I decided earlier this evening that I’m done with trying to holler at honey’s. First and foremost I would love to find a girl that thinks for herself. When generalizing women, which may not be deemed as fair, or atleast not fair by their standards I have to come to some conclusions. Most girls, it might just be humans, are spoon fed all of their ideas and they are fine with that. They have this idea of what a “Christian Leader” is that not realistic and if it is then have fun every single girl finding a nice home schooled boy who leads you in a morning devotion and goes on hikes with you, and hold’s your hand with his right hand, while he wipes his tears with his left hand while the two of you watch fireproof.

If the girl is not looking for that then she belongs to some other group of women that has a particular take on men that probably isn’t fair to us either. They think that everytime a guy gets their phone number, that it automatically means that he likes her. Girl ‘Oh, he texted me. What do I say?’

Other girl “What did he say’

Girl “he said ‘I’d like to get to know you.”

Other girl “Umm tell him that he’s taking it too fast”

Girl “yeah what a freakin creep he wants to get to know me”

If a guy wants to get to know you it does not mean he’s in love with you, and you don’t have to get freaked out and think that he’s trying to put a ring on it. All it means is he finds you interesting and would like to inquire more information on your likes, dislikes, passions and dreams and see if any of those align with his own. If that’s the case he will continue to inquire until you tell him to stop or he stops.

I may be way off based in all of this but I don’t think I am.

When people spend a lot of time with certain people they tend to manifest the same ideas on things. If one girl is looking to marry the next jesus and she is really committed to that idea than all of her friends are going to want to do the same. If one girl has this idea about how hanging out with guys that aren’t 6’4 or taller is dumb and she is very commited to that ideal after awhile her friends will be. The same goes for guys who don’t think too.

I’m just ranting for no reason I’m just frustrated with school and girls and taking it out on the girls and not school.

I’m done. This is lame. Not Blog worthy but going on there anyways cause it’s been too long.

The song below Sodom South Georgia is fitting for this post so listen to it as you read.

I know my dad is not god. I know that, even if I really truly believed he was, in my heart of hearts it wouldn’t be the case and everyone around me would set me straight. Knowing that he’s not god is settling and it is a good thing. However, I do tend to worship him. I don’t think that it’s the worst thing in the world. It might not be the healthiest but it’s whatever, it is what it tis. You know or you might know I should say, that God talks about himself as the father all the time. I think that’s why he does put great fathers on this earth, especially for rebel rousers like myself. However (again), some people are not as fortunate as myself. Some people have terrible fathers. Ones who do terrible things to them, in some cases people never even get the chance to know their own father. I don’t know much about god other than he is a good God who loves us and knows what he’s doing. When people have a terrible father who burns them and rips apart their flesh I think God allows that to happen for a reason, obviously. I also think that if God is sovereign and loves us then he puts amazing men in our lives to help heal us of our ripped apart flesh. Those people may worship that man/ father figure or person, and it’s okay because really their worshipping god because he put that person in their life to reveal himself.

Thanks God

D-rock/ Derrick/ your child

Pops and I

I don’t quite know how to tell my story and for that matter whether or not it’s even one worth telling. Truly though I believe it is worth telling and that is why I’m up at 5 a.m. on a sleepless night typing away.

Adversity faces everyone at some point in his or her lives. It is inevitable like a bad storm that at one point in your life something will arise, and it will hit you like a semi crushing a 1988 ford escort that you will face adversity.

My story of adversity is one of quite internal struggle that almost destroyed me.

Entering my sophomore year of college was exciting. My first semester of college I had no clue what made a great collegiate student. I didn’t realize that attending class was more important than playing Mario Kart in my buddy Tyler’s dorm room. I thought when teachers said I strongly recommend you do this they were recommending it not that strongly recommend was another word for required. Anyways, the reason my sophomore year, had me full of excitement and joy was that it was my chance to right all my wrongs of my freshman year. Second semester of my freshman year I quit my job of 35+ hours a week and ended up turning my gpa around, while maintaining to run a ministry for middle schoolers.

Back on track, literally and figuratively, my sophomore year of college was very exciting. I was ready to grab the world by it horns and drive it to the ground. Things were going well at the beginning. The ministry that I was running had around 150 kids in attendance every week and I was thriving socially, my grades were also doing well besides my stats course which I ended up taking it 4 times (talk about adversity.)

