Someday

One of my biggest fears in life is becoming divorced, if I got a divorce I would see it as THE BIGGEST failure in my life no questions asked. Yes my parents are divorced; I have seen firsthand how it affects the parents, the kids, and the rest of the family. It’s not fun and it is not something that’s going to happen in my life. I am going to marry a “tea cup girl” whom I love 100% and she is the right woman for me. I know just about everybody feels this way when they are getting married, that’s the way they should feel, but I want to feel that way about my wife until the day I die. I am going to love her, care for her, look out for her, make her feel like a princess, I will make sure she knows that she is the only one for me. I don’t want to be crude but I want to have sex with my wife until the day comes that I can’t, I truly believe that sex is an important part of a marriage and it should not be taken lightly. I want my wife to be my best friend, a companion that helps me through the ups and downs of life and me doing the same for her. Our relationship will be centered on God and we will raise a family in a Christian atmosphere. I know this isn’t all going to be easy, it’s going to be very hard but you have to work at it, you have to work on it together and by yourself. Look in the mirror, ask yourself what are you doing to help or not help, how can you make yourself better? Pointing fingers, especially at your wife, usually is not the right thing to do. Yes, I am a 20 year old sophomore in college who has never been close to marriage but I like to think that these are some of the core things that a marriage should be based on. My dream is to be the best husband for my wife and a great father to my kids, all the while following Jesus and being the best man of God I can be.

Olivet

This year at revival I started to notice certain things about Olivet, how amazing this university is, how different it is, how blessed it is. I stood at every revival service and watched, as the pastor called people to the altar, a multitude of students go and do you know who followed these students to the altar? My professors, the faculty, the president of Olivet, all went up to pray with them. This alone showed me how awesome Olivet is, name another college that has this happen. Professors here are investing their time into every aspect of our lives, yes knowledge is very powerful but a person’s walk with God is the greatest thing somebody could invest their time in. How honored am I that my professor wants to make me a better man of God let alone a good engineer, how proud are they when they see us leave a completely different person due to our walk with God. Think how Dr. Bowling (Olivet’s president) feels about Olivet, he must be so proud of what big changes happen here, what the hand of God does to thousands of kids on campus. Yes there are rules and there are things that we are kept accountable on but I appreciate it because they are doing that to look out for me, to build me up and to make sure I’m doing the right thing. Olivet is an amazing university and I’m so glad that this is where I am supposed to be.

Mornings in Chicago

Over the weekend I went to Chicago very early in the morning, we are talking 3:00 A.M. early, and let me tell you what, it is an awesome experience to be in a major city when it is completely dead. The tall buildings around you, complete silence, the air is still, maybe even smells kind of nice. It’s the complete opposite of what it is during the day and that’s why it’s such a cool experience. Anyways I went with Mullen for one morning and we just drove around, but when we got back Naldi really wanted to go. We left Sunday morning at 2:30 we leave campus and stop to get a good ol’ five hour energy drink to keep me awake (I’m driving) and drove off to Chicago on an empty highway 57. We parked by the parks and walked around for a couple of hours taking random pictures, relieving ourselves in the bushes, and trying to find a way onto the statue in the middle of the fountain. We finally headed over to the yacht club where we watched a B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L sunrise, a great way to top off a good morning. I did not get much sleep over the weekend but it was so worth it. Next weekend my dad flies in on Saturday night so we can go to the BMW championship on Sunday. It will be my first time going to a PGA event and I am soooo stoked to see Tiger Woods, Woods by three strokes on the field is my prediction. Saturday night I’m bringing my dad to Gino’s East in Chicago, it is the best pizza I have ever had and hopefully he agrees.

I’m just going to say it, AT&T is awful. I barely get service anywhere on campus where as my Verizon friends have 3-4 bars. It was even bad when I was at home in my basement, I couldn’t take a phone call down there so I would always have to run upstairs. Anyways, if you try and call me at school consider yourself lucky if I pick up and answer.




I'm out

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Lately I have been really anxious, on edge, a little lonely, quick to anger, straight up pissed, and lost. I have this underlying feeling that time is running out, that I need to start making my moves now or my opportunities will be gone. I feel the need to make big decisions now because it’s going to take several years to put those decisions into action. I’ve never really felt lost; never really felt like I didn’t know what was going on inside my head or around me, never this confused. I feel like I’m quickly heading into a dead end and I need to make my left or right hand turn as soon as possible because who knows if another chance will come my way. Who do I have by my side and who isn’t…why aren’t those people by my side anymore? How did I mess up that badly? I’ve gone from thinking I knew what was going on, knew that everything is under control, to feeling so lost and disoriented…running in circles. What am I to do? There are people that I really want to talk to but…I can’t, some don’t want to talk because I bug them or annoy them, some just flat out don’t like me, some just don’t have the time or wouldn’t understand. Then there are people who are always willing to talk but to be honest I don’t want to talk to them, I shutdown and zone out. There are times that I just want to cry, maybe it’s because I feel like I have lost control of everything due to me messing up or not paying attention. The world is flying by me and I’m standing still, I don’t know what to do.

Summer and School

It’s good to be back at school again, nice to see my roommate and best of friends that I said goodbye to four months ago and kind of nice to get back to classes and homework. I had an excellent summer at home, yes I did have a girlfriend over the summer, Megan, and she was so much fun to hang out with. My daily routine consisted of going to work from 6-2:30, playing golf, and then getting to go hang out with Megan. My golf game was so much better than it was last summer and I really enjoyed working on it so I could be ready for tryouts when I got back to school. Best round of golf this summer was a 78 at the Olde Course and an 80 at Mariana Butte on my birthday with Mullen, I was much more consistent in my irons and putting then before but my driver struggled off and on through the season. The end of the summer was a little rough in general and I was really ready to get to school and start doing my own thing.

