Early in 2010 I felt that I was supposed to go somewhere. I never imagined that a year later I would be boarding a plane for Asia, but that trip is not what I hope this is about. There is hope for something new in my life at every moment, at every decision, at every thing that God has for me. I try to walk the path he has sent out in front of me but continue to stumble.
I was given an option tonight, pick what I want or do what others tell me to do. I thought about this for a while and tried to remember some decisions that I've made for me over the last few months. Since my decision to follow God's prompting to Cambodia my decisions have been less and less based on what I want to do and more on what God is asking... telling me to do. I'm trying hard. I'm failing hard. Not because I lack the desire, but because I lack the fortitude to press onward in my faith.
The devil still has his strongholds in me and I'm fighting tooth and nail to rid myself of them, but I'm weak. However, I have a strong God. He's been way more faithful to me than I've ever been to him. He's kept me through some pretty nasty times in my life and helped me out of some pretty tight jams.
I'm losing my train of thought tonight for a few reasons. One, I'm a few beers in, and the mind is slipping away. Two, I'm trying to write things that I think people will enjoy reading. This is actually my second post tonight, the first one was deleted in it's beginning stages because I didn't think that it was anything people would desire to read. It's just more of me worrying about the world and less about God. The best I can say is that I'm becoming aware of what I'm struggling with, so now, I hope that I can move past them.
God gives me gifts all the time. He shows me the best things for me and it's up to me to decide whether or not I'm going to accept them. I want everything that he has for me, but I'm not sure how to let him give me these things. The best I can say is that I try. I will always try, and I hope one day I will actually do the things that make God say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant".
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
The world we live in
It's folly to believe that there is nothing wrong. I bet everyone will agree to that statement. Anyone who disagrees if either deceiving themselves or a blabbering idiot. I don't pretend that I've got it figured out, far from it. I look for my passion for Christ in inspirational songs, in movies, in other people, but I never look where you're supposed to find it, the bible.
I wrote once about anguish, and here 2 years later, not a lot has changed in my life. I make little effort. I'm more like the world that runs the number of views of a Justin Bieber video to twice the population of the US and a sermon that lasts 7 minutes about anguish can barely scrape together 600K. Even just bobbing around in the ebb and flow of the world I barely register what Christ is doing. Once in a while I look at him to check and see where he is. It's like going on a hike with someone that can't quite keep up. You wander off ahead and when you want a break, or need a break, you cover your needs with excuses to look for the person that is behind you, or wait for them to catch up. What we fail to see with God is that he's the one that is waiting on us. He has gone on ahead of us and is waiting for us to quick dilly-dallying around and start keeping up. Not with him, we could never do that, but with his plan. Even the faithful, the most well meaning of us, don't keep up. Sure they stay close, but the concerns of this Earth overwhelm them too often to truly walk after God the way we should.
I sit here writing at 3 in the morning and can't bring myself to go back to bed. I want to sleep, but I feel more concerned with connecting to God, but I'm not sure how to do that. I try to talk, don't know what to say, try to listen, can't hear, try to walk after him, but I find that I don't know the way. So I sit down on the path and I do nothing, I remain silent, and I stop listening.
But I'm not alone. The community of my home churh (I live at a Young Life camp currently) fails in bring in people that walk in off the street looking for something. Maybe they don't know what it is themselves, but they walked in to find "it" and no one in the church can even say hello, good morning, there He is, and hand them a bible. God is there, among the "believers" and we can't point the lost to him becuase in most cases, we don't know what we are looking for ourselves.
I live among believers. Supposedly everyone knows God, and yet I see the same things happening here that I see in churches everwhere I go. Complacency. Few here live in true fellowship. It took me several days of living on property to know anyone even outside the collection of buildings that I live in. Still after two months, I can say hello and know names, but I don't know the people that I live with. I don't sit down over coffee or a beer, or even a bible and get to know them. Share ourselves, share God; it's lost on even a community of believers.
This makes me sick. Not because I'm disgusted by what I see in other people, because I'm disgusted that I even see it in myself. A good friend of mine told me that she was impressed that I could approach people and just talk. That I had a desire to get to know them. She expressed her own wish to have that kind of boldness and still I don't even see it in myself. Despite her observations, despite how I feel about people. I need to be in fellowship with them. I'm not always comfortable around them, but I should be. It's a gift that God has given to us.
