security vs. freedom

My Dad and I were discussing some political things last week and I came to the conclusion that our society, and often our lives, are a balance between freedom and security. Liberal tends to be the word we use for those who lean toward freedom and Conservative is what we call those who lean toward security. So, it is not without reason that the older one gets, the more conservative one gets. The young person does not know there is anything to be safe from, and has nothing to lose. The older person wants only not to lose that which he has gained and needs more security. They are the yin and the yang of our society. Great security is found in totalitarianism, but there is no freedom. Great freedom is found in anarchy, but there is no security. Everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum as to their personal beliefs.

I would ask this question, in this day of Christian Conservatives (of which I have been for most of my life - WOW! I have been a Christian for most of my life now!), Where does God ask us to stand? Take away the political names and look in the Bible for whether God calls us to be safe or free. Which do you see? By all the writings and radio shows and sermons I have heard, one would think the Bible is firmly in the security camp. But, does not the weight of scripture tell us things about being free, or at the very least unsafe? The Bible calls for us to take up our cross, to pour ourselves out for others, to boldly go where none have gone before (o wait, that last part is not the Bible). But, seriously folks, we live within the tension. Should we try to balance precariously on the razor's edge of exact center, or does the balance of Scripture point to one side heavier than the other? Which is more important, affluence and personal security or social justice? You tell me.

Hi, my name is Chris and I am addicted to...

Most people who know me well would tell you that I could care less if people like me. They are right, acceptance is a devalued currency for me. As I have been thinking about Part 20 of my story, it has occurred to me that this was not always so. I have begun to realize that my lack of a need for acceptance came from two things. First, never really feeling accepted and Second, not liking the things I did to be accepted. No, I never wanted to be liked, I wanted to be needed. My drug is value and I am addicted to it.

I do not mean that I do not enjoy it when someone actually likes being with me, just that it does not get my juices flowing. Respect or value are totally different. I am not sure whether it is my lack of education which makes me yearn for respect, or whether it is something else. Perhaps I was just made this way. But, Cathy can always tell when someone has fed this need of mine. I am nicer, easier to be around. There is much less trying to prove that I have value (which can be a real drag to others) and less of the constant self-criticism when people don't "get" me.

There are people in my life who I really don't think "get" me. For example, I have a friend we will call ... Doug, because that is his name. He is a good man and I am glad that I feel I can call him friend. But, there is always this look he gets when we talk that makes me think he is waiting for me to pull my skin off and reveal the alien wearing the Chris costume. I am sure he does not even know he does it, but he really does. I don't think he doesn't like me, I just don't think he gets me, understands me. He is not alone.

I understand that for some people I have nothing to offer (I am not saying this about Doug, just some people). They can not find a use for me. I don't produce anything they can quantify, I do not fit into any box they can categorize. This is as it should be and I like it. But, some people need a well-ordered universe (good luck) and they think that anything that does not fit into their ideal shape is either broken or evil. I believe that the God who exists, the real God, the maker of all things has everything in order, but He likes variety. I believe that it is fundamentally true that He has blessed us with unique qualities and that we all have value. All of us. Everyone. You.

Sit with that for a moment. Deep inside, you are the you who He has made. God values you, wants you, accepts you, treasures you, loves you, likes you. I know God has a sense of humor and I know that He laughs at my jokes, sometimes He and I will giggle about things for hours, no joke. He values me. So, lets make a pact, you and I, to remember this. Remember that you have intrinsic value and I will remember it too, and if we forget lets remind each other. What do you say?

part XIX

Christmas in 1980 was a trip. Darin and I were suddenly living with Mom & Bud in Santa Clara and we got some furniture from Dad, so we had to go pick it up. I was scared to death. I really didn't want to see him and I was really quite frightened to be in our old house, but nothing went wrong. Dad told us he was moving to Colorado soon, and we left shortly thereafter. I was so afraid of Dad that the thought of him living in another state was a real "pick me up."

