Random Thoughts – Page 6 – Quietly Passing By

January 8, 2020January 10, 2021

21 Days of Posts – Day 4 – Rejection

Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1, then you should stop now and go read from Day 1, or take a peek at Day 2 and pick a topic you are interested in. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

Hello, lucky reader! This post, like yesterday’s, also has a point, but it comes after considerable confession. Welcome to my head again…

Ever feel like those wads of paper in the picture above? They’ve been rejected, deemed unworthy to keep, not even as bad examples, just tossed out.

Rejection happens to everyone at some point in their life. Some of the most successful people on the planet have been rejected more times than they can count. I envy them.

I don’t envy them because they are successful. That’s not my problem. I envy them because they appear not to care they were rejected. They move through their lives with a positive tilt on their acceptance/”rejectance” meter, not because they haven’t been rejected, but because they overcame that to be…successful.

If you know me, you probably know I avoid confrontation at all costs. I hate confrontation. It makes my head spin and stomach queasy. I’ll accept poor service, bad food, bad deals, and more, just to avoid confrontation.

But there is one thing I hate worse than confrontation. You guessed it. It’s our topic of the day – rejection.

Every fiber of my being hates rejection and not just overt, intentional rejection (which is usually for a good reason). It’s the unintentional rejection that hurts even more. It’s the lack of enthusiasm for one of my ideas. It’s the “playing along so he’ll get it out of his system” rejection that crawls all over me and bruises my fragile ego. I’m not saying everyone has to agree with me all the time, far from it (and that would be a terrible thing to do), but reject me or my idea overtly and intentionally so I can at least be sure that is what is happening.

Because that is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Those of us who hate rejection most likely are not rejected as much as we think we are. We imagine rejection by other people as the norm and assume it in every movement they make and everything they say, partially from past experience, partially from a lack of confidence in ourselves. That’s why including rejection in the building of a character in a novel is essential. Characters who haven’t been rejected, especially in a huge, impactful ways, haven’t suffered enough for most authors (or even some readers).

I know I sound certifiable at this point, but I promise it’s not so. When I concentrate and remember that there is someone who will never reject me (here comes the point!), that someone being Jesus, I am better able to let rejection, real or imagined, roll off my back like eggs off Teflon (wow, that’s an old reference – sorry). Jesus will never reject us if we come to him in repentance and commit to him (Psalm 94:14). It doesn’t matter what shape we are in at the time – hurting, angry, ashamed, or addicted (or all of these) – he will receive us with open arms, again and again and again.

Because we are real good at rejecting Jesus. When we choose our plans and our path over his plans and his path for us, we reject him, crumpling him up (as an idea in our head and heart) and tossing him away. It imagine it has to hurt him. Think about an exceptionally hurtful time you were rejected (just for a second) and imagine that happening over and over. That’s what I think Jesus feels every day from those who reject him, whether they do it maliciously or unthinkingly.

Rejection – it’s not just a character builder, it’s something I try to avoid. However, if we truly live the Christian life, we are guaranteed to be rejected (and hated) at some point. That’s scriptural – check out John 15:18-25.

Thanks for reading to the end! Check back tomorrow as I write about writing – what it means to me and what it allows me to do.

Photo Credit – Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

January 7, 2020January 10, 2021

21 Days of Posts – Day 3 – Romance

Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes

It’s Day 3 of my 21-day post sequence and I know many of you are wondering “is this just some kind of Internet confessional?” and are about to quit reading from either boredom or horror. Bear with me for this post, as it does have a point.

It is time to play some self-imposed “truth or dare”.

Want to know a big, ugly, weird, juicy, truth about me?

Sure you do…

I’m a heart-fluttering-weepy-falling-over-stupid romantic. Yep, I confess, that’s me. It will never, ever come up unless I bring it up, so here it is. Welcome to my hidden thoughts…

I’m a sucker for a good love song (The Cure’s Love Song or Dave Matthew’s You & Me are good examples), a sad break-up song (Liykke Li’s Possibility* and The Cure’s Apart both prime examples), various Nicholas Cage movies (The Family Man, It Could happen To You, City of Angels), some Nicholas Sparks books/movies, and even crazy stupid romances like Twilight (you are free to laugh hysterically at this point, if you didn’t start laughing at “Nicholas Cage”).

