May Flowers: A Grace Manifesto

Ancient writers would call on the muses to inspire them as they prepared to weave their tales. I don't wish to weave an inspired tale, but rather tell it truthfully as it should be told, so I have asked the Holy Spirit to assist my tongue [keystrokes] to proclaim the events as they really happened.

Backing up to January of this year, finding out I was first in my law school class was overwhelming and humbling. After prostrating myself before God and thanking Him for his enabling power (see John 15:4, Without Him we can do nothing), I enjoyed the next few weeks eating hors d'ouevres with attorneys and feeling like hard work pays off. But during the semester I noticed my footsteps were a bit heavier, putting in the hours studying was a bit more onerous. When something you love becomes a mere contest, rather than vice versa, scary things happen. For me, I love the order and logical coherency of the law (especially the La. Civ. Code). But as March turned into April, I realized that it's not all a bed of roses; the crucible of 2 weeks of 4-hour law school exams had returned again.

The weeks leading up to H-hour were brutal. For not just me, but every law student across the country. My wife tried telling me I was hitting it too hard, I needed to exercise more, etc., and she was right (alas!). By the time I was 25% through with exam period, I had worked myself into a frenzy of studying and anxiety that I had hopeless insomnia, a thing I had never experienced before. All I could do was focus during the day as much as I could and literally throw myself on God's mercy. It was the hardest 2 weeks of my young life thus far.

The following week I started clerking with a Baton Rouge law firm, as well as working on a law review write-on paper over the next two and a half weeks. Just this past week grades came out, and I prostrated myself in worship...again.

With a handicap of 3-4 hours of sleep per night, I actually did better than the semester before.

This blog is over five years old. When I first started it I was a bumbling kid coming out of high school, and apparently, well, now, I'm something or someone a bit different. And perhaps, now this blog is subject to review by important people now since it's title makes it appear first on a Google search. I see no reason to discontinue the transparency my understanding of why things happen the way they do. Hard work pays off, but it was the enabling grace of God that makes hard work fruitful (see Psalm 75:5-6, that promotion comes from God).

Thus, 2009 lessons learned:

1. Whatever work you set your hand to doing, you have to love it if you want to either do well or enjoy your life, or both.
2. The Lord gives and takes away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.
3. The brain is a place where investments are made. If you make the necessary deposits, the knowledge you need will be available for withdrawal, even under non-ideal circumstances.