Well, today was the last day of my project, and this day felt just the same.  I didn't feel the wave of nostalgia that I expected.  There wasn't a rushing river of excitement for this to be over or a wave of sadness that such an integral part of my life has passed.

Tomorrow will be just like any other day.  I will wake up and decide what to wear in the course of three seconds and move about my day.  I will go to psychology and gateway just like I always have this semester.  I will sit and laugh with those around me.  I will eat like a college student unsure of his next meal.  I will live the next day trying to learn how to be a college student.  This is still difficult.

The one thing that will change is a label.  Since this project, I have had the identification of someone who isn't allowed to lie.  Everyone around me knew that I had to spit out the truth no matter what I wanted.  Now, there is something liberating about having the ability to lie.  Something about being able to say no grants me a humanness.  I am not a person with a robotic answering system.  I have the ability to tell lies.  This may scare some of my friends, but to me, it means that everything I say now has more worth.  It carries more worth simply because it didn't have to be there.  Truth doesn't have to arrive now.  It can simply be absent.  Now, with the option of whether or not to appear, the truth is left with a choice.  It can either step on the journey, or it can let life pass by, whistling and singing about it's adventures along the tracks.  Though the conductor may scream, the people may file, the truth, to me, has a choice.  When given that choice, I hope I let truth step on and join the ranks of faith, peace, and understanding.

One thing that truth has taught me is to question what is before me.  As Zechariah proclaimed God's message or refining His people, so I will refine everything around me.  Sure, the basics of Christianity and morality will still apply, but if I am not willing to challenge what I view as truth beyond these things, am I not settling for mere knowledge?  Am I settling for the grains of sand instead of looking to the ocean?  In this, I have found a place for a rebel that has been settled inside of me.  Was Jesus not a rebel?  What he not a heretic?  Did He not challenge all of the teachings of the religious leaders?  Have we forgotten that we are a people formed by an outcast, a rebel?  What about Him is an institution?  What defines him as denomination or dogma?  In this way, my project will carry on.  I will carry this on to challenging how I see Christianity as a relationship with God, not as a defining factor for a voting ballot.  I will challenge what society has formed in it's pursuit of comfort and what it claims to have borrowed from the Church.  What would it look like if we completely ignored the American dream?  What would it look like to live selflessly in all things?  What would it look like to ignore a 401k and live for the sustenance of God rather than the safety net of money?  I am perfectly willing to be harsh on the Church.  If I cannot question and ask of a church, then what validation does it have from God.  If a church is not grounded in God and cannot handle hard questions, then it is a dry field.  Sure, God is holy in all things and sovereign amongst all creation, but intentional ignorance to supply comfort is despicable to me.

Dr. Brown told us that when he really started learning, he came away having more questions than answers.  We will always have answers in this life.  I guess we just have to be ok with always having a question and not always having an answer.  That does not mean that I will ever stop looking though.  To me, Christianity has become a mixture of rebellion, peace, wisdom, and love.  We have to be rebellious to be equipped to make a change in this world, peaceful enough to know we can't fully change it, wise enough to trust God in all things, and loving enough to extend His hand to every corner of the world.  That is my mission.

Tomorrow is the final day of the Truth project.  It seems strange to almost be done.  I have finished my rough draft, I have no more labor intensive work left, the job is almost done.  I may keep the idea of telling the truth always.  I know that at least for awhile, I won't be able to lie purely out of habit.  I got so used to never second guessing myself that I have to remember what it is like to process.

Tomorrow will be a huge transition for me.  I get to see how everyone else did.  I know there are some projects out there that were done so that not much work would be involved and there are those projects out there that changed some of my classmates lives.  Those are the ones that I want to hear about.  i want to hear how total perspectives were changed.  I remember one girl in my class was observing life through homelessness.  I will definitely follow up with her.  I remember there was a guy in my class living like a muslim.  I'm sure I'll be baffled by the stories he will tell.  I can also not wait to see Andy.  I only mention his name in here because I am sure he will not mind.  He did the yes man project where he had to agree with everything.  In an effort to bring some personal joy and liveliness to his project, I had him to everything I could think of.

I know that Wednesday Andy will come after me.  I am totally ok with that.  I know that guy had so much to write about in his essay that he could have written 3 times the number of pages needed.  In a certain respect, I know I made him do things out of my own amusement, but I also know that God called him to this project, so I made him experience everything he could possibly be a part of.  He may not learn lessons from the individual instances thrust upon him.  I hope that he does get the overall message.  Now that I look into everything that I made him do, I can see a lesson in all of them.  I will not post these lessons now, because he could be watching and that would be cheating.  Haha Andy.

I got to talk to my teacher Mrs. Velazquez about what the Bible says about truth.  She lead with John 8:32.  This verse is the one where it says that the truth will set you free.  I like this verse but it seems to be overdone.  Maybe I can glean some more wisdom from that verse.  Also, since she seem to not have that much time, gave my John 1:1 to look at.  She told me to look deeper into the ideas mentioned and the correlations of God and truth.  That should be interesting to dig deeper into verses so often cast aside.

I am almost done with this paper we have to do over our projects.  I am somewhat nostalgic about this whole process.  It seems almost weird for this project to be over, I have been crusading this cause for almost a month now.  What am I supposed to do now?

What is strange is that this paper did not take that much effort to write.  Usually, we as students can just crank out essays without much effort.  In this case, I wrote this essay without really stopping in between thoughts.  Sure, so far I have taken breaks, but when I return, I always type like a madman.  It seems almost natural to be doing this.  There was one other paper that came so simply to me.  Senior year I wrote a paper abou the book Ender's Game.  It was a story that challenged ideas and moral.  It shaped the way that people view what is right and wrong.  I almost can wait to be done.

