Older & Wiser. But Really Just Older.

At some point, I should go back through all of my blog posts (which I started writing in 2008!) and count how many times I begin a post by talking about how long it had been since I had written, and how I’m sorry for that and I’ll try to do better. My guess is I’ve said something like that a lot. But this post probably deserves it more than others, because it’s now been almost three years since I’ve written anything on here! In fact, the last time I wrote a post, I talked about how Chick-fil-A had changed their barbecue sauce recipe. But don’t worry! They changed back to the original recipe a long time ago! (Thank goodness!)

For a while now, my wife Katie has been encouraging me to write on the blog again. I think that Katie understands that I don’t do a good job verbalizing my thoughts or feelings in conversation, so she figures that the only way to really know what’s going on inside my head is for me to write about it.

It’s not a bad plan on her part.

So I’m back to writing. I will try my best to do so consistently. I can’t say that my writings will have specific focus from post-to-post. Sometimes I’ll probably talk about something going on in my ministry or something that caught my attention from the Bible. Sometimes I may talk about movies or baseball. And of course, I’ll keep you updated on the latest happenings on Chick-fil-A sauces.

I feel like the obligatory thing to do in a post like this is update you on what has changed in my life over the past three years. So here are the highlights:

• I got married! Katie and I were married in Oregon in November 2016. We got to ring a big bell at the end of the ceremony, and they played the Space Jam theme song at the reception.
• We also got a dog. Griffey is a miniature Australian shepherd and is about a year-and-a-half old. Dogs were my greatest fear when I was young. In fact, my mom took me to see “The Sandlot” when I was a kid, but I was so terrified when they showed the shadow of the dog against a fence that I cried, and we had to leave. So we saw “Cop and a Half” with Burt Reynolds instead.
• When I last wrote, I had just started my first full-time ministry as the Associate Minister of my home church: Town & Country Christian Church in Topeka, Kansas. Well…I haven’t been fired yet! I oversee our small group ministry, connect with newcomers, teach, preach, and take care of other little tasks throughout the week.
• Katie and I bought a house. Our neighbors are a retired couple. I’m pretty sure they think we’re idiots, because we don’t really know how to take care of a house or be responsible citizens. But they are patient and kind with us, and they give Griffey treats. He likes them more than he likes us, I think.

Well, those are the major things. Thanks for reading. If you did read it, anyways. Do people still read blogs? Did they read them when I started this thing over 10 years ago? I don’t know. But in any case, it’s nice to be back. I’ll work on having some more substantial content each week. In the meantime…I’ll have a three-piece chicken strip meal, waffle fries, and a Cherry Coke.

Reflections on Quitting

Know what I found out over the past few months? It’s really stressful to make important, potentially life-altering decisions. And that’s why I generally try to keep the decisions in my life to things like, “Do I want to go to Chick-fil-A or Panda Express for lunch today?” (And in case you’re curious, I think I’m going with Panda today).

As you may or may not know, this fall I started a PhD program at McMaster Divinity College in Ontario. And, as some others of you may or may not know, I more recently decided I didn’t really want to be doing that program, so I withdrew from school, packed up my car with all my stuff, and took it back to Kansas, where I’ll be staying until I figure out what I’m doing next.

It has quite possibly been the most difficult decision I’ve made in my life. It’s tough to return home with your tail between your legs after having told a bunch of people about the exciting academic program you were going to do. I don’t want people whispering to each other about how I apparently wasn’t able to hack it (even if it might be true!)

So it’s been a crazy time and that involved a lot of me stress-eating pizza (but not the good pizza…the cheap kind that tastes like it was made of the box it came in). But through this entire process, I think I have learned a thing or two about life, which I thought I would share with all of you.

But before I do that, I should make one thing clear: My decision to quit school doesn’t really have much to do with McMaster itself, or with any of the faculty or people there. McMaster is a really good school, and everyone there is really nice and super-helpful. I certainly don’t regret the friendships I made there one bit. If I wanted to pursue a PhD right now, McMaster would be the place to do it, and I would encourage other people who are thinking of going seminary to take a look at McMaster.

With all of that said, here are a few things I’ve learned while going through the process of making this decision:

1. Intuition is a valid factor in decision-making

Just so you know, this is a very Un-David-Heffren thing to say. I’ve always said that decisions should be made on cold, hard facts! You need solid reasons! Pro and con charts!

What I’ve discovered, however, is that I can come up for reasons to support both sides of just about any issue. I could list solid reasons to stay in school. And I could list solid reasons to leave. A purely reasoned approach put me in a logjam.

So call it intuition. The more I thought through my decision, the more I felt a deep-seated unease with the prospect of remaining in school. I realized that it just wasn’t what I want to be doing right now. And I don’t think that’s an illegitimate influence in making a decision…which is difficult for me to say, as someone who typically values logic over emotion.

2. Mistakes can be reversed

This has been an important lesson for me in a number of ways over the past year. What I’ve found about myself (and maybe you are like this to) is that I too often remain in situations I’m unhappy with because I don’t think I can change it. I figure “This is the path I’ve chosen, and my only option is to stay the course, whether I like it or not.” I can’t quit my mistakes.

But this year I have learned that mistakes can be reversed. Spiritual repentance is possible. Relational reconciliation is possible. Vocational reorientation is possible.

