An interesting coincidence

Yesterday was a horrible day for me. I'm feeling down - not blue like when the weather is constantly dreary. Down like when people who should love me and continuously say they love me demonstrate rejection by their silence.

My drive to work is 8 minutes - 10 if I hit both lights as they turn red. My drive to school is 15 minutes. These times are important.

I headed to work in the morning yesterday. Normally I listen to AM sports talk radio. They just went to commercial, so I flipped to FM and scanned the channels. A powerful song was on the Christian radio station. It touched me in my sadness and breathed a small breath of hope in my soul. I nearly cried in the car.

I left work to go home. Dr. Laura usually accompanies me for those brief minutes. She was interesting, but her caller was super boring, so I switched to FM and flipped through the channels. The same Christian station (by the way, it's #6 on my dial and I almost always go in order from 1-6) was playing the same song. Again, I caught the song moments after it started. It really touched me deep in my soul once more. It was an interesting enough coincidence that I mentioned it to a couple people at my class later that evening.

So after class, I'm driving home. I normally listen to Love Line because after class is the latest I'm ever up listening to the radio. Well, my project group had been working a little late, so I was about 20 minutes later heading home than normal. Love Line went to commercial, so I started flipping. No station was playing a song, so I kept flipping for 60 seconds. I landed on the same station as before for about the third or fourth time and found the same song playing once more - it was at the beginning.

What are the chances that in the total of about 15 minutes that I listened to music on the radio that I'd hear the same song, 3 times, and catch it near the beginning every time? I did not hear another song on the radio in that time either.

Coincidence, maybe, but God's fingerprints are all over it.

Oh, you want to know which song, huh? Here it is.



I try to hold on to this world with everything I have
But I feel the weight of what it brings, and the hurt that trys to grab
The many trials that seem to never end, His word declares this truth,
that we will enter in this rest with wonders anew

But I hold on to this hope and the promise that He brings
That there will be a place with no more suffering

There will be a day with no more tears,
No more pain, and no more fears
There will be a day when the burdens of this place,
Will be no more, we’ll see Jesus face to face
But until that day, we’ll hold on to you always

I know the journey seems so long
You feel your walking on your own
But there has never been a step
Where you’ve walked out all alone

Troubled soul don’t lose your heart
Cause joy and peace he brings
And the beauty that’s in store
Outweighs the hurt of life’s sting

I can’t wait until that day
where the very one I’ve lived for always will wipe away
the sorrow that I’ve faced
To touch the scars that rescued me
from a life of shame and misery
this is why this is why I sing….

There will be a day with no more tears,
no more pain, and no more fears
There will be a day when the burdens of this place,
will be no more, we’ll see Jesus face to face

There will be a day,
He’ll wipe away the stains,
He’ll wipe away the tears,
He’ll wipe away the tears
There will be a day.

Mom in Bad Car Accident

My mother was in a bad car accident. She's fine--abrasions, bruising, soreness. Nothing broken though.


She turned left through an intersection, not seeing an oncoming car.




It hit hard on the passenger side of the car. She's lucky, if you asked me.




It took them 20 minutes to extract her from the car.




Ambulence ride required.

A Legacy of Fear

This post is about the Legacy of Fear my father instilled in me that haunts me to this day.

The story goes that while I was a teenager, I would have deep "getting into God" times. These are the times where I would be reading my Bible and praying consistently. When I'm in these times, I'm sensitive to His Spirit. I don't read and pray on a schedule. Instead, I feel the small nudges on my soul as God asks me to spend time with Him. So I do, and the times are rich beyond measure.

Every so often I would fall off the wagon and have to learn it all over again. Then the cycle's intensity began to increase. I would get close, then something would happen and I'd fall off the wagon again, over and over, quicker and quicker.

