There is just under a week until Lent, the liturgical season leading up to the Easter Triduum, ends. During this period, it is customary for Catholics and other Christians to give up something as an act of sacrifice. “What did you give up for Lent?” is a popular question in these circles, and popular answers include chocolate, fast food, television, and Facebook.

I, too, am sacrificing. But while others will go back to eating the chocolate Frosty they saw in a Wendy’s ad on television while surfing Facebook, I will likely be sacrificing for much longer. About seven weeks ago, I bought a car. And with payments that are really beyond stretching my budget, I have been forced to give up something that I love dearly, at least until I find a way to make it work financially.

I am without mobile internet. My iPhone has been transformed into an iPod touch. I cannot access Twitter on the go, check sports scores, have constant access to email, surf the internet while waiting for my Saturday soccer game to begin, or check Google Maps for a quick direction change (honestly, the thing I miss most). I feel so…disconnected.

But, at the same time, it has been kind of liberating. It feels much like when I gave up cable TV – there’s a lot out there that is really cool, but I’m learning that I really don’t need any of it. I kind of like how my iPhone goes nuts with alerts – new emails, score updates, new tweets, announcements proclaiming it is my turn on Words with Friends or Disc Drivin’ – when I connect to a Wi-Fi network. All this information isn’t constantly intruding into my life; it has now been confined to five-minute blocks a few times a day.

Eventually, someday, I’ll probably go back to having the internet on my phone. But for the time being, I’m not missing it nearly as much as I thought I would. And really, if mobile internet is the biggest sacrifice I have to make, my life isn’t too bad.

This morning, my scale reported 150.0 pounds. According to my daily log, on July 12, 2010, I weighed 166.8, probably a two-year high. That’s almost 17 pounds lost, putting me at my lightest weight since high school, and well past a weight (155 lbs.) I thought was impossible for me to achieve as an adult. And all this while exercising less.

It turns out, when it comes to diet (and I mean that just in terms of daily food intake, not the I’m-trying-to-lose-weight definition), experts really know what they are talking about. I’d heard that I shouldn’t drink my Calories, that eating at the right times was as or more important than how much I ate, that fruits and vegetables were good for me, that TV dinners were not, that being healthy requires a lifestyle change. Still, I thought that 12 ounces of soda a day (sometimes more) wasn’t bad, and neither were the TV dinners I had for lunch (hey- I always bought the Lean Cuisine or Smart Ones…those are the healthy ones, right?), and neither was only eating twice a day. After all, my Caloric intake was still less than what it should be for someone my height/weight/activity level.

Well, it turns out all those things do matter, most importantly the lifestyle change thing. It turns out…these experts do know what they are talking about! Four (not up to six…yet) small meals, consisting largely of fruit, including a decent breakfast, washed down with lots of water, all over a sustained period of time have changed me. I crave water. And bananas! I haven’t had bananas since I was 8 years old!

Maybe I should start paying more attention to what experts are saying in other areas of my life. Maybe there is more to learn.

Today is the third Tuesday of the month. For the last seven years, this has meant that I have a Core Team meeting tonight to plan the upcoming youth ministry program for my church; tonight is no exception.

I love our Core Team meetings. They always drag out way too long and nothing ever gets done. I usually end up leaving the meeting wondering why I even bothered to show up.

But I always do. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I missed a meeting by my own volition. There has been a time or two I’ve been sick, and another where the weather was just too bad. Aside from those instances, though, I’ve been present.

And I am always excited for the meetings. I love our teens and am happy to do whatever I can to serve them. I am always optimistic, though there is often no reason to be, that this meeting is going to be productive. I think that I am always excited shows my love for these meetings.

Despite my track record for showing up and my love for the meetings, I’m taking the night off tonight. For the first time to my knowledge, I’m skipping a meeting healthy and able to get out of the house.

And I’m excited about it. Tonight’s lesson is about moderation. Everything in moderation, even the things I love. I think I could apply that to multiple areas of my life.

(It also doesn’t hurt that I’m spending the evening at one of my favorite places: Section 317, Row M, Seat 8 of the Scottrade Center. Usually I skip the games for my meetings.)

I was empty. Last night’s Core Team meeting, where nobody seemed interested in planning the semester (admittedly, myself included) had left me frustrated. Tonight’s dinner didn’t even seem like I’d eaten anything; I was weak with hunger. And on top of that, Encounter wasn’t filling me either. The talk didn’t relate to me at all, and the songs just weren’t ones I felt like singing. I quieted myself and prepared to wait out the rest of the adoration experience.

“Sing,” I heard. “Every word.”

