Undo.

"Let me ask you a question: Before you left, several people told you that you weren't going to make it at That School. Do you think they were right?"

It's not a simple answer.

Those "several people" included members of my blood family, and my pastor. You know, the sort of people anyone would want to be supportive when making a major life change. Instead, I was told that I wouldn't be able to hack it academically, and/or would get thrown out of the school.

I don't think I can properly describe the impact that had on me. Instead of going off to college feeling like my family was behind me, like they believed in me, like they wanted me to succeed, I left for college a seething ball of rage. All the people that should have standing behind me had apparently abandoned me.

So when I got to that school, I got there with a massive chip on my shoulder. I was there because I believed God was leading me into mission aviation, and I still do, but I was full of rage, hurt, mistrust and insecurity, and everything and everyone that threatened that goal got hammered. Hard. I'm not known for subtlety or pulling punches, and I was at my worst there.

So back to that question, were they right?

Well, the term "Self-fulfilling prophecy" comes to mind. While I do believe that the people who said those things meant well, the effect was that their words caused so much damage in my life that there was no way I would have finished a degree there. I had reacted to the statements the only way I knew how, and being angrier and working harder only has two possible outcomes if things get pushed far enough.

And they got pushed far enough, believe me.

"I'm sorry" the person said. The person hadn't meant to cause harm, but had. Grievous. Worse than the person could have imagined. Trust was lost, friendship had been replaced by bitterness, family had disappeared under cynicism, and over three years later, some of the wounds are still raw.

"I'm sorry" does nothing. Their sorrow fixes nothing. There is no possible way for anyone to apologize for their comments enough to make up for what I went through, because the universe simply doesn't have an "undo" button. It doesn't matter how many times they apologize, there is no way that anyone can go back in time to unfuck things up.

They can't rewind the night I had to spend in a homeless shelter because I had no where to stay. They can't unspend the money I had to spend just to make sure I didn't leave the town with a legal record. They can't erase the time I spent in a psychiatric ward, or repair the destruction of multiple friendships. They can't undo the anger, they can't make me unfeel the pain.

"I'm sorry" is a worthless statement. It's pathetic. Someone's sorrow does absolutely nothing to fix the damage they've done. Time flows in ONE direction, and it doesn't change just because some pathetic human feels bad about something they did, even if they didn't mean to. It won't even change just because someone tries to "make it up" to the person they hurt.

I suppose I could end this post here. A cohesive point has been made, "I'm sorry fixes nothing, and nothing can undo the past."

But that's not where this post ends. That's just a cynical tumblr-tier rant about pain, frustration, and loss, it barely qualifies as philosophical. It certainly doesn't answer any questions, which to me defies the very purpose of writing.

The real answer to pain, the only way to actually fix anything is to forgive people. That's actually worth writing about.

The people who I *could* blame for what they said three years ago, if I wanted to, need to be forgiven. Not because they deserve it, they don't. Not because forgiveness will magically rewind time and allow everything to be OK like it could have been, it won't. Not because they've made it up to me, they haven't and can't.

No, I need to forgive them because forgiveness is the only thing that allows raw wounds to heal up. It's the only way for the pain to stop and for healing to start. Nothing will ever heal perfectly, and even old scars can be gouged open again, but without forgiveness, all we have is a world full of people full of open wounds. No healing, no fading scars that don't hurt anymore, just pain.

I don't know about you, but that's not an appealing thought. I'd rather move on as best I can than to remain stuck in the past, thoughts stuck on the same old wounds, the same old pains, the same old people. No, things will never be perfect, and the damage we do to each other's lives can never actually be made right.

So my advice is to not worry about who's sorry and who isn't. Don't wait for the other person to repent, and don't demand they do the impossible and make it up to you. Just forgive them, which is a process, not an event. Make peace, if possible restore the relationship, but above all, forgive them and move on.

That Anarchy Post

When discussing a philosophical, political, or religious viewpoint, it helps to start with a precise definition of what certain terms mean. Especially, perhaps, when discussing Anarchism, because after 40 years of punk rock, angry kids, and tyrants misusing the term, "Anarchy" has been redefined as "burning cop cars, doing drugs, and wearing black clothing."

