Christian Living – Page 3 – A Work in Progress

Blue Collar Love

Lately, when I have a moment or two, I’ve been thinking about love.

Not in the way you might think—this is not one of those gooshy, “I love my wife sooo much” posts (although I do).

Rather, I have been thinking that there really is a pretty big difference between the sort-of star-struck love you feel while dating, even leading up to your wedding and the real, deeper, blue-collar love you feel after you’ve been married a while, and the work of marriage begins.

Star-struck love gets you to the altar; blue-collar love keeps you together, and growing closer.

It isn’t that the romance ends when you tie the knot, because it doesn’t. It actually gets better.

Personally, I don’t think a soulmate is someone you slow-dance with your entire marriage, and say things like “you complete me” to at every opportunity, while staring into each other’s eyes and sighing.

That crap is for the movies, and it isn’t real marriage—it isn’t blue collar love.

I think a soulmate (if there is such a thing) is the person you can come home to and say “my day was crap,” and then they sit on the couch with you, drinking a beer and not talking about it, while the kids destroy the rest of the house.

A “soulmate” is the person you can just be with sometimes, and that is enough. It doesn’t have to be a Bruno Mars song all the time.

A “soulmate” is someone who can see you in all your morning magnificence and still give you a kiss, then tell you your breath smells like ass.

Blue-collar love is not perfectly arranged, candlelit dates at fancy restaurants. It’s driving to Dairy Queen barefoot at 10pm for a blizzard because nothing else will do.

It’s making your whiny, complaining husband a pie that everyone else in the free world hates, because his mom made it for him, and when he has it he remembers her.

Blue-collar love is not running off when things get tough, or when you have an argument or disagreement. It’s rolling up your sleeves and working that stuff out.

Blue-collar love is being able to say to your spouse “I don’t have it right now. Everything feels wrong. Can I just…talk a little? I need someone to listen.”

Or sleeping sitting up in a Hospital chair while your spouse gets emergency surgery on Valentine’s day.

It’s having common goals; the same things are important to each person. It’s hitting your knees and doing the work of real prayer when it needs to be done. Battling together for your kids and your marriage.

Sometimes blue collar love is cleaning up messes you didn’t make so they don’t have to.

Or calling them out when they fart worse than you.

Or knowing when to offer input or just listen, even when your day was just as bad as theirs sounds.

Blue collar love is ugly-crying and not being embarrassed, because you know they will probably tease you after you get it out, and that is awesome.

Blue collar love is goofing around in the kitchen until you almost fall, then falling anyway, grabbing onto each other the whole way while screaming with laughter (and then groaning like you took a hit from Warren Sapp afterward).

But blue collar love can also be work, and that makes it even better. Marriage is not for the faint of heart.

If neither I nor my wife was willing to work at things, life would be wretched.

But I also think if everything was easy all the time, life would be crappy, too.

It isn’t until we face adversity of some kind that we learn what we are capable of, and how strong we are as individuals and as a couple.

I may not be the most romantic man in the world, certainly not the most observant. I forget things. I’m bad at planning things for my wife-who is conversely the bees knees with all that stuff.

My wife knows this well, and let’s me slide with sucking at it.

Individually, we probably have issues. Everyone does. But they aren’t deal-breakers, and they do not lessen what we have together, which isn’t a perfect marriage.

But it’s a great one. We love God, and love each other. We put in the OT when it’s needed (which is always), and always extend the extra Grace.

Because without a little work every once in a while, the rewards aren’t as sweet.

My wife is the only person I have truly loved, in the way people usually mean it. She is, to me, proof that God loves me. She is—literally—an answer to prayer, and will be my pretty girl until I look like this:

getimage

And even when I come home from work or anywhere smelling like a herd of rabid buffalo, she gives me a kiss…then tells me to go wash up, because I smell like trash, or whatever I happened to be into that particular day.

Or for my part, I can come into the bedroom while she’s using the w.c. and prance around the bathroom door in my Superman chonies. Or take a picture of my rear with her phone and make it wallpaper. It’s all good. She just laughs at me, and that’s a good thing.

You want to know my secret to staying happy? Be willing to sacrifice your dignity for a laugh every once in a while.

Come to think, we laugh a lot. Seriously, a LOT. That woman is funny, and I am more than willing to embarrass myself, especially in front of the kids. I want to teach them how to one day love their wives.

That’s the least I can do.

We have a blue collar love, and we are happy. Even when it’s hard, and life is being lame.

And, before I forget, I might add that it’s fun to freak out the kids every chance we get, too. If you don’t know what I mean, try giving your spouse a kiss in the presence of your children. You will usually get the wedge, or told to never dance again (I’m never gonna dance again…guilty feet have got no rhythm).

