Buried In Snow

We are buried under snow. Good thing I did not go out earlier to snow blow or I would have been doing it twice today. I am excited for the weekend, I am tired of working this week and need a rest. I saw Be Kind Rewind Last Night and it was one of the best movies ever. Michel Gondry is my favorite director. Well, there is not much to write today, kind of an uneventful one, which is usually good for me because events mean stress and stress ruins days, so I am happy to be silent.

Turning 30

I feel a little better today despite the fact that in only 13 days I will be older than I had ever imagined I would want to be. It isn't so bad though i guess, everyone has to be 30 someday, granted God lets them live that long, but 30 never was the problem. It is the shadow of 40 that scares me. When I was small, I could not wait to age, and it seemed it took so long between birthdays. But now I look back to yesterday and I was 5 years old arm wrestling the masked wrestler at Showbiz. Makes me scared that tomorrow I wake up and I am 40 and my hair has turned grey and I have little brown spots forming on my hands. My wife and I watch Scott Baio Is 46 and pregnant on TV, I am not sure why, the show sucks and I can't stand Scott Baio. But I watch anyway. He is so old though, and I feel scared to death watching it, like he used to be an idol for kids, now he is gross. I mention my favorite band Counting Crows to my students and most of them do not know who they even are, which is sad because they are missing out. But to them I listen to oldies. Pretty funny though, this getting old. My wife has plan a huge party for me, I am actually excited about that, we will eat at my favorite restaurant, (New Peking) then go to a little hole in the wall pub (The Cloverleaf) that I like, to do Karaoke which I love, and they must all sing with me. Then on my birthday I get a tattoo I have been wanting for a while now. I have this tattoo on my chest of a little boy burning in a house that has been boarded up, and he is looking out the window at the flames unable to escape. Draw your own conclusions, but it is unfinished. I am getting on my back, behind it the same house burned to the ground with the little boy standing unharmed in the rubble looking up at the sky in wonder, also draw your own conclusions. Well thats all for now, I will leave you with this great video though.

When The Birds Stop Singing

It is interesting to see what happens when you cage a bird. When I was young, I saw a wounded bird, it had a hurt leg. I took it home and fed it for days with a medicine dropper and baby food. It ate, it grew a little, got back some of it's strength, but never got back it's desire to fly. I left for the weekend and asked my mom to take care of the bird with this ridiculous eating regiment and physical therapy (For the birds leg). I came back to find a new bird in a new cage and Sammy (The wild bird) in a shoebox eternally sleeping. The bird was only injured in the leg and I did exactly what the books told me to do to help the wounded bird recover, but it never did. I was fighting death with this bird and I lost. Sammy stopped singing long before I left for that weekend and he would have died whether I was there or not. Taking away what made him a bird was worse than that aching leg. With the leg, Sammy couldn't walk, with the cage, Sammy couldn't fly. I loved that stupid bird, but it taught me a lesson in life. When you stop something from being what it is, it will die. Maybe not physically all the time, but it will die none the less. I feel like this sometimes, like something has been taken from me and I have never recovered. Like everyone is trying to help me, my wife, my friends, my church, especially God, but I can't take it because I don't feel like singing all the time. I am not comfortable in my own skin, I don't feel at home all the time, and I need to recover from something that I cannot even put my finger on. But you should know that I am OK. God is working in me all the time. God is repairing me, teaching me how to sing when it isn't sunny. You may have noticed these blogs taking a depressing tone over the last week or so, and I am sorry about that. I write in blogs because It feels better to not hold things in. When I hold things in, I feel alone. I don't like to express myself to people while speaking because no one signed up to hear my story and if you are reading my blog, your signing up and I don't feel bad like I am boring you or annoying you. I am sure in a week or two, things get much sunnier, but for now. Blah

