Author: DocSauce

I Hated Me

I have typed this first paragraph several times now.  I keep trying to work up a metaphor for the pain and bitterness that I carried around with me.  A metaphor depicting the way that I hid this the best that I could from the people around me and how I would ignore the sore spot in my soul.

There is no metaphor that I can think of to describe this.

I would ask really good questions when I was around other people and I would tell stories and get involved with their life and their projects without ever really letting anybody else get into mine.  I would share my story and my life and I would be “transparent” at the drop of a hat.  The trouble is that transparency got me nowhere and I wonder if the fruit produced in the lives of others because of my “transparency” was short lived or actually fruit at all.  Just like when my math teacher would work problems on her transparency sheet and the work was projected on the wall, I would keep my problem on the transparency sheet and broadcast it to an audience.  They can interact with the problem as though it were projected on a wall, but I was behind the glass.  I did not mean to be, I never thought about that, I did not recognize it as it happened. I just now am able to see what was going on.

I have often tried to figure out just when I started to hate myself.  I never considered the idea that, should I figure out when and why I started to hate me, that I could spend some time thinking about it and praying about it and see if Jesus would redeem that part of my life.  That never crossed my mind.  I just wanted to understand me a little bit better.

I got a chance to go to Colorado last summer and met with a really sharp guy from Australia.  This guy is really good at helping people get to the root of some of their pain.  During my time with him, he had me do some ridiculous things like making a memory timeline.  I had to write every memory I could think of down on a timeline, then we talked about them!

One of the memories I had occurred when I was about 10.

My brother was a really wild and rowdy kid.  He is a couple years younger than I am and was a lot more aggressive than I was.  He would chase me from one end of the house to the other end of the house when were toddlers.  He thought it was great fun!

Life was hard for my family at this point in time.  We had just moved from Missouri to Louisiana and did not have a home.  Somehow my dad was able to arrange for us to live in a house way out in the country.  Because we lived so far out, and my dad’s work schedule was not a 9-5, we did not see my dad much during the week.  He worked hard and commuted a long way.  My mom was left with the task of managing my brother and I on her own during the week.

My brother seemed to be in a serious “boundary testing” phase of his life too.  He would pick at me and pick at me incessantly until I would complain to my mom and she would intervene.  After one of these episodes she explained to me that my brother was going to keep pestering me until I stood up to him.  She may not have said it, but I understood that what she meant was that I needed to fight my brother in order to put him in his place.

I was a good student.  I was a sweet kid.  I know I had a “little black cloud” that followed me around and I would get moody or upset, but all in all I remember being a really sweet child.

One day while waiting for the bus, my brother was being a pain.  He was shoving me and pushing me and I kept taking it.  As the bus came into view, he grabbed my backpack and threw it in the ditch.  There was several inches of water in this ditch and so I ran to get my backpack before my school work was soaked.  As I got near the bag, he shoved me in.  I grabbed my bag and jumped out of the ditch while the bus rolled to a stop.  It never crossed my mind that I had an option to go inside and get cleaned up.  I simply got on the bus and went to school.

That afternoon my brother was still at it.  I ran to my mom and started complaining about what he was doing.  She picked up my little sister who was really young and told me not to break anything in the kitchen.  She then went into another room and closed the door.

Commence Thunder Dome

I was petrified.  I had wrestled and fought with my brother before, but somehow I always knew that there were limits.  That if I got out of hand or he got out of hand, somebody was going to step in.  Not this time.  He started in on me and I remember grabbing a broom.  The next memory I have is standing over him while he laid in a fetal position crying silently.  I had a broom in my hand and was shaking.

I have remembered this fight for a long time.  I can see it in my head, I can smell that damp kitchen, I can see the sobs coming from my brother and I can still feel the terror that I saw in his eyes as he laid there trying to protect himself from me.

This is what I did not realize until last year.

I loved my brother.  I deeply loved my brother.  I cared about him.  I wanted to protect him.  I was often called bossy because I would tell him what to do, but my heart was trying to guard him.

I would get worked up when he would get in trouble.  I hated seeing him hurt and I did not like the people who caused the pain.

And here I was, standing over him, having just completed delivering the beat down of beat downs.

But it was not so simple as that.  It was not simply that I hurt my brother and so I was mad at me.  I hurt my brother believing that what I was doing was the right thing to do.  I had been coached to engage in this manner in order to teach him a lesson and restore order in the house.  What I had done in my young perspective was noble and appropriate.  I was in the right.  I had done the honorable thing.

But I felt so horrible seeing him like that.  This is where the root of cancerous self loathing seems to have really developed good roots.  I started to feel that I was incapable of doing what was good or what was right.  For me to do what is noble, what is right, I would be left feeling like this.  If I really were a good boy, then I would not feel so despicable for doing what was good.  The only reason for me to feel this way after doing something good and noble is because I was a horribly bad and ignoble boy.  No matter how good I behaved or how much people praised me, I knew deep inside that I was an agent of pain and destruction.  Those were not the words that would go through my head.  What I would hear often is that all I am capable of is hurting other people, letting people down, and ruining things around me.

As I thought about that memory I started to realize that in that moment, watching my brother lay there in pain, something changed deep within me.  I lost a part of my innocence and started to believe deep inside that I was worthless.  The rest of my life I would hear my own voice in my own head telling me that no matter what I did, my best contribution to my family would be for me to cease existing within it.

None of this was my parents fault.  This wasn’t my fault.  Kids are great observers and horrible interpreters.  This was simply the result of me being in and reacting to a situation that was not so bueno.

