Livejournal Forgiveness Quote

So, I went back into my old Livejournal account, looked at the 1day1thought community, and found this quote for today.

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

~Josh Billings

I thought it was fitting. Kind of.

How Ironic

So, I've been selected as one of the team leaders on Catholic Campus Ministry's upcoming Search retreat, and guess what I'm giving a talk on?

Reconciliation.

All kinds of good ironic. I'm ridiculously busy competing for a scholarship and one of the four spots on our school's ACM team. Sorry for not posting here except in a blue moon, I do sort of feel disappointed in myself, but oh well, being too busy is life. Expect more eventually.

From the Mouth of Babes

"But why would somebody do something just for money?"

A kid in "Alvin and the Chipmunks" asked this of his mother as I was cleaning up the theatre. Oh, if only we were all as smart as six-year-olds.

A break... finally

So basically, it kind of seems like this blog had died. It went more than a month without anything of a substantial update. That's a huge no-no. But even though I let this aspect of my digital life slip, I'm glad that my good old flesh and blood life has been picking up quite nicely.

The pro-life club I'm in is now planning a pro-life conference, which will hopefully turn into a statewide thing. If anyone knows any people in Pennsylvania that are interested in hearing quite a few pro-life speakers and showing their support, tell them to drop me a line. It'll be on Friday, April 4, at Penn State and the next day, Peter Kreeft will also be speaking at Penn State courtesy of another group on campus I'm involved with.

Speaking of that other group, I was recently voted in as the secretary for the Newman club on campus. Newman is a Catholic student organization I've been a part of since my freshman year, and apparently the members think well enough of me that they'd like me to be the secretary this next semester while the previous secretary goes to study abroad.

Onto another club on campus, Penn State's Paranormal Research Society's TV show just started, Paranormal State, and I'm proud to say I know some of the people on the show. So far the show has been good, it's a lot of helping people, not so much running around with cameras a la Blair Witch, like you might expect of a show dealing with college kids and the paranormal. All of the episodes so far are good, but for my more religious readers, the 2nd and 3rd episodes, The Name and The Devil in Syracuse are both fairly religious-y, having to do with demonology and such. There's even a deliverance (a lesser form of exorcism) in one of the episodes. It's usually on Mondays at 10 pm on A&E, but this week there is no show, new episodes are starting back up on the 31st. So, if it's New Year's Eve and you want something fun to do at 10:00, turn on A&E.

Classes and final exams finished for me as of Friday, and I found out that this is the first semester I got all As! Four As and one A- (I probably should have showed up to more mythology lectures.) All in all, a great semester, but even greater for this next reason.

And now, for the biggest announcement, I have a girlfriend. Shannon and I have been going out for almost three weeks now, but unfortunately for me, we live 2.5 hours apart when not at college, so I don't know if we'll get a chance to see each other over the break. Also, our one month anniversary is the day I'm getting my wisdom teeth taken out. Now how's that for a present?

What I'm sorry for

So I am sorry that I haven't been posting here as often as I should, and I kind of gave up on Nanowrimo because I've been having to write all sorts of nonfiction and poetry for my creative writing class. What I'm really sorry for is this:

I'm sorry that I don't live closer to my friends, so that I could give them hugs when they're feeling crappy.

Day 2

As of Day 2: 1,453

Yeah, I know I'm a bit behind, but I do at least have some sort of help, come Thanksgiving, I can get one of my journals from home and put in a big old chunk of it in as an introduction to set up one of the plot devices.

Oh, and because I forgot in the last entry, here's the link to the official Nanowrimo website: http://www.nanowrimo.org

Nanowrimo

This month I will probably be even less available than usual, partly due to many exams and final projects happening, but also due in large part to Nanowrimo.

Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The objective is to write a 50,000 word nanonovel over the course of November. It's fun, but this being my third time attempting this challenge, I'm hoping that I'll actually finish this year, for the first time.

As of Day 1: 605 words

Seven Random Facts About Me.

