or else your life will suck worse.

i've got more blessing flowing through my life than i can keep track of. though, it makes me happy when i do. and i've also got a lot of crap circulating which, more often than not, overshadows the good going on. i've got choices to make every day: do i not stir things up and hang out in situations that aren't good for me?  or do i stir things up and get out of situations that aren't good for me, in which case, i've lost a place to hang out.  i come up empty at the end of most days and making smart decisions pisses me off.  smart choices doesn't always mean seclusion but some days it does.  i look inside myself on those days and see if i can find any character building in process...but pretty much all i see is nothing. except the blaring feeling that, in this too, i've gotta have faith.  which pisses me off but still leaves me feeling comforted in a non-obvious or sometimes obvious way when i fall asleep at night.

wisdom that transcends every aspect of your life comes from the lord.  not that people who don't love jesus are dumb... but i've got a pretty obvious 'red light, green light' system in place inside me because of jesus/holy spirit. CONVENIENT. but it's also rare to find my head and heart in the same place at the same time. choices have to be made based solely off those stop and/or go signals the holy spirit gives off and i can't wait for my innards to agree with each other.  which can leave me dragging my feet when something's changed in my life because of a decision i MADE not because of a decision that i FELT. but somehow there's a resounding something inside me that approves.  and the lord's got all the therapy i need in order to get back up to speed. because, seriously. i could use some counseling. that'd be fantastic.

and people are coming out of the woodwork to help.  jesus never leaves his kids abandoned. good thing. he's faithful to his kids even when they're big bratty jerks.  and for some reason i think he's especially faithful when his folks are faithful to him.  whatever that looks like.  SO, DON'T BE DUMB AND MAKE GOOD CHOICES. or else your life will suck worse than it does now.

the end.

matt theissen. oh, matt theissen.

this song pops into my head for the first time in seven years today as i'm driving to work. AS IT TURNS OUT, it's pretty relevant to life today.  how fantastic. oh, matt theissen.  there IS benefit to memorizing tunes on repeat ALL DAY, ERY DAY when you're thirteen. lyrics come back right when you like them to. how fantastic.

unfortunately unnecessarily unintelligent.

riding two horses with one ass is not something the rowdiest rodeo stars attempt...so, why not pick a side in life? the lines get blurred sometimes and nobody's perfect but can't we just be resigned to a default that always brings us back home?  and can't we do everything in our current power to lessen the blurriness in our lives?  wouldn't life be easier if we were faithful to the loyalties we've got in life?  would more consistency make us as boring as people say?  

i'm hearing people say things about you that aren't good.  hearing what i heard about you might break your heart. but knowing that if what i heard didn't break your heart then it'd break MY heart. because then you're in trouble and you don't care that you're in trouble.  that makes double trouble.

what's unfortunate is unnecessary unintelligence: you don't have to be dumb but you're choosing to be.  you may not see the flames yet but smoke is rising in your life and sooner or later you're going to be one. hot. mess.

and i'm watching the guns pointing at me as i'm pointing at you. i'm concerned with my own life and i'm trying.  wholeheartedly following jesus is a very. very. very gradual process. and there might always be movement in that process but that doesn't imply forward motion, necessarily.  however. i've got grounds to stand on that say what you're doing is wrong.  and so unnecessary.

"it is my eager expectation and hope that i will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death."
-philippians 1:20

and iiiiiiii will hold on hope.

Is there some quick fix to this that I’m not seeing? Usually my problems don’t last this long. My fuse is long and once it’s lit, I’m normally reasonable about throwing a bucket of water on it. Normally, I have a few conversations with some good people and I’m good again. Usually, my problems are normal things that I go through like a repeat offender. Dealing with these issues is a one day thing and after that I’m on my way to a better tomorrow. 

