A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Not another doom and gloom Nate post.  After reading though my posts I can see where readers get that idea. Those who are close to me already know this and don’t worry quite so much about me.  Evan calls my posts “intense internal reflection.” And it is.  As much as I would like to think that I was writing these things down for all of you, I really do it for me.  It is a way for me to sort through the cacophony that fills my head and my heart though out the week.  It allows me to document where I am, what I am, and keeps me going toward who I want to be. As I realize those things it usually is a sobering experience but trust me I always feel better, more in control, and more at peace.  I am not a person who suffers from depression.  I have been around many people who do and know more about the DSM-IV diagnosis criteria than most of you.  I just don’t want you to worry about me.  I am ok.  I am moving forward.  Above all, I am trying to be the person I think I should be.  I hope this blog challenges each of you to consider the same.  No person, no church, no society can tell you who you should be.  That is something found between each person and God. I will try to refrain from using such words as despair, depravity, deficiency, melancholy, and any other words splattered though out my posts, but just this once.

This week I have learned that I am still the scared boy at heart that I was in the 3^rd grade.  The difference is that this week I have chosen not to let those fears dictate my daily life.  I have let my fears prevent me from too many opportunities in the past, but not anymore.  This was the theme of my week. This began with leading the first CPF meeting Monday morning.  It went well but I know that there is room for improvement.  There were about 8 of us who showed up and we spent some time sharing our backgrounds and I shared about inter-denominational fellowship.  We spent some time praying for each other and our faculty.  The idea is to figure out what it means to be a Christian who is also a pharmacist.  I say it like that because it is drilled into us to define ourselves by our profession.  It makes sense because we will be professionals and that is how it is done among professionals. I have a hard enough time just trying to figure out what it means to be a Christian, naturally, outside of what I am told.  So we are working on that.

The next challenge was a lunch with the Dean of the College of Pharmacy and the President of the University of Iowa.  I was invited along with about 7 other students.  The salmon was delicious.  My stomach was turning the whole time and I had a diet coke which kept making me burp. 

Now for the big guns.  I set up a meeting with the Dean to discuss Rho Chi’s desire to fill any needs within the College of Pharmacy.  I really like the Dean, he just makes me really nervous.  He is a great guy to talk to, but he is still the Dean and I get that feeling like I am in the 3^rd grade about to head into the principal’s office.  I am the president of Rho Chi which is the Pharmacy Honor Society.  In the past it was just a way to pad your resume.  I want to make it into something that helps out our College and our community.  So I wanted to meet with the Dean to try and figure that out.

So why do I tell you this.  I would never have done these things nor had the opportunity to if I had let my fears get the best of me.  I am getting better at exuding confidence when I am freaking out inside.  I am sure I still sound shaky at times but I am getting better at it. Just like anything, practice helps. I want to encourage you guys to think about what things do you wish you were doing and what is holding you back.  I know it isn’t easy but if it is fear it’s not worth missing out on for that. This is all part of me trying to figure out who I want to be and how to get there.  I am learning and that involves failing at times.  I fail, I feel rotten, and then I usually write about it. This week there were some failures but there were also small successes. This week I decided to focus on the successes. 

The Con

I have challenged myself to be more balanced in this new school year. It is my last chance to get in right. I have committed to spending more time with my classmates and am involved more with the College of Pharmacy. I have committed to spending more time with Christians within the walls of contemporary worship. The commitment that I am most happy about is to spend more time re-establishing God as a priority in my life. I have gone ahead and worked it out on my own for the last couple of years and although I was successful in many ways, I have never been pleased with myself. My final commitment is to spend one day each week reflecting on this journey and writing about it here. If anyone actually enjoys this pathetic little blog, then you are welcome. I have also stopped eating potato chips and started eating carrot sticks. I have learned that you can pack away a lot of carrot sticks without feeling full.