And for the record.   I no longer hate myself!

I’ll write about that part later.`l

And one more thing…   to my brother…

I am very sorry for beating you with a broomstick.

 

Why I Loved Frozen

I heard and read several reviews of this movie before watching it.  I was fully prepared to watch a pop culture propaganda flick eroding traditional gender roles and pushing a homosexual agenda.

I don’t know what movie the critics watched to come up with the ideas above, but I saw none of that in Frozen.

***    Spoiler Alert   ***

I heard that the male characters in the movie were morons and the only purpose they served was to show how inept men are compared to women.  What I saw was a woman trying to rebuild a relationship with a sister.  I saw a woman attempting to climb an ice covered mountain with great ambition and terrifically little skill.  I saw this heroine embark upon a journey ill prepared and rescued time and time again by a man.  How is this a slight to the masculine world?

I try to communicate to my daughters and model to them through my relationship with my wife that they will need a rescuer.  That they will need a man in their lives to encourage them, protect them, and rescue them.  I have watched more chick flicks and princess movies than I can count, waiting each time for there to be a healthy representation of a male female relationship.  I am left disappointed every single time.  Either the guy is a worthless, spineless, brainless clown, the woman a bimbo, weak, dumb, clutsy, or an ugly man hating she beast that consumes men  until the right fella happens to get through to her.  This movie depicted a woman being independent, brave, forward thinking (even if unprepared), proactive, and bold.  It showed a man who was fully committed to his adventure, his calling, who was willing to stretch himself to love a woman.  I would be very happy to have my daughters look up to Anna.  I would be just as happy for my son to look up to Christoph.

And before I get any criticism about my thoughts regarding the way Anna demonstrated her independence, boldness, and proactive way of living, I would like to turn to a little phrase from the Bible…

“…She considers a field and buys it…”

I see that character in Anna.

I saw no homosexual agenda at all.  I read several critics who said that Disney made a movie in which the two main characters save the day, without the aid of men, and set the kingdom free because of their love for each other and, because these characters were women, it is a homosexual propaganda film.

That really saddens me.  The theme of this movie was a woman’s frozen, broken heart caused by a wound inflicted by family who meant well but acted in ignorance and was set free by the selfless love of her sister.  This movie is actually quite deep.  It does not appear to me as though there are 2 heroines, but 1.  Anna saved Elsa, Elsa reconciled and redeemed the broken relationships in her life caused by her reaction to her brokenness.   It just so happens that that redemption and reconciliation extended to the entire kingdom.  There is nothing homosexual in the genuine, deep, intimate love of a sister for a sister.  I have seen that between my wife and her sisters.  I see it developing now between my daughters.  This is a very good and healthy thing.  Ironic as it may be, this kind of affirming love between women seems to give them the courage to take a stand on the things they want to stand for and to engage life fully in the areas they feel the desire to engage…  And that is exactly what I saw Anna doing.

I rolled my eyes when, near the very beginning of the movie, after the character development was mostly complete and the plot was beginning to get underway, I heard the phrase, “the one.”  Standard Disney romance language.  I do not believe there is “the one” out there and that a single man and a single woman need to find that one in order to be truly happy.  That should be a post I write later.  I was so refreshed when “the one” turned out to be a slug of a fella.  I was actually kind of pumped!!  There is not “the one” in this movie.  What there is is a man who meets a woman under less than ideal circumstances, is not romantically interested in her, chooses to do the right thing and serve her for her protection and guidance, and in the end he develops a love for her.  I see a woman who meets a man in less than ideal circumstances, recognizes she needs him, pokes him in the ribs and challenges him to stand up like a man, and then submits to his guidance and develops a love for him.  I see a man and woman struggling to figure out how to interact in this relationship which results in heartache, fear of loss, and being dragged behind a sled while being chased by wolves.  An actually astute summation of what I would say is a healthy relationship.

Anna is in need of an act of true love.  Go figure a bunch of rock trolls come up with the idea that this will be a kiss from “the one.”  I don’t know if Disney thought this through or not, I doubt it, but it fits that a bunch of trolls came up with this idea.  Not just a bunch of trolls, but a bunch of rock trolls, like trolls that are as dumb as a box of rocks!!  I kept thinking throughout the movie that there were acts of love which could have solved her problem.  The weather is cold, there is a raging storm and Christoph takes off his hat, puts it on Anna to keep her warm, and endures the rest of the ride bare headed.  That silly little snowman (my oldest daughter LOVED him) risked his very life next to a fire to warm Anna.

But the act of true love?  Not a kiss!  So happy this movie did not cheese up the ending with a magic kiss.  This was not a romance movie at all.  The act of true love was a final act of resignation to the point of death in order to save a sister even though she was lost.  The act of true love was a sister recognizing her brokeness and accepting the act of love from the one who made the sacrifice for her!

I have seen a picture of a Corpsman laying dead in a street in Falujah.  The caption is actually a verse from the Bible… “Greater love has no one than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friends…”

Finally!!!

Finally a Disney princess chick flick that has a wounded, broken hearted princess living out of her insecurities instead of her idyllic innocence, a family that loves each other but still hurts each other, a wounded sister, innocent and devastated, a man who looks like, sounds like, and acts like a man, and Love being represented in a manner other than the tired, tried, and cliché, “Kiss… The One…” tradition.

Yup.

Maybe I’m going soft in my old age…

But I LOVED Frozen!!

Define Integrity

I think the standard definition I get for integrity when I ask folks what it means is, “Doing the right thing when nobody is looking.”