That’s another thing my wife has to put up with–constant and random 80’s song references…

It’s work, man. But it’s the most satisfying you will ever do. home

Strange and Interesting

Today is my younger son’s fifth birthday, and it got me thinking how strange and interesting life is. Mainly because I never thought I’d have any kids of my own. It just sort of never seemed like it would happen. I wanted it to, but I was nowhere near getting married. I wanted the whole enchilada, as they say.

For me, I always have. Even when I was younger. Maybe part of it was wanting the chance to give someone else the childhood I didn’t have myself. It was pretty much a mess, and if it hadn’t been for my sisters, I would have no idea what life as a kid was supposed to be like. I knew apathy pretty well. I knew about addiction, and depression, and mortal illnesses. I knew about physical and mental cruelty. I knew lots about fear.

My sisters taught me about love without condition. They taught me about feeling safe, and how it felt to be chosen first. All three of them were amazing at taking care of kids, and I will always be thankful for that. And my brother-in-laws were more father to me than my own, especially Philip. Dad died way too young, and before that he was worn out by life, and work, and functional poverty.

But I never expected to have a family of my own. Or a home—a real home. One with a foundation that was mine. And a door with panes of glass. Always wanted that for some reason.

My last…whatever it was ended badly a little more than a decade ago, and I went on a deliberate hiatus for a number of years after that. I came to belief shortly after Y2K, and built on that foundation for a few years as well. I needed to, or I was never going to be useful to anyone else.

The good of the hiatus part is that I was able to work on my heart issues, and what some might call my “core woundings.” It wasn’t fun by any means, but it was like…physical therapy for my soul.

And I needed it.

There came a day I wanted to try…getting out there again. I wanted to meet someone desperately.

I discovered I didn’t have much game pretty early on. None would probably be a better descriptor than “much” in this instance.

I fumbled around a little, and had very little success. A couple of first dates, and a lot of phone calls.

Then someone contacted me (I will always believe that was God getting my attention, and giving me what I needed, even if not exactly what I thought I wanted), and it began.

We emailed, and took a lot of those MySpace quizzes. We talked on the phone like smitten teenagers (and the funny things was, she was the first person I had been with since high school that was age appropriate).

I was all in, and I knew that after just a few weeks.

We were engaged December of the same year we met. December 22, to be exact. At her family Christmas dinner. Not what I planned, but given the value she placed on family, totally appropriate.

And I decided to move away from California, my lifelong home. I had always wanted something new—a fresh start. Nothing like moving to Arizona to be with your girl and her son to start things over again.

We married 9 months after we met. We got pregnant 9 months after we were married. And our son was born the usual 9 months after that.

That’s when I realized that even though I was living in a place I didn’t know very well—a place that was hotter than a monkey’s butt—I was pretty happy with life.

And that was strange, too.

We’ve been through plenty of difficulties of our own, but we’ve always laughed with each other. We pray together, and to this day I love holding her hand. And as far as I know, we’ve never went to bed angry at one another.

I was reaching into our living room closet the other day for something, and I turned my head and looked out the panes of glass in my door to the front yard, where there are trees. Two cars in the driveway.

I don’t know, man. I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is. Having a home. There isn’t a white picket fence, but it’s a pretty good thing we have going here. I know I won’t be able to right all the wrongs done to me by having a family and trying my best to do right by them. But the healing of and in my heart has allowed me to forgive many things, and that’s a huge deal.

My life is full, and it’s completely not what I thought it would be, but everything I wanted it to.

Truly, I should not be here. But I am. Through addictions, through lots of things. I went through life feeling like an accident. But the truth is I am not.

I am here. God meant me to be.

I acknowledge that I only have life, and draw breath, and come home to hugs and kisses from my kids because of the presence of God in my life.

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul?

I don’t know. I gained what feels like the whole world, and discovered my soul.

It isn’t just because of the house. It isn’t just because of the family.

I think…no, I know. It’s because my feet are finally on the right path. I still stumble, and sometimes even fall.

The fulfillment I feel in just…trying to be obedient makes it worthwhile.

And I get to come home to this insane enclave of kids, and dogs, and a wife, and it’s pretty awesome.

God is good, all the time.

And the funny thing is, he always was. It’s funny how much you hear when you actually listen.

Life is good, too.

It’s a Hard Heart That Kills

Back in February: “U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday described the deaths of three young Muslims gunned down in North Carolina this week as “brutal and outrageous murders” and said no one in the United States should be targeted for their religion.” No doubt to most people, that situation was a textbook hate crime.