According to dictionary.com:

noun

1.

a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.

Etymologically, it comes from the Greek "anarchos", which is a combination of "an-" meaning "no", and "archos" meaning "ruler".

There is nothing in the basic definition of "anarchy" that promotes violence, chaos, or even being an asshole. So bear that in mind as I proceed from here. It's also worth pointing out that there are many, many, MANY different ways of having an anarchist society that have been promoted over the years, and I'm not even trying to encompass all of them, it is simply the only common term that comes close to encompassing my political views.

It should also be stated, at the beginning of this post, that anarchism as a political ideal is not the same thing as having anarchy as a daily lifestyle. This post is about the political ideal, and reality is just a bitch. America was founded as a Republic, that doesn't make it a Republic, nor does it make "A republic" a perfect system. Same with Democracy, and in this case anarchism. I'm an anarchist because that is the political ideal I believe in most (*right now, which is subject to change in the future), not because I think it's perfect.

At it's most basic, a society (be it a nation, a tribe, or whatever) is a group of people who come together for the common benefit. It makes a lot more sense to work together to raise crops and fight off wolves than it does for everyone to work on their own, because someone needs to be up at night to keep watch, and someone needs to work during the day. Cooperation is a good thing, obviously.

I'm also a Christian. This means that on a basic level, I don't believe in aggression (Romans 12:18, Matthew 5:39). I do believe that the Bible teaches that self-defense is a basic human right and that extends to defending others (Nehemiah 4:17-18) and even to capital punishment (Genesis 9:6), but aggression without just cause is a vile thing. Those who start wars without just cause (even if it's just "limited airstrikes with no boots on the ground") are guilty of murder.

In 1 Samuel 8, the Israelites ask God for a king so that they can be like other nations. They want a warrior, a man who will go out and fight their battles for them. God warns them that the reverse will happen, and that wanting a king is a rejection of God, and God's place as the sole ruler of the nation. They choose to disregard the warning, and Saul, the first Israelite king, is a disaster by any standard. David, who followed, was not exactly a good man, and had a loyal general murdered because he'd knocked up the general's wife.

Israel's government before Saul could be best described as a kritarchy with occasional incidents of theocracy. The Israelites were left to do as they saw fit, with disputes mediated by judges, as long as they generally followed God and weren't being invaded at the moment. It's the only part in the entire Bible where God weighs in on a specific form of gov't, and it's explicitly anti-State. It says "Follow God, and do not desire any other ruler."

Having no earthly ruler sounds like anarchism to me. Going through life with nobody telling me what to do, only God, and the only people I need to submit to are the judges, and that only comes up when there's a dispute with a neighbor? With the only law being God's law, not an endless-changing list of man-made rules and regulations?

An-archos. No rulers...sounds pretty similar.

Of course, Romans 13 tells me to obey the rulers that do exist. Which doesn't sound at all like an anarchist statement, so how do the two reconcile?

Basically, it's a question of realism versus idealism. 1 Samuel 8 is the ideal. Just follow God's Law, put God first in my life, and there won't be a need for a string of loser kings (and most of Israel's kings were bad). The reality is that kings do exist, though, so even though it's not the ideal that God had in mind, we should obey them out of respect for God. Notice that Romans 13 doesn't say "Obey the king because he's right." or "Obey him because his father was a good man.", it says "Obey the king because God put him there."

The reality is that because people screw up, leaders, rulers, and law-makers are something we're stuck with, but it's not the ideal that God had in mind for us.

"Really?" You ask.

Sure. Look at it this way:

In the Garden of Eden, what system of government did God institute? Kings? Presidents? Communism? How about none of the above, just a single commandment to not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve had absolutely no other obligations, regulations, rules, laws, or even social customs to follow.

In fact, it was their adding to God's laws that messed them up. Notice how in Gen 3:3 Eve says "...and you must not touch it, or you will surely die" while in Genesis 2:17 God only said that they cannot eat the fruit. Had Adam and Eve not added to God's laws, the serpent would not have been able to cast doubt on what God said. In the additional laws there was room for doubt and confusion.

