Dad?

My dad was a revolutionist. He lived in a culture of tyranny and imperialism. He was a freedom fighter in the war, a legendary one. He left me behind to play with my friends as he went off to wage war against the bloodthirsty king of Scotland. In he end, he died, but Scotland gained it's freedom. Except that wasn't my dad at all. That was the story of William Wallace as told through the movie "Braveheart."

My dad was the anti-Braveheart, he was the opposite. He was unbrave. My mom got pregnant and he got gone. In fact, offered her $5,000 to leave well enough alone and walk away. After all, she was the promiscuous one, not him. Guys are just being guys. My brother Will used to say, "Like Jesus always said, Boy's will be boys." She took him to court to fight tyranny and give me a semblance of a father. She was the freedom fighter, the warrior.

1978. No DNA testing was admissible. Her word against his....and my brother's estranged father's. They ganged up on her. She was defenseless. He left the courtroom smiling.

I lay on the court pew, staring at a small hole in the toe of my mother's friend's stocking. I slid down to the floor to get a closer look. I probably resembled Ralphie with the leg light. I picked at the hole until I could get my finger through it. I looked up shortly after and my mom was sitting next to the judge talking about something. It was nothing to me then, but was going to determine my future for better or worse. He left grinning. I left murdered without knowledge of my demise. But really? Was I?

If you asked me at age 13, I would have told you I was dead. I wasn't a man, but I had to grow up fast and learn as I went. I did things that men with integrity did not do. I learned the hard way every step of the way. We didn't have much money, so I think us moving all the time encouraged me to put the blame in the wrong corner. I pointed my fingers at my mom, because I couldn't find my dad.

I always wondered what he looked like. Will I look like him? Will I see him someday in the world and we would make eye contact and just know and walk away? There were two occasions in which this did happen.

I worked at a factory and there was this guy on the morning shift that trained me. I spent hours on top of steel rollers talking to him. There was something familiar about him. A very strange piece of me wanted him to be my dad because I could forgive this guy, I could love this guy despite the anger and hatred that fueled my blood to circulate. His name was Jim, as was my fathers. He had a daughter a year younger than me...one of the only pieces of information I knew about my dad, apparently when I was a small child I played with my sister in front of a church during a kids musical presentation. He wasn't my father.

Another time I was working at a factory and this Scottish guy walked in. My father was Scottish. His father born in Scotland. He used to come watch matinees at the theater wearing his kilt. Again, this strange familiar feeling that this one was something different to me, not just some kilted Scotsman. I believed him to be my grandfather Noble. I dashed over to the cash register and pushed the teller out of the way to take his payment. He paid by credit card. He was not my grandfather.

It was hard for me not to know who he was or what he looked like. This was the single thing I wanted to know the most. I needed a face to paint my anger on. I didn't get it until a couple years ago when my mom hired a PI for father's day to get his picture for me. He was nothing special at all. I looked at his face and felt nothing familiar. I was ambivalent. Wasn't the reaction I was looking for.

All my memories of my father came from memories of someone else's father. People I idealized and wanted to be, just were not. There was this guy, who when contacted three times rejected me three times. Just like Jesus. I should have rejoiced in sharing in His suffering.

It took me a while to ask myself the most profound question concerning my father: Was I better off without him? I looked at so many things to determine these things. My sister told me through a rejection email that he was her hero and was this utopian man dedicated to serving Christ. I only knew the back of his head. My mother raised us without much. We could have used some help. He raised my sister in this big house with tractors and motorcycles. My mother worked and will continue working 14 hours a day to keep food on the table and a leaky roof over our heads. Once we had to live in a rat infested house. He got to retire and relax and enjoy everything a break gives you. I struggled with rejection and rage my entire life. I made crucial mistakes that have altered my life. I have been broken and broken things all due to the lack of any idea at all on what it meant to be a man. Because of him. But was it? Was it because of him?

The answer, after so many years of suffering is no. It was because of God. God does not cause sin. God does and will work through anything He chooses though. God had a finger on me from the womb. My father's heart was hardened, but God saw something different in me. He created it in me. He mourned and wailed and howled with me as I suffered, but He did all of those things with me, not just for me. I was no pity case to my Christ, I was a warrior, training how to get cut and bleed and continue to fight. All of these things make sense to me now. I am who I am because of who He is and what He has done in me. God moves in disaster. God moves in defeat. God moves in misery. Because nothing in this world or the next is mightier than our God.

I got what He wanted. I got to be stronger than my father. I got to know God in a way my father could never imagine. I got to really appreciate being a father as a child that never was one.

Our God is good. If you are in turmoil, take heart in that. Hide it deep inside your heart.


Photo credit to: http://amazoncocugu.deviantart.com







Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z

His Hands

Part one of "The Lie Detector Results say.......You are ? The Father" blog series. This series aims to express the grace and love we find in our Savior even in the deepest, darkest valleys of our lives. Today, we have Courtney, my dear friend whom I have never met before (Thanks to the internet, I suspect I get to know more about her heart than many she has met). She is the owner of Storing Up Treasures. One of my favorite people. One of my favorite blogs. Introducing......




I can still smell his truck.

His dirty, old pick up. The smell of chewing tobacco mixed with sweat.

I can still feel the weave of the seat covers as it rubbed against the back of my legs. And the wind blowing on my face as we drove.

His hands.

I can still see his hands.

I was only four years old the day he left. I remember that day in vivid detail. The way his face looked. The way his voice sounded. The way he loaded his things into that truck. The way he hugged me.

"Where are you going Daddy?"

"I have to go away for a little while. But, I will be back."

And then he was gone.

For years I waited for him to come back. I prayed he would come back. I pretended he was away on business. I even told my friends that. I cried myself to sleep. I dreamt he was with me.

And each day that passed, each month that he didn't call or write, a piece of my heart died. Each year that came and went, each birthday he forgot, bitterness took hold of what was left.

In the grade school years he showed up a couple of times. He made promises he couldn't keep. Told me he loved me. Said he was sorry. Took me and my little brother to McDonalds. Somehow thinking his brief presence would make up for all of the years he lost.

"Let's just let it be water under the bridge, Courtney"

It will never be water under the bridge Dad.

