So far not so good

I don’t know if I turned the corner at the new year with high hopes, but I don’t think I expected this.

I expect to be out of a job by the end of May. I recently got pulled into a room with some other coworkers and told there would be massive layoffs.

Now this kind of thing is not new to me. Several times in my life I have been yanked into cafeterias and offices and informed of my demise.  The end result most of the time has been that I came out smelling like a rose.

The one time in the last few years this didn’t happen helped to send my life into a tailspin. I was unemployed for a year. My bank account went down to nothing and my marriage collapsed.

I think I had better start saving money to get out of here. At the moment I can’t afford airfare or even a bus ride.

Of course, being in a dying workplace is never fun. Morale is low where I work. For the most part, however, my fellows workers are keeping their chins up. But there are subtle things going on around me which reflect our discomfort.

One of them is the rumors. Who is staying. Who is going. The boss is out. In with the new boss.

I really don’t care who stays and who goes. I really expect to be laid off.

I have never taken these pink slips well. I usually complain and whine with the best of them. While my griping isn’t good, I have not violated my moral principles.

However, I am a little concerned over something I did yesterday. Citing poor health, I informed employees  attending a meeting I was supposed to be at that I would be absent. Then I escaped to a coffee shop.

As I sat there I chatted with a colleague online. This person had also fibbed to get out of the meeting. When I told this person what I did they replied,”I love it.”

Their excuse was even more original. And while we were texting, I read an Email from another one who claimed she was stuck at home with a repairman. I texted my friend a “ha ha ha.”

But I am troubled. One thing I tell people is that I am not a liar. I think lying is despicable. Yet, for all intents and purposes I told an untruth.

I justified my failure by noting the bullying of my colleagues at these meetings, their own lousy excuses for not attending, the double standard of my bosses who accept those excuses and in fact don’t come themselves,  and the total ineffectiveness of these gatherings. Furthermore, as I told my online pal, I was in fact dizzy and exhausted. But I could have gone.

The truth was, though,  I was indeed emotionally and mentally unfit that day. So there was a grain of truth to what I told my coworkers. Even so, my excuse would probably not have flown with my boss.

So I need to look under the hood and make some repairs so that my ongoing shitting circumstances don’t result in moral turpitude. Now, if I could only find the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Truth

Yesterday I was sitting in my office hour right now. I had to close the door because I made the mistake of listening to Kelly Clarkson’s “Behind These Hazel Eyes.” I broke out weekpings.

I broke out weeping. I heard it somewhere yesterday and hunted it down on YouTube to give it a closer listen.

How it speaks to me is that in a perhaps not so deep part of me, this is how I feel. I have a broken heart. But right now I am just going through the motions of life. My outward appearances are just a sham. FB shit.

I think perhaps when I finally admit to and face the truth of my marriage and all that has happened that maybe I can start to heal, if I live that long.

Seems like just yesterday
You were a part of me
I used to stand so tall
I used to be so strong
Your arms around me tight
Everything, it felt so right
Unbreakable, like nothin’ could go wrong
Now I can’t breathe
No, I can’t sleep
I’m barely hanging on

Here I am, once again
I’m torn into pieces
Can’t deny it, can’t pretend
Just thought you were the one
Broken up, deep inside
But you won’t get to see the tears I cry
Behind these hazel eyes

I think I will die soon

I think I will die soon.

There are a lot of candidates standing in line to kill me.

First and foremost is my broken heart. I am as lonely as can be.

Then there is my age. I keep reading of celebs who are passing on and they are either in their early  60s like me or not to much older.

Furthermore, there is a time bomb ticking in my body. I have an incurable disease that is under control at the moment, but which could easily put me in the grave if not addressed. Given the state of health care in this country, that is a distinct possibility.

One possible cause of my demise could eventually be my temper. Like the disease, it too is generally under control. But occasionally it rears its ugly head and I lose it with someone. One of these days one of those “someones” is going to lose it so badly themselves that they will plant me six feet under.

But if I could predict the future, my guess is my death will come from the first factor listed above. I am in constant internal pain. I have thought of suicide it is so bad, but only in the abstract. In the final analysis I am too much of a coward and a Christian to kill myself.

