Five CT scans, four IV catheter needle pokes, three shots in the butt

Being a college student, the obvious topic of conversation and easy conversation starter was "So what are you doing for spring break?"  Almost every time I responded with a joyful recognition that yes, I was going home and was looking forward to being lazy and not doing homework 24/7.  Until Tuesday night.  When I got invited to go on a roadtrip by some high school friends.  A roadtrip to Phoenix, Vegas and San Diego.  All in a span of four days.  Ridiculous? Yes.  But we were going to make it fun and crazy.  We had been on miniature road trips and had a blasty blast.  This one was massive in comparison to those, but I figured it was an extremely rare chance to get to do something crazy awesome with some friends.  We ended up modifying the trip to make it more reasonable (mostly thanks to Trevor's pleading and urging).  Mom and Dad didn't even put up a fight.  It was so easy it was weird.  So I was getting my hopes up and prepping for an awesome now-5-day trip across our beautiful country.

Then this morning I woke up and felt like my appendix was going to explode.  Half an hour later (of course immediately after calling my mom), the pain went away.  Strange, but totally ok.  Until half an hour later when my back started hurting and I got nauseas.  And kept getting worse and worse till I was in extreme pain.  My dad brought me to the doc and we found out I have a kidney stone.  I actually have two but ones still in the kidney which is completely fine, except that that means I'll have to get it out sometime in the future as well. 

Instead of doing surgery, they're making me do it myself.  No, not do it myself as in perform surgery on myself, but I have to pee it out sometime, otherwise there will be surgery.  I almost wish they would have said surgery, so I could just get it over with instead of waiting and waiting and feeling pretty crappy.  It would also be way easier for me, although I don't think I would enjoy one quite invasive method of the procedure my dad reassuringly told me about while we waited (use your imagination).  Besides, health conditions are way more epic when you need surgery. 

So..spring break is looking a lot like the original plan, minus working for now.  Its really disappointing, because I was looking forward to being spontaneous instead of cautious and calculating like usual.  But I guess thats not the plan, so I'm gonna try to make the best of it while waiting to pee out a coconut. 

I can finally say this without getting tagged as a mopey, bitter man

I do not like Valentine's day. 


I've never been allowed to say that, because I've always been single on V-day.  And if you say you hate valentine's day while you're single, people automatically assume you're bitter and lonely.  They would have been so right, because I was always so bitter and lonely on V-day.  Every year.  Boy, was I miserable.  Not. 

I just never got why it turned into such a big deal.  Couples automatically got all mushy come this time of year and went to great lengths to have the perfect valentine date.  Single people moped around and whined about how they didn't have anything to do on valentine's day with anyone special.  It's stupid.  Why does a certain day of the year have to bring that out?  Life is normal, then suddenly its February 14 and most people freak out like they're either getting married the next day or they're going to die alone because on this one day out of their whole lives they don't have that someone special right now. 
Maybe i'm just cynical.  sure i guess it's nice for people to be able to have a special day.  it's a good reason for some quality time with your significant other.  I just don't like what it does to the single people.  Or more laccurately, what they do with it.  I was single for every other valentine's day  of my life, and i was fine.  Me and my (non-taken) boys would treat it just like every other saturday  night when the other guys had dates.  We survived.  Somehow.
 Valentine's day should just be less of a big deal.  But as long as ads can suck consumers into chocolate and flower spending sprees,  I don't think it'll die down.


then again, there's  a giant basket of cookies and candy on my desk from my mom. 

maybe valentine's day isn't so bad.

I guess I DO have a loyal reader

Jordan Vogel is awesome.

Something Catchy to Grab your Attention

Well..I was finally going to put the link to this on facebook to draw in a huge fanbase and loyal readers and stuff.  And then i realized that when i added the link, it showed my latest blog.  Whose first words involved "Core 100".  At that point, I thought to myself, "Wow, what a great way to make anyone at Dordt College lose interest in my blog immediately."  Hence, this post.  Just filler.  To suck you all in to read this.  And in this case, "all" likely consists of three people.  Maybe four if I'm lucky. 

The other day I realized that most of the time when I write in here, my blogs talk mostly about blogging.  And here I am again, blogging about blogging.  I'll try to stop that.  But no promises.  Please keep reading?

