Pray

I’m really not a very politically minded person.  Maybe I should be, but I’m not.  It’s only fairly recently that I started voting every election.  I used to just vote along party lines, which for me tended to be conservative, or Republican.  But now, considering the state the country and the economy are in, I think I would vote for whoever had the best answers. 

This year–a presidential election year– we have Senators Obama and McCain in the race. 

Change you Can Believe In.

Straight Talk.

Which to choose?

A friend I was talking with once referred to Obama as a “hollow” man.  I really think she’s right.  He speaks platitudes.  He makes reference to CHANGE, but does not (that I’ve heard) specifically define it.    What does he really plan to do?  I don’t know.  All I hear is how change is needed.  How we can’t afford four more years of Bush in the White House.  His campaign seems to mostly center on telling people what he thinks they want to hear about the war in Iraq, about the economy, and about CHANGE.

But what is he going to do?  I don’t know.  I don’t have the discerment that some people do, but when I think about Obama as President, I get a feeling of unease–almost dread in the pit of my stomach.  It isn’t just his empty speeches filled with empty words.  It’s a lot of things.  To me, he almost seems anti-American at times.  Removing the flag from his airplane.  Standing at indifferent ease during flag-raisings and pledges of allegiance.  There are several things like that, and feel free to look them up on the net if you want to. 

Is McCain the perfect candidate?  Of course not. No one is perfect.  But I believe he is the best candidate this election, and I will vote for him.  I respect his service and sacrifice to his country.  I respecte his experience.  I agree with almost everything he has to say.  Will he follow through on all of it?  I don’t know. Maybe he won’t.

But he is specific about his plans.  Or at least, not as vague as the Senator from Michigan (or wherver the heck he’s from).

One problem I see in Obama telling people what they want to hear is that it seems to be working.  He is the “it” person, or candidate, for the entertainment industry right now, in all its liberal glory.  He has Hollywood on his side, and worse yet, has Oprah lobbying for him.

Oprah, for heaven’s sake.

And it seems to be working.

I hate the thought that it seems he has a very real chance of winning, based on that alone, not on experience, not on issues, but on popularity, and the endorsement of the Hollywood elite.

I hate it.

When I expressed this sentiment to my friend, she said “Are you praying about it?”

I was speechless.  I hadn’t been, or at least not to the extent that I should have been.

I used to rationalize not voting by thinking that my vote didn’t count.  It’s just one vote, I thought.

It doesn’t matter.

But what if everyone thought that?  What if all the people that could have made a difference in this or any election thought their vote didn’t count, and did not vote because of it?

Now, I vote.

So my other thought is that, what difference would my prayers make in regard to the whole country?  How are the prayers of one man in San Diego going to impact the country for the next four years?

The answer is that they won’t, if I never pray them.  What if everyone who could have made a difference by praying did not pray because they thought their prayers would not matter?

Now, I will pray.  Look at what James has to say about it:

“…the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective…” James 5:16.

Jesus’ brother.

I will pray.

I will pray that God’s will is done in regard to this election, above all other things.

I will pray for wisdom for myself, in regard to my vote.

I will pray for wisdom for the American people in regard to theirs.

I will pray that blinders are lifted from eyes in regard to Senator Obama, and that truth will be revealed in hearts. 

I will pray that Senator Obama encounters Jesus somewhere along the road to Damascus (or Pennsylvania avenue, if that’s God’s will).

I will pray.

Let me just leave you with the words of one of America’s greatest minds.  MC Hammer.

Hollow

I used to feel like part of me was missing. I could pretend to be a complete person all I wanted. I could walk around like everyone else. I could work, I could go to the mall, or to the movies. I could go to church.  I could do whatever I wanted.

But something was missing.

I felt like an imposter.

Like I was pretending.  I looked like I felt OK, and I usually said the right things, and to anyone that wasn’t inside my mind, things would seem

                                          just perfect.

But during these times, it felt like I was yearning for something, and I didn’t know what.

                    Like I was searching, and not finding. 

                          Like having an endless thirst, and not being able to slake it.

It was like there was a hole, right through the center of me. I could almost feel wind whistling through it. It was cold, and it was painful, and it seemed there was nothing I could do about it.

Except try to fill it.

And nothing fit.

Nothing fit because this hole was not shaped like anything on earth.

It was shaped like Jesus.

I believe now we were all made with this emptiness, with this hollow place in our centers. A place designed by our maker to be filled–with light, and love, and completeness. You can stuff it with anything you like. Some things will even work for a time, but eventually, they will begin to come loose around the edges, and things will begin to stream in again, and eventually, what you have stuffed into the hole will come flying out, and there will be the emptiness again.

