Saturday night's all right....

“And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9


Do you have those thanksgiving horror stories? Did you have a drunken relative causing a scene at the main family gathering? I thought about that on Thanksgiving during the day. They were giving a movie with like the worst Thanksgiving family moments ever.
It was depressing really.
I asked the Wife why she was watching it.
I even suggested that it wasn’t the right thing to watch for the occasion. You know, mindset, frame of mind, that sort of thing. I could feel my mindset shift, becoming more and more susceptible to a gloomy mindset. I saw in that movie the grim visage of Christmas coming. Those things were weighing heavily on me all week coming up to the holiday. As our bank account dwindled and the phone continued to remain silent, no hits on job inquiries, I started to feel the edges of despair creep up on me, like nightfall in winter. I think I was fourteen when I first noticed that it got dark a lot earlier in the winter.
It just hit, BAM, like a snowball in the face.
It was four in the afternoon and we were banging the basketball of the milk crate nailed to the brick wall of the cleaners we used as our basketball court when it dawned on me that it was dark, gloomy, cold.
Winter had snuck up on me.
That’s how I felt as night descended on Thursday.
I didn’t want to go to my Mother in law’s house. It was her turn to host. We did it last year. Did I ever tell you about Virgil our turkey last year? He was awesome. Anyway, I was finding excuses to delay our arrival. I think that the Wife understood, worse still, she was feeling what I was I think.
I went, she went, we all went as a family.
To be more precise, I was there in physical form but I was miles away mentally. I was lost on that edge again, caught looking over the precipice trying to see into that darkness beyond and figure out what Christmas was going to look like.
Will we be moving out of our house?
Would I be working?
So many unknowns and here I am supposedly the answer man. Billy knows, ask Billy.
Well I will tell you a secret that I have been dying to tell for years.
I don’t know anything about anything.
I just don’t know.
I don’t know half of what people expect me to know, and I am even less sure of the things I thought I once knew implicitly.
Confidence?
Whatever grains of confidence I had squirreled away have gone. Crushed under the weight of false expectations and that murky, foggy foundation I set up for myself. I deluded myself into believing that I could skate through the rest of my life leaving nothing in my wake.
What did it matter? I wasn’t happy where I was working, doing the work I was being paid to do, working with the people I was paid to work with (which in my defense, turned out to be wholly accurate since they jumped at the first opportunity they had to dump both me and my salary).
I was empty at work, empty at home too for that matter. Life was turning all different shades of gray.
I was fading into my own background, irrelevant in my own life.
Can you become your own afterthought?
Absolutely, and that is what I was quickly becoming. With all that already going on in my head, you can imagine the wreckage that was left sprawled across the landscape of my mind and soul after getting canned.
Canned. Like a fish.
Call me Charlie Tuna.
I was looking forward to Thanksgiving with all the enthusiasm of a turkey. I didn’t want to be thankful, I wanted to plant that seed of resentment and let it grow; nurture it until its vines choked the rest of my miserable existence away for good.
Weed in the garden? You better believe it.
I shivered through the evening, gliding between family members like a ghost. Not really acknowledging anyone. I managed to find twenty minutes of silence dropped in a chair next to the pool, echoes of laughter mocking me from people who were still alive.
Me? I was the ghost of Christmas future.
I was angry and bitter.
I know what you are thinking and you’re wrong.
I wasn’t really thinking about my former job at all. I have come to terms with the fact that it’s all over. That part of my life was crumpled up and thrown out like a two week old section of the Sunday paper. I felt like all that effort and experience was as useless as last year’s black Friday coupons.
And so out it went.
What I thought about, as I leaned back into the cold vinyl of the pool chair, was my father. I was wondering where he was.
More to the point, why wasn’t he there with me.
My Dad, if you had bothered to ask me years ago when there was life in those deep pools of brown beneath my eyebrows, was my hero. I wanted to be like him, kung Fu master, the hoodlum priest, respected by everyone, friend to everyman, devout follower of Christ.
A hero.
At least to me.
Well damn the devil, I have learned a little in this, the unenviable affliction of mid life crisis. He is just a man. A man with fears and dreams not realized and hope and he is weary.
Gray cracks in the armor, snow on the mountain, shaved and bare as it is.
He doesn’t call. He doesn’t come to me to console, to council, to tell me it gets better, light at the end of the tunnel, the darkest hour is just before dawn.
I would have settled for a stitch in time saves nine.
Insert your own cliché here.
I was mad at him for not being there.
Is that fair?
Do you know why he wasn’t there? Well, at least my opinion of it? I think he feels that I am strong enough to get through this, that somehow I am man enough to fight my way out of the shadows and come through like a champ.
In short, he looks at me the same way I looked at him as a kid, infallible, Herculean, imperturbable, a man’s man.
Guess what? He’s wrong too.
