Perplexed.

I don't know where to begin this thing... things that have happened in the past couple days/weeks are starting to wear me out a little bit.

One of my small group guys, Luke... his dad died, on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving! Why God? Why did that have to happen on a day devoted annually to family, love, and... well, thanksgiving?

Luke, Rat and I went to Ben Graebel's funeral. The guy was only 53 years old, five years older than my father. The church they held the ceremony in was packed out completely, with standing room only outside of the sanctuary. I was pleased to see that he had touched so many lives that deeply. Still, the question remained in my head: why? Ben's 10 year old son Will asked the same question in a letter he had written to his father, read to the audience at the end of the ceremony. Why?

Today... I found out a guy who grew up in the same town as myself, Rob Theori, whose older brother is my age and graduated in the class of 2001 from Pinkerton Academy with me, died in a car crash last night. On the road I grew up on. Maybe even on the curve my mom and dad decided to build their house. Rob was only 22. The guy he was with died too. They were speeding and lost control of Rob's BMW. The car hit a tree and literally split into two separate pieces. Why? Why did Rob have to die at 22? For a goofy decision like speeding?

I'm off on this kick again, wrestling with relationships. I've been reading and studying and memorizing 1 Corinthians 13, which was kind of the battle cry from kamp out in Durango this summer. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal". Love is something I've struggled with time and time again. It's making me crazy. Lust is not love, yet it lives in my heart and desires to drag me into sin, which in turn wants only for me to die. Love lives in my heart too, but I don't feel like real love can live with lust in the same place for very long.

Which brings me to the point I'm... sort of trying to make. I'm sick of hurting people with my inability to love them the way God does, and I'm putting myself in a position again to either get it right and see what happens or screw it up and become insane once more. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, right? I need to know how to love something more than myself. I would almost vouch for hating myself, if that wasn't so darn narcissistic.

I want to love like the love demanded of me in 1 Corinthians 13. I just don't know how. Yet.

I'm working on it. Be patient with me. I just want to know why it has to be so hard.

I want to know why Ben Graebel and Rob Theori had to die the way they did.