I assume Dad moved on or around the beginning of the year, but before school was even back in session, Mom and Bud forced Darin to move also. So, Darin got shipped off to Colorado to live with Dad and I stayed behind, where Mom enrolled me at Juan Cabrillo Junior High School. Cabrillo was gang central. Even though it was in a fairly affluent area, the hispanic gangs were in full control in the area. At this school, there were 20 "white boys" and we stuck together. "White Boys" is what we were always called, but two of us were actually black, oddly enough. I didn't really know how bad the gang situation was until I was confronted one day for "staring down" an older kid. I told him I wasn't even looking at him, but it didn't matter...I was a "white boy." After doing everything I could to keep this guy from killing me, he went about telling me what different tags (graffitti) and gang signs were, what certain slang emant and basically how to keep from getting shot. What started out as a scary situation, somehow became pretty darn educational.

One day while some friends and I were walking home, some of the gang girls decided to beat up my friend's girlfriend. There was nothing we could do. There were perhaps 100 people standing aroundyelling for about 5 of the girls to "beat that white girl's ass." The three of us off to the side were worried about the beating we would take as we watched 5 girls gang up and punch and kick our friend while she laid on the ground trying to just cover her head. Then this little tiny guy, who I recognized from school, walked up and put a cigarette out in her back while the crowd hooted and hollered. I was horrified and was about as close as one could come to throwing my life away to hit the kid when a van-load of caucasion kids pulled up, jumped out with bats swinging and pulled us all into the van to drive us home. they passed by, lived in the area and knew there was no hope of us getting out of there any other way. I was pretty shamed that I had not done more to stop this.

My opportunity came later in the week. It was late in the afternoon and I was walking home through a nearby park when I spotted the kid who had burned her traipsing through the other side of the park. Without really thinking about it, I ran up and punched him in the side of the head and kicked him twice in the ribs as he went down. I leaned over him where he was crying and balled up and told him that was payback, then I ran home. This seemed like a pretty good idea until two weeks later when it was me who was traipsing through the park alone. You see, that kid was the younger brother of a gang leader. I looked up and saw two young hispanic guys walking toward me with what looked like broomsticks in their hands. As one took a swing at me, I stepped in and kicked the other in the groin as hard as I could, then turned and punched the other square in the nose. They were both down and I was feeling pretty good about myself. But that is because I didn't see the three behind me. I got hit hard in the back with a stick of some type and I went down, but from my back I kicked one of those kids in the groin and tried to get back up. It didn't work. I took what is still one of the worst beatings I have ever taken. Just a little hint, if you are going to kick someone in the groin, make sure they don't get up...it makes them pretty mad.

I was still fighting, because I figured I was going to die and I might as well take someone with me, but the fight was going hard against me. Just when I was at my worst, my face covered with blodd and feeling completely at my end, someone calmly said something in spanish and they all stopped and backed up. An adult guy walked up and told me that I "held my own" and he liked that, then he punched me hard in the ribs and I went down. He leaned over me and I expected he was going to stab me, but he just told me not to F*** with his gang and laughed as they all walked off. i really don't remember what my mom said when I got home but it could not have been a good sight. I never went back to the school and that Saturday morning, Mom put me on a plane to Denver. Once off the plane in Denver, I caught a bus to Colorado Springs, where my Dad, Patti, Darin and John picked me up.

Patti and John had moved to Colorado in early March and I moved there March 28th, 1981. I had some apprehension, but being with Dad was better than getting killed by gangs in Santa Clara, so I was less worried. We drove up highway 24 to the house in Woodland Park. I saw a herd of elk that day for the first time and thought to myself, "well, this is different." When we got to our little house in Woodland Park, it was a two bedroom with an unfinished basement. Darin and John had makeshift rooms in the basement with walls made out of blankets to separate them, but I was put in the room across from Dad's. I remember crying that night, but it got a little better over time.

in memoriam

Humor has always been very important to me. It has helped me cope and I still greatly value humor in life and friends. Actually, I probably place being funny as too high a priority for people. I can usually tie certain events in life to some comedy, TV, movie or record. Eddie Murphy's "Delirious" was my favorite album during my Senior year in HS; Saturday Night Live has had a profound impact on my consciousness; when I moved to CO in 1981 it was Steve Martin's album, "Comedy is Not Pretty"; and back in 1980 while living with my Aunt Carole, it was George Carlin's "Occupation:Foole".