I long for a woman, but the ones I want are not available. One is married and the other is too young. Oh yes, I’m married too. That needs to be dealt with, and soon, because it is a marriage name only, having itself bit the dust many moons ago.

I am no great catch, however. I have very little to offer a woman but myself. No doubt any woman reading the above would run for the hills immediately.

Thus, this blog may in the immediate future lie in cyberspace unattended. Who knows? Perhaps this will be my last post.

Life as Art

The last 10 days or so have been a roller coaster.

In my last post I related my ecstasy at finding out my potentially fatal disease is under control.  I have held on to that joy to some degree and sought repentance to God in thanksgiving.

Further, I have found myself more focused on other people. I shared the proceeds of a gift card with two people in a coffee shop last weekend. It reminded me of the movie “Pay It Forward”. I did it out of compassion I believe for the two friends who wandered separately into the store. I believe the Holy Spirit led me to do it.

Unfortunately, some long term bad habits have also reared their ugly heads in the last 10 days.

I again find myself mooning over women. I got a “like” on Facebook from my former crush and it set me into a tizzy. But I quickly came to earth when I noticed that she had switched her profile pic to one which included her new boyfriend. Bummer!

I also have been messaging with a flat out babe at work. We like to complain about our jobs. I also like to flirt . She does respond, but not as often as I would like. I think she is just being kind and humoring me. So this weekend I am just ignoring social media all together. It’s really freeing.

The worst sin that has bubbled up again is my tendency to lose my temper. This happened yesterday as I was walking home.

As I passed a parking lot on my street a couple of dogs scampered through and one of them came after me. I was tired and depressed and not in the mood to get attacked by a mutt. So I let the teenage girl trying to corral them have it.

“Get your dogs under control” I yelled. She was OBVIOUSLY trying to do that. But I was too agitated to give her some kudos for the attempt.

Things escalated when in the distance I saw through blurry eyes (I have poor long-range vision) a short fat younger guy with long black hair. He began to yell at me.

I could only hear parts of the diatribe due to the yapping mutt.

“Jackass”….”It’s people like you…” …”C’mon”.  This last phrase was uttered with the motion to bring it on.

Now the smart thing to do would have been to walk away. But hey, I have my pride.

I held up my phone and told fatso that I was going to call animal control. I think I also said “C’mon!” which also was not very wise given my age and pugilistic skills. I have always been more of a diplomat than a fighter. Not this time.

As all this was happening, a elderly black guy rode by slowly on a bicycle. He just chuckled, and kept chuckling. He stopped for a minute–and chuckled, Then he rode on–and kept chuckling.

Finally, in a state of confusion, I just walked down the sidewalk toward home. That would have been fine, except I also thrust my arm into the air. Attached to it was a hand with a middle finger jutting skyward.

When I got home I called 911. (Yes, I did.) I wasn’t sure it was going to work since my haven’t paid my bill and my account is suspended. But along with the carrier’s three digit number, the emergency line seems to be operable.

“What is your emergency?” I relate the whole story to the woman.

“What is the address?”

I thought,”How in the hell do I know?” I sputtered out that I did not know the dude’s address, but that he had threatened me, and his dogs were running loose. I tried to tell her a general location but couldn’t remember the name of the damned building.

“I’ll try to send someone by when they are available,” she said.

I thought,”Yeah right.” College football is in town today and every available police officer I am sure is committed to the thousands involved in that, not to some raging fart complaining about dogs and an unruly neighbor.

In retrospect, I realize I had been had. Satan got my goat.

How do I know? Well, for over two years I have been walking through this neighborhood and listening to a cacophony of dog barks, many of them aimed at me. Once a fairly large dog got out one night and came after me. These neighborhood mutts are an ongoing thorn in my side.

My friend, a dog lover, told me,”The dogs are fine. It’s the humans.” He was right. These morons leave their dogs to yap all day and night and aren’t even around most of the time to shut them up. It’s the rest of us who have to deal with them.

So Satan knew exactly how to ruin my joy. He knew exactly what button to push.

Then, there was the old age pensioner black guy. It would not the first time I have had angelic beings represented to me in the form of an aging person of African descent.