It could never just be water under the bridge.

My brother idolized him. He wanted to be him. I hated him. I wanted him to go away and never come back. At least that is what I told myself.

The teen years were an unleashing of the bitterness that had taken root and festered for so long. And before anyone could blink, I was on a path of destruction.

Drugs. Alcohol. Men.

I looked for anything to numb the pain.

Things with my Mom became volatile as she watched me slip away. We fought all of the time. She had lost control of me. I was drowning and she couldn't save me.

So the summer before my 10th grade year, I went to live with him.

He didn't hesitate to have me come.

He smoked pot with me. He bought me cigarettes and alcohol. He let me continue destroying myself and told me it was all okay.

He said he loved me. He said he was sorry.

"Let's just let it be water under the bridge."

But, it could never be just water under the bridge Dad.

 I went back home. Never wanting to see him again.

Daddy's should be strong and brave. Polished and secure. They should tell you to be safe and ground you when you are misbehaved. They should hold you when you are scared and wipe your tears when you are sad. They should offer you advice and wisdom and tell you that you are worth more than the boys you are chasing.

I wanted a Daddy.

I didn't need another friend.

At 16 I became pregnant. At 17 a Mom.

My baby girl saved me. Suddenly I wanted to be more than I was. I wanted to be better for her. She was a healing balm to my injured soul. One look in her eyes, and I knew that there was a God. I knew that He loved me and that this baby was His way of telling me.

I started picking up the pieces of my shattered life. I started chasing after God in every way I could. I wanted to be so much more to my baby girl than my Father was to me.

And God came and enveloped my world.

I always thought I was fatherless. It was then that I realized He had been there all along. I was never alone.

Bit by bit my heart began to heal.

 I began to understand God's love for me and as a result I started to see my Father in a whole new way. As I started to understand what Jesus did for me, how He saved me, I began to see how very broken my Dad truly was.

And forgiveness came.

God began pulling at my heart to call him. To tell him all that was happening to me.

"Dad, I love you."

"Dad, I forgive you."

"Dad let's just let it be water under the bridge."


A month later at the age of 45 he very suddenly died.

I can still hear the sound of his laugh. I can still see his eyes, those baby blues that turned down slightly in the corners.

I can still hear his voice quiver at the other end of the line the day I told him I forgave him.

I miss him.

Not for who he was, but for what he could have been. Not for what we had, but for what we could have had.

My life will never be normal. I have and always will long for a Daddy.  I cry at every wedding when the Father walks the bride down the isle. I long for the wisdom only a Dad could offer. There is a hole in my heart that will never be full this side of heaven.

 I wish my kids had a Grandfather. I wish my Dad could have met them.

I wish that things could have been different. And I don't always understand why things were the way they were. But, Jesus has done what only He can do. He took a broken little girl and healed her. He brought forgiveness to a man that didn't deserve it. He has loved me through the heartache and put back together my heart so that I could live.

 I pray that whatever life has handed you, you would turn to Him and let Him do the same for you.

Sing.
Migrate.




 Thanks for reading...Z

One Left Standing Still

Married for 5 days. He proposed to her at an outdoor flea market in front of a booth selling giant wooden spoons and forks. It means nothing to anyone else, but to her it meant he was the one. She grew up with her grandmother. Her parents both died in Jetliner Flight 223 out of Missouri, when it exploded on take-off. She went to private Catholic school and still wears her uniform sometimes because it reminds her of her grandma. Every Saturday morning at in her kitchen was served fresh biscuits and chocolate with burnt links of sausage, her favorite way to eat anything. In front of her chair, next to the picture of praying hands were these giant wooden eating utensils. They always seemed strangely funny to her as she pictured the Jolly Green Giant eating with those. Her grandma died in her sleep holding a picture of her husband taken during the war.

He knew what her grandmother meant to her...she meant that much to him. She loved that he loved her that much, like her grandmother did. She said yes without speaking, looking at him in the eyes, looking down, and grabbing his hand. She smiled with tears in her eyes and he let himself exhale. They were married days later in front of a judge. He could not stomach having his huge family sitting before him at his wedding and her having no one.

They went to the river and took a riverboat ride for their honeymoon. It was modest, but she never asked for anything but his heart and she had it.

They did things like attend midnight movies and fake choking in restaurants. They ate most of their meals picnic style anywhere there wasn't a table. Tables reminded her of big giant spoons. She wanted to eat smiling. On a Thursday in June, they ate cheese sandwiches and Cracker Jacks in the park. He laid his head on her lap and ran his fingers around her Ruby ring given to him to give her by her grandmother. She told a story about listening to mystery records when she was a child. The weight on her lap lifted almost causing her body to fall backwards. He was gone. She looked down and he was gone.

The rest was the mess she left as she passed through.


Photo credit to:http://mastowka.deviantart.com







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Thanks for reading...Z

One Disappears

 

Who doesn't hope this is the way it all goes down? To be sitting on your favorite chair nodding off to old episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. A piece of potato chip drops to your chest. Your mind is alarmed to the potential that the grease will stain your shirt, but your arms are fixed in a warm position at your sides, hands tucked slightly under your butt. The sun is peeking through the curtain as the window blows it back and forth exposing the sun to your face and assaulting your eyes. The phone rang a half an hour ago and it didn't matter who was calling, you just got home from work...ALL work is done for the day. You shut it down. The world can wait because there is nothing better than a mid-day nap.


Boom. Gone. Your hair seems to be missing, it no longer dangles in your eyes. You can't move your hands freely due to the force. One light-year per millennium is equal to about 670,616 miles per hour. This is the speed you are traveling. It feels like the speed and distance would feel if you were sneezed from your Lazy Boy with the force of God's allergies. Expelled from your chair, your house, and into the universe...watching the houses become sheds become boxes. The grass and landscape become green and brown squares. You haven't had time to even think about what is happening.

A sudden stop somewhere far above Omaha. Above the sun. Above The Milky Way. Above everything times 7. You reach your temporary destination and are placed 6 inches from the mouth breathing Jesus' face. He is smiling. If you look around, you will see millions around you doing the same thing, staring into the face of a smiling Jesus. He smiles because He is happy to see you for the most part. For the least part, He smiles because He knows what He just put you through, the ride, the chair, the chip stains all over your shirt, the smell of vomit for those that can't handle fast rides.

