Burning

Jeff

A sweltering heat. My heart beat loudly; it felt like it had actually moved closer to my ear drums. Dizziness. A dozen eyes slowly following the two clumsy figures in the dance hall. Laughter. Sloppy wetness on my face that tasted like stale air and liquor.

I woke up, feeling awkward. It was a one-night stand: a time where two people use each other and nothing comes from it but a few weird exchanges in the cafeteria the following day. And the guilt.

But in a crowd of testosterone-induced bravado, guilt is quickly assuaged. My male peers affirmed me in my conquest, while my heart was silently accusing me. The awkward sickness I felt after the experience was numbed by the growing masculine pride in me.

I had done well, I thought. It wasn't that bad - I was making it out worse that it really was. Maybe, I'll do something like it again...

Of course, I did. Not frequently, though. After that experience, I felt a spiritual "awakening," as if I had to prove my goodness to God or something.

I made a vow to Dustin, who was quickly becoming my best friend and trusted confidante, that I wouldn't drink again for the rest of the summer. Being the good Christian brother that he was, with equally hypocritical values, he rebuked my sobriety strategy for the impossibility that it was. I was in college, after all...

And human, for God's sakes.

He was right.

Lukewarm

Jeff

Dustin's Sophomore year was my Freshmen year. Just around the same time that he was getting caught for illegal transportation of large alcoholic containers, I was going through an inner struggle. In the process of reinventing myself, I had to face a key question: who would I be?

Weekdays were spent juggling over 18 credit hours. Weeknights were spent attending meetings: choir, theater, TV news, etc. You name the activity, department, or club, and I had considered being a part of it. Weekends were spent in exploration of my identity. Friday night, I would go to a party and have a beer or two. Saturday, I would go to a football game. Sunday, I would sleep in and do procrastinated homework. Depending on the weekend and my mood, I was a party animal, an introvert, a musician, an athlete (though, not a talented one), a Christian, a philosopher, or a nerd.

I was forced to attempt to answer the ever-nagging question of young adulthood: "Who am I?" I did not know. Was the real me the popular guy who was breaking out of his shy shell? Was it the quiet, chubby kid who got pushed around for the majority of high school? Was it someone else, someone I had never really let out?

I think I'm still in the process of discovering that. I won a talent show in the middle of my first semester, which won me a lot more recognition than I probably deserved. I wrote a song about my residence hall that I sang with two other guys in a pretty ridiculous way. When the pats on the back turned to free beers, my ego started to take a spin for the worse. I was unstoppable. I was immortal.

I pledged for a fraternity. We called them "literary societies," but for the reader's understanding and all intents and purposes, it was a fraternity. Being part of an exclusive group of men on campus that were renowned for throwing the best parties only fueled my swelling ego. The effect on my heart was far worse, though.

Simultaneously, I was beginning to lead another life. There was a group on campus that I really started to mesh with - the Christians. There were only about ten of them on campus that were really dedicated, but their resolve to live like they talked was something to be admired. I had never seen such discipline and integrity before - especially within the walls of a church.

This group of authentically-Christian Christians asked me to join their praise band. I didn't think twice (which may have been foolish on my part). A chance to play with a band again? The only other opportunity I had had before was with a small, high school three-piece called Decaf. We didn't have a drummer, but that didn't stop us from cranking the crunch distortion on our fifteen-watt amps. Brash music without percussion. Decaffeinated music. We thought it was clever.

So, I joined another band, but this time with a drummer. I didn't mind the Jesus songs, if it meant I got to practice soloing. I caught on pretty quickly to the contemporary praise tunes that I was "supposed" to know as a nominal Christian. We practiced a few times and played a chapel service before the end of the semester. I sat in a chair in the back of the stage, next to the drummer, behind a wall of vocalists. I didn't have a strap for my guitar, and didn't really care to be noticed by the group of chapel attendees. I had, after all, just won the college talent show.

I went to a few more parties that semester, but really began to juggle who I was supposed to become this year. I had broken up with my high school girlfriend and had already once asked one of my good friends that happened to be a female if she wanted to be my girlfriend. She had declined, which to me - and to most guys - meant that I had every right to ask her again in a few months. So, Christmas break came. I was "lead guitar" for a band that was still trying to decide on a name and on the bid list as a potential member of the oldest fraternity on campus.

All the while, I didn't know who I was. So, I lingered in the lukewarm waters of indecision and had an interesting Freshmen year of college that you may, at worst, call a dive into sin and debauchery, and at least, a wading through a life of hypocrisy and pretension.

Screw up

Dustin

In college, I was really good at screwing up. However, I would say I was even better at making myself feel really guilty for my sin for an exaggerated period of time. Somehow though, once the sting of the guilt subsided, I found a way to indulge in a similar sinful activity.

Take for instance my sophomore year of college. At this point of my life I was enough of a believer to feel guilty about getting drunk, but not enough of a believer to prevent myself from doing it. Anyways, that year I learned the hard way that it’s not a good idea to carry a keg across campus when you’re underage and kegs are against campus rules…and you’re in a praise band.

So the story goes that I was enjoying a rowdy evening with my fraternity brothers, when out of nowhere the drummer of the praise band (also my R.A.), was knocking on the door to break up the party. Being prone to stupidity, I offered to sneak the keg out of the window and carry it to my buddy’s truck. Unfortunately, R.A.s are smarter than your average drunkard, and one of my drummer’s cohorts caught me in action.

