Kicked In The Noots

This is the sickest thing I have ever seen. I was going to post something of value but I cannot speak or type after watching this.

Mob Santa

Christmas Eve

Ten years ago, I would have been sitting on a bar stool alone, drinking gasoline until I fell off. I would have then after being cut off, try another bar, then take a walk around Wyandotte and look in all of the windows and watch happy families laugh while the lights on the houses danced around me. Christmas wasn't a happy time for me then, but still one of my favorite days which is messed up altogether. It was cold inside and out for me and I wished I could feel like those families did sitting in those windows, but for me they were like the display windows in expensive stores that I could never afford to buy from, they were models to me and I never could have believed that one day I would be one of them, but here I am, sitting in a window with my wife and kids, and family and friends, warm watching the same lights dance around me, but this time I am seeing them from the inside. It is beautiful. God is beautiful. Christmas is all about Jesus, yet Jesus made it all about us, He was born so that He could die and save us. So God repairs and brings broken people from the outside to the inside. May God bless you this year and show you what it is like on the inside.

I Never Asked You For Anything

I never asked you for anything, I never asked you for love, I never asked you to go to the carnival and ride the ride, I never asked you to leave your home, I never asked you to stay, I never asked you to sit through a storm, I never asked you to sail across the sea. I never asked you to count the stars, I never asked you to make me happy, I never asked you to fly rockets, I never asked you to throw garbage cans, I never asked you to talk, I never asked you to be silent, I never asked you to change, I never asked you not to, I never asked you to be sad like me, I never asked you to be happy. So why do you try to take the only thing I have ever needed from you, the reason the moon shines, the twinkle in the stars, the gift that came wrapped in flesh with ten little fingers and ten little toes.

The Family I Almost Had

I was going through all of my old journals on paper yesterday and realized that I appreciated me then recording my life to read today. I wrote almost everyday, and as I read I remembered things I had long ago forgotten and watched how they played out in my journal. I realized how incredibly dumb I was at times and how much more passionate I was. It was weird life reading about your own life in second person. I think I need this, I think I need to write about myself, to leave something out there in space and time that documents my presence here. To validate to myself that I really did something here, that I existed for a while however long God allows me to fumble along here. I am going through something big right now, so I would like to remember how it felt right now. I never knew my father, never met him and I know that I have a sister. Last year, my wife and I were walking around a high school track when we came upon a phone lying on the track. I picked it up and looked in the recent calls part to find out who knows the owner of the phone and I saw my fathers last name. So shaking and nervous I called it and turns out it was my cousin on the other end. It was weird because I was talking to family that had never even heard of me, they had no idea I existed. I told him who I was and he called me back later to tell me that he was sorry for what happened to me, but they could not have anything to do with me. I hung up, and beat up the punching bag for a while, then got over it, well somewhat, if getting over it means trying not to think about it. A year later, a couple of months ago, I found my sister on Myspace. I jumped at the chance to email her and make first contact. After all, I had felt this parallel life kind of bond with her my entire life. My mom says that I was in a church play with her when we were young. It is weird because she could have encountered me at 2 different periods of my life, the man or the monster, but I will talk more about that in later blogs. I emailed her and spilled my guts to her, told her almost everything. She was amazed, yet couldn't believe her father, the hero would ever do anything like leave his child alone in the world. She told me she would get back to me and spoke with him, he told her a series of half truths, and she returned my email telling me she would not believe it were true, she wished me the best and encouraged me to continue of my journey to know my family, which of course my journey ended there as he was my father. I sent her a copy of the blood test that showed his DNA being closer to mine than my own mothers. She never responded. Over the past 2 months I have been angry with her, angry at the way life allows you hope, then rips it from your chest. Now I am just sad, not the kind of sad when you feel sorry for yourself, because I do that often, but the kind where I miss the sister I almost had. I was so close, but I was dreaming, I knew deep down this probably wouldn't happen, but still I allowed myself to hope for bigger things, to think about my first Christmas with a sister to buy for, maybe we would shop for our spouses together, maybe they could all come over for dinner. It was a fantasy. I cannot say that it could have never happened like that, God is capable of doing anything, what I am saying is that He didn't do it like that for His own reasons, He is God and I am not. I get that my sister is scared, after all she was raised by a coward, and in that I think that I have forgiven her, but that doesn't make me miss the fantasy of a family any less. But one thing I have learned over all of this is that although I thought I was alone and spent my life angry over never having known my father, I always had one. I realize now that God took care of me. He gave me discipline, love, compassion, great friends, a loving mother, and built character in me and for that I can honestly say I would not have changed anything. I just wish what could have been really was.

