Sunday, March 30, 2008
Bone Marrow? Would You?
My wife and I were just watching Eli Stone from last week and we got into a discussion. One of the law cases on the show was a father trying to legally force his estranged son into donating bone marrow to keep him alive. The thing was, the father had left him at birth and repeatedly denied the kids attempt to have a relationship with his father. The kid won and told the court that he had gotten the blood test to see if he were compatible just so he could tell his father he was Sh&% out of luck. The kid finally rejects the father. Being a kid whose father did the same thing, I laughed. My wife looked at me as I was laughing as if I had said the F word or something. Then I realized what I was laughing at, the revenge, the scene felt good to me for that kid to finally be able to hold the cards. We started talking and trying to figure out what would happen if that were the case with my father. What would I do? My instinct tells me to send this guy to the grave begging me for mercy, but after further thought, I don't think I would, I know I wouldn't. That would make me the killer, that would make me the guy who just needed revenge so badly that he was able to watch a man die. God says revenge is His, and I believe it, I have to believe it. I have to believe that somewhere out there is an old man that will regret what he did or didn't do for his child. I really do pray his regret is not on the day he stands before God, but I do pray he feels like a guy should when he put his own son in a house and set it on fire. Yet, I cannot complain because I am who I am because God let him do what he did. I am stronger now. I believe harder. I know God because I had to walk through some fire and saw the chaff burned away in front of me. I may be charred, but that is by design. I am broken hearted, but that serves to keep me from being cold hearted. If I were to make the decision to be not the killer my father deserves, but the son my God made, I will always be the man that was better than that guy. I know I shouldn't judge and shouldn't consider myself better and in reality I don't, but in this instance I took the high road as he crawled. I am crippled at times with sadness, soaked in tears, and I never recovered, but I am also a son of God, taken care of, nurtured, clothed in Christ's blood, and refined through flames and still walking through them, still breathing. I wrote this in my suicide letter a long time ago, "Cover me in ashes, abandon me in the cold, I'll still be here, I'll still exist." I still believe this, not in the same way, at the time I would wake up and find this written above me in my room and not remember doing it. I thought it referred to the inability this world has to make me disappear completely. But now, call me weird, but I believe it was prophecy given to me by God at a time that I was going to try and erase myself. I was little, in elementary school and this girl that was kinda dorky wrote me this page long thing in my yearbook. I didn't even want her to sign it, but what it said will never leave my head, I had not really spoken to her at all and here she goes with all of this stuff about me not waiting in the shadows for long and standing up and leading and being the man that God will use. There was so much more, it creeped me out, I was in the 4th grade and had idea what she was talking about, that one day I would be someone. I never forgot that and never will because that is how God rolls. I believe in miracles.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Maybe It Won't Last Long
The Invader has come. Now everything is blurry again.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Make Them Care
As I mentioned 2 days ago and last week, God is trying to tell me something. This morning, the wife woke me to help her get the kids ready and in the car as she was going to work. I did and when I came back in, I laid back down as it was a ridiculous 7 AM. I usually have no trouble getting back sleep, but this morning was different. A phrase kept coming into my head, "Make them care." Ok? What does that mean, it's like some Field of Dreams kind of thing happening and I have never known God to speak to me like that. But I started to think about the apathy some of my students and many, many teenagers everywhere feel about the world. They have been written off until they get older. They get indoctrinated at a young age to feel, believe, and act a certain way and until they are adults and show what they have been programmed to be, they are invalid. But why shouldn't kids have a say in what goes on in their world? Why should kids sit back and let the government, the media, and the schools tell them what they need to do? So they learn not to care, their apathy is our fault. Make them care. I sat up thinking about how to make them care and the only way I can think of, well I think God made me think of, is to do as He did. I know that sounds self explanatory and trite, but I cannot tell you of one church that is doing it. Christ lived among the poor and sinful. Christ spent His ministry with those that had nothing. And He told us to do the same, but most churches are not doing the same. They have building funds and committees and bake sales. Youth groups have become all about fun times and community. Community and fun are important things, but what about what Jesus really did, because I do not remember Him and His disciples having a bake sale or protesting and picketing. They lifted their hands and feet and moved. They went right at the world, they went straight to the problems. Not bashing charities, but if you consider giving to charities and ministries the brunt of your involvement in the betterment of the world, don't you think that you are deceiving yourself? A lot of people do things like that so that they don't have to really do anything, none of the heavy lifting. I bought a snow blower a couple of years back to make