I got over the shadows and gloom and the whole daddy’s not here, waa, waa, waa, poor me long enough to stuff some hot turkey (better you than me pal) and other traditional food stuff into my gullet.
I passed on saying grace when offered the opportunity.
Just let me have my misery with a side of pity party to go with the gravy and stuffing thank you very much.
Friday came like morning always does, too soon and just a little too brightly for my tastes. But it was okay, I had a thing to do, a meeting to make, a prospective client to woo.
I thought it went well.
After I got home my brother in law came over and we basically blew stuff up online. LAN parties, you gotta love ‘em. I was pleasantly distracted until about 1 am with hover tanks, drop ships, titans and mech walkers.
Bang, bang, boom.
Saturday was so much better. I had fun the night before just goofing off and it was a beautiful day. We spent most of the day in the park with family and friends and I even got a call from my buddy Moe (yeah, the Moe listed up top as a contributor on the blog yet never posts… trust me he contributes behind the scenes).
He said he felt like a bad friend because he hadn’t spoken to me all week.
I laughed.
Are you kidding me, a bad friend? I don’t think he realizes how much his call helped. When someone is going through a tough time, we tend to leave them alone, not sure of what to do, or what to say.
I know, that’s usually what I do. I figured if I was in a pinch I would rather be alone and it is for the most part true. But what I need is different from what I want (and that topic is a whole other blog entry). I was glad for his call.
After the party in the park wrapped up we returned home, smiles on our faces, feeling really good.
Then I checked the mail box.
My last paycheck was in there.
I was determined to not let it get to me. So what? I’ll make more money somehow. I will get another job or I will make enough money freelancing to keep us going. It’s going to be okay. God said so.
I could see that shiny, glowing bit of hope above me.
It’s so pretty hanging there above my head like that. Makes me wanna just snatch it up in my hands and…
Then I opened the envelope and looked at the check.
I was expecting a full two week paycheck for whatever reason and there was only one week in there. Instead of enough money to cover the car payment, mortgage and get some food, there was enough for the car and food.
Suddenly that shiny bit of hope turned into a hook and I felt like I was yanked from the water and reeled in.
Ha! Got one! Look at the size of this one! Woo hoo!
Charlie Tuna.
I felt like someone had gutted me.
Pass the butter.
Wifey and I had officially reached our end point. What came next was about an hour of wailing and gnashing of teeth. What do we do? Why is this happening? We know people that are worse that seem to never have this kind of trouble, waa, waa, waa, poor us.
In the end Wifey needed a walk and left, disappearing into the warm night air.
The kids were in and out of my office yammering away, oblivious to the doom in the air.
Don’t you see it kids? It’s game over man, game over.
I was done.
Verklempt squared.
I quietly asked them to go watch a little tv for a bit, I had work to do. Hey, at least I had that $30 logo auction I sold on eBay!
They retreated to the living room, giggling and laughing all the way. I wish I was that young again, that innocent. I think back now and I can see my father sitting in the shadows during those days when we struggled financially and I get it know.
I so definitely get it.
I felt bad as the tears started to scald my face. Yeah, the burned. The greater the grief the more fire in the tears I think.
I tried to get up and walk out, to go sit with the kids and borrow some of their hope in the form of hugs and kisses and I love you daddy, you’re the best daddy in the world.
It’s the best medicine. A cure all.
I never got past the door.
I crumpled near the door, woozy and weak and struggling to contain the sounds of failure as I slumped to the floor sobbing. Who wants their kids to hear them falling apart? Night had finally descended on my life. It was dark and cold and so far from dawn. I felt the heavy wet blanket of despair cover my completely and I was lost in its darkness.
I cried to God. I asked why he hated me, why? Was I evil? I know that I am no saint. I know I have done things in my life that ought not to have been done. I cried out for forgiveness, for what felt like the one millionth time.
At least a million, probably more than that.
“I can’t take it. I can’t take it. Please, please God, please, all I want is a little hope. Hope. Please.”
The words spilled out of me, jumbled, bleeding, washed out of me with the tears.
They pooled at my feet. I wanted to lay down and give up.
Bankruptcy, foreclosure, near divorce, I had survived all of it before but I was at the very end.
“Please Jesus, I need some hope…”
Ah, the delicious weight of the world on you, the sweet, crushing press of all your guilt and shame and wasted opportunities.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
I felt like I needed air suddenly and I took a breath like a man that had his head held under water for too long.
I gulped that breath down, swallowed it along with what was left of my tears.
And it was gone, the weight, the gloom, the doom, the anxiety, gone.
Someone had taken that blanket off of me.
I stood up and wiped my face clean. I could feel my legs under me, I could breathe again.
The problems were still in the room with me but I was no longer afraid of them.
Yeah, weird huh? I had, dare I say it? Hope.
Hope.
I want to say it again.
Hope.
It showed up in a crumpled heap on the floor in the corner of my office on a Saturday night.
It’s still night outside as far as I can tell but I know that dawn approaches.
The glow is in the horizon people.
Dawn comes and I will wait for the new day.
Hope.