But Adam and Eve did eat, and were cast out. Skip forward a few chapters, The Flood happens, and God gives Noah ONE law. In Genesis 9:6, again there is no system of government established, no endless codex of prescriptive laws to follow, just a commandment that murderers are to be put to death.

Even after the Torah was given to Moses and a full system of laws was established, the only system of government was "Follow God and the Law", there wasn't a king who had absolute power. The judges had absolute power, but were only raised up in time of need, not during peacetime, as it were, and they did not add to the laws.

Had God actually wanted a certain system of government, it does not make sense that He would not have instituted that and made it clear, but at no point in the Bible is there any such thing.

Instead the repeated commandment is to love our neighbors, which is referred to by Jesus as the second-greatest commandment, the first being to love God. So let's examine what that would look like, if everyone was totally committed to keeping those two.

First off, if everyone loved their neighbors, poverty is gone. Period. Instead of some guy being homeless and starving, his neighbors would take care of him, help him find a job and a place to stay, and get him back on his feet. In a loving manner, not just flicking a nickel at him as they drive past.

Second, if everyone loved their neighbors, crime would largely be a thing of the past. Murder isn't love, neither is rape, theft, or any of a thousand other things that we have laws against. The need for cops would be over.

Third, it would be the END OF WAR. While there would always be a need for weapons in case a neighboring country got hostile, the days of punitive bombing of countries thousands of miles away would be gone.

Now, granted, this ideal system also has as a basic requirement that everyone loves God. That means it's predicated on everyone being a Christian, which sadly will never happen. Ultimately it is just an ideal system, and not a realistic system.

On the other hand, a cursory glance through history has seen EVERY system of government yet devised fail as well. They are all idealistic, because the simple reality is that people are corrupt and selfish, and placing people in power only amplifies corruption and selfishness. Kings become tyrants, voters become leeches, and anarchist burn cop cars.

I'm not saying that anarchism is perfect, but I am saying that if we all really follow God's commandments, we'll remove any need that exists for rulers. The result of everyone following God's commandments would be a peaceful, lawful, healthy society that didn't need cops, courts, or rulers. Everyone would be left alone to do as they saw fit, with no one who would threaten to jail or kill them if they didn't play whatever games the government is playing that day.

If the two greatest commandments, according to Christ Himself, are followed, government becomes superfluous, and for that reason, I consider myself an anarchist.

Four in Four

I just got an email that says I have a job waiting for me, pending some paperwork, in Rockford, IL. I'll be working on regional jets, doing maintenance, which is a huge opportunity for a guy who is trying to break out of the single-engine and light-twin rut that comes with being a fresh A&P that hasn't had much experience. The A&P world is measured in years of experience on specific aircraft, not grades (mine were good) or ability or even years of experience in general.

So don't get me wrong, it's a good job. 

But it also means moving to another new city, another new state, making a new list of friends at another new church. It means, once again, going somewhere new and starting all over again. Rockford will be the fourth city I've lived in four years, and IL will be the fourth state at the same time. 

And Illinois, well, it's not exactly a friendly place for practitioners of the shooting arts. "Felony Possession of Ammunition" is actually a thing there, I'll have to clean my car just to make sure that a spare and lost .22LR round doesn't land me in prison. Taking my rifles is out of the question, and I can't even take just my reloading gear to make ammo in my spare time.
 

It's just not a particularly fun thing to look forward to. I'm not real quick at making good friends, and this job is only a contract gig, so I'll be there for six months, at which point I'll almost certainly move again. It will be a very great challenge to reach out to folks and make connections, knowing that not only will I leave at some point, but I'll be gone by Summer.

I was told at Orientation that I'm too independent and too strong-willed, and need to work on getting along with others in order to be a good missionary. It seems that the events of the past few years of my life have made me a certain kind of person, and I'm not sure if that was something that I could have avoided if I even wanted to.

I mean, you don't learn to work well with authority when you get thrown out of a school for getting sick and making someone several thousand miles away suspicious that you may do something.

You don't learn to depend on other people when you have to move 700 miles past everyone you've ever met to live with strangers, especially when those strangers turn out to be insane.

