In Search Of Whales

Security Blankets

2012-02-12T23:59:00.000-05:00

"I have buried you, in every place I've been, you keep ending up, in my shaking hands." Bon Iver

It is still here...buried in my guts...this feeling of being someone different than who I've become. Sometimes that scared little kid still sits on front of the strange enigmic saxophone player in the park talking about the end of the world. I was five at the time and learning about nuclear war. I bury that kid whenever he reaches from the depths. There was something altogether different about him than I am now. He was scared of everything. He was always unsure of himself and expected everyone to reject him. He was always playing out these scenarios of everything he dreamed was true in his head. This kid was weak, so he gets to die. He gets to taste the bitter pill of being forgotten, until he is remembered.

I am loud.

I am not going to be ignored.

I am not scared of anything.

I never get embarrassed.

I can handle rejection.

I am the burier of weakness.................yet I spill it out here.

Sometimes, I wake up and I am still that kid. I still need a heater to sleep and the window open. I still need to feel safe when I am most vulnerable. I still need to make up scenarios to restore my mind to peace. When I was that little kid, I would feel insecure and just go into the living room where my mom slept and lay on the floor next to the heat register. I would wait for the creaking and dinging that would happen just before the heater would kick on. When I heard that noise, I would feel safe again and fall asleep in it's loving warmth.

I've had the crap kicked out of me many times since I was that little kid. I learned to be strong. I learned to kick back and fight and win. One of the things about me is that I seldom lose. I refuse to lose. But despite my aggression, I still hate confrontation. I still hate to feel insecure. When I do, I find myself under an open window with my heater. Maybe no one fully grows up anymore. Maybe we bury ourselves and weaknesses in everywhere we go and hold them under most days. Maybe sometimes, they emerge and we fall into their arms to find comfort and peace.

Is there something wrong with that? Will slept with his "Woobie," a little satin jacket he had as a kid until the day he died. It had been sown so many times, it looked like a Halloween freak show, but he would not sleep without it. It was his connection to security and comfort. When he felt vulnerable, he grabbed hold of it.

What is your security blanket?

Photo credit to: http://thirty3flashes.deviantart.com

Crawling Into Data

2012-01-27T12:36:00.001-05:00

What I have to say is nothing new. I will not wow you with information I do not possess. But I think it is worth writing down anyway for history's sake. Sometimes, it isn't the new things or ground breaking discoveries that we as people need the most, it is the constant reminders of things we have learned a thousand times. We all know that lying is wrong, yet we often do so without a second thought. We know that it is wrong to slander others, yet we often do not even notice when we are murdering someone with our lips. The thing that has been sitting in my stomach and aching me in this culture that is quickly trading human interaction for electronic relationships, is the lack of human touch. We are losing the humanity that comes with knowing the person your venom is directed at is a human with blood coursing through their veins. People who go to breakfast in the morning and have a cup of coffee and read the newspaper, or Reddit. People who miss their parents and daily think about the day they buried them. People who enjoy roller coasters and want Boblo Island to come back.

During this year's Republican primary, one thing that has stood out to me the most is that people seem to toss aside the knowledge of the person on the other side of their screen and all that data, actually being a warm human being. People tossing insults, lies, and sharp words at each other like they are flaming lawn darts aiming to punish the soul of the person who simply disagrees with you. I am guilty too. I have noticed an increase in paragraphs I have written, then deleted before posting, realizing that they do NOT glorify God. It doesn't have to be an inflammatory statement to be pointless. God says to let your words be few. Much of what I say has no real point as far as glorifying my God.

I ask myself...would I say this to the person if I were face to face? No. Probably not. Because then I would feel bad, because I don't like confrontation. Unfortunately, the internet has become a haven for confrontation from those that also don't like human confrontation. You simply can delete the person, block them, then slander them and they will never see it. Data is unforgiving, lifeless, and brutal. A simple number will never change it's mind because of the look on the person's face in front of it. It will thrust the cold steel into the bowels and turn to another and repeat.

People are not numbers.

We can open the newspaper and read the obituaries and the stories of people who have died and we can have no emotion at all. We did not know them. People die everyday. It is life. It is the end of all people. Who cares. Who cares? But what if you held that person's hand as they died? What changes then? Human contact reminds us that we may be all different, but we are all the same. At my job, a person will die and you will put them into a bag and put tags on them. You will call the proper outlets for organ donation and whatever. You will sign the right paperwork and be done with it and on to the next thing...until the family get's there and wraps their arms around you in utter agony. All they see are their family photos stored in their minds, and the way their mom or dad smelled on Christmas Eve. There is no number for that, it cannot even be recreated. This is the beauty of life and death. God is present in both.

Often we forget that God is also present in our interaction through electricity. Your words hurt or mean just as much as if face to face, yet we lack the discernment of judging a person's face.

Let's keep it clean and civil. Let's handle our electric communication as Christ would handle His physical interaction. Let's make it a point to actually stand face to face with another person sometimes, instead of over lights.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Timeline

2012-01-17T23:04:00.000-05:00

Facebook is changing over to the Timeline look of your profiles which allows users to go back and view the history of one's life. This is both wonderful and scary at the same time. It is like taking a snapshot of a person's entire life and saving it for whoever wants to look in at any time. I can understand that some people hate this new feature. I personally like it a lot, however stalker friendly it may be.

I went back tonight to my posts from when Will died. I have had a series of dreams of him still being alive over the past few nights which brought me to do such a dumb thing. I realized while reading posts that I can remember my tears flowing over, that I have a lot of people who care about me, and cared about Will. I read really awkward posts of condolences from people I have barely spoken to in years, just speechless in the words to say, but were caring enough to try. Of course you didn't have words to say. No one would. There are no words to make a person feel better when their hearts have been crushed, but the attempt is worth more to me than the effort. God has a way of protecting His children. I was angry and bitter at Him, yet He sends people out of the woodwork to lift me up out of the mud.

I have been going back there all day. It is weird, because I avoid thinking about Will as much as I can, because as wonderful as he was and as much as I loved him, remembering him still brings me pain. Today, the dreams would not allow me to avoid the feelings they intended. I just prayed for God to tell Him that I miss him. I pray that prayer at least twice a week and hope when I get to Heaven, he says that he missed me too.

When you look at a historical timeline, you are looking at the significant events of that period of history. I believe that Will spikes a very significant event in my history. The moment my faith was pushed and tested until it broke and God's grace fully engulfed me. Below is my timeline as I remember it.

1978- I was born
1981- I meet my little brother Andy
1983- My father wins the paternity case (No blood tests allowed)
1988- I get tuberculosis and spend a half a year out of school and in therapy
1991- Suicide is introduced into my life by a school friend over his parents divorce.
1993- I meet Will and Joe
1997- My first daughter is born
1997- I meet Jesus
1999- I meet my future wife
2001- I marry my wife
2003- My son is born
2006- My second daughter is born
2007- I contact my sister and get rejected
2009- Will passes away
2010- The crushing of my spirit
2011- I come alive again

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

What I Come Home To

2012-01-15T01:50:00.001-05:00

People will accept you or reject you based on a thousand different factors. We get up every morning and prepare ourselves to meet an ever changing world. We leave the house without any guarantee that we will be liked, succeed, or survive. We get insecure about ourselves and accept a reality that doesn't have to be true and start that car and enter into a cold and unforgiving world. This isn't news to you. You live it, I live it. The problem is that we often forget what we are coming home to. I have spent this past weekend watching my family. My son, who was stricken with anxiety this weekend, his birthday weekend. He had two major panic attacks this weekend. My wife, who is always worried about having cancer and loves her husband and kids so much she fears losing them everyday. And me....a mess...and absolute mess. I come home to the warmth of my family. I refused to leave the house this weekend for more than an hour. I refuse to let them go. It is easy to forget the people that will die for you and vice versa when life gets rough. But they are the very people God has given me to survive and be happy. My heart is full. I cannot imagine a better life. There is no "Grass is greener" situation. I have what I always wanted and never deserved. I have everything. The world can reject me...shut me out, but I get to lay on a pillow next to my wife's and wrap my arms around little people that call me their dad. I get to be a dad that they will always love and lay their heads on, instead of the one that is distant.

God has given me all of these things.
God has given me everything.
God is good, not because I am happy, but because He is good, even when I am evil.
God is everything.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Punching That Clock

2012-01-14T01:05:00.001-05:00

I haven't been writing lately. I apologize for that. I have thought about it everyday, but don't have anything interesting or groundbreaking to say. Things are changing for me quickly and I am just paddling to stay above the water, there hasn't been a lot of time to really think about how I FEEL about these things. When one is caught in a place they have no idea how to survive, much less flourish in, they rarely have the time to write down their live experiences of those things. Often they journal at times when it becomes quiet and calm and he get's a sense of peace are safety. So here it goes, because right now it is peaceful. I fully intend to journal more with different things and spill out in different ways, but for now, here is an update.

I am doing well. I am not liking the man I am becoming. I say that because when change happens we rarely like it. It usually shakes the ground beneath us. I don't like it when the alarm clock blasts with the sound of the trumpets of Jericho at 5:25 AM. Most mornings my first thought is "What was I thinking?" As a full time pastor, I would take my kids to school 3 hours later, then come home and start work in my sweatpants and t-shirt. I would put on my music and do what I did. As of late.....if my hand does not grasp that card and swipe it through by 7:06 AM, I will lose a half hour pay and be cited in an incident report.

My last boss was a very brutal man that would ask your opinion about things and take it to heart, and field any complaints and keep them from me in order to spare me the discouragement. I fear now, although I admit it is probably unfounded, that I could lose my job with one simple mistake.

The morning traffic is horrible, but not terrible (I have decreed that terrible is a more harsh word than horrible because of the strong T sound.) I drive down 75 into Detroit before the daylight showers the sky with light and will leave well after it has left. It is a difficult transition. I used to begin projects at 3 AM on a Tuesday. Now I am counting the few hours left after work, before I can drop my head to the pillow. I used to need things to think about to put me to sleep. Most nights, I fall a sleep before I realize I am trying to.

Earlier, I said I did not like the man I am becoming. I don't like him because he is what my family and I need to move forward. I need to serve Jesus full time, but do so with a joyful and serving heart, without pay. This transition really is bitter sweet. I am being forced to live a practical life. I am not practical.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

2012

2012-01-02T02:01:00.000-05:00

New Years Day night...the very first night it has resembled winter. There is a bite in the air that will instantly entice your hands to pull that zipper all the way to the wind pipe. It's been a pleasant holiday season, and an ending to a very eventful year. I got through college this year. I fought the urge to give up and pressed on in the power of God. I became an RN. I got a job working as an RN. God is good even when we think He is bad. I saw another side of myself this year. I saw an anger I had forgotten I was capable of. I literally gave life all I had left. At the end of this past year, I found myself standing on my feet again. My face left an imprint in the mud at my feet and the dirt remains caked on my face, but my legs are firm. My demons are beneath my shoes finally. The war was long and hard and I expended faith I didn't have to give and wound up unconscious in the arms of God...just as He had planned.

It was a very nice Christmas. I have much to be thankful for. But underneath that torn wrapping paper there is something still waiting for me. I try to get it out of my mind and haven't even thought about writing about it here until now. I didn't want it back. It is a not-so-distant memory of the phone ringing just after my son opened his Nintendo Wii on Christmas morning 2009. The other side of all of that electricity and wires was my little brother Joe and I knew what had happened. Christmas was ruined. Forever, it would be synonymous with loss and confusion.

Christmas Day 2010. I made a choice to make Christmas off limits to any feeling at all. I felt it at times, but pushed it out and turned it to anger. I would simply pretend it didn't happen and that is how I would survive. Just close my eyes and open them when I saw light beyond the darkness of my eyelids.

Christmas Day 2011. I came to this day with the same plan. This time it doesn't work and I realize this every day since Christmas. Under that paper torn in happiness, is a very real and serious issue I have to come to grips with...My brother killed himself on Christmas and I cannot rewind any tape to bring him back. I have tried not to write about him so much because I know it hurts some of his family to read, and I feel like I am whining all the time. I look at my blog stats and see that there is an influx of people visiting my blog on Will's birthday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve expecting me to spill out here. I haven't written on any of these days this year because I don't know what to say that I already haven't. I am sad, but things are getting better. It hurts to think beyond that. It is easier to pretend. But doing that is forgetting the whole point as to why I began writing for any random person to read. I put down my personal journal I had kept for 12 years and decided to bring whoever wanted to go with me on a journey through my experience of being a human being in a dying world. It doesn't make sense to keep my thoughts and experiences from this blog. For those who read regularly, you know that I don't know all the answers. I don't know most of the answers. Sometimes I feel like I don't know any of the answers. I just write things down as I see or feel them. I try to do this in honesty because I am tired of being lied to and I thing you are too. This is me, take me or leave me behind, I will continue because of the power and grace of Jesus.

2012, I am going to deal with whatever is waiting for me under that paper. And I am gonna share it with you.

Here is a list of other things I plan to do in 2012:
Write a fiction book.
Become a part of the normal masses that venture out into the night to work and return again when it is dark, and actually get used to it.
Stop doing things that my heart hurts after doing, like losing my temper and yelling at someone I love.
Crafting the most perfect batch of beer I have tasted.
Stop letting people that hate me for bad reasons effect me and the way I feel and think about them.

If I accomplish any one of these goals, I reckon I will be happier than I am right now.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Rust

2011-12-27T21:29:00.001-05:00

It was seconds after the door slammed shut, that I realized there was someone behind it. The ball would drop and I would be sitting beneath the moonlit sky, but buried inside of this refrigerator. I pinch myself twice and slam a fist into the door, I cannot believe I got inside it in the first place. That red glowing light was like some kind of cheese and I was the mouse that could not resist. Finally doomed. I had made a lifestyle out of following little red lights. Everything about them tells you to stop...that they are profoundly dangerous. But I never much feared the dangerous, but the predictable. I had always said that I would rather die not knowing or by accident than in my bed a hundred years from now, wondering if tonight was the night my eyes wouldn't reopen. As I sit alone in this vertical tomb, my mausoleum, I take it all back. The things I said. The things I did. The people I've hurt. Walking away laughing. I regret everything. Just seconds after the door slams shut, I regret my entire life. It feels deeper than wishing I haven't wondered into this junk yard or even sitting down inside this fridge. Somehow I want to die. I am glad to be getting what I deserve finally. I am praying to rewind the entire tape and record over it. The looks on their faces will haunt my hell I am guessing. I slam my hand into the door again and again until I feel a trickle of warm fluid down my forearm and into my sleeve. I slam it again in anger, and again. I listen as the bones creak and snap as I shatter it on the steel? What is this material anyway? It is soft, yet unforgiving and unwavering. I am trapped. Her fingernails were painted red. It's all I saw as the door slammed shut. What witch of a woman locks a child inside of a refrigerator? But I am not a boy anymore I guess. I am no more a child than a feeble old man staring out at the world he once loved. It's been days since that door shut. Maybe years, I don't know anymore. It's too dark in here to count my fist marks in the door. They used to heal and stop hurting. Now they are brittle and falling apart. They bleed no more. I have long since stopped crushing them on the door. The light of the sun crosses only my memory and I am left to my doom. To my regrets...

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

When All The Presents Are Opened

2011-12-26T01:42:00.001-05:00

You keep moving forward no matter what's behind you, and you put all your love left onto your wife and kids. This is how you survive the things you never thought you could make it through. Without God, none of these things in the formula will work. God is good and as my friend Jerame said, "Even when He doesn't." Your faith and strength in God will not take the pain away, only time will work on that, but it will give you a peace about what happens when we close our eyes, never to awake. Our God gives us the hope to endure the suffering that life can bring. He doesn't save us always from the pain of being alive. He had to endure it. Why not us? Instead of asking why me? Ask why not me?

Every year is hard when you lose someone you love, but every year does get easier as the harshness of our emotions fade into submission to the pain of sin in the world and our desire for deliverance from it. The fact of the matter is that we are gonna have to bleed to come out alive. We are gonna have to taste the poison that death and hell bring to see the grace on the other side. I am not special. I don't get to be except from what many around the world have to endure. I love my God and He loves me, but that doesn't make me special. My birthright in the eyes of God makes me special to Him, as does yours, but I have to live in this disease that entices mankind as well as any other. What's done is done.

He is gone...my brother that slept on an extra skinny, double long bed, right beside me. I am not gonna hear him snore or the strange mumblings he would say in the night anymore. Jesus alone listens to those, but I get the grace that was planted on this day in 2009, when my God allowed us to be shredded into tiny, sharp pieces to get us to Him. My brother is happy and dancing right now. He isn't alone. He isn't in his garage in the cold. He isn't still stuck in that hell he was living in. He isn't the guy that left us anymore. I gave that to God. He isn't weeping anymore. My brother is dancing. He is building things he never thought possible. He is waiting for us. Because of Christ. Because of the cross. Because of the birth of our God into a stable. May God give you every good thing that your heart needs to be free of anger, and sadness, and loneliness, and fill you with His grace.Merry Christmas.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

12-25-2009

2011-12-25T02:18:00.000-05:00

2 years. Two very eventful years. The first was the worst I have ever had to endure. The second? One that has changed everything about me. Two years ago you were doing things that only God could see and thinking thoughts that only He took to heart. It was quiet and cold and I was sitting ignorant...as I usually am. I wouldn't have any idea you had gone until the morning when people missed you. So what happens two years later after the family Christmas festivities have ended and the kids and wife are all in bed? This happens. I write about you...my big brother, whom I love. Whom I miss so much. Whom I have outlived.

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and that hasn't changed, no matter how hard I have tried to hate every twinkling light. The celebration of the birth of Christ is just too important to be overshadowed by the anniversary of an enormous enemy victory. It was because of Him and His birth in the very place that the cattle eat and sleep that gives me assurance that you are happy in Heaven right now...because nothing is bigger than the cross, and you believed. This year nothing has fallen from the sky. Oddly enough, two years ago, it was rain all day. There are no parades for you. No one is lighting a candle for you at your house. The world is as it has always been...a very loved by God and sometimes terrible place to be. I am not gonna dwell on the terrible things this year. Last year, those things reigned in my life and made me punish myself endlessly. There is nothing good that can come from blaming yourself for another's actions. So I will focus on my God.

This God. This Beast from Bethlehem. This divider of families and friends. This giver and taker of life. This Savior of all. It all belongs to Him. This day. These wrapped gifts. These moments of happiness with our families. Even these tears we shed over who isn't there with us this year. It is His. He paid for it. He was born in humility and died in agony, but raised in all the splendor of God and clothed in absolute majesty.

This huge God also found His way to weave himself into the very fabric of our lives. He is the tissue that holds the entire universe together. Today we celebrate the day He was born in a barn in the filth of animals. It is because of the loss of my brother that I celebrate today. It is because of Jesus that I can lay my head down and sleep in peace, knowing that my brother has lights strung all over his home in Heaven. I believe he has an ornament of our lives hanging on his tree. I believe tonight he is looking at his mother's dangling ornament. His father's, His children's, His sister's, his brother's, and even mine. His tree is perfect and his lights never go out. Christmas is not a source of pain for him anymore and it shouldn't be for us either. Christmas is about Jesus. His birth into the world to save it.

May God rip away all that holds your face in the cold ground this day. May He lift you up out of the guts of hell and seat you right next to Him in His glory. May we remember His love and love those equally around us.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Buried in Christmas

2011-12-17T23:01:00.001-05:00

Please check out my short story on Blurb.

Click on the words to bring up the entire text on each photo. Or, if you have an iPhone or iPad, download Blurb for free and all your wildest dreams will come true.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Regrets?

2011-12-11T02:58:00.001-05:00

I checked it out. Yes, she really did.

People always say they live their lives without regrets. I have never understood this statement. I don't believe it. Even if our mistakes serve to teach us something, wouldn't that lesson have better been learned without the mistake...like maybe if we had listened to wisdom in the first place? I don't buy it. No one is happy about failure. Here is a short list of my failures and regrets. I will leave the deepests things out because I write too many serious things on this blog in such a short span of time. I must water this mix down a bit.

I regret coughing that phlegm ball onto that poor girls forehead.
I regret looking over at those girls watching me skateboard in the 4rth grade, because I regret the terrible wipe-out that ensued and the walk or run of shame that followed as those girls laughed at my demise.
I regret most everything I say that I think is funny, so I say it louder than my normal jet engine volume level.
I regret the way I danced the night I met my wife at a wedding.
I regret that horrible green, skin-tight sweater I wore to show my sexuality on our third date. She regrets it too. It didn't show my sexuality at all. Possibly the opposite of my sexuality.
I regret calling my wife the day after I met her and leaving a desperate message with her grandma. I should have waited the customary 4 days to call....and NOT left a message with her grandma.
I regret shaking my infant son all about while holding him above my agape mouth as he spilled his stomach directly onto my taste buds.

I regret much more serious things as well. Those can wait.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Deciding To Dance

2011-12-09T23:06:00.001-05:00

The Tree The Homeless Man Decorated (2009)

Christmas. The most haunting time of the year. It cannot be replicated. None of them can copy the others and yet the feeling seems like they do. At Christmas, I remember the little creepy elves my brother and I used to play with inside the tree, much like my son does now. I remember the glare of the twinkling lights outside as they reflected off the snow which always made me wonder how the reflections didn't melt the snow itself. I remember a choir in a packed church singing as bodies clinged to each other as if the ship were sinking. Outside, the snow fell silently but impacted every square inch of my soul. So much life all around me, even as it fell from God to the cold, frozen earth. Something was moving inside and out. I think of walking through the streets, making sure to stay right in the middle of the road and follow the lines as not to make a decision between right or left. I looked into houses and saw families flinging tinsel into the air and onto their trees with Christmas movies playing in the background. Christmas has always reminded me that as bad as the world may get, there is still something inside of everyone that wants to watch the lights dance in reflections off the snow. I remember Christmas 2009 when I went to put a box of food under a tree on a hill a homeless person had decorated for Christmas. I was touched by his desire to continue celebrating. I was wondering if he was lying under that tree reminiscing about his mother's smell when she sang "Silent Night" to him. I was hoping to find him there. He wasn't. I left the bag of things and went home. Two nights later, my brother said goodbye with his eyes. I still see Christmas as warmth. I still believe that people have a sometimes very deep down desire to watch the lights again. So every year, I string mine up and turn them on for them. Maybe they are watching. Maybe they are walking in the middle of the road down my street, mindful to keep to the crack in the middle. Maybe they see my lights and dance with me. Dance with joy. Dance with hope. Maybe for even a minute they consider that the snow falls silently, but fills our hearts. The warmth in here can be shared with (out there). It is hard for them to feel anything but the bite in the air, I know, I've chattered my teeth on the frozen tracks. But sometimes when we reach out our hands and turn on our lights, they decide to dance.