This is the day. The one we have inherited through faith in our risen Messiah.



"Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left” (Luke 17:34-36).



Photo credit to: http://nicholas-bouwer.deviantart.com








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Thanks for reading...Z

Present Day Detroitish Michigan

I would tell most of you that you would not have liked me much in high school and the few years after that. I wasn't the person you see now. I still am not the person you see now sometimes. My last post was scary and messed up and could very easily leave a person thinking: "This guy is a whack job." Maybe true, but I want to be clear that the state I was in at that time in my life was messy. Life can be messy for people. Not everyone gets through unscathed with nothing but good, happy stories to tell. A person's life experiences do not make them scary, or weird, or still in that state of mind. Things change. In my case, Christ was the answer. He is in your case too. This is the state of mind of a person that was profoundly serious about taking his own life. This state of mind isn't pretty and doesn't always sit well with "Normal" people. I can't apologize for my past. I can apologize to people I hurt, but not for who I was, because it served to make me who I am. God's handiwork sometimes is dipped in blood and hidden beneath the night sky.

God is glorified through our weakness, so I cannot apologize for posting the story of God's hands in my life, His heart on my heart. I have to tell of His work in me, because I am so imperfect that it could only be God that keeps me going. This glorifies God you see.

Here is a picture of me now. Completely amazed by the love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God. Ashamed in His righteousness. Healed and redeemed in His blood. Lavished with gifts that I could never have deserved. Happy for every moment I have of air to breathe. Thankful for the opportunity to try and glorify my Savior. I am a failure at many things I try to do and helpless in my lack of ability to do some things. God is good. God is present. God is still chipping away. I am still messy. I am a far cry from where I was, but still messy and so are most of you. I have to admit that if you don't think you are, I am not sure I can relate to you at all. I am really sure that you won't be able to relate to me.


 Photo credit to: http://dignacker.deviantart.com




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Thanks for reading...Z

The Scary One

 This blog is rated R for people who scare easily.


I mentioned in a previous post this person/enigma that used to rule my conscious. He began when I was child, I eventually would grow to call him Cold.

I used to live next to park. The year before I began kindergarten, I would spend a lot of time playing in the park during the day. Most days Tom was there. I remember his name because I made a mental note to fear him forever when I met him. He would sit in the park and play the saxophone all day for coins. I didn't have any coins, so I don't know why he wanted me around, but he did. I was 4. I wanted to play. He was like 20. He wanted to spit fire about dark things at a 4 year old. I listened as if these were the last words I would ever hear. Tom was fascinating. Something was off. He taught me about nuclear war. Taught me about the coming apocalypse. Taught me that everyone has to die. One final time...I was 4.

15 years later I began seeing Tom again. Not the same guy, but a manifestation of him (Cold). I saw him everywhere. I was drinking a lot, so let me preface what I am about to spill on you with the fact that not all feelings and bits of perceived reality can be trusted when you are basted in beer. However, the effects were real to me. They still are real to me.

It began one night at about 4 AM. I was dreaming horribly. This was my habit for several years...to dream horribly. I woke at the sound of my name. My eyes opened without flutter to a very dark room...darker than I had ever remembered it to be. Dark spots briskly moved around in my periphery and vanished at focus. I was sweating like I had run miles and my heart was racing. I could actually hear my heartbeat. I got up, flipped on the light, and shrieked at what was plastered in front of me. A poem painted directly on my wall, with paints below on the floor. It read, "Cover me in ashes. Abandon me in the cold. I'll still be here. I'll still exist." .............Yeah.

By months end, there were 13 or 14 of those things painted on my wall. I don't remember authoring any of them. However, like I said, I had zero nights sober then, so who knows. Poems like "In the end, we all will fly, up to the heavens, to the fire and fry" (Cobain reference maybe, who knows). I painted a single clown. I painted dozens of eyes all over.

I grew paranoid. Anyone would. I believed someone was going to kill me. My door had been kicked in weeks earlier and nothing stolen, so I had some evidence to believe I was being stalked or messed with. I continued seeing things...shapes...hearing things. All things any decent shrink would have diagnosed me Schizophrenic for telling him. I was obsessed with death.

I woke one night after a horrific dream, one of the worst in fact. I couldn't move. I was paralyzed. In my dream, I was being raped by something unseen. I woke and could not move my arms, they were being held down. Maybe by my own mind going ape turd or something different. Couldn't see anything. My phone rang and my arms were released. I ran into the kitchen and looked out the window as I answered it. I felt something terrible behind me. I put the phone to my ear and it was Joe, my brother. He said this: "Adam, he's behind you. I am on my way." .........Yeah.

My mom knew I was in trouble. She had her charismatic friends (Demon slayers, Holy Ghost shooters...joking, all in good fun) over. She says they started praying in my apartment when I was at work and stuff started whipping around there. She said something of a sun flying out the door into the basement. Ghostbusters visuals everywhere. She says everything became suddenly calm and she looked over at my 6 foot iguana who was giving everyone the stink eye. They put a Bible in it's tank and she said he laid his head down on it's 60$ pages. Now, no more definitive answers here. There are several things at play. Psychology proves that when you enter a scary place expecting to see something, you usually do, at least your perception of something. Also proves that terror can deceive your mind and make you draw conclusions that are not in reality. However, my iguana died the next day......Yeah

Took me months of dating to share this with Laura as I didn't want her to run for cover and lose her forever.

Once again, no definitive answers as the horror stopped when I placed my trust in Christ, however, conveniently the same time I stopped drinking.


Photo credit awarded to: http://claudiu-popescu.deviantart.com




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Thanks for reading...Z

Applause. Exit Stage Left

Who do you owe your life to? I owe mine to Christ. And I owe mine to the vessels of Christ. His hands and feet...His very heart. I am supposed to be studying right now. Instead I sit in a secret place thankful for those God has put into my hands. Regretfull for those that slipped out of them.