1. I have slept outside in sub-zero weather.
2. I have a sugar packet collection. Currently, it numbers in at least the 100s.
3. My favorite book is "Choke" by Chuck Pahlaniuk, the same guy that wrote "Fight Club." It's a story about a recovering (sort-of) sexaholic who has problems with his mother (who is in a nursing home on his expense), and spends a fair part of the book thinking "What would Jesus not do?" And then he does that.
4. I used to wear glasses for an astigmatism, but then my eyes got better (I'm not sure how either). Now I've actually got better than 20/20 in my left eye, and 20/20 in my right, which is cool, but it kind of messes with
my depth perception a bit.
5. The first full song I learned to play on the guitar was "Eleanor Rigby," by The Beatles.
6. I have a roommate who is currently sick with a fever of 103. He has shivers, and every once in a while he'll have a coughing fit in his sleep.
7. This past Saturday, I went out drinking with one of the stars of a show on Court TV going into its second season. The stereotypical "stars are stuck up" thing definitely did not apply to this guy, as he was ridiculously cool and easy to chill with.
8. (number six was kind of a cop-out) Right now I have no backspace key, just a little funny rubber thing where the center of my backspace key should have been.

In response to Ariel's post.

Me, in the news!

I've been on the TV and in the newspaper several times, and the most recent was this Friday, after I had given a speech about why I was pro-life at a candle-light vigil for Penn State Students for Life. You can check out the full (front page) article here (but you might want to read my speech below here first): Students For Life Shed Light On Issue.

And here is the transcript of my full speech, because the Daily Collegian (understandably) cuts it down quite a bit.

Hello everyone. I'm John Montgomery, and I'm going to tell you why I'm pro-life. Sometimes I don't really know why I'm here doing all of this, being pro-life and trying to make the world more like that. I've never gotten a girl pregnant. I've never gotten pregnant either. None of my friends have ever had to think about dealing with an abortion, or ever really worry about getting pregnant.

No one close to me has ever had to choose whether or not they'd end an infant's life. So why am I here?

I have a friend, and she is awesome. Literally, it is amazing what she does. She's probably one of the most beautiful people I've ever met, and that's more than skin deep beauty, even though she's won state beauty pageants. She's got brains too, because she was the valedictorian of her high school class. If she was up here instead of me, she could talk circles around me. She competed in forensics, giving speeches, on a national level. She's kind and funny and she's the kind of person you'd want to have as a friend, and be a friend to.

She's never gotten pregnant. Like me, she also has not had people close to her who have dealt with all of the hardships and difficulties of abortion and pregnancy. However, despite all of that, she is the reason why I am pro-life. She is the reason why I am up here today talking to you all.

A few years ago, this friend of mine went on a retreat, and while there, she got a letter from her mom. Her mom told my friend that she loved her, but she also told her a secret. She had planned on aborting my friend when she had gotten pregnant with her. One choice, and my friend could have never been born.

Because of her, every time I think to myself, "What am I doing here? Why am I putting in my time to something that seems to make so little of a difference in the world? I'm only one person." But then I remember my friend. I think about her smile and the way she laughs and how she inspires people, including me. And I think about how I never would have known any of that if her mother had changed her mind on just one decision. One little choice, and my friend would have been gone. The world would have been that much darker if her mother had decided to abort her.

She's only one person too, but I care about her, and that makes all of this, every second, worthwhile.

Oh, and yes, the article isn't lying, I really was close to crying, both during my speech, and afterwards for quite some time. Real men aren't afraid to cry.

The Lighter Dark Side of Reconciliation

So this weekend, I spent all of my time exhausting myself, and most of that time was spent working at Univ-Con, the USA's largest paranormal conference. It was ridiculously fun, but ridiculously tiring, considering pretty much all of my free time from last Wednesday to Friday night was spent helping get this conference working, and I still haven't fully rested back up from how fatigued it made me.

Excluding all of that, we had an interesting pair of keynote speakers Friday night at Univ-Con, Lorraine Warren, wife and partner to the only Vatican-recognized lay demonologist (the late Ed Warren), and Father James LeBar, a former exorcist. I had heard Lorraine Warren speak at Univ-Con last year, and had read a few books about some of her and her husbands more publicized cases, and I was not disappointed in any of it. There is a real existence of demons in this world, and anyone who doubts should talk to one of these people.

That being said, demons are smart, and they know things they shouldn't be able to know (preternatural knowledge, as they call it, I believe). These spirits know the dark things you have done in your life, and may mock, ridicule, and harass you with their knowledge of your sins and the times you have failed God. However, as an interesting note, they don't seem to have any knowledge of sins that have been confessed.

