Faith

Until Later, AZ

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It seems just as soon as I got here I’m on the road again. It’s become a pretty exhausting constant in my life. There may have been one stretch in my life during COVID that I lived in the same place for a decent amount of time, but even that was broken up with army training and a road trip of over a month. Besides that stretch, I haven’t lived anywhere longer than six months since I was in college in 2017. It’s become a fact of my life, but that doesn’t make it any less tiring. This time I am leaving Arizona for Army training in Michigan which will lead to more training in other locations and then eventually to a deployment which will help to continue the theme.

My time in Arizona was spent during the hot summer months, but I still enjoyed it as much as I could. Working outdoors I got to see lots of great sunrises and sunsets. Once during monsoon season, I got to see a desert wash flood to the size of a major river. I had driven past it several times and never seen anything it in besides dry sand so I never imagined that it would completely fill and flow so heavily that you could row a canoe down it!

I was blessed to make good friends at work and outside of work. With friends from church, I had pool parties, watched fireworks, went on hikes, ate Sonoran hotdogs, and went to a Diamondbacks game. I made more friends training at jiu-jitsu and doing the Murph workout on Memorial day at a Crossfit gym. It’s amazing I made such good friends in such a short amount of time, and I’m blessed to have people in Arizona praying for me and anticipating my return.

Despite working outside in the heat all week, I still often went on hikes and explored Arizona’s nature in my free time. One of my favorite trips was going to Mount Lemmon in Tucson. It was 20-30 degrees cooler up the mountain and there were trees! After going so long without seeing trees that really made me happy!

I left Arizona and drove over 2,100 miles in two days to get to my family camping trip in Pennsylvania. It was a brutal trip with one night of three hours of sleep at a truck stop, but it was absolutely worth it to see my family and especially all four of my beautiful little nieces. It’s crazy to think my oldest niece is already 11! I missed Thanksgiving and Christmas for my work training and this upcoming deployment will have me missing them for a second straight year. That coupled with the fact that I live on the opposite side of the country and can’t visit them whenever I want really made me realize how precious these moments really are. It’s so interesting to see my nieces developing their own personalities and it’s also interesting to hang out with my brothers as adults. I really admire both of my brothers, but on paper, they are very different. Clifton is an electrical engineer working for a software company. Jon is a musician in a band and a worship director at a church. Despite those differences on the surface, it blows my mind how much we have in common and how we view life through a similar lens. I think it has a lot to do with my Christian upbringing from my parents. What we view as most important in all of our lives is a constant and I think that gives our relationships a mutual foundation and a greater appreciation for each other. I’m very thankful for great parents who raised us right. I am just so blessed to have the family that I do!

The camping trip was filled with hiking, paddle boarding, campfires, card games, and a lot of laughter and fun. When it came to my last day, I started to get quieter and more introspective as I knew my departure was approaching. I had to leave before everyone else so I could get to my army training and when I left, I gave out hugs to everyone in the parking lot of a hiking trail while trying to keep my emotions in check. It felt different than any other goodbye because I have very little control over when I can see my family again. The army will change its plans on a whim, and I will tag along for the ride. It’s a lot easier knowing I have the full support and prayers of my family behind me.

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” – Proverbs 17:17

Until Later, AZ

Southwest, BABY!!!

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I’ve spent over five months in the Southwest and it’s been a great experience, but it can feel boring at times, especially when you look around and all you see is flat land and knee-high brush plants. I miss trees! However, all it takes is a couple of hours drive and you can get a greater appreciation of the diversity in this part of the country. The three photos above are from a drive I took to Las Cruces to visit a friend and to go to church in person for the first time in a long while. The first picture is from the high-altitude mountain passage in Cloudcroft, NM. The second photo is from a quick stop at White Sand National Park where you can see beautiful white sand for miles and miles! The last photo is of the jagged Organ Mountains that overlook Las Cruces. Las Cruces as it turns out is actually quite a nice city with a big university and lots of nice shopping and things to do. I didn’t think that existed in New Mexico besides Albuquerque or Santa Fe!

Some classmates and I took a weekend trip to check out Carlsbad Caverns National Park! We did the hike down into the caverns and it was pretty awesome to roam around down there and see how massive these caverns really are! Reading about the history of the discovery was interesting as well. Some rancher’s teenage son discovered the entrance while riding his house looking for stray cattle. He ended up doing most of the discovery of the caverns himself.

One of my most recent trips was out to Amarillo, TX to visit my old high school friends Hans and Orie. Hans was called to be a pastor in Amarillo. It’s a special call because there isn’t currently a church there. I showed up for an evangelism weekend and I got paired up with Orie, Han’s brother, and we walked the neighbor spreading the word about Jesus’s love for us and about the new church they are starting. Hopefully, our effort will reach people’s hearts and that congregation can grow! There was a group of college students spending their spring break helping do the outreach as well so that was super fun to work with them. I’m starting to sound old myself saying this, but it is so refreshing to see so many young people at church! We had a lot of downtime to explore and eat out at some good restaurants. I had some great tacos and I had an awesome time exploring Palo Duro State Park with Hans and Orie! It is actually the second largest Canyon in the US behind the obvious Grand Canyon.