Because only one thing will fit there, and stay.

My tendency has always been to try and fill the emptiness with things other than what was designed to fit there–things other than Jesus. For a time, it was food. That worked best of all, so far. It made me feel better to just pig out. Later, it would be the same with alcohol. Binging was fun, and easy, and when I did it, I didn’t have to think about anything, and it was great.

Except when it wasn’t. When the party was over, or the meal was over, and I was left with myself, I was not happy at all. The truth is, I was disgusted with the “wonder” of me. And what I had tried to fill my emptiness with was gone.  The food, the fermented malt beverages, the empty relationships

                       all gone.

And I was empty again.

Maybe it isn’t those things for you.  Maybe it’s something else-like drugs, or sex, or pornography.  Maybe it’s video games, or maybe you adopt a lot of cats.

And none of those things work.  You still feel hollow.  Not all of the time, but when you really sit down, or when you lay down at night, or when you ask yourself if you’re really happy, or really feel complete, the answer is almost always no.

Something is missing.

I was hollow for 32 years.  I spent my life trying various things to fill my emptiness.  I nearly ate myself to death, literally.

And it didn’t work.

I became not an everyday drinker, but a serious binge drinker.  I would pound beers until I was sick, and the result was always the same.

It didn’t work.  After the buzz was gone, and the sickness was gone, and the hangover was gone, I still felt hollow.

And then I discovered that sometimes empty relationships felt a lot like love, or what I imagined love would feel like.  But when the person was gone, and I had to think once again about my life, I had to admit that it wouldn’t have worked if I had a new person in my life every weekend.

And I was still hollow.

And then there came a day where I absolutely couldn’t do it anymore.  I was on a trip with my friends to see a baseball game, and our intention was to eat as much bad food as we could, and drink as much beer as our stomachs could handle.

Instead, God spoke to me on the first night of the trip, before we even got to Peoria.  I remember standing on the dock leading down to the river, holding a beer cooler in each hand, and just feeling overwhelmed with so many different feelings, and memories.  I remember thinking that I could no longer fill the emptiness through my center, that I never had been able to.

I did not even want to try anymore.

So for the first time in my life, kneeling on the rough wood of the dock, I asked Jesus to fill that emptiness, because I was tired of being hollow.

And I was filled.

And it was good.

The difference between my life now, and my life then, is that now I have hope.  Now I have help.

I am not in it alone.

How can an entity I can neither see nor touch give me hope?

I can’t explain how, I only know that He does.  And it changed my life.  I am the same person as before, but I am also different. 

When I begin to feel like my old self, when I begin to feel hollow, now I can turn to Jesus.  Now I can reach out for His touch, and grasp the edge of his garment, and be healed.  I don’t have to reach out for food, or drink, or anything else, though that temptation will always be there.  Now, I don’t need to fill that emptiness with anything else, because it isn’t there anymore.

Jesus is.

I am no longer hollow.

Defense of Fort McHenry

O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, 
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming, 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, 
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming? 
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there — 
O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave 
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave? 

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, 
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, 
What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep, 
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? 
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, 
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream — 
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave 
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore 
That the havock of war and the battle’s confusion 
A home and a country should leave us no more? 
Their blood has wash’d out their foul foot-steps’ pollution,
No refuge could save the hireling and slave, 
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. 

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand 
Between their lov’d home, and the war’s desolation, 
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land 
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation! 
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 
And this be our motto — “In God is our trust!” 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

                          – Francis Scott Key

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
   For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
   That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

                          –William Shakespeare

Flight 182

Residents pay tribute to PSA crash victims

By Jeff McDonald
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER 
September 26, 2008 

JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
Former Pacific Southwest Airlines pilot Jim Van Vranken freed a dove in memory of friends and co-workers who died when PSA Flight 182 (top photo) crashed 30 years ago yesterday at Dwight and Nile streets in North Park.
NORTH PARK – Thirty years after a passenger jet slammed into North Park in what was then the worst aviation disaster in the nation’s history, longtime San Diego residents have yet to shake all they witnessed that day.More than 100 people showed up yesterday morning for an impromptu remembrance of the victims of the crash, crowding the very corner where the Pacific Southwest Airlines Boeing 727 fell to the ground at 9:02 a.m. Sept. 25, 1978.

Standing at Dwight and Nile streets, emotions welled up as those gathered squeezed loved ones and traded stories about that awful morning when the passenger jet and a small private plane collided in a bright, cloudless sky and 144 people lost their lives.

As 9:02 a.m. approached, attendees joined in an extended moment of silence. Heads bowed across a wide circle eight and 10 people deep.

