Super Bad

I was a little kid. I had a huge imagination. I thought that stabbing walnut forks into the arm of my mom's best friend's dead husband's favorite chair was a good idea. It made me a very nice little throne to sit on while we waited for them to finish with their endless talking. However, it crushed my mom's best friend and embarrassed my mom. I wasn't a bad kid I don't think, but I was a challenge. I wasn't easy. It took me a long to time to realize how hard it must have been for my mom to raise two kids on her own, not to mention, one of them that tested everything. Everything.

Here are a list of things I should not have done, but are not really genuinely sorry for that put my mom into panic attacks. Some of these she will just learn about as she reads this.

1. Pulled a knife on a kid who was part of a rival tweener street gang.
2. Mooned my teacher and got suspended.
3. Shot out people's windows with a BB gun.
4. Caught fish and put them in the video store drop box every weekend.
5. Started a forest fire by my house.
6. Announced that I had gotten my ex-girlfriend pregnant at my mom's family reunion. She thought it was a joke. It wasn't. I did that one passive aggressively on purpose.

There are so many more, but I don't want to kill my mother today. Anyways, it isn't mother's day, but I sure do appreciate you.















Sing.
Migrate.










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Self Speak

Everyone has self speak. It is the way you talk to yourself when you are experiencing things like stress, joy, trials, sadness, laughter, despair etc. It is a coping mechanism.

After a fight, we justify ourselves and our actions and play out the scenario as if it went completely different than it really did, at least our ideal way it should have played out, and would have if we had it to do over again.

After a loss, we may blame ourselves, knowing full well we had no fault in the loss, however we do this anyway. Some people like me have the tendency to try to make an already bad situation worse by adding shame to the equation.  We tell ourselves things that are not true and sometimes, we begin to actually believe these things.

After a success, it is human nature, not God's, to pat ourselves on the back for our conquest. We like to idealize ourselves and our personal talents involved in the winning of a certain battle in your life. It is really easy to forget, if you are not careful, who gave us everything that is good in our lives. Our talents, our brains, our skills, and our good circumstances were all given to us by God for His purposes and through His love.


After abuse, it is common for the person to blame themselves and every minor mistake he or she has made to justify the actions of the person we love that has abused us. It is our defense and for some, our only defense.

What do you tell yourself when you look at your reflection every morning? Are you confident that you will be OK given any circumstance: That no matter what comes today, God has given you the skills to overcome? Or are you not liking your chances on a day to day level? Maybe you aren't sure you can get through even one more hurdle. Sometimes the fear of the struggle wins before we even consider taking a stand against it.

Studies show that confidence and positive self speak offer more positive outcomes. The self fulfilling prophecy theory. Don't know what I think about that, but I do know that when you are confident in God, you will walk into a tornado and find yourself walking out the other side.













Sing.
Migrate.

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The Sound Of Silence

The experience of waking up is different when it's dark out. I don't want to drag myself out of bed. I have the fan going, the window open, the peaceful music playing. Life in bed at 6 AM is beautiful, especially when you wake up for a few moments to experience it.

I step out into a quiet dark sky. The wind is blowing hard this morning and there is a bite in the air. I leave for school a little early, so I can sit in my car and think for a bit. I hate that life is so fast these days. I want the quiet back. In just a few short minutes, the sun will be up and the angery people will be pressing their horns. People will be walking down halls carrying stacks of papers. The phones will be ringing and the night stalkers sleeping. But for now, I will sit in this silence.






Sing.
Migrate.





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The Sound of Silence

The experience of waking up is different when it's dark out. I don't want to drag myself out of bed. I have the fan going, the window open, the peaceful music playing. Life in bed at 6 AM is beautiful, especially when you wake up for a few moments to experience it.
I step out into a quiet dark sky. The wind is blowing hard this morning and there is a bite in the air. I leave for school a little early, so I can sit in my car and think for a bit. I hate that life is so fast these days. I want the quiet back. In just a few short minutes, the sun will be up and the angery people will be pressing their horns. People will be walking down halls carrying stacks of papers. The phones will be ringing and the night stalkers sleeping. But for now, I will sit in this silence.






Sing.
Migrate.





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Sad Stories

Everyone has a sad story. We all live in the same existence. Some in different circumstances, some with less, and some with more. But we all still live in the state of this world. Don't believe me? Look at the suicide statistics. The most common person to commit a suicide is a middle aged, upper class, white man. Is this guy disadvantaged? Most would say no. I don't think the effect of sin has any more effect on the disenfranchised than the white collars that lurk behind desks and are on the verge of  horrific breakdowns. No one has the market cornered on suffering.