How am I doin'!?!? How YOU doin'!

How you doin’? Me? I’m great… just peachy. See? I’m smiling! That means I am good to go. No need to check up on me. Everything is hunky dory.
Hunky dory I tell you!
Why is it that we could be dying on the inside and yet when someone asks us, how are you, you tell them fine, just fine, with this pained, one-flew-over-the-cuckoo’s-nest sort of smile?
And then, here’s the kicker, you get upset if no one reaches out to help.
At least I do... and the wifey. She does too. Maybe it’s me. I used to be able to tell when something was bothering someone and, once upon a time, I would ask if there was anything I could do. I hated to see someone in need and not do something.
Then I changed. Over the years I became more and more self centered.
It got to the point where even I didn’t like me. Now? Now I am trying to get back to where I used to be. You know, caring about my fellow human being and stuff.
Did getting fired make me change?
I don’t think so. This isn’t the first time in my life I have been through a rough patch or three.
I don’t know what’s different.
Maybe I am just sick of me, at least the old, recent version of me.
I’m not going to be Mother Theresa. For one thing, the habit won’t fit and for another, I’m not strictly speaking Catholic and the last time I checked you had to be Catholic to be a Nun, or at least Whoopi Goldberg. (Yeah, I had to add Whoopi to the old Microsoft Dictionary…)
And another thing, I’m not a woman though I have cried like one (once Johnny… once – softball liner back up the middle meets manhood, ‘nuff said)
I have no idea where this thought was going.
Uhm, well, forget. It will probably come to me just as I doze off to sleep tonight anyway.
No bites on the eBay auction. That’s more than a little disappointing but I am hoping for one of those zany Bad News Bears style comebacks.
And I don’t mean the one where the Yankees win after the coach gives his kid the Uber-Dad "slap that look off your face mister" slap on the mound in front of the whole stadium and they do that whole 2-4-6-8-who do we appreciate? Bears! Bears! Yay Bears!
No. Not that one.
I mean the whole, “Let them play! Let them play! Let them play!” thing at the old Astrodome.
Yeah. I need William DeVane to get the crowd watching my life whipped up into a frenzy rooting for me to win one for the Gipper… or who ever they were playing for.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to start on my list of things I am thankful for.

Chicken Noodle Soup for the soul...

‘Soups on. I just finished up a nice bowl of Lipton Chicken Noodle soup. I decided that it was a little too plain so I livened things up with some bacon bits and a bit of fresh ground pepper (this year’s father’s day gift…) some garlic and oregano.
Good times.
So, freshly sated and slightly caught up with my work I’ve decided to get my daily notes out of the way.
I wouldn’t want you to miss out on your daily dosage.
Let’s see. Nothing major happened last night. I posted my first ebay auction for logo design on the web Sunday night. No bites as of yet. A few hits but I am an eBay virgin so no one is sure what to do with me I suppose.
I need to get something sold under my belt and get that whole feedback thing going. At least that’s what my sister-in-law says. She’s a professional eBay auctioneer.
Is that like a mouseketeer? Maybe.
She has an eBay Sellers Group that she invited me to join, so as to being my lucrative career as an eBay guru.
I was thinking of offering a few freebies to get things going and as if God was agreeing with me, she suggests the very same thing not ten minutes later. Weird to say the least.
I offered up 5 free logos to the first 5 folks that responded to my thread and voila!
Five volunteers lined up.
Sweet. That was too easy.
Oh yeah. They’re freebies. I won’t be earning anything on them. But the hope is that they will use them and people will see them and want their own and THEN I can earn some more soup money.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Oh yeah, good news. I got random call from a guy that said the got my resume from some temp agency or another (it started with a V… I don’t remember the name) and he wants me to come in to talk about possibly doing some web work. It’s not too far from where I live and if I can work in a telecommuting thing, I’m golden baby!
I told you God had a plan. Phht. You didn’t wanna believe me. Ha!
Told you so.
Okay, before you get all I-never-said-that-God-wouldn’t-do-nothing on me (yeah.. I know, I know, a double negative… relax. It’s a blog not the New York Times) I was looking in the mirror and pointing to myself as I said that.
So the told you so is for me.
I feel good today. Calm. I know things are going to be okay. It’s just hard to see beyond today and that is scary. At least for me.
Heh. A six foot, two hundred fifteen pound scaredy cat…
Go figure.
Everyone is afraid of something I guess.
Good thing God is bigger than the boogeyman.
(and if you got that joke you’ve been watching Veggie Tales…)
Hasta manana.

