My name is Joel and this is my blog.

I don’t know what it is, but being at home drains the life out of me. I can’t seem to live my own life without something interrupting it. No I don’t mean people need help and I want to be selfish and just live my own life and let them be, but more along the lines that I am told how to live my life by those closest to me. I’ve had a rant post before this but I realize it’s those who are closest to me that that do this. It’s almost like I can never make anyone happy and in result I’m not happy. I really miss the sense of fellowship in college and without it I can see my walk with God not going so well. I wish my church had a sustainable college fellowship, it is one of the cons in being a commuter church. People from all boroughs makes it hard to fellowship. In two years everyone should be back and we’ll see how it goes from there. I was looking at twitter today and I ran by this verse:

Better to be patient than powerful; better to have self-control than to conquer a city.

What powerful words…This is something I definitely struggle with…How is it that I find it easy to get things done for church whether it’s worship stuff or fellowship stuff, yet I find it so hard to fight battles of self-control in my own life? Well, I ask you guys just pray for me as I continue on here at home being miserable, because it’s taking a lot more patience than I thought and a surely a lot more patience than I can bear.

I prayed a prayer not too long ago asking God to humble my heart. I’ve been living on the easy track for the past couple of months and I must confess my life has been full of sloth and gluttony. I remember the reason for my prayer: so that I could live life more Christ-like. Well let me go with the first thing that has been bothering me: my job. My job consists of calling people and asking them if they want to take an accident prevention course. Well for one, I am not used to asking people that I don’t know to do things, and number two I am not used to people rejecting me. I will be totally honest with you, I am not used to rejection. I am used to people liking me and when I find out someone doesn’t like me, I choose to just ignore them or not think about it. It might be a sense of pride that I have in myself that I don’t really think of consciously but it is sub-consciously there. I know I am a likable person but it isn’t something I flaunt. Every single call that I make I am scared to death of the person rejecting me. This has been bothering me for some time now and you might say “Joel, just leave the job and find something else that is easier… Well, I think God might actually have a plan for me, he might be building me mentally and emotionally to give me a tiny, JUST a tiny fraction of what it was like for Jesus to be rejected. I know this will build my character and even though I suck at this job I’ll continue on with it. In the beginning I was all about the money for this job…But…The money doesn’t mean much to me anymore as I’m trying to use this to better myself. This is another reason why I am scared to evangelize, knowing full well that I have EXCELLENT NEWS for a person but being scared of rejection. Maybe this is a way for God to prepare me for something. Like, “Okay Joel…I know you aren’t good at spreading the good news, but here, let me start you off with something smaller, just call people and ask them to take this driving course and maybe soon you’ll understand how it feels like to be rejected”. It may sound dumb but this is something I am actually really scared of… Like REALLY scared of. The funny thing is though…I’m not really that afraid of public speaking, I’m more afraid of one to one conversations because it’s more personal. So I sit there with all these thoughts going through my head as I’m about to call the next person, and in anticipation as I’m waiting and the phone rings, no one picks up. I continue this over and over again and 80-90% of the time no one picks up…I know I’ll get used to this after a while but I have a feeling God is using this so I can share this in a testimony: “I was once deathly afraid of evangalism…I didn’t know where to start and everytime I got rejected I became more and more discouraged…Up to the point where I decided to stop…Then God had other plans for me, he gave me an opportunity to talk to others but the consequences of them rejecting me for this other good news (saving 10% on your car insurance) were not as big, but it was still rejection. In this world as Christians, we will be rejected and spit upon…And God is starting me somewhere small…”The number two thing that has been bothering me  is school. I am only taking a three credit course but how is it that I find it so hard to study? It’d ridiculously hard for me to take an hour or two of my day just to study…Maybe it’s because this job situation is bothering me so much. I have it all planned out…I work from Monday to Wednesday, and maybe sometimes squeeze in a Saturday if I need the cash, and then study some everyday…But the more free time I have…The harder it is to study and the bigger hole I dig myself into as I procrastinate. I need to study more and I plan to right after this post. The number three thing that has been bothering me is my family. Being at home so much, I am going insane having to deal with my parents. My parents don’t ever really compliment…At least not me. I would say of all my siblings, I am the most care-free. It might be because I am the youngest so I am spoiled to death, but they don’t really compliment me. They call me lazy, careless, messy, unorganized and time and time again they keep comparing me with other people. At first it didn’t phase me, but after a while it started to bother the crap out of me. Word’s can do a lot of damage to people, and even though my parents mean well it bothers me a lot. I don’t have any privacy here at home and that also affects me when I am trying to WORK. How the crap do I make calls when I have my mom walking around distracting me?! It’s hard enough as it is but she is always bothering me somehow! Time and time again I tell myself to just find a job where I can be outside of home and not be bothered here but like I said…No more taking the easy way out…

