I also wanted to say that I realize that not once have I ever mentioned God on a blog before. Although I may have referenced him in one particular entry back on livejournal... I rarely ever mention God here, if ever.

To be honest, I haven't actively thought about him (Him, whichever... He gets the point) that much in my life when you consider how long I've been living. Yes, I have had moments where I have felt very... moved by him in some way. But even just thinking about today, God wasn't really in my thoughts that much today. I realize that I haven't been making that large of a commitment to keeping him first in my life, even though I'm entirely indebted to him for what he did. and will do. But I do want to change that though. I've been wanting to change that about myself for the longest time now... ever since middle school. But it's taken me this long to get to it... because I've just been lazy or too caught up in my own life.

I remember back when high school was first starting, I made my New Year's Resolution (or later should I say weekly resolution) to someday finally get baptized. To fully commit to God like I said I would when I first made that prayer in middle school. And I would keep telling myself this every week, and pray every night about it... and then I started forgetting. I knew in the back of my head that I was drifting away, but I didn't do anything about it. I started seeing things in high school in a different light, feeling more critical about how a lot of Christians don't see or refuse to see things in the same light non-Christians do. I mean that in the sense that they refuse to empathize with them. They judge people for being gay, atheist, not living up the standard of Jesus. I realize this in itself is a really general statement, but it has happened and will continue to happen. But anyway, this bugged me a lot... since I had come from a conservative environment where some of these things had been ingrained into my head. Or I had seen it expressed by my teachers and peers. And that isn't the way I think things should work, if God really loves everyone. So I started drifting away from God for basically all of high school. I still attended church every so often and would be momentarily moved sometimes, but I didn't go to youth group at all (which was one of my favorite things about middle school), and I didn't read the Bible much from what I can recall. I even laughed sometimes at the apparent ridiculousness of some of the things present in organized religion.

Then I came to Berkeley, and I did not expect to get involved with religion in any way, or at least for a while. I didn't go to church for maybe 3 months, didn't have a Bible available like I did at home, didn't really express a Christian sentiment of anything other than occassionally telling people that I was Christian or came from that background. but God certainly wasn't on my mind at the time.

And then I finally met Jason. Not in the literal sense; I'd known Jason for maybe a couple of months. But I started seeing Jason for the kind of person he was when he was alone, in our room, reading his Bible intensely or praying or committing himself to those things that I had distanced myself from for the past 4 years. I remember when he first added me on facebook and I saw that he had a Bible verses application and everything... I almost was concerned that I might be rooming with some "religious fanatic" or something like that. But when I finally met him, I came to respect him for what he did... because not many people that I knew could make the kind of devotion or commitment that he did.

Around this time, I started going to church with Ryan, Olivia, Melissa, and Eric, as seeing Jason gone every Sunday started making me think about at least doing that as well. Although God wasn't really on my mind at this point as much as I was thinking about the obligation I felt to go if I were to still call myself a Christian. So I went, and it was not bad. but I didn't go every time, though.

Well, I'll just skip a few points and basically say that one night in February, while Jason was sleeping and I was alone in the room, I had this sudden epiphany - or thought - that God had made me room with Jason for a reason. Because I had seen Jason go out and do the things that I had secretly always wanted to commit to when I was younger but never got to. And finding out that he had only just gotten into Christianity later in high school got me, because I felt that he had grown in the span of a couple of years ten times as much as I had in a decade. And I was jealous- of his personal achievements, of his integrity, of his naivete- it all just struck me. So yeah, that night, I came to this thought that God had been the one who put Jason in MY life. After all these years of me scoffing at the thought of God actually doing what our world dictates is by coincidence.

And I cried that night. Literally.