In my opinion, there is no doubt the events of last week, where college students were asked if they were Christians, and then executed if they answered in the affirmative (though this man killed some other folks as well, there was no doubt some special viciousness reserved for those who claimed faith in Christ. Hard to imagine being the second person asked that question after the first was killed. It is, however, certainly a testament of faith). Still, you’d think the President would at least acknowledge this.

Or that a young man and former soldier ran at the gunman and tried to stop him. He could have gotten out of there, as he helped others evacuate.

He didn’t. He was unarmed, with little hope of success.

He still did something. That man is a hero.

Seriously.

Instead, the President (not to mention former Secretary Clinton) made the situation a forum for more gun control political speak. It makes sense, of course, with the election coming and all, but talking points are, after all, just talk.

Though there will be much more of that to come, no doubt.

Because guns kill people. We have to “get them.”

But it isn’t just politics, folks. Real lives are at stake. I was thinking about that—the tendency to politicize a tragedy to advance an agenda—and the logic confounds me. If so and so didn’t have such and such, he wouldn’t have done it. Or if so and so DID have such and such, he could have stopped it. But though these sentences have truth to them, it isn’t that simple.

Praying isn’t enough, I think the president said. He’s right. But neither is rhetoric. Nor is there any conceivable justification for stumping on the backs of murdered students, children, Marine Recruiters, or anyone else.

So stop trying. Have a little respect for the dead, not to mention yourselves.

Of course, guns do fall into the wrong hands. So do cars, for crying out loud. If you were determined enough to kill people—maybe even a lot of people—I think you would be able to find a way. Look at Timothy McVeigh, folks. He literally used bullcrap to take out a federal building. If someone is nuts enough or determined enough, and wants to kill people enough, he will find a way. It made me think of a line from the Bodyguard, when Frank says “If someone is willing to swap their lives for a killing, there’s no stopping them.”

Also, consider this clip from the movie “Full Metal Jacket, and note a short line in the middle: “It is a hard heart that kills.”

It’s a hard heart that kills.

A movie line, of course, but it rings with truth. And I believe the problem we face with guns, and killings (mass or otherwise) is a heart problem and not an access to firearms problem. I do understand the appeal of that argument, however. It absolves the person blaming the gun from personal responsibility.

And make no mistake, one chooses to fire a gun. A Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm, for example, has a 6.5 pound trigger pull weight, against a weight of 1.6 pounds for the weapon. It does not fire on its own.

Consider this excerpt from “The Gunslinger’s Creed,” taken from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower:

I do not kill with my gun, he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father; I kill with my heart.

And that’s where we are as a country. We kill with our hearts—our hardened hearts. We’ve got a national heart problem. At the root of having respect for life is the acknowledgment that all lives have worth. Not just minorities of one sort or another—one religion or another.

We need to start teaching the value of a human life, indiscriminately. All life is valuable, and worth more than jewels. We need to work on softening our hearts toward the plight of others.

All lives matter, not just black, or white, or gay, or transgenital, or octocurious.

Life doesn’t mean anything to so many people these days. Murder often becomes arbitrary. Or in some communities, almost a rite of passage (look at Chicago murder statistics if you don’t believe me).

We can make guns as hard to get as we want—we can take them all away and melt them into camping ware.

The change it would bring to the epidemic of violence in our country would be negotiable, at best. Because our hearts are stone toward people not like us. Not all the time, but often enough that things like Oregon keep happening.

And if those with left-leaning tendencies stopped to think about the situation, they would realize that so many people doing terrible things with a gun are more likely to get them from someone’s closet, or car trunk than from Bud’s Guns. Statistically speaking, it’s pretty easy to fact-check.

There’s no waiting period or background check on the black market. Or maybe the person concerned would not use a gun at all.

For pity’s sake, the United States wasn’t invaded because (roughly quoted) the enemy feared “every citizen would be hiding behind a blade of grass with a gun.”

Of course, there are people who shouldn’t have guns. There’s a lot of crazy out there.
But gun free zones featuring one security guard carrying a can of mace in an active shooter situation are about as useful as teats on a bull.

It would probably be great for controlling hippies fighting over a chia and watercress sandwich, though.

I never thought of myself as a particularly violent person, but I think I can say truthfully that if I was somewhere where my life or the lives of those around me were threatened I would do whatever I had to in order to protect those lives, or at least try.

I think anyone would hopefully do that in the same situation.

“I’m sorry, active shooter. I would like to confront you, but I believe only police and mil—“

I pray that if that day ever comes for me, I would have the courage of my present convictions.

I would want to have the courage of that second person who confessed Christ after watching his or her classmate shot in the head.

I would want to be the congressperson who voted to defund, even at the cost of shutting down the government.

Because forgive my hate speech, but all lives matter. I realize that in my heart and acknowledge it fully, because Jesus lives there, too. But because I am human, I realize the quandary.

