It has been a very long time since my last post. Since then I have gotten engaged to the girl of my dreams, finished one semester and begun another. I am the luckiest, most blessed man/boy on the planet. She is the most gracious, pure-hearted, beautiful person I have ever known. It is true that lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same. God is still good and I still have an ugly, black heart. I am filled with evil desires, bitterness and sarcastic, semi-serious hate for most everything around me. The more I realize how sinful I am, the more I dislike myself. What would God say about these feelings of intense self-loathing? Would He encourage me to remember the grace that I have through the cross, or would He say, “DUH!!! You freakin suck man. Get used to it!” I think that the former is probably closer to an actual Godly response, but there is no real way of knowing. All of these feelings are affecting my perspective. Since all of life is influenced by one’s perspective, the way that I interact with people is changing. I am not at all sure that I like the changes I see in my life. I should be moving towards Christ, but I often feel like I am running away from Him; fast and far. I desperately want the Holy Spirit to come down to me the way that it did to the believers in Acts. When they received the Holy Spirit, they experienced an immediate change in perspective. This change often led people to pursue things that they never would have if not for the Spirit of God.

Is this possible, if anyone feels that they are truly interacting with the Spirit on a day-to-day basis, please contact me. I would love to learn from you. I have a sneaking suspicion that the way to this kind of relationship is to treat God like an imaginary friend. Friends love you. They can be confided in and trusted. A true friend will tell you the truth; no matter how painful it might be for you to hear it. God is not my friend. I treat him like an ATM. I go to him when I need something, but I only ever get what I already had. Sometimes it is good to get all of my thoughts as they come to me.

I wish that I knew someone who truly understood what I wanted out of my relationship with God. Scratch that… What I think an ideal relationship with god looks like. I believe that there is an entirely other, or separate, dimension that it is possible to enter into. Another way of saying it might be: I think that if I could tear down the sky, I might be able to look God in the face and He might say something like, “Hello David, you found me. And by the way, did I mention that I love you…” I want to look God straight in the face. I want Him to wrap His massive arms around me. I want to live in His everlasting love. What would it be like to bask in the glow of God every second of every day? I hope I can find out, starting now…

Similarities and conclusions

Tyler and I,(he was mostly asleep), just watched "Into the Wild".  I am intrigued.  I wonder.  There are similarities between my life choices over the last couple of years and the choices that Alex makes.  The reasons that he does what he does are different, and so are the outcomes, but many of the intellectual conclusions are the similar, if not the same.  I went somewhere to find out about myself and about the world.  I have been back in school for close to a month now; removed from my loneliness for longer.  He was not connected to anyone at the end.  He thought that he could create his own happiness.  I tried.  We came to the conclusion that you can't be happy if there is no one to tell.  I realized that there were certain people that I needed to be able to tell.  Life is not complete without people.  We are communal beings.  Alex interacted with many people short periods of time. Despite this, he had a profound impact on some these individuals.  Ron wanted to adopt him for God's sake!  He never revisited them, or gat to tell them about his experiences after he left them.  In the last two years, I have come into contact with possibly thousands of people that I will never see again.  Some of them worked at gas stations I will never visit, but I had real relationships with some of them.  There are people that I will never forget, but may not see again: Rafael, brandon, Ashton, Ashley, Andy, Ben, Geoff, Marty, Matt, Laura, Laura (there were two), Mark, Renee, Dave, Dave's parents, Matt, Jared, Will, Cody, Rifki, Sayid, Marvin, Chris, Sam, Tiffany, Autumn, Derek.........I could go on for a long time.  The sad thing is I forget some of their names already, but I do not forget who I have become because of them.  I shared time and pieces of my life with these people and many, many others.  I am coming to the realization that there are many relationships that we cannot, will not, or sometimes should not hold onto and others that we can't escape.  There are people in my life I cannot live without.  If  you are on of them, thank you for loving me.  Most of all, I now realize how truly alone I am.  I will always be alone... except for God.  I say that nonchalantly, but that single statement may hold more truth than the rest of my words and actions put together.  No matter how much you love someone, or how much they love you, they will die, and before they die, they will never truly, TRULY, understand you.  I do not even understand me. How could another human being?  But God TRULY understands me.  He knows my sins and weaknesses and everything else...and He loves me in spite of it.  At the end of the movie, Alex comes to the conclusion that earthly happiness does not exist unless there is someone to share it with.  I am proud to say that I have found the people that I want to share my happiness with.  More importantly, I have found the person that I want to share everything with.  I believe that her role in my life will last much longer and be bigger than anyone that I have ever or may ever come in contact with.  Even more that this, I want to exist not so much with, but in God.  I am content, not with the life I am living, but with my freedom to participate in my own existence.  