You don't learn to be (whatever the "good" opposite of strong-willed is) when a hard life forces you to buckle down and keep going no matter how much you want to find a safe place and hide in it until the storm passes.

I'm not worried about surviving in Rockford, I'm a tough, independent, and strong-willed man that will do whatever it takes to survive. However, I'm worried that by the time I'm done being a nomad and can finally return to HQ for my technical evaluation, I'll have only become more strong-willed, more independent, and tougher. And I'm not even sure why those are bad things.

BUT...

The way to live life is to do what needs to be done now, now, and worry about tomorrow's problems later. Right now I need a job, and this is a job. It's not ideal, but nothing is, and nothing ever will be.

Holy unBlack Metal

I'm sitting in the maintenance office of the MAF hangar in Maseru, Lesotho. There's no work for me to do, so I'm listening to Frost Like Ashes on YouTube. They're an unBlack metal outfit from St. Louis, if I remember correctly, and the current song "Adorers of Blood" is a wonderful praise song in the style of Black Metal. Before "Adorers of Blood", I listened to "Hardest Rocking God of All Time" by Grave Declaration, another unBlack metal outfit.

If anyone asks what I'm listening to, I'll downplay and dodge the question. I certainly won't try to explain unBlack Metal to a group of missionaries that thinks David Crowder is the hardest rock allowed at work. There's just no way to understand unBlack Metal without understanding Black Metal, and Black Metal is something I just don't talk about with strangers. Well, not unless I want to scare them off and make them think I'm Varg Vikernes' biggest fan, anyways.

There isn't a genre of music that's created more controversy than Black Metal. People think pop music sets the standard for shocking and bizarre behavior, but nothing ever done by a pop star has come close to the things done by black metal musicians. Lady Gaga and Madonna subverted Catholic imagery for their music, black metal musicians (and their fans) burnt churches down. Gangsta rappers boast about killing their rivals, black metal musicians have actually done it. There's no compromise in black metal, it's explicitly pagan. Explicity anti-Christian.

Black Metal isn't simply a genre that one listens to. Black Metal, in it's original form, is a lifestyle. The first wave of black metal didn't simply show up on the charts, it announced itself with a multi-year spate of murders, suicides, and church burnings. It's ideological music in the purest sense.

The fact that most people have never heard of Black Metal is simply due to the relative obscurity of the genre, as it's a tiny and extremist fringe inside the perpetually fringe world of heavy metal, but the fact remains that black metal is the razor's edge of music. It's way past "this album sounds too processed"  is a criticism and into a world where "(this album) is the aural equivalent of having your throat slit in one smooth motion" becomes normal. It's not "easy listening". It's not "soothing white noise".

When it comes to Christians listening to music, if there's any one genre of music that we were probably supposed to avoid, that we should have left alone, it would be black metal. It is hands-down the most vile, sick, and evil genre of music ever created. So, naturally, Christianity invaded it in the early 1990s, because we will allow no pit of darkness to remain unlit.

Black metal has always been about the message. And not in the cheeky way that Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin played around with dark imagery, but in an explicit way, where the message in the lyrics was played out onstage, and in the lives of the band members themselves. UnBlack Metal retains the look (minus the sacrificed animals and most of the blood), the sound, and the intense, message-first lyrics, but has swapped out the lyrics for Christian ones. 

Personally, that makes it just about perfect to me, because I'm sick and tired of ever-fancier versions of "Jesus Loves Me" that somehow still manage to be repetitive, technically simple, and theologically empty. Yes, Jesus loves us, but that's a small portion of what Christianity is about, and I want music that reminds me that to be a Christian is to be at war with Darkness.

There's a hell of a lot more to fighting that war than just remembering that Jesus loves us. Let's go kick some ass.

HAIL CHRIST!

Frodo Lives

So here I am, in the mountains of Lesotho a couple hundred kilometers from where Tolkien was born. I'm here as an MAF maintenance intern, and it happens to be just coming into the rainy season, which means the mountains are covered with soft, puffy clouds.