Woe is me...

A poor man is shunned by all his relatives-
How much more do his friends avoid him!
Though he pursues them with pleading,
They are nowhere to be found.
-Proverbs 19:7(NIV)


I hate whiners. Yeah, not very Christian hating an entire segment of humanity like that. But you know what they say. You do know what they say right? Right!?!
(All together now, “No, what do they say?”)
We hate the things in others that we hate in ourselves.
I am in the mood to party, people.
Yep, I’m going to throw me a party - a pity party!
Imagine going through what I have gone through (some of you don’t even have to imagine, some of you are going through it now or have already gone through this sort of thing) and then trying to talk to family members about how you feel and looking for encouragement.
But what if all you get it is, “Wow, that’s too bad. Let me tell you about the drama in your brother’s life.”
I have been trying to talk to my Dad for more than a week now. Just to sit him down and get some spiritual advice or some older, experienced man’s perspective on how things in life don’t always work out and here, son, is how as a man you need to handle things kind of pep talk.
Waa, waa, waa, poor me.
I feel like Anthony Michael Hall in the Breakfast Club when Judd Nelson is making fun of his home life, except the dark sinister part of me is sort of like Judd Nelson wanting to kick the living Fruit Loops out of my softer more gentile Anthony Michael Hall side.
Golly gee Dad, can we talk for a minute?
Every time I call him he’s literally on a mission from God. He spends most of his retirement days volunteering in some capacity at his local church. If it’s not that, then he is dealing with my brother who is going through his own problems. The same brother I went to encourage the day after I got canned.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great. I am proud of him. I’ve met the folks at his church and they love him to death. But right now I am feeling a little selfish. My kids want more time with their Grandfather. I need more time with him.
Waa, waa, waa, poor me.
I feel stupid for even complaining about it.
But that’s how I feel at the moment and so there you go.
At least he’s still alive right? I have a few friends that have lost their fathers already.
It sucks.
Wifey is going through the same thing, except when she calls her Mom, she gets the whole “your sister is driving me crazy” routine.
Waa, waa, waa poor Wifey.
Poor us.
Excuse me while my Judd Nelson side gives my Anthony Michael Hall side a wedgie.
This has to stop, seriously. If I am really trying to turn my problem over to Jesus like they taught us in Sunday school, why am I worried about what are parents are doing? Isn’t God supposed to be running the show anyway?
But they are our parents. Aren’t parents supposed to be there for their kids? Even when they are all grown up? We look to them for guidance and encouragement. Who else can we turn to for support of not them?
I have been reading this other verse, 1 Timothy 5:8.

“If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

It’s a little on the harsh side I think but when I read it I thought of my Dad. And guess what? That sounds just like me. Oh I don’t mean me not having a job. That is a different matter entirely. I mean being there for my kids, for my wife, for my family. For the last two years or so I have been supremely selfish. I don’t even have a mission from God to fall back on. I just have me, making excuses for the things I did or, rather, didn’t do.
I’m seeing that more clearly now.
There’s nothing like a little perspective.
Okay. I am done whining. I need to start my day now.

The Luckiest Man Alive...

I made an executive decision last night. I’m going to attempt to grow a beard. That’s right. You heard me, a beard.
No shaving.
This isn’t some rabbinical tangent here. We are talking going all Grizzle Adams. Why not? It’s not like I have to impress a boss or anything, know what I mean? Why not just relax for a week and see what sort of vegetation grows in.
That I am not willing to spring ten bucks for replacement razors is beside the point.
I spent my first day at home yesterday. The work slate with the Confesor was light so I decided to work on my Mom’s website. She sews, knits, you know, all those lovely grandmaesque things. She’s good at it too. Make my little girl’s dresses each Christmas.
Oy, such workmanship! You know, it gets me right in the kishkes when I think about it.
And yes, I had to add oy and kishkes to my dictionary.
I also sat down and watched television for the first time in a week. It felt good to catch my breath for a bit.
I finally got to see The Man from Snowy River.
Great movie.
I loved the whole charging down the mountainside with the cracking of the whip and the beating of the horse hooves in the dirt. It was, to say the least, impressive, most impressive.
I was back at the gym this morning, trying to get some sort of routine re-established. The normal 5 am crowd were all “Where have you been all week?”
I laughed. It’s nice when people notice when you aren’t there, even if you don’t say more than hello in the morning. Makes you feel like part of the world in a weird don’t look at me while I am sweating on the treadmill kind of way.
I can’t help but feel blessed this morning.
I know that sounds crazy but let me explain. I saw their story on the news last weekend. A family of five was out boating when the boat sank. Tossed in the water, the father grabbed his youngest child, a three month old baby, and swam to shore. His wife survived but he lost a son and a daughter.
Last night, my kids where laughing and running all over the house. At one point they all jumped on me, giggling and laughing. They hugged me and kissed me and laughed some more.
I am the luckiest man alive.
I prayed for that family this morning. I prayed that God would somehow get them through this.
I know there are those of you out there that have lost children; my prayer was for you too. A pain like that doesn’t ever really heal. I don’t really know what else to say really. I was nearly in tears this morning at the gym listening to this man heart broken voice as he was interviewed. He spoke about how it wasn’t something that you survive day by day but rather minute by minute.
He is going to be on my heart all day today. And so will all of you that read this. (Yes, all ten of you…)
I will pray for you too just because.