Some of us wear where we have been and what we have been through as a badge to testify to our inner strength and perseverance.  We can hold on to that chip on our shoulder for a very long time and drop the gloves to anyone willing to challenge our fight. Others wear them as badges as a testament to the work that Christ has done in them. We hold on to this pretty tight too, mostly because they prove our God to us and validate why we fight so hard. Others don't wear them at all, they just keep bleeding.

I like to do all three. However, the only truth and worth is in option number 2. The others are a reflection of my pride. A reflection I am eager, yet still reluctant to get rid of. Until I do, I will struggle with anger, with regret, with sadness, with impatience, and with pain.










Sing.
 Migrate.









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Pretty

We bought a dog a few weeks ago. A Labradoodle, named Snooki, from the show. She is a hellion. She battles us day and night. She poops, she pees all over the carpet. But she is so cute.

It is crazy how cuteness can change a consequence. She is cute, so we don't kill her. Pretty people, especially girls get less tickets, more jobs, higher salaries, better promotions, better grades, half price car washes, and songs written about them. As if they had different brains and souls than those that aren't so pretty.

Kind of shallow isn't it?











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Migrate.










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Name Tags

People come out of the blue. They just keep coming. New people, interesting people, sad people, needy people, courageous people. God sends people our way for many different reasons. Maybe for us to help them, or for them to help us, or both. Or maybe just for relationships. Relationships make unpleasant things workable. I hate school, but I have made pretty good friends that have made it ok to be there so dumb much. Originally, when I started going to church, it was the relationships I was attracted to, not the programs. I think that is why most people attract to others, because of the innate desire for intimate friendships. By intimate, I do not mean sexual, I mean relationships that go deeper than superficial pleasantries.  We call these friendships our most valuable, because there is trust and we can let down our guards and relax our insecurities.

I just happen to be the kind of person that tries to force these deep relationships on people by not accepting superficial banter and asking personal questions. I ask because I care. I don't want to walk away from a person without them knowing what I am about. I have always shied away from surface level things. If I think you are not being real with me, I will probe you and try to get to the bottom of who you are by recognizing who you are trying to be. I am not clever at it, but I do have success sometimes.

When I meet you, I don't want to talk for very long about your job or your car. I want to know about your greatest fears and your alcoholism. I want to know what you have been through because I believe all people are going somewhere and I want to be a part of them going to a good place. I want to be used by God in all situations.

The thing is: I may forget your name a half dozen times. But I will not forget anything you have shared from your heart. I forget names in part because I don't value remembering your current label or name tag. I care more about what is going on inside.









Sing.
Migrate.










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Bad Guys

What is your definition of a bad person? Do angels grieve their deaths? Is the same God present in their lives the way He is present in ours?


Being a bad person is so subjective, yet so well defined in our own minds. A guy rapes someone. That person in most people's minds is a bad person. A kid tells a lie to his mother. Not such a bad person, boys will be boys, or at least that is what Jesus always said. Right? No? Ok.

Is anyone really bad in their own minds? Does the rapist think he has no hope or good in him at all. Does the one who lies believe that they are a good person. When we see someone who seems evil to us, we generally label them evil and maybe that isn't so wrong, maybe they are. In the same breath, we might see someone who is sacrificing for others and tell ourselves, "That guy is a good guy." Maybe he is, but maybe he really isn't.

The Bible says there is no one who does good, not even one. In reality, I don't believe any of us are good, that is why we need a Savior so bad. However, as evil as we can be, God gives us this gift redeemable upon belief which makes us perfect in His eyes.

This concept has always troubled me. Not because I don't believe it, because I do, but because it goes against the human concept of fairness. You get what you pay for and reap what you sow in our culture. A guy kills a whole family of people in cold blood, he automatically should go to hell many would say. No chance at redemption. Jesus does the opposite. He dies for that person. Unbelievable. But so good.












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Migrate.












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Green Acres

She didn't even mind me going through her cd's. I was looking to see if our musical choices were compatible. I had just met her. She was perfect and I needed to find something wrong with her. But instead of finding awful music, I found every cd my favorite band, Counting Crows had ever made. It was then I knew.

She bought me tickets for this day 11 years ago. I was so sick, I could barely breathe, but I would never miss Counting Crows. More importantly, I would never have missed a chance to see this girl. We sat in the Mezzanine and all I could think about was her. And cough obnoxiously loud. I think I was wearing what she called, "My cutie boy pants." I had and have no idea what she meant by that, but I liked it anyway.