I guess when you go to reconciliation, that old Bible verse really is true.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed his transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)

It's kind of nice to know that when we say "forgive and forget," that God takes it kind of literally, at least in terms of applying it to his angels (both fallen and otherwise).

When Forgiveness gets you in trouble

So on Sunday night into early Monday morning, I was a bit... out of it. And in this "state," I made some phone calls, and I wanted to call a girl I knew, but I didn't want to wake her up, because it was like, four in the morning. So instead, I texted her.

The next day, I forgot all about the text, and this girl kept looking over at me while she sang at the front of the room as part of our music part of our Catholic club. I was kind of confused/suspicious, but she's a pretty girl, and she's really cool, so I was fine with the attention.

Then, Tuesday afternoon, I discovered the text message I had forgotten about. It really wasn't a bad text message at all, I just told her that she was awesome, and I respect her as a person and that she should keep living the way that she is. And I used perfect spelling and grammar. Relatively speaking, I'm a really nice guy when I'm in this state. So I figured that was why she had been acting the way she had.

I had a board meeting with her for our pro-life club on Wednesday, and it was still kind of awkward, so late Thursday night/early Friday morning I wrote her a facebook message, apologizing for potentially waking her up and for the awkwardness of texting her while in that "state." My guilty conscience just kept bugging me too much.

Friday afternoon, I got a reply from her. Apparently, her phone doesn't get text messages, but she said if I really needed to talk that I could call her at any time. Oh, and she wanted to know what the message said. I figured it would be better to tell her the truth than to have her imagine some kind of idiotic or perverted message, and since then, I haven't gotten a reply back.

Tsk, tsk, if my conscience just left well enough alone, I would have been out of this mess scot-free.

Loooooong week

Want to know why I've been saying nothing here for a while? Well, Jay over at Adventures of a Christian Collegian put it excellently in his list of things he has learned at college.

Professors are knowingly and incontrovertibly in an evil alliance to assign all quizzes, tests, and major papers during the same exact week. This cannot be avoided no matter what professors you pick. Even the ones you thought were cool (because they were younger and perhaps only went by their first name, which was something usually along the lines of "Mark" or "Jenny") are in on this conspiracy.

I had three tests this week, a quiz, and two major assignments. Throw into that my job working at the commons, helping to plan a pro-life rally in the spring, staying up late trying to keep my potentially concussed roommate awake, and fitting a religious retreat into my schedule, it's been a hectic week. I've had about four nights out of the past seven that have only had about four to five hours of sleep.

In the past 24 hours, I got 15 hours of sleep. I went on a run with one of my friends too, and I feel awesome, even though I'm helping to run a table to promote a pro-life speaker tomorrow, and I'm not entirely sure what's all going on with that. But that's not all of why I feel awesome.

Friday night at the retreat, we had faith sharing. Now, this scares the ever-loving hell out of me (I like using "ever-loving" as a swear modifier, but it doesn't really make as much sense here). I love faith sharing though. It feels so good to be able to talk to people and feel like they understand you, and maybe to get some things off of your chest. My usual policy with faith sharing is that once I think of something I want to talk about, I always wait fifteen seconds after the last speaker, to give someone who maybe urgently wants to talk the chance to get up there and speak. Plus, it kind of makes it easier to avoid going up front too if I give myself that time period.

God however, had different plans than for me to sit quiet that night though. After a couple of people went up (including one of my close friends, that had a problem he hadn't told me about, but I'm glad he let it out), I was doing my counting thing, and I got up past twenty. Nobody was making any moves, and finally I just said "screw it" to my insecurities and I stood up. Once you stand up, you can't really sit back down without people noticing, so I was locked in.

A lot of people had been talking about prayer and what it's done for them, so I started there. I said how what prayer does is awesome, but what prayer is is even better. I talked about how great it is to be able to talk to God whenever you wanted to, and my favorite ways to pray. And then I said how there was one prayer I wasn't sure about. Whenever I say it, I wonder if I'm saying or using it right or whatever.