I wouldn't say my internship has gone well, objectively speaking. I screwed up in Orientation, buckled down and aced the second chance I got, only for a bunch of durkas to screw that up by causing a ruckus and forcing the program I was supposed to work with to evacuate the house I was supposed to live in for fear of being mortared.

It's the latest portion of a quest that's included spending nights in a psychiatric ward, a night in a homeless shelter by necessity, and calling a friend at 2330 because I got thrown out of the place I was living. I've been penniless and have had to choose between buying tools for school and food (I chose tools). I've had to choose between ever seeing people I loved again and staying healthy (I chose staying healthy). I've had to drive 1500 miles past home to live with strangers because my family wasn't willing to let me come home (I've never asked why).

I've endured all of this because I believe God has directed me towards entering mission aviation. I knew in advance that it would be hard, it's just a different kind of hard than I was expecting.

I'm at this point where I could get home from this internship and walk away from the entire quest. Nobody would fault a man for saying "You know what? I sacrificed a hell of a lot to get there, and it didn't go very well. I'm going home."

But on the other hand, Frodo.

Frodo got stabbed at Weathertop just trying to take the Ring to Rivendell. His quest, at that point, involved being chased by Ringwraiths out of his happy little life, traveling far beyond anything he'd ever known, and then it involved getting stabbed and nearly dying from the wound.

Nobody would have faulted him for saying "You know what? I brought the Ring to Rivendell, got stabbed in the process, and people much more suited for the task can do the rest. I'm going home."

But...that's now how the story of Frodo ends. He didn't call it a day, he didn't choose to place his own happiness and well-being ahead of the necessity of the day, he instead volunteered to go all the way to Mount Doom and finish the job. He didn't even know how to get there, but he still volunteered.

By the end of it, he'd seen friends die. He'd endured being separated from all but one of his friends, nearly murdered by an ally, poisoned and nearly eaten by a giant spider, and had his finger bitten off. And he had to fight, run, and hide from overwhelming enemy forces the entire time.

There are thousands and millions and billions of people who, at the end of the day, do whatever it is that they think will make them healthy and happy. If something should arise that they don't want to do, they do anything they can to pass the job off to anyone who will do it, no matter how poorly.

I'm sure, that at some point, Frodo wished that the Ring had never come into his life. That the entire thing had been handled by someone else, and that he could have spend the rest of his life in Hobbiton. But when it came down to it, Frodo stepped up to the situation at hand, and put his dreams and desires and well-being second to what needed to be done.

I'm with Frodo.

I'm sure there are people in this world who would make better missionaries than I will, but that doesn't change the situation. The task has been set before me, and I will see it done, even though I don't know the way.

To Mordor if need be, to Mortarville if at all possible, but no matter where this journey ends, I'm with Frodo.

A Cacophony of Sex

I have a confession to make, and coming from a guy that loves Holy unBlack Metal, this is one hell of a confession:

I don't hate Miley Cyrus' song "Wrecking Ball." I kinda like it.

But there's a story attached to this that brought up some interesting thoughts:

I don't think it's possible for a modern netizen to be unaware that Ms. Cyrus has a new video for her song "Wrecking Ball" that's risque. There's some nakedness, some tools, it's basically porn. I haven't bothered to look up the video and watch the whole thing, I saw a bit of it while I was waiting for a pizza at a mall here in Maseru, and decided that it probably isn't good for me to see the whole thing. I'm not going to link it.

At that point, I hadn't actually heard the song, as far as I know. I don't listen to pop music when I can help it, and the radio station at work is normally set to a classic-pop station out of Mozambique, so I only rarely hear the new stuff.

So a couple weeks later, with the batteries on my MP3 player dead, I'm listening to the work radio and I hear this song on the radio. My ears perk up because it's well-sung and seems soulful compared to the usual variations on the theme of lust that come over the airwaves. The singer sounds like she's sorry that she screwed up a relationship and hurt the guy, but is slightly defiant in that she gave it her all.

The line "I never meant to start a war" intrigued me, so after the second or third time I heard the song, I made a mental note to google the lyrics when I got home.

Turns out, that song is "Wrecking Ball'.