I am pretty sure that very few people read this blog.  This information has not stopped me from being a little afraid to post.  I think that there is a fear in the back of my mind that if I am not careful, if I am too reckless about who I tell what, I will lose it all.  If I post this, then go to sleep, I might wake up to a different reality.  I guess that is kind of a silly thing to worry about huh.  Anyways, on with the blogging.  I have come to the conclusion that I am one of the most blessed people in the world.  I am not trying to sound cliche, and to some I may not.  I have a beautiful life.  For the first time, I am ready to commit my entire being to a human other than myself.  I am not scared of when the other shoe will drop, because I am wearing one, and you are wearing the other.  I am holding your hand so tight, not because I want you to believe that I will never let go, but because I never want to let go.  I wish I was talking to you or spending time with you right now.  This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.  In addition to this love that I get to experience, I  am truly enjoying and appreciating my education for the first time.  I am also constantly bombarded with desires to do things that I am quite sure not many people want to do.  I will not explain all of these for fear of making myself out to be a self-righteous, judgemental dickhead, which is, of course, always a possibility.  I know that God is doing big things in my heart and that if my plan for is to truly seek God's will through living my life, that I will always be able to praise Him.  Job is amazing.  I want that kind of faith.  

On a separate note, I think that some people should not be so childish.  Life is hard and it gets harder.  You may never get your happy ending, and the bitter, angry part of me wants you to be crushed when you realize that.  But if you are "falling for" every person that you meet, chances of you ending up with someone are high. Conversely, chances of you never really being happy are also high.  Honesty is the best medicine, but I doubt that you have ever truly been honest in your whole life.  Life goes on. I am a happy man. I hope that you are not.  This paragraph is directed at someone. If you do not know if you are that person, you are probably not.

something to think about

What if I completely trusted God with my entire life?  Every second of every minute of every day etc... Would I worry? Would I still be scared? Would I become better at living each moment to its fullest? Is it possible for a human to no longer care about worldly problems, or to not think about the future?  I have been thinking about these questions a lot lately.  Mostly because of the only person that is reading this.  I want to trust God with my existence.  I am trying to.  The more I try, the less I worry, the less I worry, the more that I feel like the ideal answers to the above questions may be possible.  God is big, understatement and then some, I know.  He is bigger than my problems.  He loves me more than I can imagine.  If I trust him fully and completely, I no longer have anything to truly be afraid of.  Life is minuscule compared to eternity.  Death is not the end, but the beginning. Life is not the entree, but a single m&m that you eat before the appetizer, then smaller still.  When I think about things in light of eternity, my own hopes, dreams, fears, plans, wishes, and problems get swept away.  I am unimportant.  Eventually, no one will remember me.  The people I love will all die.  If I don't get to spend my time on earth with the people that I would like to, it will be alright.  It will be a short time of suffering compared to the eternal bliss that is to come for those privileged enough to know God personally.  My main goal should be to make sure that this group of people is as large as possible.  

God is good. He has a plan for me. Both as a human with a short amount of time on the earth and as an eternal being.  I am happy about that.  

My last week is here.

Seven days left in Charlotte and I am all alone.  My mom, who is normally my human contact outside of work, is in Panama. I won't get to talk to her until I get home.  The vast majority of the time that I was here, I was in a wonderful relationship with a girl who, I just realized today, thought much more of me than I deserve and more than I think of myself .   I did not deserve to have her. I do not deserve to have her.  I have a dark heart. I am empty. I am lost. God set me up. I'm sure of it. And now I am siting here ignoring him. writing about Him as if he would never know. I am single. I work a lot. I am poor. My family is far far away. I am alone. My decision to end the relationship with her was/ is the most heart-wrenching experience I have had in my short life on this earth.  It was right, but that knowledge makes it no less hard.  My friends are far away, and the few true friends I have here were somewhat driven away by my ending of what they thought was a good relationship.  I am not ready. I am so far from being ready it is not even funny.  I have broken hearts and had mine broken, even by me.  I am lonely.  God set me up. He made me alone because I will always be alone. GOd is the only one that will ever know my thoughts. God is the only one that will know the essence and details of my emotions.  He knows me. If God is here, why do I have to look for him. People have been looking for God for so long and all along He has been there, wherever that may be.   He is omnipresent and omnipotent you dumbasses!!! Live! Love! God will be there. I am not alone. God is here. I am safe. I have a friend. I just realized this.  

this is new... so are these.

