When Arrogance Attacks…

While at Auburn, my fraternity made a t-shirt that read “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God, and AKL just because I’m better than you”. It was a fun shirt, but it was also an arrogant shirt. The truth was that we made the shirt when the fraternity had about 10 members, and less than a year later the whole chapter dried up and died. It’s pretty tough to be better than other fraternities, when your fraternity ceases to exist.

I can safely say none of my fraternity brothers believed the shirt was actually true, but many people in this world believe some variation of it. Instead people insert other things – race and religion being the two most popular – and from these stem things such as racism and war. When a person or group of people being to think they are better than other people, bad things start happening.

The truth though, is that you and I are no better than anyone else. I love traveling and experiencing that first hand. Cultures around the world are very different, but the basic hopes, dreams, struggles, and trials of people are all the same. I love that.

I hope this isn’t new information for anyone, but I want to emphasize it anyways – sometimes it’s easy to forget.

Poor Garrett

Is it wrong to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others?

I couldn’t help but smile a little tonight when I got a text message:

“Hey Emily, it’s Garrett. How’s it going?”

For many obvious reasons only beginning with my name not being “Emily”, some girl gave poor Garrett a number other than her own. Though on a side note, if Garrett couldn’t ‘man-up’ enough to call the girl instead of text her, that alone should be reason enough to receive faulty digits. Anyways, I couldn’t help but chuckle when I replied “Wrong number. No Emily here.”

Several minutes later I received the follow up “Sorry.” text from Garrett. I thought for a second, and almost replied “Better luck next time.” But that would just be mean.

Losing Control

I guess you could say my brother and I watched a lot of tv when we were growing up. Since we only had one viable tv in the house, the constant dilemma was who got to watch what. I can’t remember exactly how the system began because it is so ingrained into my head, but it became a house rule that whoever turned the television on first gained “control”. “Control” was the actual term we used to describe who had absolute power in dictating television viewing, and whoever did not have “control” was just out of luck. I remember watching the television and clutching the remote when I had “control”, even when I wasn’t changing the channel – I just wanted to hold the remote to have the power it represented. I guess in the world of an eight year old, it probably was about the extent of our own “control”…

The whole process of growing up is about becoming responsible enough to take control of your own life. We inherently know this, and relish the day when that becomes a reality. When we are young our parents and teachers have the most control over our lives, and there are times when things didn’t go the way we want them to because someone else controls what we do. We are told that one day when we’re grown, we’ll get to make our own decisions and be in control of everything ourselves. I remember thinking from time to time how things would be different if I were in charge. Everything would be right, or at least everything would be much more fun if only it were up to me. Besides all of these people making the decisions around me don’t even know what I really want. If I were in charge, I would always get exactly what I wanted. I would always make decisions that benefited me, because who in their right mind would decide to do anything to knowingly harm themselves?

Eventually that day came, and I was free. I finally had “control” over all aspects of my life. In all the years since, one of the hardest lessons to learn and to remember is that the only person who really needs to be in control of everything in my life… isn’t me.

Asterisks

Wednesday night I went to the Braves game vs San Francisco. As much as I can’t stand Barry Bonds, it was secretly exciting to see him hit a home run during the game.

Change is Good

I went to Auburn this past weekend for a fraternity Conference. When I was in school at Auburn, I joined Alpha Kappa Lambda and became quite involved. It was a small fraternity then (understatement), but now they’ve grown into quite a good fraternity. They are on the cusp of breaking out of the small fraternity world and poised to start impacting the Auburn greek system in a big way. It’s really excited for me to see their growth after being apart of it when it was so small.

Auburn in general has grown by leaps and bounds since I graduated. It started when I was a junior… They expanded the runway at the airport. I don’t think that’s the sole reason for all of the growth, but that’s the first big thing that happened. Things started slowly, but after I graduated, it’s been unreal how different the Auburn/Opelika area looks. The campus has even expanded so much that there are parts I don’t even recognize anymore. When I was in school, I always wondered why so many people who came to football games never took *any* back roads to avoid traffic… surely people don’t forget that much over the years… Well, as I found out this past weekend, it turns out people do forget that much… and the part they don’t forget no longer exists…

But change is good. Auburn is well and thriving.

One that that hasn’t changed? Lakeview (It’s the church I went to in college, but I won’t type the whole name in a small effort to evade google). I went there Sunday morning for services, and it felt like a time warp. Everything about the place was exactly the same – even the songs. That was actually a little scary. Their services are “contemporary”, but I use that term very loosely. It’s funny how God surrounds you with exactly what you need, when you need it. I was so scared when I left Auburn that I was also loosing Lakeview, but I couldn’t possibly imagine having to sit through the services every week now… It’s all about seasons of life…

Swear Jar

The Veil of Christian Morality

I don’t believe there’s anything I hate more than the “Veil of Christian Morality”. I think that’s what I’ll call it… The “Veil of Christian Morality” refers to the false idea that just because someone is a Christian, they are automatically assumed to hold impeccable morality, honesty, trustworthiness, etc. for all eternity.

Just because someone accepts Jesus as their personal savior, doesn’t magically give them the power to resist all sin and temptation automatically for the rest of their life. It’d be a great deal to get in on, but it’s just not there. Christians do have a compass to guide our lives by, but let’s be honest – the direction the compass points, and the path we actually travel aren’t always in line, and nobody is making us go the right way. Christians should always strive to follow God, I just wish others wouldn’t assume being a Christian made you immune to the temptation of sin… and then treated you accordingly when you, if only slightly, lose your way.

The Greatest Thing

The greatest thing about about doing something never done before, is that it’s very difficult for someone else to say you did it incorrectly.

Monday

The comic strip was too large for the blog, and it was bothering me. OCD anyone? Link below still works =)

Source: http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2007/ga070806.gif