Lessons from the Home Depot...

Rain. It’s pouring outside at the moment. My workout schedule was shot to pieces this week. I have been thrown from my routine. I’ve only gone once. Just so you know, I’m not being selfish and paying for a gym membership or anything. We happen to have a recreation center where I live that paid for as part of the homeowner’s association dues.
Wah, wah, wah.
That reminds me. I need to cancel Netflicks ( I had a chick flick flashback, sorry).
Okay, got that done.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Rain.
We had another long day yesterday but not as bad as the one before. I say we because the wife was in the mood to get some pent up frustrations off her chest too. We sat in my office for a good long while and talked and cried. I think we even felt better afterwards. We discovered that part of our frustration stems from family and friends trying to give advice on what we need to be doing, namely me updating the old resume and getting a new job.
I get that. That’s actually in the handbook for the Recently Unemployed. Yeah, I read it there once, Chapter two, paragraph 12, subsection 3a.

“The newly unemployed should immediately upon his or her dismissal from the previous place of employment begin his or her new job search in earnest. No time should be spared. No rest taken. Panic should immediately set in and unless you find a job within fifteen minutes of losing your old one, everything will implode in a deafening white flash of subatomic particles losing their nuclear bonds and vaporizing your lazy worthless carcass out of existence….”

Maybe that was my sister in law that said that. I don’t really remember.
At any rate, my wife felt like she shouldn’t have to remind the entire free world that it’s only been a few days.
Wow. It seems like its been much longer than that. Tomorrow will make it one week exactly.
The world has ended. The sun has not gone supernova and I am, contrary to scientific theory, still here with all my molecules in their proper place.
Thank you, God.
I am still waiting on him by the way. I would have though he’d have called by now. He’s got a lot on his plate. It’s cool. I am doing what I heard my Dad’s pastor say during the sermon last Sunday.
“You do your part, God will do his.”
I’m doing my part and God will do his.
What’s my part? I’ll let you know as soon as I figure that part out. I think it has something to do with my long held desire to be creative and get paid for it. Whether that means writing or drawing or whatever, I think that’s what I am supposed to be doing. So that’s the plan for now. Clean up the old website and get all my designs dusted off and out there for viewing.
I need to dust off a lot of things.
You know, hope, charity, concern for my fellow man and all those other things that make it cool to be human.
Those are the things I lost along the way. That was another epiphany our little session yesterday generated. I realized that I had grown completely selfish and self absorbed over the last few years.
I used to be the sort of person that would pull over and help an old couple change their tire on the side of the express way and refuse the knot of bills they would inevitably try to hand me when I was done.
“That’s okay. You guys reminded me of my grandparents. I just hope that if they are in a similar situation, God will send someone to help them too…”
Now? Now I don’t even see the people on the side of the road.
Let me give you a fer instance.
The Confesor and I needed to swing by the Home Depot to get a plank of water resistant wall board (that’s the green sheet rock, okay?). He wandered off for wax toilet seals or something along those lines while I waited with the cart near the building supplies.
And I waited.
And waited.
After five or ten minutes I was starting to get a little irritated. I could be home working on web designs instead of standing around like an unemployed jackass in the contractor’s section of the local Home Depot.
Ah, there he is.
He walked past me without a word and proceeded to help the guy behind me that was silently struggling with loading his cart with fifteen or so panels of wall board.
I felt like a turd in dirty jeans.
I didn’t even see the guy. I was too caught up in my wallowing that I failed to notice someone that could have used my idle hands to lighten his load a little.
What would Jesus do?
He would have done exactly what Confesor did.
Point taken, lesson learned.
I want to be that guy on the side of the road, shirt sleeves rolled up, sweat dripping off the brow, helping the single mom with the three kids in the broken down station wagon in the middle of the summer instead of the guy zipping past at fifty five miles an hour sipping on my lemonade.
That’s my prayer for today, to make me see the need around me and find ways to fill it just as surely as I need my needs filled. After all, if I don’t pay attention to those I should be helping, why should I expect anyone else to pay attention to me?

Near Postal Experience...