Weak from the lack of nourishment and frustrated with how other faith stuff was going, I didn’t feel like doing that at all, but I relented. I sang.

“Louder,” I heard. “I want to hear more.”

I obeyed.

“I am here for you, my son. When you are weak, that is when you have to trust all the more that I am strong. When you feel like you have nothing left to give, when you feel empty, that is when you need to trust all the more that I can fill you up. I will fill you up. But you must give me all you have.”

And I followed. I sang the rest of the songs at the top of my lungs. Every line. I came home tonight and decided to do something about the lack of planning in the semester- I signed up to help lead six Life Nights, twice what I’d ever done in any other semester. And I’ll do other work, too, like helping with environment for the semester and the Luke 18 retreat. This semester is going to be tough, and a lot of work, but I hear God so plainly calling me to this. I can only respond with

“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” 1 Samuel 3:9

I desperately need to clean my apartment. It has been at least a month since I’ve done so, which means that the dishwasher is full of dirty dishes…and so is the sink. There’s a pot on the stove that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher or the sink. The laundry is overflowing the two laundry baskets, and is sporadically taking up floor space around the apartment as well. The kitchen counter is covered with mail from the last month and all the random other things I’ve brought in from my car since it was last cleared. My desk, which I haven’t used in forever, is covered, too, from all of the stuff that made it past the kitchen counter, but not quite to where it belongs.

Except that none of that is true.

For the last month, my apartment has been clean…like visitor-ready clean. At most, all I have to do is vacuum and dust a little. For that matter, my car is pretty clean, too, with just a couple of random things that shouldn’t be in there. My desk at work, ever since I dismantled part of it and redecorated over a month ago, has been clean as well.

I’m really not quite sure how this happened, but I’ve become someone who picks up after himself, doing his dishes as he goes, making sure that everything that goes into the car comes back out, and making sure my desk is ready for actual work, should it ever come. (; And I’m even enjoying it being that way. I mean, I’ve always enjoyed a clean apartment– it is great to come home to– but I’ve never been one to make sure it stays that way. Perhaps this is a sign of me maturing, or, in a small way, preparing to marry and live with someone who would probably would find me more pleasant to live with if I weren’t so messy. Who knows?

I remember sitting in the back of Curtis’ white Oldsmobile Cutlass, driving to and from Wal-mart. Directly behind me was a bookshelf speaker, wedged between the back windshield and the carpeted panel behind the back seat, and connected, somehow, to the car’s stereo. I had just met Curtis a few hours ago at Drury’s Orientation Night. It was my, and everyone’s, first night at college, away from home, and I was looking for something- anything- to do, when he asked if I wanted to hang out with him and a couple other people he knew. Not knowing anyone, I jumped at the opportunity.

It was in that car that I met someone else- Creed. Curtis had their new CD playing while the car-full of us were driving around Springfield. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever heard the band before, but the song we listened to most, “My Own Prison,” I found myself really liking. Though critics will tell you that their sound isn’t unique and their words aren’t inspiring, that song, and many of their later efforts, resonated with me.

My relationship with Creed lasted about as long as my friendship with Curtis, and was about as deep, too. Curtis and I didn’t hang out again, as we each kind of found our own groups, but still said hi to each other every time we passed. And I was never a super huge Creed fan who knew all their songs by heart, and whose favorite was a song no one else would recognize. I just liked their mainstream stuff. But as college ended and I moved back home, I didn’t hear from Curtis or Creed again.

Until yesterday. I was driving home while listening to the radio when I heard a song on the radio I instantly loved. I checked the lyrics on the internet and was surprised when the answer came back. The song was “Rain” by the band Creed. (YouTube | iTunes) I think I might have heard that they were getting back together, but never expected to hear anything from them again. Yet here they were, years later, still making sounds that are pleasant to my ear.

It makes me wonder…what is Curtis upto these days?

Last night, fed up with television programming, but looking for *something* to watch, I turned to Hulu and rediscovered a show that I haven’t seen in quite awhile, but really enjoyed when I was able to catch it.

30 Days(link) is an FX show hosted (or narrated) by Morgan Spurlock, the filmmaker who made the documentary Super Size Me (link). In Super Size Me, Spurlock documents 30 days of eating nothing but McDonalds. He eats there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, trying everything on their menu at least once.

In the television show, Spurlock narrates and provides framing for others’ journeys to spend 30 days doing something they aren’t used to, are decidedly against, or know nothing about. For instance, last night one of the episodes I watched was about a woman who believed that gay and lesbian couples should not be allowed to adopt children. On the show, she had to spend 30 days living with a gay couple who had four adopted children, attend a few meetings for children who have homosexual parents, who are homosexual parents, and help out at a gay adoption rights advocacy group.