Okay, so maybe the tears weren't coming out like they did when I was... 6, but I remember feeling teary-eyed for sure. Sniffling a little bit. I didn't understand why God hadn't given up on me by that point. I didn't understand what I had done to get a roommate like Jason in my life - someone who had been determined otherwise by chance, by a lottery. Why did other people get to have bad or nonexistent roommate experiences and I got to have a roommate whose presence in my life made me freaking cry tears of happiness for the first time in 7 years? All I knew was that this kind of feeling, this kind of sensation, this kind of euphoria was something only God could have done. I found it hard to understand when other people would speak about how God would explicitly tell them things in their lives- like to move to this location, to pursue this job, to speak to this person- I felt that I had never experienced anything of that sort since my first prayer to God as a child, that I had merely imagined that God answered my prayers when I saw little good things happen. I wondered why I kept falling into the same loop every year of telling myself I would commit to God when I only halfheartedly felt that way to begin with. I thought that maybe my child mind was too naive to understand things in this way back then, so that now that I was an adult, I would be over it all.

But here I was, in a freshman college dorm room, having this sudden epiphany - and I was telling myself that this feeling was the feeling that I had been searching for all along. That this was what it really felt like to be answered by God- particularly in a way that I had never expected. I never anticipated college to work out the way that it did - and I have to say that it is probably the best experience I have ever had in my life.

So well, after that, I started attending IV CCF Large Group, although I was feeling partly consumed by work (which is another topic of its own) and was partially in and out of the loop for another year. And although I was feeling more inclined towards God, I was still having God-less moments and it was bugging me. I felt that the process of me starting to get back in a regular relationship with God was going to take five times as long as everyone else I knew or saw at CCF. And then something different happened this semester... I don't know how or why, I made the effort to attend every large group at least because I was feeling bad about missing out a lot last semester. I felt bad because Tim had prayed for me the one night I had come from my first EE20 midterm and mentioned how he was glad that I had been able to come to consistently come to small group - and then I didn't show up for about 3 weeks. I was going through a workaholic stage... it wasn't pretty.

So then things started building up to a point where this one speaker, a woman named Dana, starting talking about prayer and its importance with relevance to the passage in Matthew of Jesus in the desert being tempted by the devil. And I don't know how to put it, but something came out of the message that stood out to me. The second realization, that my identity was in Jesus Christ as a son of God. That that was the reason that God loved me. And so, I finally mustered the courage to do something I had never done before in my life by myself - I got up to talk to a member of the prayer team, who just my luck that night happened to be Ryan. and we prayed. and it was awesome.

It's been a rough ride, with some ups and downs these last few weeks, but I've been feeling better about myself. I still feel that I've been having trouble keeping God first in my thoughts, and that somedays I'll go through moments where I almost just forget that he's there. But it's been in moments like now that I realize that he's there, that's he's always listening. and today I figured that it was about time that I mentioned this here, the place where I store all my random side thoughts that I feel like jotting down. Because God is in my life more than all of the other petty little things I worry about- and he does deserve that much here, at least. So I digress.

I just wanted to thank everyone who God has put in my life to this day. This not just including the people who I've been able to talk to about God. This means everyone I know. Even the people who I've had issues with before.

I realize I had this conversation with Johny before about whether or not I really do appreciate him or whatever- because whenever I say things, it's hard to construe how much of them I actually mean- I suppose I can't say what he really thinks, but I will make this clear now Johny, I do appreciate you. Just for being there. And thanks for giving me those extra warnings after I dropped you off at your house that one Friday night - it really meant a lot to me. And okay now I'm just being sappy.

I realize that this kind of topic would be hard for people who aren't Christian to follow or get... but that's fine. I feel that these kinds of feelings are best explored on your own- from what I can say of my experience, people shouldn't be telling you how you should think or how you should act or what you should believe in. That's something that you really need to discover for yourself... and although it does seem as though all these beliefs just fundamentally contradict if you only believe in one of them... I believe that there is an answer that God will reveal in his own time regarding that. But I don't feel the need to convert or change people or do whatever they call it- it's more a matter of expressing my personal experiences and letting others make what they will of it. If it's not something you dig, then whichever. I'm fine with that.

And on another note, I am totally screwed for this week. Why am I going to bed at 7:50 AM... -_-