Words of Wisdom?

So every year in the DHS yearbook, they put up the seniors' pictures along with a little submitted blurb. Well, we received the "submitted blurb" paper a while back, and I've been brooding on what to say. They have two categories - what do you want to be remembered by, or what advice would you give underclassmen.

Well, seeing as my most stunning accomplishment at DHS has been encasing Mr. Handley's stapler in Jell-O, I couldn't think of anything spectacular to put for the first subject (although "Daniel will always be remembered for his frequent tripping over desks and competitive math tendencies" has its merits.)

So I decided on the "what advice would you give to upcoming underclassmen" prompt, and here's what I've come up with:

"High school, in order to be relevant as well as educational, requires more that what is taught in the curriculum. Therefore, never be afraid to seek out the Truth, always remember your sense of humor, and know that no matter how bad things seem, faith will never fail to pull you through."

It's a bit wordy (they suggest 25-30 words, this one's about 52.) But I think it sounds pretty cool... How about you?

Let me know what you think!


-Daniel

In Which Daniel Informs His Avid Readers Of The Comings And Goings Of His Life.

(How's that for a prestigious title? Sometimes I impress even myself!)

Well, sorry for the phase of not writing... or the "Not writing phase," as you may call it. Your choice.

At any rate, I've been avoiding the blog for some time now (travelling only by day and keeping off the roads.) And come to think of it, I don't exactly have a reason why. I mean sure, tons of bloggable (if that's not a word then it should be) stuff has been going on recently - running with Mr. Anderson and Mr. Logan, Academic Team, Work, Band, and the usual lot. I just haven't felt overly compelled to sit down and type. Which is strange, especially for me. In fact, the only thing that brought me to the keyboard this very cold December afternoon was the title of this blog - I've been ripening it in the far reaches of my brain for some time now.*

I could have written an enthralling blog accounting the "D-loop" run during which we three brave runners almost fell victim to the hideous deeds of Old Man Winter (and his close friend, Good Sir Mud Puddle.) Or a captivating tale of the ginormisosity** of this year's Academic Team. Or my strange new affection for thick socks and Corn Nuts.***

Yeah, I could have written a blog about the super-coldness of Dayton and how my windows actually froze shut because of it. Maybe even about my starting to save up for college and apply for several dozen scholarships (I never knew I'd get so interested in global warming or the Holocaust... what won't a student do for money?) I could also have written on how I forgot that I absolutely adore Christmas Music, or how I stumbled across the miracle that is "Pilgrim Radio," or about how my car ran out of gas (again) the other day and I had to wrestle a gas station attendant into letting me fill up my container and then run across Highway 50 in negative ten billion degree weather to deposit the smelly stuff into my gas tank.

Ooh, or I could have blogged on how Christmas shopping gets trickier every year due to the fact that you have to buy things with your own hard-earned money (literally "hard earned" for me... Mint Chocolate Chip has roughly the consistency of cement mixed with diamonds.) Or about Guitar Center's fabled drum room, in which you can play the electric drums with friends until the salespeople catch on and give you the boot. Or maybe about how I won over the entire staff of DHS, resulting in them voting me for Student of the Month?****

Yeah, by why in the world would I blog about any of those things?

=D



-Daniel

*And by "for some time now," I actually mean "on the drive home from school today."
**pronounced "jiy-nor-muss-sauce-it-ty"
***It's like a megadef score when I get both at once...
****That story is a lot less cool then I let off. And nerdy.

Next Step: Tuition.

Hello once again to my avid collection of readers! It's been a totally tubular past week or so, and I thought I'd let you all in on what's been stewin'.

First off: I've been accepted into CCU! The enrollment counselor called me up on my way out of Academic Team practice (I'm a cool kid,) on Thursday and congratulated me on my acceptance. She asked if I was considering other colleges as well, and I said "yes," just to.... well, I dunno why. I guess I just wanted to make it sound like I'm on top of things. In reality, I'm 99.99% sure I'm going to Lakewood, Colorado next fall. Everything about the school's been picked over by Mrs. Krueger, Mr. Rohrer, mom, dad, and I. I think it's going to be super sweet. No idea what I'm going to major in, but English (emphasis on creative writing,) business, Spanish, leadership, Biblical studies, and music all interest me... We'll see where God takes me!

Second, last night at Crave was awesome! We played a set consisting of Your Grace Is Enough, Salvation Is Here, and We Are Hungry, which are three of my all-time favorite worship songs. On top of that, it was the music video awards night so the room was packed! It was almost like we were at a REAL gig! (Except we didn't get paid. At least not in money...) AND, Hans came with me! It was awesome. And he wasn't super freaked out or anything afterwards (hmmm, go figure... Christians know how to have fun, too! Hahaha.)

Well, I thought I had more exciting tales of bone-crushing defeat or exhilarating triumph, but I guess not. Other than those two things, life is normal (alas, I have a dirty calculus test tomorrow.) So I guess I'll bring this blog to a close.

Thanks for reading!


-Daniel

The Purpose Of Life As Revealed By Forrest Gump.