Simply looking at the lyrics, some girl decided to insert herself into a guy's life, it went badly, and though she tried to save it, it fell apart. Simple enough, and the way it's sung makes it somewhat sorrowful, but perhaps not repentant. It would not appear, lyrically speaking, that "wrecking ball" would be by any stretch a complimentary term. No, instead the girl's a wrecking ball, and is sorry that she wrecked something.

But pop music being what it is, new pop singles must have a video to accomany them, otherwise...well, who knows. I don't know the business, and I'm fairly certain I don't want to understand how pop music works.

So a video was filmed, and in part of it Ms. Cyrus is sitting on a wrecking ball naked, and then a little later she's licking a sledgehammer, and that's all I want to know.

The problem, from the perspective of a philosopher who pays attention to such things, is that the song's message does not match the video's message. While the song that's dubbed over the video (nobody actually sings these days) talks about how the girl screwed up and damaged everything, the singer is portrayed as an hyper-sexualized wrecking ball who glorifies her destruction of the building that represented the boy or the relationship, I'm not sure which.

So which is the real message? Admitting that she screwed up and didn't mean to start a war, or sexually reveling in the destruction she caused?

There's a word for music in which parts clash with each other: Cacophony. It's the antithesis of "Symphony", in which all the parts work together.

I don't know, and perhaps I don't want to know, what exactly is going on with Ms. Cyrus. I don't generally follow celebrities, nor do I have a particular taste for pop music, so all I know is that she used to be a fairly decent girl, and is now a slow-motion train wreck. From what I can tell, society is waiting for her to crash and burn so that we can mourn the loss of her talent instead of trying to save her before that happens.

What I do know is that there's something very wrong with society when it's perfectly acceptable to accompany a sad song about a relationship gone bad with a video that glorifies and sexualizes the destruction of that relationship. I mean, I've seen an outcry from the usual "we're DOOOOOOOOOOMED" crowd that thinks (falsely) that we're the most decadent civilization in history, but what bothers me isn't the decadence, it's the discord between the lyrics and the video.

Have we really fallen so far as a intellectual society that nobody bothers to understand the message anymore, and focuses instead on the sounds and the visuals? Because to me, that's exactly like focusing on what's on the cover of the book and not even bothering to open it to understand the message.

Folks, if that's what we're doing as a society, we're doomed.

DOOOOOOOOMED!

Dissecting Depression

"How're you doing?" my boss asked.
"Surviving." I replied.
"Just surviving?"

"Surviving" means a lot to me. What I went through in Spokane nearly killed me. There, I was struggling with depression so dark and deep that I couldn't eat. Couldn't get off the couch. There, emotional pain translated to the physical world and took me off my feet. That wasn't "surviving", it was walking numbly through life as I shut down piece by piece in response to overwhelming misery. It was dying, another week or two and I might have eaten a bullet. It wasn't impossible, even though I hate the idea of suicide.

I'm struggling in my internship, to be sure. From what I had reasonable expectations of when I first walked through HQ's doors three months ago, everything got FUBAR'd. I had applied for, been interviewed for, been medically cleared for, raised funds for (3/4 of which came from me working two jobs), gotten a VISA for, and had plane tickets for a certain internship. And it was something that I was, that I am, very passionate about. 

Instead, everything went sideways. I'm on the wrong continent. I'm working on the wrong airplanes (Cessna 206s instead of King Airs and Quest Kodiaks). It took something of an argument with my supervisor to even be allowed to do as much as I am doing, since interns normally do a couple weeks of bitch work around the shop and then go home, they don't spend two months doing engine overhauls and airframe inspections. And even then, I'm not learning anything new, nor am I allowed to do as much as I have been trained on, since the Organization's regs are strict about mechanics who haven't gone through Standardization.

From the reasonable expectations I had (spend 3 months in a certain country, working on certain aircraft, etc.), absolutely nothing has come to be. That's disappointing, as one might expect. 

And the process of me getting here wasn't exactly pleasant, to say the least.

So even just the internship has been a struggle.

