Exit 38 and Jesus...

The days here just keep getting more and more interesting...or perhaps just more and more "different".
I went to sleep at two o'clock in the morning yesterday after a long day of garage sailing in my relatives' relative's house, only to woken at eleven thirty by the sound of my telephone vibrating. I knew I was supposed to hang out with a guy I had met at Stone Gardens, a rock gym here in Seattle, but I didn't really know if I was up to it...of course, as is inevitable, although everyone tries to avoid it, I sounded like I had just woken up when I answered the phone. I got ready and forty five minutes later I was in the car and driving to some place called Exit 38. It was cold as the dickens outside, and I didn't know if my hands were even going to work in this temperature.
But, much to my pleasant surprise, they did. We started with a 5.7 right next to a bridge (the concrete was in), and then moved to a series of 5.9's on another wall a little ways away. Those were by far the most fun. It takes a little time to remember how to feel when climbing outdoors. The atmosphere is so vastly different than that of an indoor gym. Everything is a little bit scarier and you aren't quite as bold. After the first few climbs, it all comes back, though...sadly, the temperature didn't improve, so we called it quits after a lesson in cleaning an anchor and a 5.11 variation of the first route. All in all, twas good fun.
Afterward, we headed back into town and ended up in Wallingford at a little place called Kuan Yin Teahouse. My excitement to be in a teahouse was only magnified by the crispness of the day and my inability to feel my hands. Formosa Green Tea was served (an excellent choice, I might add) and I drank my fill while eating little wedges of cheese bread.

However, the most exciting part of my day was what happened after.
At 7:15 on Sundays, church happens! Mars Hill is a large church, much larger than anything I am used to, but I'm trying to squeeze my way into the Ballard church community. It seems there is an incredibly high volume of college students that attend the service. This makes me a little apprehensive, because it also seems in some ways that college students are the least approachable. For all the credit that modern society gives college students for being more mature and more adult-like than they were in their high school years, they don't seem to have progressed much. The majority of the college students I see are the same immature, egotistical, closed-off, tactless adolescents they were in high school.
Although, this has just been my experience...and I am no one to judge. So I'm giving this a chance, despite my initial apprehensions, and seeing if I can't fit somewhere into this massive colony of people who attend church en vogue. (I mean seriously...showing up in high heels with perfect hair and designer clothes? I thought this was church, not an audition for America's Next Top Model)
But I am too harsh...I need to give it time.

On a more philosophical note (now that the mundane has been recorded), I have begun to notice with increasing discontentment that I am incredibly judgmental. Despite my best efforts to control my thoughts, the seven me's seem to just run rampantly around inside my skull, shouting the most obscenely hypocritical they can come up with. The sad part is, I'm not really that critical. I don't like to be. But recently, I can't seem to look at anyone without my first thought about them being something terribly judgmental.
Save for those people who seem like underdogs.
I still like them.
But anyone who seems like they may in any way, shape, or form be a threat to those whom the "average" person would consider "strange" or "weird", my mind attacks.

This is one of those problems that only prayer and obedience will fix. Jesus can only help me as much as I want to help myself, for I am the keeper of my salvation. While Jesus provides salvation, it is up to me to remember His sacrifice and remain weak enough to need Him. Because every time I feel that I can stand up on my feet without Him, it fails miserably and I end up lying on my face in the sand, stretching my hand out towards Jesus again.
And every time, though I don't deserve it, He finds me, places his arms beneath my own, and picks me up again.

Thank God that He is in control and I am not...I make such bad decisions.

Profundus Sententia Ex Cunabula