I wrote once about anguish, and here 2 years later, not a lot has changed in my life. I make little effort. I'm more like the world that runs the number of views of a Justin Bieber video to twice the population of the US and a sermon that lasts 7 minutes about anguish can barely scrape together 600K. Even just bobbing around in the ebb and flow of the world I barely register what Christ is doing. Once in a while I look at him to check and see where he is. It's like going on a hike with someone that can't quite keep up. You wander off ahead and when you want a break, or need a break, you cover your needs with excuses to look for the person that is behind you, or wait for them to catch up. What we fail to see with God is that he's the one that is waiting on us. He has gone on ahead of us and is waiting for us to quick dilly-dallying around and start keeping up. Not with him, we could never do that, but with his plan. Even the faithful, the most well meaning of us, don't keep up. Sure they stay close, but the concerns of this Earth overwhelm them too often to truly walk after God the way we should.
I sit here writing at 3 in the morning and can't bring myself to go back to bed. I want to sleep, but I feel more concerned with connecting to God, but I'm not sure how to do that. I try to talk, don't know what to say, try to listen, can't hear, try to walk after him, but I find that I don't know the way. So I sit down on the path and I do nothing, I remain silent, and I stop listening.
But I'm not alone. The community of my home churh (I live at a Young Life camp currently) fails in bring in people that walk in off the street looking for something. Maybe they don't know what it is themselves, but they walked in to find "it" and no one in the church can even say hello, good morning, there He is, and hand them a bible. God is there, among the "believers" and we can't point the lost to him becuase in most cases, we don't know what we are looking for ourselves.
I live among believers. Supposedly everyone knows God, and yet I see the same things happening here that I see in churches everwhere I go. Complacency. Few here live in true fellowship. It took me several days of living on property to know anyone even outside the collection of buildings that I live in. Still after two months, I can say hello and know names, but I don't know the people that I live with. I don't sit down over coffee or a beer, or even a bible and get to know them. Share ourselves, share God; it's lost on even a community of believers.
This makes me sick. Not because I'm disgusted by what I see in other people, because I'm disgusted that I even see it in myself. A good friend of mine told me that she was impressed that I could approach people and just talk. That I had a desire to get to know them. She expressed her own wish to have that kind of boldness and still I don't even see it in myself. Despite her observations, despite how I feel about people. I need to be in fellowship with them. I'm not always comfortable around them, but I should be. It's a gift that God has given to us.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
That little ache...
I'm not sure what this post will look like, but I'm quite confident that it will be a lot of babbling and have no defined direction of where it is heading, it's just a blind attempt to put how I feel on the page...
I read. In that past 2 weeks I've read a pretty massive series that follows Julian Delphiki, or Bean, through his short life. I want to avoid writing a book report here, so if you want to know more about it, email me and I'll let you know. He dies. It's a sad moment and his widow marries another man, and he dies. How much death can you really read about before it starts to effect you? I know that they aren't real people, but over several books, you get to know them as real people, you know what makes them tick, you KNOW them.
It's often the same in movies. You connect with one character that you root for over the course of the film. I've seen some that the better ending would have been the hero losing, but for the sake of the viewer, there is often some impossible string of events that leaves the hero with his heroine living happily ever after. There is a hug and a kiss and maybe a wedding, but it tugs at you that there is happiness.
Holding these thoughts in my head as I put down the last book that I finished just a few minutes ago, I couldn't help but wonder where my happily ever after is. What follows here isn't an effort to make you feel sorry for me, it's just truth. My life has been a string of disappointments and a few successes, but the success never lingers in my mind the way a good failure does. I try to learn things from them, but sometimes it just sticks that maybe there is nothing to learn from it. One demotivator I've read, reads "If at first you don't succeed, maybe failure is your style". I hate to think this is talking to people like me.
I wrote in the past about anguish and carry some scars that won't heal. When I get that little ache, is it those scars stretching because the rest of me is growing or is it just new scars being added with the ones that already exist. I carry a pang, right in the middle of me, some days I feel it more than others and some days I can make it fade to almost nothing, the way a mosquito bite feels like nothing the next day. What will it be that makes this pain go away?