Sing.
Migrate.
Dance with lights.

Thanks for reading...Z

Type 2

2011-12-03T00:35:00.001-05:00

The moon is our back-light. We move through the night as ghosts presenting the past to the those that aren't watching or listening. We are stone in the light of day, but delicate and thorough as we sweep the night sky while, the rest of the world is somewhere behind their eye-lids.

There is a place for us...the people of the night...the people who will stop and stare at the way the light hits an icicle as it gently bleeds in small drops as the world warms, slowly killing the beauty of winter.

Some do not understand us or our decisions and habits. Some are so different and "Responsible." We are called lazy because sometimes when they turn around we are staring at a rose in bloom. We are called stupid because we see in the abstract, finding a picture in every blotted mess littering their senses. We are called foolish because we will spend hours painting the veins of the human hand, desperately trying to get it right. This makes the world no money. It is an in-efficient way to live.

It is in-efficient if you are seeing the world in digits and numerals. We do not make sense to you because we don't make mathematical sense for a thriving person, trying to get things done. To us, we are truly living.

Life is so short, we just want to experience the beauty of it. God has made everything beautiful and we want to express these things, sometimes to our fault. We may not be perfect and we may not be efficient, but we are full of color in a black and white world.

The other side of the coin. This is our downfall. We would rather take a picture of a homeless guy than help him. We will paint pictures of poverty and think we have done our parts by "Raising awareness." We often think too highly of the gifts God has given us, leaving us shamefully plugging ourselves. We often have the softest hands, while the "Black and Whites" are calloused from doing. This is our fault and will be our demise if we don't find a happy medium somewhere. I say, just listen to God and follow His word.

We are the type 2 personalities. We are both the marquee and downfall of our culture. We are both darkness and light. We are only understandable if we are seen as more flawed humans, just like you.

In the end, we are all forced to take the bad with the good, realizing that we would not know the good without the bad. People are people and lots of people cannot see beside their own people, yet we still live as people. It is a good thing to be human, but an even better thing to be a loving human.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Into The Winter Sky

2011-11-27T00:52:00.001-05:00

I watched the way the snow jumped off as I slid my hand down the icy iron handrail. In the middle of the night, no one is around to contain the forces that only God can control...the beauty of the snow as it fell underneath the abandoned streetlights...the bend of the branches under the weight of God's cotton. When the wind blew, a mist was driven into my face as I stood in the middle of that field bending down to light that rocket fuse. I had spent all night on it, precisely cutting cardboard and electricians tape. I was careful to make sure this rocket met my Lord in the sky. I flicked the wheel which ignited a spark on the flint and the wick erupted in flames. I took a step back to take it all in...the beauty of the moon lit sky reflecting off of the un-plowed snow...the wind that blew over garbage cans in a silent rebellion against mankind. I watched my breath rise from my mouth and find a home in the night sky. The rocket engine sparked, then flamed hotter than the sun and lifted the cardboard missile into the air so high I could not see it once the engine exploded. What a spectacle. What a sight to see. The smoke of it's desire to burn lingered in the night air, forming a trail of it's journey as far as the eye can see into the darkness, back-lit by the moon. It was a night to remember. One of those very few times when it is clear that God's beauty was still present in this destruction. One of those nights you would never forget a detail about. It was a night only my brothers could understand. It was an entire childhood bursting into beautiful sparks and finding purchase in the atmosphere, never to be found again. The next day, things would be normal again and we would forget what magic happened the night before, but we never forgot those nights. We were the only ones up in the entire world. No one saw us. No one lived at all during those moments. It was just us in the universe, blasting off into the winter snow. It was just us sitting on frozen park benches, eating the fresh powder that fell from God. Everyone and everything else faded away into the night. The world always slept when the Dead End Kids opened their eyes, spread their wings, and flew into the atmosphere.

It's been a long time since the Dead End Kids have opened their eyes.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

On The Other Side of the Shadows

2011-11-25T23:58:00.001-05:00

All kids are afraid of the dark. There may be some exceptions of steel plated souls, forged in the molten lava of courage, but I have never met one. I was no different. The things I could not see scared me every time I encountered them. Darkness is scary. No one wants to be blind. No one wants to bare themselves vulnerable. It is too hard to trust people. There are too many scary things out there.

Every kid has a moment when they grow up a little and take a step into something they can't see through. They let go of their mother's hand and step out into the unknown if only for a second. One day curiosity overcomes the fear and we have to know, even if the consequence is destruction. We must see for ourselves. The Prodigal Son was all about this in the Bible. This kid that used to hold his fathers hand and trust everything he said, one day decides that he must at all costs experience what is out there himself. I can relate. I can see why. I think the moral is that we all can see why. We all have had periods of our lives when wisdom was not enough. It was not enough to know the truth, we must experience it ourselves. How did it end?

For me, I was raised in church...literally in church. My brother and I spent more time in churches than in our home I think. We had Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, Monday nights, and the others were singing practice for my mom and her sidekick, Joy. We knew all about church. We knew their various doctrines and creeds. We knew what they stood for and what they damned. We knew all the rules and which hoop to jump through. We knew all the words to "This Little Light Of Mine" and never to participate in the "Tall man" portion of "Where Is Thumbkin." We knew that preachers got sweaty and shouted a lot. We knew that their wives were always in charge of the bake sales and whatever else didn't require preaching. We knew there was more to the story.

I didn't want to live that way. I didn't want what they offered, at least the way they portrayed it. I wanted something bigger, and less defined. I wanted something that reached inside of me and grabbed hold. So I let go. I let go of my mother's hand and took a step into the darkness. Wanna know what I found?

Darkness. I found more darkness. I got lost quickly and terribly. I didn't find what I wanted out there. Out there was more pain and suffering...more than I had ever been through. I was given more than my share of death. It ended sitting in a rocking chair writing my letter of resignation to my life. The darkness was exactly what the devil wanted for me. I thought I wanted it because the devil was in the "Light" too.

The problem with resisting the devil is that he comes as an angel of light. He sits in churches. He sits in Bible studies. He sits in soup kitchens waiting for us...telling us that He is the remedy to our blindness. For a minute, it seems as though he is until we find ourselves in darkness again.

I ran too far from the light. I had seen the devil in the light, so I wrote off the light as evil. I gave up on the good crop because there were weeds, and fled to the place that produces nothing but weeds. That is how I got to the bottom of who I never thought I could be. I got to the devil. I stood with him face to face, exchanging our anger...exchanging rage at God. I was enticed.

I was wrong.

I didn't know it until I found myself saved despite my best efforts to sleep in hell. I had to surrender. That God that I had grown to hate was not the God represented to me by the weeds looming in the light, but by those driven from the darkness.

My life and upbringing was not so bad. Nothing was terrible. I had friends and a small family that loved me dearly. It just wasn't enough. There was too much out there for me to hate. The things in the darkness were the very things I wanted most. I wanted a father, but he lived in the dark and had fled before I was even born. I wanted the stability others had around me when they spoke of their huge families and growing up together in the same schools. I wanted these things I didn't have so bad that I forgot what I did have in the light. I had a loving mother and four loving brothers. Right now, I can honestly say that is all I ever needed and would ever ask for. I wish I would have seen that then. But in the light, I do now. None of them were perfect. None of them were without mistakes, but they were my heart...my armor.

Sometimes in the light, we have to sift through the darkness and pray for discernment between the two. They become cloudy at times, but be assured that the devil is trying to destroy what God has lovingly given you.

Protect what God has given you with your life. This is not a story of how things happened, but how it happens. The Bible says that sin is crouching at your door, waiting to devour you.

To devour you.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Vapor

2011-11-19T02:06:00.001-05:00

There is something about watching your breath flow up into the night sky that brings calm. It tells you that you are still warm. You are still an alive human being that is capable of much more than you know, both bad and good. Rest assured that it isn't over until your breath has gone from the world and the heat transfers into your surroundings. This tells me there is always time. There is time to turn it all around. This life you live does not have to be the end. It does not have to be who you really are. You can change. People can and do change. I am a testament to that. I could list the ways in which I have changed and it would take 12 years of blogs. None of it is because of me. All of it is God. I will give you an overview.

I wanted to die, now I want to live.
I used to hurt people on purpose so I wouldn't be alone in my own sorrow, now I would give anything to take away the pain I've caused.
I used to live in this place of despair. I now live in the warmth of God's love and grace and beauty. I didn't deserve any of it.
I used to drink myself to sleep in fear of my next nightmare. Tonight I will fall asleep knowing I am safe in the arms of God and excited for whatever tomorrow may bring.
I used to walk the streets at night staring into windows and wishing those families were mine. I am now one of those families.
I used to see things in the darkness of my room at night, now I have only the music of my wife's heartbeat and the comfort of knowing I am God's child.
I could go on forever with better words than these, but they would only deflect what God has really done. I pray His work in me would be evident without my words.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

A Little Web Redemption Of My Own

2011-11-15T23:20:00.001-05:00

The atmosphere was electric. The lights were dimmed as I walked across the room, on top of the world in so many ways. I had broken through to the other side of my troubles. I had overcome my desire to give up. I followed my beautiful wife across the room full of laughing people and beautiful light bulbs to a table of more laughing people. This table could decide my future, my wife tells me just before walking over there. At the table were two male nurses at Heritage hospital in the Taylor ED. This is where I want to work...desperately. I was excited and had my best game in front of my face and ran my fingers back through my slick hair. We arrived and I shoved out my hand with confidence and introduced myself as if they NEEDED to know me right away. I may have even winked, I don't know, I was in the moment. My wife began the intro and I was off making poor countries rich with just my words. I was slaying every linguistic dragon I encountered and used awesome words like Encephalopathy, and Reddenbeagle. I was what swagger was created to define.

Then something went terribly wrong. Something broke inside me. Something turned off the lights and made the entire room look at me in complete disgust. It was something awful, something that blanks faces.

Let me preface by telling you about a different, but not unrelated story that happened many years ago. Put the first story on the back burner for a moment.

It was the day after Christmas, the year 1999ish. I was returning stacks of gifts of things I did not want to Macy's (Hudson's then)...a few were for an ex-girlfriend I decided to dump before I had to give her a present. "Good thinkin," I was saying to myself the entire time. I had a terrible upper respiratory infection which was producing much congestion in my chest. My hands were full as I tried to set the presents down after waiting in a long line to return them. The teller was pretty. She had a glisten in her eyes that was inviting to speak to her. She said "Hi." I looked at her in the eyes and as I said "Hi" back, I half-coughed. Half-coughing is a phenomenon where half words mix with half coughs and things happen...unspeakable things when the person had a respiratory infection. As I began to speak, I coughed and could not cover my mouth and a single, tight rolling slug of infection flew from my mouth and the world went silent as I watched it make contact with the center of her head, right between the eyes. My eyes grew wide at the same time hers did. We were both equally offended by my violation of adequate human courtesy. Her eyes crossed looking at what I had tattooed on her face. I picked up those gifts and ran away. I would return a different day when I was sure she was not working.

Back to my original story much more recent...Last Saturday. I was throwing verbal flames at these potential employment leads and the world stopped again. This was my redemption...my chance to make wrong things right. The lights went dim and the world softened it's voice as I watched a single, tight rolled piece of saliva fly from my mouth and find the tip of his nose like a Marine heat seeking missile bent on destroying my life. The room was so still that I had time to look to my left at the people watching and then to my right at my wife still talking as if nothing happened before the person exhibited their initial reaction. He was a picture of grace, just reaching up and wiping his soaking wet nose. I apologized immediately. This was not something that could be blown off. This was a catastrophe. He said, "Oh, no problem," but underneath I could only see complete hatred and rage.

What word was I saying you might ask? I don't know, but I suspect it was something with a strong P sound. Something like: Plagiarism, or palaeontologist, or human pappilomavirus.

Such is the normal of my life. I am an idiot who is ripe for the world's laughter.

Do you think I still have a shot at that job?

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

God Is.....

2011-11-11T22:49:00.001-05:00

God is the sunshine. He is the One that puts a genuine smile on your face. He has knit us together in our mother's wombs. He is the reason we can breathe clean air. He is the electrical charge that sends the blood coursing through your veins. He is the sun and the moon. He is the song that you put on repeat to get you through the night. He is that vivid memory of your childhood that you cannot shake. He is the reason you have overcome. He is that moment that you are glad you got up this morning. He is the only reason for life and the only comfort in death. He is that moment you fall asleep smiling. He is the middle of the night snowstorm thats beauty in the morning astounds you. He is the crystal that twinkles in your eyes when you have finally gotten what you have always wanted. He is the sound of children laughing. He is the comfort when our children are gone. Our God is what He is even when we rebel. Our God is merciful. Our God is loving. Our God is bigger than our imagination of Him. My God is rockets launching into the night sky. My God is the sway of the trees in the midst of distress. My God is victorious despite a million obstacles. My God is the brilliance of light when everything fades to grey. My God is the rays that beam when you squint your eyes while looking at Christmas lights. He is the sound of children singing slightly out of key. He is the rise of the sun when you have fallen asleep under the moon. He is the chatter of the loon in the morning and the owl at night. He is the maker of constellations and the Northern Lights. He is. My God is. Our God is.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

It Was Never About Fishing

2011-11-11T01:15:00.001-05:00

It is cold in Michigan. Tonight it snowed. It usually doesn't snow this early. I guess the three proponents of global cooling might be right in which case, I am thrilled. I am one of the few that cannot wait until it is hard to walk on the sidewalk. I'd rather fall on my face slipping on ice than fall on my face tripping on a stick.

Reminds me of something very important. Every time it snows and gets cold, it reminds me of a Total gas station, which are scarce now if even existing at all. The four of us bought these winter flap hats made of wool and fur and used to go to this Total gas station to buy machine dispensed coffee before we headed out to our special place to fish in the middle of the night. We seldom went out before 11 PM. There were girlfriends and teenage obligations, so the night was our time...when the Dead End Kids arrived.

We never caught much and what we did catch, Joe would either torture or we would put into a local video store drop box. It wasn't about the fishing, it was about the time. Those times could never be taken from us. We spoke of things three guys would usually not speak about, we were not superficial. We were real. This time was real. The moon always stood at attention and glistened just right for us there. There was always magic. Even after Will died, we took his mother there at night and the snow blew like crystal across our faces and promised us something better. Reminded us that there was so much beauty left. Many people have a place like this. I think the common denominator is the beauty of God's creation and the way He chooses to manifest it to us. Those nights could have been anything, but to us, they were pure beauty and we knew it, and enjoyed every second of it as if it were going away.

It did go away. We seldom visit. We don't see each other as much as we would like. Sometimes we forget we even existed...That we even did anything worth remembering. Life does not allow it when you grow up. But I will never forget the magic we had there. I will never forget that we were different than the other kids. We were the Dead End Kids that dreamed of a world more beautiful right where we stood. We would die before leaving and we would die for each other.

I can be so grateful for that tonight.

Photo credit to: http://winter-fairy-tale.deviantart.com

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Number Seven

2011-11-09T00:08:00.001-05:00

Please click on all the links in this post as they aid in telling the story.

This is a Blurb story I wrote, click on the words to see their entirety. Thanks for reading.

I have been through the grieving process it seems. I am a very self aware person. I have realized all of these steps as I have gone through them. Knowing is only half the battle. Believing is a much harder task.

I had been a Christian for 12 years. I had been serving in the Church as a pastor for 9 of those years. I had never once had my faith in God questioned and shaken. The death of one of my three my best friends/brothers rearranged my faith and life. I have been upside down ever since, just trying to replace negative feelings with other things. I have played avoidance when actually dealing with some of the issues in my faith in regards to Will... and I guess.....everything. I would never vocalize them. I would never dare even think them, but they became more and more clear when I found myself identifying with things that were expressions of doubt and disenchantment with God. I listened to this CD by Mumford and sons, which when listened carefully through, is clearly a struggle of faith in God. There is a song I have listened to on repeat a hundred times called "White Blank Page." There is a lyric in there that says this: "You did not think, when you sent me to the brink." There literally has never been a lyric in any song that I have identified with more. This alerted me that there was a problem. There was something not right. I was avoiding doing something. I was avoiding reconstructing. I was comfortable living destructed. I had seen the upward turn and chose to better myself, but refused to reconstruct. I think I felt guilt for leaving him behind and afraid I might forget about him. I was used to him consuming my thoughts for so long. I didn't want to really let him go, and as long as I held on to that resentment, he was still kinda there. He was at least present in my anger, and I think I kind of felt some of his in a strange way. But I can't live there. I have realized that recently, and I just don't want to anymore. God is too good for me to keep avoiding Him. Here are the steps and the checkpoints of my arrival to number seven.

1. Shock and Denial- I faked crying when I arrived on the scene when hugging Joe, his brother. I did not believe it, at least in emotions. I held on to him and faked weeping for his sake. I stared blankly instead.

2. Pain and Guilt- A day later, I was a mess of tears. I was inconsolable, and wanted to do nothing but punish myself for not fixing everything. I stayed here for a very long time.

3. Anger and Bargaining-I spent the most time right here, alternating with number 4. My anger was a conscious choice. It kept the tears at bay. Blaming God helped me to stop blaming myself. So I stayed here for so long....for more than a year, I could not pray without trepidation.

4. Depression- This has always been my case, so it alternated with number 3 the entire time and I took medication to try to subdue it and it did do it's job. I punched religious statues and shouted at my God. I put myself in hell.

5. The Upward Turn- I bettered myself by going back to school during the thick of it. I hate school and did want to punish myself with it. I also wanted to keep my mind off of things and away from God and coming to grips with what really was the issue....I had lost faith.

6. Reconstruction-For some reason this started the day I passed my state boards for nursing, at the gym. I was listening to music to motivate me to lift more weight and found myself having to stop lifting and concentrate on not weeping. I did this at least 8 times during my work out. I went home and celebrated with my wife, but could not shake this overwhelming feeling of, "It's time." I opened my Bible and read the third verse of the first chapter of the Bible I had read for real learning in a year and a half: "Zech 1:3 Therefore tell the people: This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Return to me,' declares the LORD Almighty, 'and I will return to you,' says the LORD Almighty." I was wrecked. I was listening to music and this song crossed my ears and everything inside me busted.

7. Acceptance and Hope- I am here. I am happy to finally be here. I am excited to see my God again. I am excited to see my brother. I have much more to do here and am excited for the future as my faith has been reconstructed and I resemble something stronger.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Thing That Separates Us From God

2011-11-06T01:24:00.001-05:00

Not writing a ton lately. Usually this means things are going well or at least average. I am happy to report that things are going well with me. Not because I graduated nursing school or because I passed the state boards, or that I have my first interview on Monday, but because I have re-prioritized my life. School did something terrible in me. It made me read my Bible as a chore instead of as a life boat. I was always thinking, "I should study," instead of thinking, "There is nothing more important than this." Shame on me because of my folly, I became a belligerent Christian, intolerant of the things that put the breath in my lungs.

You always realize you're an idiot when you are at a red light and cursing the guy next to you for driving at just a speed to keep you from passing, but enough to keep you 5 miles under the speed limit. He is an old man. He is missing his wife that may be in Heaven and remembering their Saturday nights. This is the guy I want to get mad at? This guy? Really? I tell myself to "Stop it!" But frustration wins often. Frustration tells me I am messing up.

This past week, I have put an end to it. I have closed the doors that open while I should be spending my time with God. I have amputated the things that cause infection. I have set aside a significant amount of time to talk to God, and read what He has said. The result.........?

Everything has changed.

God is faithful when we are not. Always. I cannot remember a time I have been more satisfied with what God has given me. For the past year and a half, I have been avoiding things. I have been angry about Will so I have taken it out on God, as if He were to blame for human mistakes. If I used simple human logic, I would see that when a person is given the right to choose, he may choose the wrong thing.

I have been bitter. I have been so angry. I have given God what I thought He deserved...silence. I gave God what was left from my table. Meanwhile, He sustained my life. He gave me the things that make life for me beautiful....My wife, my children. I never acknowledged that He has kept my kids alive and my wife from harm. I only felt victimized by Him. This is a mistake. This is a part of the grieving process that needs strict attention. God is a provider, but also God. We have NO right to question Him because He is perfect. We seldom make the right choice. Freedom is based in humility.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Down 75

2011-10-31T22:32:00.001-04:00

The sides of the path begin with buildings then move to company headquarters, then to warehouses. Somewhere an hour or so away, you will see a giant mall and retired stadium. Then pine trees. Maple trees. Spruce. Then oak. It is the route to "Up North" which in Michigan has become an official place. On the way you have to watch for deer jumping into the road and keep your eyes on the road while trying to watch the hawks weave around the silhouette of a Stay Puff Marshmallow Man looking cloud.

When we reach our destination, we read magazines and buy gasoline for the boat. We sit in the wicker and wooded chairs and sway with the wind and the distant hum of boats on the lake. All around is the sound of a big family...at least big by my standards. I was never used so many people calling themselves brother, sister, father, grandma, nephew, niece, cousin, or mother. I was used to my mother and my brothers. It freaked me out at first...having so many family members in one house, stepping on each others toes. It didn't take long for me to love it. I had never played catch with a nephew before. I'd never grilled hot dogs for 15.

Laura and I watch this television show called "Parenthood." Laura had to beg me to watch it with her because I thought it was clearly for girls. She won and I loved it from episode one. The thing that I loved the most was big and how close their family is. Rain or shine, strength or fault, they were always there for each other. I never knew I ever wanted to be in a large family. But here I am, in one. I love it.

Thanksgiving and Christmas was always great for me. It was me, my mother, my brother, and most years we had a straggler or two. I remember once I brought home a homeless man I found under the viaduct while riding my bike. I wish I had a picture of those moments...the one where the homeless guy is riding on my bike pegs and the one of my mom's face when I got to the front door with some dirty, smelly guy. She might not remember this, but she showed me Christ when she gave him food. He did not come in as there was something off about him, but my mom always had a big heart. We would watch the parades together and my mom would sit down and say this prayer: "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the food you have provided for us and use it for the nourishment and strength of our bodies, in Jesus name, Amen." We would eat too much and take a nap, which I still do. We would then go see a movie, the three of us, and come home and put up the Christmas tree and eat the banana pudding she is famous for. It was great so imagine what a shock it was to go from one house 30 min. away and hug 40 people, then another 40 min. away and hug another 30. So much more to be thankful for than I had previously been accustomed to. It was shocking. Now it is warm.