In the center, next to a floral wreath resting on a wooden easel, stood Ray Bentley, a pastor at Maranatha Chapel in Rancho Bernardo. He was trying to wrestle some sense from a terrible day long ago.

Hans Wendt / (c)1978

“Maybe somehow today, a little bit more comfort and healing will come,” Bentley said, before reciting Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . . ”

PSA was a San Diego-based carrier that focused on flights throughout California. Flight 182 had left Sacramento that morning and stopped in Los Angeles before heading to San Diego.

More than two dozen of the crash victims were PSA employees because the airline offered off-duty personnel sharply discounted seats on flights that were not fully booked.

Former PSA pilot Jim Van Vranken barely missed boarding Flight 182. He took a later flight out of L.A. and arrived at Lindbergh Field minutes after the crash.

“All I can see is their young faces,” said Van Vranken, who had avoided the corner of Dwight and Nile until yesterday.

Online: For more on PSA Flight 182, go to uniontrib.com/more/psa

Joe Irwin of Solana Beach lost his brother, John, in the accident.

He brought boxes of white doves yesterday to release in his brother’s memory, and offered a bird to those who cared to mark their remembrance.

“One day we will all follow that same journey home to our Father in heaven,” Irwin said. A moment later he loosened his grip and let one bird fly.

Be careful what you ask for….

God speaks.

He does.

I’ve learned over the relatively short time I’ve been a believer to be careful what I ask him, because sometimes the answer, while true and right, is not at all what I want to hear.  Or even if it is, it isn’t what I expect most of the time—and sometimes, there’s no audible answer at all.

So I ask again.

               And again.

                      And again.

That is, if it’s something that’s really important to me.  Yet some things I just never took to God—never laid them before Him, never asked for direction, or guidance, or patience, or wisdom.  Things I tried to handle on my own (or not handle, I suppose, as the case may be).  Parts of me I ignored, or denied the need for fulfillment.

Though I am notoriously slow on the uptake in many areas (ask my friends), it eventually became obvious even to me that I could no longer ignore a certain part of me—of my heart—that had been gathering dust for many years.  And that is the need, the God-given desire, to meet a woman that could fulfill the part of my heart not taken up by Jesus—the part of my heart that needed a person on Earth to share it with.

So I did what I should have done long, LONG before.  I finally began to address this need in prayer.  It used to be when I met someone (a woman) I was interested in, I wouldn’t do anything about it.  I would just tiptoe around them carefully, hoping they would either make the first move, or do something to let me know it was OK for me to do it.

I would seldom approach them, and if I did, it was usually in what was probably (to them) a vague and confusing way.  There were many reasons for this, but the truth was that I was simply afraid.  My last experience with a woman had ended not just with the usual wounding, but with the added fun of a betrayal by a close friend, and the ending of said friendship (at least for a time).  My heart was not merely wounded, but felt as if it had been broken on a very large wheel.  Torn to pieces, even.

The end of that relationship, such as it was, sent me into a tailspin that brought me as close as I’ve ever been to the proverbial “edge.”  I probably should not have expected anything different from it, though.  It only occurred to me after it was over that I’d been simply a means to an end for her.  She led me down a very dark path, and I gladly walked it at her side.  My love for her was not healthy, and her love for me was empty and self-serving.

I think since “it” happened (the end of things with the previous situation), I’ve really only asked one person out (in 2006), and was DENIED! I was sort of relieved, to tell you the truth.  While it meant that I would not be going out (at least with that person), it also meant one less opportunity to be hurt.

So after that, I just withdrew into the part of myself that needed someone in that way, and did my best to not think about it.  Which sort of worked.

Except when it didn’t.

What I was doing was denying a part of me that God had also created.  I think we’re made to love–not just Jesus, but other people.  And not just people, but, you know….”the person.”

And eventually, I had what an alcoholic might call a moment of clarity, and I asked God to help me fulfill that part of my life–the part that had been so sorely lacking.  But I left it up to him, and pleaded for his guidance.  There was a woman I’d been emailing with a bit, and she was a nice person, but I didn’t get that little flip in my heart when we spoke.  Or emailed.  She was just someone nice to talk to, and she seemed to like me well enough.

“Lord, I want this in my life,” I told Him.  “I want it.  I want for me what YOU want for me.  But I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know how to make it happen.”

Even with God, this was a hard conversation.

“I need you to help me with this.  I want to find the person, the woman you’ve prepared for me.  I don’t think it’s Lisa*, but if it is, God, I really need you to let me know.  Make it very clear for me, Lord.  And for her.  If not Lisa*, then whoever she is.  Help us to recognize each other when we meet.  Help us to connect, whatever the circumstance is.  Help me, God, to create the circumstance, if that’s your will.”