That prayer is the Our Father. There's a line in it that says "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." But as I told them, I have a huge grudge. There is someone that I haven't forgiven, and I don't know how to forgive him. I don't know where he is or what he's doing or whether he's even sorry or not, and I don't know how to get closure and let go of this whole situation. If I'm doing well, I don't usually think about it, but when I start getting tired or stressed out, if I have nothing else to distract me, it will be the only thing I think about. Just on and on through my mind, as many bad thoughts about all of this as I can think of. I told them how sometimes I just can't function right because of it. And I apologized to my friend Dan, because the "problem" I talked about in this post had to do with how I can't forgive this person. I've been praying about this, but I still haven't found a solution.

Afterwards, people were hugging me, and I kept bursting out into tears. My friends told me to just keep praying, and that God never gives us more than we can handle. One of my friends told me I was beautiful, because that was the first thing that popped into her head. I definitely felt a lot more beautiful than I had in a while.

For the first time in almost three years since this grudge started, I actually talked to someone about it. Sure, I didn't go deep into it, and when Dan wanted to ask me more about it, I had to tell him that I'm sworn to secrecy about the specifics (which is the truth, until I ask for that promise to be given back to me). But I did bring it up. I finally told people about it. In my daily journal that night, I think I wrote "I did it!" close to eighteen times in a row, I was just that happy.

It may not be much, but it's a start, and that's how healing works, a little bit at a time.

I knew this would happen

YES! College is getting into full-swing, and I am tired and swamped. My computer science homework had me up until 6 in the morning last night, and it was really just to solve unsolvable (at least with our current knowledge) things that the teacher never told us we'd come up against. Fun stuff.

Also, I cut my thumb on a shard of glass that was embedded in the sole of my shoe. I just thought it was a pebble, go sue me. I have to slow down on the guitar practicing until at least tomorrow night, I think.

My friend is doing good, he came back after the weekend, and I had supper with him and some other people. He didn't come to the Catholic meeting after supper, but I'm glad he's at least well enough to hang out with people on some degree.

I am seriously behind on my responsibilities as a webmaster for the pro-life club on campus, Students For Life. I'm starting to feel really guilty. I definitely need to change some things, like, everything on the resource page and most of "What we've done" and the board page. That, and I just need to create a new layout in general. The website makes me feel like I'm browsing the internet in a cave. It needs to be cheerier. The rest of the club is doing admirably, and we're hoping to get Jason Evert and/or Christopher West to give a speech on campus, with help in part due to Generation Life. We've got a life rally being planned for the spring as well, with Peter Kreeft showing up on the final day of it.

I've also been having guilty dreams about not exercising enough. In the past three days, I've had two dreams about old coaches of mine berating me for not being in shape as well as I was, or telling me about various opportunities I have on campus to exercise. So, I'm going for a run. Right now. Bye.

Why no post?

This is probably one of the longer gaps I've gone without posting anything. I'm sure all four of you (and I can't even count something cheesy like my mom, because she doesn't even know about this) were extremely worried.

Well, I'll explain in probably one of the best lines from Scripture: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I'd like to slightly amend that for the purpose of explaining things. "There is no(t many) greater fatigues than to fear for the life of a friend."

One of my friends, who will remain unnamed, came to me late Wednesday night, and wanted to talk to me in person. Then when we met up, he wanted to talk to me somewhere more private.

Apparently his sister had gone through a complete psychological breakdown about a week ago, and his parents had never told him. He was really worried about his sister, and he was worried about how his parents would react (his parents don't exactly rate high in parenting). He has problems of his own too, so he was worrying that he was going to have a breakdown too, that he would just wake up the next morning and not care about anything.

So, I hung out with him that night. We went exploring the basement of one of the commons, got some cheeseburgers at McDonald's (protein is always good for depression, although that was unintended), and then we made a mash-up of two posters we found in the commons, a blood donation poster, and an ad for a big dinner being held by a frat. Imagine a poster where they try to get you to donate blood by showing a huge black guy with a football helmet on trying to eat the biggest damn hamburger you may have ever seen. And we hung it up. And at least one of them is still hanging up in my commons, because I guess no one has realized yet that it's a spoof.

Like this, only with a helmet on too.