But it's stacked on top of being homesick for a home that doesn't exist. Odds are pretty high that I won't get a job in Nampa or Tulsa, the two towns that are the most like "home." I don't have a job to return to, so I will have to travel to wherever I can find work. Which I don't mind in and of itself, but when I'm struggling here, I wish I could look forward to returning home, not being at a pseudo-home for a few days then spending two days on the road.

And I'm broke, too. I'd saved up some money for the post-trip expenses, but then I had to buy health insurance, and then I got laid off from my primary job a week early, and then I had to buy a new fuel pump for my car. Came out to over a grand that I don't have now between the three. Life is what it is.

Those are situations. Bad situations can make anyone depressed, it's the nature of being human. People get bummed out when they lose their jobs, when the car breaks down, when things just don't go their way. It's part of human nature. 

I'm also manic-depressive, though, and so I'll be struggling when I'm making A's in school, my after-school job is going well, and I've got friends that love me and whom I can talk to when I'm down. It's part of who I am, that I deal with clinical depression for a good chunk of the year.

Then there's the existential questions. I've taken on faith, over my logical objections, that God is calling me into missions. I said three and half years ago that I'm not the guy for the job, and I still don't believe that I'm the guy, but I also believe God is calling, and God doesn't make mistakes.

But I could be wrong. It's happened before. So the fact that everything has gone sideways on this internship brings up very real doubts that I was ever right about being called into missions. Doubt is cancer, and it eats at my faith that this is where I should be, that this is what I should be doing with my life, that what I believe is real is real.

So as I'm struggling with everything that brought me to Maseru, as I'm struggling to keep moving forward, the real question becomes "Where does one stop, and the next one start?"

What is simply situational depression, that needs to be ignored and answered with Faith that God has a plan beyond this? What is clinical depression or mania, and needs to be addressed medically? What is the Abyss of existential despair, trying to swallow me whole?

Where does one stop and the next one start?

I'm surviving, and while that doesn't mean thriving, it also means that I'm not slowly shutting down, I'm not moodily lashing out at everyone, and I'm not emotionally numb and just waiting for the end of the trip. This sort of thing doesn't concern me for the short term, and I'm not entirely sure if it really concerns me for the long term.

This, by my standards of life as a manic-depressive person, does not qualify as unhealthy. I worry about mania when I can't sleep, can't sit still, and get frustrated with how laid-back everyone else is. I worry about depression when I can't get out of bed, when I can't keep moving through the day, and when I start shutting down.

This, what I'm dealing with now, isn't me being unhealthy. It's simply part of life as a manic-depressive.

However, if I want to make missions a long-term thing, and I *do*, then I need to find a better way of staying healthy. In Tulsa and Nampa, I lean pretty heavily on my friends when I'm down, and I'm very active when I'm up, those combined with proper meds help me stay functional.

Here in Maseru, I don't really have the support network I had back home. It takes months to develop that, I'm only here for sixty days total. That's hardly time to develop a support network out of a group of guys who are all married and all have kids. They don't have free time, which means there's not a lot of free time that I can borrow to just have men to talk to.

Also, I can't be nearly as active, because I'm in a foreign country, and there are rules in place here for security reasons. I can't hit the range on a Saturday, I had to leave my rifles in Idaho. I get a lot of exercise, but I have to be back by nightfall, so I can't go backpacking or go walking until I've talked with God about my day and am at peace with it. And with very limited internet, I can't really hide in music and talk with my friends online.

While I was in the ward in Spokane, they talked about having multiple layers of safety nets to avoid coming back to the ward. Take the meds AND develop a safety net of friends to talk with AND develop a comforting place to go for alone time, etc.

I don't have most of that here, and I *MUST* find a way to change that if I want to do this long-term. I need to get better at developing support networks. I need to find a way to have a comfort place (my bedroom normally works great, but this one has ants that seem to be immune to the local ant-killer spray) when the city itself is off-limits after 1845.

(I'd say I should find a wife, but that becomes a frustrating and depressing subject without any help from the rest of my struggles in life.)

I'm surviving here, and that says a lot, but I need to be able to thrive in adverse situations, not simply survive.

That said, I'm not losing the struggle, and that's important to keep in mind.