It’s Been Awhile

I took a break from the blog here for a while due to some personal issues which are mine and not public blog worthy. Lets just say that I’m still here, thoughts still exist, and God is still good.

Distractions and disorder come at you when you least expect it, and as I read Perry Noble’s blog today, I was blown away by a specific set of Perry-isms that he reflected upon early this week. Specifically:

# God will often let more be put on us than we can handle so that we will stop boasting in our own strength and become desperate for His!
# Letting “all hell break loose” in our lives is the only way God can get our attention at times.
# Even though you are surprised by the problems you are facing…God is NOT…and HE’S got this!!!
# Don’t EVER give up on the God who hasn’t given up on you!
# Don’t waste your pain…if you are being overwhelmed…LISTEN to what God is trying to say.

Those quotes sum up things pretty perfectly for how things have been. It also sums up where things are headed, and where focus should be. So, It’s been a while since I’ve been involved in blogging, but I will try to do better.

I just remember that I am not my blog, I’m not how much money I have in the bank. I’m not the car I drive. I’m not the contents of my wallet. I am not my ___g khakis.

Thanks for reading.

Twenty Twosday #5

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the greatest of things. And no good thing ever dies.”- Best quote from The Shawshank Redemption.

Twenty Twosday #4

Three of the worst things in life.

1) Regret.

2) Looking back where you’ve been too long

3) Hasty moves to screw your future up.

Let’s Rearrange

Video of the day? The Fray – Over My Head (Cable Car)

And suddenly I become a part of your past
I’m becoming the part that don’t last
I’m losing you and its effortless
Without a sound we lose sight of the ground
In the throw around
Never thought that you wanted to bring it down
I won’t let it go down till we torch it ourselves

I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.- Isiah 43:25

God’s Children

To understand this note you need to understand a few things about Ed in June of 2009. If you don’t that’s cool, I’ll keep it brief and basic.

You also need to stop right here, and open this link up in a new tab to read before you come back to this:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=94327239547

Anyways, if you are too lazy to read that, its a fantastic read about seeing God at work in a developmental disabilities camp. It reminded me of an experience I wasn’t going to put “out there” but I will.

God spoke to me directly today that He loves me. Admittedly I haven’t been focused on God and believing in him very recently. I haven’t been focused on waiting for his answers, but rather trying to impose my own answers, and even making those up in my head when I don’t find the answer I would like to.

Church today was awesome. A UFC themed, call to action on getting men involved in the church (not specifially MY church.. just THE church. We had Bratwursts served to the dads passed out like it was communion bread. The message is one of the top 3 I have heard. I worked the media for the second service, and I feel privileged to have been there to hear it twice. I can’t say enough about the awesomeness, the uplifting, and the hip factor of the people that I have been blessed to meet through my church.

On the way home, a flood of thoughts invaded my head and as I try to reflect on the day being Father’s Day and not being in any way a celebratory day, I got pretty overwhelmed. I start crying and feeling down on myself for a multitude of reasons.

While doing that, I reach to the backseat of the car and asked Dominic for “a five”. Dominic just earlier this month turned four, and because of his Down Syndrome, his speech is delayed. He’s making some progress, but his words are very few. But we ‘get” each other.

When I reached out, he grabbed my hand instead of fiving me. Grabbed it with both hands, pulled it towards him, lowered his head into my hand, and then kissed my hand. Since I wasn’t looking at him (driving- safety first! Eyes on the road!), I was surprised by the feeling. I looked back and he looks at me, pushed my hand back towards me and he had the biggest smile and a cackling laugh that he reserves for moments of his pure joy.

Which makes me cry harder now.. I know!

I can go into a long missive about Downs and what Jenn and I went through finding out, but its not important now, nor is it the point. Being a special needs parent changes a LOT of things. We are blessed that Dominic has few medical or health problems, just has that one pesky extra chromosome that decided to stick around at the very moment we conceived him. On good days it is a challenge, on bad days, it sucks. No lying there.

But God spoke to me today through Dominic at a moment that I needed to. God loves us. Everyone. Especially the ones who feel unloved by any one. In Luke 15 there is a fantastic parable of the Prodigal Son (you’ve at least heard of that term? Yes? Its from the gospel of Luke). About being lost and coming home. The overwhelming joy of the father receiving his lost son who has returned back home again speaks louder than any excuses for the sons behavior that is outlined. The joy. The mercy. The grace. All of it undeserved by the son.

That outpouring of an unexpected amount of joy, love and grace by the Father came to me in the car this afternoon. In a dark, unappreciated time, my son was used by God to show that through his son Jesus, my son Dominic carries the message in an amazingly simple act.

Pulling me close, kissing me silently saying “its okay dad”, then smiling and laughing in an outpouring of graciousness and joy of his own. I will quote it from the link above:

“These things all reminded me of truth God has been speaking through His word: When we approach Jesus, excitement cannot be contained in Him”.

No kidding.

That was reflected back to me through a four year old’s act of reaching out to love his father in the simplest way possible that he can show me. He didn’t make me breakfast. He didn’t give me a card. He didn’t do anything other than reflect back the love and the gift that I have of life in my son. And like the prodigal son, I don’t deserve it. But there is no time to say my prepared speech for Dominic about how he is somehow “different”. Because it doesn’t matter.

God is speaking to every single one of us. Every day. Trying to Encourage. Rebuke. Correct. Reach. Change. Heal. Free. Bring back home. Restore. Love.