I would still kill to protect my family. I don’t want to, but I would.

I would kill to protect your family. I don’t want to do that, either.

But I would.

That’s because to some people out there, no lives matter.

Let Your Glory Shine

The song “Let Your Glory Shine,” by Lincoln Brewster came on my mp3 player today, and it gave me a second or two of pause. The song begins with a short but lightning fast burst of guitar that just melts your face. Then he gets into the verse, which is pretty much straightforward blues/rock with a nice groove. Of course, then Brewster and the band go absolutely nuts after the bridge, and there’s another face melting guitar solo.

In the following video, Brewster tells the story of the song:

He talks about when he came from the secular music world (he played for Steve Perry, the original Journey singer) into playing worship music in a church, he always felt restraint, so far as his playing went. But it seemed like God was telling him to just play with what he was given to play, and in this instance, that was crazy guitar skills.

But the chorus of the song really tells the story.

“Let your glory shine, let your glory shine, let your glory shine through me.”

I’ve heard both pastors and worship leaders over the years say things like “church isn’t the time to showboat,” and maybe it isn’t. Perhaps a song like this IS more suited to a concert setting. But to me, that doesn’t meant the song doesn’t carry a valid message.

Let your glory shine through me.

Brewster also says in the “making of” video above, that “If I don’t give Lord everything, both musically and spiritually, then I’m not being obedient.”

He’s letting the talent God gave him shine (worth mentioning is that he always gives God the glory for what he’s been given).

That sounds OK to me.

Certainly, I’m no pastor, no bible scholar. Can’t sing or play.

But if there was something I could do OK, I would do it, and honor God with what he’d given me.

What that is, I’m still doing my best to discover. Maybe it’s writing. Maybe telling people about the Good News.

Maybe it’s simply my work. I would guess that’s it for a lot of people. Steven Curtis Chapman has a song where he says something like “do everything you do for the glory of the one who made you.”

Can I write and edit documents to the Glory of God? I think so—I hope that’s what I’m doing today.

But maybe it isn’t something so glamorous as typing for you, or playing ridiculously awesome guitar solos.

Maybe you drive a cab, or wash dishes.

Maybe you scoop dog poop in a park.

Or you could be a stay-at-home parent who spends a great deal of their time following children around and vacuuming Legos out of the carpet (you can do that, right?)

Try to think that in that moment, you are where God meant you to be.

Handing homeless people a meal, or stacking chairs.

Flipping burgers.

Making bouquets.

God put you there.

You can glorify him wherever you are.

I wish I could sing all the time. I’m the only one in my nuclear family who can’t, including my 4 year-old.

But that isn’t me.

Instead, I am spending my lunch trying to think, and write, and eat something from the roadrunner without getting some meat-sickness.

Then I will go back to Word, and Publisher.

I will write, and I will edit. And I will drop the mic when I am done for the day.

“If I don’t give Lord everything, then I’m not being obedient.”

The Lifeguard

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. Our country has some serious problems–both domestically and abroad. These are issues the executive branch is capable of handling, but for some reason has been choosing to act and/or negotiate from a position of weakness rather than strength, in both areas.

I think there are times when that sort of approach can be affective, but in this instance, it seems the greatest country on earth is approaching the head of the soup line with our palms up in supplication, asking if we can please have some more.

Do I think we should act like the playground bully and take more control?

Of course not.

I think our current USA CEO could even be a great president under better conditions–under peacetime conditions.

Except that in our current domestic and world situations,

IT ISN’T LIKE THAT AT ALL!!

There’s a war going on, and a pestilence made up of radical Islamic thugs and murderers spreading in the middle east.

Is the answer to keeping Iran out of the fray gently petting their back like a kitty?

Maybe not.

But letting them inspect themselves to determine if they are stockpiling nuclear weapons?

Have they proven themselves to be both truthful and trustworthy? Sane, even?

And what about the Islamic State?

What about our own country, for that matter? What is going on?

It seems as if life has no meaning beyond Webster’s definition.

People kill each other almost arbitrarily in places like Chicago, and really across America.

Young African-American men are killing cops, because black lives matter.

Cops are occasionally killing African-American men because they have been conditioned to fear them, and even expect the worst.

Stupidity, AND latent and active racism have a hand in both.

Here’s the thing, in my opinion.

Life is never easy, for most of us.

But it has value. Each life has value.

Black, white, blue, born or unborn.

How do we get people to realize that?

It’s there where I usually get myself into trouble.

It isn’t by preaching wrath.

I think it’s by preaching the love of Christ.

Not Allah, or Vishnu, or Baal, or anything like that.

Christ.

It’s a shame so many people don’t know that.

It’s a shame it often seems the government is working toward criminalizing people for saying it, in one form or another.