Well there is only one way to describe the day I had yesterday.
It sucked.
I was miserable for most of the day. We, Confesor (the aforementioned step father in law) and I were installing a lovely wood floor. It was a straightforward gig, took most of the day. My hands were caked with some weird glue that probably caused the hair and tails to fall off the lab rats. I scrubbed them raw with a scouring pad trying to clean them. No dice.
Good times.
I think I had too much time to think and not enough work occupying my mind. My emotions ranged from despair to anger.
I had my moments of Postal worker inspired fantasies involving rappelling gear, a baseball bat, maniacal laughter and lots of screaming former bosses.
Decidedly unchristian of me.
I knew that there would be days like this and I thought I was prepared to handle them. I was wrong. I wasn’t. I realized, as I fell asleep last night, that I had done it again. I have been trying to do this on my own and the crushing realization that no matter how much handyman work got done, it’s not going to be enough to cover our needs hit my like a kick in the groin.
Yeah. I went there.
I am still fighting for control of my life; so much for trusting God right? Can I tell you that I find the prospect of trusting my existence to something that I can’t see with my eyes is terrifying?
It is.
I was alone with my thoughts a little too much and before I knew it was lost in fits of anger, jealousy, despair, hopelessness, just generally feeling overwhelmed.
I wanted God to make me feel better but he was waiting for me to realize that I was still trying to control things that had spun out of my hands a long time ago.
I thought that sharing the details of this fiscal derailment would make me feel better and maybe give hope to someone out there in the eUniverse, should they happen upon these entries.
Sorry. I want this diary…
Wait. Guys don’t do diaries.
Journal. Yeah. Journal, I like that better.
I want this journal to reflect what I was actually feeling that given day. I still know that God is going to see me through this but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t terrified.
My kids came up to me just know with long faces. I mean like right now, as I am writing.
I asked them what’s wrong.
My son wanted to know how much money we had left in the bank.
THUD.
That was my heart falling right out of my butt and onto the floor.
See, that’s the sort of thing that feels like a kick in the gut. I’m supposed to protect my kids from worry. But they love me so much that they worry about me. Am I okay? How are you Daddy?
The truth is that they protect me from despair. They infuse me with a little gumption.
Hey, I got to use gumption in a sentence. I need to scratch that off my list of things to do.
I told my son that we were okay.
Then he asked me how God was going to get money to us.
Good question.
Really good question.
I told him that was the cool part. We get to see what God does to meet our needs.
He smiled a little too weakly for my taste but I can see him trying to understand and be brave. I love him for that. He’s such a little man already.
Uh oh, the dog puked on the carpet.
Never mind, little man took care of it already.
See what I mean?
I am blessed and highly favored.
Whatever life throws at me, whatever trials come my way, I have been blessed. Hold on to the things in life that matter. You’d be amazed how the hug from a small child can restore your faith in things. They are small miracles and I am blessed to have them.
Okay. I need to get something to eat before I get going. I feel better now.
Thanks for listening.
Let’s see how God is going to move today, shall we?

When life hands you roaches...

It’s 5:45 in the morning and I am getting ready to go to the gym to get my exercise thing going. I started working out a few months ago (you might remember some earlier entries in the blog on the subject…) and I have been feeling good about my progress.
I have to admit that I didn’t want to get up yesterday morning. I was feeling unsure about everything and my heart was, well, heavy, burdened. I know that these feelings are going to come and go but lets be honest here.

1.) I am still a guy.
2.) Guys don’t do feelings well.

It’s a little known fact that men do in fact have feelings. Most women generally assume that we don’t because of our behavior but we do. But when confronted with feelings we kind of make that same face that we make when confronted with an infant with a poopy diaper for the first time.
(Heh… I just had to add “poopy” to my Microsoft Dictionary)
You know that look.
“Oh… OHHHHHH…. Uh, hey, what do I- this smells- help, Baby- oh crap.”
And then we make those sounds like we’re going to hurl.
“URRRKKKK- UUUURRRK… oh this smells bad.”
It’s the same thing with emotions.
The whole point of the preceding section was to mention that I am, in fact, getting up off the mat and continuing on with my life. The sun does continue to shine.
I spent yesterday helping my aforementioned Step-Father in law paint some stuff and take out a few cockroach condos, I mean kitchen cabinets.
It was bad. Unless you have actually lived in a New York City tenement (and I have, thank you very much) you don’t really appreciate just how nasty the German cockroach is.
When I get to heaven I know what the first thing I am going to ask God is.
Some of you might ask about rainbows and what it was like living in the Old Testament and how cool the whole parting the Red Sea thing was.
Me? I’m asking what the story is with the cockroaches.
Seriously, I have to know.
I spent my time listening to some worship songs I had to dig out and dust off, feeling like quite the hypocrite for doing so. But as the day went along I found that I was talking to God more and more. Asking him for strength and, believe it or not, feeling strength come.
No, I wasn’t lifting cars and tossing them.
Samson is going to be my second question. “Lord, what was Samson’s exercise regimen and how can I get that strong?”
The strength that showed up was different. When I pulled the cabinet from the wall and saw those roaches I wanted to cringe.
Okay, I wanted to cry.
I read this great story once about a big roach (the dreaded Water Bug) and the author described roaches as having antennae that “waits for instruction from space” or something like that. I am sure I butchered the line, at any rate I wanted to cry.
There, I said it.
I felt like crying. I was feeling a blanket of despondence cover me and I wanted it to go away.
And then I started to laugh. I felt a calm come over me and I started to thank God for this opportunity (Yeah! I know. Can you believe it?). I thanked him for being there with me and the roaches. I thanked him for the roaches.
Put the phone down and don’t bother calling Bellevue.

