I should not be posting this. It is far too late (rather early) on this last day I will spend in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I need to finish packing and get to bed so I can finish out my summer job tomorrow and have time to finish all those little things that have to be done and get to bed early so I have sufficient sleep under my belt to drive 14 hours or so to Boston Thursday. I'm packing my computer as soon as I post this.

Brief introspection to follow...

This has been a strange summer. I should feel as I leave it that it has been a tremendous blessing, to have work and a place to stay and food to eat and opportunity to grow closer to my bride-to-be. And I do...but I feel as though I have largely wasted the summer. The job I finish tomorrow is less than we had hoped to do--I will finish probably about 20 hours short of what I had planned to work. I have talked for hours with Elisabeth, but far too much of that has been pointless bickering. Instead of improving my discipline in a consistent schedule of sleep, work, study and prayer, I have gotten worse. I have become even more accustomed to living a mediocre, selfish and dissipated life.

And yet, 26 hours from now, I will get in my car to drive to Boston, starting on a road that will lead to marriage in four months and ordination in four years. If ever there was a time for me to grow up and lay aside the lifestyle I have indulged in all my life, this is it. I fear, indeed, that I have set patterns now that will haunt me in the months and years to come. I know that this need not be so--and yet that is precisely why I fear. For the fact that it still remains so bears witness to the fact that I do not actually want it to change.

That fact will only change, I know, by the gracious working of God in my heart. And for that, I must be willing. So please pray for me. This is the time, this day and this hour, for my childish ways to die.

And yes, I know...posting this instead of packing is precisely a failure to grow up. So this ends now.