Now I am not saying, as some like to do with President Obama, that the devil presents himself as a black person. In fact, the other time I encountered an angel, it was an old black woman who saw my depressed mood and from her porch said words of comfort.

It’s just that it seems to me that the evidence is that God and Satan like to represent the principalities and powers in heavenly places to me as African (except for the guy who offered me a ride on morning. He looked more like “Bad Santa”.)

In any case, I realized after these 10 days that I have a long way to go in repentance. Old sins die hard.

I think God saw it coming though. I wasn’t planning on going to church this morning, but I ran into the pastor of the church I have been attending before this incident in my ‘hood and he had offered me a ride. So this morning during communion I was able to face my sinfulness head on.  My tendency is to run.

When this morning I explained to my housemate what had happened to me the day before, he interrupted me and said,”You were not in a fight with a neighbor. You were part of a French art film.”

I was not familiar with the genre, so I looked it up. Among other things, an art film stresses the symbolic and unconventional. That certainly describes what happened to me yesterday. In fact, it tends to describe my whole life to date.

It’s a New Day

I have been going about this all wrong.

This blog has been filled with a lot of piss and moaning about my romantic problems. Indeed, it is just about the theme. I should just rename it “Losses of the Lovelorn or something.

As I’ve recorded, the chick half my age I have had the hots for is now in a relationship that seems to be getting more solid by the day. My deceased marriage does not appear to have any hope of doing a reenactment of the Valley of Dry Bones found in Ezekiel. And although I have placed my attentions on a new woman, a real beauty, I have been pretty much friend zoned by her.

But you know what? I don’t care.

This is because I have headier stuff to think about. I have a new lease on life.

This morning I went to the doc. I am generally nervous when I do that because I have a potentially fatal disease and these quarterly visits are to check how I am doing.

I was even more nervous today. This is because (for a lot of reasons) I have not been taking my medicine.  I was worried about getting a bad report and a tongue lashing fro my great physician.

My worries were all for nought. I walked out of there in a bright mood. It is odd I felt this way because I regularly am checked out as fine. But this time I would not have been surprised if things had turned out differently.

Maybe it was the beautiful autumn morning, made gorgeous by a lazy sun, hanging clouds and cool, crisp temperatures.  However, whatever prompted my mood, I had the emotion of a man just released from prison.

I do believe there is a reason I am still here. For the first time since I was diagnosed with this illness, I said,”I want to live.” I said that to God after I walked out of the doctor’s office into this October day.

I have no idea what “living” means for me from here on out. But I am going to find out. Doing this has to start with going to God for His take on this.

Anyhow, it has been some day. I feel very much energized, alive and hopeful. In fact, I have been feeling so good I keep treating friends I meet who walk into this coffee shop.

It’s great to be alive.

Snakes and songs in the lonely desert

I was sitting at a bus stop yesterday morning and an elderly lady began chatting with me. She told me about news that lots of snakes had been spotted by homeowners in our state.

I hate snakes. They’re slimy little creatures, and some of them are dangerous. It’s no wonder that Satan in the Garden of Eden took the form of a snake.

Snakes tend to sneak up on you too when you are by yourself. In that respect they are a zoomorphism for loneliness.

Loneliness is my biggest problem right now. It gnaws at me like a dog chewing on a bone. And it leads me into temptation.

I got off of social media two months ago because a woman who I have fallen in love with from afar announced on a post that she now has a boyfriend. That love kind of faded over the summer-you know, out of sight, out of mind.

Recently though I restarted my online presence. Now I see pictures of her and my heart aches.

Further, I have begun to flirt with a woman at work. She’s a good friend, but she is also beautiful. I’m smart enough to keep enough distance, but sometimes I fantasize about a relationship with her.

My marriage fell apart years ago, but for some reason, most likely religious, I cannot bring myself to divorce my wife. Even calling her my “wife” seems funny as we haven’t functioned as husband and wife for many, many moons.

As a result, I am caught between a rock and a hard place. My past has left me desolate, but I can’t move forward. All I have to look forward to is death at my age.

I sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind in my marriage. There’s no doubt about it. But I believe my actions have not deserved the treatment I have received from my wife.

I partly blame her for my loneliness.