The only burden causing angst in my life was fundraising. For the ministry that I was running I was required to raise $1,000 dollars a month and if was unable to do so then I didn’t get paid. I was 19 years old, I’m 23 now and have no clue how to ask people for money when I’m struggling, it’s just an awkward thing to do and I’m a pastors kid so of course all the people I would ask for money were always getting hit up anyways. Ok, so what did I do about it I started selling cocaine, no dummy, I became obsessed with it. Not In a good way though. My mind was consumed with different ways I could raise money, I began to skip meals because I could not afford them, and my whole life was just out of whack.

I remember sitting across the table at HuHot from my roommates Drew and Trey and I literally did not say a single word and they kept on looking at me like “What’s wrong” or “Are you ok?” All I could think about was ways that I could raise money and I would play out this conversations with wealthy business men that I knew and would wine and dine them and tell them all the great things I was doing for these kids and then would end it with “Do you want to hop on board on the ministry train or boat.” (you can laugh)

I was so consumed with it that I became delusional. My roommate Drew, his father was my boss the previous year and I started to make up all these conspiracies in my head about how they were out to get me and thought that they were just the shadiest family in the world. Even though none of the stuff I was contriving in my head was truth.

Back track a little. Two weeks before my freshman year of college my family moved to Florida so that my father could start a church. I was stranded in the lone island of Nebraska but actually I was stranded there with my older sister Somer.

The night before thanksgiving of 2006 I drove over to the house that my sister was living at. Driving there was a wreck though. I literally had been to the house she was living at least 75 times. But, for some reason when I began to drive there I would just be so caught up in my mind that I was incapable of even remembering where I was going. The night before I went to the grocery store with my good friend Juan and I could not even remember why I was there and I would just walk around and he would have to help me as I walked around. That night was the day before Thanksgiving and I could not sleep at all I sat in the office where the ministry I lead was and thought for 3 hours before going to club. Club= what the ministry I lead in the mornings at the middle school I worked at was called.

Finally I arrived at her house and I was just a wreck. The family that she was living at was playing simple board games and so I tried to play. Again all I could think about was taking wealthy businessmen out to try and get them to give me their money for ministry purposes. Later, that night the family she was living with sat me down and said, “What do you want from us?” I remember thinking that night they were mad at me because I had ruined their family game night but they were just concerned. I told them I was extremely stressed and that I did not know what to do. Their daughter Lauren took her tithe money (she tithes to people in need) and bought me a plane flight to see my family in Florida for the next day.

I cried a lot that night. I slept about 7 hours but I woke up and my mind was racing and it felt like I hadn’t got a single moments rest and it had felt like this for about 3 or 4 weeks. When I woke up I was incapable of doing anything. My sister had to tell me to put my shoes on brush my teeth. It was all good though, right; I mean I’m going to Florida to see my family. Wrong, that morning I was at the top of their stairs lying under their kitchen table and Cindy the mother asked me if I was sick and divulged that she had pneumonia when she was in college and it really messed her up.

So instead of getting out of there maroon Dodge Caravan to go to Florida, we went to Bryan LGH west so that I could spend some time in their mental health unit. I remember being so confused. I had no clue what was going on. I remember the nurse counting my clothes and I started crying and I told her “Your trying to make me homeless” (I was obsessed with the fact that I was going to be homeless as well.) Me checking in was hard for everyone involved, especially my sister, she dealt with feelings of guilt for a long time afterwards, and I did resent her a little bit but it was inevitable like a storm.

What ensued was just strange. The first day that I was in there I thought it was all part of a big plan. I thought Campus Life the organization I was working for had worked it out with the hospital and at the end of the day they were going to say “Surprise. You no longer have to deal with raising support anymore, we’ve got enough money for you to not have to worry about it anymore.” So I went around the hospital and began to witness to everyone in it. I distinctly remember an older male nurse saying as I was laying on the ground witnessing, “Oh great, we’ve got one of these!”

Some of it now looking back on it is humorous. But, it was the scariest time in my life. All I wanted was the comfort of my father. My heavenly father and more importantly at that time my actual biological father. I refused to take the drug test even though I was clean as a whistle because I was afraid they were going to pin something on me, and I had all of these irrational ideas about insurance. That being said my sister on Thanksgiving Day told me that my dad had bought a plane flight and he was going to be there the following day. For some reason it was unphathomable to me that he was actually going to come, I did not believe her. Sure enough though the next day he came.