While I agree that doing the right thing when nobody is looking is a very good thing, a noble thing, an appropriate thing, a thing that needs to be done more often, I have a hard time standing on that definition.

This may sound bad, but I actually have a hard time with integrity.

I hear the phrase, “Man of integrity” often and I am left wondering what, precisely, is being said of this man.

For all the side conversations and implications that come with my different ideas about integrity, I think it is fair to say that integrity is primarily a qualification of a person and their character based upon their actions.  But even this thought troubles me a little bit.  It means that the label of integrity is granted by an observer to the actions of a particular person.  Who defines what is “right” in a particular moment?  How do we know that the “right” action was “right” enough?  Could there have been a better action?  If the action was just good enough and not the best decision for the given moment, then does that mean that the person’s integrity is weak?

I got to thinking about a phrase I hear often in the Navy… Hull Integrity…

Hull…   Integrity…

What does that mean?

It means that the hull, the skin of the ship, is completely intact, there are no holes or cracks that were not planned in the hull, and that the hull is still strong enough and sound enough to fulfil the specific role for which it was designed.

What if that is the definition of integrity?

What if integrity means to act in manner that is completely congruent with who we are?

Integrity would no longer be a subjective judgement based on the actions of an individual, but an objective affirmation that an individual is in fact what/who they say they are.  A lack of integrity would no longer mean that somebody did something that was not right, but that somebody has acted in a manner that is not in accordance with their identity.

I understand that there are troubles with this definition too.  It means that the observers to the situation must understand the identity and the purpose of the person they are observing.  It means that the person being observed has to understand their identity.

I think that integrity and identity go hand in hand.

If a thief steals, have they violated their integrity?  I say no.  They have not violated their integrity at all, they have merely acted in accordance with the designated purpose which was determined by their identity.  I am not saying that it is okay to steal.

I think if this is the crux of integrity then the solution for “integrity violators” is not behavior reform, but identity and purpose development.

When a person has done something that is out of line with what is expected then we need to evaluate the expectations placed upon them, their identity, and then the action.  If a person has been put into a position which is not appropriate for them, then the organization that put them there has set this person, as well as themselves, up for failure.  If the person is in an appropriate position for them, but acts out of line with what is expected, then they need to be counselled regarding their understanding of who they are and how they fit in then grand scheme of things.  There must still be some kind of repercussion for the wrong which has been done, but the repercussion is not the solution or the correction.

I had a Senior Chief one time who had a leadership style that seemed to drift between psychotic and brutal depending on which way the wind was blowing.  One of his favorite phrases was, “Hold a man accountable for his actions, then get that man the help that he needs.”

I am now very careful about the labels I place on somebody.  If I have a junior sailor who shows up to work late several times in a week, has a uniform that looks like a bag of doorknobs, seems to be trying to shave with a polished rock, I am careful to not call him a dirt-bag.  I might call him lazy, or nasty, or weak, but I don’t call him a dirt-bag, a worthless sailor, a cancer to the team.  I used to, I don’t any more.  If I give him one of these labels and he feels as though he will not ever please me or the Navy at large, then what stops him from developing a defeated, “it is what it is,” kind of attitude about it and then internally resigning to be a dirt-bag?  Nothing stops him from doing that.  If I punish his lateness, his nasty uniform, and his hairy face, then spend my time later talking about what it means to be a servant of the American people, about personal sacrifice and honor, and about who he is as a man and a sailor, then I can hopefully set him on a course to root out the weakness that he brought to the table.

If I punish a thief for being a thief, I should not be surprised when he steals later that week.  I told him he was a thief and he agreed with me.  If instead of punishing a thief for being a thief, I punish a man for stealing and then connect with him as a man, then there is a chance I have helped him build a bridge to move past his current behavior.

Integrity…  Easy for me to understand on the surface.  Difficult for me to understand the full reaches of the topic.

If it is doing the right thing when nobody is looking, then it is a description of compliance to rules which have been placed upon the individual.  If it is acting in line with identity, then it is a purposeful act of affirming the maturity and stature of the individual in their identity.

Thoughts?

How to Connect With an Introvert

For those of you who read this blog but do not know me personally, let me make something clear…

I am not an introvert.

Though I do not always enjoy being the middle of the crowd, I do enjoy being around people.  I love backpacking.  The only thing better than backpacking is backpacking with somebody else.  I have spent quite a few hours by myself sitting in the woods on hunting trips, but I would much rather spend that time sitting in the woods with somebody else.  I have found that I enjoy bird hunting more than big game hunting because it is a more social event.  Drawback… you have to kill a lot of birds to equal a deer.

I love who I am.

I love how I am.

There are still things about me that need to mature and develop, but on the whole… I love being me.

I have four kids.  When they were very young, they were your typical toddlers.  Into everything, running around, making noise, making a mess, spontaneous.  Our house seemed to vibrate constantly with the activity and noise that simmered perpetually within the walls.  My home is not a safe place for an introvert.  I understand that and so, when I am hanging out with an introvert, I meet with them outside of my home.  We meet somewhere quiet… like the mall…

I have all these ideas about ways to raise my kids.  I have these ideas about things to do in order to communicate just how much I love them and to really connect with them in a meaningful and intimate manner.

It never crossed my mind that any of my kids would turn out to be a calm, quiet, introvert.

What do I do with that?

How on earth do I communicate my love to a little girl who would like to just sit and look at a book… or look at art!

How did this happen?