my Michigan snow removal easier, but this year, it snowed a lot, so instead of getting the job done, I gave some kids money to do it for me. Isn't that what we do a lot of the times, write a check so that we don't have to do the work of obedience to God's plan for you. I am sorry, but Jesus never listed check writing or giving as a spiritual gift anywhere in the Bible. We need to care. Care what goes on in the world, care about all of the violence, care about the homeless and poor. We need to care. For myself and my kids and my students and hopefully everyone around me we are probably going to look an awful lot like foolish people. But here's the thing, God said in James 1:27 that Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Does this sound like committees and bakes sales and mega-churches and in house cafe's? To me it sounds like taking care of the least of these is what God has in mind for His people, not just sending money, although your money helps a lot, but it is getting your hands dirty. Becoming poverty to fight poverty. Becoming nothing to show the world something real, to show Christ's picture to those that possess the heart of what God wants from us clothed in rags. God tells me to Make them care.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Flood
Can you imagine what it would be like to experience the flood that Noah did? You are sitting watching Family Guy or some other show or video game and you hear a noise. You write it off as being some raccoon that is ravaging your trash outside, only it sounds strangely like the world being ripped apart by water. But that doesn’t concern you, it doesn’t even concern you that it has been raining for 3 weeks non stop. Because you have that TV and anything else can go to the bad fire. Just then, your door is kicked in, not by another person, but by a mountain goat that has been washed away from the mountains some 500 miles away onto your doorstep, now into your living room. This is now alarming for you, mountain goats should not be allowed to do such things, so you run outside to see why he has found it so urgent to come inside and you see the water 20 stories high flooding in a giant wave toward you. You are shocked, you look at the wave, then at the goat, who is looking at you as if to say, “It was nice meeting you person”, so you look back as if to say, “Same here, I have never exchanged telepathy with a goat before”. The wave hits and everything you see is torn to shreds and you are washed away but are fortunate enough to grab onto a floating bed headboard, the very same one that Rose laid on in Titanic, it holds two people easily, but you cannot risk trying to help someone else. So you float for a week of storms and people perishing and screaming and eventually die of freezing because of the high altitude in which you have just floated up to. You go to meet God and ask Him, “Why would you do such a thing?” What does He say? “Because the earth was violent.”
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
My Life As A King
So I said in a previous post that God was trying to tell me something and I just couldn't hear Him yet. I still can't, clearly I mean. Weird things have been happening to me, I have been made aware of my own materialism problem by the conviction to get rid of all my things and live on the streets with the poor, not that God is telling me to do so, or maybe He is I don't know. Laura and I have been casually talking about adoption lately, so while eating lunch, I went to some adoption agency websites to get a handle on what we are talking about if Laura and I decided to adopt. I got flooded with pictures and stories of children being abandoned on doorsteps and in dumpsters and parks. I looked through the pictures and as I was looking I was made aware of how shallow I was. I looked at the cute kids. Doesn't that suck? I looked at the cute kids, not the ones that had defects, not the one that had AIDS, not the one that had an overgrown head. All of the kids need a home, but which ones get adopted first? The cute ones. What about the kids that aren't so cute and have problems. Would Christ look at how they look? I don't think so. So now I am ashamed of myself. I feel something radical coming though, like God is changing everything I have conditioned myself to think and feel to be something else entirely. Not sure, we'll see how it pans out. So here I sit with my hands folded, thinking about kings and crowns, the poor and the destitute. I think there is an aspect of me in both of those things. I sit in this house that I have always kind of been discontent with, that the poor would consider a palace. I have this job that allows me the opportunity to help people, yet I have been discontent and always wanting for more. I have this wife who lights up the whole world, and yet I yell at her. I have these kids that make my stomach hurt because I love them so much, and yet I take them for granted and act foolishly. I have the life of a king and yet I feel destitute. I should feel destitute, I want to feel destitute. Mother Theresa said that "Loneliness is the most terrible poverty." Which I guess is why the majority of people that kill themselves are white middle to upper class people. Loneliness is like a person to me sometimes, I do not want to not be lonely, because then what will be left. It is a dumb way to think and it makes no sense at all, but since when do we get our feelings to match with our thoughts? But I have this desire to forget all of the things I have and live poor, because all of the Glory of God is in the poor. Miracles happen daily for the poor, you see the eyes of Christ when you look at the poor. I want that, I want to recognize Christ everyday. I want to see what I haven't seen in my life as a king.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Zombie
