A Gentleman's Portrait

Romans 1:16. Live Unashamed

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May 13

Today marks the first day of the year where I have thought about committing myself to writing a daily entry based on what I read in ‘Jesus Calling’. Something that I really need to do is apply myself into making it an actual daily habit because there are things that I learn from my devotion. Today’s entry talks about thanking and trusting God when things are going wrong. 

Something that bothers me the most about myself is that I tend to be the type of person that wants to fix all of my problems on my own; even those that I know for a fact I have no control over. It’s been really difficult for me to understand this concept of thanking God even when things are not going swell. Why? Well, because who wants to be happy when the circumstances call for us to be sad or mad? I have learned (and am still understanding) our flesh’s desires. Our flesh definitely wants us to show how we feel according to the things that are going on in our lives. If we got a job, we want to celebrate. If we failed an exam, we want to be frustrated. Which is normal, don’t get me wrong. 
Now, if we get angry at something that is meaningful yet not really (compared to a lot of things in life) we lose the sense of who God wants us to become. We are want-to-fix-everything beings. It is embedded into our nature and it can be detrimental because we can lose control of who we truly are in Christ. I remember when I didn’t get any of the internships that I applied for: I began to question my full potential as an engineer. “Why am I going through all of this schooling just to get rejected by companies? They didn’t even look at my resumé!” I really gave up. I told myself that I was going to just get a normal job and deal with life that same way. 
I can now imagine working at a bagel shop or something like that and just walk in with a negative attitude. I would have been upset every single day because I never got a call for an interview at Continental Tire or at Verizon Wireless. But then God showed up: that was the best part. He literally came into the picture (even though He was always there) and reminded me one very sad and profound fact: I pushed God to the side and told him “I can do this on my own”. Where did that lead me? Well, nowhere really. I am sure He used my own stubbornness to teach me one of the best lessons we all have heard about: “We praise Him when we lose and we praise Him when we win”. 
Comparing the way God does things with the way we do things is completely out of the question. The other day I thought about something kind of profound and it dealt with the universe. Our universe is so big that just thinking about how big it actually is, gives me a headache. If I were to design the layout of the stars and galaxies, how would I, Juan, do it? I HAVE NO IDEA. It would require me to spend a long (I mean a LONG) time figuring out how big and how much space I have to place things here and there. The more I thought about it, the more I came up with unanswered questions but that is when God comes in. He is such an amazing planner, that He already has the layout figured out and this same method applies with our lives.
God already has every little aspect of our life picked out for us, but the reality is that it’s the things we do with what He offers us that changes the layout of our own universe. In my case, the ‘Juan Universe’ is laid out with many different options and they all affect the way that my life progresses. But if I don’t trust God with His magnificent plan for me, then how can I take the time to even consider applying His own twist to the design? That seems to be the problem for me. I have been so ignorant to His will that the things I want never work out and I end up trying to solve it without His help. But He’s still right there, looking at me and trying to get my attention. Eventually I end up giving up and God literally just takes the wheel. 
I have definitely learned that whenever you question an aspect of your life, just turn to God and ask Him to guide you. Don’t tell Him “you need to give me answers now” because your timing and His timing are very different. So I just want to thank God for everything that He is doing in my life. He is molding my character and teaching me profound things that I will never forget because now that I have fallen plenty of times, He’s still there pushing me back up. There’s a lot more track left in this race.

Filed under God Life College Stubborn independence humble love guidance planning

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Delta means Change

So today I finished kind of being all lazy and bum-ey because I know it has been 4 days since I finished my exams. The best part about this is that I have the rest of summer to have fun and work on some new things.

1) since I got injured my junior year of high school, I have not been as active as I was before that injury. Then a year and a half later I started my engineering career and even though I recovered 100%, I still didn’t bother going back to my old exercise-driven self. So first thing on the list is losing about 25 pounds. I am able to do more things this summer now that I am no longer an Orientation Counselor at Charlotte and one of those things is doing way more exercise.

2) Write more music. The Cameron Floyd Band has been a tremendous hit and I seriously cannot thank all of the people that have been supporting us. I’ll be completely honest: the second I joined the band it was a grand total of 4 people, including Cameron, Thomas, Tim and Myself. But I’ll write the details about how we came to be in my next post. Anyway, I would like to start writing more songs for the band as I am almost done with my first one and now I am about to start working on another one. 

3) Add more to my professional career as an engineer. I have exciting news but I am waiting to spill all of the beans

4) Get more involved with my family and with my old friends. The reason why I say that is because this will be the last summer I live with my parents and I need to become more close with them now that I have some sort of free time. This means travel and just enjoy the summer. As far as my friends, I kinda of disconnected myself from my high school friends because as soon as I arrived to college, I kind of made a new set of friends and most of them (actually the majority of them) don’t live here. Plus I want to catch up with other peeps. Talk about our lives and how much they have changed since graduation.