Heaters

These are places where I don't feel alone: On the floor lying in front of a heat register and listening to the sounds of the furnace clanging (If you haven't done this, try it when you can't sleep). In the car on a long trip listening to the GPS give me directions (I talk back to it). Sleeping in the living room at Christmas with my ipod playing and watching the lights on the tree flicker. Scrolling through my iPod to bring up catalogued songs which bring up catalogued memories. Sitting on the floor of the shower and praying. Eating and any other potentially addictive inanimate object we use to make us feel something. And mostly being with my family. I say this because my sleeping has gotten pretty bad lately and I have been having a difficult time. I used to not sleep very much at all due to insomnia in which I tried everything to cure it: Sleeping in the shower, under tables, in front of heaters, listening to a metronome. They have all worked for a time, then they get old. I can't sleep because sleeping is your most vulnerable times, and when I am vulnerable, I am not safe, and when I am not safe, I am creeped out, and when I am creeped out I feel alone. And lately I cannot sleep. So bad into action come these methods of feeling not alone, so I can close my eyes and sleep at night. I was doing so well too, going to bed earlier, and falling to sleep. It felt better in the morning, I finally believe that sleep is good for you. But now, it is 2 AM, I am not at the least bit tired, there is nothing on TV, the family is sleeping peacefully, my friends are sleeping, and the world does not care that i am awake, this makes me feel alone.

Backwards

When love is backwards, it spells evol. When Jesus is backwards is spells suseJ. Coincidence...I think not.

Sitting, Watching The Cursor Blink

There was this great part in a horrible movie called, Once Upon A Time In Mexico when Johnny Depp goes into a restaurant and starts to eat his food with a friend. He takes a bite of food and tells the other guy that the food was so good that he was going to shoot the cook. He went about his meal and later got up to leave and walked into the back and pulled a gun and shot that cook. This scene best describes the way I have felt in my life. Most days I don’t get the opportunity for something amazing to happen to me, I mean the kind of amazing that doesn’t happen every other day, because I realize how amazing it is to breathe, I really do. But every once in a while something happens that seems great to me, too great for me, and I squash it. A person comes into my life that a really good person to hang out with and is genuine about life, I avoid a friendship. Something really good happens to me, something that cannot be explained away, reject it and run. It is a pattern that I have always had in my life and unfortunately it was a pattern I took with God as well. I have been a Christian for over 10 years now and I am just now learning the point of what Jesus did. For 10 years I have believed that nothing could separate me from God’s love, I believed it, but I didn’t believe it for me, for everyone else it was true and I would die for it, but for me, it couldn’t be true. God couldn’t possibly love me. Let me just tell you now that I am and always have been filth. If you look up to me, do not. Try to look past my stupidity and see God in my, because He is anything and everything good in me. I have had this problem with feeling worthy of the love of others and maybe I am not worthy of the love of others, I have hurt a lot of people on purpose all in the name of being some sort of victim, so that gave me the right to be careless with others. But lately this feeling is changing. Maybe I am starting to believe the truth for myself, not the way you believe something when you read it, but when you experience it. I know it now, I feel it, I have experienced the love of God despite being broken, maybe because I am broken. It has taken so long to let go of all of the self hate I have lived with my whole life. Last year I would have told you I didn’t want to be happy, I didn’t want to ever stop being lonely. Because it was my friend. Sadness was like a person to me, I person that comes and stays with you and makes fun of you and laughs at you in your own house, but you can’t ask him to leave because you feel like he is all you really have and having a bad thing is better than nothing at all. It is hard to explain in a way in which you can understand, but this is how I have lived. I wish so badly that churches would stop perpetuating this very lie because I didn’t get this lie form the world, I got it from the church. I was raised in bad churches. I was raised with the belief that God was a set of rules that if you broke, you would find yourself on the wrong side of God’s love, the side that is dark and doesn’t ever get to see it. The problem was I broke the rules...a lot. I broke most all of them because that is me, having to push the envelop and find out for myself. So breaking them made me think I could not be loved by God, so I couldn’t believe in a God that loved me as much as the next guy because I didn’t believe the next guy was as bad as me until I learned they are by experience. I am not finished with this way of thinking completely, but I am growing and learning and being changed everyday, but I do know that God loves me no matter what I do. He loves me more than I love my children. My kids can make me so mad, but I will walk into their room and look at them sleeping and want to cry, nothing ever could separate me form loving them, God feels this a million times stronger for me...and you.