On a more serious note, it really is pretty fascinating to see the budding personalities coming out of my kids.  My oldest is displaying her individual personality more and more.  The girl loves art.  We have a friend of ours who graduated with an art degree teaching private art lessons to my daughter.  I have found myself reading blogs from artists, both Christian and non, in order to broaden my ability to appreciate the same things my daughter appreciates.

Instead of going places and doing things with her, I have started making it a point to simply sit next to her.  We sit down to watch a movie and I invite her to sit next to me.  I try to make it a point to have her sit in my lap when I read books to them instead of always letting the toddlers sit on my lap.  I have started paying closer attention to which kids are running around downstairs and when I don’t see her, instead of calling her down to see what is wrong, I go upstairs just to sit on the floor of her bedroom with her and make small talk.

I take each of my kids to breakfast on Sunday mornings.  The oldest gets the first Sunday of the month, the youngest gets the last.  One of my kids wants to go to a busy sit down style place that serves great pancakes.  My oldest prefers to buy a donut and a juice in a grocery store and sit in the front of our car to eat.  I used to ask her why she preferred to sit in the car instead of going to a restaurant.  I do not ask any more.

I know she values these moments with me and I know they are good for her, good for me, and good for our relationship.

I have no clue how to evaluate these moments.  I see these times through my own perspective as an extrovert.  If I am comfortable, I am talking or doing, not sitting and stewing.  So when I sit with my daughter and we just sit there… something feels wrong.  When I ask a question and get a little short answer, I feel as though something is wrong.  I believe that things are not wrong, but that is how it feels.

It makes it very difficult to relax and just enjoy being with her when everything in me is convinced that something is wrong.  She must be upset with me.  I have to have hurt her feelings in order for her to sit so quietly for so long.

As I sit and analyze this, my questions tend to drift from wanting to connect with her to wanting to diagnose the break in our relationship.  It is so difficult to diagnose a problem that is not there.

I love my little girl and I know she loves me.

But I really wish I could figure out how to connect with her, and her introverted little soul.

Painting a Car

I Have to Tell Her

(Click here for the beginning of the story)

I just knew that I had to.

I also knew that I was a coward and that I would wait until that last minute to say anything at all.

So I committed to telling her before we left the little town she was living in.

I decided to drive from Camp Lejeune to Knoxville to go on a hay ride in the Smoky Mountains with a church group that fall.  I had been sending emails back and forth with Jessica for a couple months by this time and I was really enjoying my relationship with her.  The last time I was in Tennessee I heard about a hay ride through the mountains and Jessica asked if I was going to come back to town for that.

Of course not.  Why would I make an 8 hour drive on a random weekend, burning my vacation days, just to sit on a hay bale and ride around the mountains looking at the leaves.

“No… I don’t think I will be coming back for that.”

Her mouth said she understood but her eyes said she wanted me to be there.  My head knew it was a completely ridiculous thing to do, but my heart said I wanted to be there too.

During the month between my last trip in and the hay ride, some things started to change.  I started to feel a deep affection for this girl.  I started feeling a longing to know her and all her secrets.  The really scary thing was that I wanted her to know my secrets.

I did not know what was going on and I was afraid of making decisions that would affect the rest of my life based on silly emotions and heart flutters.  I spent some time with some friends of mine asking them a lot about relationships, affection, and the way a woman’s heart works.  By the end of my time with this couple I had a pretty good idea what I needed to do.

I took some vacation time and drove to Tennessee for a hay ride.  I know I know… But I wanted her.  In a very legitimate and honest way.  I wanted to have this girl in my life and if it cost me the last bit of cash I have in my account and some vacation time to have her then so be it.

The hay ride was awesome!

She was going to school in a little town called Cookeville.  Really pretty place.  I knew that I had to talk to her before we left her little college town or else I would have squandered the entire weekend.  I stopped by her dorm and picked her up.  I was driving an old Jeep at the time.  Big tires, big engine, loud… loud, loud, loud.  I was so intimidated by the task at hand that I stalled over and over again.  We went to a little Mexican joint to get a bite to eat, but I wasn’t hungry.  We went to a little play ground and sat on the swings.  It started to get late and I did not want to be on the road much past dark, so we started to head for the interstate.  As I was coming through the tight curve of the entrance ramp, I knew I was breaking my commitment to myself.

I looked over at Jessica and she was as peaceful as could be.  She really enjoyed riding in my Jeep.  The sun was just starting to set and the temperature was cool.  I jerked the Jeep to the side of the entrance ramp and pulled to stop in the grass.

I looked at her and then back to the front.  With one hand on the stick and my foot working the clutch, I said it.

“Jessica… I Love You.”

BAM!!  Slammed the gas pedal to the floor, dropped the clutch like a bad habbit and threw dirt and rocks all over the place as I shot down the entrance ramp and the interstate for the next 2 hours to Knoxville.  Usually the only thing I could hear on that ride was the sound of those giant knobby tires on the pavement.  This time all I could hear was my own heart pumping.  I felt so foolish.  I also felt really good.

The hay ride that weekend really was pretty amazing.  I sat next to Jessica and we had a really good time.  She was the first girl to whom I had ever spoken those words outside of my family.  While on the hay ride somebody else caught a candid picture of the two of us.  I think it captured the moment pretty well.

Hay Ride

She did not tell me she loved me on that trip.  When I dropped her off at the end of the weekend she actually took the time to make it clear to me that she could not tell me that she loved me.  I honestly did not care.  I loved her and I was convinced that she was going to be mine.

