my heart is hurting yet my spirit is joyful!!!

i will be honest when i say that finding the words, to explain the movements of God, might be one of the hardest things i have ever attempted.

i can not start at the beginning, for "the beginning" starts in the middle of a much longer story, so i will just have to start at the end (right now) and work my way backwards. right now i am trying to verbalize what God did tonight, which is spawned by what he has been doing in the past two weeks, and in the past couple of months.

tonight jason was teaching on luke 22:53-62 peter's denial of Jesus. at the end of the story, he brought forth two points which are necessary to take from the passage; that spiritual overconfidence cripples us and that Christ's prayers keep us. it seems simple, yet the understanding and living out of these two concepts has been struggle of my life so far. i am too proud of a person. God has begun a transformation in my heart, revealing and changing my self-view in almost every area in my life. i am overwhelmed by the love that Christ has for me (the church, all of us). during service, my spirit felt like it was jumping for joy over the recognition of it. even thinking on it causes my heart and mind to overflow with emotion.
but joy was not the only experience that i was experiencing tonight. i found out that a friend of mine from youth group died in a tragic car accident this morning. i do not know if i was in shock for it was during the service that my heart broke, and my grieving began. God amazed me by showing his sovereignty and irony during the sermon. jason began to list some struggles that people face throughout there life "cancer, death of a friend, a broken relationship". now i understand and a part of me knows that he was thinking about my mom when he said cancer, but there is no way he knew the other two situations, but i knew that his words were from God.
as i have hinted above, my family found out my mom had cancer like 2-3 months ago, and she is into her 3rd week of chemo. though it is rarely on the forefront of my mind, it is never out of my mind, i am constantly thinking of her. so tonight, i was able with the help of all of the above to weep over the situation, her lack of caring of sin.
and in that i saw my lack of hatred of sin. i see my sin, and in shame, i turn my eyes from it, but it is not dealt with if you simply turn your eyes from it. i am at fault for not calling my sin and temptations by name in prayer. I have a calling to work in an impossible situation, and i am desperate to get there, but i have yet to learn to sit and wait on Christ, to pray for change, to learn that which is necessary to do that which i am called to. i am like peter in that i am willing to sacrifice everything, to give up all fleshly desires, yet i have not learned how to flee from them. i have been overly confidant in my spiritual walk, because without a doubt i know and love Christ. but i have only just begun to cherish his word as i ought. It was Christ's revealing his plans for my life which caused this realization of the need, but it can never be the calling which sustains the need, it must be Christ.

so how can a person simultaneously feel emotions which we have deemed polar opposites. . . i do not know, yet i know with Christ all is possible.

