Holy Balls I am bored.

"Dang, two days in a row? Luigi must be really motivated to update these days!"
Sadly, I wish this was the case; however, I'm just seriously freaking bored. No one's really talking to me so..I'm just gonna ramble on here until I get distracted or until I get tired enough to ktfo or something.

So yeah, we drove to Florida today. After a 12ish hour drive, I'm finally here at my grandma's house to stay the night. Tomorrow morning, we will wake up and drive to the ship, and disappear for 7 days. I already had a long talk about that yesterday though, so no point in elaborating on that again.

This time though, the car ride wasn't too bad. It wasn't fun, but it actually seemed to go by a lot faster this time. I remember being a lot younger and making the trip here and wanting to die of boredom. Maybe it was cause I was ktfo for a good deal of the ride, but it was not as arduous as I remember.

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Before deciding to update again, I read through all of my old blog posts, just to see what I've been thinking for the past half-year. And although there was definitely not as much content as i had hoped there would be, it was still interesting to read the stuff and recapture all the feelings and events that I was feeling/going through at that time.
Btw that's something I really regret btw. I know there are no regrets in life blahblah w/e, but I really wish I had kept up with my blog more consistently. I was pretty good with it in the beginning, but after a while I stopped blogging entirely. I hope that I start to update more regularly again so I actually have something substantial to look through whenever I decide to again.


Augh...so I've basically stopped going to youth group entirely. I'm pretty upset about that. It's not so much me and my view towards God though; if anything that hasn't changed. It's really just something between me and my youth group itself. It's a selfish, immature, and stupid reason really -__-...but unfortunately it's something that I can't really do anything about now.

In short, I've been going to ECHO even before it was ECHO, when it was still just me and 5 other people in my pastor's new townhouse. I remember being so excited, so filled with passion and love when I went to those meetings. I remember the retreat when we were given the name ECHO, and how it was maybe just 30 students that went, if even. I remember all the different meeting spots we've had to go to, all the different church offices. I remember it all really, even since I started coming to Dulles Community Church in the middle of 8th grade.

You could say that I feel entitled to that feeling almost, that I feel like I own it. And for a while, these feelings didn't really get in the way of anything. I accepted that God's calling of other people who did not share this amazing connection was more important than any petty feeling of comfort that I had. So I accepted all of the changes. I went on with a positive outlook and, usually, it led to something good. I made connections with new people, grew stronger in my faith, and continued to serve and love the Lord.

I remember after Fall Retreat in junior year, how I came to ECHO every sunday. I never missed one meeting. But that summer, the summer before senior year, everything changed.

I walked in one day as all the new freshman "graduated" up to the high school service, and I remember feeling lost. Me, feeling lost, in my own youth group. Something that I feel like I almost raised. Something that had been a part of me, that had defined me, for so many years. And now, in a blink of an eye, it was totally and utterly foreign. A lot of the other seniors had stopped coming, or were coming more and more infrequently, and there were all these underclassmen that I had absolutely no relationship with. It seemed like I was outcasted from my own family...sorta like how an older sibling feels like when a new baby brother or sister is brought into the family.

Writing this, I know I sound unbearably selfish and hypocritical. ECHO, my realtionship with God, none of this is supposed to be about me really. It's, ultimately, supposed to be about how I can impact others in a real, genuine, and life-giving way. If I felt outcasted, I should have extended the effort to connect. I'm the elder accepting in the new students; I should be descipiling, not deserting. Why was I too selfish and immature to understand that then? It took a wise and random conversation at 4:00 AM with a GMU upperclassman on a drive home from Annandale for me to realize all this. Sure I can complain about how this all changed, but really, really, in the end, I missed the entire point of everything that I had claimed to "own" for four years. How pathetic.

Now, realizing this too late, I'm stuck thinking that it's too late to go back now and do anything worthwhile, so I have to just sit here with this awkward tension, knowing that people are wondering about me as I wonder about ECHO. How is my youth pastor doing really? How are all the freshman doing that I completely missed out on for a whole year?

Justin, if you ever stumble across this, I am truly, and unforgettably sorry for this terrible mistake. I hope I can say this to you in person some day, but for now, this is all I can do. In such a dumb state I can't face the person who had so much faith and who spent so much time leading me, only for me to throw it away at the very instant I was really uncomfortable.

There is good news though. I can start over in college. I will find a new community like this on campus. I will plug in. And I will not just absorb, I will give back. I will lead. I will not back down when faced with discomfort. I will embrace change and mold myself in betterment with it. Though I will come in as a new kid again, I will find a way to spread the most precious effort I have been given by my youth group, and not just sit waiting for something to happen. This is my promise, and through this I hope I can make up for this "lost year". Only good can lie waiting for me. So Lord, please guide me through this; help me to find a new church family, and help me to find a way to spread what I've been so undeservingly given.