Certainty is a rare and valuable thing. How often are you positive about anything? Everything comes with its share of doubts and potential pitfalls. Those, I don't particularly mind. It's only when those potential pitfalls are things I can fix, that I can change, that I can prevent. It's not out of self-loathing or self-doubt that I say this, but merely because I acknowledge that I am imperfect and capable of screwing things up, especially when I've recognized my previous patterns for screwing up and I'm afraid of making the same mistake yet again.

This is something that's only truly become apparant to me in the past few months, as I begin to understand the value of experience. This new-found respect for experience is not out of a sudden wealth of it in myself, but of the realization of what little I do have, and what there is in others. Last Sunday was a pretty interesting experience (lol) in this regard.

A fellow pastor from across the state came and preached and did some official duty related to my church's recent election of elders (essentially the governmental body of the church - irrelevant to the story at hand). In our typical fashion, we (my parents, myself, and said pastor) went out to lunch and had a fairly nice time chatting and such. Somewhere along the conversation my dad started explaining the events that stopped us from moving to Tempe, Arizona in the summer of 1997.

A lot of the details I shouldn't, and won't share, because it's a pretty personal story. What I can say, though, is that it's weird to stumble across a whole new realm of respect for your own parents. Some of you may, or may not, know that once upon a time I was destined to move to Arizona, where my dad was going to start a new church. He had the financial support, the manpower, and we were just about a month or two away from moving. Our destination, to us, was quite certain, but everything fell through. In essence, they were backstabbed by their own church and fellow (quoteunquote) Christians, in a pretty clear-cut way (meaning, this isn't just the bias of the son talking). I really wish I could describe it all, but perhaps another day.

Anyways. I had a whole varied amount of conclusions about everything after sitting and watching my dad almost drop to tears. The first was, as originally mentioned, about respecting experience. I came to realize that my parents had experiences that strongly affect how they act - for me to be as critical as I often have was, in retrospect, quite unjust, when taking into account where they're coming from. I'm known to be especially critical of my mom. Some of it's justified. Now, I realize, some of it's not, and I should have questioned myself a little more harshly when others told me it wasn't.

The second was one of the value of bad experiences. At the time, there was little good behind the emotional, financial, and practically physical abandonment my parents faced, and yet, there is much good that has been wrought of that ill. I wouldn't live in Ithaca, for starters, and I don't particularly enjoy the thought of not having the friends and experiences that I do now.

And the third, of course, was of certainty. As much as I'd love to be certain about something, anything, there's nothing around me or within me that I can trust to provide certainty. Thus, I just have to suck it up and trust God that it will come out for the best, regardless of how I want to screw it up. And maybe try to minimize my capability of doing just that in the mean-time.

*hums softly*

I feel really, really good. This break has been wonderful, for myriad reasons. Some of which I will teasingly not mention.