so i am annoyed (i know not really new or different). this past week has been a great trial in my ability to love others. one would assume it is because of my mother's cancer or jake gregory lying in a hospital in a coma, yet it is neither for neither event has brought out the stupidity of man greater than the olympics. some where in our society we lost the ability to have faith in anything. not only does our society shun God, we have now begun to shun the accomplishments that God has allowed among his creation. let me give a brief history of myself so i can better explain. . .
i have loved swimming since i was born. (so i can not remember that far back, but i really do believe in the statements validity) i assume i attended my first swim meet around 11 months old (my cousin Chris was in his 2nd year) that was the summer of 86. now flash to the olympics of '88 (i was somewhere between 34-38 months) and i was watching and cheering for Janet Evens (for all of my memory i have been a janet evens fan, my mom has since retold me stories of what it was like for her to watch her toddler intently watch olympic swimming instead of shows like sesame street) so i can honestly say i have been watching swimming my whole life (olympic swimming for 20 yrs). I was seven before i learned to swim (for financial reasons) and by my eighth birthday i had finished my first year on a swim team. For as long as we could afford it i was swimming on summer and winter teams. As i got older and money became tight i switched to a team closer to home(also cheaper because of city regulations in st. louis county). i have since beginning been partial to butterfly (i do not naturally have the physical body of a swimmer, i thought i looked more like a greco roman wrestler) and i swam it until i wore my shoulders out, tearing simultaneously, ligaments in both shoulders at the age of 13 (summer before my freshman year of high school, which i had switched back into my own school district to swim) i tried to continue never getting back into form and eventually switched over to diving. Though stocky i have always been rather graceful, and was able to win my first ever diving meet. (after that our two state ranked divers who had been doing this for years came back from vacation and i began taking third) i competed for two years for school and for my local team, when in a meet at an unsatisfactory pool, i tore my Achilles tendon(i was one of three divers who came to practice on crutches that next week). Since i have followed and taught swimming and diving, but have mostly given up racing and competing.
That is my brief/life long history with this sport. now flash to this past couple of weeks, when Phelps mania has taken over our nation. don't get me wrong Phelps is an amazing athlete who should be praised by those who praise athletes. But, i also used to like ian thorpe until fame went to his head and he turned into an inflated airhead. I have like i said earlier have been following olympic swimming since i was 3, so i was watching in 2000, when phelps took the bronze, and in 2004 when lochte made his olympic debut. so unlike many other people who are spending there days talking over these athletes and swimmers like they know everything about them, i have been following there races and times. i was privilaged to be able to go to a georgia tech v. flordia swim meet right after the during the '04-'05 school year. i was able to see how lochte had improved just in that amount of time. and then at trials to see him actually race and push Micheal Phelps, to offer a challenge, was a great moment. So come to the olympics, i see Phelps literally receive all attention, i made the choice to root for lochte instead of phelps in any race they had against each other. I have also been criticized by everyone for being a half hearted fan of swimming, because i did not jump onto the phelps band wagon. 9even though i only jumped off breifly to make room for everyone else)
now lets flash to my real agitation in all of this, for that might only be the tip of the ice burg. so everyone and there mom thinks they understand swimming. and since all of the athletes are getting the best times ever, it must be doping!! WRONG i can not imaggine someone who truly loved there sport to dope, i just can't. as for the phelps doping theory, lets take a breif look at the mens 4 x 100 free relay. 5 of the 8 teams in the final broke the previous world record, therefore by many people's theory on doping it would then mean that all 20 men were doping, not only the Americans but the ausies (who would be murdered in Australia for such disrespect to the sport of swimming) and the french who are currently battling harder than any other nation against doping 9in the sport of cycling). let me just say strait out that if doping were the cause then all teams were doping and thus the playing field is even (i am sure that doping is not the cause). since doping is not actually involved in the amazing times set by swimmers at the water cube, lets look at some factors that are. every one who has ever swum understands that every pool has different water, some good to swim in and some bad. i would almost assure anyone that china went through strenuous efforts to make the water as easy as they possibly could to swim in. (they had picked dark grains of sand out from the imported sand volleyball sand). also in case you haven't heard, speedo is the cause for these speeds. they spent millions in development to make the fastest suit. americans were cleaning house at earlier meets, and it was argued that the american's should not be allowed to use the suit because it would be unfair. the olympic committee felt differently, and it sent several international teams inn a frenzy to back out of there contracts w/ different suit providers and to side w/ speedo (i hope speedo upped there price to the international competitors, because it would be a great example of capitalism). i do want to look at the teams in the men's 400 free relay, because i would assume that all five teams to come in under world reacord time, were wearing the new speedo suits (if one of the five weren't i bet they are kicking themselves for not, because they could have won.) those are the calculable aspects of faster times the incalculable are a man's determination. we know people get better when they have better competition, i do not believe phelps would have won his medals with out ryan lochte, giving phelps a reason to be better and to go faster. and after his race in the 100 fly, i can assure phelps in not only going to work on that stroke, but he is going to work on his endurance between races, so the next time he has a schedule such as that he won't tire out during the end of the week..

ok i am tired of typing, i think i will finish my rant for the day.