But it requires humility. The reason many of us continue down paths we don’t really want to go down is that we don’t want to admit to others that we were wrong. I’ve learned that it’s really uncomfortable to sit across a table from someone and say “I’m sorry.” And I’ve learned that it’s really uncomfortable to walk into a professor’s office and say, “I don’t think this is for me.” But it’s only when we stop and acknowledge the mistakes we’ve made that we’re able to move forward into something new.

3. Most experiences are a mixture of good and bad.

Here’s a minor spoiler from the Pixar movie Inside Out: the film shows that many of life’s experiences cannot be entirely summarized by a single emotion, whether it’s joy, sadness, anger, fear, or disgust. Instead, many experiences involve a confluence of emotions. Something can be both happy and sad; good and bad.

I only watched Inside Out last week while I was on a plane, but it helped me understand what the year 2015 was for me. As I was reflecting on the past year on New Year’s Eve, I thought, “How would I classify this year?” And that’s not an easy question to answer. In some important ways, it has been one of the best years of my life. In other ways, it has been one of the most difficult and frustrating years of my life. So was it a good year or not?

And I think it was a good one, because even in its most difficult times, I experienced positive things. While I was stressed out trying to make decisions, get schoolwork done, and adjust to a new environment, I was also able to be encouraged by people close to me and to experience the everlasting faithfulness of God. The past few months brought a lot of frustration and anxiety, but it also brought more relational depth and taught me a few lessons that I may have needed to learn.

So that’s what I’ve learned, and I write all of this in hopes that it might encourage any of you who are wrestling with a difficult decision. As the New Year begins, I’m starting the exciting and terrifying process of looking for a full-time ministry, as I figure it’s about time I start doing something with all the years I’ve spent in education. So here’s to 2016–which I’m sure will once again be filled with incredible blessings, difficult transitions, exciting opportunities, orange chicken, and a 60-win season for the Cincinnati Reds.

The Year I Was Supposed to Grow Up

We only have a few traditions here at A Chicken in a Cage with a Ferrett. (1) Being awesome. (2) Playing Christmas music in December. And (3) Writing a year-end recap of my life. At the end of each year, I like to reflect on some of the major themes and currents in my life, as well as some of the major events. And as 2011 comes to a close, I think that this last year was theoretically one when I was meant to enter adult life. I’ll let you decide if I succeeded.

One way in which adulthood crept up on me this year is that all my good friends started getting married. In fact, that’s how the year started, when last January 1st, I was the best man for my friend Ryan’s wedding in Idaho. And recently, I was the best man again when my friend Charlie was married in Indiana. (Women talk about being “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” I guess I’m always a best man, never a….man?). Through all of this, I did discover how good I look in a tux. It’s out of control. I should wear one every day. It’s kind of an odd feeling when your best friends all start getting married and becoming domestic and watching the evening news. Adulthood is so domestic. But I do really like visiting friends when they have wives who are willing to give me baked goods.

In May, I donned my goofy cap and blue dress and walked across the stage to receive my college degree. Graduating college is an exciting time, of course, but it’s also kind of sad. You gain calligraphic piece of paper but lose a home. I loved my time at Ozark and often wish that I was still there (you can read my ode to my alma mater here.) What’s even more depressing, though, is that Ryan once read my a passage from a book on Christian marriage that said that if you graduate Bible college single, your chances of finding a wife decrease drastically. Again, that’s why I need to wear a tuxedo around.

May 22nd became one of the more distressing days I have experienced in a long time. I remember browsing facebook and seeing a status update from a friend in Joplin, Missouri saying that he was in Walmart and that it had been locked down because of a tornado warning. Those things happen in the midwest, so I didn’t think of it too much. Then I got a call from another friend telling me that the tornado was a bad one, and I began to see news reports showing the chaos that was left in the wake of the twister that ripped through the middle of a city I love. Now, I’m not going to pretend that this event was as impacting for me as it was for those who were there and lost loved ones or houses. But even so, it’s a difficult to see a place that you lived for five years torn to bits. So continue to remember and pray for Joplin. The picture below is the satellite image that you can see on googlemaps, and you can see the brown stretch moving from west to east where the tornado went through.

In August, I moved away to a mythical land–Cincinnati, Ohio. This has brought with it a number of different challenges. Paying for rent and utilities. Cooking some and trying not to set my kitchen on fire in the process. It’s like I have real responsibilities or something. It’s funny. People might spend a long time dreaming about the day when they move out on their own, ready to carve their own path in the world. But it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. I miss the days of having other people cook for me and clean up after me. And even though I have all these new responsibilities, I don’t really feel like a true adult. It’s like I’m playing house or something, and I worry about being “found out”–that someone will discover that I’m just a kid who really has no idea what the crap he’s doing.

So maybe adulthood is more than I’ve imagined it before. Growing up, I looked at my parents and thought, “Man, there must be some point in life when you just ‘get it.’ When the world makes sense, and you always know the right thing to do, and you have all the answers.” But if that’s how it works, I’m certainly not there. I think it’s more likely that we never really reach the end of our development. We’re are people who are just trying to find our way through life, from the time we’re born till we die. There is never a moment when someone gives you a certificate and says, “You’re an adult now.” We grow into it.

At the end of these kinds of posts, I like to write a little something that looks forward to what’s going to be happening in the next year. But this year…I really don’t know. Right now, it looks like it’ll be more of the same…hanging out, going to school, watching Netflix, eating frozen pizzas.