So I married her. Who wouldn't? I would marry her tonight...again...all over again.

She is my center. I cannot function without her. God knew that. She evens me out. If you know me, you know there is something underlying that is profoundly inappropriate and dangerous. She gives me balance. Or I should say, God has given me balance through her.

She is my wife. Goodbye city life. Green Acres we are here!













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Migrate.











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Steps

Anyone else fall up the stairs often? One foot in front of the other as fast as you can. Maybe you take two steps at a time, maybe just one to increase your anaerobic cardio. One slip of the toe and Bam, your shin is shattered, or at least it feels shattered. Or if you slipped at the heal, your whole foot is dead because it scraped the entire step with the weight of your body. Falling up the stairs sucks. My wife has seen or heard me do it so many times, I cannot even count.

It reminds me of growth. We grow. We are people. We start physically, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually growing at birth. Until something stumps our growth. Moms always say it is caffeine. I don't think that is true, but I will contribute to the lie that helps the world calm down. Our spiritual growth is my concern here. All are connected, but specifically, our spiritual growth can take a tumble during our ascension toward spiritual maturity. Be it stress, laziness in studying God's Word, Lack of a passionate prayer life, substance abuse, divorce, addiction, and any other thing that presents itself as a stumbling block, all too pretty to deny.  We are striving for God..desperate for Him, and these things find a way into our lives and distract us.

Too many distractions. The basics are being overlooked. We think we are so smart and need to be fed complex things, but a lot have forgotten the very basics of what it means to be saved. Think about those things.












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Migrate.












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Hello Darkness My Old Friend

It has been several months since I began taking a decent anti-depressant.  I started taking them after Will died because I wasn't sure I could handle depression for no reason and grief. It has been that long since I have had an episode. Until today. It broke through the chemical restraints and my words now run parallel to my eyes.

These days everything is art to me. The sound of a swing set or a rusty gate opening. The way people look in the cars next to me while we wait on a red light. The way waves can sound like music when you listen really hard for it. The beauty of things is why I got attached to my depression in the first place. However, during these times it feels as though my heart is crumbling sand. It can get far too intense. I just want to be alone today. It is hard for me when it is this bad to keep putting on that make-up and wig and dance for everyone.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I thought I heard music and I opened my eyes and began to cry. Partly because I thought I had found a remedy for this, and the other part because I missed it so much. It is like out of nowhere for no particular reason, I miss everyone and everything. I suppose I knew it was coming, re-reading last night's post clued me in a little. I usually don't read my posts after they are written. If I did, I would want to change things and that wouldn't be honest. Let my words be my words at the time I wrote them. I wanted to write in the first place to record an honest memoir of my life. I know, kind of grandiose, but I want to go back and read when I am older and see where God has put me, and how He has survived me. 













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Get Well Soon

I have been doing this semester's clinical rounds in a psychiatric unit. This is a special interest to me, I guess because of my family history of mental chaos, including my own. There is one very distinct and profound difference in the 4th floor and the 3rd. When you step off the elevator on the 3rd floor medical unit, there are pictures on the walls. You go into a patient's room and see cards and flowers and balloons beckoning someone's loved one to "Get well soon." Take that same elevator up to the 4th floor psych unit and things look gravely different. The walls are static, painted cream some 20 years ago. No wall hangings, no pictures, possibly to reduce stimulation for the schizophrenic patients, but what about the depressed ones?

Walk into any room on the unit and you will not find any balloons. No cards, flowers, or get well soon notes. Just people meandering. The beds aren't even up to date, they are the old steel ones with the cranks at the bottom. Left overs. I ask why is this the case? Why does the psych unit look and feel so much different. Is it that people have lost hope in the mentally ill and do not believe they will get better? Is it because of the stigma that mental illness is something to be ashamed of and that they are all a danger to society and mass murderers? Is it because many "Crazies" aren't really paying attention anyway due to the copious amount of drugs flowing through their hypothalamus?

I don't know, but I do believe it is wrong. People get judged for being mentally ill. A person does something that others would never do and the "Normals" in society look at them down their noses and grimace. If a person had cancer, would people shake their heads at them and sneer? Definitely not. Why then someone with Major Depression or Bipolar? Schizophrenia? Dissociative Identity Disorder? Movies are made about these people with these illness and sadly, nearly all of them end in one of them killing someone or many people. Truth is you are most likely to be killed by a greedy person than a mentally ill person.