So where is this coming from, where have I been? It’s been 4 years, 3 months, and 14 days since my last real blog entry. If you last read my blog when you were freshmen in college, I would now like congratulate you on graduation. Around the time I stopped writing, I began my journey into pharmacy school. I have learned a lot of chemistry, physics, biology, physiology, anatomy, pharmaceutics, pharmacology, therapeutics, medicinal chemistry, drug literature, biochemistry, and pathology. I have made little headway with my understanding of God and The Church despite my better understanding of the natural world and the human body. School provided a great distraction from my inadequacies. You see, I am really good at school. I get good grades and don’t have to work too hard for it; I get along with most people, and enjoy learning. I am not really good at God, and I am especially not good with The Church.

So why now, what happened? I don’t know. Nothing really happened that was good. I got hurt pretty bad and decided it was time to wake up and get it together. You see, I didn’t find any solace in the accomplishments as a student of pharmacy. I didn’t find any real solace from my classmates or college friends. I spent the summer dealing with this inside myself. I worked at it and resolved to overcome it. I did pretty good and could manage to go on but I wasn’t who I wanted to be. I don’t like cheesy Christianity because it is pretty close to face Christianity. I am going to be cheesy for a second; I wanted a God who loves me to lean on, I wanted to feel like he was there for me like all the songs say. I didn’t feel that. I don’t feel that. One of the things I really believe is true, like in the way you feel something in your bones, is that we don’t deserve an audience with God; it isn’t even something we can earn. I had a decision to make. I decided to try and be obedient. I decided to dig up the old passions that had been covered up with years of “other things.” I started by reading my old blogs and was burned deep inside by one titled, “Despair is the lack of the eternal.” It’s spooky how God works.

The article is about a dream my friend Allison had about me one night 5 years ago. I’ll give you an idea of the big points of the dream but if you get a chance you’ll understand better if you read the article. In the dream my real father had been in prison since I was an infant for some crime and was about to die on death row. He wanted to speak to me one last time before he died and I wouldn’t take his phone call. On the day of this punishment, I went to a lake with a box filled with letters and pictures from throughout my childhood and I threw them into the lake. I walked away alone and in despair. At the time I thought this dream was about our views of death. I displaced all personal connotations on some convoluted philosophy. I missed the point. “Despair is the lack of the eternal” was I titled I pick only because I had been reading Kierkegaard and I thought it sounded cool and deep. What I saw the other night as I re-read the blog after these many years is that I have a father who is not the man who raised me. That father is calling and called trying to get me to talk to him, think about him, relate with him. Years have gone by with my back turned to his attempts to get me back. And I was scared to think that there might me a day that it is done and I am left giving up on all we had at one time. I feel like I am getting close to that lake. I don’t want it to end like that.

If despair really is the lack of the eternal, then I need to grasp the eternal. I don’t know how that is done. If I do figure anything out though, I’ll let you know. There may be many things in this blog that could be heresy. I am just a young man that wishes he had the wisdom of an old man. I have a lot to learn and have made many mistakes. I really don’t want to offend anyone. I will be critical; I will be illogical at times. I’ll try not to though. I’ll try to be positive. I’ll try to be helpful.

So here I am, it’s a Sunday night and I am at Java House. Tomorrow morning at 7:30am I have my first Christian Pharmacist Fellowship meeting, one of those things I thought God was asking me to do. I don’t know if 2 people with show up, but that’s ok. I’ll pray for my classmates alone for the hour and be at peace with that. That said I am a little scared. I did a high ropes course today, that wasn’t scary. Both the Hawkeyes and the Seahawks won this weekend. God might still have a plan for me. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

One last thing before I go for the week. Sorry I have been a poor friend to most of you. I know you understand, but I miss you and wish I could go back and do it all over. I will leave you with this. I was talking with a professor this past week and I realized something about my priorities. Pharmacy doesn’t need to be on top like is has been. Faith, Family, and Pharmacy is the order I need to work on and establish. Thank you for being my brothers and sisters for these many years. It’s time to get back on this winding dirt road. I hope to see you around the next bend.