Christmas. My big brother and I would wake up at 5 AM and sit in his room listening for any sign of movement from my mom to give us the slightest inkling that she was waking up. We usually made up a phantom noise and went running out into the living room, where she slept so we could have our own rooms, at about 6 or 7AM shouting "Santa came here!" She would sit up and grin and tell me to sit down and wait. She would stagger, still barely awake into the kitchen and get me orange juice and make a pot of coffee. The rule was, since I was hypoglycemic and definitely would pass out at times, that I had to drink a glass of orange juice before I could open presents. We would open them and go crazy until we fell asleep on the couches, playing with our toys. We grew up and Christmas became different and just as beautiful. Christmas Eve, we go to see Laura's family on her mother's side and eat a feast and open presents, but most importantly share in the second most important part of Christmas, family. Growing up, my uncles and aunts were all distant and I never knew any of them very well. The few times I saw them, it was like sitting in a room full of people that can't stand each other. It was so different to sit in a room full of people who care so deeply for each other. Christmas day, we open the presents with the kids and hold back tears thinking of Will and loving our excited kid's faces as they get everything they wanted. My mom and big brother come over and exchange gifts and we eat until we are full, then Laura and I fall asleep while we are all still talking and the day ends well.

I write all of this stuff because it still amazes me the way that God sustains a person from where they came to where they are. God was with me as a child and He is with me now. I was happy then and am happy now. Whether there are three of us in the room or 50, my God is always there too, celebrating life with us. I thank my God today for my family, who has become larger than I ever expected it to be. There was a time I could name my family...Mom, Jason, Andy, Will, Joe. Now I fear I would forget people it is so big and disrespect my love for them.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Top 5 Scary Movies

2011-10-31T18:39:00.001-04:00

My top 5 list of scariest movies of all time. Though I have not seen all scary movies ever made. Here is my list of the ones I did and why.

1. Friday the 13th- There is no more a vulnerable and inescapable time than while you are sleeping. Freddy could not be physically hurt or figured out. His passion as much as killing was terrorism of the mind. For many years after first watching it as a kid, all shadows were Freddy's blades.

2. The Ring- Every time a group of people watch this, someone gets "Got" with the phone ring thing by one of their prankster pals. I was thourouhly freaked out after watching this not expecting much at the theater at 3 AM.

3. Event Horizon- Saw this one alone, in my room, in the middle of the night on a faulty VHS player. It's intensity is almost unmatched.

4. 28 Days Later- Not the scariest horror film, but it is by far my favorite. Intense and creepy soundtrack and ridiculous camera work make this "Non-zombie" zombyish film amazing.

5. Jaws- The single biggest reason the world is afraid of sharks...besides the shark attacks. I was a weird kid, I saw this as a child and wept my eyes out, not because people were dying or that I feared the shark, but because Jaws died in the end. Creepy kid right?

Give me your top 5!!!!!!

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

I Can Do.........

2011-10-27T22:38:00.001-04:00

Today was a big win for me. I passed the state boards and became a registered nurse. For most in my class, it is just one of many sunny days. For me it was a culmination of a thousand thunderstorms.

This is a testimony to the power of God and His way of shaming the wise.

I am an idiot. My internal filter is faulty, my logical leads me to the longest route to my destination, and my stubbornness hinders me from following very closely. But God inside me is something special.

I have been told my entire life that I can't do things. It pisses me off and I hate it, because sometimes I believe it is true and at times it has won and I have given up. I even had a high school teacher tell me when she saw me with a wife and kids that she "Never expected this much from me." Something so easy...to marry and have children? These things are easy. Anyone and most everyone falls in love and most get married and have kids. She didn't even expect the easiest of tasks from me. The hard part is holding all of these things together.

The enemy's passion is telling you that you are nothing. His goal is to get you to believe it. Ask my mother who was told to abort me by her own father and left to her own defenses by my father. They told her to give up, the enemy told her to give up...but she didn't. Instead it pissed her off and she fought harder and raised two kids by herself. By the strength and grace of God I sit in this squeaky chair and write victorious. I have her spirit.

This is another testament to Christ in my life, that he took a bastard child and raised him up with sometimes nothing, clothed him in sorrow, drenched him in tragedy, shattered his heart, and made him one of His children. The world took my brother the year I began school, instead of derailing me, God used it to keep me busy and unable to sit and feel sorry for myself. The world told me I cannot go back to school full time while working full time and raising three kids and a wife at home. God made special moments with my family and gave my wife the heart to forgive me for what I have left behind for her to clean up and picked me up where I fell.

During this past year and a half, I have shouted into the open air about the unfairness of God. I have punched religious statues. I have punished myself in any way I could find for the loss of my brother. I have doubted that I really had it in me to do anything good. God stood there in complete disagreement. I think He is proud of me today.

I was at the gym after I found out that I had passed this miserable exam that was the final barrier to what I have been working so hard for. I was lifting weights and I got madder and madder at the thought of people telling me what I could not do. At least six times, I almost cried. The gym is not the place to cry. You do that on your pillow at night or in the shower so you can blame the soap. Not the gym, so I held back the tears and praised my God for His strength that He freely put in me. I have overcome much because of Him and am a living testament to His strength, power, and ability to bewilder the wise.

I dare the enemy to tell me I can't do it. Because I can.

Philippians 4:13 I can do ALL things through Christ, who gives me strength.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

A Few Of My Favorite Things

2011-10-20T01:17:00.002-04:00

A few of my favorite things...

My God
My family
Wind chimes...and wind to chime them.
Train whistles
The sound of rain.
The sound of wind blowing things over.
The glare of street lights
The smell of leaves as they die
The Michigan Wolverines
The sound of the ice as you hockey stop
Christmas lights reflecting off the snow
Homeless people that call 911 when you have been struck by an SUV
People that pay attention to everyone
Cows grazing
Shuttle launches
The smell of new pencils
The sound of the wind blowing through the trees
Little kids laughing
Seeing people get what they have always wanted
Holding my wife's hand
Finding money in your pockets
Finding something you have lost
Writing things down
Thanksgiving
My mom's banana pudding
My own face in the mirror when pretending to cry
People watching me doing my favorite things
Being freezing cold and pulling the blanket over my face
Letting lightning bugs go
Knowing I am right and not saying anything
Justice
Michigan beer
Saying "I am sorry" and the person not knowing what I am apologizing for.
When people you think hate you stand up for you
Television
Sad movies
Sad music
Sad anything
The Counting Crows
The smell of Febreeze
Leather sofas
New socks
Soft bristle tooth brushes
Adult butt wipes
Scottish accents
Coffee
Old pictures
Duct tape on vinyl seats
The distant smell of gasoline
Snow
The Detroit Red Wings
Pretending to be dead
Old, nasty conversion vans with mattresses (Not for the perverted reasons)
Anything Scotland
Sleeping when I am exhausted
Playing hockey
Remembering how good I was at basketball
The feeling you get 1 second after finishing a workout
The taste of good steak
Really, really sad music
Stories of how people came to know Jesus
Memories
Doc Martins
Horror movies/zombies
Beards
Moose
Bears

I could go on all night. What are your favorite things?

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Nice Dream

2011-10-18T00:03:00.001-04:00

I usually have bad dreams. I have posted before about a couple of them, but I get effected by them sometimes. This last night I had a great one.

I was sitting in a hockey locker room getting my gear on. I rose up and walked out the door to find something beautiful. I saw more than a thousand people screaming surprise to me. A thousand or more people, all people I have at least met. The guy that owns the corner store that I had words with the week before Will died. The guy that lives down the street and speaks to no one. A ton of people were there. My wife had set this all up...A surprise to me because my wife usually sets me up for dreams of her cheating. Of course she really isn't, but that is the dream I am accustomed to.

All of these people are here to watch me do the things I love to do the most. She leads them to another arena where they watch me play old man drop in hockey and suck horribly. She then leads them to watch me play video game hockey, which I am awesome at (at least at the pro EA level). All of my favorite things get witnessed by thousands of people.

Best dream I have ever had.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Home

2011-10-15T01:10:00.001-04:00

A quick message to those that have strayed from their families for whatever enticement has engulfed you....

It is more beautiful in there than it is out here. You walk past the warm lights of another home glistening with flashing lights and laughing children and wish it was yours. Go back. Go home. Make it work if it is at all up to you. There may be people inside that are willing to forgive you and desire to lay on their dad's/mom's chest again on Saturday mornings. Some kids love to be watched as they sleep. Some kids want both of their parents sitting on that brown leather couch in the living room laughing with them.

Maybe it isn't so bad. Maybe the multitude of little things are small compared to the memory of that day you said "I do" to one another.

Stop and reconsider. Is your family worth fighting for? Is it worth dying for?

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

Ink

2011-10-11T22:49:00.001-04:00

Base photo credit too: shichigoro756

It has been almost 4 years from the time I typed my first letter on this blog for anyone to stumble upon. I sit and think about all that has happened in that time, the ups and downs and the in between. I remember being a little apprehensive about posting what I would have normally written in my private journal, on the web. Then I decided that there was nothing about me that I wanted to keep inside anymore. The things that are kept inside have always caused me tension in my chest...this feeling of guilt like I was hiding something. There is nothing wrong with anyone being a private person, but there seems to be something wrong with me being a private person. I wanted to spill my life onto the internet so people could see all that God has done in me, despite my failures, weaknesses, and sins. I wanted to force myself to confess to anyone who would listen, who I say Jesus is, both in the Biblical-highlighter sense and in the very fabric of who I am.

I would check back in every day after a post and look at the comments, never expecting to have any, and I never did for the first few months until I got one solitary message of encouragement from Ashley Weis, who no longer keeps a blog or I'd link to her. This was scary to me. There was for sure someone out in the world reading my blog, sharing in my thoughts, and possibly judging my life. I got over the fear and kept seeing person after person sharing their thoughts on my words. It was exciting. I installed a statistics program onto my blog and looked at the map. I was shocked. Hundreds of people from all over the world had read my blog for whatever reason and had by freak chance gotten my guts spilled on them.

This is a humbling thing. I have never really bought in to that statement. This is humbling is usually said when someone is praised or critically acclaimed and in those cases, I always wonder how it would be humbling. I look at defeat as humbling, not success. But there is an aspect of humility that comes when you absolutely know that all good and perfect things are from God...That absolutely nothing you have accomplished can be attributed to you. It is humbling to see how God has taken my many defeats and made them victories in His name for His glory. Thank you to all who have been reading all these years.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading, Z

Politics in Real Life

2011-10-06T14:37:00.001-04:00

This will be a very rare political post with no agenda or sway. I was thinking yesterday while watching congressmen argue with each other on TV while our country drowns...What if people lived in real life how the politicians do?

We would all have shiny teeth and hair doused in Aquanet. We would make our way through the crowds at the mall, kissing babies and waving while fake smiling at everyone we could possibly make eye contact with. Imagine if everyone was doing that, it would be a sick circus of clowns that look strangely familiar to news anchormen/anchorwomen.

We would get up from our horse ranches and have a cup of coffee and read what the world wrote about us, take a pony ride, eat a fritter of some kind, clean our butts with $200 a roll toilet paper-government issued, smoke an illegal Cuban cigar, go shoot some quail and possibly coyly shoot one of our friends/subordinates in the face, listen to the crowd shout about having no jobs and needing relief from the taxes and begging for less spending of money they really don't have, eat another fritter of a different flavor, go sit in on a meeting with a lobbyist who promises us $3,000,000 for our campaign if we support marriages between quails and fritters or unborn babies being bathed in foreign oil, go home and sleep with our wives or even a sub-wife or prostitute, then go to bed on a million thread count silk sheet-government issued.

What a relaxing life. This is debauchery. This is idiot-ry. Fool-itry. What would happen if we didn't ever show up for work and got paid anyways? We just got our pictures taken smiling all the time. What if we stole all of the supplies at work? What if we kicked a homeless person on the way in? What if we couldn't come to a compromise, so we shut down our jobs, but refused to suspend our pay? What if we sat in our $20,000 leather chairs-government issued and watched a CNN/Fox News/MSNBC newscast about how terrible a country or leader is and without real intelligence, sent our hard working and devoted heroes there to fight them? Then what if we blamed each other or the president for that decision so no one would have to take the blame. What if when your bank account was empty, you just wrote checks that weren't there to cover it and never, ever got questioned for it?

There is a very strong similarity between the the two major political parties. They both enjoy their luxurious and smiling lives and will do anything short of nothing to keep things that way, no matter what the country is going through. If you want to see the two parties come together and get things done, tell them congress is getting a pay cut or losing some power. Then the elephants and donkeys (Combine the two and you get a fat donkey- meant to be read how it would appear in the King James Version style of writing) will get something accomplished for the betterment of themselves.

I think this is why Jesus stayed out of politics.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Flames

2011-10-03T01:11:00.004-04:00

I held fire to my fingers. I flicked the wheel with my thumb and the volcano erupted in a dancing light show. I felt the wheel heat up as I placed it under the wick, then a spray of sparks. The rocket was lit and after a few moments, it flew into the air. It left a tail that weaved between the stars and shot into the atmosphere unlikely to return to it's origin. It's composition consisted of a used toilet paper roll, a huge wad of Kleenex, some glue, and a rocket bought in the middle of the night from a local Meijers. It was beautiful the way it sailed off as if it had a specific destination.

I lit mine and it did the exact same predictable things. We lit the rockets according to simple rocket science...make it straight, make it symmetric, and give it propulsion. Joe lit his according to Joe science...make it strange looking, make it square, and gave it fire. His lit because it had a rocket attached and flew 3 feet before veering off to the right and fizzling out.

At least his was honest.

Ours was a showing of what smarts we had. His was a work of art, descriptive of his passion. It died.

Passion dies often. Especially when it's misguided. If he had the guidance that matched his passion, it would have overcome the atmosphere and lived with the stars. But it didn't. It succumbed to gravity and fell back to a foggy earth.

Our lives were meant to be lived with guided passion for what is right. Any other scenario will end in a rocket dropping back into your parent's back yard.

The Bible says (this is my favorite verse), that ALL things work for the good of those that love Him. I believe that, because I believe our God is good. I believe, despite my anger and rage for what He has allowed, that my God is still in control.

It has been a rough couple of years trying to convince myself of that. I have had times when I was playing the part because it was my job to, there have been times when I was sure everything happens for a very good and unknown reason. But to be totally honest, most of my time is spent in the middle... not really knowing. I am still so pissed off and cannot bring myself to an understanding that sin has taken hold of all humans still alive. And that God has reconciled ALL things to Christ. Somewhere in the middle is this emotional and misguided feeling that God is playing games that are set up for us to lose. Set up to make us feel stupid to make Him feel better.

I understand now the feeling of complete loss. I understand Job (somewhat, as his collapse was much worse). God isn't God because things are going well, but because He is still God and loving when things are terrible.

It's been the hardest year and a half of my faith. I have been so angry and acted out. I have made myself the fool, just to show him that I still had a choice. I have given God the worst of me, just to tell him how mad I am at Him. But when the noise had died down and the fit has subsided, He is still holding my trembling hand. God is still good, even when we blame Him for everything.

There are pieces of me scattered all around this place. Pieces I will never get fully back. But this is growth. You lose some of yourself and innocence when trying to survive the evil life brings. It is then you experience defeat. The next step is to reach toward God and take hold of victory, which is found only in submission.

Sing.
Migrate.

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

Thanks for reading...Z

Another Side

2011-10-01T02:44:00.000-04:00

Joanna Newsome- Sadie

The link above was my ringtone for my brother Will.

I have written so much about him, but I fear I have not represented him accurately. He wasn't all doom. He wasn't always this object of my collapse. He....

He was a real person. A person with likes and dislikes and a person that laughed more than the average person. He was just like me.

When I met him, we were sitting in church on a Wednesday night at some strange youth gathering without any direction. He was wearing a purple and greyish satin jacket that belonged to his father and smiled the smile of a million braces. He was quiet...just the opposite of his little brother Joe (Gumby on this blog). He was taller than anyone I could see and had really large hands. That's all I remember about the first time we met.

Soon after, I came to his house with his little brother Gumby. That day, we all watched CB4, a Chris Rock movie, and laughed through the whole thing as though it was a funny movie. It wasn't, but we laughed anyway. This is what friends are made of. The three of us became friends. Joe and I once hated each other and then became best friends. Will came along for the ride, but ended up my brother. All of this happened in the Michigan winter. The snow cleared and we were family. I slept at their house at the side of Will's bed. I moved from my home into a flat and Will slept in the recliner next to my bed. Joe and I woke up on a dock somewhere like brothers in a backseat.

He was an icon. The things I say probably are exaggerated now, but to me, he was a complete hero. He was everything I wish I was, and he loved me for who I was and wanted to be near me. I knew I had someone different than ordinary friends. The three of us soon became the Dead End Kids. We got in trouble and made it clear to everyone that we were not going anywhere. We weren't. We stayed for each other. It didn't matter the opportunity, we would not move away from each other. I still will not move away.

I think what we had in each other is what everyone really wants...We had unconditional love and respect. Will and Joe didn't care that I had a nervous twitch or that I was quietly sad about everything. They were family. They wore my badge and I wore theirs. They knew that there wasn't a single thing that they could tell me or do that would change anything and vice versa. I wouldn't have changed a thing...except the way my big brother met Jesus. We always dreamed of purposely getting kicked out of retirement homes and ending up dying doing something stupid together at 103 years old. Not parting ways at 31 years old. 31years is too few. It isn't nearly enough. But it is truth. Truth is He's gone and I can store up thousands of memories about him that are wonderful, but the last few eat my soul away.

We still are the Dead End Kids. We have gone nowhere. His ghost is everywhere we turn. We cannot leave. We are a part of the mess he left as he passed through.

So what does it all mean? Nothing. It means he is dead and we are not. This should be encouraging to you because we still have the chance to see the way the lights dance around the snow and the leaves fall red before being raked. It means he is in Heaven and we are not. We are here in a beautiful creation, experiencing a faulty human, wonderful life. You may be a dead end kid, but the dead end may be the place to start a new path. It's ok to remember the path while taking another.

Photo credit to: http://sultan-alghamdi.deviantart.com

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Re-inventing Myself

2011-09-27T02:19:00.002-04:00

It's been a long and sometimes very bumpy, but rewarding ride. Last Sunday I made my announcement...a decision that my wife and I have been miserable over making. I think the misery came more from the guilt we felt over knowing the right one to make for our family. It has been an 11 year ride as a youth pastor for Living Water Church. In this time, I have lost students to many things, even death and gained devoted staff, committed to the cause of Jesus Christ. It has been the best 11 years on my life. I can say that without a moments thought. I was doing something I love. I love loving teenagers as tough as they can be deal with.

I am on to different things. Not bigger and better as some would say. Nothing has been bigger or more rewarding than serving Christ in ministry full time. I remember the night we got the call after a very intimidating interview with a Q&A with like 12 people. I waited for the time they said they would call by, and just like Living Water's timing, they were late, so I was terrified. I had never wanted anything so badly. The phone rang and they offered me the job. I grabbed my soon to be wife and hugged her tight. I knew this meant family. This was what I had always wanted. I finally got what I wanted. To be honest, I had never gotten what I wanted. I fought for it with all my heart and got hurt and cut and struggled through my own weaknesses and thin skin and found my way to now. Right now, I know more about youth ministry than I ever have...and I am walking away from it...at least full time youth ministry. It is bittersweet. I cannot even explain to you how it feels to stand in front of a kid that was troubled and desperate for God 10 years later and officiate their wedding to another committed follower of Christ.

This is not the end. I will be taking on the role of a volunteer, non-vocational pastor at Living Water and will have my hand as much as I can in the youth ministries and anything else I can submerse myself into. I miss doing things for God just because I want to sacrifice without the lingering thought that it is my job in the back of my head. This is my chance to work on my weaknesses and devote my strengths to this church in different and exciting ways.

I am excited about the future, both mine and this church's. They both go together as this church has raised me and I have served and will serve diligently. Thank you to all who have supported me throughout the years. I will need your continued prayers and support as this church tries to transition in the smoothest way possible.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

And if You Don't Know, Now You Know

2011-09-24T03:10:00.000-04:00

People think life is all about trying hard...that it isn't about succeeding or about victory, it is about trying.

It isn't about any of those things. Life is about submission.

Submission is harder to accept that defeat. Submission is giving up. If you were ever involved in sports, you have been taught that giving up is not an option. How completely wrong that is. Submission is the very fabric of our being. Let's take a look at some things we can control and some things we HAVE to submit to...

Things we can control:
Our temper.
Our weight.
Our attitude.
Our choices.
Our relationships.
Our appearance.
Many more small things.

Things we submit to:
Our birth.
Our death.
Our circumstances.
Our age.
Our God.
Many more.

In nursing, they call these things unmodifiable risks. Things that you cannot control that can cause you harm.The former are modifiable.

Trying too hard will cause you harm. Trying to fix things for yourself or others will cause you both harm. Thinking that your efforts deserve respect or reward will get you. Nothing we can do is good.

The Bible says that even our good deeds are like menstrual clothes compared to Him. It is clear that we are helpless. God requires perfection. We cannot achieve that, ever. But Jesus did. That is why we believe. Because we are helpless to save ourselves. Jesus did the work, we submit to His death and resurrection as He did...even death on a cross.

God desires our submission to Him as He has overcome the world. Our efforts are futile. Our faith in Him produces results, just ask the woman who bled for years, or the man who died and was risen again, or the blind man, who can now see. God desires desperation and submission, not our feeble attempts to save ourselves.

Photo credit to: My good friend, Patrick Richardson- Januarybegan.com

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Redemption Under A Rock

2011-09-22T01:15:00.003-04:00

I wrote it down. I wrote everything down in those notebooks. I wrote about the anger and the hate, the rage and defeat. I wrote about being hopeless and helpless. I wrote about death and life. I wrote about me against the world.

