How do you ride?

So my life is riding past me faster than I can track, almost faster than I can control. There'll be no more grade school ever... soon there'll be no more summer... soon there'll be no more college... soon there'll be a family, employment, retirement, and all that falls in between. In the blink of an eye it will all be here and past, like two athletes riding by on a double bicycle.
Thanks to an amazingly simple yet deeply true analogy from someone at my church, I got to thinking just how my life could be like and where I should be aiming to have it. The double bicycle is my life, and there are two athletes available to command it, one being myself and the other being Jesus. The front of the bike is the steering and direction while the back does most of the pedaling and movement. I could choose to ride that bike myself, however without Jesus I'll quickly end up winded and powerless and without the strength to keep myself from crashing or steering off some cliff. I could choose to put Jesus in the back to do all the pedaling while I steer. I'll take all the benefits Jesus gives me, and I'll let Him give me power, but I'll decide where to take my life and I'll be in control. The ideal situation, and what I'm aiming for, is to put Jesus in the front and me in the back. Jesus will steer me in the right direction and also give me the extra strength I need to do His will, and I will just give Him my all.
The question remains, how do you want to ride? I want Jesus in the front of my bike, steering my life in the right direction, and I've made a commitment to strive for that from now on. If my life is going to fly by, I want Jesus in control of it.

One more test...

...and it is finished. N I C E

Beginning of the end of the beginning

I've got a week and a day before graduation, and no school anymore except for a single test. It's crazy, but it's awesome to think about as well. God has a plan for me in the future, and I can't wait to see it out. My biggest problem will be following His lead, since being led by faith is something I haven't experienced for anything so big before, such as a career path and such. Reminds me of the scene from Star Wars where Luke is lifting rocks and Yoda and R2D2. Afterwards, Yoda asks Him to move his X-Wing out of the water. Luke says "Master, moving rocks is one thing but this is totally different." Yoda replies "No! No different. Only different in your mind." Luke's attempt fails because he doesn't believe he can do it. In the same way, I treat big decisions like the X-Wing. I would find it difficult make one of those decisions based on faith or feeling unless I really strongly believed it was God's will. Sometimes I think making small decisions based on faith is totally different, but it's not. God puts situations and feelings and people into our lives to help show us His will for us. We need to believe in it and pray about it and follow those leads where they take us. And we can't go halfway. Yoda puts it best when he says "Do or do not. There is no try."

Two dogs

An old wise tale recently told to me goes something like this:

Once there was a Native American elder. He once told his tribe very plainly "Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all of the time." The tribe listened intently to his short tale, and with curiosity, they asked "Which dog wins?" After a brief moment of reflection he replied "The one I feed the most."

There is a part of the story that goes unmentioned, but for me it is implied. I've never let the dogs die. I feed one or the other for some time and they wound each other day in and day out. Sometimes they get severely beaten, but every time I will bring them back with a defibrillator or some sort of pick me up. I've seen them both on the deathbed, but they always come back.

I want the good dog to win, so the solution is obvious. But can I do it? Yes. Will I do it? Yes. The bad dog needs to die.

It's over...

Clearly it took me until I got my yearbook this morning to realize what is happening. 21 days from now I'll have completed high school. It will be the biggest transition in my life as I say goodbye to so many people and so many things. And in their place will be new things and new people. People that I've known for my whole life will be out of my life, most perhaps for good. It's a gut-wrenching feeling, and it brought me much closer to an emotional outbreak than I've been in a long, long while. So many things I wish I could take back over the years, but so many more things I wish I had done, so many relationships I wish I had developed more. I did a lot, but missed out on a lot, and the beauty and curse of time is that I can't go back and change it. This part of my life is over. But it wouldn't be so hard to accept that if those that I care about had a secure future. And I'm not talking about a future in their schooling, in their careers, in their families. I'm talking about eternity. My friends will be driving away after graduation perhaps the happiest they've ever been and perhaps with the "carpe diem" live life to the fullest attitude in their hearts. Perhaps in the future their lives will be awesome, and they will die at an old age content men and women. But that doesn't matter to me. None of that matters. The time here can't even be compared, can't even be considered, can't even be measured, can't even be seen in comparison to eternity. And what have I been able to do during these 12 long years to prepare them for it? Apparently not very much. It leaves a gaping hole in my heart to know that the seeds I've planted in their hearts have not yet grown or may never grow. Perhaps they are not even healthy seeds...

I haven't cried for nearly a year, and besides that time I probably haven't for about three or four. I'm not a very emotional guy on the outside. I have trouble expressing things or even feeling things that others may find devastating. When my grandpa passed away, even then I couldn't cry, and I miss him so much... But when I do get upset nowadays, I feel it inside me; I feel the symptoms, I feel the signs. When I think that this is all over, especially for my influence on my friends, I get that way. It's a tough burden to bear. My only hope is that the end of school is not the end of my relationship with my friends. My only hope is that I still have a chance to share with my friends the greatest gift they could ever receive.