In our imperfect and self-centered lives we don’t hear his message or listen to what he is telling us. So today in my wading pool of self pity, God spoke to me directly to show me where the love is and where it comes from. And when he spoke to me, Dominic didn’t have to even say a word. He gets it.

And so do I.

People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Luke 18:15-17

Twenty Twosday #3

Saying you have faith is easy until you are put to a test that shakes & sifts you out to see what’s left.

Home.

The Falsehood of Brotherhood

The quote below comes from a coworkers Facebook page. Good advice there. Too bad that often times the supposed “brotherhood” in certain lines of work are brushed aside for one’s own selfish or sinful desires.

BROTHERHOOD…a term used by men of a fraternity, religion or other group; that “none of his brothers would betray him”. This is a term that I hope to teach to my boys as the grow into men.

Setting a solid foundation is a core value of the person you are. The person you want to be, or even the person you would like to become. When the Apostle Simon was first selected by Jesus, his nickmane Jesus bestowed upon him was “Peter”. translated- “rock”. A solid foundation of the person you would like to become, or are, or want your children to become is essential to leaving your legacy.

Sometimes the sinful human nature, I have learned, often disregards this solid foundation, and moral value, or a “code” thrown around like a “brotherhood”- whether it be police, fire, union workers, or biker gangs- is often brushed aside at the times it matters most and is crucial to shaping a life altering decision.

Maybe not your own life that will be altered, but the lives around you. Friends, family, or even a fraternal “brother”. Placing yourself on that rock of character foundation will ensure you have the strength to endure the test that is thrown at you.

Most people have heard of Judas Iscariot betraying Christ Jesus, leading up to his death and resurrection. That tradition of betrayal by one of Jesus’ own twelve hand selected “fishers of men” is still alive and well in settings today that are supposed to be a “brotherhood”. No doubt about it.

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. -Proverbs 27:17

Only a Memory

You know those quizzes where you pick the first 5 songs from your iPod and you put them down, presumably to answer some kind of weak quiz about what your shuffle says about the kind of person you are? Yeah they annoy me too.

I tend to think of songs with some kind of memory attachment- back to a place in time you recall fondly (or not so fondly), a person you knew, one of your drunken friends singing bad karaoke to.. you get the idea.

Here is a few random iPod shuffle/memory associations that come up when the song does.

Night Ranger- Sister Christian- released in 1983, nobody understands what “motoring” is really supposed to mean 26 years later. I spend 5 minutes and 2 seconds trying to think of what the singer means by his sister “motoring” in relation to the rest of the sing lyrics. Yep, still no clue.

Summertime- Fresh Prince/DJ Jazzy Jeff. “..or in your Nissans sittin on Lorenzos”. You remember the “low rider mini truck” fad of the early 90s? I desperately wanted to buy my bosses 87 Nissan truck to be able to put short fat tires on it. Couldn’t afford it, so I ended up with a Mustang GT with a t-top roof. More horsepower than a 20 year old kid needed, no doubt about that. But I still spent “all day waxin” that ’stang.

Steelheart – Angel Eyes. No, not the Jeff Healey song..but that is pretty good too. No, Steelheart was one of those bands coming in at the end of the Hair Metal genre, which Nirvana and Pearl jam managed to un-employ hundreds of bands and send the Aqua Net corporation into Chapter 11. The song Angel Eyes- you remember it- the “I’ll never let you go” chorus? Remember it yet? Anything? maybe the impossibly high vocals that singer Mike Matejevic was known for? This is one of those songs that reminds me of a former love. We broke up shortly after this song was out. I think Everything I Do had more to do with that, though. Stupid pop ballads.

Take On Me- a-Ha. SURELY you remember this one. It’s probably the most popular 80s song of all time. The video was amazing for its time. It was played at least once an hour on MTV when all they showed was music videos. MTV owned pop culture in the 80s, and single handedly ruined the careers of every artist who supported music videos by refusing to play videos altogether since 1995. My memory of tuning into MTV just to watch music remains a fond one, and if you were a child of the 80s, you recall ‘world premiere video’ anticipation and those MTV countdown shows where Wanted Dead or Alive or Genesis’ Land Of Confusion were the only two videos you could see continuously for two years back to back.

Jimmy Buffett- Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season. I would be in big trouble as a parrothead if a random shuffle on the iPod did not produce at least one Buffett tune. though hardly my most prized JB song, it remains a popular one and one of the “songs you know by heart”.

As a side note the SYKBH album is marketed to drunken people who know Jimmy by name only and can only name one of Jimmy’s songs- Margaritavile when asked. That is the album that you have to buy once you score tickets to a JB concert, but have NO idea of the man’s musical catalog other than knowing that in addition to attending the concert, you need to buy a Hawaiian shirt, a lot of Coronas, and this CD to have an idea of what songs Jimmy will sing in concert. You are the ones that Jimmy has to play to live.

I digress. This song reminds me of getting married to my wife in Key West, in December of 2004. In the song, Jimmy sings about when “I stumbled next door to the bar”. That actual bar Jimmy stumbled next door to is Louie’s Backyard, when he lived in KW in the 70s. We dined there the night we got married. On the MASSIVE outer deck, which is literally out on the waterfront of the Atlantic. I smile thinking about it everytime the song plays. You owe it to yourself to dine in such an environment

What about you? Any stories to go with your songs?

TwentyTwosday #2

Is it possible that the best way to “stay connected” these days is to actually walk away from Facebook, Twitter and Blogging?