A month after this trip Jessica came to Camp Lejeune for the Marine Corps ball.  Is there anything more romantic than a room full of dress blues and choking Marines?  I think not.  After the ball we went down to the beach and went for a walk.  While listening to the gently crashing waves and holding her hand walking barefoot on Onslow beach, Jessica turned to me and said it.

“Michael… I Love You”

I do not remember what I said, but what shot through my mind was a simple, emphatic, “Of course you do…”

And that was that.  I took her back to the place she was staying, and then I went home.  I dreamed about my life and the way it was going to look in the years ahead.  I dreamed, but I did not sleep.

This is kind of the end of this part of the story.  Our entire dating relationship was a long distance relationship.  It moved pretty fast.  From the moment I saw her to the moment we were married was roughly 1 year.  We have been married for almost 10 years now.

I do not regret it a bit.

 

 

Daddy is at Work

It is an answer that my kids get a lot.

My precious wife is doing a superb job of replicating her character in our kids.  It is a true joy for me to think about the kind of people my children will become because of the influence of such a woman upon their lives.

I spend a lot of time at work.  Sometimes more than I need to, but that might have to wait for another day.  For the entire time that I have been in the Navy, I have been leaving for work in the morning before most people are getting out of bed.

This includes my kids.

It is part of their routine to ask where I am while they are getting ready for the day… or for them to just not ask at all anymore since it is normal for me to be away in the mornings.  The standard answer is usually given.

Daddy is at Work

So yesterday my wife and I went to a meeting after I got off of work.  I am behind on a few deadlines, so I stay late at work to get caught up.  I left straight from work to go to the meeting.  We left the meeting at about 9 PM.  By the time we got  home, my kids were already in bed.  I spent another day not seeing them at all.

As we were riding down the road, Jessica told me that my youngest decided to snuggle up in my bed after I went to work.  When Jessica came back into our room, my sweet little child asked her the standard question and got the standard answer.

Wife and Daughter

Jessica asked me a question…

“Does it hurt for you to hear that your kids ask about you when you are not home?”

“…”

“Or is it encouraging since you know  your kids are thinking about you?”

“Yeah…  it kind of hurts.”

But then I started thinking about this.

Why does it hurt?

It really is a matter of perspective.  I look at this from the perspective that I am missing so much, my kids seem to be growing up so fast, and they don’t have me around.  I miss them.  They miss me.

Here is what started to stir these thoughts around for me…

It does not hurt when Jessica tells me she misses me when I am away.  I have spent some hunting trips away from home for a week or two at a time and when Jessica tells me she misses me, it really doesn’t hurt.  I don’t feel sad.  I don’t ache to be  home.

So why do I feel that way after a long day without my kids?  Do I love them more than my wife?  Do I reason that Jessica’s understanding protects her while the kids are still vulnerable in their ignorance?

I do not love my kids more than my wife.

Her understanding vs. their ignorance… that may be.

What if it is perspective?  I have this feeling like I HAVE to be home with my kids.  I have this feeling that I am doing them a disservice and ruining their little lives if I am not home.

But what if my perspective is wrong?

What if my kids need me to be gone?

Check this out.  My kids are going to define normal for their lives based on what is common for them now.  If it is common for me to be gone often, then the normal for them is that Daddy spends a lot of time away from home.  If I can keep a very deep emotional connection to my kids for the duration of the time they live at home and protect the security they feel in our relationship,  then normal for them looks like peace and security in relationships even when not physically near.

I am not saying that I am going to find ways to stay out of the house in order to try and develop this in my kids.  Absolutely not!!

But it is something to think about.

If security in a relationship for my kids looks like face time and close physical proximity, then what happens when I leave?  What happens when they grow up and business or school takes them or their significant other away for extended periods of time?

Maybe it is good for my young kids to hear my wife say, “Daddy is at Work,” and then for them to feel the warmth, love, and connection to me when I am around.

Could this build that kind of security in our relationship that might not have otherwise developed?

Maybe.

 

And maybe I am just belligerently over thinking it…

 

I’ma Burn This Jungle to the Ground Finale

Why questions can be hard questions to answer.

As I kept looking at what was going on in my life, I started to feel an awareness that I had not yet known.  I had been doing all of these Christian things, leading other believers, and submitting to Jesus for years.  I talked about this life being a spiritual war and I talked about Angels and Demons.  I had not spent any time thinking about the implications of this ideology.

It was almost as though I talked about these things like a peace time military talks about war.  There are great examples and references to war.  There is an intimate understanding of war and the stuff that goes along with it.  There is no knowledge of the taste, smell, and sound of war.

I continued to sit and think.

This is why I believe Jesus allowed my life to spiral out of control like He did.

Jesus says at one point that the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few.  He commands His disciples to pray unto the Lord of the harvest to thrust out laborers.  I am a laborer.  I want to be a leader of laborers.  Jesus knows that His Kingdom advances.  In that language, the language of an advancing Kingdom, there are strong implications.  There is a King.  There is a Kingdom.  The Kingdom advances into new territory.  This territory must be held by an enemy.  Jesus wants men who labor to be prepared to lead other laborers into a hard environment as He advances against His enemies.

These leaders need to be seasoned.  I remember the calm and peace that would come over me when I knew that the team leaders in my platoon were seasoned combat veterans.  They were intimate with the hardships, tactics, logistics, and mission of the war in which we were engaged.  They knew the pain of loss and the exuberant joy of mission success.  They knew the sting of missing family and the innate passion to get back home.  I knew that they had felt everything I was going through, had the same fears, had the same misgivings.  I also knew that they had found a way to survive and that built a lot of trust.