It’s my belief that if people knew what value they had to their maker, maybe they would act, think, and feel differently.

Maybe I’m being optimistic and naïve, but I think there’s always hope. It may be that my saying that in the way I have offends you.

I’m sorry if you’re offended, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

There’s just one way to find real peace.

It may not be popular.

It may be difficult (of course it is. Morality seems more vice than virtue these days). And moral relativism is a lot easier to achieve and maintain than a relationship with Christ.

Man, I don’t know what to tell you. I only know my own pain. I only know my own hopes, dreams, and fears. I only know the sources of my own scars.

And I only know that it wasn’t until I began a relationship with Jesus that I began to find relief.

I know that with the same certainty I felt when I knew I wanted to marry my wife.

Listen, folks, you don’t have to believe me. You get to decide the route your life takes.

We are all different, in almost every way.

But we are also all the same.

We’re drowning in a deep, dark pool, and we need someone to throw us a rope. Lots of people will, but only one rope leads to rescue.

Cling to that one with all your might.

Sunflowers

I’ve been up at the front exactly twice during an invitation at church, both times at my church in San Diego. They did it a little differently than some places I’d been. People would sort of hang out on the short steps leading to the stage, and if you wanted prayer, you’d come up and have a seat. Sometimes you’d do the same in the chairs. Seemed to work pretty well.

On the day in question, it was because I was a small group leader, and the pastor called us to the front to pray for or with people that wanted prayer. Typically, it was people involved in worship or ministry in some way that would be the prayers, but there was a retreat or something going on, and the pastor needed a little help.

Honestly, it wasn’t something I was terribly comfortable with at the time, because I didn’t feel…worthy, or qualified to lift anyone else up to God. I felt broken, and sort of…held together.

But the pastor called, so up I went.

I remember the first time, I sat nervously on the step, wondering if anyone would come to me—there were quite a few people sitting around the stage. I silently prayed that if someone did end up with me, that I would have the right words to say when the time came.

I felt like the kid in left field, asking God “Please don’t let anyone hit it to me.”

Shortly after that, I saw a pretty woman in her late thirties or early forties make her way down the aisle to where I was sitting. She was tall for a woman, and very slender. She had a bandanna tied around what looked to be a very bald head, and my first thought was cancer.

What I remember most is she looked very, very tired, and from what it looked like, had been sitting alone in the sanctuary.

She stopped right before me, and I slowly stood. She took both my hands in hers, and I could see the gentle sheen of tears in her eyes.

“Hi,” I said. “How can I…”

Before I could finish my sentence, she dropped her head toward her chest and the tears began to flow.

God, I prayed. What do I say? What do I do to help her?

You do nothing, was the sense I got. You say nothing.

So I didn’t. She was a little older than me at the time, but I just reached out my arms and I hugged her.

She cried on my chest for a good five minutes, and I just prayed silently in my head for her. Mainly that she could experience Jesus through her pain, and that I not ruin any experience that might happen. I never asked for healing. I don’t know why.

She lifted her head a minute or so later, and she just smiled a gentle smile at me, and said “thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” I said.

She stepped back and said, “I guess I needed that.”

“Me, too.”

She looked at me for a moment, and then walked back down the aisle, and out of the sanctuary.

I stood there for a moment, and realized I didn’t feel nervous anymore. I actually felt peaceful. I could still feel the woman’s arms around me, and smell the faint scent of Sunflowers (I think that’s what it’s called) clinging to my t-shirt.

I didn’t remember anyone holding onto me like that since I was a kid. Not in a romantic way, but still loving. Comforting.

Like I was a brother.

I realized it was me who needed the prayer, and in that moment, needed her.

And it occurred to me that maybe she’d been praying for me the whole time I was praying for her. Maybe she was crying for me. I felt like I got the most of the blessing.

That was the only time I saw her.

I don’t know her name, but when I think about God meeting my needs (which he does every time I ask), I always think of her, and of Sunflowers perfume.

And I think one of the funny things about God is sometimes you just need to show up, and let him do the work.

The Song You Sing

Over the past week or two, I’ve written, rewritten, and ultimately discarded a post that’s been sticking in my craw like county fair taffy. In the end, I think I only need a few syllables. 17, to be exact:

All lives are the same
Created in His beauty
All matter to God

I think about life, and then Thoreau speaks quiet words into my ear:

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

I don’t want to listen to him, because I got a “B” on my Civil Disobedience paper, and his sideburns are ridiculous.

Am I quietly desperate? I don’t know. I don’t want to be.

That doesn’t make his words any less true.

Do you really want to live the rest of your life with the song still in you? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Sing.

At my best, my voice is…not good. But in my own way, I carry a tune (even if it is in a bucket).