a.) I’m not crazy
b.) I’m not in New York City

I don’t know why. I don’t know why God chose that moment to find me again. But I know that I started to feel the air lighten and that cloud lift. He was there with me telling me that it was going to be okay. Remember I said I was reading the book of Job? I’m pretty sure I mentioned it. Anyway, he never complained about things the way you think he’d might.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
It was like his mantra.
I’m making it mine for the time being.
Things turned out well for Job because he never lost faith. I’m going to do the same.
Oh yeah, weird thing. I feel like I have to mention it. I had a dream that I was on a Cruise ship. What it means, I don’t know. But I felt like sharing.
I gotta go. The treadmill is calling me.

It only hurts when you laugh...

I got this in the email (special thanks to Bill Miller, random spammer of the day – I have no idea how I ended up on you email list but it’s all good) when I got home this afternoon and despite how I was feeling it made me smile. Okay, I may have even laughed. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine.

If you manage to find my blog and things in your life are going about as well as things in my life, maybe this will cheer you up.

• Why, do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are going dead?
• Why do banks charge a fee on "insufficient funds" when they know there is insufficient money?
• Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
• Why doesn't glue stick to the bottle?
• Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?
• Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
• Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?
• Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
• Whose idea was it to put an "S" in the word "lisp"?
• If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
• Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?
• Is there never a day that mattresses are not on sale?
• Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
• Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?
• Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?
• How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?
• When we are in the supermarket and someone rams our ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do we say, "It's all right?" Well, it isn't all right, so why don't we say, "That hurt, you stupid idiot?"
• Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that's falling off the table you always manage to knock something else over?
• In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?
• How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?
• And my FAVORITE - Statistics on sanity: One out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

The Day after.. and the day after the day after...

An odd thing happened this morning. The sun came up. I guess the world does go on. My kids have gone about their business while my head screams with indecision and self doubt.
This is no way to be Superdad.
Superdad is fearless and loving and always has a smile on his face. Right now the smiles are forced, the hugs weak and half hearted. Sometimes I think that all I need is a man servant running in to tell me that barbarians have run off with my herds in the northern lands and while he is yet still speaking…
Ever hear of a guy named Job?
I’m not there yet but I can see how he might have easily given up. What bugs me is that he didn’t. He never quit. Sure he questioned what was happening to him and why but he never blames God. Not once. His friends tell him that he must have done something to deserve the things that happened to him. His wife tells him to curse God and die already.
Nice.
That’s what you need in those darkest hours before dawn.
Encouragement from the ones you love.
But he didn’t give up and in the end God restored him above and beyond what he had. I’m sure that he carried the emotional scars of what he went through the rest of his life but his faith sustained him.
All I did was lose a job, Job lost everything.
I won’t complain. Really. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.
There is a Mark Schultz song called “He will carry me”. My favorite section?
“And when my hope is gone
And I've been wounded in the battle
He is all the strength that I will ever need
He will carry me”
I need to hold onto that.
So there I was sitting at home on my birthday contemplating the coming week and explaining my totally awesome present from my boss, when my Dad comes over to hang for a bit. He-
Whoops. Sorry about that. We were running late for church and I had to scoot and then one thing led to another and then next thing you know, BAM. It’s Monday morning and the kids are getting ready to go back to school.
I told them what happened this morning.
They took in a lot better than I did.
We explained that Christmas might be a little rough this year but that God is in control and we were going to be fine. I may be far from being a true believer but my kids aren’t. They don’t doubt God’s power. They have a surreal sense of purpose when it comes to God.
I wish I could take credit for their faith but I had very little to do with it.
They give me strength and hope in their unrelenting conviction that “God is really cool Daddy, he’s won’t let us down.”
Totally awesome.
Oh, by the way, I am going to work in a few minutes. My Mother-in-law’s hubby (I suppose he could be called a Step-Father-In-Law) is a handyman and has a few job lined up where he needs my help.
God is in control and moving.
There’s the doorbell. Talk to you guys later.