I just gone done watching Forrest Gump after a long day of sitting around. It came on channel 50, right after a riveting Modern Marvels episode on farm equipment. Forrest Gump is like the unsung hero of movies to me. I always forget about it, but then afterwards I'm always left thinking, "Whoa! That was the sweetest movie ever!"

So without further adeu...

Whoa! That was the sweetest movie ever!

I can't help but sit here, tired but not able to sleep, thinking about my adventure. How does mine go? Who are the lovable cast of characters that I'll get to meet and go through life with? What are the crazy adventures I'll get to embark on? Where will I learn crazy new lessons or engage in epic conversations, or experience phenomenal moments?

And immediately after that train of thought, another more awesome one comes chugging along - my story's already begun. I've already gone through the beginning of my movie - the part that sets the scene and the fundamentals of the film. I've already met characters and experienced tragedy and triumph.

But then continuing in that direction, I start wondering how life would be if it were really just a film all about me...

...

...

...

Yeah, let's not go there. That'd pretty much be the biggest waste of breath ever.

So I guess I'm not trying to say that life is a movie about me, me, and me (written and directed by me, endorsed by me.) But rather insinuating that my life is just another part of the story, and wondering what my side looks like. In fact, even more interesting are the possibilities of my interactions in other peoples' side of the story. How do I alter their episodes? Am I the role model? The geek? The antagonist? The optimist? The regret?

The end of Forrest Gump is amazing, too. It always makes me feel so... insignificant. I sit there, watching Forrest and his son perched on the same stump that Forrest sat on with his mom on his first day of school. And as the camera pans out over Greensboro Alabama, the whole story has an air of repetition. How does Forrest Jr.'s life play out? Who does he fall in love with?. Watching from the couch, underneath three cats and a load of laundry, I can't help but think about how pointless a lot of things really are.

Irritation with my brother, the copious amounts of leftovers in the fridge, my shiny motorcycle, the money I'm saving for the holidays. It all seems so worthless, doesn't it? One time when I was a freshman, I made a critical decision to bring my Gameboy on the band bus on our way down to Las Vegas for the state basketball finals. Picture this - there I was, on a bus full of band kids,* huddled under my blanket,** playing Pokemon.

Here was my (uncharacteristic) genius method of thought: In three years, no one is going to remember this. Heck, probably even by next year, no one's going to be running around saying, "Ew, there's Daniel.... did you hear he battled Charizard all the way to Vegas one time?" On a larger scale, there's this poster in Mrs. Dickerson's room that says something like "In five years, it's not going to matter what clothes you wore, how your hair looked, or what car you drove. What will matter is what you learned and how you use it."

But in 90 years, what will even that matter? What will your yearly salary, or your best family vacation, or your house, or your friends matter in 90 years? Wow. If it weren't for God, this would be an extremely depressing blog.

So where does that leave me? I love what Jeremy Malekos said one time: "My kids always know the answer is either going to be no, yes, or Jesus." Following that (awesome) train of thought and referring to the beginning of this paragraph... Jesus.

What does Jesus want from my life? How does Jesus want to write my side of the story? Because I've got a feeling He's a lot better writer than I am. Isn't it sweet how we're reminded how awesome God is through... Forrest Gump?

"When you think about it, there's so much holding you back. And yet there's nothing at all holding you back."

Or as Relient K put it, "This it how I choose to live. As if I'm jumping off a cliff. Knowing that You'll save me."


-Daniel

*Now I'm not saying anything bad about band kids. As I'm sure everyone already knows, band kids are the best group of kids known to man... and the second best know to felines.
**Yeah turns out I brought my blanket, too. I'm pretty cool.

Good News.

Hey everyone, glad you're here to read this. I'm not kidding when I say this is the most important thing you'll ever hear from me.

That being said, I'll get started. (Please bear with me, as this will be rather lengthy.)

I had just pulled out of the Shell gas station in Hawthorne and was rapidly accelerating to highway speeds. I had left my dad behind (upon his request,) because his engine was having some problems and he was waiting for a trailer to come so he could load his bike up and head back to Reno. It had been raining on and off the entire day, we had been told, and so the road was slick with fresh rainwater. I had a white Jeep to my right as I reached about 75 miles an hour. Then something happened for the first (and I sincerely hope the last,) time - I lost control of my 2003 Triumph Speedmaster motorcycle.

You see, motorcycle engines are a little fickle at times. And after standing around for about an hour and a half in the 43 degree rain in Hawthorne, the engine becomes thoroughly cooled off. This means that it takes a substantial amount of warming up before it's fully ready to be ridden. But I was cold from the aforementioned standing around, and more than ready to get home after a week away in Mexico, so I went for it.

As I reached 75mph, I went to shift into fifth gear. This means I pulled the clutch, meaning that for a brief instant, the engine was idling. And since it still wasn't warmed up enough, it died as I completed the shift into fifth. Since the engine was in gear but not running, the tire was locked in place. Usually, it would have been overcome with friction from the road and done what's called a "rolling start." But the roads were slippery from the day long rain, so the rear tire stayed still as the bike continued to move.