In the final analysis, however, God has put me here. Oh, I surely put myself here, too. But I have enough faith in the awesomeness of God to understand that He has taken my sinful behavior and the conduct of my wife to fulfill His mysterious purposes.

I may never know why I am in my current situation. But all I have left is trust.

God gave Jeremiah an object lesson in trust at an ancient pottery barn to show Israel that He can do whatever He wants. The prophet observed the potter manipulating some clay in order to make a jar. But, as the biblical book that bears his name relates, Jeremiah saw that the potter tossed the clay and began again because it had not turned out as he had hoped. (Jeremiah 18)

The Bible says, “Then the Lord gave me this message: ‘O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand’.”

The loneliness isn’t easy to deal with. I try to keep on in life, engage in this or that, and dismiss the seriousness of the events that led to it, but the loneliness doesn’t go away.

In the dramatic TV series “Breaking Bad”, chemistry teacher turned meth maker Walter White is tooling down the road in the desert, listening to and singing along to the hit by the band America called “A Horse with No Name.” The impact of this scene is humorous and moving at the same time.

Walter’s wife has told him that she is divorcing him because he is in the illegal drug business. In addition, she refuses to let him see his teenage son and newborn baby.

Yet, Walter got involved with meth because he was diagnosed with lung cancer and wanted to provide for his family before he died.  At the wheel of his car in the barren New Mexico countryside listening to oldies rock and roll, this middle aged man is seemingly trying to forget the whole thing.

“A Horse with No Name” is appropriate here because its author, Dewey Bunnell, was inspired to write the lyrics by recollections of his travels as a youth through the southwest desert. Further, the song was banned by some authorities because it presumably was a metaphor for drug use. (Source: Wikipedia.)

But it’s really a song about the lack of human love.

Bunnell writes,

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain

Walter is indeed escaping the hurt and loneliness out there in the desert.

However, Walter learns he is not really alone. He gets pulled over by a cop because his windshield is badly cracked.

As the officer writes a ticket, Walter becomes increasingly agitated. He is trying to explain to the trooper that the windshield was busted by flying debris from two crashed airplanes, an even that everyone in the area is aware of. But the cop does not accept this as an excuse.

Walter finally flies off the handle and the cop pepper sprays him.  The teacher/drug dealer is taken to jail. Luckily for him, his DEA agent brother-in-law has some clout and gets him out of the pokey, but not before Walter apologizes to the policeman.

It took humility for Walter to do that. It also takes humility for us to accept God as our Creator (Erwin Lutzer).

When I am cornered by that snake Satan out in the desert, crushed by loneliness, acknowledging my Creator’s right to deal with me any way He pleases is a good first step to overcoming him.

 

Feet Don’t Fail Me Now

In his glowing review of “Mission Impossible:Rogue Nation”, critic Roger Ebert says that the film makes sure “Tom Cruise never stops running.” Indeed, this is what Cruise never stops doing in this MI film and in just about all of his flicks. It’s the man’s signature.

I used to  be a runner, but had to stop due to injury. But I’m still running in other ways.. I’m running from my family. I’m running from my shame. Most of all, I’m running from God, and I have been for a good part of my recent life.

I did a lot of damage to my wife and kids. Oh, not physically mind you. My hurts were more of on the emotional level. They generally were caused by my explosive temper. It wasn’t until I took a friend’s advice and started taking meds that I got some semblance of control of my rage. But by then the damage had been done.

When life happened and shit hit the fan professionally and then financially, my house of cards came falling down. My marriage couldn’t take it, nor could I. I began my running.

Yes, I ran away, but what did I run to? Escapism mostly, including the bad side of the Internet, affections for a woman half my age, and my usual fall back position, workaholism.

It has taken a summer of doing absolutely nothing and getting rid of years of total fatigue in my chest to be able to have enough clarity to finally own my role in the collapse of my family.

I have blamed myself before, but I have also blamed my wife for her part, and surely she has her own baggage. But that doesn’t matter. I can’t control her. I can only be responsible for my own choices.

Interestingly enough, the catalyst was a scene from the hit series “Breaking Bad” that tipped me over to ownership of who I am and what I have done to put myself in the place I am today.