I asked him for a lot that night.  I asked Him to lead me to someone who loved Him the same way I did, who wanted the same things from life as me. I asked him to protect this woman until I found her.  I asked him to speak to her, to prepare her heart for mine.   The last thing I asked Him was that if it wasn’t His will for my life to meet someone, that He prepare my heart for that as well, and help me to find comfort and peace in Him.  

And then I left it up to God. 

I was about to take a vacation to Mexico with some friends, the first real vacation of my life, and I wanted to go with a peaceful heart. 

Turned out to be an awesome vacation, though about as hot and humid as I’ve ever been.  It was beautiful, though, and very relaxing.

That was about all I did on the last couple days of the trip.  I had plenty of time to think, though.  Time to journal, and time to pray.  I had no great spiritual breakthroughs in Akumal, but it was a wonderful time just the same.

When I got back, I checked my email, and found that a young woman in Yuma had contacted me in regard to my old myspace page, which in truth, I hadn’t checked out in a very long time.  I’ll call her J. I’d stopped posting on my blog, and no longer kept track of it, or any new “friend” requests.  My two closest friends had gone that direction as well, and had even deleted their profile information.  I hadn’t gotten that far yet–I was much too lazy.

So I glanced at the email this woman wrote, and it intrigued me.  It was brief, but she mentioned that she thought we had many things in common, and when I looked at her information, I could see that she was right.

She was very honest, and the openness of what she wrote made me want to respond, so I wrote her back.

We began to email, and after a while, began to talk on the phone.  I’m not sure how it was for her, but for me I was instantly interested, and felt a very strong “conversational” chemistry right away.  After only a few days, I began to feel like we simply had to meet.  I didn’t express this to her, not right away, but I felt it almost from the very beginning.

Then a circumstance arose where she was able to come to San Diego for a day trip.  We decided to meet at a restaurant in Grossmont Center, and then take her son to the Zoo.  I hadn’t been since I was a kid, and it seemed like it would be both fun to do, and afford us the opportunity to talk in a casual setting. 

I was standing outside of my car when she pulled up and we hugged briefly, and on my part, a little nervously.  She was cute in the pictures on her page, but she was beautiful in person.  She was nice, and funny, and we had a great time walking around, and talking about small things.

After the Zoo, we had an early dinner at the restaurant where we met earlier.  That’s when we got into the deeper stuff, and it occurred to me that we were compatible on even more levels than I originally thought.  I felt that little flip in my guts that I hadn’t felt in years, and looking across the table into her eyes, I knew I was in trouble if she hadn’t felt the same thing. 

I think we were in there for maybe an hour, but by the time we left, I had a particularly strong sense that there was a ton of possibility there, and I wanted to pursue it.  I tried to be as cool as I could on the outside, but on the inside I was

                         really

                                     freaking

                                                 out.

I hadn’t gotten a sense of rightness from anyone to that extent before in my life.  She loaded her son into her car and after she was done, we stood looking at each other briefly, and then hugged again.  And in a crowded parking lot on a mild and sunny September evening, we kissed for the first time.  It was just a small kiss, but to me, it felt electric.

And very exciting.

We’ve spoken every day since then, and the more I talk to J, the more sure I am that she is the person God has prepared for me, and I am the person God prepared for her.  It’s not just about the things we have in common, though those things are many.  What it’s about for me is that thump I get in my heart whenever I see her.

     And when I pray for her it feels right.

           And when I hold her it feels right.

                   And when we worship together it feels right.

                              And when we talk about the future it feels right.

When I ask God for wisdom about our relationship, He gives it to me.

                              And I am listening.

I don’t know exactly what the future holds, but for the first time in longer than I can remember, I know what I want.

                               Who I want.

The semantics remain to be worked out, of course, and I am not approaching anything wantonly, capriciously, or without consideration and prayer.

                               But I am approaching my future with hope. 

Hope that I have because something has been awakened in me that was long dormant.  And in the energy created by that awakening, I’ve found myself praising more

                               praying more

                                        worshipping more

 and wanting more for my life.  Wanting what I can only find through devotion to the one who created that thing in me

                            that heart

that has now been awakened, that is now growing exponentially.  Growing toward Him more and more daily, but also growing toward J.

This has been a blessing that I do not have words to describe, and I have words for everything.

Blessing upon blessing upon blessing has been coming my way of late.

But it did not begin until I fully surrendered that which was lacking in my life to Jesus.  Nothing changed until I asked for the wheel to be taken from my hands.

Nothing happened until I prayed.