What about you? What have been the highlights of your year? What are you looking forward to in the next?

Movin’ On Up!

Here’s how much I love you readers: even when I have a lot of important things to do, and even when I should get to bed early because I have to drive nine hours tomorrow, I still make time to write a new post when the situation calls for it. So don’t take this for granted.

I am writing this on Sunday night, and on Monday morning I will leave my home in Topeka to move to Cincinnati, where I will begin seminary in a few weeks. The U-Haul truck that we rented is all packed up in our driveway. Since my bed is already in the truck, tonight I am sleeping in our spare bedroom, and that’s where I am as I’m writing this. It’s funny to me, because when we first moved to Kansas, this was my room the first couple years that we lived in this house. It looks like I’ve ended up right back where I began. Except there are a lot more cat decorations in here now.

The past few days, I have spent a lot of time packing and getting ready to move. It’s been a pretty big undertaking, and unfortunately for my parents, I didn’t get my room cleaned up as much as I had hoped. There’s something you need to understand about my bedroom. Most of it has gone untouched for years. Seriously, there are things in my room that have done nothing but collect dust since before I left for college five years ago. So needless to say, there was a lot of junk in my room, and it took a long time to dig through everything and figure out what I need to take with me, what needs to be thrown away, and what might need to be stored. It makes me wish that I never have to move again, but then I remember that I’ll probably run out of money in a few months and have to move back in with my parents.

All of this cleaning and rummaging and packing has been an interesting experience, because it feels as though I am in a place of transition between my past and my future. One the one hand, I am about to embark on a new experience. It’ll be my first time living on my own, and I can look forward to learning how to cook and making new friends (or maybe, I can just look forward to eating ramen noodles and being scared to even leave my apartment). On other other hand, as I have been sorting through all my possessions, I have been reminded of where I have already been. I’ve looked through old yearbooks and stacks of pictures and notebooks. I’ve found some pretty cool stuff, like this old picture of me and Jon Foreman, the frontman of Switchfoot, when I was in fifth grade or so. Switchfoot was my favorite band then, and they’re still my favorite band now. Part of the reason I am who I am now is because when I was just a kid, I heard the song “Chem 6A” and convinced my parents to get me the Switchfoot album on cassette tape. My past has shaped my current character, and it will continue to do so as I move on in life. While I have been packing and have been reminded of my past likes and past events, I have been able to reflect on who I have become and where I am going.

A couple years ago, I went on Ozark’s “Spiritual Formation Retreat,” which was one of the best things I did in my time in college (isn’t it weird that I can say that now?). One of the activities we did at the retreat was to take a few hours and just think about how the story of our lives had gone up to that point. This was probably my favorite thing we did all week. It really helped to sit down for a while and focus on my life, reflecting on how events and relationships throughout my life–both good and bad–have molded me into a unique individual who can be used by God in special ways. Losing loved ones at an early age has shaped me. Becoming friends with this kid Charlie in my Sunday School in elementary school has shaped me. Getting up on stage and sharing my testimony with the rest of the youth group when I was in seventh grade has shaped me. Being given a copy of Blue Like Jazz by my sister for my 18th birthday has shaped me. Striking out with girls in college has shaped me. Choosing to spend a summer in Oregon has shaped me. We all have experiences and stories and , and even things that seem insignificant at the time chisel away at our characters, constantly determining the people that we are.

It’s important for us to reflect on these things, because by doing so, we prepare for our futures. My friend Kelsie is one of the smartest and wisest people I know, and when I was a freshman at Ozark, she graduated as the saluditorian. In her graduation speech, she talked about the book of Deuteronomy, about how before Israel entered the promised land, Moses reminded them of where they had been. He rehearsed their story, and he reminded them about the law that God had laid down for them. It was necessary for the Israelites to keep all of this in mind as they entered a new chapter of the nation’s story. The line of Kelsie’s speech that I remember was her last: “Reflections on our past will shape our future.” That’s good advice, I think–especially when entering a new stage of life. We have to remember where we’ve been if we’re going to have a good grasp of where we’re going.

When people move away from home, they often call it “leaving the nest.” I guess this can be either encouraging or terrifying, depending on the outcome. Because when some baby birds leave the nest, while they might falter at first, they begin to flap their wings and soar to new heights. Other birds, however, just crash to the ground below and are left to die.

I hope I’m more like the first bird.

Gozark!

When I was just a freshman in high school, I decided I wanted to go to Ozark Christian College when I graduated. For the next four years, I knew that would be where I would end up. I never even applied to any other college. I didn’t visit other campuses. I was Ozark all the way. In fact, by the time I was a sophomore, I was ready to be done with high school. There were good things about high school, but I was anxious to move on to something else. Ozark was my Promised Land, and I impatiently weathered my years in the desert of the high school hallways. At long last, in August 2006, I drove my Buick onto campus, parked it in front of Williamson Hall, and started carrying my stuff to my dorm room. I wore my David Crowder t-shirt that day, and we had chicken parmesan for lunch in the cafeteria. There are some days that you just don’t forget easily.