Freedom

Living in the freedom that God has given is a bit hard to swallow. I had always been taught growing up to make sure you confess and ask forgiveness for your sin before you die, or else... The bad fire, as my wife calls it, or hell as the church calls it. You say a bad word in traffic, you had better ask forgiveness before you crash and waste a life of service to God and end up in hell anyway. This was one of the biggest reasons I refused to accept the Good News Of Jesus... Because the Good News they were giving was not good news at all. It was no different in my eyes than not knowing God at all because inevitably I would forget to ask forgiveness for sin before I died unexpectedly and end up in hell anyway. It was hearing the Good News the Bible teaches that brought me into His freedom. I remember lying there on a set of train tracks and wondering to myself, while shaking in fear what hell was about to be like. When God sent a friend to pull me off of those tracks before I got hit, literally a few feet from being hit, I remember thinking for days about the Good News I had learned growing up and it didn't make sense. I was a man that sinned a lot, I was disgusting in every way and here God has saved my worthless life, or was it worthless? I couldn't figure it out in light of the so called truth I had always known, so I tried to die again in a bathtub, but this time I decided to consult God once and see what happened and here I am... Alive. The so called truths of the churches I grew up in were not truths at all, they were lies, they serve to keep God's people in bondage to sin when Jesus paid for it in full. The word Jesus used on the cross when He said, "It is finished," was tetelestai, which means paid in full, this was an accounting term, when a debt had been paid this was the term used and the term Jesus used on the cross to describe what He had just done. The battle fought, the battle won, it is finished, all debts paid. Believe. Jesus says BELIEVE. With Jesus comes freedom. We need not worry about hell, we need not worry about earning our way into anything, God says we could never do that anyway as our good deeds are filthy rags. This is grace and freedom, but why is it so hard to accept personally? Personally we beat ourselves up for sin and that leads to more sin and more sin until God says enough is enough and pulls us out for us to go and do it all again because we cannot accept the freedom we have. You can never earn your place in God's grace and you can never earn your way out. Belief is what the Bible says we need to do. That is how we are saved, and if you want to love God, which comes when we have the Spirit of God inside of us, God says keep His commands, which are all summed up with loving God and loving others. We have true freedom, when you sin confess it and move on, that sin is gone, forever.

Pee Pee Doll

This is the best commercial I have ever seen. The snow is glorious, finally feels like Christmas! I just finished pulling my son around on a sled, then white washed him and hit him in the face with snow balls. Christmas is cool, I love it cold and snowy, Cali is filthy in the winter so, I would never want to go there for anything, I'll take the East Coast any day. Peace.

The Movie

Started editing the movie a week ago. We are editing every night during the week and doing a scene a night. I am really happy with the way the thing is coming along. The video looks great, most of the audio is where I want it, the rest we will overdub. The story is being shown well and the acting is good. I couldn't be happier, except if we were finished. It is weird how much of a puzzle it is. We shot the whole thing out of sequence and at several times of the year and here we sit with all of this footage in all kinds of places and piecing it together, and it looks like a movie. There have been many times I have regretted even starting this project, the time it has taken away from my family, the work it takes to get everyone together, and the frustration of waiting on schedules, not to mention the work of filming and editing itself. But today is not one of those days, because I am starting to see the fruits of my labor and I am happy. In the end, I will have written, co-directed, acted in, scored, etc. a full length feature film. My only hope is that this movie glorifies God above all else, and that some will think about life and maybe change for the better.

God Still Loves Me

I am tired. It is only 11:45 PM and at this time I am usually calling a friend to come and watch a movie to keep me from feeling lonely. I do not go to bed like the majority of smart people on a Sunday night. I sit up. Doing nothing at all interesting, just thinking, playing a game, reading, whatever. Tonight is different, tonight I feel God. Tonight it isn't about entertainment, which I spend too much time doing in my free time, it is about getting really close to God. Leaving behind the foolishness and selfish greed. It is about looking into His world, and trying to see through His eyes. I have always had a low self opinion. I have never really seen the value in myself, that is why I talk about myself so much. I write a blog under the cloak of expressing myself, but I think in reality, I do it make myself feel better about myself. The truth is, I am not who I say I am, I don't think that anyone is. We have this perception of what we want to be and we roll with it, never questioning whether it is really who we are or what glorifies God. God desires us to be us, even when that means we are ugly inside and out. God loves us regardless of out faults and insecurities and for that, tonight, I thank Him.

