Retrospective Blogging

After reading blogs from Stephen Christian (lyricist/singer for Anberlin), I decided to make my own really amazing blog. But as I logged in to go create it, I found this and I started reading all of my posts. I feel like I need to talk about it a little. I had actually planned to do this before, but I think that I was going to try to have that "I learned a lot because of Summit and it made me a better person..." sort of a speech. Now that I can look back at what I wrote and be a little bit more objective since it has been a year and it is almost like someone else wrote it, I think I will comment on my Summit experience from 07-08, even if it's only for me.

I see some recurring themes in these blogs. The first is girls. There were a lot of girls at Summit and I hung out with a lot of them. Megan, Julia, Allison, Brittney, girl in the red dress (I later found out that her name is Lauren), Alex, Tana, Jocelyn, Allee, girl in the red top (not to be confused with the girl in the red dress because they are two different people), and, of course, my sophomore year love, Jodi, who is Tana's sister. It would happen to me. I'm really not sure what to think about this. To be honest, I really didn't hang out with a lot of them that much. The two girls in red clothing I never hung out with. I saw Megan and Julia 3 or 4 times, but never really got quality time with them. I hung out with Jocelyn and Allee for only a half an hour at best. I only met Allison and Brittney on the last night, so I really didn't hang out with them that much. I met Tana the day of games and we were playing so the majority of my interaction with her was me going up to her and telling her "That was for you" and blowing her a kiss while I was running sprint relay. The only person I really enjoyed the company of for any length of time was Alex, who I ran off to see a great number of times (as you can see from my blog). To me, I think this shows that my mind was in a completely different place. I was not at all interested in team unity. I felt that the last 7 months gave us that and that this was my week. In my defense, I will never see these girls again, and I wanted to be with the friends I'd made over the last two years and meet some new ones. But I probably shouldn't have run off while my team was competing, as boring as it was for me, and I should have considered eating dinner with them the final night, instead of immediately making up my mind that Brian and I were going to meet girls and spend the night with them.

The second thing I noticed when rereading this was my inability to take any sort of blame. I can't even count the number of times I claimed that I was going to throw up. I know at least one of those is true, but as for the rest, I honestly don't remember. I'm pretty sure I made that up as an excuse for playing poorly and to make myself look better. Sort of a Kirk Gibson "Look at me! I'm playing through the pain," sort of thing. I will put blame on anyone and anything if it is within reason because I can't handle it when I screw up. I expect myself to be perfect and, when I'm not, it drives me insane. The only way I get relief is by putting the blame on anything that isn't me. I still do this a great deal of the time and I have literally convinced myself that things are not my fault, even though I knew in the beginning they are. I am so bad, that I have literally rewritten history so that I could get relief about my short comings.

The third thing I noticed was that I am an arrogant SOB. I already knew this of course, but I was never doign any of this "for the fame of His name". I was doing this "for the fame of my name". There were times when things got so bad that I had to go back and reevaluate everything and see that I was messing up and that I needed God to help me get back on track, but that never lasted. I am just like Israel. I'm just like Nebuchadnezzar. I never learn the message the first time. I have to hear it again and again.

Now that I have addressed the fact that I am arrogant and prideful and realize it, I want to say this. A lot of things transpired between Andy and I and I was definitely wrong in a few places. However, me threatening to pull him out of tug was not because I was prejudiced. I would have done it if Brian decided to tell Everett and me "no" and I would have done it if Arielle had said "no". The captain, with the backing of the coach, told him to change the way he was doing something and he flat out said "I'm not doing it your way." Fact is, the first two or three times I asked him, I was polite about it. And when he continually said "no", that is when I got offended and unleashed all hell on him. In this instance, I was not wrong. It's that simple.

After the initial rage of him slapping me in the middle of a club one night, I let it go. I still comment on it from time to time, but not because I dislike him. Simply because I was, and still am, shocked that he would actually get up and do that. I have long since forgiven him for it and I don't have anything against him anymore. I should not have harbored contempt for him as long as I did and I'm sorry that I did that.

I really didn't learn anything about me beyond the fact that 1) I care about me a lot, 2) I care about girls, 3) I'm arrogant and prideful off the wazoo, 4) I do things for me and not for God, and 5) I'll do anything to not be wrong.