Over the years I have begun to greatly differ with Mr. Carlin on most matters from Politics to Religion, but I am always stunned by his grasp of the english language. As a student of semantics and story, I am thrilled to listen to one of his riffs. I felt a kindred spirit with a man who while uneducated (he only finished the 9th grade), was one of the great communicators of our time. I have been blessed in my life by listening to his routines. They are art and while I may not always agree with the content, I am honored to have enjoyed his offerings. So, it was with some sadness that I learned of his passing last night of heart failure.

Mr. Carlin did not believe in God and I feel sad for his sudden revelation. To stand before God and say that you did not believe is a fearful thing. I do not pretend to have all the answers or to know his heart, but Mr. Carlin regularly stated that he thought belief in God was superstition. I pray that when reality hit him, it did not hit too hard. Goodbye, my fellow foole. Thank you for granting me the right and the joy to grasp that title and wear it as a badge of honor.

Part XVIII

Ahh, Simi Valley. Living in Ventura county, just across the county border from Los Angeles was an interesting journey. This was much different than the life I knew in L.A. before. We had always been poor and lived for the most part in apartments in L.A. This was the first time I had seen Aunt Carole since she and Uncle Gene had got a divorce. She was different now. She had lost a good deal of weight, wore skimpy clothes, too much make-up and only dated black men. Now, I am not one who cares about people's races or really who dates whom, but Aunt Carole was trying to make a point. She would go on and on calling her relationships "salt and pepper" and it always seemed she was trying to throw it in her dead father's face. I don't know why I felt that way, but I did. Popo was a racist, she knew it and she dated black men ... after Popo died. It seemed weak to me, even at 13, to try to use another person to make a point to man who by that time had been dead for 3 years.

At this time, Carole dated a man named Mark. Mark was a very tall, very dark man with a bald head and a goatee. I liked him a great deal. He would hang out with us and he was a musician and songwriter so he would sit at the piano and we would sing together. I thought the most of him, until I saw him put his fist through a window in a jealous rage. Mark didn't come around much after that. My two uncles would come around quite a lot. My Uncle Raymie, who was supposedly in witness protection, would swing by and tell me to hit him as hard as I could or he would try out some karate move. I have taken martial arts most of my life and there is one thing I can tell you ... Raymie didn't know anything. Charlie would come by a lot also. He was in between prison stays at the time and he would come over and tell me colorful tales of how he saved a mobster in prison and got shanked for it. Or, he would try to enlist my help to carry out a crime, including (no joke) wanting me to help him do a hit. Now, Charlie is full of crap, loads of it, so I think he just thought it was cool to say.

Mom had sent me out to California with $350 in cash which I guess I had earned in the warehouse. The family took it pretty fast. I was playing around and broke two ceiling light covers. The square opaque glass ones that were sort of standard in any house at the time. Aunt Carole told me I had to pay for them and charged me $75 each for them. It took me 4 years before I found out you could buy them at any hardware store for less than $3. But, that was my family, if they could take something from you, they would.

After the first couple of days there, Carole enrolled me at Sequoia Junior High School. I still remember how surprised I was at how many electives they had. You were able to choose elective Physical Education and one of the options was surfing. I am not kidding. Simi Valley is a good 45 minutes from the nearest beach, but we could take one 50 minute class per day in surfing. I am not sure how that worked, since I chose Wrestling for my elective PE. One day in class (my coach was a 1968 Bronze medalist named John Rodriguez), I tore a bunch of the muscles in the back of my neck. A doctor prescribed me a painkiller, which I was only supposed to half of a pill every 4-6 hours for pain. That weekend, oddly enough, my Uncle Charlie came to visit. Carole and Mark went out and Charlie broke out a jug of Carlo Rossi Rose Wine and "borrowed" some of my pills after getting me drunk (yes I was 13). I don't remember what happened after that.