I think this is what Jesus was looking for in Peter.  He knew He was going to thrust Peter to the front line of the advancing kingdom and he wanted Peter to lead well and fight hard.  It worked too.  Peter was sifted.  He was broken to a point of abandoning Jesus, abandoning his only friends, and running away from what he had come to believe.  He made his exit and went back to fishing.

After a short conversation with Jesus, Peter felt encouraged, took up the task, and left his nets for the last time.

I endured such despair.  I quit the mission.  I told everybody around me to move on.

As I started putting these pieces in place, I got in touch with a friend named Mike.  Mike had helped me walk through some hard times in the past, so I trusted him.  He got me in touch with a group of counsellors in Colorado and, for 2 weeks, I got some help.  We talked about my family history, my marriage, combat, and ministry.

After these trips I felt like a new man.  I felt grace in my life like I had never felt before.  I felt as though Jesus really had chosen me to lead.  I felt a deep peace in the midst of the parts still falling down around me.

I firmly believe that Jesus has invited me to labor with Him for the long haul.  I believe that Jesus has asked me to lead others as they labor with Him.  I believe Jesus has chosen for me to fulfill a specific role in the Kingdom.  I believe He let me struggle and flounder in order to season me.

I believe I met Jesus.

Before this encounter He was the most significant character in a story.  He was the point upon which an entire religion pivots.  He was something to study and talk about.  He was what Christians try so hard to represent well.

After this encounter I became a significant part of His story.  He is no longer the point upon which my religion pivots, He is my friend, my encourager, and coach.  I do not study and talk about Him, I spend my time with Him in study and conversation.  I do not have to try to represent Him well.

I simply have to follow Him and tell the truth about who He is, what He has done, and represent my story with integrity…  even the ugly and hard bits.

And what about the things in which I had been misled, or misguided, or misunderstood?  Well… I’m still working on those.  I have taken a step back from a lot of the dogma which I used to believe.  I have taken a step toward simply knowing Jesus.

I can already see a massive change in my life because of this new paradigm.  My political views have changed a lot.  The way I grade whether or not a ministry is successful has changed.  I have become very sensitive to the hippy, liberal, college age critics of Christianity.  I hear them saying things that have now started resonating deep within me.  I no longer feel as though their rhetoric is an attack on me or the Church.  It is a passionate plea for me to be like Jesus, as I get to know Him, instead of the dogma that goes along with Christianity.

Hopefully this demonstrates the difference…

Before this ordeal I spent a lot of time thinking about the points of Theology which were presented by Jesus in His various discourses. I completely missed His heart.

Jesus reads a scroll at one point in His life that says,

The Spirit of the Lord is on Me,
because He has anointed Me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent Me
to proclaim freedom to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He finished reading this and sat down making the point that this passage is talking about Him.

I have found myself being deeply moved to see captives set free.  I spend more time trying to figure out how to free slaves than I spend strengthening the points of an argument.

Jesus escalated force to beast mode in order to set me free.

I am no longer motivated to argue the points of Christianity.

I am excited to sacrifice my desires in order to see grace, love, and freedom come to those who are oppressed and enslaved.

I guess you could say that I am no longer so concerned about representing the religion of Christianity…

I just want to be like Jesus.

Key-West-Sunset-2.jpg

So here I am…  Standing on the beach having just broken through the jungle.  I guess it is time to learn how to swim or fly above the waves!

I’ma Burn This Jungle to the Ground part 2

I had to take another look into this Jesus dilemma.  It was my understanding of Him and what He wants that got me into this predicament.

In the years that I have been labored for His Kingdom, I had seen some really fantastic things happen in the lives of other people.  I have seen a man who was abused for years by his dad call him and forgive him.  I have seen a girl who was trapped in an abusive relationship find the means, the courage, and the strength in order to put an end to the abuse and abandon the relationship.  I have seen young men and women work through major insecurities in their life and move on to fulfilling careers and relationships.  I have seen men who were deeply wounded and responded with anger to everything become peaceful examples of calmness and joy in the midst of strife.

And that is where my problem began.

I have carried deep wounds because of past experiences.  One of the easiest to talk about (easy in terms of it being a concise story, not in terms of it being emotionally easy to rehash) is a medevac I was involved with in Ramadi.  I saw how my predisposition to an angry manner was exacerbated by combat and produced an uncontrollable simmering rage.  As the Jesus I knew healed me, the anger was taken away, but was not replaced with peace, joy, or any such emotion.  It was as though the storm had gone but the clouds persisted.  I just knew that as I kept doing the things I was doing, Jesus would develop this joy, this peace within me.

It did not happen.

dark mountain

Then one evening while dealing with my kids, I had a flash of rage like I had not experienced in more than a year.  After the blinding outburst was over, I felt as though I was not healed at all.  That I had swallowed my emotions to a point of numbness, but that Jesus had not healed me at all.  If I had been healed, then where did this outburst come from?

I did what I usually do in these times, I evaluated scripture and my situation to determine what happened and what needed to happen next.  The Bible seemed to indicate that Jesus loves me and wants me to be healed.  I felt like it was pretty clear… I was yet unhealed.

So what is Jesus’ problem?

Is He not as powerful as the Bible says?  If He wants me to be healed and I am not producing the fruit that is congruent with a healed life, then He obviously cannot carry out His desires.  If He is incapable of carrying out His desires, then He is not all powerful.

Is He a liar?  If He says He wants me to be healed, and He is powerful enough to carry out His desire, yet I am not healed, then He must be a liar.

