It's been another Wednesday. Which meant another day of classes and school, and another day full of fighting my way through.
I managed to get two skinned knees, a skinned elbow, and a skinned hand, one of the wires on my braces popped loose, and I have a loose bracket, too; all this already so far this week. Couldn't hear a thing our Strat instructor was saying, it seemed like Comp I would never end...however, we were actually doing something for a change, so that was kinda neat. It's interesting editing your classmates' papers. History was good, but it was raining slightly and very gray and cloudy. Sort of wondering if I'm in the right place here. MassComm went pretty well, we had to research various entertainment trends for the past fifty years in fifteen minutes and then give a short recap of what we'd found.
The CCF flag-football team, the Mortal Wombats, had their first game today, at three p.m. down on the intramural fields, facing a team called(Interesting use of non-originality here) Team Name. They might not have been all that creative in picking their moniker, but they could pick off our passes for sure. The game opened with an interception on the first play, several defensive stands and interceptions later, they scored a touchdown. After an iffy call that was decided best left alone, they made the two-point conversion. At halftime it was 8-0, the Wombats nearly scored several times, and did make one touchdown, but were beaten 20-6.
Some extra practice was needed, so we kept at it until about 5:30, I headed back to the dorm for some dinner. After finishing off a box of cookies, a granola bar, some Monster, Diet Coke and strawberry milk, I checked Facebook and my emails to see if I'd missed anything. Hadn't really, but had that feeling like I just needed to be alone or something, just too much going on to be around people. And that odd restless feeling where you need to attack something was back. That's usually when I start running, because there isn't a ball handy whenever I need to punt one. But you can only run from things so far, that only gets you nowhere, really. Still hungry from my snack, I get a bit of food from the caf, and then figure out what's going on. My form of displacement, a kind of hiding from reality by taking out my frustrations on something that won't fight back, is to find a ball of some kind and play around with it. Tonight I needed to play volleyball. Don't know why, but just had to. I guess that's probably the way most guys are about dealing with stress, and some girls, go play sports. Anyway, I walk down to the volleyball courts, sort of wishing I was in Missouri or at the house and I could hit it around with Ash and the Freelands, or play with Courtney off the roof.
So I practice jump serves with my soccer ball. (Yeah, I know. Sounds weird, and even harder to actually do. But I usually set weird challenges like that for myself. And my internal sports calendar is completely different than most. I can play basketball in July, and baseball in December.) Amazingly, I figure out a way to launch the heavy dead weight over the net, and my jump serve is accurate about half the time now, so it was a productive half-hour. Then Jacob and Felicia come up to play on the other court, I ask if I can join. They're in my Strat and Comp I classes, respectively. They say, "Yeah, come on over." and a game gets sort of started. Trent, another guy in my Comp I class, and Charlie, in history, wander over later, and a bunch of other people I don't know, we played about nine games in an hour and a half.
It just seemed so amazing, such the providence and grace of God, that when I needed to play volleyball, He would have a game be picked up with several people I knew. A more personal example of "I'm here, Wesley, and I'll keep guiding you. Just keep on fighting, hang in there for now."
And also, been thinking I need to call Steven for a few days, I call him up as I get back to my dorm, starting up the laptop at the same time to see what's happening. I see a message from, of all people, Steven, just checking up to see how things were going. He said that he'd been thinking of seeing how I was doing for a couple days now, too, just another of those weird God-things. I got caught up on youth-group and church news, he found out a bit about how college life is treating me. It was a good conversation to have, talking to another brother in Christ like that who I feel comfortable around, admitting I'm having a hard time. We talked for about twenty minutes.
Well, just two of those bright little things that we usually don't notice, that shine all the more because of the darkness and oppression surrounding them, and I just had to share them.
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