Outta My Mind

Feelin’ like I got a front row seat to watch everybody be happy

Can't even paint a smile on my face, it’s so hard to not complain

Gotta try not to say

O God, what about me

‘Cause I know that's not the way that I'm supposed to be

Get me outta my mind and into Your heart

It’s not about me, it’s not about me

So I’m gonna start playin’ my part in Your design

Now is the time

Get me outta my mind

Outta my mind

There's a bigger picture on display and it's starting to come in focus

Causing me to see to see the ones in need outside my little world

Gotta try, just to say

O God, what can I do

Doesn't matter what it takes, I wanna lead them all to You

Get me outta my mind and into Your heart

It’s not about me, it’s not about me

So I’m gonna start playin’ my part in Your design

Now is the time

Get me outta my mind

Outta my mind

If anybody asks me what have I been up to

This is what I'm gonna say

I've been spending my time, outta my mind

And I'm really lovin’ livin’ this way

-Outta My Mind, Anthem Lights

As I've gone through the first two weeks of this semester, this song has emerged as a bit of a theme. I'm sitting here watching my closest single friends all get boyfriends and girlfriends, and I've asked God many times if he's forgotten about me. The first verse especially resounds with me every time it comes on. I've taken risks and failed each time. Earlier I remember noting that it felt really good not to have a girl on my radar for the first time in years. Now, two months later, it's seriously bugging me. I'm fighting the urge to try pursuing a relationship for the sake of pursuing a relationship. I want to pursue a young woman for the sake of honouring God, and honouring and blessing her. I see others around me pursuing and dating the women that they are head over heels for, but not me. I don't want this to bother me at all. At this point I just want to pursue God with my whole heart and not even think about marriage or girls. It used to be that having a young woman in my life was creating emotional angst, now the fact that there isn't anybody is causing the distress. Right now I'm also legitimately concerned that I cannot trust my heart at all when it comes to girls seeing as it has let me down so far. Even my mind has let me down, because I have thought through all of my attractions rather thoroughly. So I while I trust myself to find a woman worth pursuing, I have no reason to trust myself to find a woman worth pursuing who will be open to me pursuing her. Wow, I how quickly I got off track from my beginning to this post. Actually, not really. That's where my mind is, as I have been tracking it over the past little while. And this song is where I want to conform my mind to. "It's not about me." Go read that song again. Listen to it. I'm moving little by little towards what it speaks of, but I'm not anywhere near having it down. A talk with my soccer coach, one of the men that I respect and appreciate the most here at the school, helped me yesterday, but there's still so much further to go.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

(Philippians 3:12-21 ESV)