Ozark has been my home for the last five years. But a week from now, I will be graduating and will be leaving. As cliche as it sounds, it had not yet sunk in that graduation is finally here, possibly because I still have quite a bit of reading and studying to do for my Western Civ text for Tuesday. When I stop and actually think about it all though, it is an odd feeling to realize that I’m leaving this place. This hill means a lot to me. The people here are maybe the greatest community I’ve been a part of. I’ve grown and matured a lot here (but have also gotten less mature in some other ways, so it probably cancels out). In our culture today, we don’t often think about the important of “place,” but places really do mean something, and Ozark is a place that is especially significant for me.

As I walk around campus, and even go elsewhere in Joplin, I see specific places that mean something to me. I can go to the cafeteria and see where I’ve talked and laughed and eaten countless cheeseburgers. I can see classroom in the library where I began to realize that I love to preach. I can see spots on campus where I’ve had to have some really difficult conversations. I can see the round tables in the student center where I played cards for hours–where friendships were forged and I laughed more than I possibly have anywhere else. I can see the ping-pong table where I would play until I got dizzy. Right now, I’m sitting at the desk I’ve been sitting at for five years, writing papers and blog posts and facestalking. I can see my bed where I’ve laid staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the happenings of my life. I can see the chair on the other side of the room, where Charlie, then Ryan, and now Nick have sat, talking with me about all sorts of things. I can see the spot on the gym floor where I injured my knee and tumbled to the hardwood, and I can see another spot where I closed my eyes and heaved up a buzzer-beater in our intramural game. I could go to the mall’s food court and see the place where I slept on the floor so I could get free Chick-fil-A for a year. I can drive out to the church at Commerce, where for the last year I have been taught wisdom and ministry, as well as being constantly told how my body will fall apart when I’m old. I can see the projector in its spot on my counter, which we have used to watch seasons of Smallville, Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, The Office, and who-knows how many movies.

But now, it’s time to leave all of that. In times like this, I tend to become rather reflective and sentimental. I love this place. But it’s a place where I can’t stay. I think that a lot of the time, God uses a certain place to prepare us so that he can send us to another place. It’s a pretty cruel trick, really. When we become attached to a place, that’s when we’re often sent out from it. Thankfully, though, we serve a God who transcends places. It’s not as though I need to be at Ozark for God to be with me. He was with Joseph in Egypt, David in Jerusalem, Jonah in the fish, Daniel in Babylon, Paul in Rome, and John on Patmos. While places are important, God is bigger than all of that, and everything really boils down to him anyway.

I’m ready to leave Ozark. Not especially happy about it. But ready. I’ll miss this place deeply, and I’ll miss the people here even more. But I believe that God has used Ozark to do what he’s wanted it to do in my life, and now he has something else for me to move on to. I’m excited to start seminary in Cincinnati in the fall, and I’m excited to continue down whatever path it is that God has set before me. But part of me will always be left at Ozark (not that I’m going to dismember myself before graduation and leave bury a piece next to the time capsule by the library).

What are some places that mean a lot to you?

State of the Heffren Address

I would like to begin this post with a quotation from a blog post that my good friend Charlie wrote in May:

I secretly have a “Blog War” with David Heffren. He doesn’t know about it(well, he might not if he reads this post like a good friend would). I saw that before tonight, we both have posted 11 blog posts so far this year, and as I walked into our dorm room, I saw him writing a new post. I can’t let him write more blog posts than me, so I decided to write one. I know that people usually write when they have something of importance or meaningful on their minds, but I am competitive by nature. So I guess you could say this post was born out of spite for David Heffren. So take that four-eyes.

This is now my 43rd blog post of 2010, whereas Charlie has only written 40 of them. He made a good showing, but he just couldn’t handle me down the homestretch.

Right now I’m in Boise, Idaho because my friend Ryan (and my roommate last semester) is getting married tomorrow afternoon. When I first met Ryan, I never would have thought he would have gotten married before me. Actually, that’s a lie. This guy was just too fashionable. You can only hold him down for so long. So far, Idaho is a pretty killer place. When we landed, we could see a mountain from snow all over it, which was a nice change from just looking at dead trees and the Jehovah’s Witness church out my back door. Plus, we had some delicious Red Robin for the rehearsal dinner last night. Not a bad way to end the year.

At the end of each year, I like to write a blog post to review the previous twelve months in my life, picking out the most notable events. So as I look back on 2010, the first thing that comes to mind is when I went to New York City in January for a class. I had never really been to NYC before, and it was a great time. I met Mike Ditka, which is a story that I’ll never get tired of telling. I ate lots of pizza. I tried on $6000 jackets. I talked with a crazy guy at Starbucks that told us how he passed out for PCP. I ate free dessert from the Italian restaurant manager that somehow remembered Ray. All in all, a successful trip.

2010 was a year of transition. Not so much because of things changing a lot in my own life, but more because of so many of my good friends graduating and going of to bring real life. April and May were kind of weird months, because of the the upcoming graduates would want to get in all of the time they could with their friends, so it felt like people were wanting to hang out all the time. This was a shift because I’m used to people not wanting to hang out with me at all. Graduation was a pretty sad time, but it was still exciting to see all of the incredible things that my friends are doing in ministry, and I truly consider myself fortunate to have spent a few years rubbing shoulders with them.

Probably the most noteworthy part of my year was my summer spent in Corvallis, Oregon where I did a student ministry internship with Suburban Christian Church. If you’ve been an avid reader of my blog from the beginning, you may know that I spent a month in the Northwest while I was on camp teams, and I was anxious to go back. The people at Suburban were great, and I couldn’t have asked for much of a better summer. Granted, I had to struggle with driving a stick shift for three months, but once I stopped being bothered by all the other drivers flipping me off, I could settle in and really enjoy myself. Oregon really is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I always say that you can get to every biome of the world in a two-hour drive. I’ll be heading back to Corvallis a week from today, and I’m pretty stoked for that. I just hope the people there remember me.