I just decided that it’s OK if people don’t like my melody—or don’t think I’m musical.

Maybe my music consists of letters instead of notes; bouquets of words, and sentences, and imagery.

I’m good with that.

All I want to say to you, whoever you are, is find your music.

It’s different for everyone.

It’s probably something else for you. Your music will sound different than anyone else’s.

It should–you weren’t designed the same as they were. You don’t have the same purpose, but be assured, you have one.

For my wife, it’s singing and pouring out her amazing heart for children.

Find your own song, and belt that thing like Andrea Bocelli.

Let me finish with these words from Psalm 51–about the most appropriate I can think of, given what I’m talking about:

14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.

15 Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise)

Certainly not my words, but they fit.

Listen, or How a Trip to Mexico Changed My Life

There’s a lot I can take credit for in my life.

My mistakes.

My screw ups.

Things like that.

The turn my life has taken over the past few years is not one of them.

More than ten years ago I was a believer, but I was a just-inside-the-gate-of heaven type of guy. I did as little as I could so that I felt “saved,” but had not really done much of anything with the Gospel, or myself.

I was neither financially, spiritually, or romantically viable. And probably some other viables, too.

I believe the saying now is a “hot mess.”

A former relationship had rendered me skittish about sticking out my neck in any real way, so I didn’t. I just sat back and waited for the next thing to happen.

It didn’t, even though there were a couple of opportunities with some really nice, really great women who probably would have made me happy.

Never tried.

My discipleship and spiritual life were mediocre, at best. I was part of a ministry that changed my life over around a five-year period, but that was due to God being glorious, and me at least being smart enough to stand out of the way and let God use me a few times. I almost feel like I had nothing to do with it. Maybe I didn’t.

Financially, I had a decent job that payed well enough, but I was utterly stupid about money and it amounted to naught. Plus, it was in the cellular industry and there was always a measure of uncertainty attached to it.

I made so many bad choices it makes me shudder to think of it now (not that all my choices now are perfect, but they are at least considered first).

I needed to get away, to think about things, and where my life was going. I needed to pray. I had what turned out to be a misguided feeling that if I could just meet someone, my life would be better.

Well, actually, that was true. Just not in the way I thought.

There were a couple of lame attempts at online dating that I really never expected to succeed. So they didn’t.

I considered what was wrong in my life, and why all that stuff was so hard.

I’d had a few relationships here and there, but they always went in the toilet after various periods of time.

Why?

I could not blame the women, not really. I had chosen to pursue them in most of the cases. And eventually I always just…face-planted.

I’d always had more female friends than male ones. I guess that was because of my childhood and adolescence, which I’ve written about several times. Not inclined to repeat any of that here. Anyway, it seemed to make things easier, but not really.

There was the feeling of being with someone in a “safe” way, but it also gave me the opportunity to take things in the wrong direction emotionally, which did end up happening once. Also, once physically, which was the biggest mistake of my life.

Also, it removed the risk of me meeting anyone else, because it seemed like girls weren’t all that interested in guys who hung out with girls most of the time.

Most importantly, though, it was not appropriate. I don’t believe now that God made us that way—at least not me. I copped out for a very large part of my life.

And then it came to pass that God allowed me a moment of clarity about my life, and the conclusion I came to was this one: I was never going to right my ship and my life if I kept doing the same things over and over again. It was clear I didn’t really know how to handle things—I’d never learned.

So that meant the “why” was because I had never asked what God thought about my relationships, or if I should even have one.

A day or two after that conclusion, I was fooling around online—watching YouTube clips and skimming around a couple of dating sites. I signed into MySpace to play some online game and saw I’d gotten an email from a young woman in AZ. I didn’t know her, but she was pretty so I didn’t delete it. I read it, though. I didn’t get any voice from on high telling me what to do.

So I kept skimming, and watching concert clips.

A short while later, I went to Mexico for a short vacation with two good friends (yes, they were female. No, there wasn’t any tension that way). We had a condo a few short steps from the Akumal beach.

(sorry for the gratuitous backfat shot–it’s the only pic I have that shows the view from the patio where I would sit and write)

I sat out there the first morning, and I read a little scripture and scribbled in a notebook. It became my habit over the next few days, between snorkeling, sightseeing, and drinking margaritas.

I think it was the second to last day when I wrote this:

“God, if you’re ever going to make something happen for me with someone, you have to make it really clear what you want (yes, I gave an order to the creator of all things). Because I don’t know what I want, but I know I don’t want this—this life—anymore. I don’t want to die, I just want it to be different.”

There were a few more things, but that’s the part that matters most for my purposes today.

Shortly after returning, I pulled up MySpace at work and wrote a reply to the Arizona woman who’d written me.