Sometime that year my curiosity got the best of me and I found my aunt's massengills under the sink. I didn't really know what they were, but the instructions had nearly human looking drawings representing how to use them. It was a 1980 version of porn as far as I was concerned. I would hide it away and dream of women using it ... yep, there was definitely something wrong with me. Anyway, things got pretty bad in December between my aunt and I and I ran away, but was caught pretty quickly. She told me she was going to tell my mother what a horrible kid I was and I told her that I was going to tell my mom she was a prostitute. We agreed to keep our opinions to ourselves (and I don't think she was really a prostitute), but Carole called my Mom and on the first day of Christmas break, she sent me to Santa Clara where Mom and Bud had returned after finishing the work in Florida. Darin now lived with them after running away and getting caught also. So the week before Christmas, I moved to Santa Clara with Mom, Bud, Bud's son Gregg and my brother, Darin. It was not an arrangement which would last long.

Film thought

So, I am stranded at home with no working car, working from home and the server at my work is down. This means there will not be much getting done today. So, I flip on the TV and "K-Pax" a film starring Kevin Spacey (amazing actor, by the way) and Jeff Bridges is playing. Throughout this film, a psychiatrist (Bridges) is trying to debunk a man who claims to be from another planet (Spacey). Spacey's character keeps proving that he knows things which no one could know. I watched a scene where he explained something to a bunch of astronomers which had been unexplainable up to that moment. This interested me, because is this not how we as Christians live our lives everyday? Is this not the response we get from science? We prove in many ways that God exists, but people are so pre-disposed to believe what they have been told that they call US close-minded. I don't remember, but I think the movie ends with him not being from another planet, but the principle in that scene was one I could embrace, which I could recognize from my own life. Art is in the Story, look for it in others' stories, tell it in yours!

when mind and heart can't reconcile

I am one who, for the most part, can control my emotions with reason. If I can reason something out, or remind myself of a truth, then anxiety, anger and fear will melt away. However, there are times when it doesn't seem to work, like my pyche has gone on the fritz. This past week has seemed to be one of those times. I am having the hardest time reconciling my heart with my mind. I have been unusually, and unreasonably stressed, anxious, sad, depressed and just generally tense.

I have a lot of tough decisions to make in regards to my career, finances and the like, but it is not a particularly new situation for me. I am always testing to make certain that I am on the right path and correcting my steps to get back. So, I am not certain why I am struggling so much right now. In my head I have the right ideals, philosophy and concepts. My heart won't listen.

I am struggling with feelings of anger, failure, incompetence, and very negative messages in my head. But there is no unusual, concrete reason for these feelings. The other night I just started feeling like a bad father...for no reason at all. I know that God is in control but can't seem to keep from worrying at all.

So, now is the part where I figure it all out, right? I give some pearl of wisdom about how I will fix it all. Alright, here gooes ... I am waiting ... Anytime time now ... C'MON!!! I have nothing, no ideas, no wisdom, no reference. Nothing. I guess in the light of this revelation, I just keep moving, keep doing what I think is right, keep responding as I think God wants me to and wait. I've got to be honest though, it doesn't fill me with warm fuzzies.

Part XVII

Stifling mugginess. That is what I remember when we got to Tampa. I remember leaving the cool, air-conditioned, controlled environment inside the airport and stepping into immediate sweat. It was June of 1980 and I looked every bit the part. I wore cut off jean shorts. I wore tube socks with wide stripes across the top pulled up to just below the knee and the tennis shoes which I hoped everyone would assume were Adidas, even though they had only two stripes, which gave them away as clear knock-offs. I had shoulder-length straight brown hair, parted in the middle and I looked like every average American kid at the time.