The wind is howling, blowing around fragments of winter retreating. The bushes and branches dance in unison. The beauty of God is magnificent. It reminds me that everything is in the hands of God. Unlike me...He doesn't drop anything. We are safe in His arms. I believe that with all that is me. So why do I feel so terrible? Why does true beauty make me so sad?

It makes me miss my brother.

Went to DQ today. Standing in line, it remanded me of when we were teenagers and would go to the DQ his girlfriend worked at. He had his own treat...off the menu. He named it the "Tall Will." It was a tablespoon of ice cream and an entire foot of whipped cream stacked on top.

There is something other-worldly about our closest relationships. Those we do not ever want to picture our lives without. Through the love and loss, we finally really see God I think. We see God when we love intensely in these isolated moments when you cant even explain what you are feeling or what is happening, it feels unreal. Like it really isn't happening to us, like deja vu. We see God when everything we fear walks through that door and the phone rings at an inappropriate time. Our hearts sink, we are crushed. Suddenly the sound of the water smashing against the rocks sound more like our bones crushing than beauty. We find ourselves in the dark without a guide or a torch. We navigate by feeling hell's slick walls begging for the way out. This is when God puts your hand in His without the lights, beckons our faith and guides us through hell and into something different. This is when our faith, though scarred becomes our vest worthy to take any punishment.


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Security Blankets

In a boat in the middle of the ocean. No one around...just me floating to the rhythm of the wind and tide. This is what gets me to sleep.

I used to use a metronome. Then I slept in the bathtub. Then I slept in my car. All comforting enough to get me to sleep. Something about some of those unstable and potential dangerous things made me feel safe. I could not be reached in the middle of the ocean in a storm. I would not be found sleeping in the bathtub...no one sleeps there because it hurts your back, head, pelvis, neck, and face (depending on the position you choose).

These things are comfort measures. Things that help us cope with life as we fear it. We all have them. We develop them to survive. Some scientists say that these are the only things that keep us alive. I disagree. God beats our hearts and squeezes our lungs like an accordion. However, I do believe these survival tactics have their place.

Kids hold a teddy bear or a favorite blanket. Will had a silk jacket he wore as a kid. Some kids have their thumb. Some people have cigarettes. Some have mezmorizing beverages. I have my heater and the window. These things rarely ever go away. Some of them we learn to let go of, like thumb sucking and blankets and some don't. Some are destructive and some only we know about. They make us less lonely.


I want to know yours.



Photo credit to: http://xpennywisetheclown.deviantart.com/









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Apocalypse NOW!!!!!!!!

"When I think of heaven, Deliver me in a black-winged bird. I think of flying down into a sea of pens and feathers, and all other instruments of faith and sex and God in the belly of a black-winged bird.
Don't try to feed me. I've been here before. And I deserve a little more" Counting Crows

From the view of where it all started, it would be really hard to see the way things would end up...at least for now.

I started blazing like the sun. You could not quench the fire inside me. You couldn't deter me from pushing forward, despite cardiac arrest. I was in love with learning. I was in love mostly with God. Sleep wasn't important. Every second I could, I would drink coffee (My replacement for more destructive beverages) and open my Bible. Then read books about loving Jesus. Books about how to show that love to other people. Books about what the Bible means (I wasn't developed enough to understand hyperbole or symbolism or parables) I took it all literal... especially Revelation. I will get back to that, Revelation comes at the end of the story as we know it. I was crazed. I was a fanatic. I was ready to die for what I was coming to know of God in my life. Knowledge was everything to me. I ate it like food and stored it in my cells for when I needed energy. I push people away because of my intensity. I judged others without realizing it, just by being too pushy. I wasn't proud at all, I knew the other side of their plight for the world, I had been in the depths of the dragon and felt it's fire. It singed my face. I wanted no one to suffer. I came on too strong for most people. Heaven was to me, the beginning of all things. I was ready to die.

Now what is interesting to me is that just moments before I gave myself over to Christ, I also wanted to die. I think the idea of a noble martyrs death instead of the quitters death seemed more attractive. I was still looking for a way out because as excited for God as I was, I was still in hell. I still wanted out and this gave me a real outlet and a Savior King ready and waiting to except me. What could go wrong?

Jesus was laughing. He wasn't going to let me die on some cold train tracks somewhere away from anywhere. He wasn't going to let me die of a cardiac arrest caused by premature ventricular contractions precipitated by Wolfe-Parkinson-White Syndrome. He sure as I write now, wasn't going to let me die in some fool hardy quest for martyrdom. The problem was the death that I was still seeking. He knew that. He knew I wasn't cured yet. I told everyone that the sadness was gone and that I wanted to give my life to Him, but never mentioned the possibility of living through my 21st birthday. I still didn't want that. I wanted to go to Heaven. To quit. Still taking the quitters route.

Revelation. The end of all things. Is it? Is it the end or the beginning? This book full of both literal warning and imagery describing things that are unimaginable for anyone. The day we get new bodies and minds. The day, those that oppressed got there's. The war on earth. The outpouring of the Spirit on His children. The wedding feast to end all feasts. The break in war to celebrate the coming again of our precious and wonderful Messiah. The beginning of all eternity...of all new things. It's exciting really.

I saw it as another way out of life. If I weren't going to get that martyr's death, I was going lead the rebellion against the One World Government (I cannot even imagine the people that statement is going to bring to this post from Google searches... holla if you are one of them). I was again, a fanatic. Not the kind that goes to every football game on Sunday and reads about the team when the paper gets to the porch...in that case I am a fanatic as I rise to church every Sunday, read the Bible and study Christ. What I meant was, I was the fanatic that was a little scary. The kind that you want to settle down a little. I was too eager for the things that completely missed the point to what was really going on inside me. I should have focused on love. I should have focused on callousing my hands instead of death and the end of all things.

Over the years, God has broken every barrier to Him that I can think of. I am sure there are more that I am still blinded by, but He has been faithful to forgive and to mold me into a person that resembles someone that wants to try to show the love Christ has for them. I am flawed. I said in my "About me" that I don't make sense until the end. Well I don't. It didn't make sense to focus on death when I was just given life. I will not make any sense of anything until that day, when everything begins. Heaven awaits, but my hope is that I get more time here to be a model of God's love for those in peril, on or off the sea.



