Breaking Through

I was driving earlier and I saw the sun struggling to break through the brooding clouds. I couldn't help but feel a connection. I raced to a decent spot to take a picture and snapped this off with my high tech camera phone. Not the greatest quality but still a great picture of how I feel.

The Void

Yearning fills me
emotion takes over
dying for connection 
I feel lost

Love surrounds me
friends and family
perfect Father
I feel alone

Deep down
lost to all
what is good
I feel wrong

Into the void
feel the deep
engage the pain
I feel sad

Run from the void
jettison myself
disengage
I feel dead

Will it fade
the haziness
clouding me
I feel empty

The void
always there
never filled
never satisfied

I feel hopeless

But I know there is hope...

Psalm 42: 2-5
  
  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
         When shall I come and appear before God?
  My tears have been my food day and night,
         While they continually say to me,
         “Where is your God?”
        
  When I remember these things,
         I pour out my soul within me.
         For I used to go with the multitude;
         I went with them to the house of God,
         With the voice of joy and praise,
         With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.
        
  Why are you cast down, O my soul?
         And why are you disquieted within me?
         Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
         For the help of His countenance.

Lost and Wandering

I’ve been wandering around lost in the recesses of my mind. Bogged down by a mire of lies that have developed over years of misinformation and bad choices. Its been a week of bad choices and believing those lies. I let myself slip into the old fog where confusion and chaos rule. No clarity, no foundation, slowly losing hope, slowly dying.

I don’t mean to be dramatic or negative in any way, but I do want to be clear. I feel like I was floundering and the reason why begins with my choice not to trust and to take control over my life. Life! As if I can have life when I’m in control. When I step back and look at my futile attempts to control my life I have to laugh. I know so little, I control even less, and when I try to control I end up lost and wandering. What drives it all is that innate desire for love and acceptance, which I think I can find on my own. True love only comes from one place. The place that I have been running from this week.

I see now the irony. I want love so badly, but I’m running from the only person who can give me what I want. I’m looking in all the wrong places. So my life becomes an endless pursuit of something that does not exist here. Looking everywhere, finding only disappointment after endless disappointment, because nothing satisfies, nothing fills, nothing is perfect. Yet the mind plays tricks, ‘the next one will be the one.’

Eventually I get tired of searching, and I give up, saying, ‘I will just be alone.’ Stop yearning and maybe the pain will go away. It will numb and fade, but I will die. I’ve followed that road many times and I have only just broken free from those chains. Despair becomes your only friend, and there is room for no one else, only misery and self-pity.

Hope has begun to break through the chaos. There is a foundation of truth and love that I can stand on. It boils down to relationship, but not the kind of relationship that I keep seeking after. A true love relationship, where the other person is always put first. My Father wants me to love Him. This isn’t selfishness on His part because He already loves me so much more than I could possibly ever love Him. This is the only true love and this is the model and foundation for every other relationship. In reality I can only love Him because He loved me first. As I engage in this relationship, receive the love, it compels me to love, and not only my Father but all those around me as well. Now I have something to give. I am no longer empty, lost and wandering, but full of life. I have purpose and love is at the center of it all. Love is true life!

Tuxedo

Have I ever told you about our cat Tuxedo? No...okay, well you're in for a treat. Tuxedo was by far the best and the craziest cat we ever had. We got Tuxedo when I was about ten years old and obviously he looked just like he had a tux on, because he had a nice patch of white fur on his chest. He was so cuddly and cute when he was little, but he got a little more aggressive as he got older.

              (Yes, I realized that all the animal pics I have are with my sister)

Tuxedo's favorite place to hangout was at the end of our couch. The couch was next to our main walk way and his favorite thing to do was jump out from behind the couch and surprise us as we walked by. The surprise was that he would fly at you with all fours paws out-stretched and wrap himself around your leg with claws extended. He then became a permanent fixture on your leg as you continued to walk. Or if you attempted to remove him with a hand, your hand would be pulled into his trap as well. Our legs were constantly decorated by nice long scratches.

As he got older he developed a few other bad habits as well. He loved attacking our neighbors six year old boy. He also liked to mark his territory and for some reason he thought the clean sheets hanging on our neighbors clothesline were his, you get the idea. Some of his habits were quite amusing and more or less harmless, unless you happened to be a bat or mouse. He loved to sit on our second story porch and wait for the bats as they flew around our house at night. When he saw one flying close enough he would leap off the porch and snatch the bat out of the air. The bat would practical be eaten by the time he hit the ground. The only parts he didn't eat were the wings, which he so graciously gave to my sis as a little prize. One night my sis was having a sleepover and a couple of the girls were sleeping on a mattress on the floor in her room. Tuxedo caught a nice juicy mouse, ate half of it and left the other half at the feet of my sisters friend. The girl woke with a start and screamed as loud as an air raid siren, waking everyone up. You would of thought she had seen a ghost. It was just a harmless mouse...

We loved tuxedo a lot but he was a wild cat. He broke the last straw when he killed our neighbor girl's pet chicken. I still don't understand what the big deal is. She should of never let her chicken out where it was vulnerable. Irregardless (a made up word that is redundant and rather pointless, but still fun to use, and if you have a problem with that [Kass], google it!), we decided that we had to get rid of Tuxedo before our neighbors decided to stop speaking to us.