Am I effectively blocking what Jesus wants for me?  This could have been an option, but I felt pretty certain that I had maintained my discipline and walked according to the principles of the Bible.  I had given an honest, earnest attempt to comply with what I read in the Bible, I saw fruit being produced in the lives of the people who were taking my advice, and I could feel things change in my head and heart…  but I was still left with this wounded heart.

Since I had come back to a belief in the Bible and the God of the Bible, this was something that had to be reconciled.

As I spiralled out of control, I remembered a verse from the Bible in which Jesus says to Peter,

“Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, but I have chosen to pray for you, and when you return, strengthen your brothers.”

This was an easy verse for me to dismiss.  I have seen so many Christians who start to fall apart and they run to this verse claiming that they are just being sifted.  While this may be true, I have found several of them who have not opened their Bible in months, other than when sitting in a Church, and have not prayed in just as long or longer.  They abandon the spiritual disciplines in their lives and then try to use this verse to explain why they feel the way they do.  This has happened enough times around me that this verse lost its power, and it became more and more impotent as it became more and more cliche.  Several weeks into this struggle I got to thinking about this verse again.

And then I saw a Jesus I had never seen…

The cliche part of the verse is that Satan sifts believers.

Let me make something clear.  I do not think any verse of the Bible is impotent or cliche.  I find that some verses are used in a very cliche manner and are often taken out of context in order either to make a Christian feel better about something in their life or to support a particular argument.  Neither of these are appropriate.

The part of the verse that hit me like a brand to an unsuspecting bull was Jesus’ response.  Let me put this in my own words for a minute…

“Peter… Satan wants to beat you up… I have decided to let him.  I’m not abandoning you, I will be right here through the whole ordeal, but I am going to allow you to feel the pain in the fight.  You will survive and when the fight is over I want you to encourage your brothers.  Be ready, Peter… life in this moment is going to be rough.”

Who in the world is this Jesus and where has He been hiding?  Jesus is a savior, a healer, a righteous judge, a man who got angry and flipped tables in the temple.  Jesus, as far as I knew, was not an MMA coach training a young fighter, sending him into the ring against a brute of an opponent, simply to strengthen his understanding of the battle and then use him to motivate and encourage the other fighters.  This Jesus is a tactician.  This Jesus is a warrior.

While I knew that this was true of Him, this truth did not make its way into my heart.

Could this be?  Had I just endured this garbage in my life so that Jesus could reveal another aspect of who He is to me?

Scripture proved to be true.  Jesus was powerful enough to heal me.  I had not blocked His power in my life.  He had not lied… He did want to heal me, but He wanted me to get into a fight first.

I had misunderstood His desire for me.

But why?  Why on earth would He allow me to create such caustic damage to His Kingdom in the process?

And why would He choose to sustain my life?

 

I’ma Burn This Jungle to the Ground part 1

I stood on the edge of a pristine beach.  My heart was broken within me.  All the hope I had ever known had just been flushed from my soul.  While other people rested at the waters edge upon the warm, sugary sand, I stood lost in a numbing,  bitter pain.  As the confusion faded and I began to realize clearly the position I was in, my pain became anger.  Anger became Rage.

And I decided the best choice I had was to burn the jungle to the ground.

I have been a Christian for a long time.  I have taught lessons, led studies, and hosted discussions.  I have given advice and counselled those who were looking for help.  I have read and studied so much and memorized entire books of the Bible.  I have spent entire backpacking trips focussed on prayer.

And I have collapsed to a point of suicidal hopelessness when it was all said and done.

The only analogy that I could come up with during this dark night of the soul was about me walking through a jungle all my life.  Surviving as best as I could.  I had been told at one point that on the other side of this massive jungle there is a magnificent city.  Paradise.  Rest.  Gumbo and cold beer.  As I encountered other folks cutting through the vines and brush, I would tell them about this restful paradise.  I would encourage them to keep pressing into the jungle.  I would help them sharpen their machetes and coach them as they started swinging again.  I was making my way to the clear meadow with warm sunshine and a bath, and I was encouraging and leading others to the same.

Can you imagine the way I felt when, all of a sudden, I could see the edge of the jungle.  I picked up my pace and feverishly hacked and slashed through the vines to get to the clearing.  As I got closer and closer the sound of water grew louder and louder.  Like a bowling ball striking the pins, I came bursting out of the jungle and onto the beach.

There was no city.

The very thing which I had set as my life’s goal had been washed away.  I had been deceived.  My life had no purpose.  I could not keep doing what I was doing because I had come out of the jungle.  Go back in?  Not hardly!!  That place is full of hard work to survive and I knew there was no point in pressing on.  There was nothing for me to press on towards.

I had never even heard of the beach and swimming was not a skill ever discussed in the jungle.  What I needed to do was communicate to everybody else that they were living a lie.  A sham.  The most effective way to do that is to light a match and watch the whole thing go up in smoke.

So I did.

Burn It Down

I would go for a run each day during work and I would cross busy roads without ever looking for traffic.  I would chant over and over again that my life was worthless and death would be better.  I did not care if I got hit by a car.  Getting hit by a car would have been an improvement.

I told my wife to take our kids and move back in with her parents.  I told her it would be better for them to not be near me.  I explained to her that I was about to put an end to life as I knew it and that she really did not want to be there for that.

I told the group of people who met in my house for a Bible Study that I was a sinking ship.  I could not tell them with any confidence that God existed.  I was sensitive to the fact that they cared about their beliefs and I did not want to cause them such turmoil and pain.  I encouraged them to leave, seek spiritual guidance elsewhere, and stay as far from me as possible.  I was full of poison.