In the scene, Jesse Pinkman, a drug dealer who sells the meth produced by chemistry teacher Walter White,  has just gotten out of rehab. He ended up there after his girlfriend died of an overdose. This led to the girl’s father, an air traffic controller, being so torn up that he caused an air crash that killed scores of people.

Jesse asks Walt if he has been following the crash. Walt gets the inference and tells Jesse,”Wait a minute. You are not responsible for this, not in any way, shape or form.”

Walt falls into character as a scientist and tells Jesse that he has done some research. “I blame the government,” he tells the young man.

Jesse’s reply is telling.

“You either run from things or you face them, Mr. White.”

Walt asks,”What exactly does that mean?”

“I learned it in rehab,”says Jesse.” It’s all about accepting who you really are, I accept who I am.”

Walt shrugs and asks,”And who are you?”

“I’m the bad guy,” he says.

The Bible is replete with runners. Probably the most famous one is Jonah, who ran straight into the mouth of a whale.

There’s also Saul. He was God’s choice to be the first king of Israel. This is what the Life Recovery Bible (LRB) says of him:

“Saul’s story is a tragic one. He was a man with great potential for leadership, but he failed miserably. He allowed his fearfulness, disobedience, and self sufficiency to come between him and God’s plan for his life.”

Like Saul, I have failed miserably in my God given roles.

What can we learn from Saul? The LRB provides one answer to that question:

“There is no escaping the consequences of our actions. God can give us the serenity about our past failures if we are willing to take responsibility for them and ask God’s forgiveness. When we face this with courage, we may well spare ourself and our loved ones many years of additional pain.”

That’s the rub. I have to face God with my failures. But hey, I am not the only one who has been running.I have been in good company.

20th century preacher J. Vernon McGee, whose work lives on in the Thru the Bible radio broadcast, says that man’s feet tell of his weakness like nothing else.

“Our feet do not naturally turn to God. We are born today with feet that naturally turn in the opposite direction,” he says.

McGee tells the story of a boy who was being examined by church deacons for membership.

“They said to him,’How did you get saved?’. He said to them,’Well I did my part and God did His part.’They thought they had him and they said,’Tell us your part and God’s part.’ He said,”My part was to do the sinning. His part was to do the saving.’

He said,’I ran away from Him as fast as I could-as fast as this sinful heart and these rebellious feet could take me. And he done took out after me till He done run me down’.”

Running from God is exhausting. But as McGee says, I can stop and turn around to the beautiful nail-pierced feet of Jesus.

“I’ll admit it requires a little humility,” says McGee. “You have to be willing to come to His feet.” It’s pride that stops me.

I am thinking that even my eternal state could be at risk if I don’t stop running. McGee asks a disturbing, yet challenging question and then answers it.

“Where are your feet taking you today? They’re taking you either to heaven or to hell. There’s not a third place for feet to take you.”

The Scriptures tell me that another part of my anatomy which allows my feet to move, i.e., my knees, will bow at the name of Jesus, whether I like it or not.

Why can’t I stop running and start kneeling now?

Feeling my way toward God

Raylen Givens is a fictional U.S. Marshal who has been relegated to serving in rural Kentucky because he shot a Miami criminal under suspicious circumstances. The drama is appropriately called “Justified” because this is what Raylen says about the shooting.

I’m only three episodes into this series, but it seems that what the lawman thinks is a punishment may actually could turn out to be a blessing for him. It’s clear from the get go that Raylen does not want to be in Kentucky. He grew up there and he doesn’t like it.

But now he is beginning to fall for a woman. They’ll get you every time.

I’ve used a lot of blog space to discuss a young woman who I have been crazy about here in my own “Kentucky”. Yet, she now has a boyfriend and I am still here, with a dead and gone marriage with someone who is elsewhere.

The only reason I keep going in this place is that I need a job. I have responsibilities and bills to pay.

Yet, like Raylen, it seems that God may be giving me a second chance in the midst of what appears on the surface to be an unjust deal. It’s just that my “do-over” doesn’t involve a woman, at least for now.

I’ve been given the opportunity to re-educate myself and do what I wanted to do when I was a young man. Instead I took jobs to keep me in Christian ministry.

If I can just jump through some administrative hoops (or better, if the administrators are willing to dance to MY tune), the possibility is right in front of me.