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Filled

I hear trains in the distance. It's almost time to leave. "Micah"

I have been learning Final Cut Pro for the last week. One of the most complicated programs for sure. I see why most stick to iMovie and call it a day. I have been practicing on the footage from the movie I wrote and filmed, but never finished. I am learning slowly, but today, the process began to stick. I actually got on a roll editing. I never thought that was possible. I think I may cut together a shorter version of the movie. I have a long way to go, but cutting this together is really exciting. It will be nice that have something as a record of the years of sweat, money, and sacrifice we put into filming this movie.

I am feeling like myself now. I forgot how I feel since I have been medicated to cure who I am. I like who I am when I can feel things. I like me much better. Not naive, I know there are gonna be these grueling lows that leave me comatose, but I like that feeling better than just functioning.

A few short and vague differences between robotic me and the one that my flesh gets to wear:

Robotic:
I want to go to bed early like a grown up.
I don't really have much of a problem getting out of bed.
Mood is stabilized.
I feel flatlined.

Me:
I want to watch the sun rise before I go to bed.
I would rather create than compete against the number crunching trolls. (Sheenism lol)
I notice the little things, like chipped paint on an old bicycle or the flower missing a petal.
I want to go outside again.

Most importantly: I have missed this intense feeling of helplessness to save myself or anything around me. I am completely reliant on God. When I have been emptied out, God fills me up. There is nothing better than being filled by God.  Nothing.











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Getting Comfortable

Things should never fall apart.We get our hopes up and when that happens, we allow ourselves to believe that something really great can happen. We allow ourselves to breathe again because we are with people we can trust.

Then they fail at being the Utopian person you wanted them to be and we are crushed. Thoroughly crushed. 

Who is this person I put so far above me? Are they even real? I say no. If you have placed them above you, I say no. We all sin just the same and are forgiven just the same. God came and made it finally an even playing field. You don't have to be the best of the best in Bible understanding to be His prodigy. You don't have to recite the Old Testament to be the object of His affection. You only have to submit to him. Relax and let go of who your ego wants you to be. I am not asking you to be willing to share or be "Transparent..." I am asking you to be real with God and yourself. Step aside from who you normally are and lay your cards out at His feet. You may just have deuces. You may have high Kings, or you may have nothing. God is the gamble. God wins. God isn't some entity. God is the driving force of life. I want you to know that. I do not write to Christians. It may seem so because some Christians agree with me. Christians have church. I have me and God. I write to you, whether you know The Savior or not, my eyes are fix to you... the reader, whether in full understanding of the significance of Christ's coming or not, things fall apart. People get fatally hurt. They lose hope and walk away from everything that has always sustained them...Because the answer wasn't what they expected.

Pick your head up. Open your eyes. We are in battle. We cannot afford to get comfortable. God is still here. God is still watching. God is still sitting among us pouring out His justice.








Sing.
Migrate.






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Going Back

This has been a decision I have been struggling with for months now. I have never liked the fact that I was on meds to keep me stabilized. Makes me feel weak, even when I know better. I made my final decision today. I am gonna run without the drugs. Gonna leave them behind. Not such a surprise to me as I have been conveniently forgetting to take them for 3 weeks now. Before you speak, hear me out.

The meds make me blank. I don't feel much. Feeling inspires me to act. Without feeling, I don't act much. You get the picture.

This past month or two, I have been creating again. The very thing I love the best about life and the image of God. I have done it because I desired to do so. I want to express what God has put inside me and also what the world has put inside me. Drugged, I just had no desire. I just coasted. Autopilot to get me through my brother's death. I am ready to come out into the sun now.

I realize what this means for me, and for what you may be subject to reading. It feels like I am going back into the belly of the beast. But I don't believe that. I believe I am going to be exactly what God wants me to be. Because He is so big and so great and loving that He will prevail in me, despite my many follies. I know I am allowing the sadness in with the rest, but I think that is what makes me who I am. I don't think I was ever meant to live without it, although I may always be wrong. I am not God. He is.

For now I want to feel things. The last three weeks have been different. Episodes of anger, frustration, disappointment, sadness, and grief have mixed with an intense desire to be wrapped in the arms of God. Withdrawal from the medication and an insatiable desire to be near my God. To be finally whole again.

When God knit me into my mother's womb, He saw this day. He saw everything. All the way from Heaven to Michigan, God saw this kid squirm and struggle to breathe outside of the water...always sustaining him despite my rebellion. My God is good and deserves to be served by me with intensity. I am not bashing medicine. God made it. I really believe that, but for me, I glorify God most in my brokenness. I am now ready to be broken in a healthy way.

I am going back, but I am not going back to that.






Photo credit to: http://enveuz.deviantart.com/










Sing.
Migrate.

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Sit and Wait

Things happen really quickly. Keeping pace can be harder than ever imagined when our pace was playground games and mathematics. Keeping pace in the really real world is a much different thing. There are so many instances in which I lose my bearings like some kid navigating the woods. Everywhere you look is just trees that leave no landmarks or clues of the way home. A kid will usually sit down and cry until something in their bones tells them to dry it up, rise and find your way back home. I think the crying out is what precipitates the strength to walk out of those woods. Grown ups just aren't that easy. We have learned somehow that pushing ahead and solving things is the key to finding that road that leads us back home. But when you are lost, the further you walk, the harder it becomes to find your way.

Sit down. Get your bearings. Cry for help. God responds even if His answer is nowhere near where you wanted it to be. It is the only way to get home.

You find yourself doing things you didn't think was in your heart to do. Shameful things. Embarrassing things. You walk further away the more shame you feel. The further you get from God, the further you go beyond what your innocent heart could stomach. Then wind up this monster that doesn't remember at all what is was like to be sitting at his Creators feet playing with Legos. But if we could only find the courage and humility to sit down and cry for help. Stop moving. Stop running away. We could be found. Not by God, He always knows where we are, but by that kid that played on that schoolyard.

May God's love rest on you tonight. May you find who it is God meant you to be.



Sing.
Migrate.

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Decay

Photo courtesy of 

7 minutes from my front door is this little city. It used to be grand. It used to tout a million people. It's lights shined brighter than most, it's theaters packed with excited people hoping to entertain their fears and stress away in the dark lights as the curtain opened.

