Jesus, the nerdy friend in the cafeteria

(The other night I wrote up this movie/life review and it seems fitting that this would be the first post of what could possibly be a regular writing outlet.)

I just finished watching the movie Blue like Jazz, based on Donald Miller’s bestselling book. What gripped me about this movie was how it so accurately reflected two years of my life. Unlike the main character Don, I didn’t grow up in the church or know about Jesus from an early age. However, like Don, at age 20 life took a rather startling turn. For me, it meant that my life of debauchery would come to a screeching halt with the screeching of tires and clasping of handcuffs. This night, the night that I could never forget, will forever be a turning point in my story. It was this evening, July 4^th 2004, when I would go to jail for drunk driving, drug possession, and concealed weapon. To make a long story short, this night was the culmination of three years of daily drunk driving, wild drug induced nights and a deadly assortment of bad choices.

They say ‘it’s always darkest before dawn’, and how I would love to say that this night in particular was the darkest, but it would prove to be a night lit by the stars and a full moon. For a night was coming when the clouds would not part for a moment, when the moon would be a hazy memory and the light would be choked out by the crippling darkness. The moon and the stars of that night would come seven days after my arrest. After getting my license back on that seventh day, I went to pick up my love Heather. On the way I was searching for NPR on the radio because classical music was the only thing that could soothe the raging stream of thoughts running through my head. As the Son would have it, the radio never made it to NPR, instead it stopped on CSN. I heard a pastor out of California, Greg Laurie, preaching a message about life and Jesus. I’ve frequently used Ron White’s story of him sitting naked in a bean bag chair eating Cheetos to describe just how perfect the message was for me. By the end of the sermon I was in tears and seeing the sun shine for the first time in a week.

Unfortunately the sun doesn’t always shine, and the times of rain do come. While I had a joyous almost six months of sunshine, days spent devouring the Word of God, listening to sermons constantly and just loving every second, I spent many late nights lying in bed wondering how my friends were doing. So even though I was in church every Sunday, I didn’t have any sense of community or know that I needed it, and aside from my need for God, it was what I longed for more than anything, to know people and be known. I had in a matter of months gone from knowing and hanging out with literally hundreds of people to almost none. These random thoughts haunted me and pray as I did, did not go away. God intended that His people would share life with others and isolation is as time has shown, an incredibly dangerous place to be.

I met God and had my life turned upside down July of 2004. By New Year’s Eve, I had ventured out a handful of times to parties with old friends, not as the Smeee they once knew, but as a man with a purpose. My purpose wasn’t as most would think, it definitely was not to make ‘converts’ but merely to have friendships that didn’t revolve around getting smashed. Time and time again though, I would leave heavy hearted because the life that once so eagerly embraced me and my naive ways, sternly shoved me aside as if I never belonged. To my detriment, this would only fuel my desire for friendship at any cost. New Year’s Eve night, I would come face to face with that cost and gladly pay it. That night I met a guy who to this day, I call my ‘equal and opposite counterpart’ (for the sake of the story I’ll call him E). His wit was greater than mine and his drinking abilities far surpassed my own, but there was something about him that drew me in and has me still to this day weighing the cost of that friendship. As we drank until the sun came up, we laughed and shared stories of crazy adventures as if neither of us had a care in the world. But as the sun rose that Saturday morning, I was reminded of that day in July when the Son rose in my heart and I started to cry in front of my newfound best friend. I told him how I felt horrible and didn’t know what I was doing, how God had saved me from this lifestyle and shown me something more. To my utter surprise though, his response was the last thing I ever expected.

“I don’t want to hear it! You feel bad? I live with this feeling every day of my life! I was an assistant to the youth pastor at age 14.” This was the response I could have never imagined, but will never forget. These words would run through my mind constantly for months on end as I pursued this friendship and hoped to restore whatever damage had been done. I knew that his experience with the church was despicable and the kind of hypocritical material you see plastered all over the media in regards to Christianity. Knowing this though, I wanted so badly to show him that it was legit and that even though we both wanted to run from it, we couldn’t hide. Little did I know, he had gotten pretty good at hiding and acting as if none of it had happened. Within six months of hanging with E every day or close to it, I stopped going to church all together because being real, what was the point if I was just hung-over anyway? By no means did he ever try to question my faith or belittle it, he just made it clear that it was something he did not want to talk about or even think about, so it remained the pink elephant in the room for the next two years or so.