I was hit by the bumper of no car.

My wife refused to take my kids and leave.

The men and women who had trusted me to teach and lead them in their faith risked their sanity and remained faithful to me.

So I was stuck.  Sitting on a beach.  I lit my match, I started a small fire, I warned the people to take a step back, and they just sat and watched.

Then the fire went out.

And I just sat…

Since there was nothing else to do but sit, I started to think.  Thinking can be dangerous.  My dad told me years ago that a mind is a terrible thing.  (We did not have many deep conversations growing up, but that one was a life changer for me.)

What if the goal of my life was wrong?  What if I had misunderstood who I was or been misled in the early years of my travels?  What if my entire perspective were wrong?

So I sat still and started rethinking my paradigm.

I could not be an atheist because of some of the things I had already heard and seen.  Just like there are some things in the world that are hard for a Christian to explain, and things within the Bible that are hard to reconcile with other things in the Bible, so also are there some things in the world that are hard for Atheists to explain, some things in life that are hard to reconcile to a belief without God.  So I maintained faith in a higher power.

I have read and studied a wide variety of religious writings which lead me to believe in a monotheistic God.  After getting to that point, it was easy for me to reaffirm my belief in the God of the Bible.

But this left me with a dilemma…

I believed this before and it led me to a beach instead of a city.

In order for this Jesus to be real, and for me to have been let down as I had been, then perhaps the Jesus that exists is not the Jesus that I knew.  Is it possible to be a Christian, pray to Jesus, read His word, and still not really know him?   Or to know Him but miss a really significant part of who He is?

…

 

 

Porn Commitment

I have had an on again off again relationship with porn for a long time.

For a really long time.

Sometimes I try not to get involved with porn, sometimes I just don’t care.

I have found that I have a binge, puke, and starve relationship with porn.  It became an almost controlling entity in my life several years ago and I watched, almost like a bystander to my own life, as a death affect crept across my relationships like shadows in the evening.  Everything I did seemed to have been influenced by my involvement with porn.

I could tell that my attitude would be a little extra hostile and angry, possibly from the guilty feeling that would wash over me, and so I would deliberately choose to not engage in order to make sure that I was not hurting anybody in my home.

If there is something I have learned in my life as a dad it is this…

An angry dad, an emotionally dead dad, and an absent dad all cause great harm to the family.

So as I pushed back on my negative emotions, I also pushed back on whatever good things I felt, and this left me in a state of unresponsiveness to my wife and kids.

I deployed in 2012 and managed to go for 5 months without watching anything pornographic.  I really felt as though I had come out of a fog and was really excited to begin life clean.  I managed to stay clean just long enough to get home.  I watched the shadows creep back into my life and started living the same binge, puke, starve cycle all over again.

After enduring some significant hardships in 2013, I decided to rethink my approach to porn.  I started thinking a lot about what I had done differently during my brief intermission in 2012 and decided to bring as much of that as I could into my life now.

My wife and I went out to eat in January and then found our way to a frozen yogurt joint that we like.  While eating my standard chocolate, vanilla, coconut, and chocolate chip dessert, I let Jessica know what I was thinking about.  During our conversation, I decided to let her know about a commitment that I had made a couple days earlier.

I have committed to go for a solid year without watching any porn.

“Why on earth would you do that?  There is nothing wrong with porn!”

[My wife has requested that I edit this post and make it clear that SHE did not make the above statement…]

Well…  I think there is something wrong with porn.  I understand that the word “Porn” is not an English word, but actually a short form of a Greek word that sounds something like “Porneia.”  This word is used in a sentence in the Bible that says to stay away from all Porneia… in english this is translated as sexual immorality.  Pretty broad phrase.  Sexual immorality…  Because I am a Christian, I feel a desire to conform to the standards of the Bible and that means no porn.

Something else that concerns me greatly is when I see things in my life that control me, instead of me controlling them.  I hate seeing friends of mine who have become addicts.  It pains me to see them struggle to control their lives when it comes to the vice with which they have been struggling.  There is an analogy that goes like this:

Food was made for the stomach, the stomach was not made for food.

I do not have a stomach simply to indulge in eating whenever and whatever I want.  (Ironically enough I am snacking on a pop tart as I write this)  I have a stomach in order to process food to fuel.  If I loose the ability to skip a meal, or  loose the impulse control when it comes to snacks and cookies, then I have been replaced as the master of my stomach by food.  In the same manner, if I have lost the ability to control my impulsive desires for porn, then I have essentially submitted control of my life to porn.

It is not like I was a zombie mindlessly seeking my own pleasure and going for it at all cost.  I was in control to the extent that I would decide the when and where to engage my habit.  I did not feel like I was in control of whether or not I was going to fall prey to my vice.  I feel like I can identify with the alcoholic that chooses not to buy beer at a grocery store, but takes a drink in a restaurant with supper, looses his willpower for the rest of the evening, and polishes off a fifth by the time he goes to bed.

Like I said earlier, I can also see the way my emotions change when dealing with my family and friends.

Because of these reasons, I have made a commitment to abstain from pornography for a year.

I would appreciate your encouragement if you have ever tried to fight back against the almost undeniable combined influence of our culture and desire when trying to recover self discipline.

I would appreciate your prayers if you are a praying person.

I would encourage you to take look at your life and evaluate whether or not you are truly free in your decisions, or if you feel like you are a slave to your impulsive desires.

For the record…

I am 1 month into this commitment.  I have 11 more to go.

Thanks for reading!