As I was looking at the list of episodes, reading their synopses, and as I watched two episodes, I wondered how I would do on a show like this. I think that the opportunity that the show affords people is a really good one- the chance to see the opposing side to something they believe in. In some cases, the participant walks away from the experience changed; in others, it only served to further convict them. In both scenarios, I feel it is a good thing.

I would like to experience that good thing. The thing is, though, that I’m not sure there is something with substance that I’m so against, or so far, that I can’t at least understand the other side of the coin. As a result, I feel like the experience wouldn’t be nearly as powerful for me as it is for the participants.

For those of you who happen to find this post (after me not posting in forever), what things are you this adamant or passionate about? Would you be willing to spend 30 days seeing the other viewpoint? Would the exercise be worth it?

I *love* driving. Having the windows down, shades on because there isn’t a cloud in the sky, great driving music blasting on the radio, singing along with friends, driving a little faster than I should, using traffic as my own set of cones to slalom around. There are few things better in the world than this.

I *hate* driving. Feeling my wheels spin when they shouldn’t be, or not spinning when they should be, windshield wipers not keeping up with what’s coming down, listening to traffic reports or no radio at all so I can concentrate, my body tense, rigid, my jaw clenched, too many cars. There aren’t many things I like less than this.

I can’t think of anything in my life where my enjoyment is as affected by environment as driving. Soccer I could play in any weather. Praying to and worshiping God I could do alone, in the midst of a hundred people who aren’t singing or aren’t even caring, or with a thousand other people as into it as I am. But driving, driving I have a love/hate relationship with. It is one of my favorite things in the world, something that relieves stress for me; and it is also one of my least favorite things in the world, adding all kinds of stress to my life. I wish the lows weren’t as low as they are, but then I wonder if the highs wouldn’t be as high, either.

Who’s with me for this ride? Where are your love/hate relationships?

As soon as he stepped around the defenseman and into the zone creating a two-on-two, people around me started yelling shoot. And T.J. Oshie could have. As soon as he got to the top of the circle and had a man screening Vancouver’s goalkeeper, the shouts around me became louder. “Shoot it!” And he could have. After he cut across the top of the crease and all that was left between him and a goal was the goalkeeper, the shouts were deafening: “SHOOT IT!” And he could have.

But he didn’t.

Oshie held on to the puck, outlasting the goalkeeper until all that he saw was the white net, open, awaiting his shot. And then, and only then, did Oshie shoot.

This is my fourth year as a season ticket holder for the St. Louis Blues. The first year, the Blues led the league in all the things you didn’t want to lead the league in: lowest attendance, worst home record, worst road record, everything. It was terrible. They were finding new ways to lose: scoring on your own goal while a delayed penalty on the other team had been called, having the puck rebound from the glass off the goalkeeper’s back and into the net (…in overtime), and two short-handed goals against in one power play.

Since then, things have gotten better, slowly, each year. I passed the time and the losses by counting moral victories and baby steps, watching the players drafted a couple years before mature, enjoying the unexpected surprises in players that wouldn’t have had a chance with other teams. Sometimes it was tough, but I was there almost every game, cheering on my team.

Now the Blues sit a single point out of a playoff spot. And it is still an uphill battle. The chances of them making it are still pretty low. But that patience, that not listening to the crowd but following the instincts, the plan, that waiting and waiting and waiting until the goal is plainly in sight, has paid off. These games ARE playoff games. The team lives or dies with every victory or every defeat. And it’s fun as hell to be a part of.

As the Blues management has said over and over, “We are going to follow the plan. We are going to follow the plan. We are going to follow the plan.” I am seeing, right now, that plan take off before my eyes.

(In case you want to see the goal I refer to above, you can find it on NHL’s site here.)

old.

There, I said it. Old. Old. Old. I can’t eat the same things I used to, at least not without ramifications. I can’t recover from injuries as quick as I used to; I feel the aches and pains of my activities far longer than before. My eyes aren’t as strong as they once were. My academic skills not as sharp. The change that bothers me the most though, is how big of a wuss I am.

When I was young, my mom once told me that I didn’t let minor illnesses slow me down. A mild cold would go unnoticed. A sore throat only noticed by a slightly raspy voice. She knew when I was really ill because only then would I complain about it.

Now, however, I complain at the slightest illness. If my nose starts to get stuffy, I’m done for the day. And forget about coming near me if my throat hurts; I’ll complain your ear off. Where I used to get awards in school for not missing a day, I now cannot get through a season without calling in sick.

Being sick sucks, now more than ever.