As I spiritually pulled the blinders back over my eyes and pretended as though God was dead, I physically was falling further into the abyss, grabbing every vice on the way down. E was a great friend in that he typically acted as a moral guide, aside from being the best drinking buddy I ever had, he always had my best interest at heart. If I ever talked about another girl, he was the first person to smack me and remind of the treasure I have in Heather, who is now my wife. If I ever talked about doing drugs other than pot, brother gave me a lecture and would ignore me if need be. So the poor decisions I made in regards to drugs and illegal activities during this time were for the most part, without my numero uno homeboy. But, like was said earlier, he was the best drinking buddy I ever had, and there were many late nights where he carried me off his front lawn and put me to bed. I was drinking more than ever and taking far greater risks because far too often, I couldn’t truly enjoy myself until I was trashed. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew I was in the matrix.

The glitches in the matrix didn’t come in the form of deja vu as much as they came in the form of random people, testifying to the creator, telling me things about my life they shouldn’t know and saying crazy things like “God told me to tell you this”. For a good while it was fairly easy to chalk it up to coincidence but when I got off probation and could finally smoke weed again I started to freak out on the regular. I would get high and see crazy things like demons and darkness. I had many paranoid nights at our spot, ‘The Creepy House’, where I practically had to run out because I was scared for my life. Now to most people this would sound like pot smoking paranoia, but as someone who could normally smoke all day, every day, and function fine, it was so much more. I started to shut myself off from the world because I was seeing the reality of the matrix and couldn’t handle it. So during the day I would walk in awareness and recognition of its existence, but at night, in secret, I would act as if it was all a dream. The dream would soon become an unavoidable reality as the light started to break through the darkness and instead of the light being choked out, the darkness was running in terror of the Son.

I had begun praying with a dude that I worked on cars with and took bong rips with. We would get high, praise God and then pray. It was an extremely spiritual experience and one that I have no desire to repeat, but am grateful that God opened my eyes through. I wasn’t kicking it with E as much because he unknowingly made me chose between one of the best friends I had ever known and living a lie. But as life went on, I found myself at a crossroads. On one side I had all these friends and intoxicants I was certain I couldn’t have on the other, but on the other I had truth and purpose. I couldn’t live the lie any longer, I was miserable. Like Neo, I kept asking God “I can’t go back can I?” To which I was regularly reminded of the wise response given by Morpheus:  “Even if you could, would you really want to?” As many times as my heart cried out ‘yes’, my Spirit, the Holy Spirit, said ‘no’. Those six months after my arrest were some of the sweetest, most real times in my life and they weren’t drug induced. Try as I did, I couldn’t replicate those feelings with drugs, booze, or even great relationships. I had realized that I would rather have truth, purpose and live alone than to be surrounded by people and be utterly isolated by a lie. God did exist. Not only that, but His Son did die on my behalf. Knowing this was no longer an option for me and realizing this required a response. My response was my whole purpose in writing this.

As I watched one of the final scenes of Blue like Jazz where Don confesses to ‘the pope’ how sorry he is for Christians, I couldn’t help but think of all the relationships I’ve had since July 2004 that deserved a confession like this. I thought about one conversation in particular with E where I told him that I couldn’t buy the lie any longer and that because of that, our friendship would have to change a little. Like Don’s confession, I admitted to treating Jesus like the nerdy kid in the cafeteria who I’m secretly friends with but act far too cool for in school. Like Don, I treasured E’s friendship far more than I did my own pursuit of truth and happiness. I wanted him to like me more than I wanted to have inner peace. In hind sight, I feel like a fitting response to E would have been like the last line in Fight Club, “You met me at a very strange time in my life”. I wasn’t really solid in my faith, yet I was no longer comfortable in my sin. So while I wasn’t all about setting the world on fire for Jesus, part of me still wanted to set the world on fire…literally. Like E, we both were far too rebellious to settle for a religious life, but I was no longer content to settle for the lie. This last scene changed my whole outlook on the movie. It no longer was about an individual journey of faith, but instead about how our individual journeys affect those we encounter. Everything in me really wants to believe that the relationships I’ve had since 04 will be fruitful and that I’ve done far more good than harm, but realistically, I know that at times my inconsistent actions have severely diminished my message. And for that, I’m sorry. I, like Don, have misrepresented Jesus and hope that whoever reads this, will see that it is not the Christians that we put our hope and faith in, but the Son spoke of in the Bible, the One who came to give life and give it abundantly. Jesus is not the nerd we avoid in the cafeteria of life, instead He is the King we adore and praise everywhere we go.