Waiting..............

I keep getting into this figurative car and slamming the door on myself, trying to tell myself not to go. There is this battle that wages within every human. The battle to hold on to the things that have value while trashing the things that harm us. This is maturity. When we have learned to bag the bad and live the good, you are fully mature. This is supposed to be natural I think, but for me I find myself constantly finding myself in that car slamming the door on the things that are good.

Like fire. This is the thing people saw most in me when I realized that there is a God and He is active in my life. I was excited. I was ready for anything. I would let you stick me with a rusty knife if it meant you finally seeing the truth like I did. I wanted everyone to know that Jesus is real, and alive, and active right now. I wanted the entire world. I was intense. I would drink pots and pots of coffee and read and educate myself. I was training for a war. People would comment on my intensity because I was a bit misguided and rash.

Then something happened...time. Time passed and I helped make a family and tried really hard at my life and job and failed to be who I thought I could be. I have always had big dreams and thoughts, but lacked follow-through. I felt God had more in mind for me, but failed to deliver what I should have been able to deliver. So I became frustrated with the constant starting and stalling. God would shake me with something and the cobwebs would be cleared and I would set fire again....for a while, then fizzle. I would get discouraged so much and find myself ready to quit, then smash, an SUV would strike me from behind and I would emerge alive again....and full of flames. I was still on fire when my brother took his life.

After that.....I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It had a base in anger, but didn't feel like anger. It felt like how a field feels when the wind is blowing and no one is around to watch how far it's stems bend. I was just there receiving punches. I took them, but I am still unsure whether I was really fighting or just receiving the punches out of a feeling that I deserved them.

I did things to better myself and my surroundings. I did difficult things to take my mind off the time that was passing so quickly. I went back to school and changed careers even though I loved the one I was in. I felt the need to escape the bleeding that seemed to come from every place I set my foot down. I would pray to my God, but to be honest, my prayer life lacked any fire at all. It was me asking for help and God directing me back to my own heart. I knew the answer then and know it now...letting go of the things that are harming you and returning to the fire is the only way to find yourself complete. I had walked away from the little things that burned in my chest and forced me to act. I got in that car and slammed the door on myself and anything great I could have become.

Life isn't about your talent or potential, life is about your obedience to God even when the entire universe hates every inch of your existence. It's about the fight....and remembering constantly why you are fighting. If you forget that reason, you will end up stagnant. You will end up without any direction to travel and you will sit down and wait. Waiting is the worst enemy of any human being.






I know I said I would finish the Halloween story, and I will, but I still haven't figured out how it ends.

Sing.
Migrate.










Thanks for reading...Z

The Awakening - For Halloween- 2 part series

I opened my eyes. I open them again. I opened my eyes. I open my eyes to silence. The sun flashes through the trees like street lights passing overhead in the night sky while your driving away from someone. The wind is blowing leaves over my jacket and across my face. This is the most peace I have felt in many years. I can't hear anything, not even the wind, not even the squirrel that scurries up the tree beside me. It looks surprised to see me awake. He stops mid-trunk, looks at me and stares into my soul, searching for a threat, then tears up to the top. Life is happening in slow motion and I have no real desire to speed it up.

My life is too fast. I wake to the world forcing me to be somewhere. I sleep as a necessity to get me to where I have to be tomorrow. I am a soldier marching on through whatever is happening in this giant spinning sphere. There is a tightness in my chest, so bad sometimes that I have to remind myself to take a breath and then another. I feel smothered and sinking. I haven't spoken to my family in so long...never have the time. My mom calls three times a week and I don't even listen to her messages anymore. It's not that I don't love her, it's that I don't have time for her. I don't have time for anything. They came to my house last Thanksgiving in Seattle at my mom's insistence. My dad just sat at the end of the table and ate quietly while my mom waited on me, probing me with questions. "Do I have a girlfriend?" "What's my job like?" "Where do I do my grocery shopping?" I told her I had to sleep and we all went to bed. Through the wall, I heard my dad ask her if they could just grab their stuff and leave in the night. I woke the next morning and they were gone. My mom left a hundred dollars on the pillow. I haven't heard from my dad since. I haven't spoken to my mom since. I have always felt so ashamed for that night.

