), "Where is it?"  I must have had a slight concussion because the first words out of my mouth were, "Where is what?  Better yet, where am I!?"  Then, quickly I recovered from my brief bought of amnesia and yelled, "Oh!  My wallet!  It's in my back pocket, right side!"  He reached under my derriere, being much more rough with it than I would have liked, and pulled my wallet out.  Just as he was about to open it I said, "Just take the whole lot for that would do even greater damage, you sadistic fiend!" He must have been pleased with this for he told his wolf-pack to set the motorcycle back on the road and stuck the wallet in his pocket without opening it.  Then, showing the ultimate maturity in the situation, he stuck his keister in my face and shook it around, growling, " Na Na Na Na Na" in the weirdest sing-song voice you can imagine.  He turned around and gave helmet a painfully playful kick, then they hopped in their pick-up and drove off.  I laid there, staring up at the sky and, even amidst the searing pain, I smiled.  Why did I smile?  Because my wallet had no money in it, my license was in my motorcycle, and my credit card was expired.  BADOOM, CHSSHH.

So I don't know where in the world that came from.  I must apologize, I did start writing this with every intention of portraying the actual story when suddenly -BOOM- I was blindsided by creativity.
So here is the real account of my accident.

At 2:30 I was headed down to the church to give pastor Alvin a final evaluation for my internship at the church.  Again, I drove this road 6, 7, or 8 times a week.  It was a very normal drive for me and the scariest thing was usually a dog running out from a specific house.  I is about a6 mile drive.  A car pulled out behind me and I noticed that they were catching up to me.  I was driving about 55-60, belting out The Sinner by Memphis May Fire into the confines of my full faced helmet, and focusing on trying to keep a steady speed.  One thing that annoys me when I want to pass someone is when they don't use cruise control and speed up and down constantly.  So here we are, cruising along, when I notice a minivan ahead of us, in my lane facing me, getting the mail.  I said to myself, "Man, I hope this dude doesn't try to pass me here, for that will cause some dangerous maneuvering to be inevitable."  Of course, he went to pass me, but I was expecting this, so I started to slow down but kept an eye on him, in case he slowed down too.  It would not have been good if we were both trying to slow down or speed up and just hung out next to each other until meeting the van.  Then I saw him slowing down too, so I picked up a little bit of speed to let him in behind me and that is what he did.  Taking my mind back to the minivan, I planned to head around it in the left lane because that is what most people let you do when they are getting the mail.  However, no sooner had I thought this than I noticed the van had backed up completely into the left lane.  My next train of thought was, "I guess they are going to let me go around them in the right lane."  I let off the throttle here because I was a little confused, but I assumed I had an open path around the van.  As I got closer, suddenly the van took off across my lane into the driveway.  If you look at this photo, you can see how close to the driveway I was when they decided to cross the road.  At first I thought they were going to stop and still let me through on the right side, which is why my skid marks head to the right at first.

The van pulled into the driveway on the right and I hit the brakes, obviously.

As soon as the van started across the road a few things flashed through my mind in about half a second.  I reviewed my readings about motorcycle safety, such as separate braking from swerving, how to react to locked up tires, etc.  I also thought about how not too long ago I was thinking about how it might be beneficial to lock up my back tire off the road to see what it felt like.  I never did get that experience until this happened, unfortunately.
Next in the sequence of events was the fact that the van never did stop and I realized that if I kept trying to go to the right that I would collide with the van head on and I knew that was not desirable in any circumstance.  This is where a bit of panic set in because I realized that I would have to swerve and my tires were already locked up, so down I was to go.  I would imagine I was traveling between 50 and 60mph when I locked up my tires.  So I swerved to the left as best I could and felt the bike sliding out from under me when, suddenly, (I may have let up on the brakes) the tires caught the pavement and flipped over (which is this next photo).  We believe this may have been what caused the broken wrist, I was probably holding on pretty tight and when it threw me it wasn't very gentle.

The first mark is either where the bike flipped or hit, then it slid off to the left and ended up on the side of the road.

So, here I was, flying through the air yelling "Frick!"  I remember being worried about the white car behind me for I thought they had two options, hit the van or run me over.  I hit the ground and started rolling.  In the moment I thought about the times I have fallen snowboarding or skiing and rolled down the hill without being able to stop my forward motion and how similar this experience was, except I was on asphalt instead of snow and I was traveling a lot faster, so I rolled a lot longer.  I also remember hitting my face on the ground and thinking I was very thankful for my helmet, I believe my exact thought was, "This helmet is nice."  When friction finally overcame inertia I came to a rest on my stomach with my body on the road and my legs partly off the road.  I laid still a little while and said three distinct words, "Frick, frick, frick."  I slowly rolled over, uncomfortably, onto my back with my backpack at an awkward angle underneath me (my backpack contained my reflection paper, a book, and my jacket.  I almost tossed my computer in there out of habit, but thank the Lord that I didn't).  At this point I didn't feel any pain yet and as I rolled I saw my bike all banged up.