When the curtain closed, the curtains began closing everywhere. This is Detroit. Paris of the West. Mo Town. This is the city that should thrive like Chicago or New York. But instead it decays as people leave it to the elements.

A few years back they put up casinos. Surely gambling what you have earned would bring us back. It didn't. It didn't make a dent. The motors stopped being made and the city became a wasteland that the mayor wants to tear down and walk away from.

I drive in to Detroit every Thursday and Friday at 6:30 AM. It is still dark outside and the lights of Motor City Casino are the brightest thing you can see outside of the smokestack fires from Zug Island. It looks beautiful. A grand place where people should be laughing and celebrating. I wish what we saw on the outside was really what was happening on the inside. You walk through it's huge doors and pass your ID to the guard and enter in to this abyss of people. Some responsibly gambling their extra money for a nice night out, and even more gambling probably what they shouldn't gamble. The inside isn't grand at all. The inside is depressing.

I think the casinos are smoke and mirrors hiding what is really happening in Detroit. Detroit is rotting. Rotting from the inside out. People stopped caring from the topside down. Detroit is just full of "Those people" to the suburbans. The news paper reports 40,000 people less living in the D than expected. People in exodus. What could possibly turn things around?

I think the answer is always God. And I think that God desires us to be faithful and positive. I love the Chrysler Eminem commercial because it shows a real star with pride for his home town, whether or not what he believes is true. He believes it. What if everyone living in the big city believed it? What if positivity is just what people need to be proud of their home again? To take pride in it's appearance. To make moves that really bring helpful change to the city. I love driving downtown. I love seeing the beautiful architecture. I would love to live in one of it's huge and really cheap lofts. But I can't. Because the city is a war zone. If you don't believe me, visit Detroit Receiving's ER and just observe.

The lights may catch your eye, but can sink your heart. What is the answer? I don't know, but I think Phillip Cooley, the owner of Detroit's own Slow's BBQ is on to something...
  
“Traveling and living out of a suitcase made me sensitive to my environment and helped me re-evaluate what I needed out of a place I would call home. Detroit, to me, is a blank canvas … it’s a chance for us to create a balanced and sustainable urban landscape.”


Maybe this is exactly what we need. A blank canvas. A place where things aren't in the way and young, artistic, and positive people come and save our city. We need a new way of looking at things. Maybe we need to do the same with all of the destructed and left over things in our lives. Maybe we just need a blank canvas and a little creativity.


Sing.
Migrate.







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Mosaic- Chapter 5- Later

Flashes of light. A gown twirls like a ballerina in unison with the wind. Her flesh is like the flesh taken from a classic painting. She looks at me like she knows me, like we had met before and I just couldn't remember. The lights of the hall seemed attracted to her as her hair reflected every beam back into our eyes. She was noticed by a lot guys that night. A new entry in to the meat market that is Christian dating. The problem is that we are all looking for Christians. There simply does not seem to be enough of them.

I was  7,831.27042 days or boards old. Only a couple years from the tracks, the iron that would not bend except for the force of the power of God. My life as I knew it had been spent walking toward something. I believed it was the tracks that acted as a magnet that drew me to them. I was wrong. Kind of. I needed those tracks to finally get the point. The point of all things. The whole reason for life. Love. Maybe not the kind if love we are accustomed to. Maybe it is a love that we have never experienced, at least I hadn't. It was a love that while devoid of butterflies, leaves you searching for truth. A love that may seem to leave you to your own destruction, but shines when it sees you in redemption. My life was headed for those tracks. But the reason wasn't for death. The reason was to give me a small glimpse of hope.

When a human gets hope, there is nothing on this world that can stop him. You can bring the fire and rain and he will endure it. You can take his flesh and he will see the other side of terror. A man with hope in a Savior ever watching and providing is the most powerful weapon. I had no idea what was in my slightly distant future.

I didn't deserve him. I didn't deserve her. And I especially didn't deserve their mother. I never will and that is beautiful to me because it continuously paints a picture of who God is and what He is really about. See God isn't about minor fixes and small battles, although He reigns in them too in our lives. God is about total and complete victory. God is about releasing who He is on His beloved Creation. We resist, but fail. He will not be stopped in His righteousness. He stopped that train from ending my conscious thoughts. But even if he hadn't, His hand would still have been on me, even if committed sin against my very being and Creator. He would have held my head until my eyes closed. Even if this one person rejected the gift He had given, He would have loved me until the end because our God hates death. He hates sorrow. He hates pain of any kind. But God does give us a choice because a choice to follow Him is glory to Him. So while He has the power and strength to force every horse to drink, He does not. He still leads them, but their tongues may remain in their mouths if they choose. In my case, there was no more denying who was providing the water. I had to drink. I had to give all I was to my Creator...because I was and still am...nothing at all.

So I met her. I went on dates with her. We drove around all night learning about each other. I needed only one night to write in my journal that she was the one. I believed it more than anything. I was right because Jesus was righteous. I had never heard God speak so clearly to me. I had been saved by God. My soul, my heart, and my hands. God used her to save the rest.

The heat and fire melted the cold that the steel put in me. The walk through hell showed me just how magnificent Heaven must really be. How graceful and loving our Creator.










Sing.
Migrate.








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Mosaic- Chapter 4- The Lights of Living Rooms

People used to write on actual paper. Paper made from wood. Wood produced from trees with a pen made from plastic and ink. People like me would write for hours. It was all we had to do. Without the internet, writing things down was our only record of our existence beyond the air we were absorbing and the footprints we were leaving.

I sat that night in my room in a one bedroom flat above my mother, writing for what I thought would be my last time. I had volumes of thoughts recorded in little spiral bound books hidden beneath my bed for only me and the demons to read.

I was playing a show with my band at the time "Faces of Adam," one of two bands named that in the Detroit area...coincidence? Probably. There were likely to be two narcissistic Adams who could sing in the area and I was one of them. I was on stage. The crowd was fierce. By fierce I really mean, not paying any attention at all to anything I was doing. I will always hate when people do that to me. I sang for a minute, but something was eating me that night. Something wouldn't let me live another two hours. I looked into the crowd and saw him. Cold is what I named him. This demon/human freak of nature that I would see when rising in the night. This mixture of temperature and emotion, humanity and deity. It was evil. It also happened to be my best friend at the time. Someone I really counted on to keep me from being truly alone. Cold wanted the worst for me. I did too.