Redemption's Song

This was for my Core 100 project.  I know, I know, its Core 100, I didn't need to try so hard, but once I got started I wanted it to be good.  Whether it is or not is debatable and up to you.  As with that other super long thing I wrote, this is meant to tell a story, so the rhyming might be subpar.  Oh, and this is exaggerated to make a point.  So when it seems extreme, thats why.  and stuff





Just below heaven and right above hell

Mankind is caught in between where he dwells

We are the children of Adam and Eve

Who’ve followed their footsteps by being deceived

Created and cared for by God’s loving hand

That kept us from falling before we could stand

But we took the promises given to us

And threw them away and we tore down his trust

We turned our backs on the hope that we had

And left him behind as we never looked back

We lost ourselves wandering through the night

Stumbling further away from the light

Refusing to listen to that guiding voice,

We’ve set all our traps on our own legs by choice

You come to us, begging us only to stay

But you find us crawling the opposite way

You’ve offered us hope in return for our lives

A chance at rebirth and an end to the fight

But our swollen eyes are too blind to behold

Our one chance at rescue from this hellish hole

You stand at the top of the pit where we lay

Where we’ve dug out holes that will soon become graves

You’ve thrown us a rope and you’ve offered us help

But we take the rope and instead hang ourselves

We’ve burned every bridge made for us to get home

And instead choose to drown in the waters below

But in comes the mercy that holds us afloat

And grace like a viper that won’t let us go

What once seemed irrep’rable begins to mend

When Angels like ambulances now descend

Cherubim sing like the sirens that sound

“What once had been lost is eternally found”

They wing me above from the hell down below

And pick up the pieces of me as they go

Ascension so swift and so far from my death

To places much greater than from where I left

Broken and beaten, I’m laid on the clouds

And brought up above where a voice cries aloud

“My child, what is it you’ve done to yourself?

What is this disaster you’ve brought on yourself?

I formed your frail body when you were conceived

And made you like me so that you could be free

So what are these chains doing tied ’round your limbs

And whose are these shackles that bind up your hands?

I gave you a life and my love from the start

But you took my promise and tore it apart

I made you, my child, but now you’ve gone astray

You lived in my fold but you wandered away”

At this I cry out as I fall to my knees

“Oh God, can there be any mercy for me?

You gave me your all and I gave you my worst

Your love I’ve trampled and your name I’ve cursed

I’ve broken your heart and betrayed you again

I’m sorry for everything I ever did”

But from his right hand came a man much like me

With holes in his hands and scars on his feet

He looked at me sadly as tears wet his cheeks

He stepped to me as he spoke these words to me

“I know who you are and I know where you’ve been

I’ve walked down the same beaten path you once did

Temptations you’ve felt and the choices you’ve faced

I’ve walked through those trials, but never betrayed

And though you have faltered and fallen instead

I’ve helped you back up time and time again

I wept for you, bled for you, suffered and died

Only so that I could give you new life”

“But how can you love me with all that I’ve done?

I’m no more to you than your prodigal son

My voice yelled loudest to urge your arrest

My hands held hammers that nailed through your flesh ”

I looked at Him hopelessly, turning away

He turned me around and he stopped me to say

“My love for you has no beginning or end

I’ve cared for you since long before time began

And now that you’re here, you won’t ever forget

The mercy I’ve shown you that canceled your debts

So lift up your head, wipe the tears from your face

Son, you’re forgiven for all your mistakes”

I cannot believe all these things I’ve just heard

I cannot describe what I’ve witnessed with words

I stand before God and the angels above

Amazed by the reaches and depths of this love

The judge and the jury are at my defense

And show the accusers my new innocence

The curse has been lifted, the devil brought down
Hell and her fury cannot touch us now