With all that said, I feel hopeless but God is telling me to press on. In time all will be well… It may not be tomorrow…It may not be next week but it will be soon. I think all of this could be dealt with if I just learn to humble myself. One of favorite quotes come from C.S. Lewis

Humility is not thinking less of yourself…But thinking of yourself less

I need to stop thinking “what if this person rejects ME”, or “why can’t my parents just leave ME alone”, and just stop thinking about my own pride and selfishness and start to think about others…I don’t know…I feel kind of depressed. I don’t know what it is, it may be the fact that I am not in college and this transition home is so harsh…Who knows. All I know is that God is sculpting me and he has plans for me. Well if you read through this whole thing, thanks for having interest in my life…And dang you must be bored! It’s mad long so I’m not even going to bother to proofread it. PEACE.

I NEED SOME MOTIVATION.

So I have a big list of things I need to do but couldn’t get done because I was just so dang busy. So the things I needed to do for the past week was.

• Start Working
• Apply for Binghamton’s Nursing School
• Train in Table Tennis (since I have a tournament coming up)
• Start Studying for Microbiology
• Write a Song for WTFoodge
• Help Edit a Video for my staff worker in IV so she can gather up money

Now here are the reasons why I couldn’t get most of that done:

• I visited Stony Brook to buy the book needed for class and catch up with some people for about two and a half days
• I had to eat with my dad’s side of the family on Saturday morning and my mom’s side on Saturday night
• I had church on Sunday
• On Sunday I actually went to the toy fair and it was pretty sick (I’ll write more about it later if I have the time)
• I had to pick up my bro from the hospital because he had surgery to remove a lymph node on his leg…Even though upon picking him up he was walking fine and dandy like nothing ever happened

This is what I plan on getting done today

• Get a few calls in for my job and hopefully get some customers
• Ask Bing what supplementals they need from me
• Study some microbio

So some dude named Kevin Ong came to speak at IV about Christian dating on Thursday. God has convicted me over the years to only look for Christians when dating. I have learned some serious lessons back in the day in attempt to date non-Christians. I pray and hope that my wife (when and if I get married) loves God more than I do so we can encourage each other to grow in Christ and not just have Him to the side in daily living and only worship him when I go to church or fellowship but really worship Him in my marriage in ALL that I do. When I slip she can encourage me and point me towards God. There is something REALLY attractive about a girl who is in love with God. Of course there are other standards I have, but at first place is that I want my wife to be truly in love with God. This has been in my heart for a long time and just as Kevin Ong has said and challenged us to do; I’ll be praying for my wife.

Wow, it feels like it has been an eternity since the last time I was here. Upon stepping out of the LIRR as it pulled into Stony Brook station, I felt this bittersweet feeling inside of me. Bitter because I know full well that I’m not a full-time student here at Stony, sweet because I get to spend the next 3 days here with my family. I met up with a bunch of brothers from IV to eat dinner at Denny’s and it was a great time of catching up. Something I miss so dearly about college is eating late at night. There is something very liberating about eating late at night: no parents to tell you what to do, just having a good time. This feeling makes me want to stay here but I know in a day I’ll be back home, boring home… (sigh)