I think I have written this before, but my time since getting  back from Oregon has been a bit of a blur, so I’ll just summarize it all here in a few sentences. I’m still at Ozark. I preach now at a little church in Commerce, Oklahoma. It’s challenging at times, but still going great. Connor and I went to Indiana to visit our lost friend Charlie, and it was a great trip, except when Charlie’s car broke down at a gas station in Louisville. My intramural volleyball team got second place, thanks to our average height of about 6’2″. I went to a lot of weddings (Ryan’s tomorrow will be the fifth one in the past four months). And….that’s about it.

As far as looking forward to 2011, I guess the only thing I know for sure is that I’ll go to a wedding tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’m going to graduate this year, but I don’t want to count my chickens too much. After that, the year is pretty wide open, which is exciting in a way but a little scary in many more. Have a great New Year’s Eve. I’m going to spend my time stealing some kisses from Charlie (Hershey’s, that is).

Northwest

Today is bittersweet. I hesitate in using that word because I feel it is greatly overused. Whenever a season of life ends in a person’s life, they talk about how bittersweet it is. It’s becoming cliche. Surely there is another word that we can use. However, I just typed in “bittersweet” in thesaurus.com, but it didn’t give me anything. It seems like I’m forced to conform in my word choice. But I digress.

The reason that today is bittersweet is that this is my last day in Oregon. For the past twelve weeks, I have been in Corvallis while doing a youth ministry internship with Suburban Christian Church. It has been a fantastic summer, and while I am excited to spend a day at home in Topeka and then to head back to Ozark on Saturday, I am going to miss Oregon a lot. All of which got me thinking: What are some things that I have missed about home while I have been in Oregon, and what are going to be some things I’ll miss about Oregon after I leave? I now present those lists for your enjoyment and personal betterment.

What I Have Missed Most About Topeka and Ozark

• NOT having to cook for myself. I can only handle so much Hamburger Helper and ham sandwiches. I never thought I would say this, but I miss the Ozark dining hall. This only makes the need for me to rapidly find a wife who can cook that much more urgent.
• Going bowling every Monday. I’ll advertise it again: I need new bowling friends for this year. You need to be good, but not good enough to beat me. Caitlyn Lippitt, you will be sorely missed.
• Driving a car with an automatic transmission. I’m an unsafe driver as it is. I don’t need to be worrying about making the car run.
• Playing basketball in a gym. I’m awful on the rim at the park that I’ve gone to here. As surprising as it may sound, I’m not much of a streetballer in Topeka.
• Chick-fil-A, Sonic, Spangle’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Cheddar’s.
• The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Not only does the library have a few copies, but I’ve got my own!
• Watching ESPN. Here the Reds are having an awesome season for the first time since I can remember, and I haven’t been able to watch the magic.

What I Will Miss Most About Oregon

• Mountains. Sorry Topeka, but Burnett’s Mound isn’t quite the same.
• Being outside in weather that is NOT 98 degrees and 80% humidity. I only want to get nasty and sweaty when I’m actually active. Not when I’m just sitting on a bench.
• Jeff’s awesome projector and giant screen. It’s way better than the projector in my dorm room, which was made around 1949.
• Wilderness expeditions to Smith Rock or the river near Sweet Home. Anything that helps me feel a little bit less like a wimp is a good thing. I’ll be on my own survival show in no time.
• Reading at the riverfront park near downtown Corvallis. (See bullet point #2).
• Being able to say “Yeah, I live in Oregon,” and feeling like I am somehow hipper and more culturally aware than other people.
• All of the incredible people I have gotten to rub shoulders with at Suburban. I can’t wait until they do their next youth retreat in Missouri.

I feel like after a summer like this one, I should at least include something meaningful in order to redeem this post. So here are a few lessons I’ve learned and some things that I have been thinking about through this experience:

God comes through.
After my first day of working at Suburban, I went back to the house I was staying at, sat in a chair, and wondered if I had made a mistake. Just a few days previously, I had been in Joplin saying good-bye to many of my closest friends. Now I was on the other side of the country in a new situation, and I knew next to nobody in the entire state. Honestly, at the moment I wanted nothing more than to be back at school, where I was comfortable and knew what I was doing. At the same time, I knew that if I had made a mistake in coming to Corvallis, it was too late to go back. I was stuck, and I started counting down the time until August 19th when I would head back to my haven in the midwest.

But when God wants you somewhere, and when he has a specific work for you to do, he makes sure it works out. I really believe that, if I were going to come to the northwest for a summer, God placed me in an ideal situation. So many people at Suburban did so much to make sure that I had what I needed and that I felt welcome. I know that there are a ton of great churches in the area, but Suburban was the right fit for me. It was definitely difficult at first, and I felt very distant from everything and everyone that I care about, but over time I came to realize that I was where God wanted me and that I hadn’t made a mistake. He does a pretty good job of making things work out.