I set it all on fire and danced as it burned when I encountered Christ on my road to death.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't burned that stuff. Maybe it was just another hasty decision made by a very unpredictable person. But I doused them in gasoline, along with everything I had ever written and flicked a match on top and watched all my sorrows burn. It was beautiful in the moment. It was beautiful to watch your past go up in flames in the face of this new and beautiful future. I had never had a future in my mind. In my mind, things always ended in me taking my own life. For the first time, I saw something out there on the horizon. It took me seconds to make the decision to burn those feelings. I hated them so much.

I wish I hadn't. A true record keeper keeps the bad records too. The bad ones remind us of how far we have come. I have but one notebook left from that time. I could not burn it. I could not deny that night. It was the only notebook I left from the fire. I lost all the rest.

It isn't about holding on to the past. It is more about the reminder of the miracle of God and His personal touch in your life. This last notebook held my final letter to my brothers written over a previous post. I was so drunk, I didn't notice there were already words written there. It is barely legible, but I can make out it's point.

The point was goodbye. The point was that I still believed there was gold in the world, but grew weary of trying to find it. I had failed, not the world.

I tremble writing about it as I tremble thinking about it...the tracks vibrating beneath my head...the cold breeze blowing over my cigarette, almost putting it out. The night sky was brilliant this night, with it's colors and light beams. It was cold and lonely outside. I wept like a child lost from his mother. I wanted out so bad.

Wanting out is our way of excepting anything real. It is the bottom that some people need to take hold of what is really the truth. Even when God saved me, I still held close to my contempt for Him and my doubt that His hands were anywhere near me. I could not hold on any longer and I tried again. This time in a more uncertain manner...the blade. I could not even hold it to my wrist as I trembled, so I dropped it a few times. I shouted at God or the devil or whoever was messing with me and grabbed it again. I was certain this time and held the blade furiously. I took a deep breath and thought of my brothers, Andy, Will, and Joe, and then prayed for real. I had never really talked to God frankly. I had only gone through the motions with the "Dear Heavenly Fathers" and stuff. This time, He answered in a voice that does not reach my ears, but pierces my heart. A voice I cannot explain or prove. A voice you will probably not believe in. I dropped the blade again..this time for good. I reached the floor and prayed. I wanted to hear more. I laid there alone for days weeping the hardness from my heart. Weeping away all of the pain. I was healed. I don't even care if you believe me about God. What I care about is that you seek out your own experience with Him. Ask. Knock.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Pioneers

2011-09-18T02:33:00.001-04:00

What does a real human being look like? Life is made out to be a quest to at least appear to be subhuman. To be great beyond anyone's normal expectations. To be something the world has never seen before.

What a profoundly ignorant lie. What a seduction to believe we can be something that has never been, when all we are is a repeat of what has been over and over. I know it sounds harsh and rubs some people the wrong way, but it IS the truth. We are no different from those that built the same fires before us. We build with matches, they built with friction. The end is still fire. Every hair on our heads are counted, but so were theirs and I bet there are many with the same number as ours. But we are far from cookie cut.

We are originals. God does not make subdivisions. We do that because it is easy and profitable. He makes completely different models with similar characteristics...qualities that resemble Himself. God's signature on us to show others that we belong to him. Just like we hope that our kids look like us. God wants us to look like Him.

You may never experience a truly unique existence, but you will experience it in a unique way. Because God is that big and is infinitely creative. We are individuals despite our resemblance to those before us. We are unique in that no one person has lived in this time period in this skin with this list of experiences. We are the first to ever exist like us.

I like to play strange games to feel important, such as: Who was the first to ever fart into and armpit? Myself and Dan. Who was the first to burp directly onto someones teeth? Also Myself and Dan. It is sick and gross, but funny. Really fun to think that maybe no one has ever done this in the history of the world. Try it. Come up with something truly original. Post it here. I want to know about it.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Mouth

2011-09-16T23:51:00.004-04:00

Who wants to be the center of attention? I raise my hand. I always raise my hand at that question. I don't even know why and that is sad to me. Do I want attention? I don't think so, but maybe. Do I want to be the fall guy or the victor? I don't think so, they both make me cringe, but my hand rises above my head anyways and that will be that. The teacher, or boss, or whoever will call on me anyways because they have seen enough of me to know I have no problem speaking in public.

I get mocked a lot and that's fine with me. I am funny, but much funnier as a caricature of guy that has no value in social mores or norms...just says whatever.

The truth is, I don't say just whatever. I say what I feel at the time as long as I don't see any negative harm coming from it. If I feel something is really messed up, I will tell you as long as I don't get the feeling that the truth will drive you further from the truth.

When you do things this way, there will be mistakes. I have learned through the years, some things to watch for. I will share them with you.

1. Most of the harshest and most honest people are the most sensitive and unable to take correction.
2. People who may be otherwise able to hear the truth, may be sensitive to a few different topics and will let you know when you have infringed on their ability to maintain peace with themselves. Even if it is the truth.
3. Many Christians do not like to question their own faith and get offended easily when you do. They may feel for whatever reason that you are questioning theirs.
4. You may be right, but you may make yourself wrong in how you say things.
5. The truth is, and was never about you finding it. It has always been about your being exposed and enlightened to it by God. Others may not yet have been enlightened yet, and to them we show grace.

Communication in the age of information is everything. People have digital courage on the computer and may not say the same things face to face. I think we should say all things as if we were face to face with our Creator standing right at our sides. If we think this way, we may not make so many errors in transmission of the facts of God and life, and the way it pertains to our existence.

It's Ok to be a mouth as long as it is the mouth of God. A mouth that shares the things of God and His Word. Anything else was found at the Tower of Babel.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

White

2011-09-12T01:09:00.002-04:00

There was one color. White. Snow was everywhere and we had the day off from school. We went to the park in front of Will's house. It wasn't really a park, but a lot of grass that had led a driver years prior to slam into his living room with his car in the middle of the night. It was a great day to play in the snow, even for a sophomore in high school that really wished he could be a kid again.

We called our creation p#nis de milo. It was an 8 foot statue of Frosty with a 3 foot ***censored***. We may never have cared about it or what happened to our 6 hour creation, but we cared about creating something. I think that is what I miss the most about my brother, besides his hearty laugh, I miss his passion to create. Especially create with me. We invented toilet paper rockets and songs and tools, and so many phrases. At least once a week, I repeat one of them and explain it's meaning to my wife.

So much went wrong so fast. Never has anyone been hit so hard while carrying such a fragile heart. It really was the perfect storm. I was thinking about it today in church...people are terrible to each other. They really do not think of it's possible repercussions. Not that any one person caused Will to make this profoundly wrong choice, but many, including him made a series of destructive choices. People saw his innocence and gentle spirit as weakness, so they stomped him as much as they could to get where they wanted to go. The problem is, they wanted hell instead of Heaven. They wanted the things this world offers instead of the truth. He wanted to be loved unconditionally.

Sometimes I hate living here...in this rotten world. Sometimes I love it, after witnessing a real transformation by God. Most days, as my friends know well, I love the beauty of God, but hate the evil more. This isn't right. This isn't what God meant when He offered "Life to the fullest." He offered much more, but we get caught trying to fix "Life to it's emptiest."

We can't fix anything. We are helpless. We are unable to change even one thing. It is God who does this work. God is the ONE that comes to save our dreadful existence.

Photo credit to: http://mj-gn.deviantart.com/

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Life

2011-09-05T00:46:00.002-04:00

Life is beautiful. Many times, we can't see that until it is in jeopardy. Things are designed. There are no chance occurrences. Life is mapped out. God knew us before we were. He knows and has counted every hair on our heads. Sometimes, it takes the most tribulating times and the most exhausting efforts to reveal itself. Life seldom comes to us. Life lays dormant, silently waiting for our grasp. Life will not force you to search for it, it waits for you to realize you need it. This is Christ. The Way, The Truth, and The Life. The passage to joy. The meticulously crafted and forged key that makes us kin to our Creator. Every moment is precious. Precious moments seem few to some. We have to open our eyes.

Standing in church this morning, watching the praise band play after my talk, I watched people's souls dance in unison with God's. I saw real people, worship a real God, in a very real way. I watched some of my students who have come from hell and were doubted to be anything, stand before God and sing and dance and let go of themselves for the joy of praising God. I looked at kids who no one would ever be able to envision as God lovers, close their eyes to the sway of joy and gratitude for the sacrifice of our God on the cross. I see lives changed forever. Proof of a very living and powerful God.

People without life hate those who have it. They do so because they don't understand it, not because they don't believe it exists. People reject the things they don't understand and yearn to find life on their terms. This is never going to happen. This is why I believe that no one ever can change apart from the strength, motivation, and spurning gotten from God alone. They aren't going to understand the change in your life because they don't want to. It is a scenario worse than anything they could imagine. The thought of trusting in something they cannot control. Some would much rather trust in something they can predict and fully understand. It's less scary, but it isn't life. It is death imitating life, to produce more death. And it is eternally sad that many will not choose life because of it.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

In Pictures...In Words

2011-09-03T00:33:00.002-04:00

People see things in either words or pictures. A story is told or read and they see the story in the words that are printed and take them for what they say they are...or they see them in whatever picture their minds compose to understand the background and situation.

What if I told you this story:
A kid walks into his attic and starts going through the treasures stored up there. He opens a small box and pulls out a piece of his dead grandmother's hairpiece that is lying on top of his own childhood baby teeth. He moves on to the small metal box that holds a piece of paper stamped State of Michigan. The paper is yellow, but you can tell it was white years ago. It tells this reader that this one guy is this kid's father due to probability in blood typing. He moves on to a gun. This gun is heavy to him. He is baffled by it's weight and strength. He has never seen a gun like this. Plastic guns are light and fun, and this one was heavy and menacing. He puts it to his eyes to look into the barrel. He looks out at the wall and points it to his gaze. He pulls the trigger and hears a click. He does it again and hears another click. This is where he let's his guard down and pulls it again with a weaker grip. The gun blasts off, sending his arms backwards and his heart racing. He puts the gun down and walks away from it shaking.

I see stories in pictures, which my test taking book says is a bad thing. When someone tells or writes me a story, I see the words manifest in the way I would picture them to have happened. The problem with this is it is easy to confuse your own pictures with the actual facts. I am told.

When I read the Bible, I am in the story...at least from a 4th dimension on-looking vantage point. I see things as they are happening, not as they happened. It helps me to identify with the point of the situations, but not the details, which is why you won't find me posting about deep theological arguments here. I get the point and the rest creates no pictures for me. There is a place for a person that sees things in words...the theologians...the philosophers, but their place is somewhere miles away from me. I love deep thinking. I love thinking about God and the deeper things about Him, but I hate arguing about it. When I see and hear people in even a healthy debate, I walk away. It just isn't my thing. I came to know Christ, not because of words, but because of pictures. Particularly a picture of a really hurting kid in love with his anger and rage, waiting for someone to give him an excuse to close his eyes. This kid saw God save his life and rip him from the hands of the devil and walk him hand-in-hand to His Father. I understood God due to pictures formed in my head that describes the indescribable qualities of our Creator.

It doesn't matter the way in which you think. It matters the point of the story.

Photo credit to: http://marielou-ann.deviantart.com

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Old Apartment

2011-09-02T00:21:00.000-04:00

It was the smallest apartment. It hadn't been updated in 30 years. It sat as the top floor of a 110 year old duplex. The carpeting was matted and had tracks that led to every room right through the middle. The bathroom was a pale, yellow floral wallpaper that I assume used to be beautiful in the morning when the sun shined through. The living room had a huge widow that overlooked the neighborhood, but it was covered by the overgrown branches of a tree planted 50 years ago by who I can imagine was some kid bringing home a small tree on earth day from school. It's kitchen window was it's window to the world. I used to stare blankly out that window just waiting for something to happen. Things rarely happened. One bedroom down the wall was my small tomb. During the night, I would put on Tupac albums and sometimes play track nine on repeat as a drank myself into oblivion shaking my fists to a cold and unforgiving world. "Life goes on!"I would shout as it flowed from his mouth. It didn't matter what had happened to me, or what was happening to me. This was my anthem. "Life goes on. F the world." This was a pendant on a necklace given to me by a friend I had. She knew I would like it when she got it for me. Everyone knew I was in trouble. Most sat by watching it, doing nothing...because they wanted to see what would happen next. Because I am and have always been unpredictable. But when they did see, most of them ran away. Jesus happened next. People don't have room for Jesus.

I drive by that upper flat twice a week at least, and every time I look at it, I peer into that only window to the world. Every time, I see my own face staring out of it. This was the home of my most beautiful and horrible memories. I realized the top and bottom of who I could be here. I saw both a glimpse of Heaven and Hell. I often think about me laying there on those tracks a mile away from this place. I think about being alone in that moment. The truth is, I didn't feel alone. I felt like I was weeping to someone unseen. I felt like I was giving up in the face of a victorious and vengeant God. I wept, all the while feeling the cold steel on the back of my neck. I cried so hard my guts felt like they were spilling out of my mouth. I wanted to live. I wanted so badly to feel something other than the sharp pains shooting through my head...and stomach. I wanted to believe in something that was true and honest and just. I was tired of being lied to and shown that God only loves you when you follow His rules. I never asked Him to intervene.

But He did. He intervened in a way that I could never deny or walk away from. God gave me something many do not get to see. God gave me a miracle. God let me see something miraculous to prove He was here. I am a blessed man. I get to live with the piece of mind that despite all the hatred and anger and pain in the world, I have actually seen a miracle. Some of you have too. Remember your miracle. Your miracle drives you through times of doubt.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

We Are Not Superheros

2011-08-30T23:51:00.001-04:00

When there are storms on the horizon...even ones that have been following for a very long time, we sometimes have the tendency to expend our energy on putting them off in any way we can. We can know something is coming and that something is going to roll over us like Grave Digger at an 80's monster truck rally. We know that what lurks is far stronger than we have the strength to bear, even if we know that Christ has volunteered the weight in the back of our minds, we still fear it's punishment. We decide we deserve the punishment and reject the sacrifice of Christ, but the pain is so much, so we continue to run and avoid it. We would rather live a life in limbo than stand up to the things that will ultimately give us great strength.

I have spent a lot of time running from the truth known by experience, as opposed to the truth known in words. When a person I know loses someone they love, I know what to say. I know the truth about God and the world, and that God loves them so much and the death is a product of sin and not God's doing or punishment. But what if that person that lost the one you love is you and not someone you know? I lost a piece of my heart...someone who I looked to as a big brother who had a hand in saving me from myself. I didn't think logically. I didn't immediately think to myself, "This is life. This is sin in the world and it isn't fair, but God is here and He is enough." Instead, I could not muster my guts to speak to Him for weeks. The thought of speaking to my God made me angry. It made me hate my own existence because it was created by the same God that had destroyed me. This was my thought that didn't manifest itself in conscious thoughts, but in silence that laid dormant, quietly killing me and my faith. I was shaken for the first time in my life as a Child of God. Never had I blamed God. Never had I seen tragedy as His hammer coming down. Never had I been in the midst of hell as a believer in Christ...a believer that God is in control. This trembled my whole understanding of who God is and what He really wants.

To be honest, these things went through my thoughts:
1. God is unfairly testing me, knowing I will fail, without giving me the tools to survive.
2. God performs miracles all over the world, but He is not willing to give me one minute of clarity to save my friend.
3. God breaks those He calls His children to keep them low and submissive, because this is what a jealous God does to eliminate distractions.
4. God may have saved me to continue hurting me.
5. God is all terrible.

None of these things are uncommon when we are in despair. However, none of these things are true in the slightest. What we know from His Word is true. The words are true, not the emotions...not our guts. Flesh is weak and gets confused, but God's Word is true and living. I think the beauty of disaster is that it shows us how true the words really are. It helps us to know them by experience and not just by reasoning, because reasoning can always be tampered with when feelings get involved.

Just know that God is real and whatever you may be putting off, may just make the sun shine in your life again.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

This Is Your Captain

2011-08-27T01:52:00.000-04:00

"This is your captain speaking." - Unknown source

I felt a vibration on my pocket. I feel them all the time...most of them phantom vibrations with a cause only known except by God Himself, our captain. I sat in front of the princess of the world, while she got an autograph from the princess of the Disney castle. My eyes glance upward to her crown, then back to my hand which held a device that allows world wide communication. Then back up. Then back down. Something caught my eye. The picture was my fallen brother Will just after he removed his corn rows...the one I have used for his contact information on my phone...a number I have wanted to dial for almost 2 years. In front of the picture and contact information is a question. This question would usually go unnoticed by my eyes. This was the question of my life so far for me. It said Are you sure you want to delete." I literally said, "Jesus!" to myself when I saw it. How had my leg made such a profound and menacing choice? How had it gone through thousands of improbable combinations and reached this conclusion without me consenting? I still don't know, but it made me think...and it wrecked me inside. I didn't need that to happen in the happiest place on earth. I did not need to see a piece of electricity suggest that I finally delete my brother from my phone. I quickly said cancel, both out loud and with my thumb, careful not to hit the confirm button. No way. No way I delete him. No way.

I realize he could never be deleted. He was here. He was right here in my face, sinking into my heart...into my memory. He can press that button and end communication, but he can never have taken what we had away. You simply cannot erase yourself from existence. You can make your flesh stop blinking, but you cannot stop your image from coming across my mind every day. Most importantly, you cannot erase what your kids see in you for the time they had with you. You cannot erase what your children have hidden deep inside of them.

But why the strange and random cellular phone error now? Why now. Sitting in front of the princess, watching my daughter light up with joy? Why am I told through electricity to delete my best friend from my phone...from my memories? I won't do either. I will hold on as if my life was held by it. But in the end, my hands might be gripping soil, looking for something greater, holding on to something I can never get my hands on. Eternity is for those who have entered understanding of it. I just may not soon get to touch it. I may not see him for such a long time.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Day Six

2011-08-24T22:41:00.001-04:00

Day six was the best day yet. Full day at The Magic Kingdom. We planned for the heat this time and took frequent breaks inside air conditioning. The lines were great. The longest we waited was like 30 minutes which would be unheard of at Cedar Point, so I loved it. We rode everything we wanted to and some we didn't want to. Caeden fell in love with Space Mountain and rode it trice, once with me and once with mom. Too many details to share tonight, I am way too tired, but it was a great day...that's the gist.

Ended with dinner with the Princesses and Aevry was a little starlet. She was dressed full out princess and kids were coming up to her just to talk to her. She was so excited and proud. Then she got to meet the princesses and She lit up like it was the best day of her life. Tomorrow we fly home and back to work we go.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

Day Five

2011-08-23T21:48:00.002-04:00

Day five was a nice, uneventful one. There was swimming, naps, food, some really bad and some really good. There was a movie, some cookies, a hurricane scare, some rain, some rain swimming, some underwater roundhouse kicks to the pool wall, and some pool leaf snorkel diving. We made today low key to rest for tomorrow's big day at Disney. We are all pretty excited and are more prepared for the heat. Prepared means we just decided going and watching a midday show in the air conditioning was a really good idea. One we wish we would have had at Universal. The sun here is nothing to be trifled with. Caeden got slightly burned wearing SPF 55 today in under an hour.

Gonna sleep now. Got a big day tomorrow...that's if God or hurricane Irene does not interfere.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

Day Four

2011-08-22T22:56:00.001-04:00

Day four was a lesson in patience with traffic. Got up a little later than usual due to the exhausting day we had yesterday. Laura got up and got us a breakfast and brought it up so we could sleep through a little. Today was hot again. I cannot understand how anyone sees this heat as something desirable. It is miserable outside night and day. You always feel gross, even just after a shower.

We went to the outlet malls to look around and fought traffic and fought this confounded GPS which knows nothing at all about Florida. It takes 20 minutes to travel 7 miles. I know people who can almost run that distance that fast. The lights are long, the traffic is heavy, and everyone is from out of state which means there are thousands of clueless people meandering just like me.

Had trouble with the safe in the room today. I or Laura put the computer in sideways and the door looked as though it shut, but it would not lock. We called down because we wanted to lock up our valuables (not many really) so we could leave for the day. After 25 minutes, we called again, still on his way, then after another 20, we called again as the guy came wrapping at our door. I opened the door..."Deedent you hear me wrapping, wrap wrap wrap-a-roo" he actually said none of that, but that's how he would have sounded if he did. He came in. Took off the front of the safe. Looked at it. Put it back on. Asked us to turn the computer around. Shut the safe and locked it without incident. We had to apologize.

Ate at Quizno's, went putt putt at Pirates Cove, sat in the pool, I worked on a song, and ate at Sweet Tomatoes. Not at all in that order. It was a nice, relaxing day.

Aevry calls Mexicans, Mecisans. She also says her legs look like two wands.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

Day Three

2011-08-21T21:14:00.001-04:00

Day three was hot. Melting, burning, sitting on the equator hot. Sweat mixed with two layers of sunscreen hot. Get dizzy and have to sit down hot. But so good.

Got up at 5:45 AM to eat breakfast with Mickey Mouse, who is delightful in person by the way. Went straight from there to Universal Studios on a free pass from my aunt and uncle, so thanks to them. Went on the Twister ride first. Caeden is obsessed and terrified with tornados, but really wanted to give it a try because he loves that movie. It was far more intense than anticipated. End game was two balling kids, but the getting there was one of the coolest shows of special effects I have ever seen. It really did feel like you were in a tornado. We got out of there quickly when it was over and went to the Simpson's ride to ease the nerves. That ride is so fun. The kids were cracking up during it and it even scared Laura a bit. They somehow manage to make you feel like you are on a roller coaster even when you aren't moving much.

Many sweating hours later, we find ourselves in the line for the Harry Potter ride the whole park has been talking about. Just Caeden and I on this one as Laura took the too short Aevry to the Dr. Seuss park. Once we got inside the enormous and detailed castle (Hogwarts), the details shined brighter than anything I've seen. The paintings spoke to each other in videos that looked seriously human. The newspapers laying on the coffee tables had video front pages, and the the Butter Beer was unique and addictive. The ride itself scared the crap out of Caeden, but I thought it was the best the park has to offer. If it weren't for the heat and the long line outside, I would have ridden it again. Finished the night at Cici's pizza.

