Good Time

Well, I'm in the middle of a good time right now. I've had meaningful devotions I think every day this week, even if only a few minutes in Philippians. I worked out three times, yesterday being a very enjoyable time of doing whatever I wanted, working myself without nasty strain. Wednesday evening I FINALLY, FINALLY wrote great words to a song I've had written for a year, and recorded almost all the vocals beautifully, to match the perfect, scintillating guitar already recorded. The song is beautiful, in every way. This morning I aced (from my point of view) a Reactive Process Engineering exam, but more importantly, I buckled down and worked for hours and hours studying for it Wednesday and Thursday. I just ran up 10 flights of stairs (22 steps per flight) to get to this computer lab to print off four great articles I found for the kinetics design project I've been dreading but made myself work on after the exam this morning. I just ate a containerful of delicious mexican-ish bean/rice/meat stuff that perfectly met the gnawing hunger that developed as I researched in the library. Do you have any idea what that feels like for me? I actually DID things that needed to be done. They were hard. They were dreary to anticipate. But I did them, and wasn't a baby about that. The sickening cloud of disapproval that usually presses on me from undone tasks is lifted, at least in this area. I HAVE worked out. My body feels somewhat solid. I DID study long and hard. I used my recording equipment. I had quiet times, and they really meant something!

Yesterday I actually took purposeful joy in being saved, even after a depressing and difficult session of studying for a hopeless-feeling exam. Today I came across a verse (more like really fully noticed and noted it) that I call my verse, because it clearly and plainly prescribes treatment for my plaguing pride and self-centerness, particularly regarding interactions with others. I wrote it down on a bookmark in my bible like this (the underlines are just spacers. Disregard them):

Let nothing be done
through selfish
______ambition
or ____conceit,
but in lowliness of
_____mind
let each esteem
others better than
himself.
Phil 2:3

It's pretty clear what to do: If I'm doing something for selfish ambition, DON'T DO IT. If I'm doing it through selfish ambition, DO IT DIFFERENTLY.

I'm sure these are just more words bouncing off your head like most spiritual writing bounces off my head (especially from other people's blogs), but they actually soaked through my skull as I read them today, and they mean something to me. Not a grand amazing new meaning, just their actual, simple word meaning. If my mind could be opened and I could read scripture, in one hour I'm sure my life would be forever changed, and my brain would probably explode.

I'm going to finish this post, grab the articles I just printed, and go lay on the grass in the sun for 30 minutes and then catch a bus home.

I write this to document what it feels like here at the peak. I feel like my life is measuring up to the markers. Past experience predicts a horrible trough on the horizon--failing catastrophically in anger or some other sin, ditching devotions, skipping working out, or even just wasting my time over the weekend--but I'm not so sure that has to happen, though I doubt I can stay at this peak indefinitely. Should I? Is this what life lived rightly, apart from external circumstances, should be like? Is it wrong to feel wrong when I'm not living like this? Is my life on the way up, or is this just another few-day peak before I descend to the misty swamp where I normally walk? Should I expect to "be on the way up" at all?

I do think I've come one step closer to rejoicing in being saved, no matter what's going on or what's coming up.

--Clear Ambassador