Her name was Jenny.

Everything flowed from that. From the beginning, our conversations were easy and authentic. Transparent.

It went quickly, but felt right from the very beginning. It felt like that clarity I’d asked God for.

I listened.

Jenny and I were married on May 16, 2009.

Today, we have two crazy boys, and we own a home. Things are looking up, and get better all the time. We worship and serve at First Christian Church–Yuma. We are leaders in the Prayer Ministry there.

The pastor is a Godly man named Jeff Elzey who is also a great guy. We are able to worship every week with our best friends and family, and that is wonderful.

Yes, there were quite a few bumps and a pretty significant breakdown along the way, but it feels like those things needed to happen now as part of my personal refining. And some pain was involved, but so was healing.

My life is full now, and fulfilled. Listening to God brought all of that about. Asking him to take control of that part of my life and my heart helped. Otherwise I would have discarded all the little clues he set in my path—never been great at grasping subtleties.

I love the life God has set before me.

I love my family, and all the friends I’ve made since becoming part of things at my church and in my community.

My job is better than it’s ever been.

I take no credit for any of it. I just think there are so many blessings in being faithful. Not perfect—just faithful.

Listen to God. Listen FOR God.

It will change your life.

Dysfunction, with a W

Today I read an article online about the TV show Six Feet Under. It was pretty much just a quick oral history of how the show came to be, but there was a small part of it where the actor Peter Krause, I think, was talking about how the Fisher family was dysfunctional on the show, but that cast as a family was very functional.

It got me thinking about my own family growing up. Not that we were terribly dysfunctional, really. I think we were like lots of families during that time period. My brother and sisters grew up in the 60’s and 70’s (I came along in 1968), and it was just a different time then.

My siblings dealt with the same things lots of people did during that time period—Viet Nam, drug issues (not necessarily their own), probably some politics, meeting (or not meeting) societal and parental expectation, and simply finding their own way.

And they had this baby brother come along, and they were really more like parents to me than anything else.

My mom dealt with health and alcoholism issues as long as I can remember. Then it was cancer issues, and it took her a really long and painful decade to succumb to them.

I got along with my sisters much better than my brother. They showed me the love and support my parents couldn’t, for whatever their reasons. My brother, not so much. If I had to name an individual responsible for most of my woundings and scars, it would be him. Both literally, and figuratively.

He single-handedly formed the self-image that almost completely undid me.

I didn’t get it before—not for years—but I think I understand why things played out like that a little better now.

He was a little different as a kid, from what I have been made to understand. Perhaps there could have been some mental or chemical issues, I don’t know. He wasn’t always easy to love. Still, the girls did what they could.

Then I come along, and for whatever the reason, I was treated and loved well by my sisters and was a total mama’s boy. I don’t think there was anything special about me, but the love I was shown shaped my personality as much as my brother’s hate did, I think. And I get that it upset him and probably caused a lot of his issues with me.

Plainly put, this new brother did not help his issues at all, and certainly stole a lot of the time that he used to get. It felt like he hated me for being more loved than he was. I don’t know if that’s true.

I suppose that is a dysfunction.

Yet there were also moments of kindness. He would give me things of his I wanted that he didn’t use or play with anymore. He would take me for rides on his motorcycle. One time I got sick in the middle of the night and puked all over the place. He cleaned me up and put me back to bed, and then cleaned up the mess all by himself without waking anyone else up.

Lots of things like that.

My dad seemed a little aloof, but I think that was a generational thing. Men of his time (the greatest generation) were not always the touchy-feely uber-dads you see so often these days (I try to be that kind of dad myself).

I think he did the best he could considering what he had to deal with himself. There were periods of unemployment, my mom’s alcoholism and cancer. Probably hopes and dreams he had of his own that never happened. I don’t ever remember him striking me or anything like that. But I also don’t remember encouragement coming from his direction. I don’t remember much in the way of physical affection, though I suppose he did love me after his own fashion.

He died when I was 16.

Still, I had my friends, and I had my mom and sisters. My brother was thankfully not home much that I remember, and that was good. He only seemed to come around when something bad happened, and he wanted me to feel like it was my fault.

Like when my friend shot himself about ½ mile from my house.

Like when my high school girlfriend broke up with me shortly after graduation.

Like when my mom died in 1987.

That was when my downward spiral started, and didn’t end for a really long time. There weren’t really drugs, unless you count binge-drinking. There was lots of that. There were also several empty relationships, the last of which ended in the early 2000’s. There was a short foray into occultism. Pornography. Despair.

More dysfunction, I guess. During most of those years, I was not a good brother, or probably friend. I preferred shadows, and I would walk in them.

Then God started to introduce people of faith into my life—slowly, so I didn’t notice it was happening.

