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Sometimes, all you need is grace and Taco Bell. Emphasis on the grace. My mind is still a fog. I'm reading the words, but I don't understand what they mean. I hate when that happens.

I'm not cut out for spending huge amounts of time alone. Unfortunately, this is what you do when you're in a non-traditional Masters program. Nor am I cut out for the single life. I could hear St. Ignatius prattle on about "disordered desires" all day long, and all I can think is things you shouldn't say to saints.

It's not that I can't picture some other calling, but I can't and won't take a vow that I don't stand a reasonable chance of keeping. I'm a scandal waiting to happen. I'm just telling you that. And frankly, I didn't enjoy the idea of pastoral ministry all that much, anyway. I love God. I love his Word. I remember things most people don't. That makes me a good dude to have at a trivia night, not a shepherd.

I've been bouncing through life thinking I must be crazy, and searching for assurances to the contrary. And if I am crazy, isn't my future wife supposed to say, "Yep, you're crazy, but I love you anyway"? Isn't that what God says to all of us?

Me and "The Deb" get along so well because our kind of crazy makes sense. We're not really "The Cool People," although we want to be. The truth is, maybe we're not the crazy ones. I think we see the good things people don't see about themselves, and they miss those things in us, because they're looking only at the outside.

That's just it: me and Deb are just really different than most people. But we can't be other than who we are. But "Normal" people and crazy people need love just the same. You just have to decide whether you are going to do that. Suppose the thing that made you 'acceptable' went away. Would you still want people to love and accept you? Better question: If that acceptance is based on something material, something completely beyond your doing, is it real?

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