My life was a freaking mess, and I had no clue what was going on and why I was where I was but having him there just made me feels like everything was going to be ok. He told me to take the drug test because I had to in order to get out, so of course I did and sure enough I hadn’t been drugged or done any by choice. I was however severely dehydrated. The next few days were rough of course. The huskers had one though so all I would do was watch ESPN highlights with my roommate Joel who had overdosed on methadone pills in front of Walgreen’s that morning.

My dad would bring me Chipotle burritos everyday. God I must have eaten 10 in the 5 days that I was in there. They had me super drugged up when I was in there. I was already in a mind stupor and then they would give me so many Risperdol pills at such a high dosage that I was catatonic. I remember a family coming in to visit me and I couldn’t say a word because my jaw was locked up so weird and they told my dad “He doesn’t seem that bad” I remember thinking in my head are you serious I couldn’t even mutter a word.

Anyways time flew. I had good friends come and visit me and I would walk around with deodorant in my sock as some sort of coping mechanism and it helped and I just spent that time going to group therapy and doing whatever the hell I could to get out. Eventually they did let me out after I convinced them I was somewhat fine and that I was going to move to Florida with my family. Sounds great right.

So when I got out we unenrolled me from UNL and my pops and I made the trek down to sunny St. Augustine Florida. I remember rolling up to our house and I was greeted by my little sister Mandy and my mom and I just started crying and said I just can’t stop thinking. My mind was racing at a million miles per hour all the time. I don’t even remember most of what was going through it but I remember it felt like there were molecules just bouncing around like when water turns to vapor just shooting a million miles per hour.

Moving to Florida was the hardest time of my life. I moved away from all that I had known for the last decade of my life. I would spend most of my time with my little sister. They had me on an extremely high dosage of Risperdol and I was pretty much a walking zombie. I gained 30 pounds in a month and just hated my life. All of my friends were borrowed from my sister and they were high schoolers and I was 20 so I felt lame. They were great people and I’m still friends with most of them.

Eventually I began to make my own friends, which was great. I took a year off of school and just waited until my mind was completely normal and healed. Eventually my brain was healed. It was a hardship though going to a psychiatrist and counseling to try and figure out what would help restore me. I would go into psychotic episodes a couple weekends out of every month for 6 months. Sometimes I wouldn’t sleep at all I would just stay up and my brain would race. It’s pretty sad to me that at the age of 20 I would have to sleep in my parents room for comfort, I love them for allowing me to do so but its just humbling to think that I was in that place in my life. One time I sat in my room all day and had hallucinations about the t.v. show scrubs and music playing, I was in another room in this hallucination but that’s just how crazy my brain was. Adversity is a word to describe this in the least.

After the psychotic episodes persisted for 6 months they just disappeared. I don’t know how it happened but I was healed. It could have been the medication but I’d like to believe it was through people’s prayers, God, and through the patience of my family.

I went back to school and received my associates with a 3.0  and finally figured out how to make school work. Many friends and good people entered my life in Florida and I am eternally grateful for all of those memories and people I share them with. Last summer I hit the gym really hard and lost 25 of the 30 pounds that I had gained. Then on a whim I decided to try and go back to school at UNL. I got in and fought to get financial aid and it all worked out. Now I’m living in Lincoln.  I just received my grades and got a 3.35 my first semester here and life seems to be on the up and up.

I don’t really know how to tell my story in as vivid detail as I’d like and you will never fully understand what I went through but I’m ok with that. Because everyone has a story of their own to tell. Everyone has faced adversity at one time in their life. When adversity comes like a storm you have a choice. You can choose to go inside and sleep and let the storm do what it wants. Or you can chose to stand out in the storm and weather it, fight it with all of you’ve got, and own the storm. I owned the storm that is adversity and I encourage everyone to stand and fight the elements that are their own unique gusts of adversity.

The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. —Harold Goddard

a story is a narration of the events in the life of a person or the existence of a thing, or such events as a subject for narration. (dictionary.com)

Each one of you sitting in front of me today is a living breathing story. You have a choice as to the story that you want your life to tell. You are full of goals, passions, and ambitions that are unique to yourself and are indivdual parts to the narrative of your life. So the question I would like to prose is what kind of story do you want your life to tell. I am here to explain the elements that compose a story, help inspire you to find a cause or something worth basing your story on, and to stress the importance of living out a truly amazing life narrative.