The one thing that concerns me is the time involved in going to school. I’m just wondering if at my age I have the energy to do what is necessary to succeed.

I know from experience that school requires commitment and motivation. In fact, two days ago I convinced a program head at my school to let me into his courses because he believed that I was dedicated.

Not only am I worried about my own abilities, but there is also some risk. I could end up losing financially as well. Failure is not really an option.

I also ask myself,”Why stick my neck out?” In my current malaise, detailed fairly well in this blog, I may not be that happy, but at least I am comfortable. But it is a wasteful kind of comfort. I work, watch TV eat, sometimes exercise and sleep. That’s about it.

My experience as it stands now  is a bridge to nowhere. My former Christian life and a relationship with God seem like a distant memory. Perhaps this is a good thing because it certainly didn’t work for me.

In reality, I have come to the conclusion that I really do not know who God is. This week, however, it has come to me that this circumstance is normal. You see, there is this thing called The Fall in which mankind and creation were consigned to futility until God redeems it for good.

I do believe He is in the process of doing this, and especially believe in His Son’s work on the Cross and resurrection. But the practicalities of the sin of Adam and the work of Satan on my life have been on the back burner in my thinking.

Oh, I believe Satan is alive and well on Planet Earth. But I don’t sit around thinking of the effects of that on my personal life too often-not deeply anyway.

Sometimes God uses circumstances to wake us up to the truth. He did it with a Christian hater named Saul back in Roman times.

As the Life Recovery Bible notes, Saul was decisive and took immediate action as a Pharisee pursuing Christians. He was zealous, but for the wrong things. However, Jesus confronted Saul as he was traveling to Damascus and blinded him physically. Even though he was humbled in this way, Saul gained keen spiritual understanding from the experience.

Turning from persecuting Christians, Saul proclaimed the gospel throughout southern Europe. He endured physical and emotional hardship to do this. He was able to persevere through the grace and power of God. In addition, his second chance even involved a new name-Paul.

I wouldn’t exactly call my last week a Road to Damascus experience. But there have been some developments that make me think that God is at work and chasing me and has not given up on me.

In addition to the educational opportunity, a perfect new living situation will open up to me soon. It just kind of fell into my lap. I may not be able to eat much to pay for it, but I need to lose a couple score pounds anyway.

Thus, even though I think modern Christianity has failed me and that I have been sold a bill of goods by the Church, it seems God hasn’t died. But I can’t blame the Church for what has happened to me

The people that run it are in the same boat as me. I don’t think many of its leaders really know God. Oh, they think they do, but they don’t.

Paul talked of how God’s purpose was for the nations to “seek after Him and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him.” (Acts 17:23, 27-28). This isn’t exactly a Scripture that tells me that knowing God is an easy task. I Corinthians 13 also discusses the idea that we are looking at the truth through a dim mirror.

Like those in Christian leadership, I have also tried to serve God, at least the One I understand. Neither I nor these leaders seem to have gotten much in the way of comprehension.

But as the The Life Recovery Bible indicates, it is crucial that we have an accurate understanding of God so as to serve the God who loves us and not Satan, who desires to crush and destroy us. This is what is missing for most of us in my view. The problem is the blindness and dim mirror caused by The Fall.

Before Damascus, Saul had a limited understanding of God. So did one of the other great early Church leaders, Apollos, that is  until he met Priscilla and Aquila. These two really DID know God (as best as one can) and instructed Apollos in the way more perfect.

Both Saul and Apollos shared one trait: they were both teachable and humble to new instruction about God. The Lord gave them that teaching in different ways and they were available to be used by Him as a result.

As I see it, the best I can hope for in this life concerning knowing God is to study the Bible, pray and be open to what God tells me, and hope to feel my way toward Him in this dark world. The rest is up to God.

It’s really all about Him. One of the lessons to be learned from Paul’s life is that zeal and energy do not impress God (Life Recovery Bible.)

But I will still need these characteristics as I go back to school. The work needs to be done. I know from experience that succeeding in school is impossible without them.

Because of God’s goodness to me this week, and what I see as a second chance, I am motivated again to tell people about Him. Perhaps God DOES love me. This knowledge I expect will be the true source of the zeal I will use to get me through the hardships ahead.