I didn't notice anything at first besides the loss of power, but then the rear of the bike slid to my left, fishtailing. I immediately went into panic mode and threw down my feet to gain stability - they began to slide as well. I leaned wildly to my right and the bike followed, correcting itself only momentarily before slipping off to my right, again in a fishtail. As I mentioned before, I had lost control completely, travelling at 75mph down the highway. One thought smashed through the haze of panic in my mind: I need to get the back tire spinning again. The back tire was swerving left to right as I impulsively grabbed for the clutch to take it out of gear. It worked. The tire began spinning once again, returning stability to the bike. With the engine still dead, I coasted to the shoulder and stopped. I had some think time.

I was shaking from the adrenaline as I sat there, cars whizzing past on my left. A million thoughts sped through my mind. The most prominent was the little physics lesson we had been taught in my motorcycle training class. Our instructor had told us all about tires locking up; if the front tire locked up, you had to keep it pointed the way you were heading and get it spinning again, no harm done. If the back tire locked up, you had to be really careful to line it up with the front tire before starting it spinning again, because if it started going when pointed another direction, the bike would rapidly correct itself and you'd be more than likely thrown off.

How? I thought, how did I manage to pull the clutch, in a blind panic, at the exact right time so as not to be chucked from the bike? Luck? Chance? I don't accept those for a second. Luck and chance don't account for anything. I can tell you as surely as I am still breathing right now, God was with me in those few death-defying moments on the highway.

But you know what? That's not the point of this blog. God saving my life physically isn't the reason I'm sitting, still cold and tired and dirty, having not taken a shower or eaten after my long day of riding, at my computer desk in my house.

You see, there are a few things I want you to take from this story.

The first is this: I was being dumb. I knew my engine needed to be warmed up a lot more before expecting it to perform at highway speeds. But I was dumb and impatient and went anyway. I didn't think about the consequences and I didn't think about my safety because frankly, I didn't care at the time. But God did. God didn't say, "Well, I don't really care about this one teen aged, impatient kid out of a million down there, I'll just let this one slide." (No pun intended.) God looked out for me although I knowingly did something incredibly stupid.

The second thing Is this: I didn't do anything to deserve the outcome - God didn't base his actions on mine. When I was sliding sideways down the road, I wasn't thinking to myself, "Okay stay calm. Remember the training course and hit the clutch when the tires are lined up." I didn't lie in wait, stoically, until the back tire clicked into position before jamming that clutch handle and saving the day. Instead, I sat there with my feet sliding on the asphalt, yelling profanities at the top of my lungs and acting on instinct. And look what God gave me! It wasn't what I deserved, that's for sure. I deserved, from my actions, to be shot from the bike and land headfirst on the trunk of an oncoming semi truck. Ephesians 2:8-9 says this: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." God saves us not based on what we do, God saves us because He loves us.

The last thing I want you to realize is this: I recognized and believed that it was God. I didn't call it luck or chance, although those are surely easier, more widely accepted answers - telling you all about my incredible luck earlier today would be much easier than telling you all this. But I knew and proclaimed that it was God. In John 3:18, Jesus Himself says "Whoever believes in him [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." I put my faith and belief in Jesus Christ and he delivered me from death.

So the question you have to ask now is: where does that put me? Maybe you've already placed your life in the hands of Jesus. Maybe you've already recognized that it's not based on what you've done or do, but rather on His love for you (that one rimed.) Maybe you've proclaimed with your mouth and believed with your heart that Jesus is King. If that's you, congratulations - I owe you a high-five.

If it's not you, think long and hard on this because let me tell you right now, it's worth it. God is worth it. Maybe you're not interested in religion. That's cool, neither am I. It hurts me when someone calls me "religious." it truly does, and here's why: religion is man's attempt at understanding God. Religion is the commentary on what God has said. I'm not interested in religion any more... I'm not interested in checking the box every Sunday or taking the "Communion Pill" to feel good about myself. I could care less about trying to impress others with how righteous I look or act. Now I'm not telling you to blow off going to church or anything, I'm just urging you not to show up, say some prayers, sing some songs, check church of your "to do" list, and then leave. I'm also not insinuating that the only result of religion is to take the focus off of God... in fact, I came to get my first glimpse of Jesus through a religious organization. But what I am getting at is that being "religious" doesn't bring you salvation - Jesus does. What I am after, and what I strongly urge you to seek out, is a relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. That, and nothing else, is what interests me.

Or maybe you're just not sure about this God character. Maybe you believe there's "something up there," but haven't looked into it or don't want to look into it. Please, please, please, give God a chance. Dedicate some of your time and efforts to seeking out who He is, because He won't let you down. Think about it - if there really is "something up there," wouldn't you want to know more about Who or what it is? God is waiting for you with open arms.

Thank you all for reading this. I know it was a bit wordy, but seeing how God can't be placed even into billions of millions of words, I'd say I did pretty good at keeping it short.

If you have questions, comments, hate mail, whatever, please feel free to contact me. Call me, talk to me, send me smoke signals. I want to hear from you all, and I want to help in whatever way I can.

I hope you're all having an awesome Veterans Day weekend.


-Daniel