Right now I feel nothing but silence, so I choose to stay still for a while...just until I can feel my feet moving across the pavement. My body seems to be moving across the path, but I don't feel any part of me. I do find it strange that no one is on the streets, in fact the place looks like crap. The buildings are dilapidated and the sidewalks are split in pieces by weeds refusing to be ignored.

"There's nobody here! No one is left!" Shouting a voice from nowhere and all around me, seeming to shout from the inside of my body to the outside. "What? Where are you? What's your name?" I shout back. Silence. No answer. I am no longer relaxed. I start to run, but still cannot feel my feet. I look down and now cannot see my feet. I panic and turn into a store and slide through the door handle and stumble through the glass and into the room. I had meant for my feet to stop and they didn't. I had meant for my body to hit the glass, but it didn't, yet I am in this room. I see the phone and try to grab it and nothing happens. I scream in frustration and still nothing happens.

"Think about picking up the phone without your hands and just speak to who you want to speak to," says this voice again, this voice that sounds arrogant, that has a hint of laughter, like he is making fun of me. My dad used to do that when I would argue with him, like he knew the answer and the future and was going to just go along with me and laugh at me when I failed.

I reach for the phone again and nothing. So I close my eyes, which I assume I must have because it became dark when I did so. "Call my mom." Ring. "Yes!" "Hello?" "Dad?" "I'm no one's dad, he says laughing. Who might I ask is calling me?" "It's Mason, is my mom there, Shelly Morgan? Is this even the right number?" I say. Laughing comes from the other side of the phone. "Who is this?!" I say. "This is Shelly Morgan's answering machine." "What? Stop messing around, is she there?" "She's not here anymore. No one is here anymore, they are all gone into the ground. They all went screaming," he says. "Stop it! Who is this?!" "This is the only voice you'll ever hear again. You won't like me much now, but when the silence becomes deafening to your mind, you will pray to me for my voice."


More to come, to be continued.......







Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

My Last Right

I work in an environment that deals with so much death. I meet many people when it is too late. I am new to this environment, but I have to admit that it has scared me a bit. I don't feel much of it when I go home. I take off my shoes and scrub all of the disease off of my skin and go to bed. Some cases bother me because they could have been avoided or they were too young, but for the most part, I am not affected. But I do think that after a while, it could be very easy to take death too lightly. I could be me lying there on that bed with another jaded person suctioning my airway...rolling me over every two hours.

Humanity needs a second look.

In the Bible, people would fall on their swords just to avoid disrespect for their family. I do not and could never imagine being subjected to the things that many families put their loved ones through. People just want the problem to go away so they can rest again. So as long as there is a heart rate on that monitor, even if it is being controlled by my hands, they will live. Make a puppet of them, just make them live.

I do sympathize. If it were my wife or kid lying on that bed, I would fight for their last breath. I cannot blame the family for trying and hoping, I would tear that hospital apart, but in the end, the person that suffers is the person that is being kept from peace. They just want you to let them fade.

This is gonna sound weird from a pastor. Don't take it the wrong way, I do believe in God. I do believe in miracles. I do believe that God is capable of anything and He is active in this world and in our personal lives. But when people come in and decide to let us cut holes in their mother's throats and stomachs to make them stay alive when there is not a chance of recovery, and yell out Jesus' name, I get frustrated. People still do not seem to understand that God blesses those who do evil with those that do good. He takes away those that do evil as well as those that do good. God takes us into what comes next for a reason. Just because you may believe in God and place your faith in Jesus, does not mean your family or you yourself will not suffer and die. Actually, the Bible says the contrary. So when you put your loved one through all of this torture and do it in God's name, I get a bit annoyed because my job isn't to coach your life decisions. My job is to be an advocate for the patient, even if that means I have to tell you that it may be time to consider whether your loved one would want to continue.


So I come home from suctioning really old people and turning them every two hours to avoid the inevitable bed sore, and I take a shower and decide to not allow that to ever happen to me unless there is a really good chance that I will walk out of that hospital on my own two feet and listen to music again. The moment I cannot hear the music or see my family's faces, I want to fade away.













Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z