There are great people everywhere.
Sometimes I think that people at Ozark are better than the rest of humanity. That sounds terrible when I put words to that idea, but it is a thought that lies hidden in my mind, I think. I tend to believe that we are somehow a step ahead of everyone else. Only we know how ministry should really work. Only we know how to interpret the Bible correctly. Only we know what God is really like. We’re an elite crew, and people who aren’t directly connected with us are somehow disadvantaged. They’re to be pitied, really, and it’s our job to go out their and save them.

This summer, however, I was constantly around phenomenal people of God. The quality of the people Suburban has working with youth is out of control. These are people who serve faithfully and give sacrificially for God and for the students. I look up to all of our youth staff. Not just in the sense that I sort of respect them and think that they are pretty decent folks. I wish that I were more like them, and I think that just about all of them are better at working with youth than I am. (I let you decide which of them I don’t think that about!) This summer was another reminder about how big and beautiful the church really is and that there are an insane number of people all over the country and all over the world who are being used by God in incredible ways for his kingdom. And a few of them have never even visited Ozark.

I’m sure (or at least I hope) that there are many other things I’ve learned this summer, but I think I need a few weeks to process some of those, so maybe I’ll share them with you when they are at least half-grown. I have been greatly privileged this summer to work with such amazing people and such awesome students, and I hope that it isn’t too long before I get to come back. I’m especially grateful to Jamey for teaching me and putting up with me, to Jeff for putting a roof over my head and a mattress under my sleeping self, and to Angie for getting me hooked up with the internship and with a set of wheels. I am anxious to head home though. I don’t know if I can say that I’m happy or sad about going back. But I am ready, and I’m excited to see what the new semester has for me. Let’s hope it’s a future wife that likes to cook and has a nice movie projector.

Here’s some of my favorite pictures from the summer. For all of you who, when you were a kid, skipped over all the words in the books just to look at the pictures. And I’m sorry for the weird spacing in this post. Blogger is throwing a fit.

Independent Living

When you opened up this page, the first thing you probably noticed is how devilishly handsome I look in my picture on the right. The second thing you may have noticed is that my blog has a new look. For the longest time, Blogger only had a handful of available templates, but a few weeks ago they branched out with a new design tool. Thus, in an effort to differentiate myself from Connor, Ryan, Jim, and Morgan, I decided to mix things up. Do you like it? Dislike it? Don’t care about a thing I write and care even less about how it looks? Let me know.

There is another reason for the style change. Today is a very special day, in that it was on this date two years ago that I started writing A Chicken in a Cage With a Ferret. And what a two years it’s been. There have been some laughs, a few tears, and a whole lot of using this page just to get to the links to some other blogs. As we celebrate this year, we’re pulling out all the stops with a little giveaway. The twelfth commenter on this post will win a date with the Former David Heffren Roommate of his or hopefully her choice. It’s quite a deal. And remember, you don’t need a Blogger account to comment. Just choose Name/URL where it says “Choose an Identity.”

I have now been in Oregon for a little over a month as I work on my internship. This is a momentous summer for me because it is really the most “on my own” I have ever been in my life. I have always considered myself a pretty independent person, but maybe that is only because I have not had to deal with many adultish responsibilities before. After several weeks of being in such a situation, I am surprised that so many people my age are so eager to get out on their own. And so, for your reading pleasure and personal betterment, I include a few preliminary reflections on what it means to live on one’s own.

Probably the most difficult thing about trying to act like a responsible adult this summer has been providing food for myself. For the most part, I have needed to provide for myself in this area since I’ve been here, which means I have had to learn how to prepare some delicious meals. For a person with next to no cooking experience, this is a challenge. The following list of what I have at the house for my upcoming meals may give you some insight into how confident I am in my culinary skills: a frozen pizza, a can of soup, ramen noodles, ham sandwiches, a box of Pop-Tarts, Hamburger Helper (which pushes the limits of my ability to prepare), and seventeen hot dogs (which was 21 before I ate four of them for dinner last night). Granted, I have been quick to criticize Ozark’s dining hall on a few points (I just want chocolate milk back, alright?), but the big positive about it is that I don’t cook there. It’s nice to be able to say, “Hm, I’m hungry, and I can go get food that someone else has prepared, allowing me to eat something that doesn’t only involve a microwave.”

A second topic I wish to address is more of a question. Or maybe an anomaly. But what I am realizing is that I really have no idea how relationships work in the “real world.” Any sort of relationship. Ozark is a relational incubator. We live together, we eat together, we go to class together, we use bathroom stalls next to each other. It’s easy to develop good relationships in an environment like that. It’s somewhat of a mystery to me how that happens when you have four walls of a house separating you from the rest of the community, especially for someone who is as naturally reserved as me. (I can still remember my first day of preschool, when I freaked out at the prospect of having to stay there with so many kids I didn’t know. My mom had to stay with me for part of the day, until we started playing some game that involved a small red ball, which I guess distracted me from the trauma at hand.)

Almost everything I know about social norms, I learned from movies. In The Sandlot, the main character is in a new town where he doesn’t know anyone, and he fiddles with his Erector set in his room until the cool kid in the neighborhood invites him to play baseball. In my mind, that’s how it’s supposed to work whenever someone moves into a new situation, but no cool kids have asked me to play baseball yet. I can only build so many battery-powered Erector cars before I need some companionship!

I hope you can sense some of the sarcastic exaggeration in all that. The people I’ve gotten to know in Corvallis have really been great. But I don’t think it is as easy to make friends as it is in an enclosed setting like Ozark. I have heard that to meet people, one must go where people are. And so far, none of the people at Wendy’s or Taco Bell have seemed too interested in hanging out.