Staying up late killed me though, because once I was done hanging out with him at around 2:30, I had to study for a French test, which I did pretty well on, despite being sleep deprived and stressed out. Later that night, my friend called me again, said he had talked to a psychologist today, but he was worried that his parents had gotten a 302 (involuntary commitment) for his sister, and that they would do the same. In the course of the conversation, he also told me that his psychologist said he was going through "suicidal ideation," which means he's been thinking about committing suicide, without any actual plans or intent to commit suicide.

Luckily, he decided to go home for the weekend, and he's getting help there, but I'm still worried about him. After hanging out with my friends who came up for the football game last night, I slept for ten hours straight, and I still feel kind of tired. So, if you could, please pray for my friend.

Funny and Serious

My blog is rated PG-13! I'm glad, because I was rather worried I might cross over into an R rating. PG-13 is not bad though, I can live with that comfortably. Although it did flag me for using the word "hurt" 5 times. Oops, now six.

As for less comfortable things, since my friend Randi is resigning from the role of president, and I just found out that James, or vice president, is also heavily burdened with schoolwork and will be resigning either at the end of the semester or in a month, people will soon need to be stepping up to take leadership positions. The question I've been asking myself is whether or not I could manage to do that, and also more importantly, whether or not I should. It would be a big commitment, but it's also an important job, especially on our campus. I just hope my prayers will be answered and I'll have some idea about what to do.

Just FYI

I am a one-armed god of programming (metaphorically speaking, of course). Technically, it was more like one-handed with a thumb, but still. Last night my hands got scratched up, and I bandaged them, but it became that everything but my thumb on my left hand is stuck in a clenched position so as not to crack open my wounds (which is not good), and the ring finger on my right hand as well.

This morning, I had my first computer science test of the semester. I was really worried about it. There was a written part, then a programming part. I got around 18/20 on the written part, I'd guess, and I was one of the first people to hand that section in.

When I got to the programming section, I was pretty nervous, but it seemed like I finished the entire program with half an hour to spare. I was confused. Only one other person had finished, and he had only given back his sheet a few seconds before I finished writing my code. I took an extra five minutes just to make sure I had everything that was asked of me. Amazingly enough, I did. So I handed in my paper, and was the second person finished. I beat like, 95% of my class to finishing, and I only had about four fingers to type with (I don't really use my pinkies).

Maybe I might have a future in computer science after all. Thank you God for gifting me and helping me out. I definitely had some help, because there was a word bank that I was not expecting and that totally saved me in the writing section.

How Am I Not Myself? #2

I totally realized yesterday that I had been forgetting about these. I really liked the idea, and I feel kind of bad that I let such a nifty idea slip out of my mind. Anyways, on to the real entry.

I have a friend who went through some very traumatic situations a few years back. I helped this friend through a lot of these problems. I feel very strongly about these sort of things that my friend was thrown into.

Very rarely do I go a week, or most of the time even a day, without part of what I learned from my friend cropping up somehow in my life. It makes it hard to forget my friend. It makes it hard to forget what my friend went through.

However, sometimes I do forget. I forget in a bad way. Worse, sometimes I just choose to ignore the pain my friend experienced. What I sometimes let myself do is just a big "screw you" to my friend.

Very rarely do I ever hate myself, but the times that I feel that way, it's usually when I've chosen to forget about my friend.

How am I not myself?

I am not myself when I forget the pain of my friends.

Help a Brother (or Sister) out!

Over at Andy's blog, I first saw an entry about questioning what you're going through because of all of the difficulties in your life. Check it out. It links to another blog post on one of his friend's blogs, and you can either follow the link train, or just check it out here. I guess this blog post is kind of part three in this series.

We all know that sometimes life is hell. Andy saw that, and it's true, but you still keep making your way through all of it. Will, Andy's friend, has been working hard at trying to make the church he is in better, and that's very hard too.

I guess what I really want to say here is to help out. Help out groups you're in, help out your church, your sports team, your business group, anything. Help out the people in charge, because while they may seem like they're totally in control and invincible, secretly, like Andy and Will, they're really having a difficult time.

I'm the webmaster of a pro-life club here on campus, and because of that, I go to the board meetings we have to plan stuff. My friend Randi, she is the president of the club, and this is pretty much the first big leadership position she's had. I knew she was nervous and scared, but she's been doing a really good job with everything in the club, especially considering that she and the rest of the board are practically rebuilding the club from scratch.