I read. In that past 2 weeks I've read a pretty massive series that follows Julian Delphiki, or Bean, through his short life. I want to avoid writing a book report here, so if you want to know more about it, email me and I'll let you know. He dies. It's a sad moment and his widow marries another man, and he dies. How much death can you really read about before it starts to effect you? I know that they aren't real people, but over several books, you get to know them as real people, you know what makes them tick, you KNOW them.
It's often the same in movies. You connect with one character that you root for over the course of the film. I've seen some that the better ending would have been the hero losing, but for the sake of the viewer, there is often some impossible string of events that leaves the hero with his heroine living happily ever after. There is a hug and a kiss and maybe a wedding, but it tugs at you that there is happiness.
Holding these thoughts in my head as I put down the last book that I finished just a few minutes ago, I couldn't help but wonder where my happily ever after is. What follows here isn't an effort to make you feel sorry for me, it's just truth. My life has been a string of disappointments and a few successes, but the success never lingers in my mind the way a good failure does. I try to learn things from them, but sometimes it just sticks that maybe there is nothing to learn from it. One demotivator I've read, reads "If at first you don't succeed, maybe failure is your style". I hate to think this is talking to people like me.
I wrote in the past about anguish and carry some scars that won't heal. When I get that little ache, is it those scars stretching because the rest of me is growing or is it just new scars being added with the ones that already exist. I carry a pang, right in the middle of me, some days I feel it more than others and some days I can make it fade to almost nothing, the way a mosquito bite feels like nothing the next day. What will it be that makes this pain go away?
Monday, May 9, 2011
Mike Bayley
I'm a little afraid to actually begin writing about Mike. I work with two guys regularly, and Mike is the bigger mystery of the two, yet at the same time, he really isn't. So, how do you put on the page something that is so open and yet so hidden all at the same time?
Let me explain myself. Mike doesn't talk. In fact, he speaks so rarely that at first I wondered if he was even capable of speech. I have since heard him say a few things, most common of which is "amen" when it's his turn to pray, but the rest of the time when he talks, you just have to guess at what he is saying.
Even in saying so very little, he has figured out how to communicate without words. He gestures a lot of times to give his impression of things. A salute here, a thumbs up there, and smiles, boy does this guy smile. He can almost always be seen with a smile on his face. Even when he is mad at me for making him work too hard, he has a smile on his face as he's telling me he wants me to leave and he doesn't like me. Which I maintain that he did tell me even though the ladies that I work with say I was imagining it.
Once you get used to Mike, you can understand him, but until then, he's a closed book. At first I struggled to get the simplest answers out of him, and now, I can get him to say words that I thought beyond him.
Next for him though, is work. He hates work. A lot of what we do is physical labor, and as much as I hate to compare him to someone else, he just does not put the effort forth that Robby does. Mike is very lazy when you let him get away with it. Most the time I just deal with it as best I can and be the buffer between the rising ire or Robby as he gets mad at Mike, and Mike's true inability to do some of the things that we do. Mike has his favorite days at work, and I was told about these from the start, but as I've watched him over the last few months, I realize that the reason he likes these jobs, is because he can do very little and still look like he's working hard. This keeps me off his back and also keeps Robby from getting frustrated with him.
As much as he seems to be inept, he is way smarter that at first you would give him credit for. My problem now is that I give him more credit that he really deserves. I expect a lot from myself, beyond my own abilities and I've put that standard on the guys that I work with. It leads, a lot of times, to the three of us being thoroughly exhausted at the end of the day, but you know, we get a lot done and I was always under the impression that you can't argue with results.
To finish up... I have given the impression, perhaps, that I don't really care for Mike, and at surface level, I might now, but deep down I know that I'm learning more from him than I truly expected to learn from doing this job. I have been blasted with revelation after revelation just by watching these two guys do what they can do and teaching me about the things that I can't do. I look forward to them teaching me more and continuing to work with them in the months to come.
Let me explain myself. Mike doesn't talk. In fact, he speaks so rarely that at first I wondered if he was even capable of speech. I have since heard him say a few things, most common of which is "amen" when it's his turn to pray, but the rest of the time when he talks, you just have to guess at what he is saying.