Of course, if I don’t really understand how friendships work in the real world, I have even less of a clue how romantic relationships come to be. I don’t even know how those work at Ozark. Apparently, poking a girl on Facebook until she eventually confesses her undying love for you doesn’t work. Believe me, I know. The improbable odds associated with romantic endeavors are ridiculous. Think about it: you have to find someone roughly your age who likes Jesus (and just that is pretty difficult in Oregon, by the way), and you should hopefully find them at least mildly attractive, and you should have some common interests, and then (and here’s the catch) they have to find you mildly attractive and enjoy being in the same general area as you. It’s a wonder our species has made it this far.

Note: Please don’t misunderstand my reason for writing this. I am not in the Northwest in search of a ladyfriend. I’ve gotten in trouble for that enough for one lifetime. I’m just observing/rambling for the sake of doing so.

Well, I guess that’s about it for now. Maybe I’ll return to this general topic again before summer’s end. Thanks for reading, and thanks for celebrating this anniversary with me. Maybe we’ll have a carnival or something for our third anniversary, with funnel cakes and ferris wheels and the whole bit.

Because we all know how much I love funnel cakes.

My Friend

It’s weird to think about how one moment which seems very ordinary at the time can end up having a dramatic effect on the rest of your life. It’s an unfortunate truth that, when a kid visits a Sunday School class, it often proves inconsequential. Maybe they’re just visiting their cousin that weekend and come to church with them before they go back home, or maybe they’ll come for a few Sundays before they fall off the map. There was no reason for me to expect anything different when three brothers visited my Sunday School class in 4th grade. Just a typical Sunday. In an effort to make the visitors feel welcome, the teacher asked them a few questions about themselves, such as “What’s your favorite TV show?” All three answered, “Rugrats,” and the oldest one added that his favorite character was Chucky.

The three brothers continued coming to my church, and it happened that the oldest one was in the same grade as me. Before long it was time to “promote” up to the 5th and 6th grade class. I have a weird memory sometimes. For whatever reason, there are random spots of my life that I remember very vividly. That promotion service was one such time. As my fellow 4th graders and I waited in the pew (in the section next to the center aisle, on the right side when you’re looking at the stage), I remember thinking something like, “Hm, this Charlie kid seems like a cool guy. I should try to be better friends with him.”

Charlie and I probably became friends the way everyone knows us as in middle school. Looking back, it was actually a pretty odd pairing. We didn’t go to the same school. Charlie would be the first to tell you that his middle school days were his greatest. He played on all his school’s sports teams, and did pretty well, too. I went to math competitions. He was dating girls before I had ever had a conversation with one. People reportedly said he looked like Brad Pitt. People told me I looked like Harry Potter.

And now, 13 years after his visit to Sunday School, I’ve been watching that guy who was so fond of Rugrats as he packs up his University of Kansas trinkets before moving out of our dorm room for the last time. It’s a weird feeling. People have been asking me, “What are you going to do next year with Charlie gone?” And I don’t know, really. In a lot of ways, mine and Charlie’s life experiences run very parallel with one another. I noticed this last summer when I was doing my internship, and a good number of the stories I told in conversations with people started with, “One time my roommate and I…” I guess that’s what happens when you’re rarely apart from someone for so long. Charlie and I have experienced a lot together, everything from fake pigtails to CIY towels to all-night Playstation marathons to sketchy areas of Louisville to Reds cheerleaders to Chick-fil-A camp-outs (followed by many Chick-fil-A dinners) to Mike Ditka.

Like I mentioned, Charlie and I were probably pretty different when we were younger, but we’ve probably become more and more like each other as time has gone on. He basically taught me how to play basketball. Everything I know about women, I learned from him. (Oddly enough, we’re both still single. Hm.) The way I speak is largely due to how Charlie speaks. (We could probably make a dictionary of all of the words and phrases we’ve coined over the years.) The things I think are funny are often the same things he thinks are funny. (Which is why, from time to time, we may accidentally bust out laughing during tense moments of serious movies.)

In a couple weeks, Charlie will be driving his Pontiac (which has nearly be the scene of my death on multiple occasions) to Indiana so that he can begin a year-long youth ministry internship with a church there. I, meanwhile, will remain in school because growing up and being an adult stress me out way more than taking tests and writing exegeticals. Charlie would readily admit that he doesn’t feel ready to do a lot of the work he’s getting ready to do, but I would disagree. Charlie has a heart for students and shows concern for them in a way that I admire. He hates to see kids that are alone or left out. I guess that would explain why he chose to be my friend all those years ago. And sure, he may not know how to file taxes, and he may hate having to do his own laundry, but he’s going to be an great, godly youth minister that will help students discover Jesus.

Before Charlie and I came to Ozark, I would hear some people say that it can be dangerous for best friends to be roommates. For us, this was never much of a problem, as evidenced by our Bert and Ernie Award from the dorm last year. In fact, Charlie and I very, very rarely get in much of an argument at all. I think I can tend to annoy him at times, but it all blows over pretty quickly. We get along well because we understand each other well. Possibly more than anyone else, Charlie just knows how to deal with me and what I need from a friend. For example, there was one time when there was a girl whose chili I dug, and one day before chapel another person, unaware of the situation, said something to Charlie and I about this girl liking some other guy. That’s never good news. I remember a brief moment of silence before hearing Charlie whisper, “Well…..that sucks.” Which was really all I needed. I’m not one to want to sit and talk about things when I don’t like them. I’d rather brood about them in silence before I morph them into some blog post, and Charlie understood that.

