Well, so that title only makes sense if you were one of 8 people who worked with all day and all night and through the snow and sleet and hail of my emotions this summer in a local hospital. (For everyone else…)That right there was a topic sentence if ever there was one. Quite simply, I’m a different sort of dude these days because of an amazing summer which I can’t quite reproduce in any sort of narrative way at this point.

I spent a lot of time holding people’s hands this summer, and I realized the difference between that and when I needed someone to hold mine.

I spent a lot of time dealing with the distance between Sarah and I right now, and how miraculous it feels that the distance is simply clicks on the odometer, not emotional at all. I realized that’s not the same thing as it being OK that we’re apart, it’s not.

I spent a lot of time remembering what it’s like to truly have friends again, and not just people who are always in the same 4 places as you. I realized that it’s OK to still miss the people who are in those 4 places.

Mainly, I spent a lot of time remembering that I feel incredibly blessed to know in some sort of deep, in the bone kind of way that I’m doing what I’m called to do, doing what it is right for me to do, and doing what my gifts were meant for.

Also, I realized that I have left this space–and indeed, my writing in any way shape or form–by the wayside. I’m about to embark on my last year of Divinity School, I am about to move 1600 miles away, I am about to move a little closer towards the outward ordination of what has been an inside call already answered. That’s a lot. It all has to go somewhere. So why not here? Obviously, it can’t all come out here, what with the internet being available to all and whatnot, but I’d like to think that if you read this junk of mine through the years, you’re getting a better sense of who I am… which I hope would be beneficial to my living in the world.

I have a friend who is inspirational, and funny, and bold and honest all at the same time in the context of the web, which is astounding to me. Then, I read this: Making the clackity noise. Everyone already knows about my man-crush on Merlin Mann, but now I feel like I’ve moved to some sort of deeper, almost Air Supply-esque misty connection… Anyway, this piece honestly made me cry a little bit about the real need for people to tell their stories to each other, and hey, who doesn’t love scoring points by beating up on facebook? Ironic glasses almost come free when you do that.

All this to say the world seems to be pestering me to write. I wrote like a page and a half missive to my mother this morning out of sheer overflow of material. So, I hope I can keep inspired, because I think I want to know about myself in this particular span of time, and it would nice to be able to share that with my lurved ones while I do so.