Time is flying and I only have two weeks left in New Mexico! After finishing training here I’ll be moving to Arizona to around the Phoenix area! While here I’m thankful for the friends I’ve made and for all the opportunities and good times visiting friends and seeing the Southwest!

Southwest, BABY!!!

New Year, New Me

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It’s been an odd New Year for me. Typically this is the time of year when I get all sentimental and I lament on all the things that have happened through the past year. I really like doing that because of the gratitude for the past year and excitement for the upcoming year it produces. This year, however, I went to bed at 11:30pm and I didn’t do a lot of reflecting. I guess this is me getting to it now.

This also isn’t a post to talk about my resolutions, though I do have a couple (retirement savings, read a book each month), but rather a post to talk about the lessons and mindset I learned in the past year that I will carry into the next year. Throughout the pandemic, most people have gotten pretty used to having their plans canceled or changed and I am no different. At times it has been pretty disheartening, but now standing on the other side of a new year I can see all the great things that God has done in my life despite the many failures of my own plans. It reminds me of Proverbs 19:21, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” That verse is a huge comfort to me and it is probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned in this past year.

That lesson was really cemented on my trip to Peru this past August. On Instagram, I posted a picture of me at Machu Picchu and this was the caption I put:

“This past year has not been at all what I thought it would be. I’ve had opportunities taken from me and failure has plagued the opportunities I did have. I’ve struggled to feel any semblance of progress in any aspect of where I thought I wanted my life to go. About two months ago I wrote a list of five goals I wanted to accomplish in the coming years. Already three of those goals probably won’t happen.

Nothing ever works out as expected. However, sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff. This trip has been a big perspective shift for me and really it has helped me rediscover the gratitude I have been lacking recently. God has been unbelievably good to me, even throughout this past year, and this picture is just one example of the unexpected good stuff.”

I think the moral of my story for 2021 can be well summarized by the Chinese proverb below:

“Sāi Wēng lived on the border and he raised horses for a living. One day, he lost one of his prized horses. After hearing of the misfortune, his neighbor felt sorry for him and came to comfort him. But Sāi Wēng simply asked, “How could we know it is not a good thing for me?”

After a while, the lost horse returned and with another beautiful horse. The neighbor came over again and congratulated Sāi Wēng on his good fortune. But Sāi Wēng simply asked, “How could we know it is not a bad thing for me?”

One day, his son went out for a ride with the new horse. He was violently thrown from the horse and broke his leg. The neighbors once again expressed their condolences to Sāi Wēng, but Sāi Wēng simply said, “How could we know it is not a good thing for me?” One year later, the Emperor’s army arrived at the village to recruit all able-bodied men to fight in the war. Because of his injury, Sāi Wēng’s son could not go off to war, and was spared from certain death.“

When I look at the experiences in my life in isolation they may appear black and white as either a good or a bad thing, but how many times have bad things led to things so much brighter than the good we were hoping for in the first place? The answer in my life is almost always. In my 2020 “Be on the Road” post I reflected on the last decade as I started 2020. In that post, you can see how the Lord’s purpose prevailed and His plans turned out so much greater and more fulfilling than my own plans ever could have! The point is that things don’t happen in isolation. Everything is connected in this life and you never know how one seemingly insignificant thing could affect everything.

  • The highest peak in Texas!

Another thing I realized in the past year with so many plans not coming to fruition was the importance of still living your life. You have to find things that make you feel alive! A lot of things are made more difficult because of Covid, but you have to find alternative things to do. What you can’t do is wait and do things that make you feel alive later. You never know if later will come. For me, nature is always open. Climbing mountains and exploring is the outlet for my adventurous spirit. The last thing I want is to be retired finally ready to do the things I’ve always wanted just to find out I’m too old to learn a new sport, to climb that mountain, or to go skiing in the Alps. Life is best lived with some urgency. If you want to do something do it now because you never know if you’ll get another opportunity.

The current job training I’m at is very physically demanding and an injury could mean that you will be sent home or pushed back and stuck here in this training environment longer. To a lot of people that means taking it easy and not taking any risks. I can’t argue with that and I completely understand that choice, but just like the proverb with the Chinese farmer, you never know what will happen. If I had stopped practicing jiu-jitsu, something that gives me immense joy, just because I was going to training soon I would have missed out on so much growth and improvement. The work training ended up getting delayed three times. If I had stopped jiu jitsu when I was supposed to start the first time I would have missed months of something I loved for nothing. Now, while I’m here training, I have an opportunity to explore parts of the country I’ve never seen before. I went skiing on an actual mountain for the first time in my life and it was amazing! I took fewer risks than I normally would have, but that still didn’t stop me from flying down the mountain with a giant grin on my face and falling a couple of times. If I didn’t do this now, I probably never would have the opportunity again. I have some big long-term Army things coming up in the future shortly after I finish work training here. If I had that timid conservative attitude about getting hurt it would be cumulatively two years before I would be able to do the things I want to do. To me, that’s not what life is for and it’s not living.

This upcoming year for me is about living life with urgency and enjoying every moment I can. Life moves fast and you never know how much time you really have. It’s also about embracing the “good” and the “bad” because you never truly know the impact those moments have in your life. The only thing I do know is that it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails!

New Year, New Me