With all of this talk of truth, I have had a constant correlation to what I want my future career to be.  I want to be a counselor.  Whether this be in sessions in a room, or in homes, I know that I will always be counseling people.  I find that no matter the circumstance, I always want to care for people and help them through whatever they are going through.  I love the idea of sitting down with someone for hours on end and talking through everything that is going on in their head and in their life.  I actually do not get drained mentally or emotionally at all.  More than anything else, I get hungry from sitting for so long without eating.

The important thing for me to remember is the fact that I will have to keep myself grounded in the word and in the Spirit.  If I am to be a help and not a crutch to people, I have to be centered in what gives me strength.  I have to keep my eyes on God so that I do not stray from the truth that is in Him.  I have found that when I try to counsel under my own understanding, my words are not nearly as helpful and seem to drag on any conversation.  When I am God focused, hours seem like minutes, problems seem like dust under foot, and life seems solvable.  There was a study that I found that showed the importance of spiritual centeredness in counseling.  I may keep this one saved away somewhere to read again when my counseling journey really starts.

  http://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.library.acaweb.org/eds/detail?vid=8&hid=4&sid=025a89a4-b64e-4b8a-9773-96aa8e5178be%40sessionmgr10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=a9h&AN=74728205

One of the biggest reasons that I feel that I lie is to avoid failure or avoid the recognition of failure.  I want to avoid this in any way possible.  I feel as though I should not fail in any circumstance.  This is probably due to the pressures that I put on myself.  I always have been able to do whatever I wanted without much effort involved.  One of those things included school.

I found out how intelligent I was recently.  Before I knew that, I always assumed that I was at a somewhat higher level and put an extreme amount of stress on myself.  If I am smart, I should be able to get an A no matter what right?  This piled on even more when I got a numerical value for my intelligence.  My thought process carried from I should be able to do this, to why in the world can I not do this?  In any case, at this point, if I cannot achieve what I want, or what I expect, even by a small margin, I failed.  I didn't just miss my target, I completely failed.  I am so hard on myself that it is ridiculous.

This idea of perfection also carries over into my physical expectations of what I can do.  I should be able to lift more, run more, do more.  Any time someone near my skill level does better than me, I have failed.  I know this is completely irrational, but it is what goes through my mind.  It's so weird that failure plays such a huge role in my life.  It's almost as if because I know I'm at a higher level in thinking, I should be able to do anything.

This seems completely stupid writing this out.  It also explains how I get frustrated so easily.  I'm going to reread this article I found to maybe get a logical perspective on how failure actually plays a role in people's life and mine specifically.

http://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.library.acaweb.org/eds/detail?vid=14&hid=117&sid=16329bd4-6bf5-4cd1-9d84-7fe594e7fde2%40sessionmgr113&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=pdh&AN=2011-25193-001

I conducted a survey with some of the guys in my dorm.  What I asked was: Do you think you could do my project and succeed, Do you think lying is necessary in our society, How often do you lie, and when was a time when you blatantly lie for your own self gain?  Some of the results were expected some of it was expected.

When I asked some of my friends if they could handle my project on their own, all of them said no.  That's kinda nice to know I'm doing something exemplary!  The main reason that my friends could not handle my project, is that they know they would lie.  This is kind of a simple idea, knowing that we all lie, but it made me reflect on my own achievements.  I really didn't accomplish everything that I wanted in terms of not lying.  I have lied some of the time.  I did not lie nearly as often, but I did lie.  One of my friends knows me pretty well and said that he would have a problem with not being able to fail.  Without that knowledge though, he said he would still fail.

Pretty much everyone agreed that lying happens in our society.  One even said that you need to lie to be in politics.  The election is coming up and we're talking about lying in the government.  Everyone agreed that we all lie and we all use it to keep relationships together.

The next question was a little harder to chew on.  I asked when was the last time that you blatantly lied for your own benefit.  One of my friends said that he lied to get away from people who were ruining his plans.  These girls apparently were driving him insane because he was trying to watch a debate and they wouldn't shut up.  It's funny how he's more interested in politics than girls.  He even invoked a spiritual need to fit what he wanted.  One of my other friends lies in a different way.  Rather than telling someone to their face, he simply leaves the situation.  He lies for comfort as a defense mechanism.  When an important event changed the way that his life was planned, he retreated into himself to protect his world.

From this survey, I have found that lying is extremely prevalent and that lying can take many forms.  Sometimes we know exactly what we are doing; sometimes we let lies slip by without thinking about it.  Maybe Paul had an idea about taking every thought captive.

Today was halloween and not a lot happened in the spirit.  Some friends and I went to the square to see what was going on.  We got some free candy, which was nice.  I didn't end up keeping it.  I gave my bag away to a friend.  For some reason I really didn't want it.  Now that I think about it, I didn't even hesitate.  I just went with what I was thinking.  That might be a sign that this project has been deeply ingrained in me.  Plus, with this whole eating healthier thing, I know that the candy isn't really going to help me.  So, I passed for health reasons and just because I really didn't want it.  It's kinda strange how even to the smallest things, this project has affected me.  I guess it really has seeped in.

Along with that, I also do not consider things much anymore.  I make a decision on what I want and what I think is right.  There really isn't a long mental process anymore.  Sure, this applies to only day to day things.  I do ponder on the heavy ideas and decisions that come upon me.  For the most part, life is based on truth for me.  This really has come to mean honesty with myself mainly.

Also, if I'm being honest, I am going to kill some of my dorm mates.  They are playing drums and guitar at 1 in the morning.  I'm not even joking; I will kill them in their sleep, whenever that may be.  I may not need beauty sleep, because I'm freaking gorgeous (that was a joke, ha ha), but I need some rest.  It's about to go down.  As i end this blog, their beating will ensue.  Goodnight world.