He was the only one paying any attention to my bleeding that night. The only one that offered any assistance. I stopped singing as the music played on. I looked into the crowd and no one seemed to notice. Wasn't news to me, it was only my first show with this band that I would never see again. Can't even remember their last names right now. They bought a song from me soon after and that was the last I heard from them.

I walked off stage, not looking up, and through the front doors and out onto the city streets. I walked 2 blocks or so to my home and went up the dirty carpeted stairs and into my flat door. I sat on my bed and looked at this sheet of tree that once inhabited the woods untouched by human hands. I set my pen down and wrote the most beautiful thing I have ever written...right over the last most beautiful thing I had ever written. I was too drunk. I didn't even notice pages of pen as I wrote right over the top of it. I set the notebook down on the bed for Will to find...he would be coming over in just a few minutes.

I walked down those tracks for centuries. The air was October in Michigan. For those in Florida, come visit Michigan in October to understand what that means. I counted the dark brown wooden boards that creaked beneath me as I stepped one more step closer to my last. I spoke to myself out loud. I reasoned that what I was about to do was the only way to alleviate the pain. I could not stand to feel alone anymore. I kicked rocks as I went to try to lighten the moment and turn it into a game that ended in a loss. I found my spot miles down the road.

In front of me were overgrown weeds in front of the lights of distant houses. I liked it because I loved to look into the warmth of people's homes and pretend I was a part of their family, normal, with two parents, a dog, and not me. I only wanted to watch from afar. I didn't want to begin to think that there was hope of anything different for me. I laid down on the tracks...the cold steel shocking my neck at first. I had spent weeks in the library researching a suitable method of ending my life and this was the most fool-proof. Cutting gets your rescued and put in the mental hospital. Shooting gets you paralyzed and potato-ized. Hanging worked but was too slow for me. I didn't have access to a grenade. I chose a train... Mostly because my uncle Dink had trains in his basement and they amazed me.

I thought about that legend that your mind keeps firing 6 seconds after being removed from your body. It deterred me before, but not this night. I was determined to make this night and this train a hero of the world. I was gonna lay there no matter how scared I was. I would not move.

I looked down the dark tracks into nothing until I saw the distant headlight. My breathing picked up. It was cold and I was shivering, but never more than now as I could see the blade dropping on my neck. The tracks rumbled beneath me. My body echoed. I could feel it wanted to get me. I could feel my body resisting. My mind had seen enough though, and there was to be no leap from these tracks from me. I wasn't listening to reason, even if it were from my own DNA.

It got closer and closer. I saw that kid sitting under his top bunk bed weeping. I could see him throwing that football. I could see him collapsing at the dismissal of his future. I felt liberated from my own horrible future. I looked into the lights of this 240,000 pound razor headed for my head and closed my eyes forever.



Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3



















Sing.
Migrate.

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Mosaic- Chapter 3- Sleep

Swirling. Around and around. My head sinking, then rising again in a shock like lightning then sinking again. A picture of my life so far. I saw things blurry, like with water in my eyes. I saw stacks of cans sprawling out all over the table. They had the look of cans that someone had tried to stack and realized the futility of it all, then left like an incomplete pyramid.  There was some country music happening in my ears. I glanced to my right to see a line dance in full splendor consisting of no one I cared about at all. Their world could end now and I wouldn't have cared.

No one I cared about was there. My apartment. A place that your nightmares take note of to scare you in your sleep. Paintings on the walls, painted by some guy I never knew. Must have been me, but I don't remember painting a single one of them. One was a grave sight under the moon that said, "Cover me in ashes, abandon me in the cold, I'll still be here, I'll still exist." I knew it was me and so do you by the way in which is was written. Another was a sun and it said, "In the end, we all will fly, up to the heavens to the fire and fry." Another " F%$# the world and everyone in it." I shared my house with twenties of strangers that night. I was looking for a couple that could help me and neither was there. Just me with vultures doing line dances to Tim McGraw and the Indian Outlaw.

I had enough and went to bed. I laid on my pillow with the distant sound of people having fun and watched the world spin away into darkness and lands of mystery and confusion. My dreams were always confusion. They all ended the same way. Me experiencing the horror of death. I would wake just before the fateful moment, but felt everything on the way. It prepared me for the cold steel. I could fathom the permanence of the iron wheel rolling over a calcium shell. I could imagine what a last second slowed down would feel like and in fact, my dreams were accurate.

It was the night I decided to quit. The night I committed myself to higher learning. I committed to studying death and the ending of circuits. I attended the library, alone of course. I read books on ending one's own life. I like to look at it in the martyr point of view as all other suicidal kids. I studied every method, vigorously covering every potential flaw. I did not want to be some hospitalized cry for help or attention. I was a finisher every day of my life. I intended to finish this finally. I chose train tracks because no one who has laid their heads on that cold steel and had the guts to stay there ever survived from my studies. No one came in at the last minute and cut them down or got them to the hospital for a quick stomach pumping. People were killed on the tracks. Killed forever. That's precisely what I wanted.

This is as hard to write as it may be for some to read, but it is a true story. I left no room for error. I covered every base. I left this notebook as a note. I had pages and pages written over the top of due to the lack of vision in a drunken stupor. I left it on my bed where they could only find it after. I made my piece weeks before, so there would be no suspicion.  I told Will and Joe that I would never forget who they were to me in this life or the next. I told them I loved them with a love that no word could define. I loved them like rockets rising to the moon desperate to connect with the untouchable.

Then I went to sleep for a week.









Sing.
Migrate.








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Mosaic- Chapter 2- The Muse

I barely knew them. I had met them only a handful of times before in Wednesday night classes at church. Due to the gang activity at my school, my mom pulled me out of public school and put me kicking and screaming into private school. I had to clean the bathrooms to attend, but in the end it ended up worth it. I sat down next to them. Joe had a video game. Will was taller than I remembered. I sat between them, next to their mom, who was struggling to listen to the blue haired super dork yelling about money or Jesus...wasn't sure which of the two were more important. I was unsure of myself. I had never been completely sure of myself. I just tried to fit in the best I knew how given the way I came off to people. I was never the shy kid. I never will be the shy kid.