In every story there is a protagonist. The protagonist in a story is the principal character in a literary work. (merriam-webster.com) You are the protagonist in your story. You are the lead in you’re the story of your life. As the protagonist your life is played out in different plots. A plot is the sequence of events of your life. Right now the plot or event that is currently being played out in my life is me presenting this speech to all of you. Plots are full of conflict, I may begin to sweat profusely or fumble at my words, or in a more real life example you may lose your job or your girlfriend may have just broken up with you. After the conflict comes the resolution I finish this speech to a standing ovation, or you find a job that pays better and has amazing benefits, or you and your girlfriend realize that you are meant to be with one another so you book a flight to fiji and get married on a whim and spend the rest of your life in the bliss existence of love. Unfortunately life is full of conflict and some are resolved and others remain open, and unlike a movie or a book there is no final resolution, as soon as one conflict is solved another one arises.

That is why it is important when you are writing the story of your life you live a story that is greater than yourself.
You must find a cause or something in your life that is so significant that it can become the entire mission of your life. Martin Luther King Jrs. Life mission was to end oppression of African American’s in the United States. He devoted himself to that cause. Look at the life of any hero in American Culture and you will see they lived a life that was devoted to some sort of cause. Find a cause worth living for. Take Bob Marley for example. Bob Marley could have just written music about pot, and how great it makes you feel and what a great thing it was and it might have been good music but no one would have cared that much about it. Instead he wrote music about oppression, and told stories of black oppression in history and he talked about political strife and he tried to bring the world together with an idea of one love. People remember him for what his cause and the story his life told about bringing the world together.
Much of the inspiration for this speech is based off of a book A million miles in a thousand years by Donald Miller who grew up without a father and has now devoted his lifes story to starting a mentoring project for boy growing up without fathers. In his book he talks about Victor Frankl. Victor Frankl was a phsycologist and holocaust survivor who lost his entire family in the holocaust but he decided to devote his time in the concentration camps to telling the men who wanted to end their lives that amid the human suffering, life still has meaning and that these prisoners could be a part of a bigger story a story of pain but redemption. He even contested Freud’s theory on man’s main pursuit in life is the pursuit of pleasure. Frankl argued that life is the pursuit of meaning itself, and when your life is not in the pursuit of meaning, you dull it with “pleasure” (A million Miles in a Thousand Years)
Find something worth living for and make your life a life of meaning.
I can not stress the importance of living a great narrative. Death is inevitable. You have a choice as the story that you want to tell. You can choose to tell a story about owning the nicest house and working 80 hours a week and going on great vacations with your family. Those things are good but wouldn’t you rather tell a story about providing drinkable water to children who are dying, or even being an educator. Dr. Green could make more money doing plenty of things but instead he has chosen to teach us to become better speakers and to speak life into us, to prepare us for the road that lies ahead.
Your life is full of choices and those choices make up the story that is your life. So What I am urging you to do is make choices that are going to play out in a beautiful life’s story. You know the elements that make up a great story now, I hope that you find a cause that is greater than yourself worth devoting your life towards, and I beg that you live out a truly amazing story with your life, because you only have one life and why waste it on telling a shallow story that has no impact on the world that you are a part of.

I will leave you with this.

The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. —Harold Goddard

Be a story that the world loves and that the world believes in.

Thank You.

Back in Lincoln. It feels great to be in the city where I was raised and to see all the friends I grew up with. Right now I’m just chilling at the University of Nebraska about to meet with an advisor about coming back to finish school. It is nerve racking to think about moving again because everytime I’ve moved it has felt like slowly pulling a band-aid off the kind where all the hairs rip off and your in immense pain. But moving back to a place I’ve already lived would be completely different.

Lance Kuhns photography. I look sexy.

Last weekend my good friend Tim got married and it was beautiful. There is something so powerful about seeing 2 people deciding to spend the rest of there lives with each other. This coming weekend my good friend Ryan is getting married and I’m sure I will feel the same way and it will be alot of fun. In that same breath I am very jealous of both these guys. I don’t think that I’m ready to be married and to wake up every morning and commit to sacrificing myself and being selfless every morning for my wife but I would like to get to that point. The thing I’m mostly jealous about is the companionship that people who are married have. It is wonderful that you can spend everyday with your best friend. Girls are sensitive, gracious, mysterious, beautiful beings and I guess what I’m trying to say is that I can’t wait until I find my girl. But I am willing to wait because the longer I have to grow on my own, becoming a more whole person and dance a more beautiful dance with God before I’m ready to fall in love and get married.

CHEERS to Ryan and Tim I am extremely proud of both of you and I’m glad you have found the women you are going to live an adventure with for the rest of your lives.

Ryan's going to the chapel and he's gonna get married.