The world sucks and everybody knows it. Everybody’s felt it in a dad or mom gone south or a non existent bank account or presence of bad or lack of good relationships.  Whatever it is, we all deal with it and we get by.  We hang on hope, play some Mumford and eat a Scratch cupcake. And I’m here to vouch that cupcakes and music as coping mechanisms are not superficial.  Jesus is involved in the hope, in the Mumford, and most definitely in the cupcake. Those things are heavenly.  

But what happens when hope is out of stock, Mumford’s new album never comes out, and Scratch is always out of your favorite flavor? What happens when you feel royally screwed without any confidence that things are going to get better.  Or easier. What then?  Do we ever talk about sessions with shrinks that don’t make you feel better?  Or Bible verses that don’t speak to the hurt in your life?  Or journal entries, once a coping mechanism, that don’t speak to what you’re really feeling?  Trying to put into words what you’re feeling makes you feel dumb because half the time you can’t define what you’re feeling in the first place. And in the second place, you feel like this horse is dead and gone, and even though it ain’t gettin any deader you can’t keep from kicking it within an inch of its non-existent life. Again.

The thing about sin is that is disrupts the proper order of functioning in this world.  Sin leaves people helpless without hope or solutions to anything.  And not that I’m some cop, self-employed, trying to keep bad things from ever happening again. I mean, not that that’d be unwelcomed if it were possible.  But come on, what am I supposed to do.  There are people in my life with problems bigger and stretching further than all the mountain ranges in this world combined. Damage has been done long before I met them.  Damage is being done to them and I watch it happening and I have no control over the situation.  “I’m sorry that happened to you.  That person was wrong to do that,” and an arm around their young shoulder.  They walk away from me saying, “It ain’t your fault.”  

I’m helpless.  Don’t for a second think I haven’t considered praying for them.  Don’t think I haven’t given light to the belief that our prayers rend the heavens, that they move the heart of God.  I’m sure they do.  Really.  But looking at the heart that’s so hurt standing in front of you and saying to them, “I’ll be praying for you,” waving goodbye to them as they get shipped off to the next less than ideal, non-permanent home------doing that takes everything in me that once made sense and shreds it.  It takes everything in me that once could cope and makes me the weakest, most incapable, hot MESS I’ve seen.  

I’ve never been here before and I’m finding my tried and true techniques for dealing aren’t working.  And I’m willing to try new things.  I’m okay with being honest and crying in front of people I barely know.  I don’t even care.  Ask me if I care.  And I can’t even ask “How long, God?!” because I know it’s just going to get worse.  Honestly, it is.  So, what do I do, how do I cope, how do I help, how do I have joy in the midst of this, how do I trust that my God is GOOD?  

Short answer: I don’t know yet.  Until then, it’s okay to feel whatever you feel.  Just keep showing up, whatever that looks like in life.  Just keep showing up.  Even if you’re not sure if what you’re doing looks like faithfulness to God, keep being honest.  Keep being open to change and be intentional about getting up, doing what you’re supposed to do, staying healthy and active.  

I guess the rest will just fall into place.            

why i IS the way i IS: a short story.

i've given up on living life void of drama. life IS drama. NEGATIVE drama. and the less time i spend criticizing it and hating it, the more time i can spend kicking its butt.

i've been working with teenagers lately (crazy thinking i was their age less than a decade ago...i'm still pretty wet behind the ears...) and i've been experiencing a little bit of what their lives are like.  their lives are everything: every emotion in the book complete with reasons for each one of them.

my goodness gracious. 

i've been disappointed with the lack of joy i've been feeling in the midst of all these lives and their drama within. i thought joy was going to be automatic because...i don't know why...maybe i thought i was just that awesome and could swing my mighty sword at satan's face with all courage and all strength...

well, i'm not very courageous and i'm quite the weakling, come to find out. i think anytime i was UNaware of that, i must've been on an ego trip...or something. and i haven't seen anything close to everything. i know i'm currently seeing a fraction of a fraction of what's out there...but still.. sometimes my gut just hurts a lot and i need nothing more than an abundance of movies with roommates and hot baths (sometimes i eat my cereal while in the bathtub). like i said: weakling. 