I am David Jonathan Burch. I have a family and a home. I was brought up by certain people with certain views, I have lived in certain places and had experiences that are unique to me. No one has ever lived or will ever live a life that has the exact details of the life that I am currently living. I have not always known these things. I mean, I'm sure that I "knew" that I have a life that is not going to be duplicated, but I just realized it over the course of the past couple of months, actually the past nine or ten months.

Have you ever been talking to someone about a trip that they went on or an amazing experience that they had or someone that they knew and thought to yourself, "Man, someday I want to, am going to, would like to do, THAT, or SOMETHING like THAT. 

the THAT and the SOMETHING are important because they mean something. I guess what I'm trying to say is that for a long time I have focused on the THATs and the SOMETHINGs that I wanted to do someday. I missed out on some of my own life because I was so concerned with the future.  I have decide to try my best to let God take me where he wishes and do with me what he pleases. 

I think that I have two different mindsets that contradict this idea. The first is when I am thinking about the life of future David, the person that I will inevitably be someday, or in about a minute. I am either motivated to to something solely because of what it will get me in the end, or I am worried about what will happen if x or y occurs. What will that do to future David.  This mindset inherently contradicts the idea of living in the moment. There are days, especially at work, when I go into robot-mode, or something similar to auto-pilot.  I do things that I have done so many things that I don't have to think about them, I do things and commit certain information to memory subconciously.  I live my life but fail to take part in takes place. 

The second mindset is one of almost intense concentration on nothing. It is paying close attention to the details of ten episodes of a television series in one sitting. I t might be searching the internet for hours trying to find information about obscure bicycle parts.  Neither of these are in and of themselves bad things. I like television a lot, probably too much, and the Internet can be a great tool in thousands of ways. but they are not reality. Watching moves and tv, surfing the internet, and even listening to music are things that I do to escape from the reality of my life, which is not a bad reality to have to live in.  Still, I often choose to think and participate in a false-reality instead of me.  If you don't understand what  mean, consider a five year old watching a horror movie. There is no doubt that they will be scared. Why are they scared? because they feel that it is real.  It is the same reason that tv shows aren't constantly changing characters and plot lines within a series.  The makers want you to get involved with the characters, get to know them, learn to have emotion about them. For instance, I hate, and I mean really really hate Micheal Scott and George Costanza. The fact that you probably know who these "people" are without any reference is exactly my point.  Any ways, the fact that I have any emotion about made-up people in unrealistic situations is interesting to me.  Sometimes I find it hard to feel emotion about things that are actually happening to me, butIf King of the Hill comes on, you better believe that I am at least somewhat compelled to take part in 22 min of the ridiculous situation that Hank  has to deal with.  These are things that I hate about myself, things that I have a hard time communicating because they are unique to me, kind of. I feel that it is not possible to relate all of my thoughts . I want to be honest but I don't have enough time energy or words to externalize all of my feelings about any issue. I could sit here and write forever, If you are still reading this you are probably wondering where I am headed. I have changed the subject I have lost my train of thought , then picked it back up a half mile down the road... In summation I want to live and participate in my life, and feel every emotion, no matter how bad it hurts.  I want to do things because God wants me to. I want , I want , I want.  Even my deepest desires are selfish. I want to help people. I don't want to waste time. I want to show those around me how God has changed me. I want to be so close to God that I can barely stand it. I want my life to fall apart, I want to fail at the right times, I want to die alone, I want to not ruin anyone's life, I want to take no chances, I want to spend my life with the right person, I want to be successful in the right things. I want to not feel contradiction. I want to be uncomplicated. I want to do all these things, and many more, but I only want to do them if God wants me to. I guess that the bottom line is, I don't know what is going to happen to me in the future, but god promises that as long as I want to want what he wants and do what He wants me to do. I should be ok. and maybe I can even bring joy to someone...