You want to know why I have named myself Zombie? I don't care if you said no, this is my blog remember. I have spent most of my life not feeling anything. I was young once and I had all these dreams and stars in my eyes. I was raised by my mother who suffered from Depression and extreme Anxiety Disorder, and she was also Bi-Polar, so she was kind of a wreck, though she did an amazing job given the circumstances. I had no idea that I needed a father or was supposed to have one until I was about 12 and started going through awkward changes and weird stuff started happening to me. I saw my friend hang himself and die at 12 years old, and I had no one to help me deal with that so death became and obsession for me for the next, well even now. I would lie in bed pondering things that should never be thought about in a child. The sadness grew and in came depression, a lot of it, then nightmares, then tears and more tears and anger and shame. Fast forward to age 19, I am laying on a set of train tracks, feeling nothing but relief. Finally it was going to be over, I just didn't care anymore. I saw the train, it was coming. It was coming fast, so I closed my eyes and braced myself. Then I got hit and thrown off the tracks to the side. It hurt, so I assumed I was dead. I opened my eyes expecting to see white lights or hell. I saw red, it was blood and the glare of the street lights that shined over the top of the trains. What happened? I looked down and my friend was lying on top of me holding his hand that was broken from pulling me off the tracks. I was stunned, so I passed out. I woke and we walked silently to my house which was a couple miles from where I had laid down. He told me he was driving around and felt like he should go to my house, he did and found my suicide letter laying on the bed. It was written by a hand so drunk it wrote right over the top of the last entry. It said nothing of a train, yet he walked 2 miles down the tracks to pull me off before I was killed. For days I battled the notion that this was a coincidence. It bugged me because as arrogant as I was, I had always hated myself. I got tired of thinking and wondering and trying to spin what happened around so that I could write it off, but I couldn't and I still felt like garbage, so I tried to cut my wrists on purpose. I sat in the bathtub and and said the first real prayer I had ever said and meant. I told God that if He were trying to tell me something, please say it, because I don't understand. I expected silence, then blood, but what I got was something different. My heart melted, it was the first real feeling I had had in years. For 3 days I sat in that apartment and cried, and I could not and would not stop because God had broken my heart. He had let me know that He was there the whole time, and that He cared. I call myself Zombie as a reminder as to what life is like without the realization that God loves you no matter what has happened. I gave my life to Jesus that night in the tub with my jeans on and a clean razor blade that was never used for anything again. I can tell you that I looked high and low in life for a solution to the equation of pain and sadness and loneliness. Guess what? I still haven't found it, but what I have found is a Savior that continues to repair what is broken inside me. Pain is here because sin is here, but God repairs. My real name is Adam
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter Is No Time To Wear A Tie
I am right now angry because I have mistakenly eaten a root beer Jelly Bean thinking it was chocolate. I do not much like the root beer ones. Anyways enough talk of things the Easter Bunny is concerned with. Church was packed to day, mostly with ritual Christians. The ones that attend on holidays or because they feel bad for not doing some sort of ritual for the Resurrection of Jesus. Do not get me wrong, I have been one of those, but what I don't understand is the need for ritual in the first place. Does it interest God, does it please Him? My mom came to church today and said Easter services are not what they used to be, but I remember what mine used to be. We would get up at 6 AM and got to a sunshine breakfast at the church, then have a service and some singing and some communion and everyone would get flowers, the kids would get palm leaves and Jesus is Risen...Risen Indeed pins and stickers, then out to eat and home for an Easter power nap. While I still take the power nap, I have no need to traditions or rituals. I respect religious practices, even the unnecessary ones, but I have no need for them. I dressed up for church today, but I do not see that God cares at all about what we look like, my mom argues that God wants to see the effort from us with our dress, but I look at John The Baptist and I have to disagree. We are in reality, we are dressing up for people which is fine to do, but realize that God does not care what we wear, His intention was no clothes at all until we ruined that. I am just sick of dressing up for people. I have to look a certain way to fit into how people want to see me. It is peculiar because most people would be made fun of for not dressing up, today I did and I was criticized. I usually wear jeans and a t-shirt because that's how I roll, but I wanted to dress up today and the church acted like they were shocked or even that I sold out, and yes, I am being mellow dramatic but that is because I had a relatively good day and good days are boring to write about. I miss a lot of people today. I miss the past. I am excited about the future, but there is that part of me.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Fragile