but i don't even care. i don't care if every person in the world is boss at my job and i'm not. I'M A WUSS AND PROUD OF IT. a wuss that's learning. 

sometimes i feel drained and sometimes i feel like someone opened the floodgates of my face. all are welcomed. but the reason why i'm writing this is because there were ALL SORTS of good and bad that happened today...and i might have to go cry at some point but overall, i left that place with JOY in my heart. not a lot, but a little bit. 

my god's a good god and even when i'm drawing blanks and feeling like i suck, while that may be true, god's bigger. and the holy spirit isn't restricted by my crappiness. his power is ACT-UALLY made perfect in my weakness. one of the corinthians, chapter twelve, verse nine. BOOM. god's boss at my job and i'm on his team. SCORE. 

for that reason alone, i've got a hope.

peacocks, blow up fish, & self-analyzing therapy.

if i had been old enough when my sisters hid mom's "manners" book, i would've helped the war effort and hid it behind the toilet right along with them.  i'm not about living life snobby.  life's too short to be proving pointless points--something about how you're, deep down, better than everybody else. that's not what i call living.

but all that said....i haven't been very classy lately.  i've been overly crude (poop jokes are NOT considered at all crude...just so you know) and really just not very nice. it'd be a waste of time to say that "oh, lord, i just don't know who i am right now!" because i know exactly who i am. and what's been coming OUT of me is exactly who i really am (that wasn't a poop joke).  maybe who i've been being isn't who i normally am on the OUTside...but all that's been happening is that more of the real, gross, un-jesus-ed parts of me are coming out in real time.  i'm trying to prove that i'm REAL and RELEVANT and a BAD ASS that REALLY KNOWS WHAT'S GOING ON IN THIS WORLD.  and i'd say i am real and i am relevant (whatever that even means...i hate that word) and i do enjoy bucking the system ESPECIALLY when it's for a good cause... 

but here's what's really going on (i think): 

1) i'm insecure

2) i don't know how to stop the the REALLY BAD THINGS that go down everyday 

3) i want to stay as far away as possible from mindless, heartless christianity (sometimes NOT being that that comes naturally but other times when i feel like i look exactly like all my other "christian" friends i start to lash out...probably just to get away from the gross camaraderie feeling you get when you're JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. barf. but in that frantic "EW, GET AWAY" feeling i feel sometimes, i do stupid things that i don't wanna do and i say stuff that i really didn't feel the need to say.)

4) i use pride as an illusion. i try to look bold and sure and cool (partly because who doesn't want to be bold and sure and cool?)....but sometimes, lots of times, i do it because i don't care to have people actually seeing how crazy confused i am and how really lost i feel.  

because there's only so long you can stand feeling insanely confused and grossly lost before you find means of coping...and for some reason the jesus route seems to take too long...so, i go back to number four and fluff myself up like i'm a struttin peacock that just don't care. 

what? 

OR a blowfish that blows himself up so that he doesn't get eaten by big bad predators. (but if you'd pop him you'd find out he's just a little guy. a little guy underwater, scared to death.)  

this is me. 

...fantastic.........

refusing to remember: a happy tale.

i know i'm not old. wrinkled, cracked faced people talk with their worn cords saying they remember "it" like it was yesterday.

i'm aware that i'm unaware. most likely sooner and later life is going to kick me in the crotch (even though i don't have those parts, it's not like it still wouldn't hurt) but 'no worries'. a motto and goal all in one. all fueled by god's big heart.

i know i'm not old...that wet spot behind my ears isn't dry yet. honestly, i'm banking on it never drying. i always wanna be the 'hide in friend's basement eating forbidden fruit snacks while waiting for "ready or not, here i come!"' type.

that's something i never plan on remembering, cracked and wrinkled, "like it was yesterday." because in my life i'd prefer it to actually have happened the day before today. 

praise the lord for life.