Tomorrow is Pirates Cove, outlets, and Sweet Tomatoes. Maybe some pool time, I don't know...if we have time.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

Day Two

2011-08-20T22:43:00.001-04:00

Day two started where day one left off. Laura woke up yelling with the shriek that could have deafened Keith Richards. "Adam, breakfast ends in 15 minutes!" "It's your fault!" she had asked me earlier what time it was and I mumbled about not knowing and went back to sleep. This was the fault she was referring to. We jumped up to throw on our clothes in a panic because we needed to eat the paid for already breakfast because food is expensive here. As we rushed to get our clothes on, a coy "Whoops." comes from the kitchen. Laura had taken a second look at her phone and realized that her wooden eyes had seen the time wrong when she woke us in a fright. It was actually more than two hours earlier. We laughed a little. She apologized a little, and we all went back to sleep and did make it to breakfast a couple hours later.

From there the day went better. We went to the beach on the Atlantic side and despite my past vows to never step into a sharks house, I went right in. Walked all the way to the surfers where the waves were "Sick" and got my first face, eyes, and mouth full of pure Atlantic salt water. It was a bit saltier than I had imagined and definitely burns the eyes more than they let on in the movies. I was proud to be in the water. My son, who is also very hesitant to get eaten by a shark, also went in to his waist and spent all day belly boarding the waves back and forth. I was so proud of him.

On a bright redder note...Laura told me 80 times to put on sunscreen as "It is worse when it is overcast." well it is and I am cooked. We had a really nice time today and ended the day with a night swim and some Micky Ding Dongs. Going to Universal Studios tomorrow.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

Day One

2011-08-19T22:01:00.001-04:00

Day one. Not awesome. Florida has way too many people. Way too many by far. In their defense I woke up wrong this morning, just a nasty, foul mood. Plane was broken once we got on and I am already afraid to fly. They turned off the power to the plane including that life saving air blower above and all of the babies in the entire galaxy started crying. And this guy farts. This guy with no couth. This guy with a belly full of Taco Bell in a plane without air for the face and babies screaming.

The flight went well once it got in the air. Caeden was so worried and ended up loving the flight.

We landed and despite our best efforts to make the quick exit from the airport, we bickered with each other instead over many, many failed directions. Got a car, checked into the hotel, which is nice and inexpensive. Then we ventured to downtown Disney for dinner and walked around while listening to the kids whine about their legs hurting and they were too tired. We left and headed to Walmart, the only grocery store within 20 miles as told to me by my computerized female voice on the GPS. The only thing I hate more than Walmart by my house is the Walmart I went to in Florida. It is here that they get most of the pictures from peopleofwalmart.com.

We're gonna go to bed now because we have an awesome day in front of us that cannot be ruined by frustration.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading. - Z

Vacation!

2011-08-17T15:28:00.001-04:00

About to leave for Florida and when I do see Mickey, I'm gonna beat his face in.

Not really.

It feels great to be done with school, my family needs this break, we have all worked so hard this past 15 months. My wife has picked up the slack I had to leave for her and still maintained her own work. My kids have gone 3 days a week, every week without seeing me at all some of those days and it has taken it's toll. Just glad it's over. In a few hours I'm gonna be in the happiest place on earth with the happiest people beside me.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

A Quick Post About Irresistable Things

2011-08-16T01:23:00.000-04:00

Trying to kill the pounds I put on during nursing school. During my dieting, I have noticed a few things that are irresistible to me if placed in front of me. Not talking about things I miss or love to eat, but things that cause an inner battle and usually beats me into submission.

1. Pizza. I would eat pizza everyday if I could.
2. Chocolate covered Hostess donuts.
3. Soft chocolate chip cookies.
3. Parmesan Cheese-Its
4. Smokehouse almonds (This isn't too bad if you can only eat a small palm full, which I can't)
5. M&Ms
6. Skittles
7. McDonald's fries
8. Cookie Dough frosty
9. Anything at DQ

That was a short list of things that punch me with brass knuckles whenever I have been doing really well on a diet.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Data

2011-08-13T02:28:00.000-04:00

I hate to imagine a world without my phone. I hate to imagine a life without technology. Why? I have no idea at all. I don't get calls and when I do I hang up abruptly because I hate talking on the phone. I get texts sometimes, but it is work to return them, so I avoid it unless I am interested. Which is also what everyone else does... judging from my dismal activity on returned texts. But imagine the world where you had only your own hands to play with and not your Facebook page or instant message. What would it really be like to be completely bored. To sit and wait with nothing to do but stare at the person in front of you? I think there would be more real friendships. I think people would meet face to face again and spill themselves out to a stranger when their eyes match their words, because most people cannot lie with both, only their words. We would maybe love people again. Instead we love data.

What is data? It is numbers. A series of numbers which represent a series of symbols or whatever the matrix is made of. It's guts are sterile. So we reject the blood rushing through the veins of those across from us to manage our data lives filled with numbers that mean words that are supposed to mean our hearts? People have spoken to me and I have been looking at my phone, more interested in what numbers have to say than a real live human being. I might as well live in a world of nothing but robots programmed to assimilate with the other robots.

I love to write things down. I love to share. But I think sometimes these things get in the way of what I love to do most...sit in front of another human being and connect. Connecting with a person is nothing like connecting with a computer or and internet provider...it is more complex. It takes trust, compassion, a genuine interest, and a heart to understand someone other than the self. If you aren't genuine, a real person can sense it immediately and you become acquaintances, not friends. You get a piece of the border of the puzzle...the part that has no depth or definition. I think God wants us to want the good parts. The parts that make the puzzle make sense.

I am gonna try to stop relying so much on data and rely more on my blood and instincts and focus on the person in front of me.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Runaway Train

2011-08-09T00:36:00.000-04:00

My little brother Andy and I at one of God's greatest wonders.

Have you ever ran away? From home, literally grabbed a bag or a hanky tied to a stick and headed for the hills and into the horizon? How did it work out?

Me and Andy decided to run away for whatever reason, I don't know, but we planned to go one night on a whim when camping in Andy's back yard. I didn't understand why we wanted to run, I think it was for the adventure. There was a pink Cadillac from the 50s in the woods by his house. It was wrapped completely around this tree and actually had blood stains on the what remained of the door. There were no trails, so one looking at it would immediately wonder if a helicopter had dropped it from the sky, which I believe had to be the truth. We packed our things up and took our sleeping bags into the woods after the house lights went off and laid down in between the Cadillac and the tree to keep us from the wolves and the water moccasins, which Andy was and is still deathly afraid of. We laid there for a couple hours before we questioned why we were doing this. We talked for a while, about it as his parents combed the neighborhood looking for two soon to be orphans. After an hour or so, we got up and went back home expecting a quiet entry into the tent. Instead, we got his parents with flashlights and frowns. They were terrified. We terrified them. It is weird, but some people have no idea what it is like to be cared for that way, or how good it feels. We never ran away again.

A few years later, I was up north with this kid whose dad my mom commissioned to be an adult male role model. Turns out, this kid lived with his mom and wanted to live with his dad, so we planned his get-a-way. We planned that the next morning after we got home, he would pack and walk 25 miles to my house and he would live in my shed and I would feed him like some dog, the leftovers from dinner and no one would ever have to know. I got home and Andy came over early the next morning and we didn't even think about it. Of course we weren't serious. How could he get to my house? How could he walk what takes us 25 minutes to drive? We went about our business of care-free play, working on our music for our band called Deathstone, when under the sound of the flames being shred by Andy's pocket, battery powered amp, the phone rang. I answered and it was this kid on the other end. I was all "What?!? : /" He was all, "I am a mile away from your house, where do I go?" "Oh S&%#." He thought I was serious, except of course, weird keyboard symbols do not adequately describe what I really said. We met him 3 blocks from my house at the community center. He had a backpack with clothes. Me and Andy looked at each other and was all, "What?!? Really?!?" and walked him to my house to figure out the logistics of the shed that would provide him shelter. We promised not to tell, but in the end, I said I had to use the bathroom inside and told my mom and she called his dad. Funny though, because I spoke to him on the phone that night and he said everything was better with his mom, she had bought him new shoes?!!??!!!?

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Another Side of Me

2011-08-07T00:48:00.000-04:00

Mine is the one pissing off the golden one.

My last few blogs have been very heavy. Some very hard for me to articulate. So I am going to write some light-hearted ones. I am not always what I appear to be. Maybe I have been dishonest on this blog. I am only portraying one part of me. The part people do not see. There is more. I laugh. I laugh a lot. I joke about everything. I am loud and refuse to go unnoticed. Maybe this is the person you remember most. I do this because it is genuine. I have learned to laugh, because laughter is a very pure and healthy thing.

Today I will write about my dog.

Her name is Snookie. Named after the popular television icon that attracts only those that love garbage. Like me. She is adequately named as she has produced so much anger and frustration in our home. She has eaten everything. She eats and nips at people's hands and is always in front of our feet when we are trying to walk in our small house. I was just talking to Laura about insurance companies needing to add dogs to their existing coverage.

I had dogs growing up. I had Deacon, a Cocker Spaniel that bit children's entire cheeks off. And we had Nipper, another Spaniel that had epilepsy and would get to enjoy a grand mall seizure every time he got excited. Deacon hated Nipper and kept attacking him, sending him into grand mall seizures, so we got rid of him. Deacon kept attacking everyone else, so we got rid of him too. I was crushed. I loved Deacon and remember crying at the top of my lungs so my mom could hear it and maybe reconsider getting rid of him. She didn't reconsider for good reason and Deacon was given away, then given away again. I heard he got epilepsy too. But that was the last thing I heard about him. He probably got put to sleep or shot in someones back yard.

I hated dogs for many years after. Here is a list of things I hate about dogs:
1. I hate when they drag their butts across the floor to satisfy some gross anal itch.
2. I hate when they sneeze or whatever they are doing in your face while you are sleeping.
3. I hate when they eat your favorite clothes.
4. I hate when they touch their cold, wet noses to your skin.
5. I HATE cleaning up their poop, especially when the season turns from cold to warm.

The things I love?....
1. When they lay their heads on you to be near to you.
2. When they play with their toys on your lap.
3. When they growl at anyone getting too close to your kids, their perceived family.
4. When they believe they are one of your children.

So I love dogs now. Who would have thunk it? With all of the complaining I have done about them. With all of the negative things I said about them, I now love them again. At least one of them.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Way I Became

2011-08-06T01:31:00.002-04:00

Why am I the way I am? What events led to me being this person with this soul in this time in history? Have you ever thought about that? Life is weird. The way things play out never fit where we think they might. I never thought I would get here. Never.

I opened the cupboard looking for cereal and found a rat. It matched the ones that were rotting beneath our floorboards, drifting their stench into our living room. We had been duped. Or maybe it was all we could afford, I don't know, I was just a kid. But here we were in this house, and I got tuberculosis in the glands somehow, and I got some time off of school, and some needles in my arms, and stitches in my neck before I was a healthy and thriving young boy again. I wasn't an outgoing kid as most would assume. I was shy in school and unsure of myself. I kept the answers to the teachers questions in my head and stayed silent. All of my report cards said I had more, but wasn't going to give it. My classmates wrote cryptic and futuristic things on my yearbook and I ignored them waiting for that one girl to sign it..."To Adam, have fun with the girls in the 6th grade, KIT, Whoever." If she had left a number, I would have called it, but she didn't on purpose. Why didn't she? Because there was something wrong with me. I wasn't right. I wasn't normal. No normal 12 year old thinks of death. No normal 12 year old thinks that maybe he might be better off in darkness than right now. I fell asleep to "With or Without you" from U2 most nights in Jr. High and most nights I felt my mom's hand upon me, praying for me. Whether she remembers or not, I do. I remember her prayers for me and I could feel her worry. She knew I wasn't right too.

Eventually my repeat button on my cd player wore out and I had to rig it. This was years later as I played "Life Goes on" from 2pac all night as I drank the world's worth of beer to fall asleep into a dream that would make me want to never sleep again. See, evil is real. I have seen it and so have you... some of you have even realized it. When morning came, things would be ok again. Just get through the night and I could act during the day. It was just that time when the sun went down and I was left sitting there with nothing to distract me from myself. Most nights Will or Joe were there, but they had girlfriends and a lot of times, that left me alone with who I called Cold. It was this empty feeling I got that I eventually got attached to. I hated it, but it became family to me. I wanted it gone, but feared losing it. So I named it and embraced it. I sat in the corner of my filthy room with a bottle singing my praises to the god of wine.

This was the person that God was watching. Not the only person, but the kind of person. This is what makes God so beautiful to me. You don't have to overachieve to get the affection of God. You needed only to really need Him.

I think that is always how He has worked. He always went to the people that really needed Him in a way that is real. A person can say they need God when they struggle with a fear of a lost investment, but a person that needs God to provide their next meal feels God differently. Less than a month before Will died, I went to this hill to look over the city and found a homeless man's house decorated in the snow with a sleeping bag and some liquor bottles. Above where he slept in the subzero cold, were some branches that he tied garland around...his celebration of Christmas. I took pictures because this may have been the most pure moment of my life. This guy that had lost everything, probably because of drugs and alcohol, but wanted to feel home again. He probably remembered when his parents bought him that Evil Knievel toy that one year when things were pure Heaven to him. Maybe he remembered the way his dad looked at his mom when he opened that box that held his very heart. Or he remembered nothing at all but his drink. It doesn't matter because he wanted to celebrate Christmas wherever he was, even if under a maple tree in the dead of winter. It is his bottom. It is what it looks like to live at the bottom of humanity. At the bottom of humanity is where grace shines the brightest.

This is where God found me. Laying there defenseless, hoping for death. God found me in the depths. Truth is, He had never lost me. Truth is, I found Him with me in the bottom of the depths. I found His dirty face next to to my dirty face, His much brighter than mine, and He lifted me up out of my own spit, blood, and piss. He set me on my feet and gave me the world. This is grace. This is the message of the Gospel of our Living God.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Life in Art

2011-08-05T01:52:00.001-04:00

The strokes were like poetry. The paint gliding down the wall with the bristles of the brush. The hand unwaveringly still, careful not to make any mistake that may ruin it's intent. It's purpose was a picture of death. And it was ugly. So ugly it was beautiful.

I didn't remember painting them. They were horrible. I can only imagine it being as I wrote above. The opposite of what they probably were. But I don't remember them. I don't remember any of them. I don't remember painting the eyes. I don't remember painting the tomb. I don't remember painting the clown. I only remember waking to them wondering how they had gotten there again. The paint on my hands and spilled on my floor.

If I described myself, hopefully you wouldn't believe me. I was a picture of myself with the face scratched off. I was me, but I wasn't anything like me. I was not who I was supposed to be. I get that feeling a lot sometimes still. I don't feel like I am who I am supposed to be.

My walk to the bathroom in the mornings were chaos. The sound of the beer cans as I tried to wade through the labyrinth on my floor. The sound of my bones cracking and muscles stretching as I got up from the floor or under the table or around the toilet. The light that smashed me before I had time to adjust. My head screaming for the mercy of the Lord. Most mornings I woke up still drunk.

I had no idea of a life on the other side of hatred. No idea you were all here. No idea there really were anyone left who cared. That's what sin does. That's the work of the evil one. I don't write this for any other reason than to remember my exodus. My journey from the cold to the sun. I love to remember the power of God specifically in my life. The Bible is full of stories of it, but when it happens to you, you would do anything to feel it's intensity again. I've been in the fire. I've been burned, but there is nothing like having the pain lifted by your Savior. There is nothing like waking up to you Father wiping your hair from your eyes. It reminds me that life is brilliant. If sin must be in the world and people have to suffer...it is still so great that God gives you something different inside that fuels you to continue on.

Tell me your story of God.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Regret

2011-07-31T00:07:00.000-04:00

"If we keep looking backwards, we will break our necks. We don't have time for regret." The Milk Carton Kids (Milk Carton Kid)

I have done a lot in my life that I should regret. I have hurt so many people. I have used people like garbage to get what I wanted. I have hurt people with the expressed purpose of hurting them. It made me feel better. It made me feel not-so-alone knowing someone else was miserable too...because of me. Sometimes because of their love for me.

I told my mother, she was gonna be a grandma while I was still in high school. Bad enough, but did I have to do it at a family reunion in front of the people she slept next to growing up? I used people and their emotions to lift me up out of the dirt for just a few moments as I watched their faces stomped by my boot into the manure. For these things, I will never excuse myself for any reason. I was a messed up kid that was misguided, but this was way too far.

I came to know Jesus and the first thing I did was make a list of people that I covered in crap and called them. I apologized and told them why things had changed in me. That alleviated my guilt a little...but should it? Should I have been able to hurt someone that bad and just apologize and all becomes well with me and them? With me and God? I don't think so. All is well with me and God, but I can never take back what I said and did to those poor people. I may be forgiven, but I am still may be a monster in their eyes and all I can do for them is apologize.

This is the finality of our actions. We can apologize and if you are close enough to the person, they may forgive and forget about the offense entirely. But if you aren't close to them, your apology may help them understand, but you can't take back their suffering. Their suffering may have been a tool from God to make them stronger, but the cause of their suffering was a tool of the devil to destroy them. I am not sure what it is I am even trying to say. I have no answers on this one. I don't know, I feel bad for things I have done. I pray that the guilt I feel will continue to remind me that every moment means something to someone. We are affective to those around us. A single word said in jest may cause a person to go home and cause herself to vomit. A joke can provoke someone to give up on any faith they have left. I am not proud or delusional about these things. I cannot ruin someone. God is bigger than that, but that doesn't excuse my gross contribution to their lives. We must be very careful and handle people very delicately. Some people are porcelain dolls that will shatter if dropped.

Regret. I said earlier that I have a lot to regret. I have done a lot of bad things. I really have. Here I am though...alive and writing. Here I am looking for ways to break through people's defenses and expose them to love. I am here because Jesus is so good and merciful and graceful to use an evil person to reach others. It goes against every human instinct and idea of fairness. It is to humans, ironic. To God it is His work, His eternity long mission. To regret the evil I have done is to negate the grace God has shown me and those around me. When God changed me, everyone around me saw it happening and knew it was real...because I was so bad. I can only pray that those people I hurt will forgive me and most importantly run to God. I am sure they haven't thought of me since, but I do still think of them. I do care. I do still think of ways to make amends with them, not for my sake, but for the sake of justice...even if it is only human justice.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Brotherhood

2011-07-30T02:31:00.001-04:00

And we watched the last rocket burst into flames and shoot into the night sky. It soared like a real rocket would. We watched it until we could see it no longer and closed our eyes. We knew this would be it. This would be the last time we watched in wonder as the work of our hands and a few toilet paper insides and cardboard fizzled into the cold world. We were growing up. We didn't want to, none of us did. We had to. Things were changing. We graduated and moved on. Our big brother was getting married. My little brother went to the Navy and my other little brother moved to the place of sand and lights. I stayed put because I had a child on the way...at 18 years old. I was that guy that did that thing that made that person that I love so dearly.

Stepping out into the world isn't something that has ever been taken lightly by anyone. Mother birds have to push their young out into the wind. Sometimes mother humans do too. Other times, we just want to do what is expected of us, so we get up, and pack our things and walk out the front door. We say goodbye to the things that have meant the world to us and promise to see them again at Christmas.

Something changes while we are gone. Cold seeps in and makes us adults. It makes us proper. It drives a wedge between what we used to love and who we are now. You come home and nothing is the same. The house is changed, the people have moved on, and even the neighborhood has changed it's face. Home feels like not-so-home. You look into each others eyes and you see yourself written on their hearts, but each of you know you can't go back. And you shouldn't go back. These were the days of your youth. It's time to grow up and make yourself a man. But there is a gap between what you should do and the feeling of emptiness that comes when what was once there is gone. There is this middle place where you just want another day to be a kid. You want to make those mistakes one more time.

One of my brothers is gone. One of my brothers isn't gonna make it for Christmas this year. But I have three brothers that will. Looking in their eyes is like seeing into the past and the future. It is seeing these little kids in pajamas trading baseball cards and ripping each other off. It is seeing two pairs of Doc Martin boots standing together with the wind at their backs. Even if currently the wind is forcing us backwards, we see the hope in each others eyes. This is brotherhood.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Counting Sheep

2011-07-29T01:10:00.001-04:00

"The only time I have problems is when I sleep." Tupac Shakur.

I have written about sleep before, and I will again, because of what is signifies. It signifies vulnerability. Some people are these utopian, somehow inhuman creatures that cannot be touched. Some people are a fairytale of everything you have ever wanted to be, but at night, when the sun goes down and the mask comes off, they close their eyes just like the rest of us, and wander off into somewhere different.

Sleep is scary because for 5-8 hours a night, you have no idea what is going on around you. There could be a guy with a giant sickle standing at your feet grinning at your bad dreams. Or there can be an angel that fights away the evil things unseen to you in your most vulnerable time of your life. We will never know, because when we close our eyes and drift off to somewhere else, we leave whatever consciousness remains here. We go to wherever our minds want to take us...like it or not.

I too often go to where my heart does not want me to go. I go to the very moments I fear the most. I hear things I don't want to hear. I see people I know cannot be there, except it all feels so real. You wake up over and over only to drift back into this abyss of forgotten memories and subconscious lies. And sometimes truth.

I used to fear falling asleep. I would sleep at the foot of Will's bed because I knew that when I fell asleep, I would not be alone. I have always hated being alone, especially in my most vulnerable state. I won't write about some of the things I have seen in the dark, they make me shake even now. But I will write about the methods I used to defeat them. Starting with the things that didn't work.

Metronome. I slept with one ticking exact seconds away in 4/4 time, 120 BPM for a couple of years. It was effective in putting me to sleep, but not effective in releasing the dreams or the fear of the dreams.

I tried sleeping under the kitchen table and in the bathtub. They helped for a while, to trick my brain into believing I wasn't in bed sleeping, but dreams will always catch up...because your life will always catch up.

I tried pretending I was in these horribly unsafe scenarios, but was completely safe, like in a boat in the middle of the ocean in a hurricane, but completely untouchable from the storm. It puts me to sleep most nights. It is my single most effective way to drift off, but nothing keeps the dreams from finding me. When I close my eyes, there is nothing I can do. I lose control of the one thing I always have conrol over...my consciousness. I lose control of the way I see things. I lose control over reality and things that are impossible. I lose control over my own ability to stop calamity from happening. Many dreams, I get to watch my worst fears realized with no defense or any ability to change anything. It is a horrible feeling and a horrible way to wake up to the world...knowing you are completely helpless. Hopeless.