And for the first time I can remember, I also had accountability.

I met a guy in college who introduced me to a Jesus I hadn’t heard much about, and he called me on it when I was doing dumb stuff. My self-image began to change. Slowly, and I didn’t notice it was happening. The Jesus he told me about loved people as they were—even in their imperfection and sin. He forgave. He changed them from the inside out.

He changed me, in the fullness of time, with many missteps along the way.

I think about all the dysfunction, and I think about the many valleys I’ve been through in my life. Lots of pain. Lots of bad things.

I would not change any of it, and I know how that sounds.

But had I not experienced that stuff, I would not be here today, literally.

There’s a line in the Pat Conroy (one of my very favorite authors) book, The Prince of Tides where the narrator says something like “There are lots of families who go their whole lives with nothing of interest happening to them—not a single thing. I’ve always envied those families.”

I like the book a lot, and used to feel that way myself.

Not anymore.

My family is interesting, and has overcome a lot. Everything I have and more.

I love them.

We are weird, and we have phobias, and predilections, and strange habits.

But strange and dysfunctional as we are, we are a family.

Wilkins in various forms, ideologies, shapes, and colors.

I have been shaped by my life experiences, and by the love I have been shown over my life. Not by the hate. Nothing good is.

I am not the person some of those experiences led me to think for so many years.

God showed me that.

So here I am today.

Arizona.

I work for the Army (indirectly), doing a job I like very much.

I have my own family, and though we might not be Wilkins-level dysfunctional, we try our best. We are loud, and crazy, and we fight, but not as much as we love.

My wife is literally the most extraordinary woman I have ever known, and I will love her until I look like this:

All that dysfunction was for a reason. It got me here, by the Grace of Jesus, my abba.

The Wilkins family is here to stay. We’ve got branches all over the country, though my main concern is the San Diego Chapter.

I am grateful beyond measure.

I love show tunes, and I love metal, the language of my people.

My wife has introduced me to country, and I like that, too.

I like mince pie, even though I seem to be the only person in Arizona who does.

I love books, and my kids, and carne asada tacos.

Life is pretty good.

Statistics Be Damned

For me, ideas often begin with a desire to know more. It’s probably like that for anyone that writes.

I’ve been reading for quite some time now about how white on black racism is making a comeback. Nearly to the extent of pre-Brown vs. Board of Education levels. And if the news stories are to be believed, it’s in no way more evident than in the ratio of shooting deaths of “perpetrators” by police officers, based on racial statistics. The level of outrage would indicate police officers are obtaining licensure to shoot African-American men like rednecks receiving deer tags in November.

It just didn’t sound right to me, although it’s also possible to argue racism isn’t making a comeback, it never left at all.

So I did a small amount of digging, and the information I found with only that was alarming, and not only in the way I expected it to be.

Also, I suppose another thing to consider is that controversy sells, not to mention earns ratings points. If it bleeds it leads, right? So I need to take coverage with a very large grain of salt.

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation reported the following on their 2012 Expanded US Crime Statistics Table:

2648 African Americans were killed. 193 by white perpetrators (apparently, not all police). 2412 by other African Americans. 3128 caucasions were killed, 431 by black perpetrators, 2614 by whites.

2013 was much the same. 2491 African-Americans were killed, 2245 by other African-Americans, 189 by caucasians. 3005 white people were killed, 2509 by other whites. 409 by African-Americans.

The conclusion I drew was easy (and based ONLY on the FBI tables).

We are killing each other.

I don’t plan to make a study of crime statistics, but it’s easy to see that the violence and death going on isn’t just 1 or 2 way. We really are killing each other. Racism or not, we just are.

I don’t know how to fix that–both racism and people giving in to their base and violent instincts and just taking lives.

Better education of our kids is part of it, but not the only part.

How do we re-learn something we’ve been taught our entire lives? And not just on a family level, but also a cultural one.

People aren’t all bad–not even mostly bad–white, black or any other color.

Give them a chance.

Absent fathers are another part of it, but as before, not the only part.

Teaching kids that all lives matter is another part.

I think the largest part of all is that the United States seems to so abhor what is usually described as traditional values, we are scattering and running in all directions rather than looking inward, to our hearts.

We are becoming more Godless by the day, which is also very evident. Media confirmation is not needed for that one.

That’s another problem, and not-so-easy to solve.

Partly due to the standard-bearers for Christ not holding the banner particularly high, even on a good day.

That is not an easy-fix, but certainly a possible one.

We have to remember that He in us, is greater than he who is in the world.

And then we have to live like we believe it.

It isn’t the only thing we can do, but it’s something.

And change has to start somewhere.

We needn’t accept what the world tells us to.

Statistics be damned.