The opportunity He has given me is one that will allow me to use my strengths and abilities in an area I love in order to share about Jesus Christ, and perhaps help others.  Telling people about Jesus is what I have really wanted to do my whole life. The fact that I even can write this paragraph after all of my life issues  tells me that God still cares for me.

The place to begin when alone

I had a disturbing dream the other night. I was in my house and several of my best friends over the years left me. Then, I found myself walking down a long, paved road that bisected the neighborhood where I grew up.

During the whole dream I felt very alone.

Since then, I have been pondering what this dream means. I’ve even consulted a couple of dream interpretation websites, one that purports to be a “Bible” site and one called “Dream Moods.”

The biblical dream site tells me the house signifies my life. The other site added the concepts of “soul” and “self”.

Seeing my friends denotes help and understanding according to the Bible site, while the secular one indicates that they signify aspects of my personality I have rejected but now are ready to adopt. Dreaming about my BFF seems to mean that there is something about him I should encourage in my own life.

And the road? It seems to signify my sense of direction or a choice. The fact it was paved (and thus smooth) could mean that God is going to intervene in my choices and direction. The fact that the road was in my hometown could mean either I have unexpressed feelings or that some aspect of my life which was developed when I was a child but missing now.

Putting all of these ideas together and my own knowledge of my self and circumstances, the meaning of this dream seems clear. I am lonely and I lack friends.

I also feel the need to change this situation, but the road tells me I am struggling with making that choice. I prefer my solitude. But my best friend’s most profound quality is his ability to have a million friends and I admire that.

Also, the one thing I did have growing up was friends. I didn’t have tons of them, but I did hang with people. One of my best friends today is a man I met when we were toddlers.

Being a loner can be admirable, but only if there is a purpose for it. In the classic film “12 Angry Men” Henry Fonda was the only juror willing to free a boy accused of murdering his father. He had “reasonable doubt” that the young man had done the deed.

Despite constant abuse, Fonda stayed the course and patiently convinced the other 11 men that the boy was not guilty of the crime.

But I have no such noble motive for my hermit-like existence. I have just withdrawn from people because I have had enough of the human race.

I have been hurt badly in my marriage. My kids have rejected me. A girl I have written about on this site has chosen someone else to have a relationship with.

A song made popular by “The Four Seasons” and “The Spinners” partially describes my marital history:

Called “I’m Workin’ My Way Back to You”, the lyrics tell of a man who let his love die due to his own mistakes. He thought what he was doing to his chick made him a man, but he was wrong.

But now, he’s working his way back to her.

When you were so in love with me
I played around like I was free
Thought I could have my cake and eat it too
But how I cried over losin’ you

See me down and out
But I ain’t about to go livin’ my life without you
For every day, I made you cry
I’m payin’ girl, till the day that I die

I’ll keep workin’ my way back to you babe
With a burnin’ love inside
I’m workin’ my way back to you babe
And the happiness that died

I let it get away
Been payin’ every day.

The reason I wrote that this song only “partially” describes my relationship with my wife is that up until now I have not been willing to work my way back to her. There is no “burning love inside.”

What does apply to me is the description of a man paying for his sins. That I will do until the day I die.

I don’t know exactly how to proceed, but God does.

In a famous story where Jesus meets a woman at a well, he offers her new life-living water.

She has a terrible history that makes me look like a saint. “You have had five husbands and the man with whom you are now living is not your husband,” Jesus tells her.

That she is coming to the well alone in the heat of the day speaks of her isolation from society. But running into Jesus makes her go to the townspeople and tell them about Him. “He knows everything I have ever done,” she tells them. (John 4)

Her experience encourages me. Even her first encounter with Jesus made her go find people. Further, she knew that the Lord knew everything about her but still accepted her.

This is where I have to begin-with the Jesus who loves me for and despite of who I am. The more I become friends with Him, the more willing and able  I will be to make real friends and either restore my marriage or move on to a woman who will complete the man I am now.

Deadly sins

Sin is a kind of madness. There is famous list which list categories of it. There are seven: lust, greed, sloth, gluttony, wrath, envy, and greed.

The movies are a good place to find examples of these sins. In my last post I mentioned two classic flicks.