People like me love both the romances that make perfect sense and those that don’t. The real question is why are we drawn to contrivances such as impossible romances? Isn’t love and romance hard enough without fighting social norms, ridiculous twists of fate, and death itself? I would wager we (us romantics) have been fascinated with the impossible romances since even before Romeo and Juliet.

Which is why all kinds of people were drawn to Twilight…all three books and four movies. We’re drawn to stories where it seems impossible any peace or equilibrium can be found in a potential relationship. We’re particularly drawn to stories where a huge sacrifice must be made by one or the other romantic partner, or by both of them, to make the romance work. Twilight has this motif in spades. City of Angels also invokes this theme of ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of love. Sometimes it works out great, a la Twilight, sometimes not, as in City of Angels (oops, mini-spoiler).

We like to see the happy couple stay together forever after overcoming such adversity. Sometimes we get that glimpse, sometimes we don’t. It all depends on what idea the story creator wants us to take away from the story. Does the author want us to believe it is better to love deeply for only a brief moment in time after overcoming all odds, or does he want us to finish the story, or movie, with a perfect sense of “all is well” because the main couple fought and overcame <insert terrible adversity here>? Some would argue one is better than the other. I find them equally satisfying, if the author does their job correctly.

When Harry Met Sally is one of my favorite movies of all time. I tell my wife that is “our” movie. Some couples have “their” song…we have “our” movie. The movie is about friends who eventually become lovers, who eventually marry, but along the way fight with every fiber of their being at various times to reach a different goal. The movie falls into the “leave the viewer happy” category, and not just for the main protagonists.

Other movies, like The Notebook, The Family Man, and City of Angels all show the work and/or sacrifice that went into the relationship, but leave the viewer, if not sad, at least a bit melancholy at the end. We see incredible devotion and love displayed by those in the relationship, and we see them happy, for a bit, then the movie shifts and moves on, just like time moves on.

I have to admit that romance as portrayed in books and movies is usually problematic. That’s part of what draw us to them. My favorite book/movie series to pick on, Twilight, has all kinds of problems and has been lambasted by critics for its glaring relationship issues (but I’ve read the entire series at least three times). Books and movies by Nicholas Sparks are so dependent on outlandish twists of fate that we all usually breathe easier because we don’t have to suffer through what his characters experience. But we still indulge in escaping to those fictional landscapes, if only to shake our heads at the characters as they struggle.

We haven’t even touched on one of the the most difficult aspects of most book and movie relationships, that of the “love triangle”, where gut-wrenching, heart-rending decisions have to be made by the characters involved. Sometimes the author will ease us out of that frightful tension with a unicorn-and-rainbow solution (see the Twilight series, from New Moon to Eclipse to Breaking Dawn), but sometimes they will not (see The Notebook and the decidedly unromantic Hunger Games series), and we have to vicariously experience the heartbreak and fallout from someone’s decision. At least it is vicarious, and not real.

Yes, love, romance and relationships are hard enough without crippling diseases, terrible accidents, and <gasp> vampires. Why do we subject ourselves to the fictional heartache? Don’t we have enough hurt to deal with? Maybe, but we get to experience, and then discard (sometimes with effort) the pain and suffering of another, and maybe, just maybe, experience a taste of unrepentant and wildly ridiculous romance without disrupting our real lives. Catharsis is a powerful tool and running ourselves through the wringer of fictional, impossible romance every now and then is probably healthy (but I’m no expert).

So what is the point, you ask? I remember; you were promised a point. The point is that as much as these crazy, impossible, fictional romances may appeal to (some) of us, the greatest, craziest, most possible of impossible love stories is that of our God desiring to be in communion with us, his children. This REAL love story has it all – a complete lack of equilibrium, an unimaginable sacrifice, even a happily-ever-after. It outshines all other love stories ever written. May the love of God wrap you up in complete contentment, or as complete as it can get on this earth, for the duration of the fast and beyond.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end! I sincerely hope it was worth it to you and that you will continue to read along with my fasting journey.