The Day

Remembering there is a prize to be won is the most vital thing to living your life with some sort of vision or purpose. I forget too often what the future holds for me. I get caught up in church politics, theological debates, people who have left the faith and people who are just being introduced to it. I get caught up in these things and forget what is going to happen to me. I am happy now and focusing of what God has for me today, but too often forget to look to eternity. We are eternal beings, and their is an eternity that is not at all like the existence we sometimes enjoy here. The Bible says no mind has even conceived what God has in store for those that love him. No mind has even conceived of it. That is going to be the day right there. The day that you experience what millions of the smartest people in town haven't even been able to imagine, haven't been able to even touch what God has. What a day. Makes me sad for looking back to the past so much and desiring to revisit things when I have this future that holds every smile I have ever cracked waiting for me. This future that will leave me perfect, both my body and my mind. To be flawless and without sin, to have no need for this body, to look my Creator in the face without the fear I have now of doing so. That day will be fun. That day I hope to spend with everyone I have ever come in contact with. I have lost a lot of people in my life, God has taken them for His reasons, but to step foot into that party and look across the room to see the faces of those that I miss so badly, that I think about every day is the most amazing thought. That is the day.

The Cure For The Flu

I have done it, finally came up with the thing that will help the world and all of it's inhabitants. I have cured the flu. This is how it works: I was in the drug store and saw some Lysol that guaranteed that it would kill the flu virus in the air. What if at flu season, everyone would go get a can of this and spray it in the air outside and all over themselves. This would kill the flu everywhere, not sure about the long term O-zone complications, but the flu would finally stop being such a nuisance.

Tomorrow Is Better, But Today Is Ok

A title of a song I am listening to right now and it makes we want to weep violently while screaming, "I did my best," those that like Dane Cook will understand that. During the aforementioned funk I had been in I was dealing with this notion, actually I had adopted this notion that Christianity was all about keeping to oneself, and being a loving and kind person, and caring for other people in a totally silent and non-judgmental way. I had it in my head that I would just go about my business only selling what people were asking for, and I use commercial terms because the world does when sharing your faith and love with others is concerned. If students came to Liquid, I would show them Jesus, some might say sell them Jesus, but they would be wrong. Church was a good avenue to peddle my faith, but not anywhere it wasn't expected. I know it is dumb, I see that now, but then to me it looked like people were not going to respond to obnoxious Christians telling them what the meaning of life is, you could say selling them happiness, but you would be wrong. Truth be told, I was lazy and wasn't very happy, so it is hard to throw on the Jesus A-game when I am not really feeling it myself, maybe I really didn't fully believe it then, some would say I definitely didn't believe it then, and they would be right. I hadn't figured out how to live in the freedom I have been given by God. And because I couldn't figure out it's meaning, I chose to live in the bondage of sin and in misery. My wife will say that this post is sad, like she did my last one, but she would be wrong. It isn't sad at all because it took me seeing what freedom in Christ wasn't to realize what it was, it is freedom. I don't have to be sad, I don't have to live like I was, I don't have to pretend and play the clown. I can be Adam living for Jesus and doing so in a not so casual manner. Because just over the course of a couple of months, God has taught me or reminded me that knowing Him is not at all casual, and that people go about casually killing each other every day. What the world needs now is radical love, not in the way of screaming and yelling at people, but in the way of going out of my way for people, doing things for people unexpectedly, just because I love them, because I really do love them, not because I feel it to be a ritual or duty, but because God has given me joy, and eyes, and ears to hear people weeping. There is a lot of hurt in the world and not a lot of love, that is where God's people come in, in a not so casual style, we are aliens, but not the kind that want to destroy the planet, but the kind that were in the Abyss, or the Undead, the kind of aliens that mean to help the world, and in my case, help people by pointing them to God.