Bearded Guild!

By the way the beard and I parted ways.

Bye Beard. We had a good run.

Bad pic. Clean Shave.

WEll alot has happen since we last spoke my few little blog readers who are out there. My best friend came in town a few weeks ago and it was glorious. We only got to spend two days together but they were alot of fun. We had mimosas in the hot tub with a group of are friends, and went dancing and discovered Ryan Gosling’s Halloween jam band Dead Man’s Bones.

While Lance was here we went to this college thang called the movement and my little sister performed one of her songs and needless to say I was moved. I hadn’t cried in quite sometime as a matter of fact the last time i cried was at Michael Jackson’s funareal when Stevie Wonder performed but my older sister was moving to Chicago the next day. Anyways the song is called “We Danced” it is about a dance with God. It starts off talking about seeing God dance and it is very much like a middle school dance with the nervousness and all but she dances with him. It goes on and then talks about how she began to step on his feet and decides to go hang out with her friends but the punch taste sour according to her so she started to dance with him again. It was the first time i had really listened to the lyrics and she had a violinist, and our friend Jennie sang harmonies and it was just beautiful.

Anyways the lyrics just really struck me and I feel like it has been my story of my faith or relationship with God I’ve just really been bitter and angry towards God for the last couple of years and I’m finally starting to dance with him again and i am truly healing. I ended up balling crying for like 5 minutes, having to excuse myself from the event and I just leaned against my friend’s car and let out months of uncried tears.

So for halloween I decided to go out as Teen Wolf. It was a pretty balling outfit. People loved it and I loved it so that was is important about Halloween. Halloween was very fun on thursday i went out and got my dance on at fusion, friday i saw paranormal activity, and watched fraility and could barely muster up the strength to drive home, and on actual halloween My friends and I went out and then just hung out at Carmelo’s a great gas station for a good 30 minutes where a feminist lesbian decided to chew me out for missing the trash can with my Gatorade bottle. She told me to be a gentleman…Idc or know what she meant but it was funny.

ADAM FRATUS's TEEN WOLF pic of me

At Fusion on Halloween this song by this dorky sudan’s rapper named Bangs was played and it rocked my world and its called take you to the movies and may be the greatest rap song ever, he refers to a girl as shirty, does his own echo’s, and calls the numbers 0403 when he calls his shirty, oh and they go to a matinee movie and he later proceeds to ryhme good with good.

Last but not least my beard. My beard is starting to look good. It has been around six weeks since it has been shaven and it will grow for another 3 before I shave it clean. I’m sort of sick of it but at the same time love it. Octobeard and No Shave November have and will continue to be succesful.

ADAM FRATUS's pic of BEST FRIEND'S BEARD

Danka Shai for being patient I’m sure i spelled shai wrong but no biggie.

Also I have really enjoyed meeting new people lately. I’ve just been blessed with good conversations and great people the last few weeks. Anyways I’m tired and the cold makes me want to sleep all day and night. So Enjoy this really lame blog post my readers. i’ll keep you updated better on my thoughts and hopes and dreams. Much love.

res·ti·tu·tion 1 : an act of restoring or a condition of being restored: as a : a restoration of something to its rightful owner.

So today in church my father spoke about restitution. This concept has been on my mind alot lately. Lately I just keep thinking about how broken I am and how there are many things that I feel are creating this void or seperation between me and my relationship with God. Most of this seperation that usually plays out in my daily life as bitterness or sarcasm stems from WOUNDS that I have neglected to deal with or let scab over without actually healing. It is really hard especially for dudes or men to deal with their emotions specifically at the time they are hurt. So then we carry around these gapping wounds and tend to act out of them in our daily lives without even realizing it.

RESTORATION must occur in order for us to be live our lives as whole individuals, the people that God intended us to be. Everyone has been hurt and taken many emotional blows in their life’s course. In order for you to be restored you must find away to forgive the people that have wounded you. For some people it might be by just saying a prayer of forgiveness to the person that has harmed you, for others you might have to physically tell the person who’s harmed you that you forgive them, take whatever steps you deem necessary to heal your wounds.

I will end with this. The analogy that pops into my head for all this is DANCING. I love to dance. I love to imagine dancing with or for God sometimes it is a really beautiful image if you think about it. When we are wounded it is very hard to dance, and even if you let your wounds heal a little bit but not all the way then we are still not dancing as beautifully as God intends us too. So be restored so that you can dance for God the most beautiful dance, may your heart point toward him, and your life be full of joy.