From an email I sent to Jackie:
Jackie,
my wonderful sister in Christ,
Seriously, I've been trying to email you for the last 3 days. But the moment has never been right for expressing my soul to you. Sunday night, I went out to the student union to exclusisvely email you and my family. On one side of me I had the blaring spanish station, on the other, some girl wanting me to check out autopsy photos she had found on the Internet. So, tonight it's 9 o'clock, I come to the library expecting to find a nice peaceful atmosphere to write this letter. What do I find? It looks (and sounds) like they are having some elderly Internet training session. Seriously: "How do I get to ya-HOO?" i love you, Jackie. that's what I wanted to say. Since I've been down here I've really realized how blessed I am to have friends like you and Erika, Steve, Judy and yes even my dear little Mary. And those are only a few. We are SO blessed. I talk to the people here and I feel like they have never even experienced a friendship close to the bond that all of us share. I've got all my pictures on the wall in my dorm, right by my little altar. It is my Wall of Hope (I don't really go around calling it that, "Hey wanna see my Wall of Hope?" how corny!) But there are all my friends there, and pictures from TEC, and Jubilee and Colorado, pictures of Gene and Marie and my nephews and family. The paintbrush and seeds you gave me the night of our consecration are there too.
Thank you.
Life is good here. He's in charge. There are times where I don't even know what to say or do or where to start. I've been feeling really introverted these last two days-it's difficult cuz I want to reach out and slowly evangelize, but my mind says no! read House of Gold! So I'm reading it (I'm smiling right now for you, my falling-out-of-a-tree Jackie, don't know why I just thought of that) dang, the book is good-thank you.
My classes are good. After 4 years at Carroll, it is so refreshing to have such a majority of my teachers that actually care and keep learning interesting. It is good. I have made several acquaintances, but like I said, I don't know where to start. I'm so used to having such deep conversations with my friends. But I cannot dive into the kiddy pool. All in time.
Brad and I have had some really good talks. He really is a nice guy, and we share a lot in common. I'm not sure if I ever told you, but the first night when I came back from the party, he had a girl in bed with him. I found out a few days later that nothing happened, but it had obviously thrown me off balance. Since then we've talked, I told him that I was saving that expression of deepest, truest love for marriage and tried to explain to him why. He's agreed to no do anything like that in our room. Just pray for him-he has a good heart. Your words really helped me deal with this.
I'm gonna take a little break now, the library is shutting down, but I'm gonna go find a computer at the girls dorm, where hopefully creepy autopsy girl is not hanging out...
Yeah! We just took a vote in here and the silence cravers won! Yippity doo da!
Oh dear, I just wet myself...
Ok, I'm dry! So blest! They also have a really good Christian Fellowship down here. (yeah, I know-little jump in subjects) We met last Wednesday on the 3rd floor of this vacant building. We all sat around on couches and had a bible study. They also had a Praise and Worship part, even though Joel only knew about 2 of the 6 songs, they were peaceful. I really liked it. I also got to go to Confession with Fr. Bernie Wednesday night. For the rest of the week I've just been hanging out with the people I've met-playing cards, watching movies, going to tattoo parlors.
The weather has been too hot for me to ride my bike much, but Sunday I rode to Winfield for Mass at Holy Name. Fr. Bernie gave one of the best homilies I've ever heard. The priest here in Ark City speaks with a very heavy Vietnamese accent, so the Masses here aren't quite as...nourishing. But Jesus is still there, to give me strength. I'm really roughing it though, cuz Fr. (ark city fr.) is on retreat til thrusday, so no Mass these last few days. Tomorrow night I'm going bowling though-if that doesn't feed the soul, what does?!?! stupid question.
How are things at Carroll? You seemed to say in your last letter that thing weren't going so great. How is your family? I pray for all of you as I look at my wall before I go to bed each night (or at least before I lay in bed reading house of gold for 3 hours) I know that God is doing great things in your world, even if you can't sense it. I aslo feel like the devi is doing his best to keep us noticing the finger of God in our journey every day. That's how I am, I'll find myself at the end of the day feeling like I hadn't served God, feeling down. Bute when I look over the beauty and prayers of the day, I know God is with me and am for him. i am His.
So know that as you smile you give him glory. Did you get to make it to Praise and Worship? I really wanted to go but neither Angela nor Fr. B nor Mandi Lundberg could give me a ride. Oh well, it wasn't meant to be.
Our regime of silence in the room is crumbling! I think I will sign off now. Thank you again. i love you. I'm praying for you, my fellow knight and friend.
your brother in Christ,
joel isaac
p.s. A hug from Logan as you finish reading this. i did tell you that my angel's name is Logan, right? good night, may your journey tomorrow be run with all your strength.
Well, here we go in this absurdly misguided experiment. New color, new font clearly indicates a shift to a wiser Joel. It is a shame blogger does not offer Comic Sans. In 2000, I was totally a Comic Sans kinda guy. Now I can't stand Comic Sans.
Let's start with the question you are all thinking: What the hell is wrong with this kid? I think Jackie has asked me at least 3 times while reading this first post alone, "Are you really sure you want to leave this in?" No, I'm not really sure. But it seems important to be unflatteringly honest and to have some sort of context of who I was at one point in my life and to not edit these things in a more flattering light. I am hopeful that it will not be long before we get to a Joel Arnold that has a level of maturity I can proudly point to and say, "Yes, that was me as a young lad." But no, pride is not an emotion I feel when I remember how hilarious and clever I thought it was to refer to peeing my pants from excitement, and how even more witty it would be if I implied I had taken a break from this letter long enough to change back into dry trousers. Pity, head-shaking pity is more the feeling I am experiencing currently.
I often wonder if I met 18 year old Joel today, what my reaction to him would be. At first I think I would find him insufferably obnoxious. But I have many of the same friends then as I do today and obviously they didn't find my special brand of humor insufferable. So I must have had good moments too. I hope that I would be able to see this was a mostly good kid. Thinking about myself back then certainly gives me a good dose of humility and a healthy reminder to be patient with the youths I meet today. Yes, I was a spirited one. I was very blunt, often tactless. I didn't believe in leaving things unsaid. I wanted to live with no regrets when it came to my friends. I was very "on fire." This will probably have to be reflected on more later, but yes, for now, we will just leave it at the fact that I was not shy in talking about God.
Cowley was my first forray into public education. Now I wouldn't use "sheltered" to describe my highschool years, but I was lucky to be surrounded by good friends. I think my parents did a really good job of instilling "moral character" in us kids, and with my own kids if I had to chose between passing on values either lukewarm wishy-washy or slightly off-putting fervor, I'd have to go with a kid who would proudly proclaim his white badge of virginity, awkwardness be damned. Oh Brad (whose name, just in case you were curious, has been changed for the sake of this blog) I often wondered whatever happened to him...
Well, yippety doo dah. My first blog post done. All in all, not as painful as I thought it would be.