Letting Go

Sitting at home, really sick. Thinking about some things, like depression. I have plenty of family history of depression and anxiety in my family, and sadly, I too have my own issues and struggles with it. I was driving and talking to my wife yesterday as we were making our way to see me daughter for her 11th birthday, about the funk I had been in that lasted a year or so. Half of last year and most of 2006, I was like a walking zombie at times, lonely, depressed, and sad for no reason. It was weird, I felt so badly for no visible reason at all. Getting old made me sad, thinking about the past made me sad, I was lonely all of the time, and yet I could not live my life without the loneliness. It was like a weird friend of mine that hated my guts, yet I needed him around just so I could feel something. I went to a psychologist a few times during this period and all he could do was keep telling me how important it was to go back to college and finish. I don't and didn't really get the significance or relevance in his advice, so I stopped going. Turns out, a psychologist was not what I needed, I needed to let go of my life. The Bible says, Luke 17:33 Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. This passages' meanings are much more than what I am talking about now, but for me this passage speaks, not just of salvation form hell or admittance into eternal life, it speaks to me now, it speaks to my desire to be who I am my way, which really isn't me at all. I tried and tried to live my life with some sort of control over how I felt, what was going on, and what happened was more misery. So I let go. I could not even imagine my life without the loneliness, but I let go. And what happened next was nothing short of a miracle. I realize that God was holding on. He wasn't letting go. God says enough is enough of me wrecking myself and He changes me. The transformation is similar to the transformation that took place when I first gave my life to God in that I realized my folly, and realized that God was hanging on the whole time, not willing to let go, knowing what He was going to do way before He did it. Now I cannot go back, literally, I cannot, I am different. I am happy, I get sad sometimes, but I am full.

To Impress A Girl

I was going through my ipod yesterday and listening to different songs that drudge up different memories to reflect on and as I was doing so I came across a song that was referring to God stirring the ocean and making waves. That led me to think, who was the first person to step foot in the ocean? With all of that water and pressure and weight that the ocean holds, wouldn't you be scared to death that you would be crushed at first contact with it. Or how did they know there were not sea monsters waiting for them to get in, there have always have been sharks you know, they ate people then and still eat people today. That guy that first put his toes in is a hero or a monster to be damned for millions of sea deaths over history. That day was more historic than Neil Armstrong's first step onto the moon. More historic than Martin Luther King's, I Have A Dream speech, more historic even than the iphone. That day was the day. Maybe it was a Tuesday and the guy or girl fell in by accident during a dare in which he or she was trying to impress someone, he fell and he survived, he becomes a hero or a villain, depending on your take on the ocean. That is all, keep buying foreign Detroit, we will soon make history too.

James Michael

James Michael is a little boy that we have taken into our home because apparently last Sunday at church this child was left behind by his parents as they left for Florida forever. At least that was the story we got out of Caeden as he explained how his new invisible friend James Michael happened to be sitting next to me on the couch, unbeknownst to me. We talked to him about it and tried to figure out if he was only pretending or if he really believed James existed, apparently he really does believe this to be true. So our next question was why he picked a name that was so similar to George Michael, he had no answer. We did some research to find out that imaginary friends are not only normal, but can be healthy. The doctors went on to explain that imaginary friends are usually used as a tool to deal with certain issues that socially advanced children are thinking about, yet not able to understand, like death, and in Caeden's case being left behind by your parents. It is alarming for me to see such worry about something that would never happen to my son, but the research shows that the kids are merely trying to work out something they do not understand. So am I. Caeden also says that James is brown with yellow hair, so this is what we think he looks like. Except with yellow hair.

Super Tuesday

I do not make it a habit to post political views in my blogs or anywhere else for that matter for a couple of reasons. The biggest is that once a reader, who is very politically minded reads your political views, you are immediately judged. The reader makes the decision whether they love you are hate you depending on whether or not hey agree with you politically. For this reason, I do not wish to offend anyone or be judged by any one of the readers of my blog, because I feel that politics are not as important as others believe. As a Christian, I believe that it is God who puts leaders in place for His own reasons, even the bad leaders, I vote every election to fulfill my civic duty, but ultimately, God will decide the election, so for me, I vote for who I believe will do the right things. Some people will tell you to not vote for a candidate based on one issue. I disagree with that if the issue is the determining factor of life or death such as abortion that is on the largest scale ever, that being more casualties every year than all American casualties in every American war combined. I could not live with myself putting my stamp of approval on a person that helps to keep that kind of genocide alive. People who disagree with me could say that if you vote for a Republican, you vote for more war, meaning more deaths. There are a couple differences there, one, soldiers enlist in the military knowing war is part of the job potentially, two, look up the death toll of Iraqi citizens under the rule of Sadaam Hussein and you see far more deaths than the casualties of this war, only they aren't American deaths which many Americans do not care to count because apparently, we are the only important lives. Three, I do not want to get terrorized again. All of that being said, this will be the first and last political post you will read from me for at least a very long time. I have attached a snippet from a blog by Avanti Scriven I read about the procedure of abortion for your viewing horror.