I wrote a post last year about how our social spheres are a lot like a big van in which people move around between seats. They’re constantly in flux. For the average person, his best friend in middle school isn’t much more than a casual acquaintance by the time they’re in high school. His best friend in high school only gets an occasional facebook message when they’re in college. And his best friend from college is nearly forgotten by the time they’re 35. I hope to be the exception to that. I understand that people come and go and relationships change. But I have little desire to have another best friend. I’m pretty happy with the one I’ve got.

And with all that said, I love you Chuck, and I know you’re going to do great in Indiana. And as much as I don’t get sentimental about things or, in your words, don’t care about anything and need to get over myself, I am really going to miss you next year. Congratulations on finishing your college career by being better than me at every single game/activity/sport that we play, except for bowling, which you now refuse to play with me. If being apart for a summer required staying at IHOP until 2 a.m. to catch up when we were reunited, we’d better plan on being there for a couple days the next time we get together. Bring on the short stacks.

I think the only appropriate way to end this post is with a phrase that we all know and love, of which the depths of its meaning can only be understood by the wisest among us:

Dang Keesha.

650,000 Hours

When I was in high school, I wrote for the school newspaper. The part parts of the paper were always the editorials and columns. The difference between an editorial and a column was that all the underling staff-writers could write an editorial (which had to be about a legitimate issue and was written in the third person), while the oligarchy of senior editors could write a column (written in the first person about whatever the heck you want). The male-female ratio of our staff was a little out of control. I was always one of about four or five guys, while there would be 20-25 girls (I loved that class). It was always easy to tell when one of the girls had written a column during their senior year. They were always about how they’re excited for the future but were still nervous, and how they were really going to miss all their friends but promised to stay in touch. I, on the other hand, wrote about how they needed to have a live polar bear at Winter Formal.

Lately, however, I feel a little like those high school senior she-journalists. Which is probably very unnecessary, because I’m not really even a senior. But this is my fourth year at Ozark, which means that most of the people I came in with as a freshman are getting ready to graduate. And that means that after May 22nd, my life will be quite a bit different.

I’m a boring person in that I don’t often make many changes to my life. Some people can’t handle life if there is not regular change. Consistency means monotony, and monotony means dreariness. If these people experience too much routine, they begin to feel like they’re trapped in a wooden crate and need a Purple Drank just to calm themselves down. I’m not like that. If you’ve ever eaten out with me before, you know what I mean. I always get the same thing when I go to specific restaurants. Wendy’s: #10, medium-sized with a Coke, and barbecue sauce. Spangle’s: #3, just ketchup on the burger, medium-sized with a Pepsi. Cheddar’s: chicken tender basket, with barbecue sauce and honey mustard, with a Coke.

One may wonder why I don’t mix things up. It’s not because I’m scared of change or I freak out if everything isn’t exactly the way I’m used to. I just figure that if I like the way things are, there is no need to change it. My dorm room has been decorated pretty much the same since my first semester. Why? Because I like my King Kong and Chronicles of Narnia posters, and I have no reason to get anything different.

But soon, things will change whether I like it or not. It’s sad, because the truth is that I wouldn’t mind keeping life how it is now. I could keep on going bowling every Monday and playing cards in the student center on the weekends and going on late night runs to Taco Bell forever. But that isn’t how it all works out. We get old and get jobs and move away. Our lives are not undisturbed dollhouses that remain quiet on the shelf. They are waves of the ocean that roll and fluctuate. For some, this means freshness and vitality, but for people like me, it means letting go of a lot of good things, and I don’t always want to do that.

The Classic Crime has a song called “Four Chords,” and the chorus goes like this:
Oh oh, here we go
Been down this road
About a thousand times before
But we ain’t bored
Oh oh, here we go
Singing songs we wrote
About a thousand times before
But we ain’t bored
The same four chords
The same four chords

For the most part, I like the chords my life has been playing for the last few years. Sure, at times I wish my situation wasn’t so stressful or busy, and I wish some relationships were better or that my intramural basketball team hadn’t lost in the semifinals, but I have good friends and I do a lot of fun things. If I weren’t a pessimist and were really thinking through what I’m writing, I would say how we never get to experience new, better possibilities unless we let go of some of our old routines, so these moments of change are both necessary and exciting. When we learn more chords, we can play more songs. The guitarists who only play four chords don’t get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They play back-up for Miley Cyrus.

And yet, there is something comforting about those four chords. Sometimes the best songs are the simple ones, and you replay them over and over again in your head. That doesn’t make it a song for simpletons who are scared of more complex chords. It makes it meaningful, and maybe it’s worth listening to again and again.

Speaking of songs, today on Youtube I watched the music video for Skillet’s “Hero.” Like many music video, after a while the band in outside in a torrential downpour as they play. Somehow, playing rock music in the rain is so much cooler than playing it elsewhere. The water bounces off of the drumheads and is splashed by the guitarist’s rapid strumming. I wonder if my blog posts would be better if I started writing them outside in the rain. It might not be very healthy for my laptop, though.