Mom, Bud and I left the airport and drove to one of the two houses in St. Petersburg which Bud's father had owned. Bud's dad had been a packrat, but a wealthy one. He owned two houses and two warehouses in St. Pete (as it was referred to) all of them filled to the brim with anything he thought he got a bargain on. As we cleared things out that summer, it was an amazing amount of crap, but also a stunning bit ofreally cool stuff. There were appliances by the tens, 13 dirt bikes and a myriad of just about every possible item one could want. Our job that summer was to clear out the buildings, sell everything and finally to sell the buildings also. My foot was still in bad shape for a couple of weeks, so for the first part, I hung out with Mom and watched a lot of TV.

Florida has bugs, lots of them, big ones. If you have never lived in Florida, it is surprising the size and array of bugs one can find. Thye king of the bug group, though, is the flying roach. These things were about 2 inches long and 3/4 inch wide and Floridians treated them like flies, shooing them away but accepting them as a normal part of life. Not me. They totally disgusted me. We don't tolerate roaches in California, we combat them. While it is true that they usually win the battle, and the war, we do not appease the little things. Apparently, in Florida, an armistice has been signed. But what is odd is that Floridians are scared to death of spiders, any spiders. Honestly, I don't think I saw more than one the whole time we were there, but it was as though an alien from another planet had invaded the warehouse. I just laughed and squashed it. I guess bugs, and our fear thereof, are a cultural thing.

When my foot healed enough to remove the stitches, I traded my time between working in the warehouses and spear-fishing. One day, early in my trip, I found an 8-foot pole with a five pronged spearhead. It looked like a trident, but with five prongs, what is that? A Quindent? Anyway, it had a 30 foot rope through the very end of the pole and I would stand at the end of the street and randomly chuck it into the canal. St. Pete is interlaced with canals and it seems every street has one at the end. About one in ten times I threw, I would pull back a critter. Sometimes fish, but mostly shellfish of some sort. Very often, I pulled decent sized crab. This would all have been a hoot, had it not been for the fact that the "red tide was in." This was explained to me as a huge group of infected plankton which travelled in an area the size of a small state throughout the Gulf region. When the tide was in, you could not eat the catch or it would make you crazy. I don't know if that is the true effect of Red Tide or if it is just poisonous, but I was told it made you crazy.

For the most part, I enjoyed my time in St. Pete. I was mostly left alone and though there were no kids around, I had fun doing whatever I wanted. We went on some fun trips out to the keys, I tried my hand at Scuba, we went to some wildlife parks and zoos, but mostly we were there to do a job and that is what we did. We went to the beach every once in a while, but the sand there is blindingly white and I am not that good with glare, I never have been. The sand at California beaches is just the way I like it, muted by decades of pollution and decay. The sand in Florida is some kind of fine, mirrored glass which burns the eye upon sight. I stuck to the canals and the warehouse.

As summer came close to the end, Mom needed to figure out what to do about my schooling. We visited a couple of schools in the area, I enrolled in one Junior High for one day and when I got home, Mom had packed my bags. I flew out that night for California and landed at the Hollywood-Burbank airport, where my Aunt Carole and my cousin Greg were waiting to pick me up. She lived in Simi Valley and rented a house on land which had orange and avocado orchards. I lived in the room with my 7 year old cousin and began attending Sequoia Junior High School.

another event from this time

I can't really put an exact date on it, but it was during this period of my life that I realized that lying worked for me. One would think that a parent would discourage this and although my folks' words said lying was bad, their actions said something else. It took me another fifteen years to see the other side. A couple of events in particular stand out in my mind as supporting the deceitful enterprise.

The first is a general, everyday occurance with my Dad while I was growing up. My Dad was (and is) a salesman. He is good at it. There were times when he would yell and scream and beat me, but if a client called, his entire demeanor would change. He would put a smile on his face, get calm immediately and say, "How the hell are ya?" to the person on the phone. This always struck me as psychotic. To this day it feels like a lie to pretend to feel other than I do. As such, if you ask me the common question "How are you?" I will actually tell you. This really bothers some people.

