San Diego #6

Throughout my time with Cru in college, one thing in various event schedules that I never understood were Men's and Women's Times. My experience with scheduled Men's Time was just to talk about women, how hard they are to understand, how much different they are from us, how we need to respect them (while never giving any ways to do so), and sex. Important topics, but they got old. That was Men's Time in a nutshell, and going into my first Men's Time in college at DCC 2011, I went in not thinking there'd be much to it.

I ended up being wrong. For once, the central topic wasn't women (1). It was about being a Godly man and what that means. I don't remember much from it, but I enjoyed it more than I had in the past.

(1) I mean that in the least misogynistic way possible. I promise.

Still, I just recently got back from my first men's retreat here at SDSP. I've never gone to the men's retreats at Nebraska. It was a great time camping out, hanging out with the project guys, all of whom I've met and gotten to know to some extent, and realizing that I suck slightly less at basketball than I thought I did. There was also a four-mile hike, and it's a miracle that I didn't fall off the mountain, I slipped that many times.

We also went over some biblical ideas of being a Godly man and personal experiences in our struggles with biblical manhood versus what we show in our lives. I struggle with a lot of things about that, but one of my biggest, ironically, is about women.

In 1 Timothy 5, Paul writes to Timothy, telling him to treat women like sisters, in all purity. Having never had a sister, I'm not completely sure what that means, but as I keep going through life and meeting more and more awesome women like the ones here at SDSP, I think more and more that treating women like sisters isn't the same as the way I'd treat my guy friends.

Sometimes, that makes me want to interact with them less, and it shows. While I know all the guys' names, I still struggle with a lot of the girls. That's because I just haven't met some of them yet, and I have no idea of what's a good way to go about doing that. I spend a little more time thinking about how I'd treat a sister than most people do, because I never had one. But, rather than use that as an excuse that defines me, that's something I want to grow in over these next few weeks.

Everyone here on project is awesome. By now, I'm aware of a few flaws in several people because I've been around them long enough, but I would hope that doesn't stop me from loving them. My prayer is that the fact that I don't have much experience doesn't stop me from loving them, either.