Happy Birthday! You're fired...

Have you ever had a feeling that something bad was going to happen? You know, that down in the pit of your stomach feeling that something was not quite right, that some invisible force was hanging over your head waiting to crush you.
Paranoid? Maybe, but I had that very feeling over the last week or so.
Something was up, something was not quite right.
Maybe it was because I was quickly approaching my 35th birthday. The big three five. Mid-thirties, funny, I am officially a statistical category.
Who knew?
So I have had this feeling right? Learn to listen to that inner voice. The world is more than what we see and hear, humans feel things and sometimes we forget to listen to that inner voice.
I heard it but instead of doing something about it, I ignored it.
(Oh yeah, if your boss tells you about an unplanned meeting for four o’clock on a Friday afternoon that you have to attend start packing your personals. Especially if you only find out about it the day before and he won’t look you in the eye anymore.)
And so, here I am on my birthday gainfully unemployed staring the approaching holiday season and having to listen to my kids talk about what they would like to get. All I can think of is how I am going to pay the mortgage and the car payment and how long will it take me to find a new job and what if I have to take a big pay cut? How will I make ends meet?
Scared doesn’t even begin to describe the thing that is eating away at my stomach at the moment.
Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be. I can and will find another job, there are opportunities out there. But I feel scarred and wounded suddenly. There is nothing like a little financial insecurity to throw you for a loop.
To tell you the truth, I felt sick to my stomach. I tried to get some sleep but, like anyone that has been in my situation, sleep was hard to come by.
So what now?
I don’t know.
I prayed. That sounds weird to some I guess but when you are in tough spots you go with what you know. I grew up in church and as an adult I have tried on and off to stay faithful, as it were, but I have always found ways to step away and ignore God.
Unless something was wrong mind you.
No, if something is wrong he is the first one I come running to.
“God! Please help me! Please save me. What do I do?”
And then as soon as things are fine again (and make no mistake, they always seem to right themselves…) I go back to ignoring God and church. Who wants to get up early on Sunday morning?
So you can imagine that I felt a little more than guilty when I prayed on the way home from my former place of employment for help. “God?” I said. “Uh, I know I always do this and for the life of me I don’t really know why, but I am in trouble again and I, uh, need your help.”
I felt like puking but I managed to keep my lunch down.
“I wish I wasn’t this way God, but I am. I run from you at every opportunity and then when I find my self in trouble, I come running back to you for help.”
Traffic was pretty heavy but I was too distracted in my conversation with the Creator of the Universe to waste time flipping off the guy in the Beemer that just cut me off.
“I don’t want to ask for your help for me, that’s not what I am doing.” I felt on the verge of tears, if you can excuse my use of that tired old cliché. “I want your help for my kids and for my wife. They used to be able to count on me to support them and now I can’t be counted on.”
I can’t really put into words how much it hurt to admit that.
I am not capable of taking care of my family or providing for them at the moment.
And that’s what I told God. I get the feeling that he was waiting for me to admit that; to admit that I am not capable of handling my life on my own without him, without his guidance.
Is this starting to sound preachy? I hope not. My heart is pounding as I write this; I have this icy lead ball in my stomach that doubles in size when I think about my mortgage payment and the car payment that are due.
I’m not a holy roller; I went to church last Sunday for the first time in a year. I don’t pray, at least not prior to getting “let go” (no one actually says your fired anymore apparently). But this is where I am.
Unemployed and scared and no aces up my sleeve, thank you very much.
I am going to do something that I probably should have done a long time ago but was too much of a coward to do it.
I am going to trust God.
I am going to have faith that he will provide for me in the coming weeks. I will try my best to not be afraid of the great abyss that lies before me. I won’t fear the future because God always finds a way to meet my needs.
See, that’s the rub. This isn’t the first tight spot I have been in. Did I mention that already? We, the wifey and I, have been through foreclosure, bankruptcy and all sorts of problems. Most of you reading this now have experienced something along those lines too. You know what it is to feel the icy ball of lead and the fear of the unknown.
Is this going to be my therapy? Maybe it will be, I don’t know. I only know that I feel compelled to share the journey.
Hopefully someone out there, walking the same path as me, will see this blog a few months from know and be able to follow my journey and see how God delivers, how God provides.
He will you know.
I have no doubt of that.
I used to joke about Jesus and God with my buddies at work all the time and inside I secretly felt ashamed of that because I knew that it was wrong. I know what he can do for you. I know what it is to be saved.
I strayed from that path when the going was good, when things were easy and now I have this mess and I am asking myself, “What would Jesus do?”
Funny huh?
Well I think Jesus would ask his father for guidance and that’s what I will do for now.