You can probe your churches' prayer list and you will see dozens of people with cancer and heart disease, things that are acceptable to get. But how many times do we see a prayer request for a person with schizophrenia? How about Major Depressive Disorder. People can't even get out of bed and have endless thoughts of hopelessness and self medicate with poisons, and they are not worthy of our prayer? When was the last time you saw a church ministry to the mentally ill? We go to nursing homes, soup kitchens, prisons, pregnancy centers and all of these things are beautiful to God and to the world, but what about a psych ward? I don't mean to be on a high horse, but it has been weighing on me since I started this rotation. Everyone is lovable. My pastor Dave was talking about that this morning at church. Loving people for real. Having your first instinct be to protect. I feel that there is a whole culture of people not being protected or loved very much. Loving the marginalized people is what Jesus was famous for, we should be too. I realize the tone of anger and self righteousness in this post. It wasn't meant to sound like that because I am to blame as well. I have laughed at a guy talking to himself before. I have assumed I should grab my kids and get them away from them. So the tone is not meant to offend, only to vent.













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Flying In Your Rocket

We would build rockets not because we had nothing else to do at 3 AM, but because we wanted to see things fly away. Something that we made, with our own hands. We loved to watch the rocket fuel burn as it sparked, then propelled those rockets into the cold night sky. We would soon lose sight of them, but something about them falling into someone else's grasp made us feel good inside.  We knew we weren't leaving. The thing about the Dead End Kids is that we don't really go anywhere. But we do enjoy every piece of land we conquer. We may leave, but we will always come back. Because this is our home, our ghosts still roam these streets.

His ghost will roam these streets until I can no longer remember them. For a minute we were the kings of our existence. We were invincible.


Will proved that to be immature. We aren't invincible. We get severely and fatally hurt. We are human, not robots, not machines. We are fragile.

It would be really nice to see my big brother right now, but he is ashes and enjoying Heaven. I can only selfishly wish he were here.










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Opium

It's alright now, the world can see it through your eyes now. But you still didn't have to go.

Imagine the entire world seeing life the way you see it. All of God's creation reacts to the way you feel, the fate of each day rests on the way you perceive waking up. Some wake up to the sun and on those days, the world will dance and sing and see the beauty of everything. Others like me would wake up suddenly to four walls caving in as the joists bowed, then cracked, then snapped. The sun would decide not to shine and the moon would hide behind nothing. And you would still see the beauty in everything.

The problem is that we usually don't see whats really going on until it is too late. I could see it in his eyes, but I didn't see it through his eyes, so I lacked understanding. Empathy is the practice of seeing things through another's eyes, not just pitying them. To the very detriment to this world, apathy runs parallel to empathy. Most choose the smoother apathetic road as it has no cracks, valleys, or hills to climb. On the smoother road, we can walk right by the wounded and they won't slow us down, because we would never really stop. We would look down, frown, and leave that guy alone. "Too bad for that guy," we would say. The empathetic road is full of good Samaritans searching for a way to alleviate the broken from their suffering. It isn't the easiest road, but it is the most rewarding. It is the road, you will see Jesus on every time.

I wish I had been traveling that road 9 months ago. Can't change that now. But for the sake of keeping accurate records, let it be known that I would have changed everything.

We cannot continue living a life of opium. We can't push back the things that evoke negatively perceived emotions and choose not to feel them at all. They are gonna get you one way or another. Putting them off will lead to greater pain. So trying to avoid seeing the way the world really is to another that is hurting will really only harden your heart. A hard heart is death.











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God

What is it that makes a person rise up with the dirt from the ground falling from their face and look up to the stars and continue dreaming?  I say these ARE the things that make us rise from the dirt. Many have no idea that they are blessed so much that they have received minor struggles. Others have no idea that they have been given even more by being drug through the fires of hell. These times make us what we are today and tomorrow. Even if today, you suffer, there is tomorrow, and who knows but God what tomorrow will bring?

There was a time that I thought there was no hope.

There was a time, I thought what I had seen would be what I would forever see.

There was a time when I stared at the door of life and decided to open it and jump right off into the abyss that showed me nothing but darkness.

Then there was the time that my God saved me. Gave me everything I needed, and not much of what I wanted, until my needs became my wants.

God is good. If there is a theme to these ramblings some people call blogs, this should be it. I hurt so bad. Sometimes I wonder if I can take another moment of it. But I will tell anyone who will listen how good God is. I am alive and hopeful because and only because of how great God is. Literally, everything good in me, is because of Him and only Him. I have nothing, and never was anything outside of Him. So if you compliment me on something and I say thank you, that means thank you to my God that has given all good things to me without limit.











Sing.
Migrate.










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