It isn't an easy task to get through life without becoming jaded by all of it's disappointments. I struggle have the correct attitude, a positive one. I have seen so much anger and lies and people that are disingenuous and it caused me for many years to have this attitude where I was skeptical of anything good. I assumed the worst in people and expected them to disappoint, maybe that was my way of never being disappointed. But what I have learned is that this is no way to live, it isn't living at all, it is being overly cautious and fragile. We aren't so fragile though, we think we can't make it through things, life, pain, loss, until we experience them and come out alive and most of the time, weathered, but better. I struggle to keep this kind of thinking out. It becomes a real battle when I am going through depressive stages, but it is a battle that must be fought, because when we jaded and effected/infected by others, we forget how to really live, I forgot for a long time, those are years I can't get back, but now I remember. I remember that through all of the sadness and anger and pride, there is real beauty, even in people, especially in people. I remember this homeless guy named Paul. My friend Jim and I used to lead a homeless thing, I can't call it a ministry because we didn't do it as much as we probably should have, but this Paul Paul was a guy that was badly burned and disfigured all over his body, his ear were missing, most of his fingers, and his heart was broken. His step father did this to him when he was like 12, for threatening to kill him if he ever hit his mother again. The step father just went in at night, poured gasoline on the sleeping boy and lit a match. Paul had been on the streets since addicted to anything that would take his mind away from his pain that was absolutely everywhere. I tell you now, this guy Paul was the sweetest man I had ever met, he had a good attitude, he love Jesus and taught me that for him God was a warm blanket to him, I agree and wish I always saw it this way. I tried to help him, to naively find him a job and housing. I gave him a calling card and he would call me from pay phones every night to pray before he laid his head down in the cold. I tried so hard, but in the end he stopped calling, he stopped showing up to our place we would meet. I lost all contact with him altogether and being the arrogant little jerk I always have been, I got angry, I was disappointed for working so hard for this guy, just to have him give up on me, on himself. At the time I was jaded, I could only think of reasons not to ever try to help again, especially against addiction. But now I am in tears thinking about this guy Paul. I didn't do anything about where he lays his head, or about what he ate and when, truth be told, Paul may have been designed more for me than I was for him, but I did learn something through that. God is a warm blanket. And that I have no idea what it means for a guy like Paul to give up, yet I thought he did, so I did, to my shame. But I won't do that again...give up that is. I am going to try harder because I think that God has been trying to tell me something, but I can't really hear it yet, I don't understand, but I know that what I am is never enough.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Weird Thing Is
It is 2:45 AM and here I sit again staring at the blue light of the computer. I have been getting in this habit late at night to turn off all of the lights in the house, open the window so the cold air blows in, turn on the heater, grab my Bible and my book light, put my iPod on and sit there for long periods of time with the heater blowing on my feet. Weird, I know, but don't judge me. My wife hates it, she says I am wasting the heat and running up our heating bill. She probably right, but I like it. I like to look outside and see a peaceful city out there, one where the noise rules, the haters hate, and the Christians join them. It is nice to see the world at rest. I was thinking yesterday about when I sleep, does God watch me and think I am precious even though I have been an idiot all day long making noise and over all making a fool out of Him. I like to think that He does because It feels better to believe that, and also I believe it because He tells us that. The only thing about it at night is that there are a million cats out there walking around, being rude, invading peoples property, like the homeless right? The weird thing is that as quiet as it is outside my window, it is so loud, the cries of those in-poverty, or war-torn, or fatherless, or old men kneeling at there beds, saying their prayers and looking at pictures on the side of their beds of there late wives, missing them to death and wishing tonight might be their night. The guy that hates his job so much, he is exhausted, but dreads sleep because he knows he has to wake up early in the morning and do it all over again. The woman who is laying awake staring at the ceiling in some guys bed, not at all in love, wondering how she got to where she is right now. The child sleeping tightly in its mothers arms at the shelter like a precious possession that can not be stolen, next to 50 more beds just like it in some moldy church basement, or worse, a box, or a viaduct, or an alley. It seems so peaceful, but it isn't so peaceful for some, but for all God looks down and watches us sleep in silence.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Lewdness
Today I am missing my beloved Christmas Miracle Beard. I am tempted to grow it back, but every time I get close to making the decision to grow it, I remember the summer is coming and a big beard is not great during the summer, so I will wait until fall. Anyways, so we were driving home from Kindergarden Round-Up tonight and as we pulled off of the schools street with all of the other parents behind us, some checks flew from the dashboard to the floor just below my legs and just out of my sight and reach, so my wife proceeded to turn on the interior lights and lean over almost laying her head on my lap to reach for the checks. Just then, this car from Caeden's class pulled up beside us and the guy looked at me and smiled a knowing smile. But he didn't know, what he saw was something that looked like a lewd act being done with our kids in the back seat. It was hilarious, but how are we ever going to go back to that school again?