We had a board meeting on Wednesday, and Randi said she wanted to see all of the board members after the meeting (some people from the Catholic club on campus were there as well). I figured she just wanted to talk to us alone to discuss the influence the Catholic club was having on us (it's a secular pro-life club, so we can't really be overtly supporting one religion). She had a much more pressing issue to discuss.

My friend Randi had gone through two panic attacks over the past few days over everything she had been worrying about for being president, not to mention all the pressures of just being a college student. She really just wanted to know that if she decided to resign, that someone else would step up and take her place. We all pretty much told her that the club would definitely be in good hands if she decided to resign, and that if she felt like she had too much work, she should have told us. We would have helped more if she needed it. Heck, as the webmaster, I do almost nothing. I easily could help a lot more, and I told her that.

Leaders aren't invulnerable. They need help too, but more importantly, they need to know that there are people available to help, people they can call on. So even if you just tell someone that you'd be willing to help with events in the future, that'd be quite a burden off of their backs.

I'm sorry for my problems

Tonight I screwed up a bit. My friend Dan thinks it was because of alcohol, which is good, because he thinks it's an outside problem instead of just me. I was supposed to bring "The Truman Show" to his dorm and watch it there with him and some other people. I showed up finally about two hours late, and Dan just advised me that he would "let this go, but you should probably just go home now John." Dan had called my cell phone much earlier, when I was only a little late, and while I took a quick poll about what to do, one of my other friends took my phone and told Dan that he had stolen my phone.

Myself, I don't know whose fault it was. It definitely wasn't the alcohol. I was thinking about not going to Dan's dorm before I started drinking at all. I just didn't want to see him. It's a long story, and I can't decide if it's my fault, his fault, or someone else's fault entirely.

Like I said a few posts back, I have a problem. Usually it's nothing. This week has been crappy, and something Dan had said a week or two back had sort of set off flags in my mind. It wasn't until today though that what he had said really had an effect on me. I read something in a book every student had been given at our high school graduation. I just didn't want to deal with what was bubbling up inside me, so I fell asleep at my bed so I wouldn't have to deal with anything. That always seems like the best option to me. Do nothing, hide away from your problems. They'll go away in a little while if you get some rest.

I know I should apologize to him, but right now I'm just trying to figure out who to blame. He doesn't know what's wrong with me, so I can't really blame him for something he didn't realize he was doing. I think I should blame myself, but my mind is telling me that's not right either. Maybe I should be getting more help with this problem. Usually it's no trouble at all. I went through the entire summer without a single hitch, I just think the stress of a new semester of school and a lack of sleep is getting to me.

Right now, Dan is IMing me, implying how he feels hurt, and I just don't know what to say. He said he felt hurt, and I said I was sorry. I told him I didn't know how to explain, but that I did feel like an ass. Then he had to head to sleep.

If there's one thing that I definitely know is my fault, it's this: I'm sorry that I don't know how to deal with this better. For all of my smarts, I'm still in the dark. I'm sorry that I can't figure out how to deal with this.

Under the influence

Right now, I'm still sort of getting rid of a bit of tipsiness. My fingers feel a bit weird as I'm typing this out, like the letters on the screen are appearing faster than they should.

As a person of strong resistance to alcohol, I rather had to hit myself hard to get into this state. By hitting myself hard, I mean I took six shots of vodka in a row, in less than a minute, and a shot of Southern Comfort later. It left my stomach feeling a bit weird, but once it calmed down, I was good.

It's funny the things that you'll do when you're not as much in control of yourself. We were planning on going to a toga party, but we went to a dance party some members of a Catholic club on campus were hosting. The other members of my group got bored and left, but I stayed. Dancing is fun. Who needs to get drunk and try to pick up girls? Techno music and dancing with no inhibitions is where the real fun is at. I'm glad I didn't leave.

At some point, I went into their kitchen to get a drink, and I decided to make a message out of the magnets they had on their fridge. You know the magnets I'm talking about, those little white ones with words and suffixes on them? Over what seemed like a very long time of searching and deliberating, probably made long by my slightly handicapped state, I finally made my message. I sent it in a text message to myself, so I wouldn't forget it. It said:

Together we give honest friendship. Share the heart. Smile, believe, trust your companions.

Really, in a perfect world, it would be difficult to find truer words.