The second is very specific, but as I rack my brain, I can not come up with the thing I was supposed to have done wrong. Anyway, Dad thought I had done something. I had not. I don't remember what the something was, maybe Darin did it, maybe the dog did, I don't know but Dad was very mad at me and had hit me and grounded me. As he was coming into my room for another round of punishment, I admitted I had done it. Let me say again, this was a lie. It just came out as a defense, "okay, I did it and I am sorry." Dad stopped yelling, lost his anger and thanked me for my honesty.

The first situation taught me that lying worked for Dad. The second that lying worked for me. Now, I did not realize that would change me at the time. Nor did I realize how hard of a habit lying is to break. At one point in my life, it encompassed every aspect of my being (ok, that may be an overstatement). I still see this time as the beginning of my life truly changing for the worse. Before this, all the bad was external with some normal kid stuff, stupid things. After this, I was not a good person at all and the bad became internal. My soul began a deterioration which lasted a number of years until God plucked me out of it and started the long trek back up to sanity.

oh, I forgot to mention

When I returned to California in 1979, my Dad and Carole were into a new thing. They had taken up the teachings of the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi, also known as Transcendental Meditation. So, they had Darin and I go through the classes and join the group. At the end of this there is this ceremony where you present a picture of the living Mahareshi an apple, some rice and something else (don't remember, just that there were three things) and they gave you your mantra for chanting. After telling me that my mantra was special, just for me and only for me, they made me promise that I would never reveal my mantra to anyone. Darin and I each had private ceremonies of our own in separate rooms, and we had ridden our bikes over there. So, as we were riding our bikes home, we had the following conversation:

Darin - "did you get a mantra?"

Me- "yeah"

Darin - "was yours ing?"

Me - "yeah"

Darin - "mine too. What a bunch of crap!"

Me - "yeah"

Darin - "They are such liars! You want to go to the 7-11?"

Me - "yeah"

Part XVI

If Dad was unreasonable as a part of his personality, he became gifted that fall. As I remember it, his passion was telling me how lazy I was, what an idiot I was and hitting me enough that I stayed in a constant state of fear. Later in life, Dad would tell me that he sort of held it against me that Carole left. I choose not to argue, but I am pretty sure it was the black eye. Anyway, I remember that time as one of the worst of my life. I never seemed to do anything right or be capable of goodness. You will have to forgive the downer that I am sure the next few posts will be.

In August of 1979, I entered Middle School. Rogers had been a Junior High until that year, so I entered the school as the only class which was never the youngest in the school. We were 7th graders in a 6th-7th-8th, but it had been 7th-8th the year before. In theory, this should have been good for me, but I was such a nerd that it didn't help at all. My personal hygeine was lacking at best due to no parental supervision. Dad was always stoned, drunk or away. In the beginning of the year we took a speed reading course and I was able to read 1,610 wpm with 90% comprehension which sounds pretty good...unless that 10% was important. For 100% it dropped me down to just over 1300 wpm. Honestly, this never came in handy, because I don't read for just facts, but read for nuance and one can not do this with speed-reading.

Notable events which happened that year: My Dad started dating Patti, who is still my step-mother (3rd time was the charm). I got head lice...twice. I was grounded for the entire year after I fell asleep while rolling up papers for my brother's route when he was away at camp and I had promised to finish. I got a cold and thinking it would be better, I took two contac pills and woke up three school periods later when my Mom arrived to pick me up. Darin had made stuff in wood shop which Dad still cherishes to this day, but when I made him things in metal shop, he pointed out the flaws. I got a girlfriend named Nancy who was new at school and we were thick as thieves until her friends told her what a geek I was, and she dumped me. I skipped school with my friend Jordan (who was Persian, not a good year to be Persian) and stole some of my Dad's weed, when we got caught I got in trouble and the toughest kid in school did a flying sidekick into my back for lying to the principal (no kidding, the principal did nothing). I did Track & Field that year and did okay, but had to drop it when I went to my future step-brother's house after a meet while I was grounded. Then, at the end of the school year, Dad let me try out for "Carousel" for which I landed a speaking part (two lines) but he decided after I was cast, that since I was still grounded I could not be in the play.