*This song, I believe, was originally written as a break up song, but the sequence of scenes it is used with in New Moon make it even more wrenchingly impactful. I can’t listen to the song without hearing Bella’s desperate screams of emptiness. Stupid romantic…

Photo Credit – Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

January 6, 2020January 3, 2021

21 Days of Posts – Day 2 – New Year’s To-Do List

Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes

Welcome to Day 2 of 21 days of posts corresponding to the 21-day fast being observed at our church. Today, I am going to go into more detail about something I mentioned on Day 1 – my 2020 To-Do list.

I gave up on New Year’s resolutions about two decades ago and in the last few years I’ve turned to creating a To-Do list for the year. I admitted on Day 1 that my frustration was that my list never seemed to change much from year to year. In the interest of full transparency, here is my list for 2020. You may chuckle, laugh, and snicker as much as you like, I can’t hear it.

Finish writing a book
Sing more – at the college and at church
Read more (a book a month)
Take more vacation days (and use them effectively)
Continue having daily devotions
Pray even more
Continue to teach my son to drive
Go to even more parties and events
Tell my wife I love her every day
Talk with my mom more (at least once a week)
Regularly communicate with my daughter
Try something new every month
Walk on the beach more (requires vacation – see #4)
Post more blog entries (at least two a month)
Build stuff
Show love more
Lose more weight (~205 would be nice)
Walk/exercise more
Continue to fix the house
Chase the lion…

You see that some are interdependent (#4 and #13, for example), and others are redundant (#1 and #20, as explained on Day 1). Some have been there for four or more years, but there are a couple of new ones.

Item #15 is new. I want to build stuff. Woodworking, crafting, and “making” are all on my radar for this year and I hope to build both useful (having a definite purpose) and useless (having a more subjective purpose) things. I never used to want to create things, at least not since I quit building with Lego pieces. Now I want to make things to help and things to appreciate.

Item #16 is a variant of a previous year’s item. Saying this phrase out loud feels odd, like the words are supposed to be in that order, but that is the order I need them in. I don’t have a problem loving people, but I do have a problem with showing that love, so #16 is huge this year. I’ll explain in a later post, or posts, why #16 is so hard for me and maybe it will sound and feel familiar to you. If so, let me know and we can encourage each other to show love more.

Item #19 is new also, a direct result of buying a house and finding all of the things that need fixed. We knew when we bought it that there would be a long list of updates and repairs, but we’ve been surprised at least three times now. I’m kind of done with surprises with the house…I want to fix what I know is wrong/broken/messed up before discovering anything else.

All I know is that if I can do half of the things on this list, I believe I will feel like I accomplished something come January 2021, and maybe I can add some new items to the list. If I accomplish them all, then I believe I will feel as if I caught that lion…

Before I completely sign off for today, here is a fairly solid, numbered list of topics for each day. This way you can pick and choose which posts you want to read. Just imagine that each numbered entry says “day” in front of it.

Photo credit – Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

January 5, 2020January 6, 2020

21 Days of Posts – Day 1 – Discombobulation

Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hello to all who have decided to follow along as I post for 21 days straight as part of our church fast. As you can see, each entry is numbered as a particular day, so if you are reading this and the title above doesn’t say Day 1 (this one does), then you should stop now and go read from Day 1. Thanks for being brave enough to join me.

It’s that time of year again, when our church conducts a 21 day fast. Each congregant is asked to pick something or somethings to fast from, whether it is food items, habits, coffee/caffeine, or something else. I struggle each year to pick things, as I greatly dislike the two to three day “head is going to explode” feeling sans caffeine, and I don’t have a ton of bad habits to avoid.

I do have some bad habits, like not posting to this site on a regular basis, or writing at all on a regular basis, so I’m going to flip the script and fast from not doing something. I’m going to post something all twenty-one days of this fast, even if it is just “hi” and “bye”, but I will attempt to do better than that.