But isn't it a reflection of reality? Isn't that the real world? We cannot control everything. Things happen whether we want them to or not...great things that we celebrate with family and friends and horrible things that we mourn all the days of our lives. If we could go back and change some things, whether you admit regrets or not, many probably would change them. I would change many things because I am tired of feeling bad about them and am tired of knowing I did the wrong thing and don't know what might have been. But what would happen if you did change them?

Chaos. Chaos theory is based on things like the migratory pattern of birds and the way things don't happen as predicted by many years of study. Life is a series of anomalies that when predicted would have turned out differently. I guess this isn't why we get to control of the world. I guess this is why nothing really works out just like you had planned it... because there is chaos. That chaos is a delicately composed symphony radiating from the fingertips of God, but to us, it is chaos and not understandable. So we fear things like dreams....things unpredictable, because they make us lose order. No one wants to lose order.

I say, God was never meant to be predictable. We cannot always have control. Our dreams show us a wonder that may not be possible, but can be completely real to us. They can teach us something about ourselves, and maybe even others around us. At the least, they can teach us that God is in control, even when we aren't. Because we wake up...most of the time.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Old Quilts

2011-07-27T01:00:00.001-04:00

It is sad when a quilt outlives it's maker. Or even an afghan.

Mortality is the single biggest issue of my entire existence. I fear death. Not for the reasons that I will be dying. There are so many ways I could have already died and that doesn't really bother me. What bothers me is that it could have happened. Tonight a guy walks out of a gas station to another man with a gun and gets killed right there for no observable reason. Last week, an old woman curled up in bed, feeling a little more tired than usual and doesn't wake up. Either is OK with me as long as it isn't fire or drowning. The thing that gets me is being deleted.

When a person dies, their loved ones hurt and never forget as long as they live. How about their not-so-family ones? They get shocked and sad, attend the funeral and in a few weeks, you don't pass across the thoughts that dominate their brains. You have been forgotten. I hate that. I think the people of the Old Testament had the right idea. They hired mourners to wail at their loved one's funerals. Maybe they can make such a scene that people would respect your life.

People here don't have much respect for life. I saw a guy honk his horn at a funeral procession the other day because he missed two green lights as they rolled through the intersection. He had had enough and cut into the procession. He missed the point of the procession. It is about respect for humanity. People on this earth loved that deceased person. People had memories made with him or her. His kids remember being bounced on his lap and feeling his stubbled face scratch against their smooth kid-skin. Her parents remember her real-pain cry she would shriek out when she was really hurt as a toddler. His wife remembers the sacrifice he made, working his hands to the bone to keep food in front of them. So they pull their cars into a procession of people who love and respect the deceased. Some of the mourners will forget quickly and others will have grandma's perfume smell programmed in their brains forever.

We kill. We kill babies. We kill kids. Tonight someone kidnapped a 5 year old girl, killed her and burned her in an abandoned house. We kill criminals. We kill with our words. We kill with our swords. We kill honest people fighting for a different country. We kill evil people trying to harm us. The point isn't a moral one. It isn't an argument about what killing is right or wrong. It is a cry for life to be respected. If a person has to die, don't dance on their graves. Someone loved them. Imagine how the parents of a murderer feels when their child kills a family of 5. Imagine how they feel when the country rejoices at their night in the electric chair...there baby frying by electricity. Look at their faces as visions of feeding the kid a bottle and the first time he hit a baseball rush through their heads as currents run through his. The Bible says God flooded the world because of violence. What is clear from the Word of God is that God loves life and hates watching those in peril.

I fear being deleted from anyone's mind. I know I will be, but I refuse to like it. Maybe this is a good way to live. Maybe it sparks a passion to make Christ that much more visible in me. Maybe it produces pride and an obsession with people remembering just me. I don't know, but I do know that I really wish people cared more about life. This world would be better and lighter if we did.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

I Guess This Is Growing Up

2011-07-24T02:13:00.001-04:00

I can feel myself growing up. I feel it in little moments of the day that I realize I just handled a situation completely differently than I usually would have. I realize it in those isolated moments when you look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself, "What am I doing? I am not 21 anymore." Then change your clothes into something a 33 year old person might wear...something plain...something without labels and print...something that tells the world you are ready to get old. Is this maturity? I hope not. I always thought of maturity as making a choice based in integrity...the right and sometimes unpopular choice, even when people are watching you silently judging. I thought maturity was based on your actions. I thought maturity was something you proved and never had a face. I thought maturity was judged by God himself.

To me, maturity means integrity. Integrity means that no one that seeks to destroy your walls can breech your defenses. Integrity is silent. No one speaks integrity. It is something that is seen and learned in a choice few. Integrity can usually only be taught by a person with integrity. I was taught by many. God gave me models of integrity to guide me my entire life. Here is a list that is not all encompassing because there are too many to number. But here are a few.

My mom- she picked up kids from the ghetto and dressed up like a clown to give them Jesus. She made herself a joke for God. Even more undignified than David in my opinion. She bled a clown's blood for me.

JoAnn/Jim- They didn't have to see me as their kid and sacrifice for me, but they did because God was their guide. They showed me a character that I had never recognized before. They gave me their hearts.

Andy- We made the world's greatest death metal band ever created by two kids under 13. I changed your diaper and you changed my life. You are integrity to me. You are the blood that courses through my blood, and I couldn't be prouder of you.

Jason- We are the opposite of each other in so many ways. But in the area of heart and love, we are the same. We went through it together...the good and bad. We came out breathing and I love you.

Will- You were my heart. You were a sacrificial lamb to everyone you loved. You gave and gave. You told me the truth about you. I appreciated your laugh and how genuine it was. Your smile and how it was specifically directed at someone.

Joe- Me and you have seen hell together. We held each other shaking in fear. We held each other shaking in pain. We are brothers even when being a brother hurts.

Dave McWhorter- I needed someone who would be willing to guide my sometimes very misguided passions into the right direction without encouraging pride. Even when your words to me didn't make sense at the time, I got it later on. You have always been a great mentor.

Jim Stew- You put me on a roof and taught me who Jesus was. I didn't know. You helped me find Him for who He was in my life. Remember, I went to you first when I was searching for Christ because I watched you give both your jacket and shirt off of your back to give another broken kid, a picture of the love of God.

Last, but certainly first- My beautiful wife, Laura and my children- If I am to speak of growing up, you are the first that comes to mind. I wasn't ready to be a husband and father, even though I always thought I was. I never thought it would bring so many fears. I never thought it would cause me to worry so much. But that is what love produces sometimes...worry. We worry because we never want to lose what we love so much. I never knew love would make my heart ache so much. You hold my heart firmly in your hands and have always been so careful not to drop and break it. When I weep, you weep. We are one.

These are the people who taught me to grow up. These are the people God gave me as a gift. Without these people, faith in God would not have happened for me. Growing up is knowing your are not in control. But as scary as it may seem, God is.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Acceptance

2011-07-22T01:27:00.002-04:00

My problem has never been whether there is a God, my problem has always been with, "Does He care about me?"

I was raised in church to believe in God. Some would say I was indoctrinated from birth. I would say, I was taught some very important aspects about the truth that the world refuses to see. In many ways, I refused to see them too, because of the consistency of hypocritical Christians to be awful. When I laid my head down on the tracks, I never thought for a moment that God was not there with me, watching. My thought was that He was laughing at me. Jolly, Santa, laughing at my plight to make a ruined life work. This was my anger. It fueled me to live as long as I did. I wanted to fight against the God that had destroyed me. The truth is...I think....that He did destroy me. He did it. He doesn't cause sin, but allowed it. Why? Because He sees the bigger picture. I did not.

I came to know Jesus the day I realized He cared about me. He really did love me. He really was guiding me and had always been there. I was out of my mind happy and excited to finally know the truth. I served Him with the best of my heart and life. I made horrible mistakes and fumbled around trying to get it right, but I fought so hard against the evils that wanted to take me. I beat my body and made it my slave to glorify God. I dedicated my life to showing a glimpse of Christ to those that were just like me. A kind of kid that I have been a lightening rod to since I started working with teenagers 11 years ago.

Many years later, I found myself battling again. I found myself sitting in the dark in front of a religious icon shouting and shaking my fists at my God. I found myself again, not wondering if God was there, but wondering if He cared at all. How could he let one of the closest people to me...one of the saviors He sent me of my whole life to put himself on a thread. How could He do that? How could He let me lose him? I never believed God to be a God that always keeps bad things from us, but I believed us to be friends. Him to be my Father. I always saw God clearer when I pictured my own son and how I would love him. I would never take away one of the things he loved the most. I would never take away someone so dear to him. This is where I got stuck. I got stuck in pride. I got stuck looking at me and not Will. Will suffered for a long time. Will did love Jesus, but got lost in all of the evils this world shoves down our throats. It is a horrible thing that he did and it had nothing to do with what God wanted him to do, but he isn't suffering anymore. He is with God...happy for once.

Meanwhile I watch his kids falter and stumble and lose everything they have trusted in. I watch their hearts get destroyed and I ask myself again, "Does God even care?" "Does God even CARE!!!!!!????" Do something! Anything!

Silence.

So I bang on a statue and shout at the devil I have made God to be and weep. I deteriorate. My faith shatters into shards of glass. I believe God is near and my gut tells me I am wrong about Him, but my anger will not let me forgive Him for something He didn't do. This is grief. This is the cycle I went through. I went through all of the predictable stages of grief. I went through denial as I sat stone as I watched his family die at his house just 25 feet from where he was hanging. I experienced anger as I resented what Will had put us all through. I experienced sadness and grief as I really missed my friend. I experienced recovery as I realized my God is not to blame for the actions of anyone. Will did what he did because he is imperfect. God cares. God was far more wrecked than me, or his mom, or his brother and sister, or his wife. I pictured me losing my son the same way God lost His and realized that I get it. I would die inside with no words that could ever express my suffering. I would be in mourning for the rest of my life. It isn't that God doesn't care...it is that He does care. It isn't that He watches us do things eternally painful to Him, it is that He watches the whole world suffer as a Father that is watching his own son writhe in pain. Acceptance. The fourth stage of grief. It is accepting that we cannot control everything. But also that God sees a bigger picture than us. I was sent to the brink...by Will or God or whoever...the point is that God, who cares brought me back again. For that the tears will drop onto smiling lips.

Photo credit to: http://4eyedblonde.deviantart.com

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

What Separates Us

2011-07-20T00:57:00.000-04:00

When was the last time you felt like you were out of control? Out of control of your own emotions? Out of control of your actions? Out of control and the actions of those around you?

I haven't written about my brother Will in a little while, but I want the entire world to know that it isn't because I am not thinking about him. It is because I have to move forward. I have to be everything God wants me to be, because that is who I am turning out to be...He is resculpting me.

I think Will felt out of control. I think he felt out of control of the pills. I think he felt out of control in his family. I think he felt out of control in the very few things he still had faith in. Life seemed to be running him over without any knowledge or permission from him. That's what life does sometimes...it doesn't ask your permission for anything, it just keeps moving like some train that has no time to stop before it hits something. It just kept moving and ready or not, deal with it. I think too many trains hit him all at once.

Ironically enough, he worked for a company that loads trains, which just happens to be my favorite nonliving thing in the world. He worked really hard and worked whenever he got the chance. His fingers were caked with grease permanently from the years of sweat he put into making broken things right again. I always looked up to him because he did something that I couldn't do because of the things God put inside him. He made broken things right. I always wanted to be able to do that. I hate looking at broken things. They shouldn't be that way, no matter who broke them. He was a picture of a part of who God is to me and my wife.

Still his Gojo sits in a little bag dangling from my wash tub he used to scrub his filthy hands with. I want to blame people for what he did. Everyone wants to, but real discernment will show that no one can change the actions and reactions of another person...only your own self. I hate this fact. I hate it because it makes you feel out of control. It makes you question everything another person says and wonder about everyone you look at and love. It makes you eternally sad.

For those that read this blog often, I am OK. I am good. Things are going really well. I am recovering. But I need to write about my brother sometimes. Some days, something small that crosses your vision, like a little bottle of mechanic's soap, can trigger really intense feelings of regret and just missing someone...whatever that feeling is called. So I write about it because it's all I know to do and tomorrow I will wake up fine and forget for a few hours until another crosses my vision. This is life. We get our hearts broken pretty often. The way we define ourselves is in how we react. We can hate God. We can hate people. We can give up faith in all things. We can give up the air we breathe, but this doesn't make what happened...not happen. It makes what happened become what happens. Even to us. We can take hold of what has happened and give up, or we can let go and look toward the Heavens knowing God ISN'T there...He is HERE with us. God with us...Immanuel...God with us...Jesus. This is faith. This is what separates us from those who parish. Hope. Faith. Love. Not just in anything, but in Christ.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Speech

2011-07-16T01:30:00.000-04:00

Lion- Blahhhah Darrdd blak
Seal- Ort

If only language were so easy. Just say whatever you want and the other will read your body language and understand to get out or go to sleep. Unfortunately, the subtleties of body language is lost on most people. For most people they need to hear the words..."I'm gonna eat you or just shut up and go to sleep and leave me alone." The thing in our culture that get's lost in language is our actual faces. With media being the top way people communicate outside of work and school, people get used to seeing the picture of a guy sitting on a boat with a fish dangling in front of him or a girl giving a duck face in whatever God forsaken bar they have decided to frequent, followed by a short 120 character message of where they are or how they feel at that given moment. It is a weird thing. Not sure Mark Zuckerberg wanted to ruin all verbal communication....or did he.

People say things over these lights that are devoid of humanity. It's like they are actually speaking to the numbers that form themselves into pictures and emotions built inside of flesh and blood. People forget about the destination of their keystrokes. Hearts. They go directly to hearts. And break them. Sometimes lift them. But mostly disregarded by the sender.

I miss the days when I would hang up the phone and insist on meeting face to face. I have always hated talking on the phone. I hated it because you don't get to look that person eye to eye and connect as two real people. I admit I have been seduced by the age of technology and have taken the easy route because it is so much easier and less time consuming. But isn't our time best spent with other people? Isn't sharing our lives meant to be done with a cheeseburger in hand glancing down the barrel of your Coke at a real live person? I think it is humanity that is getting lost in the communication. We have improved in our eloquency of words and drunk on our own witty 120 character humor, but we have forgotten about people being real...just like you are when you lay in your bed and find a way to go to sleep. I think people deserve more. I think that while technology has it's positive place in the universe, it's place is not to substitute real connection.

Let's all work on that together. Let's work on face to face, eye to eye relationships.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

I Watched The World With My Head Pressed Against The Glass

2011-07-14T00:43:00.003-04:00

Have you ever been to the bottom of the sea? I bet it's dark down there...and deep...and cold. I bet it's full of fish I have never imagined before. I bet things are a lot simpler. That's why the eight tentacled octopi reside there. It's easier to fit in with eight protrusions down there. Fish down there are less judgmental. Down there, everyone is a communist. It's the only way to escape the sharks. Deep space and the bottom of the sea are the two most frightening things in the universe due to our relatively small amount of factual knowledge about them. They are just dark. Both containing enough pressure to smash your skull and turn your blood into icicles. We cannot go to either without really high tech and expensive equipment, but their inhabitant fish have bodies suited to survive there. The reason for all of this nonsense about places I will never go, not just because of money, but mostly because of fear, is to relay my relative distaste for my culture at this given moment.

I am sick of most things. It is easy to get jaded and think negatively about everyone when moms are killing their kids and getting away with it. Fathers are punching their pregnant girlfriends in the stomach to kill something they will never get to hold. Jimmy John is killing actual elephants and bears just for the photos. Nothing seems right to me. It is all off..

However, the other day, things changed a little. I was at clinical in Detroit. My friend from school, Andrea had lost her wallet a week prior while running across the street. She returned the next week and went to security to ask if anyone had turned it in, not expecting that they did. Well, someone did. Except something was different about the wallet. She was broke with no money when she lost it, but when she got it back, it had 5 dollars in it. How cool. What a great God to remind us that He cares and that He is still active and working in this world. Not everything is all bad. He smiles on us in the little things we have to be looking for.

It reminded me of when God did something similar for me. I was working construction on a really big crew building condos. I had previously worked for an all Christian crew of my friends that debunked. This new crew hated me. I was the new guy and they hated me. Even if their emotions were devoid of any opinion at all, their actions were brutal. They called me Ass*ole. That was my name any and every time they referred to me. "Hey Ass*ole, go get us beers with your own money!" Hey Ass*ole, go do everything that we don't want to do because your an ass*ole." I hated working there. I hated it more than anything I have ever had to do, because I am usually liked. I wasn't here. I was hated by their actions. One day as I dragged myself in to work after dreading all night before going to bed because of them, realized at lunchtime that I had no money on me. Forgot the wallet. I was so hungry, but more than that, lunchtime was the only time I could escape them. I would sit and eat lunch in the woods and break down as I prayed over my food, needing to connect with my Maker. This day, I had no money to eat. I took a deep breath and came down from the roof where I was nailing boards down all day and as I came through the plywood doorway, a five dollar bill came flying through the air and landed against my steel toed boot. I picked it up and asked the crew if anyone lost any money, fully expecting them to claim it even if they had lost nothing. No one did. My heart dropped. I didn't care about the food that money was going to buy, but I cared because I knew God sent it. It was his way of saying "I love you" to me. It may seem so small, but it meant so much to me that I am writing about it 13 years later.

When things get bad, even when it is hard to imagine, God is here with us. God is here and active and lavishing us with love. When things seem to be without any hope, here He is. Whispering love into our ears.

May God show His love to you today and everyday.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Lightening Bugs

2011-07-10T02:28:00.001-04:00

Little kids knock them down to see their lights go out slowely. When they are really young, they catch them and put them into jars to watch and use as a night light. Get a little older and they are smacking them down and smearing their nuclear looking guts all over the ground, just to see what is inside of them.

Why? Why do we do that? Why do we tend to destroy the most beautiful things. If you ever held a baby, you can easily see it's beauty. You can understand why a person would want to have one. They are cute, innocent, and totally reliant on you for survival. Yet, some people can walk away. Others who cannot just leave, stay and hurt that sweet little person for the rest of their lives. Maybe it is the very fact that the babies need them that makes them nervous. Maybe they aren't worth needing. The cold truth is that some people should not have kids. Some people are so self absorbed and irresponsible that they should just pay the money and walk away. I know this isn't the greatest or most popular thing to say, but I really believe it to be true. This is not a perfect world, if it were, a married couple would have a child and raise it in love and peace until it didn't need raising anymore. But this isn't a perfect world. Some people should never be parents and because of their ignorance or rebellion, they have kids. Maybe they should walk away instead of treating them like dirt or abusing them. Maybe adoption IS the very best option for them. They made a mistake, and maybe they shouldn't make another. Maybe they are not in the right condition to parent a child right now.

It is a hard concept for me to swallow because my father split before the gun sounded and the crowd finished their bets. It sucks to think of a guy that walked away. But what sucks more is the reality of who would have been in my life if he had stayed. God protected me from a monster. Maybe not a life long monster, but the definitive monster of my adolescence. He may have been a hero to my sister, but to me, he is everything I never wanted to become and it is God I thank for that. He smashes my beautiful guts all over the pavement and just walks away as though I had never shined so bright in the night sky. It is what evil is. It is the sickness of sin hemorrhaging all over the earth. I was a victim among many, many more victims.

The Ten Commandments say, you shall not murder. Jesus said, if you if you even call your brother a fool you are an offender. Many stand here dead because of you...because of me. We speak death into the lives of many people as we go about our business doing what we think God wants us to do. We can be careless with fragile human beings. Sometimes we don't see the light we are about to stomp out. Maybe we need to open our eyes because people are lightning and mean so much. People are worth so much.

We may get the impression that our depth has gone far beyond that of others, but they bleed as red as we do, and shiver in fear, and writhe in pain when pierced. To crush a person's spirit is to crush their bones. To leave them barren is to leave their corpse for the vultures in the desert sun.

Deformed Animal Crackers

2011-07-06T23:45:00.001-04:00

There is this product they sell, called Calm. It is Magnesium. We bought it to help with my son's nervous issues, inherited from his father. You mix it with some water and fixed, you are calm. I wish it worked that well, truth is that it's Ok. But if a person invented something that really would work like that and actually give you peace, that person would win the Nobel peace prize (for obvious reasons).

Sometimes, I have to tell myself to breathe, my chest gets so tight. I will find myself writhing in my chair accepting all stimulation and sweating. It builds up I think...this tension that drains your energy and makes you want naps 3 times a day.

Many wake in the morning and grab some coffee and try to stimulate their nerves so they can be successful at work or wherever. I just try to relax. I listen to really mellow music and drive with the windows rolled down so I can feel the wind on my face and sway with the branches. When I get to wherever I am going, I am loud and obnoxious. I demand attention, not because I want attention, but because I cannot keep my mouth shut. For the most part, I hate attention because of the nervous problems I have. I cannot help myself. So when I get home, I want to spill out and absorb peace. But I have kids. So, here at night, I write and listen to "Sad" music and go for walks and enjoy the sound of the world sleeping. It isn't normal, but it is me. I didn't buy this ticket, but I really enjoy the ride most times.

God makes people different. People are different because God willed them to be. God desired each friendship with us to be unique and unlike any other. There is nothing new under the sun, but every person made in the hands of God is unique and interesting. It is interesting to look at our lives and see the way our differences have served to make us who we are or shape something or someone around us. It is cool to see the way things pan out. It is especially cool to see the way our differences are used to accomplish things eternal and things unexplainable. We bleed bright God's love when we allow ourselves to hemorrhage our fears, anxieties, and insecurities. We spill out to all of those surrounding us. Sometimes, the very things we hate the most about ourselves are the very things that make us unique and special to others and most importantly to God. If God wants to make a gingerbread man with a missing arm, does that cookie taste any different? I purposely eat the deformed animal crackers first because they are fun and different. I realize, not everyone feels this way, but I do, and I think that God may too.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Cobwebs

2011-07-04T15:34:00.000-04:00

My eyes blinked to the sharp pain of early morning sunlight beaming through my fluttering eyelashes. My face hurts, at least the right side of it does. My hair is wet and my clothes are twisted around my body like some piece of violent licorice. I cannot move my arms as one is smashed beneath my body between my skin and whatever lies below it. First thing my eyes can decipher is a very large spider web, with a very large spider in it. I would move out of the way if it weren't for the defiance of my arms. I groan very loudly and here an echo. I thought it was an echo, it turns out to be my brother Joe on the other side of me waking up at approximately the same time to the very same dreadful truth that I did. We had fallen asleep on the pier. Somehow.