During that year, Mom had married Bud. Since we were not invited to the wedding, I can't tell you what month it was. Shortly thereafter, Bud's dad died in Florida and he and Mom had gone out to take care of his affairs. They returned in early June of 1980 as they realized that they would need to be in St. Petersburg for longer than expected and wanted to get some things in order. So, around mid-June we went to Mom's for the weekend and Bud's son, Gregg. invited Darin and I to go to the pool at a local High School. We climbed over two fences to get into the closed pool, but there were other kids there as well and we swam for a while and laid out on the hot concrete. I was practising my diving, never a strong point for me. After one jump, I grabbed hold of the board and (as I always did) put my foot up onto the pool light right beneath the diving board for leverage to lift myself up. I felt a sharp pain as the broken glass from that light sliced to the bone across my toes and I screamed. Gregg and Darin called me a "giant pussy" and came over to see what I was whining about. There was blood everywhere, I mean everywhere.

We wrapped my foot with my dirty sock, put my sneaker back on and I climbed back over the two fences while Gregg told me he would destroy me if I got blood on his Camaro. Back at home, Mom and Bud pulled off the shoe which now was so full of blood that it squished when I walked and the sneaker was a deep red. When they unwrapped the sock from around the end of my foot, they grew truly concerned. We took a trip to the emergency room where I received 19 stitches in my big toe and 12 in the next one. I have never been able to tell how that many stitches could fit on so small an area, but I have the scars to this day and not a lot of feeling in those toes. The shots in the wound were excruciating, but my fear was worse than the pain. I begged Mom not to tell Dad and she said he would notice when I came in. In all candor, I told her that if Dad found out I had violated my grounding and also broken the law by breaking into the pool, I would not live out the summer. I was not being over-dramatic, I really believed it. And Mom and Bud must have also believed it, because the next week they took me with them to St. Petersburg Florida when they returned.

hooked on facebook and other recent things

So, after years of promoting the concept of social networking and at the same time avoiding doing it myself, Cathy convinced me to sign up for facebook. And I love it. I love the Office trivia, I love the flair, just having fun. I guess the question will be, how long will it retain my interest? I suppose that depends upon how much actual interaction I get out of it. We shall see I guess, I am so fickle it is hard to say.

You ever have one of those times of limbo where nothing is all that bad and nothing is all that good and you seem to be in a holding pattern for who knows what? I am in one of those times now. I am uncertain as to what direction God is leading and the forks in my road are multi-pronged and seem to head off in a multitude of directions. The word I keep hearing in my head is "wait." I am very quick to make a decision because I feel that making a decision is better than sitting still, but for some reason I keep hearing "wait." It is like the first time that Neo meets the agents in "Matrix" and he is on the phone with Morpheus and the situation seems to scream to him to get out, reason tells him so. Morpheus tells him to wait, then move when the time is right. So, I am crouched in my cubicle of life and waiting for God to say "move." It is both exhilirating and scary. We shall see what happens. Hopefully, the agents don't get me.

endorsement

Alrighty, I have two props to shout out for some products which I can endorse:

First, Cathy bought the new Jason Mraz CD and you must hear it. I am a fan to begin with, but this CD is awesome. Specifically, the third track is a duet with Colby Callait which tells the joys of being in love with your best friend. It reminds me of my relationship with Cathy and is a real treat.

Second, I am half-way through the book, "Three cups of tea", about a guy named Greg Mortensen who has built more than 50 schools in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. The most amazing thing is that he begins building them when he is living in his car and sells even the car and all his gear to finance the trip to build the first school. Although not a Christian, this guy models following Christ in the sense of "sell everything you own, give it to the poor and follow Me." It humbles me to read this man's story of philanthropy and reminds me that I don't have to wait until I am rich to pour myself out for others. It is also a good read, which helps.

Buy them both and I think you will greatly enjoy them!