The insant I realized I had been found out, my stomach dropped and my heart sank deep inside its inner walls. A few minutes later I found myself weeping as I poured out my soul to a room full of my Christian brothers (also R.A.s), confessing just about every sin I had ever committed, especially the ones I had committed after becoming a believer, since according to the old adage, "I should have known better." When it was all said and done, I’m pretty sure my friends just wanted to give me my punishment and kick me out so I’d stop whining.

But, I wasn’t done whining. Oh no, I had to call my girlfriend over so I could explain my blunder to her and cry in her arms for about three hours until she as well grew weary of my self-inflicted guilt trip and left me alone in my devastation. Unable to sleep, I wrote a letter through glazed eyes to the members of my praise band, explaining that I wouldn’t be coming to practice anymore because I was a disgrace to them and to God (when they read it the next day they came as a group to my dorm, individually embraced me and told me they wouldn’t let me quit).

All in all, the first 24 hours of guilt were the worst, but I lost sleep over the whole ordeal for months. You see, I understood in my mind that Jesus had forgiven me, but I couldn’t reconcile in my heart the fact that He had forgotten the transaction altogether, so naturally it was impossible for me to forget it as well.

Until one day, when I woke up and the pain was gone, or at least suppressed, vanishing just long enough for me to forget much pain my sin had caused, leading to yet another opportunity to screw up, only this time it was a little more serious. My junior year I was arrested for underage drinking and resisting arrest.

But that's a whole other story...

Cold

Jeff

Cold. That's how I felt my first year of college. I knew the Bible. I knew about Jesus. I even knew the words of truth that were supposed to bring life and love into my own personal faith journey. But it all just seemed like cold, hard facts. Like rocks sinking into an icy pond, burying themselves deep in the mud over time. No one saw my faith - not in my everyday life, not in my private life. It just, somehow, inexplicably was. That's what I said any way. No wonder that when I went to college, I felt a need to reinvent myself.

My first night of college, I ended up taking shots of hard alcohol on some random person's couch. I had wandered in and out of little parties until I found someone who accepted me. I would continue this wandering process most of the year. In fact, it had begun well before I left home.

The last two years of high school were a frenzied blur of events and emotions. Junior year, a classmate had collapsed on the gym floor and died of heart failure. Senior year, I started going to an Assemblies of God youth group and felt an interesting mix of both awkwardness and conviction. Jake, the friend that had originally invited me to the group once asked me, anxiously, "So, are you, like, saved or whatever?" I squeamishly answered in a vague affirmative, "I think so." Although, there was something eating at me, and it often came late at night, when I was left to the darkness of my own thoughts.

"Do you think you're going to heaven?" I asked my girlfriend at the time. She was Catholic. I was desperate for answers.

"Hell yeah!" she laughed. I was not convinced.

I wanted more than that, more than the out-of-tune organ with half-hearted voices to accompany the hymns at church, more than a cheap invitation to be "saved or whatever," more than the hopelessness of a Saturday night kegger, more than having sex in the janitor's closet (as some of my classmates had experienced), more than the emptiness I was exploring in other religions and philosophies, more than the contradictory faith of my parents. More.

Our small Presbyterian church was complete with wailing, elderly ladies and a handful of middle-aged people who ran our small farming community's dying businesses and sometimes mouthed the words to the praises we "sang." I was an acolyte. It was cool to be in the spotlight, but also a drag to have responsibility. I spent most of the service, trying not to think of cusswords and to at least look like I was listening to the pastor. My thoughts wandered, and so did my soul.

I found more of an expression of the soul in the little songs that I would write late at night. With my cheap, Fender Stratocaster rip-off electric guitar, I would softly strum bizarre chords I found in a Beatles songbook, inventing words and melodies to be sung at a whisper quiet enough to evade the sensitive sleep radar of my mom. I sang about finding true love and condemning the pervasive superficiality of high school.

I quit going to the youth group eventually. It was not the answer I was seeking. Church disappointed me as well, and though I had maintained a fairly admirable church-going ethic for a young man who was not forced by his parents to attend, this discipline eventually waned. I filled my weekend schedule with starting a band, camping out with a handful of friends and a couple cases of beer, and going out with my new girlfriend. This new life was fun and seemed almost purposeful, but it only lasted a few months.

I said goodbye to my band, left for college, and broke up with my girlfriend. I continued to wander. One night, I wandered into an old alumni house that had been converted into a meeting place for the campus Christian fellowship. There was only about ten to fifteen of them, but they were nice people. Out of curiosity, I went back several times and started to become friends with a handful of them. Eventually, they asked me to be part of their praise band. At the time, I was not exactly sure what a praise band was, but I obliged.

Few and far between

Jeff

Best friends are hard to come by. I remember in grade school, we used to qualify the value we placed on friends by labeling them "first best friends," "second best friends," and so forth. Then, there was the superlative "best best friend," which was a difficult level to which few ever ascended.

I suppose that Dustin could qualify as a "best best friend." We both came to faith in Jesus Christ around the same time, and it never failed that he would be struggling with a similar problem in which I had fallen at the same time. Our covenant grew out of weakness and brutal honesty. We called each other out. It felt good. It felt real.

We used to joke that our friendship competed with our girlfriends' affections. The truth was that the girls did not really even stand a chance. We started a band together. We road-tripped together. We train-hopped through Europe together. We were the best of friends. First best friends, even.

This is our tale. It is not necessarily an eloquent one, or even a great one. We haven't lived the most adventurous lives, nor the most righteous. But we have always been honest with each other and ourselves. Now, we want to be honest with the world, telling some of our favorite stories, and sharing a few life lessons we've picked up along the way.

This is the sacred tale of friendship - of two souls brought together by a desire to live a life beyond ordinary and to make the journey together. Everyone has a story. We like to refer to ours as a joint venture.