My bike got banged up a little.  See the grass on the left side?

Then I saw the white car and it was untouched and had to thank God that it didn't run me into me or the van.  Then the pain started to hit as I saw people running toward me and I started to understand what happened.  The first person to get to me was a nurse and she knew how to handle the situation, thank the Lord, and asked me questions, did vitals, and called my mother.  At this point I thought that my arm or shoulder was broken because that was the only place I could feel pain.  I was not looking forward to lying there waiting for the emergency response teams to get there but I felt like I hardly had to wait there at all.  They even beat my mom to the scene!  Thank you for your quick response.  So by now I fully understood what happened and had recounted my experience to a couple people.  For some reason they took one of my shoes off, but my mom snagged it, as well as my new $14 watch from Walmart and my phone to give Kendra a call.  They loaded me up into the ambulance and I took my first ambulance ride.  As I was in the ambulance the pain was still there and I sang O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing and prayed, "Lord, give me strength," over and over until we got to the hospital.
I still thought that my arm was broken (especially since one of the EMT's said there was a bulge on it...) and the doctor checked me over and finally I got some pain medication and almost hyperventilating.  Then they ordered x-rays on my shoulder and elbow so I went to go get those done.  As I tried to stand up I grabbed a railing to help me off the bed with my left hand and knew something was wrong, so I asked if they could x-ray that too and they agreed.  Turns out that my shoulder was fine but my wrist was broken!  Kinda funny, but also weird.  My shoulder is just a little sore now, so I am glad it wasn't more serious.  Then the doctor stitched me up (shoved a finger into my cut to fish out gravel, that felt weird!) and proved to me that my shoulder was not broken with a very unnecessary gesture, pulling my arm back behind my head causing excruciating pain.  He was not very nice.  I got a sling and we left the hospital by 5:30.

What a crazy day, and weekend. On Friday I went to Katie Boom's to play Bang!  Saturday I helped mom and Megan get ready for Megan's bridal shower and went to David and Alyssa Maust's wedding openhouse.  Sunday I preached and went to the viewing of my great-uncle Elmer.  Monday I went to the funeral of my great-uncle Elmer and crashed my bike.

Crashing was something that I played in my head quite a lot since I am a new cycle driver, but I never really imagined it would happen to me.  I also figured that since my dad has been driving for so long and nothing substantial has happened to him that I know of that I either wouldn't crash for a long time or not til he did.  Haha.  And even now it does not seem real.  I remember thinking about Kendra as my mom went to call her and wondering how she would react, praying she would be ok.  The nurse was cleaning my wounds at the time and stopped cause she saw a tear and thought she hurt me.  The flashbacks are the worst, though.  Laying in bed these last two nights and waking up from pain, they just kinda hit without warning and I can hear the tires squealing and see the van getting closer and closer in my minds eye.  It isn't something I would wish upon anyone, and I know how blessed I am.  It was scary, really scary.

Most people who get in a motorcycle accident at that speed can hardly walk away at all, let alone with only a broken wrist.  There are so many different ways that I could have died there and hose thoughts keeping coming, I just thank God for my safety.  I don't know why He let me through that with so little problems, but I'm not taking it for granted.  He saved me, that day.  I know He did.  He blessed me in a way that I cannot repay, but that is just another small reason why I must sacrifice my life to Him.  This may have put a dent in my college plans in the near future, but I am walking, and I am OK.  God is good, even in hard times, and He has a way to make good out of bad situations, as He has shown me before.  He doesn't cause the pain, but He teaches us through it.  Thank you, Lord.

Guys, I am just blessed that I feel this good.  I could go on and on about how God spared me, but it is difficult to put into words.  Don't give up on God because He isn't going to give up on you.  Like I said, He doesn't cause pain and suffering, that is what Satan, the devil, does, and for the time being Satan is the ruler of the world, I guess.  But God can take what Satan does and make good things come from it, just don't lose faith.  And who knows how many of Satan's plans get thwarted by God.  God bless you all, just as He blessed me through this time.

Oh, by the by, I have been home the last two days watching Avatar: The Last Airbender (http://www.kumby.com/category/avatar-episodes/page/2/) and other non-active activities.  I am doing very good, all things considered, not really sore at all, but I am still in some pain, mainly the wrist and my road rash, so your prayers are appreciated.  Thank you.  Make it a good day.

Here are some pictures of my cycle!  My dad drove it home last night, pretty crazy that it still works pretty much fine!  Also it is ironic how my last post on here included a picture of my cycle and talked about how I was going to take that to Virginia on Friday!  So you have a decent 'before' picture there.

One more crazy thing!  Those sunglasses and clip that I mentioned in my 'creative' story were real and when I went to look at the bike they were still on it!  I took them off before the pictures though...

I'm a hard core biker.