4 simple things that definitely came to mind as I evaluated what I will be doing this summer. There is more to life than just sitting around, working and being a young adult. You have to enjoy everything that God has blessed us with. In the end, delta means Change. 

Filed under change life summer college love family profession music band musician

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Gravity

If you drop a pencil and it touches the ground, is the pencil pushing down on earth or is earth pushing upwards on the pencil? Why does it matter if the pencil fell anyway? All that is going to happen next is I am going to kneel down or bend over and pick it up. Well, why did the pencil fall? It was not an accident. It was a force acting upon the pencil and in fact, it acts on everything. It may not seem like it’s a big deal, but it’s a pretty big deal.

The fact that we consider it, gravity just shows a lot of its power every single day. For instance, have you ever thought about why your car slows down when you release the gas pedal without touching the brakes? Sure, there is more to it than just gravity (i.e. kinetic friction) but the car is pretty heavy and it is on planet earth. I find it interesting that we assigned gravity with a well-calculated number: 9.8 m/s^2. If I had a dollar for every time I have had to calculate anything with such number, I would be a millionaire. 

But I think it’s a wonderful creation by God. You know, sometimes we don’t give Him enough credit. I am always surrounded by scientists who challenge the principle and fact of God’s wonderful gift of creating an intricately-designed masterpiece called ‘the universe’. Just thinking about how big and deep it is, gives you a headache. I think it is wonderful that we have been blessed with the knowledge of understanding things that don’t naturally come to our heads while we are just realizing the power of everything that exists.

Many people credit the high use of hallucinogens whenever somebody famous from the past came up with a mind-blowing theory. I can’t really process that fully because God blesses us with the ability to show us things beyond our imagination and understanding.

So gravity, thank you for being there. Thank you for showing us that God made you who you are by simply placing you as a small yet significant part of his design. So mind blown.

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Random

Since I can’t go to sleep, for some odd reason, I decided to stay up and work on a new song that I am currently writing. It’s actually the first rap that I write for the band and it’s called “Drive away”. A story about a guy who proposed to a girl and later he finds out that she cheated on him.

It’s actually pretty sad, but one day Cheese and I were sitting just playing with his guitar and i started writing. So I am trying to finish the song before he kills me. haha kidding. I prefer I get this song done so that I dont have to worry about it anymore.

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Worrying

I am supposed to be studying for my Linear Algebra exam tomorrow, but I needed to jot down this small tiny blog. It’s actually been a while since I have sat down to write and I sure miss being able to on a regular basis. But I learned a valuable lesson today and that is “Don’t let the little things in life affect you”.

This morning I went to shoot around (basketball) as I do so every Tuesday and Thursday. Since I got to the student activity center, we have to check in with our ID and it’s a really simple process. As I step closer to the check in counter, I am greeted by the old gentleman that is always there to check people in. I say “Good morning” and give him my ID. “Juan Alfredo!!!” (He has a tendency to announce my name every single time) and all I can do is smile and tell myself “That’s me”. But today, this kind man fussed the ever living mess out of me.

You see, yesterday I rented out a basketball and returned it before I left the gym. The girl who was there when I returned the ball did not ask for my ID therefore I assumed she knew who I was so I left without worrying about making sure that the ball was taken out of my account. (Back to this morning) “Where is ball #1 Mr. Fuentes” “Sir, I returned it yesterday. You weren’t here. The girl who was here took the ball and didn’t ask me for my ID”. I immediately referred to my memory bank and I recalled that the girl from yesterday never asked me for my ID, so I just walked on out. Simple. Yet this is where he started to piss me off. “I am sick of you college students blaming others for your own mistakes.” He was blaming me for not giving her my ID and not only that, but now I had to go find the ball that I used, return it and then give it back to whoever was using it. 

I found the ball! But someone was using it. I explained to the guy using it that “I need[ed] the ball for 2 seconds so that the guy in the front desk can clear it out of my account”. I swear it was like I told him “Sir, I need your kidney. Please hand it over”. After explaining the entire situation, this 7 foot 6 foot 5 inches tall giant gave me the ball and I took care of the issue. 

So after 15 minutes of time wasted, I was finally in the court shooting my ball and I was so annoyed/ticked, that none of my shots were going in. All I could think of was “my day is now ruined”. 

I then felt this urge to bump some hip hop and I put my iPhone on shuffle. Some good ole Lecrae came on and boom, just what I needed. I was reminded that I shouldn’t let the small things in life affect me. Sure, that man had no business fussing at me but I know that his job was to make sure that the ball I used yesterday was accounted for in the system. Was it my fault that the girl from the desk never asked me for my ID: no I dont think it was. 

I later left the gym with a more positive attitude and I made sure that I turned in the ball and showed my ID. All of this happened to teach me that I need to not worry about what lies ahead. Whether I get cussed out for doing something wrong or whether I don’t get my summer internship, I need to fight the thought and realize that God has better things planned for me.

I really dont know how to close this post, but later on in the day I found out that I aced a quiz/test I had in one of my engineering classes. Definitely made my day much better!!