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Monday, March 17, 2008
St. Pat, You Are A Jerk, You Weren't Even Irish
You know what I hate about this holiday? The raping of Scottish culture to serve the Irish. I am a little Irish as well, but I am mostly Scottish and I believe William Wallace should return and take back out pipes, our kilts, our heritage from the Irish loving Americans who think that they are all the same. They are not the same, the Irish wore kilts, but they were long, they went to their feet, the Scottish kilts go just below the knees. The Great Pipes are also a Scottish thing stolen by Americans to serve the Irish, the Irish had little pipes that were used like whistles in pubs and watering holes, The Scottish played huge organ like pipes in the highlands that resonated throughout the country side. I think just about the only things the Scottish and Irish have in common are there relatively close location, the color green as found everywhere in both places, and their hatred of the English, other than that, Americans should get their facts right. You wouldn't call a Spanish person Mexican, or an Indian an Arab, so don't mix the Scottish and the Irish.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The House
I finally got my tattoo yesterday. It hurt. Bad. The top one is the front piece that was done several years ago with some smoke added to it and the bottom one is the piece that was done yesterday. The front piece was done out of anger unresolved. I was pissed and still am that my father left me, so I got a tattoo of me going down with the flames in this house. Since I have realized that God was there, He was always there I got the second one. I didn't need anything outside of Him. I went through some fire and I survived, not because I am strong, but because God is strong in me. I got the back piece to show the house was burnt down, but I am still standing. Tattoos for me are the tracks of where I have been. A kid asked me the other day, because some of my students don't know I have tattoos because I cover them mostly, why I get them if I am not going to show them off. Because I get them to remind me of where I have been and where I hope to go. They aren't about vanity, they are about following my own footsteps to remember my mistakes, to remember the mile markers of my life. Most are symbols of pain, but some, such as Jesus on my chest are reminders that Christ lives here. I got that one when I first became a Believer to remind myself that if I ever had my shirt off with a girl, I would look down and remember who is living inside me when I am about to stumble. Some people keep journals, some paint, some photograph, some tattoo.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
After The Bath Tub
I can’t even put it into words, but what I can tell you is that I once tried to kill myself and God saved my life. I tried again, and He saved my soul. I laid there on the floor after having said my first prayer to God and I wept for days. I would eat through tears, I would cry myself to sleep, I could not stop my heart from breaking. Because it needed to be broken. It had been so long since I had felt anything at all, and in this moment I felt loved, I didn’t deserve it and I knew it, but it was real.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Monday, March 10, 2008
30 Sucks So Far
This is my awesome birthday party summed up. I had a really great time, my wife invited a million people, I sang Neil Diamond, and my precious friend Joe sang the worst version of Self-Esteem by The Offspring I have ever heard. It was probably the fun-nest night I have ever had, besides my wedding night, but we won't talk about that. I ate at New Peking, the best Chinese ever, then went to bed at about 5 AM. It was cool, then there was my real birthday which isn't over yet, but isn't looking so good. I do not like being 30 from the get go. I woke up at 7 AM and watched the sun rise, then spent a couple hours at the DMV so that I can drive, which doesn't make sense to me because who wants to spend their birthday standing in a crappy, long line. Then I was made aware that my tattoo artist is out for a couple of days, so I ate again and again. Who know maybe the night has greater things in store for me, but no matter what happens, I am still 30 today and I do not feel like it.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Lenses
I cannot trust my eyes. The thing about your eyes is that they see what your perception on that reality is. If you hate the cold and snow, when it snows, you see it as something bad. If you love the snow, it is beautiful and a gift from God. When in reality, it is always a gift from God, but we do not always perceive gifts that way, some gifts we experience pain through. I looked outside today, really looked and I saw something I haven't seen for a long time. I saw youth. I have always felt such longing when I remember what I experienced the day I realized that God was...and loved me. Today I looked out the window and I saw through those eyes again. Something is happening in me and I am going to share those things God is doing with you and those around me. I have missed the the eyes that really see the beauty in what God has done, both in creation, and in my life, instead I have been viewing the world through negative and angry lenses. So when something beautiful happens, it couldn't be real because nothing good is ever good for long. Today I disagree. The things I look at every day is real and good. I realized that you are looking at Jesus when you look at a homeless person. You are looking at Jesus when you see the elderly, and the crippled, and the imprisoned. Jesus was a revolutionary, as so should I be. Jesus did things out of the ordinary, and so should I. My heart is broken, but in the best way.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Into The Wild