I was loud. Joe would score on his game and I would yell in victory...in church as the money man was talking. Joe and Will's mom looked at me and said, "Shhh." I listened for a minute, then became distracted with her kids. She should have smacked me. She didn't, but at the end of the day, she told me not to sit by her kids again...a sentiment I could never blame her for because I was the loudest kid on earth. Later that day through her frustration she saw something different and invited my mom and brother and I to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I ate a hamburger. I hated Chinese then. Not now, but I did then.

I was attached at the hip with Will and Joe from that day forward. I don't know what was different about them. I had met hundreds before them. I had moved every couple years of my life and made a lot of friends, but none like this. There was something profoundly, but unrecognizably different about them that drew me in. Maybe it was the fact that they didn't care where I was from or what I had done. Maybe it was that they didn't need me to fit a mold of who could or would be a sufficient friend. I don't think either of them had a mold.

I sat timid in the deep couch cushions as their grandma told me that God had something different for me. I didn't and couldn't believe her. She was harsh and belligerent and tenacious about her will...God's will. She would not budge. Every time I saw her from the day I met her to 20 years later when she passed away, a real warrior, she told me she was praying for me and something different was going on with me. I learned to believe her. She was never wrong.

I sat in my 6th grade classroom with my yearbook in hand. I was trying to get a certain girl to sign it...Hopefully professing her undying love for me in it. I saw her coming. I was walking to her. Then this dork stepped between us. She grabbed my yearbook from me and took it to her locker. I was pissed. I missed my chance with this girl I had been going to school for months to speak to. How dare her, I thought. She handed me the yearbook back an hour later. She took up a whole page in the front. Again, I was pissed. But then I read something that messed with my mind even still today. This 11 year old girl bore my soul on the paper. She knew everything about me. She knew all of the things I was hiding. There was nothing I could dispute. She told me I was a follower, but really didn't need to be. She told me to step from the shadows and be what God wanted me to be. I didn't get it at the time, though I was intrigued, but now I realize what it was and why I remember it now...it was God speaking to a wrecked child at the time he needed something different.

I had a friend hang himself a few weeks later. He was the John Lennon of the school. He could do nothing to tarnish his image. He was everything I wanted to be, but never believed I could be. He was this myth that passed away in the night by rope to the neck. He was still just a 12 year old boy. Legend or not, he was a kid. From that day forward, death became an obsession. My mom held me on the couch as I came home from school crying. Neither of us really knew why. It was just wrong. From that day forward, death was my muse.









Sing.
Migrate.









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Mosaic- Chapter 1- The Steel

The heat radiated from the white painted tin that vibrated in waves like a train 2 miles away from where you lay your head. It was cold both in there and out here. I lay there humming "Yesterday" from the Beatles. "Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be" was my favorite part. I liked it because half the man I was would have been a tadpole making it's way to life. I was just a kid. Both days, I was still just a kid. The tracks were really cold. There was a menacing sterility about them, like they really didn't care what happened that night. Tomorrow, they would vibrate just the same but with a little more color. The heat of the tin had enticed me to join in it's melody of song as a vigil to a child lost to disaster. I laid on it. I laid on them. Even if they didn't love anything. I loved them.

A thought ran through my head. Is this life or death? Is this me living? Is this what it is supposed to be like? Or maybe, this is me dying. Didn't much matter once I laid my head on the cold steel. But this day, it was the single question that if answered would have changed everything...possibly for the worst.

I cried. But not like a kid cries when he bumps his head or when his bicycle gets a flat. I cried like a kid that lost his mom to a freak hot air balloon accident. It was other worldly. Something no one would expect from a kid that age. I cried like a puppy cries when you have to cage it and walk out of the house. No one hears it. It may cry all day long, but you are busy being human and the puppy will never get that honor. I cried alone. I whispered to myself, "Everything's gonna be alright Adam, just breathe." I said the same thing years later still laying on that metal. Again, crying something other worldly. It wasn't like there was no one there to hear me. Mom was in the other room. My brothers were waiting for me. The battle was a silent one. But one that even the tin below me knew was coming.

I pictured sitting on the floor of a row boat in the ocean while the waves spit their venom in cold bursts of spasm throughout my body. It was dark. The moon had deserted. Everybody had deserted. I pictured that heat on the floor of the boat...my only refuge from the violence above. I didn't want to see what was happening around me. I wanted to be ignorant in that boat, just rocking back and forth like in a womb.  I thought about that boat many nights. I thought about it while laying on the hot tin and the cold steel. It was the only place I could go. 12 or 19, it was the only place I felt safe.

I walked over 6,799 boards to get to that spot that seemed like a reasonable place to sleep. Every board told a small part of how I got to my destination. I walked for a century. I had finally found a place to rest. So I laid down on the lightly vibrating cold steel. As it shook, I remembered the way the hot tin felt on my face as it sung me to sleep. I remembered what it felt like to be a fetus fighting for it's life against the impending needle. 6,799 boards will hurt your feet while crossing. They can hurt a lot of things. Things flooded my eyes. Things that I had tried not to remember. The zipper being zipped over my face in the night. The face of a demon laughing as I wretched. The kid that throws his football up in the air and runs beneath it in the front yard, then pretends to get tackled or score... The only victory he may ever see. The little man that bites his nails nervous for what may happen very soon. The 5 year old that was terrified of nuclear war, listening to a saxophone weep in the park. This kid lays his head down on the steel and feels joy.











Sing.
Migrate.










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Mosaic

I am gonna start a small writing project. I have a week off from the rigors of school and I have been yearning to be creative in some way or another. I don't think I need to share the point of the project as if it is effective, it will explain itself.

Before I begin....
It will seem a little more pretentious, but is isn't.
I will be spending a little more time on them, so try to be a little more patient as I weed through some things.
Each story isn't meant to make sense right away. They need each other like we need each other to create the picture.
In everything, may God be glorified.


Sing.
Migrate.

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