One is “Panic Room”, in which three hoods are motivated by greed to invade a home. Of course, the woman and child threatened by them would not have had to fend for themselves if the couple had not divorced. This was probably motivated by wrath. In a scene in which the young daughter has been captured by the thieves, she tells one of them when he asks if her parents are rich,”My Dad is rich. My Mom is just mad.” Divorce comes from wrath.

The other film is “Fury” (1936). In this flick, Spencer Tracy is so mad at almost dying at the hands of a mob who falsely accuses him of kidnapping that he allows the world to think he is dead so that they will be punished for his murder. Bitterness comes from wrath.

In a film I have seen since these two,”The Crossing Guard”,  Freddy (Jack Nicholson) is a man who is both bitter and angry at the death of his young daughter Emily five years before. She was killed by a drunk driver.

Her death has sent Freddy into a spiral of drunkenness and whoring. His wrath has led to gluttony and lust. Freddy’s wife divorced this beaten man and remarried.

In a scene in which he visits their home, Freddy discusses a family photo with the new husband, telling him what a wonderful family he has. Then his former wife and his kids appear. The kids call Freddy by his name and the new husband “Dad”. This elicits a wry comment about this to his ex-wife. In a subsequent  argument with her,  Freddy screams that the house they live in should be his. Wrath also produces envy.

The real target of Freddy’s anger is John Booth, the drunken driver who killed his daughter. John has just been released from prison. After bungling one attempt to murder him, Freddy tells John that he’ll come back in three days to finish the job.

In a dramatic scene at the end of “The Crossing Guard”, Freddy chases John into a cemetery at night after grazing him with a gunshot. John arrives at Emily’s grave, a place he had visited a couple days before. Freddy has been so grieved that he has not even attend Emily’s funeral, much less visited the grave site.

Kneeling next to the grave, John whispers “your Dad is coming..he needs you.” Freddy kneels next to John and begins to weeps. He gives John his gun and grabs his hand. Together they kneel by Emily’s grave, holding hands as the sun rises.

What is the antidote to sin? Jesus has provided it. It’s called reconciliation. He reconciled us to God by paying the price for our sins.

God has His own wrath, a pure kind that cannot stand the sight of sin. Spencer Tracy knew there had to be a price for his human wrath in “Fury”. “Maybe someday after I’ve paid for what I did…”, he tells the judge when he surprises everyone by appearing in court,”,..there’ll be a chance to begin again.”

This desire for reconciliation is the first step to dealing with the deadly sins mentioned above. Once we accept the  reconciliation offered by the work of Christ, we can begin the process  of dealing with the hostility in our hearts toward our fellow man.

In “The Last Blitzkrieg”, Hans Von Horner is a German Nazi soldier disguised as an American. He goes by the name Leonard Richardson.

Von Horner and other German comrades infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge dressed as American soldiers. (This actually happened during this battle.) Their mission is to wreak havoc, chaos and death. They succeed.

One of Von Horner’s subordinates is a former SS soldier who is a fanatical Nazi. He relishes the death and destruction of his enemies and doesn’t care about the rules of war. He even attempts to molest a nice French woman who offers shelter to Van Horner’s crew.

Von Horner originally posed as an American when he was in a POW camp. He helped to plan an escape and told his superior officer about it. Von Horner is squeamish when he thinks perhaps the Americans will be slaughtered, but his commander promises him they won’t. They will just be punished for trying to escape.

Later, in the American lines, Von Horner runs into two of the former American POWs who made it out of the camp. He learns the rest were killed.

In the end, Von Horner and is German colleagues are found out. The rest are killed but he is only wounded.

During a firefight Von Horner sees Americans captured by German soldiers. He grabs a gun off of  dead American, obviously to help his fellows.

However, when he sees the Germans massacre the Americans in cold blood, he opens up on them with his gun. This helps the Americans win the skirmish and capture some of the remaining Nazis, but he is fatally wounded.

Before he dies, he tells the captured Germans,”We have been doing the work of  the devil. Go home, and quit saying ‘heil’.”

This is good advice for me. I have to renew my relationship with God and quit doing the work of the devil. Only then will I have a chance to get rid of my own deadly sins and reconcile with others.