Teacher punched in the face

I can not stop laughing

Shock And Awe

I remember as a little boy having this little girl a year or so older than me picking on me on the bus on the way to school. I remember she would always make fun of my stuttering (I had a bad stuttering problem, poor me right?). My mother was not all for me fighting, but had always taught me that if there was not another way out and the abuse would not stop, than I needed to finish it, and finish strong, giving the world the "Shock and awe" view of me and my enormous power. This little girl was relentless. She seemed to have so much fun in making other kids laugh at me. She was an ugly little girl, brown hair with dark brown freckles and wrecked teeth, a foul odor. She was like that bully from The Christmas Story, except she was a girl, a little detail I chose to leave out when asking mom's permission to "Shock and awe" her. She told me to go for it, but be careful, so instead of waiting for the next day, when it would have been defense and me sticking up for myself, I went that night to her house on my bike. I sat on that bike and rode around in circles in her driveway so she could see me like a cowboy on his horse waiting for a shoot-out. She eventually came outside and when she did, I hopped off of my bike and approached her. It is funny what happens to a bully when you get them out of their element, away from the people they are showing off for, they become nice all of the sudden, sometimes. This time, this girl became nice to me as if she had not caused horror on the bus for me all year long. For a moment, I reconsidered my actions and wondered if we might become friends instead, but that thought quickly fled from me as I clinched my fist and rammed it into her stomach. I remember the burst of air that came rushing from her lungs past her mouth and into my face. I remember the feeling of her ribs giving way under my fist, I remember the look of shock in her ugly eyes. I stepped back and watched her lurch around clutching her stomach and shrieking in pain. She ran inside screaming for mom and I did the, "You won't see where I live because I am hopping the backyard fences all the way home" thing. Turns out, she knew where I lived, maybe she had a crush on me and noticed, all the ugly girls did growing up, but she found me, with her mom, really pissed. I was hiding in the garage when my mother came out and found me, a fugitive. I received the proper punishment for hitting a girl and any guy that has done this knows what that is. But do I regret what I did that day? NO

A Crowd

I hate Youth Group marketing scams. A ministry uses catch your ear words like "Join us and hundreds more as we" kind of phrases. The kind of phrases that make Youth ministry less about God and more about a giant social event. I know that teens are social beings and that that is an important part of Youth ministry, but it seems that a lot of youth ministries have chosen to take the numbers approach to ministry, the more kids there are, the better the odds of saving some. But to be honest, if you do not have a proper support system set up, which most mega-youth programs do not, than they can be doing more harm than good to these kids. Teens need their friends, but it is important for me to note that they need God more. They need discipleship more. They need to see Christ at work in their leaders personal lives more. Ministry is not about being cool or trendy, ministry is about leading others to Jesus and making real disciples and you simply cannot do that with a big, loud band playing covers, or an energetic, charasmatic teacher giving a motivational speech. It takes more. Those things are fine to have, but what about the support, what about when they graduate out of your program, where do they go? What then do they do with their lack of discipleship and their caffeine sustained faith. We need substance, they need substance, we need to teach them life skills so that they will know how to stand when the wind comes. Numbers simply will not do that, a crowd attracts a crowd and attracts more crowds, but none of those will make a disciple.

Guessing

The other day, I was listening to a sermon from this pastor across the country, and during one of his prayers he asked God to show him the way, to lead us because we are down here just guessing. What he said immediately struck me. This is the way I have felt for so long. So many Christians walk around the world acting as if they have it all figured out, they have everyone in their back pocket and they know what God wants from them. I don't. I never have, I hope I will, but as for now, I have no idea. I am usually going on a whim. I feel a certain way about something and I try to search God's Word for the answers, but in the end I am just guessing. There is a passage in Proverbs that says, in his heart a man plotts his steps, but it is God who sets his feet down. That passage is awesome to me because it gives me assurance that whatever happens to us as we follow Christ, is what God wants to happen to us. We come upon some giant decision that we are really incapable of making on our own, so we guess and in the end, God works it out for our good, even if it immediately hurts. God says He has plans to help us, not to hurt us, so we can be assured that when things happen, good or bad, God has them under control and we can find peace in any situation knowing that we cannot lose. If God be for us, who can be against us right?

Repairs

It is amazing to think of a God that repairs. Seriously. You look at your life and you look really hard and you see what God allows you to see, and what I see is all of the things that I have messed up. I look at all of the things that God has put into my life and given to me to care for. I have messed up everything. The things God gives us are perfect, it is us who makes them cheap. God gives us spouses and relationships and sex and we cheapen it and ourselves by using it improperly. God gives us gifts and we cheapen them by using them for selfish gain or ambition. God gives us money and we blow it on things that could pay for antire countries to drink clean water. But what is amazing about God is that after all we have done to what He has given us to be perfect, He forgives and restores, over and over again He repairs. Why? I cannot get it, at least I couldn't until I had kids and realized that when my son messes up and breaks something, I do not get pissed too badly. He will break something and he usually is so sad when it happens and I look at him and he is sad and imperfect and full of remorse and I repair. He breaks and I repair again and again. And I absolutely love it. My daughter on the other hand breaks things without remorse, she does it for fun, and yet still, I do not disown her, I repair and train her not to break things. Either way, God repairs for His own glory.