Never again will I come to see harm

Forever I’m held in my God’s loving arms

Choirs of angels sing redemption’s song

While my father faithfully carries me on

The end

"i'm going to live again"

today i stopped home to grab some cold meds and my phone rebate(long overdue). This past Sunday my Grandma Bierma was hospitalized with pneumonia and the last week has been spent basically waiting for her to pass away. This isn't a sudden development because ..well, to put it simply, she's old. She's spent 92 years on earth, and recently, each one of those years has weighed down on her health. I think our whole family has been anticipating this day, and not anticipating in the excited sense of the word, but has seen this day coming, especially in the last several years. On my sixteenth birthday, she passed out in our living room chair, and ever since, I've slowly been preparing myself for when this would happen, and now it is. At home my mom stopped in the house in the middle of calf chores, and just reminded me again of how uncertain the next few days are. After talking to her a little bit, I drove back to Dordt, and since its cold and I rarely use my car, I don't leave any cd's in my car. Driving in silence is not often something I relish, so naturally, I turned on the radio. Confession: I usually skip over the Christian music station in my browsing. The music doesn't always interest me, and I usually use it as a backup plan. However, today I checked it and the song Smile by Chris Rice was on.


blogger is being ridiculous and not letting me copy and paste

but the chorus goes

i just wanna be with you

i just want this waiting to be over

i just wanna be with you

and it helps to know the day is getting closer

every minute takes an hour

every inch feels like a mile

till i won't have to imagine

and i finally get to see you smile

and the second verse:

my journey's here but my heart is there

so i dream and wait, and keep the faith, while you prepare

our destiny, till you come back for me

oh, please make it soon

After my grandpa died 7 years ago, I distinctly remember hearing this same song on the radio. And I remember feeling the same comfort from it that I did today. While this song is more about our time left on earth and hoping for heaven, so it would seem to be a great song for those us with years and years left on the earth. However, here it felt so applicable to a dying grandmother. She's spent ninety-two years toiling her way through the good times and bad of this life, and it appears that her days of struggle will soon be over. Her wait is short, and her journey is almost done, but she's about so see what we should be hoping to see. She can sing this song more authentically than anyone else I know.

We rarely think of life as a time where we wait to go to heaven. Our lives are like standing in line at Walmart with the coolest product we could possibly imagine, just waiting for finally be checked out and get to use this sweet product. We should be excited and want to get through the line so we can finally open up the box and rip out the packing products and own it, but we're so occupied with standing in line that we forget what the point of standing in line is. We distract ourselves the whole way to the register, looking at magazines or grabbing a few more trinkets to buy, occasionally letting other people go before us. We stall as long as we can, choosing to just stand there with the box instead of checking out and opening it to what's inside.

Maybe thats a bad metaphor, but I feel like that's how I'm living my life, and that's how a lot of us do. Do I really just want this waiting to be over? I can't say I'm spending my life anticipating leaving this world, and if I was told "the day is getting closer" I'd be freaked out that my death was coming up(and even more creeped out someone knew that), not excitedly waiting to go.

My extended family has exchanged many emails the past few days, and one included some of the few things my grandma has been able to speak during her periods of consciousness when my uncle, her oldest son, was with her this morning. She said in distress,

"I'm going to die. I'm going to die"

Seconds later, she spoke again.

"I'm going to live again. I'm going to live again."

Oh Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll

The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend

Even so, it is well with my soul

surprise!

thats right, loyal readers, your eyes aren't fooling you.
I've decided to try to start blogging again. exciting, isn't it. I originally started this blog because I thought it'd be a nice way to let out all those pent-up thoughts online on a blog where no one would read them. Well, either those thoughts obviously didn't need to be released all that badly, or I didn't have the time or desire to write them. When I quit, I thought to myself, "when you're a college student with loads of free time and inspirational deep thoughts, you'll blog more". "You'll be so bored you'll have nothing better to do but blog". "you will be a sophisticated young man attending college and your words will be read by all those other sophisticated college students whose blogs you'll also read." False. ha. free time? False. Its hard to be bored with no free time and girls who force you to hang out with them(which i guess is an ok problem to have). False. I am not sophisticated. And do not currently read any blogs.
So why start blogging again?
Beats me. Maybe this will last even shorter than it did last time. Maybe I'm just thinking I'll start again because I'm very bored on this Sunday evening, but when real life starts again, this will fall to the bottom of the priority list(don't be surprised if that happens). but maybe I'll keep writing. Just because I enjoy it. And maybe you will too.

I wrote that week ago..and i'm just posting it now. i thought about just not posting that and pretending i never wrote it and leaving the blog out in the cold even longer. but obviously i decided to try it. wish me luck.