Since Tuxedo was such a good hunter we figured he would be fine if we just left him in the jungle. My dad and my sister took him away on the motorbike and left him far enough that he wouldn't find his way home. I'm fairly certain that he probably still rules that part of the jungle to this day. Or maybe he died that very day of a broken heart...no, I doubt it. I think maybe he didn't have one.

So, not really a happy ending, but not a bizarre random death either, so maybe this is one mark against the existence of the curse. Though it kind of depends on how you feel about abandoning cats in the jungle...you decide.

If worrying actually caused warts I would be a wart hog

Is life complicated? I feel like it is very, very complicated most of the time. There is always so much going on around me. So much to think about and figure out and mostly to worry about. I often feel overwhelmed and want to give up, but mostly I just worry about everything some more. So maybe my life isn't so much complicated but worrisome? Not sure if I'm using that word correctly, but you get the idea. I also don't think I'm alone in this. I think its in human nature to want to be in control and when we aren't in control (which is all the time) we start to worry. Or maybe I'm just projecting?

The point of this post isn't to ramble on about my problem with worrying, so I'll get on with it and explain what God has (ever so gently) been explaining to me.

One of the things I worry about is my job (here I go again). I feel like no matter what I do, how good an employee I am, I could still be let go at any minute. There is just no stability in the company I work for, and it seems like my job depends mostly on whether my boss is feeling good today or not. This is completely out of my control, but I spend a lot of time thinking and mostly worrying about it. This is just one of many situations that I feel is on the verge of stomach ulcer status. Sad I know, but I can't help...or can I?

God has been showing me that my worries are simply a lack of trust in Him and His faithfulness. Simple truth, but when you unpack it, it has very large implications. If God is good (He certainly is) and He cares about me (which He does) then I need not worry about any situation I find myself in. Its so simple really (I need simple). I can trust God, He will give me whats best for me and He is always faithful.

So often I feel like I have to figure everything out and break it down, and it has to be completed, resolved...perfect. There is no room for imperfection, for stretching and growing and slowly being shaped by loving hands. Often I forget that the hands are there and I feel like I have to do this on my own. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make, I need to trust the hands that are guiding me. He knows, He cares and He will give me what I need in ever situation. I don't have to have it all together, only trust Him now, in this situation right now.

He is here with me, He loves me, He is good; why shouldn't I trust Him...there is hope!

Commander Wesley R. Guinn

This was suppose to be my post for the fourth, but my internet has been acting up and I keep putting off finishing it. So this is just a reminder that we can still be patriotic even after the fourth. Just a thought about how much so many have given to protect our freedom. Its not a dramatic or glorious story, but simply about a man who has stayed the course and been a faithful part of our military.

I did a job at an older woman's house about a week ago. While I was filling out the paper work she asked me what my name was. I told her my name and she exclaimed,"that's my sons name." I could tell she was very proud of her son. She immediately asked if she could show me some pictures. Ordinarily I would have given some excuse about being in a hurry to get to my next job, but I didn't have another job right away and so I decided to amuse her.

She proceeded to show me an entire album of pictures dedicated to her son and his service in the Navy. He was the commander of the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Scranton for the last three years before he retired. I was very impressed. I don't know a lot about the military but I do know that it is an honor to command a submarine and only the best men receive that honor. I saw pictures of this man and his family and his men and thought, "this is a good man." He seems to have had a very full and accomplished life. I took a picture of one of the many pictures of him in the album:



I told his mother I would post this in my blog and I just thought it would be nice to give one of the many faithful in our military some of the respect and honor they deserves. Thank you Commander Guinn for your service.

Elusive the Snake

Okay, so maybe that wasn't his real name, but it's catchy and I don't have a clue what we actually called our first pet snake. Okay, only pet snake, that we didn't even have for very long, but we did have a pet snake.

Have you ever tried to catch a snake? It's much more difficult than you might think. First there is the fear factor. Snakes are scary no matter how small and harmless they are. They were harmless where I lived because there has never been a recorded poisonous snake on the island of New Britain. I couldn't help but wonder if I might be the first to discover one. Then there is what I call the 'slime' factor. They seem slimy even though they totally aren't. They're just slippery and hard to grab, and even if they're not poisonous, no one wants to be bit. Poisonous or not, a snake bite hurts! If you are in the jungle, like I was, then there are also lots of places for a snake to hide or to escape your attempts to catch it. None the less, my sis and I did indeed catch a small snake, in the jungle, without getting bit.

Elusive(or whatever we named him{or her, for that matter}), the snake, was about two feet long and green all over. We carried our prize home ever so carefully and placed him in a small screen cage we used for transporting our cat. Our only dilemma was what to feed our new slimy friend. We really had no idea what a snake might enjoy eating. We pondered and argued and eventually agreed that our Elusive might enjoy some spiders, at least as a snack till we could fine something more substantial. We knew just where to find a large number of what we called X spiders(these spiders wove a neat little X at the center of there webs). After collecting several fine specimens we placed them in the cage with our friend Elusive. We kept them alive of course, in order that they would remain fresh till Elusive was ready to dine.

The next day we discovered Elusive dead in his(or her) cage and all the spiders quite alive and well. Apparently the X spider is more than capable of killing a snake. We began to wonder if they might be able to kill a human too. We decided we wouldn't play with X spiders anymore. There were several different type of poisonous spiders on our island, thought we didn't know which they were. We did know that the X spider seemed to be one of them. This lesson we learned the hard way.

Just another one of the many pets that fell to the curse...