Some of the most gruesome techniques are used to abort the pregnancies of women. Dilation and curettage is a surgical procedure and is used in the first trimester of pregnancy. The cervix is stretched to permit the insertion of a loop-shaped steel knife. the child's body is cut into pieces, removed, and the placenta is scraped off the uterine wall. Suction aspiration, a surgical abortion which is also used in the first trimester, used a powerful suction tube that is inserted into the womb through the stretched cervix. The suction tears the body of the developing baby, and sucks the placenta tissue and fetal parts into a collection bottle.

Methotrexade is a chemical that is used in the first trimester. It attacks the fast growing cells of the trophoblast, which is used to draw oxygen and nutrients from the mother's blood supply. Methotrexade initiates the breakup of the sustaining, protective, and nourishing environment. Deprived of the necessities to survive, the baby dies. Dilation and evacuation is a surgical process used in the second trimester. Sharp metal claws are sued to grab parts of the developing baby, for example, the legs, which are then twisted and torn away.

They continue to do this until the entire body is removed. The baby's skull by this time has hardened, so they crush the head so that is may easily be removed. RU-486 is an abortion pill that requires three visits to the doctor. It is reported that two women have died from taking this pill. During the first visit you have a physical to make sure that the pill won't be deadly to you. then the pill is taken to block progesterone, which maintains the rich nutrient lining of the uterus. This starves the developing baby. On the second visit the women is given a dose of artificial prostagladins which initiates uterine contractions and the baby to be expelled from the uterus.

The third visit, about two days weeks later, determines whether the abortion has occurred or if a surgical abortion is needed. Partial-abortion is when the abortionist reached into the uterus, grabs the unborn baby's leg with the forceps, and pulls the baby into the birth canal. With the head left inside intentionally. While the child is still alive, they jam the scissors into it's head, enlarge the wound and then suck the baby's brains out. The shrunken head is then removed. Salt poisoning is used during the second and third trimester. A needle is inserted into the mother's abdomen, fluid is extracted, and the salt is injected into the baby's water bag. The baby breathes in the salt and is poisoned. It burns off the outer layer of skin, and the child actually convulses for about an hour or so, and then dies. Later the mother gives birth to a dead, burned and shriveled baby.

Fake Terrorists

Music...I have had a hard time writing much of anything new lately. I was speaking to my friend Josh last night and it occurred to me how long it has been since I sat and wrote anything really original, I've written some stuff, some lyrics, some music, but nothing that jumps off the paper like me....me...I am the one that will make you a millionaire. I am of course kidding about the millionaire thing, I don't think I could handle that, money changes people, I have seen it myself and am smart enough to not pray for that. I think my lack of creativity is due to my addiction to an Xbox 360 game called Call Of Duty 4 in which I go and play online against real people and get to pretend they are terrorists and kill them. This blog is about to take an off the subject turn. The thing about video games I think for some people is that they create different identities online playing against other people. They get to escape the reality of who they are, they are not limited to the bias that happens when you are not beautiful looking, they are emboldened to speak however they want, which sucks because the guy with the little guy syndrome begins speaking very foolishly because there are no consequences because in the online gaming world, the little guy rules the show. Did I just say online gaming world? I am a dork. Officially. Anyway, I think that for some it is hurting them because it being easier to have an online relationship and send messages back and forth to each other, leaves them feeling as if they do not need a real relationship where you help a guy move, or hang out as a third wheel, or be a dudes wingman. It is killing real relational skills in people, making them want to be introverted. Makes me think that is all, how many songs could i have written, could I have finally gotten something done on this script I have been working on with a friend, maybe I could have finished the film I have been working on for the last couple of years, but the fake terrorists still fall by my gun everyday and for some reason I love it.