Riverside

I recently went home to Texas for a little visit to see family and eat mexican food. While I was home I had the opportunity to do an interview with my pastor/mentor Scott Heare at church about the journey i was on the last year being in chicago. Its a quick little 5 minute or so interview leading into that week's message, about the journey vs. the destination. Well, if any of you want to listen to it, it's posted online. Let me see if i can get the link really quick...

yeah, Here is it. Take a listen, and let me know what you think. I went back and listened to it again last night, and forgot some of the things i said, and how much I needed to remind myself of them, and I felt like taking notes from my own interview.

Wesley Mathias Wilson

QUICK! Go listen to my friend's music by clicking HERE!

My friend Wes has his cd release party tonight in the city, and I have to tell you how pumped I am for this. I just got back a couple days ago from colorado, and we blasted his music in the mountains, and it was so bittersweet. Incredible musician and friend, and he is moving back home to oklahoma in just a few weeks. Seriously, take a listen.

Texas

Just had to make a post completely dedicated to Texas since it is my last day here. You know you want to be here.

Adventures

I have been saying for about a year that eventually I would like to bike across an entire state. Preferably Texas, but if any other state could offer interesting sites to see, then I may consider that too. I had been saving up this spring and beginning of summer to buy a bike, maybe a road bike. You know, the kind with skinny tires. But I recently had to give up saving money to pay rent. The leftover money after rent and bills is going to a camping trip that I am going on soon with a few friends.

You see, the thing is, I'm not even a biker. I own a bmx, but going any more than 4 miles on that begins to give me scoliosis, so that wouldn't work for the long distance that cross-state travel requires.

I remember the first time I saw the movie Forest Gump being in awe of all of the different landscapes and areas that he ran through on his 3 year and however long run, and thought that I wanted to be able to see all the same things. Additionally, the bassist of one of my favorite bands, the Bouncing Souls, took a cross country motorcycle ride a few years ago and posted pictures on their site, and I thought, dannnnnnng, i want to do that. But I don't own a motorcycle. So I kicked around the idea of becoming a truck driver for a year, or maybe just a few months, so that I could see the country. I gave up on that one pretty quickly. Not sure why, other than that I don't necessarily want to be a truck driver.

So I thought, and thought, and I even did some thinking during that time and decided on a cross-country bicycle ride, which soon narrowed down to a cross-Texas bicycle ride. Which, if I was super-Texan, I could go ahead and consider that a country. It is bigger than France, by the way.

All that to say, if anyone knows someone trying to get rid of a bike, or if you want to watch Forrest Gump sometime, let me know.

"A cowboy leads a different kind of life..."

Curly, the old cowboy in this clip from City Slickers, says this seconds before he leads into this little "lesson" of sorts. I like Curly, first, because he does this cool lesson while he is driving a herd of cattle with Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern (voice-over voice from the Wonder Years, which is my favorite tv show ever, and in Home Alone), but also because he "always had a thing for redheads". I always kind of had a thing for redheads. Not as prevalent these days, but I think its still in there somewhere.



Question for you: what's your "one thing"?

Seriously, leave a comment if you know. Or, even if you don't.

New Idea

Check out this blog i started just a week or so ago. Its an idea that I came up with last week. As you can read in "22" I have recently been doing a lot of thinking about not only what I am doing now, but what I want to do. Not that I am going to crack the code and figure everything out, but this is something I am excited, and scared about.

I have never committed anything to a year of intention prayer and research, so I hope this is something I can follow through with.

check it, tell me what you think:

Four In Forty

Proverbs 4:23, Phillipians 4:6,7

22

Every once in a while i get this feeling. I have these things run through my head that I immediately recognize as lies, and not of God, yet still I entertain them in my head. And, I don't mean entertain like, they have a good time, I just mean that they stick around and I start to think more about them.

This past week was a kind of slow week, which isn't usually how my weeks are. It was good to actually have some down time to relax and such though, but at the same time, when I don't have a whole lot going on I begin to do more life-evaluation type thinking. The problem with this, is that in my own bias, as most people are with their own, there's the idea that I have not done, or I am not doing enough. It's the need to "make-it".

So, when I sit and do some of these life-evaluations, here are some of the normal thoughts that go through my head:
"Why have I not 'made it?'" (even though I don't even know what that would actually look like)
"When am I going to get a real job and start making money?"
"When am I going to have more than enough to just 'get by' in my bank account?"
"When am I going to (insert whatever piece of the American Dream that I have not achieved yet?"

How selfish of me.

When I get into this pattern of thinking, like I said, I recognize it instantly as not being from God. But I can't stop myself.

I was eating breakfast with Aaron, (my room mate) before church on sunday, and we were talking about the idea of looking for a solid job (currently I am triple employed, each part time, and each inconsistently), yet I am still not fully satisfied with what I am doing, as I know it is not what I want to do when I "grow up". And then I realized, and admitted to myself, though I knew it before, that I am only 22 years old. Aaron reminded me that Jesus himself was 30 before he started his ministry.

I know, I know, big epiphany. But thats my problem sometimes, is that I don't let myself remember that. I hang out a lot with people that are older than me. Out of college, and in the real world. and I see them doing what they love, or, maybe not love, but what brings them money, and I think to myself, "how come they are doing this and I am not? Am I inferior?"

My friend Tyler, who is a 3-year intern at Willow with the Axis ministry is someone I look up to a lot. He is 25 (or 26, I may have missed a birthday somewhere this year), and in his 3rd year of the internship, and I find myself comparing myself to him a lot. His ministry is going great, and he has been given great opportunity and responsibility, and has even been given the opportunity to speak at some of the Axis gatherings on the first Friday of each month. I was talking to him one day when I was feeling this way, and he told me about how he almost left the ministry when he first started, now 2 years ago, but that he decided to stick it through and only now, 2 years later, is he being given all these opportunities.

Not that I have though about not wanting to do ministry, though it may have crossed my mind here and there, but just thinking that he wasn't in the place he is in now 2 years ago. Which would put him at 23 years old, still older than I am now. I'm 22, and I think that I am behind. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm right on time.

I just need to remember. I'm still a student. And I'm only 22.