I cannot tell you how many spiders we ate during our slumber, but I can tell you I did not awake hungry. I sat up finally and wondered how we got here. What had happened. We must have been assaulted and thrown into the back of a truck and brought here to die. We survived. Except my face didn't feel alive, at least the right side didn't. It was creased twice from being smashed into the spaces between the flooring of the boardwalk. The bones seemed to have shifted to compensate and I woke up very ugly...inside and out.

"Give me a cigarette," I say. We leaned against the spiders for a smoke. Joe's face was ugly too, his left side had been made to match my right. Pieces of the night begin coming back with the vaguidity of a vampire seducing it's prey. I had some blood on my left arm running down the side. I followed it to the small, clotted spot that seemed to be the leak in my skin. I remembered a blow dart puncture. We remembered sirens and police sternly warming us never to return again. I could think of running several times for unclear reasons throughout the night. I remember standing on the pier with my shirt off, walking the railing between solid ground and the Detroit River. I remember punching Joe in the neck for reasons I would find out later. His neck looked pretty bad. We walked the wall with our backs until we reached our feet, recovering from the shock of the morning elements. It was cold outside and I wondered to myself how we were able to sleep through the night in this cold. I woke up shirtless. We looked at each other with bewilderment and I went to work. "Hey Joe...I'll see you this evening." "Happy Thanksgiving."

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Faithful

2011-06-29T13:33:00.001-04:00

Gonna do a study on faithfullness. The subject interests me because all around the world, there are these pictures of what faithfullness should look like, but in reality, they seem to be this fairy tale or work of fiction.

Being unfaithful is clear to see. It causes divorce, lost friendships, disappointment, anger, heartbreak, and even death. Usually the fairy tale endings we see in movies is just someone being faithful. It is revered, but increasingly elusive to find.

Paint me a picture of what your idea of faithfullness would look like. Being a faithful person, someone others can trust with their hearts requires a collection of faithful actions which prove one to be trustworthy. Maybe it's a story or a memory. Share it.

Sing.
Migrate.

Rockstar in Review

2011-06-23T16:03:00.000-04:00

What have we learned about the Rockstar? He is shy and quiet and does not like to share stories. He did not succumb to an ant bite. He is not in the process of tricking out his super manly 15 passenger van. He is a staunch racist. He values being forced to raise your hands to worship. He teaches the class on how to speak in tongues. He makes very good first impressions with rich people as do I. He is fluent in Russian. He would never place his butt cheeks on a window after being pantsed. He is absolutely no fun at all and was a terrible guest. The worst to have ever darkened our doorstep.

Or he is the opposite of all those things and it was great to share the evening with a brother from across the green grass. Courtney is next.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Rockstar "Friend or Foe?"

2011-06-22T15:31:00.000-04:00

It is the same feeling you get if you were to be pen pals with a guy in prison. You never really expect him to get out me meet you face to face. Such is the case with my blog friend Brian AKA Rockstar. He is in Michigan for a few more hours and has been graceful enough to spend it with us and J and K-dogg. Gonna be fun.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Holding Hands in Hell

2011-06-21T00:43:00.001-04:00

Maybe all I needed was for someone to sit with me in hell. Someone who didn't feel bad for me for once, but felt it with me. That's what brought me back. My wife. My kids. They suffered too. I wasn't alone in it. That is the difference between hope/survival and your own burial. There was a time I sat alone, at least in my own consciousness, in the fire. It burned white at times. Never has there been a hotter fire for me than the last year and a half. But in the fire I always held their hands. I had to go through it, I had no choice. Like some kid going through surgery that looks to their mothers for comfort. My wife and kids were there when I reached out my hand.

I am a proud man. I am not proud of my pride. I am ashamed of it. I work really hard to rid myself of it. But when your at the bottom of what you can handle, you scream for help. I did. I reached out my hand and my daughter grabbed it and put a little pink plastic heart in it. My wife wrapped her arms around my neck and wouldn't let me go, even when I asked her to. My son kept me from collapse. He asked me questions persistently, like "Is Will coming back? or Promise I won't die?" He still asks if he is gonna die every night before bed a year and a half later. What do you tell a kid that asks that? They will die and may die whenever God sees fit. I tell him no. I will see him in the morning, even if the morning is when the sun rises in Heaven.

It's just been a tough couple of days. I can't really express it, just engulfing. This feeling of helplessness in life and in my faith. I cannot control anything. This gives me comfort most of the time because I am a screw up, but days like these have been somber... it drives me to mourning the things I will lose and cannot control. There have been very few people who could see beyond what I let them see, but my brother was one of them. Not because he could see beyond the lies I was showing, but because I never felt the need to lie at all, which is priceless to me. To have a person listen without judgement and offer support even when he knows I am wrong. I am not saying it is a good thing to have flattering lips, but it is nice to have someone that won't allow you to be hurt. Very few of them around. I am so blessed that my wife, even when she drives me crazy has my heart in her hands. She protects it with her life. If is stops beating, she picks up it's rhythm herself. She is tenacious in keeping me alive.

Sing.
Migrate.

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

Thanks for reading...Z

Father, Where Art Thou?

2011-06-18T03:10:00.001-04:00

What would you do if someone called your kid something their actions may just dictate them to be. Would you agree bashfully and apologize? Or would you deny the claim, and stand up for that kid? I would do the latter because I believe in my kids. Even if I am wrong, I am human. Even if I am wrong, I am a father who refuses to see the worst in his kids. I think that is what makes God so great. We may be what everyone says we are, but not to Him. To Him, we are perfect. He would and did defend with His own blood, just like we would. There is nothing we wouldn't do for our children, and nothing He didn't do for His.

I have seen a lot of parents fight for their kids, when they are wrong. This may drive others crazy because everyone knows they are wrong, but I admire it because it is a picture of the Christ that puts Himself in our place. Two parents fight because one kid did something horrible to the other. The other parent defends out of pure ignorance of the situation...but because of the love that courses through their veins. When they get home and get the real story, the kid will be punished and maybe the kid will apologize, but in the moment when the other parent wants blood, they aren't gonna allow it. Because they shouldn't.

Christ allowed no blood but His own. He bleed for us, even as we are attacked, He takes the heat and is our only defense. But what a strong defense is perfection. No one can say a word to the perfect person in the room. Kids make parents do some pretty radical things. How about putting yourself on a cross after having your flesh torn off and asphyxiate yourself? This is the father we have. This is Christ, the object of our affection. The Son, The Father, The Holy Spirit that will and did bleed for His children.

I had a few father figures growing up, well maybe not that many, but I had one. I had Jim. He looked at me differently than many other grown men. Most saw me as a loud and obnoxious kid. He may have too, but he did something different for this bastard kid. He cared beyond what anyone would have asked of him. He was a dad to a kid that didn't know what that would look like and didn't know it then either until he had his own kids. I realized it for sure as a troubled teenager.

I was in legal trouble. I had gotten myself in a lot of trouble over several cities spanning several years. Jim Doederlein had three kids of his own to deal with, but this one day he took the day off of work. This was rare because he worked hard to keep his family in a home. He took me to every single court and paid my fines. He set me up to pay back this loan, not to get his money, but to teach me to pay back what has been given to me. I paid him back quickly because I didn't want to disappoint him. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of disappointing someone. For the first time, someone had some faith in me. I had always had a problem with calling a person dad because of what mine did to me, but if I were to call a guy dad, it would be Jim. He looked after me as God would have. He was a true picture of Christ to me...one of the people that gave me hope along with Jo-Ann, his wife, my other mother. I think they were God's way of loving me in a way I could feel and hold on to.

My mother is another. She tried to be my father too. She tried to find men to be father figures whether it was my uncle or a dad to one of her day care kids that she respected... she tried really hard. But kids without dads easily blame their mothers for the absence of their fathers...because there is no other person they can fight with. She was nails, I will tell you that. She wasn't perfect as no one is, but she was as tough as they come. She loved me intensely and fought for my survival.

I sit and watch my kids play and hold them on my chest to feel their hearts beat next to mine and smile. I cannot believe the coward that runs from such a thing as a child's unconditional love. I cannot fathom the monster that lives inside of his flesh that would permiss him to flee...because what I hold in my arms is the very heart of God. I could have never walked away from that. That makes me grateful for the grace of God for saving me. It makes me glad that I was abandoned by my father. It makes me close my eyes and imagine what my Father in heaven was thinking when He sent the people He sent to make my life whole.

May God bless you this Father's Day, even if you haven't a father to celebrate. We have one who is far more important right next to us.

Sing.
Migrate.

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

Thanks for reading...Z

Emeralds

2011-06-16T21:44:00.000-04:00

She had green eyes. Most wouldn't have even noticed them as she twirled around the silver pole. When she was little, she wanted to be a dancer of a different kind. She wore pink and skipped rope at school before the war in her head began. She wasn't looked after. One night while she wasn't being looked after, one of her mother's boyfriends looked after her with his hands. She was ruined. Her mother chose to continue her love for the wrong man and the little girl with green eyes moved out to the streets. She was 13. She started dancing when she was 13.

She would pretend to be someone else when she danced. On days her mind would not cooperate, she would medicate herself until it did. She wanted so badly to believe in real love. The kind that doesn't cripple you in agony. The kind that looks out for you with their hearts. She wanted someone who would ground her instead of indifference. She wanted anything that wasn't everything she had ever seen.

I met her in the pits several years later. I was there too. I wanted the same thing she did. We were friends because I noticed her green eyes. Very shortly after I met her, I gave up and went to the tracks to accept my fate. If you have read before, you know the rest of the story of the tracks, but maybe not the rest of her story. I fell deeply and passionately in love with Christ. Sadly, I also fell judgmentally in love with religion. I started bringing her to church with me. She kept embarrassing me. I bought her christian cds and she danced to them, this irritated me. I never thought for a moment that she danced to them to take herself to Christ in her own way. I had had enough of being humiliated by her to my church friends, so I walked away from her. Told her not to call. I left her alone again. Another person walked away from her. She called many months later to tell me she was moving out of state. It never occurred to me why she was calling. I think now that she was trying to ask me to stop her. Not for any reason other than to be her friend and share what I knew of Jesus to her. She loved Jesus, at least the idea of Jesus was beautiful to her. I was cold on the phone and she hung up and I never spoke with her again.

I regret very little in my life. Everything that has happened has served to lift me up or to break me down to strengthen me. This is my one real regret. I let her walk away without giving her her heart back. She wanted Jesus to be real. I knew He was. I could have showed her who Jesus really was, but I showed her exactly who He wasn't. I can only pray and hope that Jesus used more than me to show her His love. I tend to believe He did, but I will never know.

Remember this when a broken person reaches their hand out to you, even if they drive you mad. I don't get know the rest of her story because I was a fool.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

These Pictures of You

2011-06-12T02:52:00.000-04:00

And somehow, we forget about our own past. Like it was some story our mothers told to us that could never really be true, just some fable meant to lead us in the right direction.

Cell phones have made those clear picture wallet inserts obsolete. They don't make them anymore. Some guy somewhere is sitting on the curb in Delaware eating scraps and dwelling on his anger that some digital piece of machinery has taken his job. I think the concept is the same between the two. Looking backwards at who you once were, maybe before your children became adults or your grandma got sick. Photos are the very thing to save in a fire. Pictures are validation of our faulty memories...little signposts to lead your to where you have already been. I think that is why we treasure them so much. Given the choice, I still believe most people would choose their family photos over their safe full of money. I may be wrong on that, but I would. I would give ay possession to keep these little pictures that stimulate my brain to bring me back to that place the picture was taken. These tings have no price. They are a record of what life was to us.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Cuz Mickey Loves You

2011-06-08T01:01:00.000-04:00

Is there an art to giving up? Just throwing your hands in the air and walking away? Like in the movie Office Space... Can I just not show up to the things that I don't like? What would that look like I wonder? My kid is throwing a tantrum, so maybe I can just sit and smile and read the funnies at the back of the paper. School kicks me in the stomach again, maybe I just fail out and chalk it up to some right/left wing conspiracy to keep me from succeeding. My job gives me a handful of white dog poop? It's all good, just lay low under the radar and allow vagal response to take over and sleep it out. All of these things are options. I don't say good options, but options that many take none the less. I don't have it in me. I just can't quit. I am a glutton for punishment or have a strange thing for pain. The problem with not being able to give up is that I have also been blessed with a very severe failure response. When I fail, I get crushed under the waves and I feel my bones snapping and the walls closing in or whatever other cliche you can think of. I WANT to quit. I WANT to crack an egg and sit back and enjoy my breakfast knowing I don't have to ever show up again. But I CAN'T. Something buried deeper in me gets really pissed. I begin seeing me against the world or whatever lame cliche you want to come up with and begin to fight. I have written about this before, mostly to illustrate how dumb stubbornness can be, but I think that God puts this fight in us. We can use it wisely and know when to hold em or whatever horrible Kenny Rogers lyric you can think of, or we can use it to rebound and recover.

I've been hit a lot. Sometimes I feel like some abused child sitting in his room listening to his father yell at his mom knowing he is coming for me next. I expect the worst in most things and I am not sure if that attitude actually causes the worst or not, but the worst usually happens. Not the worst thing ever, because many are going through that right now as I type this, but the worst that I can think of at the moment superficially. It isn't me. It isn't me who overcomes. Jesus said to take heart because He has overcome the world. He also says that He works all things for the good for those that love Him. I know it is God, I just am baffled at His methods. Because I am human. It's OK to not know everything. It's OK to get turned around by God and get confused. This is the human condition. We don't get to always know where God is leading us.

There is this line from the song that has stuck to my head for the last few weeks as I have been wading in constant trouble and turmoil. It's from one of my favorite bands The National. It says: "What makes you think I enjoy being led to the flood?" It is precisely what I feel sometimes. I know as a pastor, many will lower their glasses and shake their heads at me for saying this, but sometimes I get frustrated with God. Sometimes I really hate the way I have to learn things. I get really tired of being tested and failing as though I were expected to somehow pass an impossible test. I try to follow as closely as I can and yet it usually ends up with me being crushed and stomped out.

But then there is this thing inside me that tells me to fight back. To stand up and keep fighting through and you know what? I always see the other side of it. Not because I am strong, but because I am weak. God breaks me so I can be used by Him. He then stands me back up and leads me through the dark valleys. I have said this before, this is my anthem for life. I can't answer why horrible things happen, but I can tell you that God is good. He always has been to me. He has the habit of crushing the pride and will to rebel from me and setting me on my feet scarred, bleeding, but determined.

Sing.
Migrate.

Photo credit to: http://grinch7.deviantart.com/

Thanks for reading...Z

Liar

2011-05-30T00:23:00.001-04:00

How would a person fare in this world if they told the truth 100% of the time? No sugar coating, no flattery, just the truth. It doesn't mean he speaks without tact or love, but just tells the truth all the time. I don't think that person would be very popular to be around. I think people like to be lied to. Not just the big things like, am I ugly, or am I stupid, but the little things like some random story that never really happened. The Bible says people loved darkness rather than the truth. It also tells us to buy the truth and do not sell it. I think that is the heart of the problem with us. Many of us have sold the truth and have bought this fluffy and apologetic version of it.

Many would feel uncomfortable around a person that never lied. They somehow wouldn't trust him. They wouldn't trust him because they have never met a person that doesn't lie. This person would be foreign...an invader to our normal way of ignorance and bliss. Really honest people lie in the subtle ways. They lie with their eyes when they feel it necessary to save the other person's heart from breaking. Really dishonest people lie with every breath they take. Their entire existence can be a lie. Both are no where near the truth. Isn't that disheartening? To actually want to be lied to? Is it less of a lie if the person tells it with good intentions? Do you want them to lie to you if they are doing so with a good heart? Temporarily, I say yes, because it may save me hours of agony. Eternally, I say no, as it can cause decades of bitterness and hatred. Did Jesus ever lie to save a person's feelings? No. He called out his best friends for allowing the devil to speak through them when He directly said to them to "Get behind me Satan." for simply trying to comfort Him and tell Him they weren't going to let anything bad happen to Him. It didn't seem as though Jesus valued anything that wasn't true.

I think I am going to try harder to never, ever lie. To tell the entire truth....IN LOVE....whenever asked anything. It is important to note that this doesn't mean you need to open your flap every single time you have an opinion. Try telling the truth when asked. This is a good start I think.

This is the project of humanity to bring the truth to everyone's eyes.

Sing.
Migrate.

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

Thanks for reading...Z

Tantrums

2011-05-29T02:28:00.001-04:00

I wish I could remember the tantrums I used to pull when I was a kid. From my mom's stories, they seemed pretty staggering. I do remember one that I had during church. I was crying for some dumb reason, probably because I hated church and wanted to leave. My mom used to threaten the spanking when I was acting like an imbecile, but usually the threat was enough. Not this time. I was obviously pissed off about the guy shouting at me from the podium and could not take it any longer. She took me to the bathroom and reluctantly gave me the "What have you." But while she got her workout I thought something brilliant. This would be the ultimate "Got you sucka." I didn't even think about it, I just screamed "HELP!" As loud as I could toward the bathroom door. I wanted them to think I was being beaten for no reason. In my head, I saw them nodding their heads in shame at my mom as she shrunk lower and lower in shame. Instead on my way out of the bathroom, with tears in my eyes, I watched them nod with excitement and recognition at my mom. As if to say, "Nice one, you actually got him to cry for help." It was the 80's, don't judge. Of course I needed no help, I needed to stop being a jerk in church. I needed to stop making it hard on my mom to raise us in the right environment. But that is me. I will make nothing easier for you.

Sometimes I still have tantrums. I still have my moments of overreacting to something and someone else has to come along and say, "Hey man, let's hug it out." It isn't the loud ones that end my rage, it's the quiet ones who don't usually say much. They say the very thing I cannot argue with and make me feel like a dumb kid that just threw a tantrum for nothing.

A few months ago, I was doing something I was supposed to be doing and I was questioned by a person that had no idea what she was talking about. I picked my son up from school and went to this place and did what I was supposed to be doing while my kid played with all of the cool things there. When on my way out to put something in my car, this person who had no idea what she was talking about approached me and accused me of doing something she knew nothing about. I got really mad. I proved to her that I was right and she was wrong empirically. I got into my car and drove off to my house. About three quarters from my home as I was patting myself on the back for being so awesome and owning this ignorant women, I realized it was awfully quiet in the back seat. I took a quick look. Then another. CRAP!!!!!! I did leave my oldest son at that place where that ignorant women was. I had to go back. Knock on the door. Go in. And try to covertly explain how I had left my oldest son there.

I had a tantrum. That's how I left my son there.........Humbling.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Funeral

2011-05-21T23:48:00.002-04:00

Mark 14:3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. 4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly. 6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Now her brother Lazarus is sick and dying. The family is in chaos and desperate. Mary and Lazarus had become very dear to Jesus. They went to the only place that hope truly lives, they went to Jesus. In all of their turmoil, Jesus says this: “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Imagine the comfort they felt. Imagine the weight lifted. But then Jesus does something unexpected for a Savior. See when we imagine a Savior, we imagine this Superman-like character who swoops in just in time to save the damsel in distress. This mighty muscle man that keeps everyone safe from the things they don’t want to ever happen.

Jesus waits.

When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. Two more days the hero stays put. Now imagine the panic as Mary and the rest of Lazarus’ family watched him deteriorate. They went home with hope after speaking with Jesus and now they watch Lazarus close his eyes and breath his last breath. Meanwhile as Jesus is walking with the disciples, He stops and says John 11:11b“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” 12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. 14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
Jesus makes the less than 2 mile trip and upon arrival, he finds Lazarus dead in his home for the last 4 days in the Israeli desert. Less than 2 miles. He only had to travel 2 miles and Lazarus would still be alive his families cries. Instead, he strolls in 4 days after Lazarus has died. The very thing He told Mary the story would not end in. It would not end in death. Mary was so upset that she didn’t even come out to greet him as He arrived. Martha wailed and cried and wept in anger. Jesus looks her dead in the eyes and says, your brother will rise again. Of course he will, there is a resurrection in Heaven, that does us no good right now. No, Jesus says, He is getting out of that bed. He sends her to get Mary, and she comes running and falls at His feet upset with Him for allowing her brother to die. Jesus looks at her. He sees her grief, he feels her heart beating with His and they are both broken. So He weeps.

This is a passage that has always intrigued me. It is the shortest verse in the entire Bible, but at further study reveals such detail about the character and heart of God. Jesus knew what He was going to do. He knew He was gonna walk into that room and tell that guy to get up out of that death bed and walk right out for all to see. Jesus isn’t grieving for the death of His friend. He isn’t weeping because of any lack of faith his family had in him. Jesus tested their faith by not showing until Lazarus had died. Jesus wept because of what God named Him. God named Him Emmanuel, which means God with us. God named Him exactly who he was and was going to be. God, in the flesh with us. Jesus wept because he felt the pain of loss and sorrow with Lazarus’ family. Jesus was sharing in their suffering as He would later ask us to do in His.

John 11:43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

The point of this story among the sheer fact that there is nothing too powerful than God, even death, is not that death happened. Lazarus was risen from the dead, but he died again later in life. The point is that death happens. It is the curse of sin on this world. But the point is that Jesus is with us. Sharing in our sufferings as we share in His. At a time like this, it is common to feel alone in you grief. It is common to be angry. It’s ok to be angry. You didn’t see Jesus rebuking Mary or Martha for their grief. You saw Him weep with them. Jesus is here with us as we weep. Jesus is offering His presence. You can bang your head against the wall without hope, or you can rest your weary heads on the chest of God and find real comfort.

Photo credit to: http://coffee-milk.deviantart.com

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Shutting Your Idiot Mouth

2011-05-20T00:02:00.000-04:00

What is at the heart of the disagreement?

This is what you have to ask yourself whenever you find yourself in battle with another human being. Ask yourself, "Why am I so offended by the way this person believes?"