My dad and I drove out several days before school started so we could play TPC Deere Run in the quad cities, this was by far the most beautiful and hardest course I have played on and it was so worth the struggles I went through while playing. Got to school, played the course I was going to try out on (shot an 83), moved in all of my stuff, then ran off with my friends. The first night I was at school I’m at Kyle’s apartment and I hit my head on a concrete balcony. This resulted in a decent size gash in my cranium which took four stitches to close up, a great way to start off my year. I tried out for the golf team this past weekend and it did not go well, just fell apart and had a hard time recovering and it ended me not being on the golf team. I’m just going to have to work harder next summer…and get a new driver.

I’m positive this is going to be a good semester for me because classes will be challenging but fun, I’ve got good friends around me, and I’m going to be able to explore myself for the first time. I’m excited to see what road my relationships will be taking, I pray for the best and I pray for God’s will to be done, it’s in his hands. If you could pray for me, it’s been a little rough lately and everything helps. I’ll keep posting on a weekly basis.

Middle school movie nights always had awkward seating arrangements in the theater.

Time to go check my farm on Farmville!

Spring is here!!!

Finally it’s here! I was getting to the point where I thought I would never again experience warm weather and now I can finally walk outside in a t-shirt and shorts. When it starts getting nice out we all know what happens to the grass…it turns a beautiful green and becomes very lush, and when that happens it is time to break out the Walker Mower and start mowing.

Mowing is a passion of mine that started about five or six years ago when I was mowing my mom’s grass every week. It felt soooo good to look back at the lawn after it was mowed and see every blade of grass cut evenly, to see long straight lines in the lawn, and the smell of fresh grass. This passion of mine got fueled even more when I started working at L&M, everyday at 7:00 in the morning I would drive a my fellow partner, Adan, and a huge trailer with two beautiful Walkers on it and head to Denver to mow Quest properties and Home Depots. I learned how to mow quickly and efficiently due to the fact that we had a certain number of properties to mow each day; I learned where to place the outer wheel of the deck on line that I just mowed, that made it so my stripes were nice and wide. I eventually became a string trimmer champion being able to evenly cut a small patch of grass with ease and trim around sidewalks both ways (left handed and right handed). Although I did not think very highly of it then, I really enjoyed waking up early in the morning to go mow green lawns; the smells that accompanied me in those mornings still linger around in my memory. I spent two full summers doing this job, it didn’t pay as well as I would have liked but I got some awesome experience on the mowers (probably around 15-20 hours on a mower each week) and I learned how to drive a truck with a huge trailer attached to it through Denver traffic.

Last year I got offered to work at THE Walker Company….THE Walker Company!!! I got to use some of the best mowing machines with some very nice decks. L&M taught me how to mow quickly and efficiently because we were on a deadline so when I started mowing at Walker I was FLYING on the mowers. Eventually Dean Walker told me it’s okay to slow down a bit so I started slowing down and really focusing on mowing precisely and straight. Eventually I was mowing Dean Walker’s lawn!!! This is a big deal to me because this is the master handing over his territory for me to mow for him! The best mowing job I did was right before the Walker Reunion, I mowed the north lawn (the biggest lawn) with the 56” deck, I believe, and I caught all of the grass which is something I don’t usually do. My lines were spot on straight, I so wish I took a picture of it because it was one the most beautiful things I have ever seen. This summer I am going to be trying to mow the Walker “W” or the Walker logo into the north lawn, not mention some other cool mowing patterns that I have up my sleeve.

I walk around campus in the morning and I can smell that they have been spraying and putting down fertilizer and all I can think of is hopping on a mower and cutting some grass.




8 more days till SUMMER!!!

A relationship

This year of school has been all about relationships for me, from making new friends for the first time since pre-school, to talking to my professors, to my break up with Kelsey. It’s all been about relationships, Mr. King told me during a round of golf “Meet as many people as you possibly can while you are at school because you will never get another opportunity to meet that many new people in your life.” (I smoked Mr. King in that round of golf by the way…). I like to think that I have made plenty of new friends at Olivet (please let me know if I have not). I have ended a major relationship this year and I have started another, and thinking about this has led me to realize that what is really going on with my walk with Jesus.

I was talking to a friend of mine who was struggling with keeping up with his daily devotions and prayer. I told him that this….this thing that we have with God is not just something, it’s a relationship, we are not praying to something, we are praying to somebody. Even though I was the one saying this it opened my eyes too, God and I have a relationship…when I think about a relationship I think about Kelsey and I, how much it brightened my day, how much she loved me and how much I loved her, how it changed my lifestyle. I take that and I look at my relationship with God, that relationship doesn’t even compare to what I have right now. This realization came before Easter weekend and boy am I glad it did because it made it into the most touching Easter I have experienced. I stood there at the Good Friday service and was almost brought to tears, three days later I stood in the Easter service and was overjoyed. I finally felt what Easter was always about; I was consumed by the emotions that Easter brings to all Christians. All of the Easters in the future will no longer be about the basket that I get in the morning, the candy, or the Easter eggs… it will be about Jesus and the cross. “Thank you God!!!”