Even in saying so very little, he has figured out how to communicate without words. He gestures a lot of times to give his impression of things. A salute here, a thumbs up there, and smiles, boy does this guy smile. He can almost always be seen with a smile on his face. Even when he is mad at me for making him work too hard, he has a smile on his face as he's telling me he wants me to leave and he doesn't like me. Which I maintain that he did tell me even though the ladies that I work with say I was imagining it.
Once you get used to Mike, you can understand him, but until then, he's a closed book. At first I struggled to get the simplest answers out of him, and now, I can get him to say words that I thought beyond him.
Next for him though, is work. He hates work. A lot of what we do is physical labor, and as much as I hate to compare him to someone else, he just does not put the effort forth that Robby does. Mike is very lazy when you let him get away with it. Most the time I just deal with it as best I can and be the buffer between the rising ire or Robby as he gets mad at Mike, and Mike's true inability to do some of the things that we do. Mike has his favorite days at work, and I was told about these from the start, but as I've watched him over the last few months, I realize that the reason he likes these jobs, is because he can do very little and still look like he's working hard. This keeps me off his back and also keeps Robby from getting frustrated with him.
As much as he seems to be inept, he is way smarter that at first you would give him credit for. My problem now is that I give him more credit that he really deserves. I expect a lot from myself, beyond my own abilities and I've put that standard on the guys that I work with. It leads, a lot of times, to the three of us being thoroughly exhausted at the end of the day, but you know, we get a lot done and I was always under the impression that you can't argue with results.
To finish up... I have given the impression, perhaps, that I don't really care for Mike, and at surface level, I might now, but deep down I know that I'm learning more from him than I truly expected to learn from doing this job. I have been blasted with revelation after revelation just by watching these two guys do what they can do and teaching me about the things that I can't do. I look forward to them teaching me more and continuing to work with them in the months to come.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Robinson Briand
I spend much of my day working with two guys that challenge me in ways that I never imagined that I needed to be challenged. I'm constantly on my guard for what I say, how I react to people, and what my attitude is. I'll write about both of them but today I want to talk about Robby a bit.
Robby is from the Marshall Islands. I don't know where that is exactly, but he remembers it being exotic. Compared to where we live now, in the middle of a desert, anywhere would almost be exotic. When he was 5 he moved to Salem, where his parents still live today, but he has opted to learn independence from the people here at Mark 2.
During a typical week we do a ton of work. We dump trash, set up and take down the club room, pull weeds, mow lawns, and clean some condos. The two of them do more work than you can expect most normal people to accomplish in a given amount of time. Robby especially. He works tirelessly and gets frustrated when the rest of us aren't working as hard as he is. He motivates me to keep moving, even when I'm tired.
One of Robby's favorite things to do is go running. He runs and runs and runs, and when he's motivated, you have to actually stop him from running his legs off. The other day he ran for over 3 miles. I dont' make that kind of effort very often, and we stopped him because we didn't want him to be exhausted for the next day.
I learn a lot from this kid, and am constantly suprised by his understanding of God and the simple things that God has provided for us. Nothing is simple to Robby, everything is a great gift. Getting to know him has been a blessing.
Robby is from the Marshall Islands. I don't know where that is exactly, but he remembers it being exotic. Compared to where we live now, in the middle of a desert, anywhere would almost be exotic. When he was 5 he moved to Salem, where his parents still live today, but he has opted to learn independence from the people here at Mark 2.
During a typical week we do a ton of work. We dump trash, set up and take down the club room, pull weeds, mow lawns, and clean some condos. The two of them do more work than you can expect most normal people to accomplish in a given amount of time. Robby especially. He works tirelessly and gets frustrated when the rest of us aren't working as hard as he is. He motivates me to keep moving, even when I'm tired.
One of Robby's favorite things to do is go running. He runs and runs and runs, and when he's motivated, you have to actually stop him from running his legs off. The other day he ran for over 3 miles. I dont' make that kind of effort very often, and we stopped him because we didn't want him to be exhausted for the next day.
I learn a lot from this kid, and am constantly suprised by his understanding of God and the simple things that God has provided for us. Nothing is simple to Robby, everything is a great gift. Getting to know him has been a blessing.
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