I just watch this movie last night and it has me thinking, which is the single thing I look for in my favorite movies. It was both sad and inspiring and reminded me that I am only going to live for a short time and will eventually run out of opportunity to do the things I think we all need to do, like see the ocean, visit the Grand Canyon and all of that stuff. It is harder now because I have kids and a wife and a job and school, but I don't think that is much of an excuse because you can live this way at home. Go out and experience something, take the time you would have spent on entertainment and go do something out of the ordinary because thats what stories are built on, they bring you memories that no one can ever take form you. In my small group a couple of my friends said that I have all of these crazy stories and one of them said all of his crazy memories were with me. That made me feel good because even thought there is so much I haven't seen or done, I have still done something. I have a lot to look back on, both bad and good, but do not regret any of them, even if it did wind me up in the clink.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
I Am Finally Famous
7 Days. It was the amount of time the person who watched the tape in The Ring had to live. It is also the amount of days until I turn 30. Exactly 10 years after I turned 20. 2 Different decades, 2 separate feelings about it. I turned 20 ands I was thrilled, 30 not so much as thrilled as I am terrified. Not scared of 30 so much as I am 40, but you must hit thirty to get to 40 and here I am sitting on the doorstep to 50. I am a little dramatic I know, it isn't that bad, I am still young, I still remember stuff. My hair is all there and is still it's original color, I have not put on an old man beer gut, and I am in better shape now than I have ever been, but I am now another set of numbers altogether and I do not think I am going to like being seen as a 30 something. But oh well, no use getting all sobby about it I don't think, last year was hard, but life goes on and I got through it feeling pretty good for a 29 year old, so 30 will probably be no different. So this year, I am not going to sulk...much, over it. Though it would be nice if the just out of teenager land hair cutter girl didn't tell me I look good for my age ever again. Anyway, Happy Birthday Me! I have made it! Oh wait.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Monday, March 3, 2008
To Battle injustice
How do we fight the injustice in the world without resorting to the fowl ways in which some fight? I hate abortion, I hate it so bad, I would go to war gladly to end it, but I can't because judges believe it is our right to kill the innocent. I hate Americas court system, it is unfairly skewed towards certain races and genders, but I can't change it, can't even fight it in court. I hate the injustice being done in our government system, but you cannot fight the government. They preach at me to vote, so I vote and still lose and now they say at least I have the right to complain since I voted, but what does complaining help anyone when the world is out of it's mind with self indulgent interests? I think the answer doesn't involve hate, it doesn't involve violence, it involves love. Love more people to pave the way for others to love other people. Many people don't love others because they don't know what that means or looks like, they just need a model, not of the Americas Top persuasion, the role kind. My friends used to say I needed a role model growing up and I did. I think the advantage I had over some others who were raised in conventional and healthy families is that I didn't have any preconceived notions as to what love should look like from a grown man. So I read the Bible and saw what Jesus did for what He did, without the filter we process things through to understand them. I did as the Bible told me to, even if I did take some things literally that were meant to be metaphors, I was still loving. That is what the world lacks and what a Christian should be able to offer it, but we need models, they need models to follow and when people are loved, they listen more to those that love them and here is our front lines on battle. If you hate injustice, love others and teach them how Christ handled injustice by asking forgiveness to the criminals that hung Him...Us
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)