It took me a couple years to realize that I was being pushed off. Every time I got close to God and really began to seek Him, my earthly father would become angry at something and go into one of his tirades. In these times, he became oppressive. He would look for tiny details of my life that caused him displeasure, and then he would squeeze. Most of the time he focused on stupid stuff. He would search my bedroom or look closely at my behavior just to find something to pick on. None of it was necessary. None of the things were terrible or even bad, they just were just things for him to control. These times sparked incredible anger and frustration in me, which in turn cut me off from God.

A pattern emerged. I became aware of it and began to test it. I'd go 3 months without devotions, then I would start them and observe the results. Within 1 week, my father would explode. After 1.5 years of testing, the results were conclusive. It was terrible. It was predictable. And ultimately, it was successful. A Legacy of Fear was born.

I lost the battle. I told God that I couldn't speak to Him under these conditions. I surrendered to the persecution and despaired. Around this time, I saw a movie which put forth a premise that really described how I was feeling. In the movie, the antagonist says, "Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers baled, what does that tell you about God?" I knew in my brain that he was wrong, because the premise is based in our perspective not on the personhood of God.

Still, the Legacy of Fear reigned in my life. It's control was devastating. I lost my muse. I lost my optimism. I lost my innocense. It wasn't all bad. I also lost my ignorance. I lost my arrogance. I lost my judgementalism. In essence, I became a different person.

The irony is that when I'm around God or when I read my Bible, my muse awakens. My ability to feel compassion and empathy and my ability to express myself in poetry rise from the ashes of my past and fill me with a vibrance I thought was long gone.

Yet the Legacy of Fear remains, like the White Witch's neverending winter without Christmas. So here I am, longing for the warmth of God's presence but trapped in icy fear. It's not courage I lack. I lack a careless stupidity, a free spirit persona, that would allow me to try to approach God again. I know that if I decide to do so, within 1 week, my father, who I have not talked to in over 4 months, would return with all his garbage, ready to unload some of it on my life.

I much prefer quietly dying of thirst rather than pulling the trigger of the gun someone is pointing at my head. This is melodramatic, of course, but the imagery seems apropos. Still, somewhere deep in my soul, my muse cries out to God. I keep telling it to be quiet, to not disturb the controlled calm I've managed to scrape together. Part of me wants God to stomp into my dark room and shed some light, but another part of me just wants to be left alone. My model for God is tainted, and I have trouble imagining a God who loves me despite my faults.

This song works pretty well for describing my feelings and also my hope. The verses are in one voice and the chorus and bridge are another voice's response.



In my hands
A legacy of memories
I can hear you say my name
I can almost see your smile
Feel the warmth of your embrace
But there is nothing but silence now
Around the one I loved
Is this our farewell?

Sweet darling you worry too much, my child
See the sadness in your eyes
You are not alone in life
Although you might think that you are

Never thought
This day would come so soon
We had no time to say goodbye
How can the world just carry on?
I feel so lost when you are not at my side
But there is nothing but silence now
Around the one I loved
Is this our farewell?

Sweet darling you worry too much, my child
See the sadness in your eyes
You are not alone in life
Although you might think that you are

So sorry your world is tumbling down
I'll watch you through these nights
Rest your head and go to sleep
Because my child, this is not our farewell.
This is not our farewell.

Alone in a Crowded Church

My wife and I have a continuing problem of not finding a niche in a church. We don't have kids. We're both homebodies of a sort.

Meeting people is not a huge problem (though it is an obstacle), but what does it take to have other church members take a genuine interest in you? We've always lacked any sort of Christian mentorship or couple-to-couple friendship from church members. (We have some of that from great college friends, but I'm not talking about them.) It does not matter if we are participating in church activities or ministering to others or just warming pews, there just seems to be a lack of personal interest from surrounding people.

Everyone has their own lives. But I wonder how many other people feel as I do. I wonder how many of them I sit next to in church.

I'm capable of skipping church frequently because I know that nobody will miss me when I'm gone and those who would miss me don't go to my church.