I stopped arguing. Well, almost. I still find my idiot mouth involved in arguments from time to time, but nowhere near the me in top idiot form. I say I was an idiot because of the way in which I would disagree. I was not taking the time to understand where the other person's thoughts were coming from. I would be harsh and drop bombs and stand back grinning and patting myself on the back watching the aftermath that undoubtedly was going to escalate the situation. Then I would take a step back and try to turn it around on you and make it about your anger. Idiot. Eventually I got sick of it. I noticed myself keeping up the argument even when I knew I was wrong, never admitting defeat. That is when I decided to shut my idiot mouth and listen. When I disagree, I try to listen to everything the person is saying and understand where they are coming from. Why is this an important thing to do? Because you are probably speaking to another human being unless you are in the habit of arguing with inanimate objects, which means you are further gone that expected. People see things because of past experiences and beliefs, even if the thing they believe is completely false. We have to understand that our emotions are tied up in our beliefs. Very often, this is why we believe what we do...because our emotions drove us to conclusions that helped us cope. So when we go on the offensive and hurl hate at another of God's precious creation, we hurl insults at God Himself. Arguments almost always end in anger and resentment.

There is another way. Love. If a belief is wrong, it is probably based in emotion. If you want to help change the belief add emotion to the desired belief. Love is always desirable. Come to a person with respect, dignity, and love and watch them listen to what you have to say. Let the Spirit of God lead them in the direction of truth as you may not have the truth either. But what we know for sure is that God desires we love all people.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Boxing

2011-05-15T01:40:00.001-04:00

Every punch produces a counter punch. You get hit, and strike back. You may fall, but you get up and stare your opponent eye to eye in the center of the ring. Your eyes bleed blood never expressed through words or ink. You bleed through rage, and fear, and will. All of the sudden your past becomes the fault of the person standing right in front of you and it doesn't matter how tough they are. Or you are. It matters what you have inside you.

Why does a guy go to church his whole life while still doubting the existence of God? Because he is trying to find a way to fight back. Because life has beaten him down and he is out of ideas. Out of punches. Out of time to recover. He sits in the benches of that church looking for something that will help him battle. He finds it every Easter when they talk about a beaten Jesus rising from the dead, but loses it again, when the pastor speaks about forgiveness. Is there a happy medium to rage? Is there this amount of hate that is Ok to harbor, as long as it fuels you to fight?

Jesus said 70 times 7. I think that means 490. I think that means as much as you get punched...forgive.

This isn't an easy passage for me to live, even as I tell 16 year old kids to forgive their family who has stolen everything from them. I still remember my hate. It doesn't go away easily. It fights just like you, because it has you believing you need it to survive. It has you believing that it has kept you safe for this long. But it hasn't has it? It has broken your heart too many times. You hold on to it like a dying daughter, but it stings you like a viper when your guard is down. See, we are fooled into believing our strength is in what lies deep and sometimes dormant in our hearts. All along, it was a not so silent God giving us what we have needed. Not vengeance, but God. We mistake the two very easily. I have to find a way to let go of what people have done to me and so do you. Christ reigns in all things. Christ heals all things. Christ is involved in you. We too often are involved in us too. Let go!

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Religion

2011-05-12T01:50:00.000-04:00

What does the church mean to you? What role does it play? What does it mean to be religious?

Church in our culture has really been considered the center of the Christian faith. One may ask you, do you go to church? You may say yes, and they may take on the notion that you are religious. You may say no and they may assume, you are not. Church has taken the hierarchy of many Christians in Western culture. But was it intended to be?

To be religious means much more than putting on a suit and tie and heading off to church on Sundays. It means more than your day of baptism or your first communion. To be religious is like this according to the Bible:

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

There isn’t much written in this passage about pure and faultless religion about attending church every Sunday and observing special religious holidays. These things are NOT bad things, however, they are not at the core of what true religion is intended to be. Religion is more about the point of Christianity...Love. Service. Sacrifice. Church is a beautiful thing. A church service is a really great way to express your faith and share in God’s Word together with your family of Believers. Go to church...period...even if your meeting with your brothers and sisters looks different than the traditional church. The Bible says not for forsake the gathering of the saints, so don’t. But church isn’t intended to be the end game of religion. It is a supplement. Religion begins the moment you open your eyes and ceases the moment you close them. Everyday. Sundays are a really refreshing way to allow others to hold you up and for you to be someone’s shoulder.

Usually when someone says I am religious, I cringe in the very pit of my stomach, because I have always hated religion. I was basted in it growing up and from what I saw, I had had enough. So I walked away. Ran really. I hated it because unknowingly I was experiencing the rot of the Biblical church. I was witnessing church becoming the idol that people worshipped while rolling around in money. I witnessed the evil one perverting what should be a thriving meeting place for His followers who have been working their hands to the bone for God all week long. Church for me was more about building funds, little tin plates being shaken under your nose, and the endless battle to stay awake through the very long and predictable service. I believe Jesus would have run from those churches too.

The church should be alive with the power of the Holy Spirit, whom God said was to our advantage being sent in His place. The Spirit of God being more advantageous for our faith than Jesus himself dwelling in flesh here. I never saw a church that showed any real evidence of being alive until now. Not that my church is the THE church or something to be revered, but I think that service to those around us is the point and in that, our mission is focused. We may meet in a high school and may NEVER get a building, but I think that’s just fine with God. Maybe, we need to keep working our hands to the bone. Maybe this is what God wants from us, not to get comfortable in a building and subsequently comfortable in our faith. Comfort in our faith, I believe, is the enemies most effective attack on the church. When we are comfortable, nothing happens, which is exactly what the one in the red suit wants.

We should look different. We should upset people. We were meant to be attractive and exciting to the world around us. We weren’t meant to have to soup up the Gospel of Jesus to get people to listen. Getting the people to listen and understand is the job of the Holy Spirit alone. This is not our lot to cast or load to bear. Our lot is obedience. We cannot compete with popular culture and why would we ever want to. Why would the church want to cover a Lady Gaga song to get people into the seats or excited about what God is doing in our lives? We have the Holy Spirit of God among us. We have the most unique attraction the world has ever seen dwelling right in our midst when we gather together in His name. We have God Himself.

What is the point?

“Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law” Matthew 10:34-35

If you are living the life that follows Christ, you are going to make people mad. Jesus did. John the Baptist did. All of the disciples did. You will too. We are called to be loving, but do not make the mistake of fooling yourself into believe that means you need to be timid and silent about what you have witnessed Christ do. This is a mistake. God gives us a bold spirit, not one of fear. People reject Christ and will reject you, however, people are looking for a Savior in a crippled world and the way they see it is in the light that shines in those that are vessels of God. Many will be drawn to Christ through our Christ driven lifestyle.

Buying all of the aesthetics and furnishings for your building made of bricks, tar, and mortar may draw people to it’s seats, but it will never lead a person into a deeply committed religion. This is the job of The Holy Spirit. The aesthetics can very easily serve as a distraction to what God is really doing by making the church service a spectacle. Religion may or may not ever happen there.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Day Changers

2011-05-04T15:47:00.002-04:00

If the horse were leading the cart, it wouldn't slam into trees.

Christianese language and attitudes can be very baffling. I was raised in church my entire life and have heard so many awe inspiring and motivational talks, mostly surrounding being a "World changer" or a "Warrior" for Christ. It can get you hyped up and ready to take on the world with the power of Christ in your right hand and the vengeance of past hurt in your left. But does anyone ask themselves whether or not God is calling them to be a world changer? He told the disciples to be fishers of men and to go and make disciples of all nations. These were to be the people that started the entire church. Normal, average guys like us were used to change the world. This is one of the most wonderful aspects of God...that He uses who He will use.

What kind of attitude are we in danger of having?

^{Mark 10:35} Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” ³⁶ “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. ³⁷ They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” ³⁸ “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” ³⁹ “We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, ⁴⁰ but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

Too many people have been filled with pride trying to change the world. It is easy to do. We get a few things accomplished and set our goals high, so it is a natural (sinful) thing to do...to consider yourself as good. Except Romans tells us no one is good, not even one. People go off to seminary or devote themselves to studying God's Word, but completely forget about the foundation that faith is based off of in the first place. Maybe God isn't asking us to be world changers, maybe that is a product of what happens when we aspire to be day changers. I cannot impact this world right away without becoming infamous. I can impact it the way Mother Theresa has chosen to. She has never aspired to change the world, but to change the conditions in the area surrounding her. We should aspire to change the day for the people at the water cooler and the ones holding out cups for change.

You simply cannot positively change the world with anything you say. It will always take long suffering actions. I think in the passage above, the disciples were guilty as you and I have been of thinking too highly of themselves and forgetting the point of what we are trying to accomplish in the first place. Jesus wasn't prescribing them to change the world in a single swoop. He used the work of fishing as his illustration. Fishing takes patience, silence, and purposeful luring. So does fishing for people. If you want to see Christ reign in the lost around you, we must be patient and long suffering, prayerful and purposeful. We must love the way Christ loves us. This is the very base of Christianity. Read every book about faith and religious history, but it will mean nothing if you aren't actively and purposefully acting out love in your every day life.

A day changer can very easily become a life changer which can very easily become a world changer. But love (Jesus) has to lead.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Needful Things

2011-04-30T01:48:00.001-04:00

There is beauty in old things. Things we grew up seeing all the time. Things we forget about until that one moment that you see it, or smell it, or hear it, and you remember what it was like to be 13 again, sitting in your room worrying about things that shouldn't worry anyone.

Will had a satin jacket he could not part from. Slept with it until the day he died. I love suitcases. Old, hard, plastic ones, that people give away at garage sales. I want to buy every one I see. I put them in the rafters of my garage and don't look at them again, but when I see one, I have to have it. Don't quite know why, I have never really used a suitcase or had a need for one. Most trips I take require a duffle bag. There is something I love about them though. My wife likes old quilts and soft blankets knitted from wrinkled hands. She calls them her secret blankets. Caeden likes them too.

Old things can trigger some real things in people. The smell of cigarette smoke on someones fingers or pipe tobacco. The sound of a train in the distance. The smell of an old elementary school. The hidden things you find in a thrift store or an antique shop. Old things remind us of who we used to be...of how we used to perceive everything or maybe just that one moment. They are relics of things forgotten. We will grab them before we grab our safe in a fire. There simply is no price for them.

What's yours?

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Easter

2011-04-24T00:17:00.000-04:00

Why did Jesus have to die?

Because I can't die for my own sins or yours. Because as hard as we try to do the right thing, we fail more times than not. Because God was tired of hurting, watching us writhe and moan. Because our sin was piled up as high as Heaven in dire need of atonement. Because the garden was plundered and it's fruits rotten. Because the shame that set in at the birth of human sin, set us on a path of destruction like a large vehicle careening out of control on a side street next to a school releasing it's students. Because the lamb and the lion paint an accurate picture of the oppressed all over the world. Because God wanted to show us His face and model what He is to all the world.

Why did Jesus have to raise again"

Because He wouldn't be God if He didn't have dominion over death. Because we need hope. We saw the disciples scatter back to their native homes and occupations when He died. We needed Him to rise to have the fire the disciples had after seeing Him raised. Because He cannot lose, no matter how difficult the situation. Even death cannot contain Him. Because someone out there is terrified of death and can now rest assured in the resurrection of the saints into eternal bliss. Because He loves us dearly.

Thank you Christ for the cross, for the grave, and for a stone lying on the ground separated from it's place. Thank you for my salvation, my family's salvation, and my faith ground and strengthened through the valley of darkness. Thank you for everything.

Photo credits to: http://dreamalways.deviantart.com, http://arczero.deviantart.com, http://eddietheyeti.deviantart.com

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Crush In My Stomach

2011-04-23T02:52:00.002-04:00

Then that same song played on my radio. The radio that plays discs that allow you to program them to repeat. I played that song all night long. I played it as I wept. The velocity of the song kept those living in my house from hearing me. They slept like they haven't in years, dreaming about things they will forget in the morning. I won't get to forget mine.

The notes alone crush my stomach. It reminds me of when we were kids. We did crazy things. Things I don't believe anyone ever has done in the history of the world and that was the point. We faked being in a mainstream band to a Total gas station clerk every night when we went in for pre-fishing coffee. He thought we were so cool. He may have even believed the things we told him. We shot ducks with blow darts by luring them in with bags of popcorn. The darts would fall to the ground and the ducks would flee to safety. We would drive around talking and the whole world would go away without a trace. It would be me and you two on the grid. In our minds, this was all life needed to be. I believe that would still be enough for him to stay here. But those times are gone and he never really got a chance to adjust.

I have nothing practical to offer tonight, just abstract descriptions of what you have been through before too. My hope is that you go back while reading. For me, life was in them. I didn't have one apart from them. They were what God gave me to survive. They were Christ in the form of two innocent, yet dead end kids...just like me. We recognized it in each other immediately. This blank stare, this longing for something we could never have. We could reach, but never touch it. But we were innocent all the same. We were just kids. Kids shouldn't turn out this way. No kid should grow up and lose hope in life. No kid should choose lifelong sabotage over happiness. No kid should spend the nights wishing everything was just like it used to be while keeping all the beauty he has now. But this is the way of the Dead End Kids. We knew when we built those rockets that they could only go so high before fizzling out and falling to the very same ground that launched them.

I am not finished grieving. Every few weeks when I think things are getting better, I am flooded with everything he was. I am overcome with the ghosts we left behind, still repeating their joy and their folly.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Great Friday

2011-04-23T00:40:00.001-04:00

Turn to page 343.
Ha. Turn to page 21.
Ok. Turn to page 500.
Pshh. Turn to page 135.
(Picture of a nun kissing a goat) Turn to page 5.
Still following along? Follow closer and turn to page 255.
OK now, almost done. Turn to page 377.
This could be it. Turn to page 55.
Turn to page 299 for a big surprise.
Idiot. Hahahahahaha!

Did anyone else terrorize the church hymnal like this when they were young?

I hated church. I would sit on my knees and play with my wrestling figurines. Sometimes, when my mom was saying amen, I would crawl down the sloped floor under the pews to look at the panty hosed calves. I think I had some weird thing for pantyhose when I was young, this is twice in two posts I have written that mentioned it.

I would be wearing slacks; a word I have always hated, but understood exactly what it meant to wear. I would be sporting a sky blue ironed dress shirt with suspenders that had plastic hands masking the clamps that held them to my waistline. My mom always said to dress your best for church. Now, knowing she has lost the battle just begs me not to wear jeans with gaping holes in them. I think I will honer her and not wear those anymore. I never understood church though. I always saw it as a scary place to be. It was...at least for a kindergartener. Everyone would sit there in the wooden benches shouting back as the pastor with huge sweat rings shouted at them. I thought he was mad all the time. If a dude was that happy about God, why doesn't he smile. I still don't know the answer to that question. I stayed away from church for the majority of my life after I was able to make the choice not to go. That happened sometime soon after I got my girlfriend in high school pregnant. People weren't too fond of me after that. Boys will be boys right?

I sat in one of those very same churches tonight for Good Friday service. Directly behind me was a widow. She spoke to us immediately, even before I tried to cover the tattoo on my forearm. Most won't unless I look the part. She sang the praise songs even though she didn't know the words as loud as she could 3 seconds behind the worship leader. She was learning the song as she sang. This is an important quality to have. Many try to learn the song in life before singing, too afraid to make themselves a fool. Not her, she sang out of necessity. Well played blue haired lady. People like you are my heroes. You see Christ in everything. How amazing is that?

I looked around and thought of all of those in our culture that get angry at the thought of God and especially Christians. I looked around at two distinctly different congregations of people with very different ways of doing things and just thought: "These are just people." People who profoundly love Jesus, but still just people. People that meet together in dark and musty, old paper smelling, matted carpeted buildings. They don't meet together to nominate the next king of the world. They meet to share their lives with each other. Sure, there are bigots and hypocrites, and judgementalists, but they are all just humans.

We eat cereal in the morning. We step in dog poop and maybe swear. It hurts our eyes to look directly at the sun. We get really sick, some fatally. We get overwhelmed with sorrow and question God. We mow our own lawns. We occasionally taste rotten milk. We are just people. People with pasts. People who miss their wives in Heaven...or our brothers. We are people who get bills we can't afford to pay. We are people that stare at photographs untill we fall asleep.

We are God's people. Undeserving of the sacrifice, yet all too eager to accept it. We are born again, regretful and fearful of our former lives getting a foothold in us again. We fumble on most snaps and sometimes we recover. But we are always forgiven. I say a lot of things on this blog. I fear that I don't say enough of how grateful I am to my Savior, Jesus, who died for me...but not only that, came to my heart and drew me kicking and screaming unconscious to Him. I have everything I ever wanted and never thought I was good enough to possess. I wasn't good enough. God is good enough. God makes me good. My sin is apparent to anyone that knows me. I am not one to try and be a different person to different people. But my prayer is that in all cases, people see the grace of God shine like the sun in me. I pray that no one would be able to look at me and not ask what is wrong with him? What is different? I fear I fail more often than not in those things. But God is still faithful.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Elijah

2011-04-20T13:50:00.001-04:00

1 Kings 19:13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

What was he doing there? Was it fear? He heard all of the prophets of God were being slaughtered. Was it anger? He was rejected for his belief in a One True God. Was is rejection? No one has ever been good enough. He searched for God in the elements of thunder. He looked for God to open up and split the earth in pieces to speak to him. He looked for real, definitive answers. He got bored waiting up on that mountain. He fell asleep. Like they did in the garden waiting on Jesus. Like we all do. Every time he would get his hopes up at what we would call a "Natural disaster," he stood at attention expecting to hear the undeniable voiced of the God He served... the very same God I serve, He was left disappointed. Elijah was a man, just like me. He was messy too, full of sin and mistakes. Full of doubt and fear. Full of hatred and anger. He was looking for His God. The only one he could run to.

God sent him sterile signs. I think he sat down on the rocks beaten up in his own spirit and gave up. After all of these things, God does not speak to me? NOW He chooses to be silent, when I really need Him to speak? He wasn't asking for proof, he was asking for His savior to save. He didn't hear God's voice the way he wanted and I think he just about gave up hope. This happens: "Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep."

Then God shows up in a whisper. His eyes open slowly. Something is happening. God is speaking. God has heard me crying. My prayers have reached His throne and He is here gently speaking to His child. No fire. No earthquakes. No tsunamis. Just God and me. How it was always meant to be. God is big enough to be anyone's "Just you and me." God is huge and here He is taking a real interest in the fears of Elijah. "Why are you here?" God knew. But did Elijah? Maybe Elijah was just scared and needed his only hope. Maybe he lost faith in the sight of fear. Maybe he just wanted a friend at a time when no one would go near him in fear of sharing in his death. Any way you want to perceive that day, God came to him when he needed Him too, even if it wasn't how he expected Him to come.

God rarely comes how we expect Him to.

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Papa...Can You Hear Me?

2011-04-19T00:23:00.002-04:00

The final part of this blog series. Tonight's submission comes from guest blogger Mandy, a writer and friend of mine. Enjoy...I did.

You were a superhero to me when I was a child.

I loved the way your eyes sparkled

and the beautiful music you made on the guitar.

You could do no wrong

(even though I rarely saw you and I never had my own space wherever you were living).

You made it easy for me to put the blame on my mother

(the one who raised three kids alone and put herself through college while she too was just a kid).

The woman you married made you look like a saint

(one who chokes children, chases them down the

driveway with bats and butcher knives, steals loads of money at your ex-wife's son's funeral

and hires a hit man to slice up her face -makes anyone look like a peach).

I always daydreamed of the day you would leave her.

She was the reason I didn't see you.

This woman

(the one who kicked me out in the middle of the night

in the dead of winter

after I had lost my brother)

was also so easy to blame.

I never once questioned why you didn't stop her from choking him.

I never once questioned why you let her kick me out of your house

(repeatedly)

In the middle of the night

in the ghetto

and didn't even drive me the two miles to the payphone

so I could call my mom.

I never once asked why you allowed her to call me horrible names

(like whore. stupid. loser. low-life)

at such a young age

(or any age, for that matter).

You were, after all, the innocent one.

Last year the unthinkable happened.

You left her.

Finally, I thought,

I would be able to go get coffee alone with my dad

for the first time in my life.

Finally you would get back together with the love of your life

(my mother, the one you called your best friend...and she was).

But there was something about the way you left that woman that didn't sit well with me

(or anyone else, for that matter).

This is the day I had dreamed about my entire life.

But then I never factored in that she

(that woman who did unspeakable things)

had a heartbeat and feelings that would get hurt...

and broken.

I didn't imagine that she would swallow a bunch of pills

and get very

very

sick.

And in those daydreams you never left her while she was strapped to a bed

in a mental hospital.

And I never once imagined that we would find out

that you had been living a double life since...

oh, forever

and that it would make all of the hardship we endured because of that woman

all the more painful.

I mean, really?

Really?!

You had a mistress this whole time?

You really weren't in love with my mom

even though you said that you were?

You could have left years and years ago.

Surely it wasn't your fault that you didn't know my children.

It was her fault you never called.

Her fault I didn't know you.

Her fault.
My mom's fault.

Anyone's...but yours.

One year later, I now know you were never the man I puffed you up to be.

You are...so...human.

So human

(and always have been).

You have missed out on my life and now the life of my children.

I have father issues now (which, really, I always did...but now I am painfully aware of them).

The way everything went down wrecked me.

And I have been mad.

So mad.

But I wanted to to tell you something.

I forgive you.

Do you hear me?

I forgive you.

I will be here when (if?) you ever decide you want to be my dad.

*Now that I am an adult, I see my dad for who he is -a broken man in need of a Savior. I choose not to be bitter. I cannot be angry with a man who has not yet been redeemed. There is still breath left in me and there is still breath left in him. I am praying for the day when my dad and I can make ammends. He is not perfect, but he is my daddy...and I love him.

Read more about Mandie at Jesus in Shanty Town

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Dad?

2011-04-15T22:16:00.004-04:00

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

2011-04-14T18:33:00.003-04:00

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

2011-04-13T20:23:00.004-04:00

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

One Disappears

2011-04-12T22:32:00.001-04:00

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Present Day Detroitish Michigan

2011-04-12T09:38:00.000-04:00

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

The Scary One

2011-04-11T20:32:00.001-04:00

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

Sing.
Migrate.

Thanks for reading...Z

Applause. Exit Stage Left

2011-04-10T22:49:00.004-04:00

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.

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

Sing.
Migrate.

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Security Blankets

2011-04-09T01:54:00.002-04:00

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/

Sing.
Migrate.

Apocalypse NOW!!!!!!!!

2011-04-07T00:27:00.002-04:00

"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.

Photo credit tohttp://lonelypierot.deviantart.com/

Sing.
Migrate.