Today, I feel the need to express my first days of the year discombobulation, which I’ve had for several years now, but seem to be acute this year. Yes, 2019 was a turbulent year, with buying a house, attending my 25-year college reunion, experiencing my daughter’s wedding, being amazed at marking my 25th wedding anniversary (who knew there was someone out there who would put up with me for 25 years?), my youngest child turning 18, and everything in between those events.

So I find myself discombobulated. That’s an expensive word that just boils down to “confused”. I described it as not being able to put all the pieces into a Perfection game, timer or no timer. I’m having trouble with the fact that my annual “to-do” list (what I do in place of New Year’s resolutions) hasn’t changed much in three years, with “finish a book” still at the top of it. “Read more”, “exercise”, and “stay in touch with family” are also still on there, but I did add a twentieth item to my 2020 list – “chase the lion”.

“Chase the lion” comes from the title of a book by Mark Batterson, the full title being –

“Chase the lion. If your dream doesn’t scare you, it’s too small.”

Mark Batterson is the author of Christian inspirational books, about a dozen of them, and while I have not yet read this book, I look forward to it (#3 on my 2020 to-do list – read more). I may read more of his stuff if I like this one, but just the title of this one is enough to warrant a place on my list.

While this book is focused on dreaming big in relation to doing God’s work and putting our trust in him, regardless of circumstances and resources, my personal lion for now is finishing a book. So the first item and the last item on my list are essentially the same thing – finish a book. We’ll have to see if I can do that in the next three hundred or so days.

Back to discombobulation. The pieces of my life are having difficulty going back into regular places, whether it is work, dealing with our still-new-to-us house, my participation in church activities like worship and life groups, my family (a wide-ranging and many-faceted topic), or other aspects of life that refuse to settle. I like regularity and dislike chaos, so this confusion and unsettling are…unsettling and confusing.

I hope that in the next few days I can get to a stasis point where my mind is reaching some kind of equilibrium. That would make moving into this new year and new decade a bit easier. I suspect some of my uneasiness relates to my rapid approach to the age of fifty, but I’ll deal with that thought in another post.

I also have to accept the fact that God may need me in a state of discombobulation so that I will learn something, or have something pruned from me that I need to discard. Unfortunately, only time will tell, and I’m pretty impatient, too. I guess I’ll have to deal with that in later post, also.

Photo credit – Photo by Gabriel Crismariu on Unsplash

October 16, 2019October 16, 2019

Repost – A Prescient Political Rant From Way Back When

Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes

The following is a now seemingly VERY prescient political rant from way back in the second Obama administration (and when I was blogging on the Blogger platform). The biggest difference between what was happening then and what is happening now is that our current crop of 2020 presidential candidates are now at least being honest about their intentions. The post is a bit raw, as I was really still developing my “voice”, but I wanted to show it “as-is”, if for no other reason than to show how little things change. Have a read, then rejoin me for a brief comment on current events at the bottom.

I do not think it means what you think it means… (originally posted April 17, 2013)

The relentless dialog from the Obama administration about gun control (and yes, I am shamefully gleeful that the POTUS is upset about the background check amendment failing) has consistently used two words that I feel are improperly applied.

Their use reminds me of a line from the movie “The Princess Bride”, based on the book of the same name by William Goldman, where one of the characters keeps interjecting the word “inconceivable” and, after several instances of this misapplication of the word, another character takes him to task with “You keep using that word – I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The words the Obama administration keeps using is “common sense”. While to me, a member of this administration using those words is “inconceivable”, especially the president, whose lack of common sense has devastated morale in this country, not to mention the economy. The application of “common sense” as in “we need to pass these common sense laws to protect Americans from gun violence” is just another tactic used by this waste of an administration to marginalize those who actually do have common sense about gun control.

If they label their legislation as “common sense” then what happens to the person who opposes it? They are instantly labeled as not having common sense by the sheep of this country who believe everything Obama says. Because the president of the United States and his lackeys all parrot the same words “common sense, common sense” those of us who actually have it are left to fight the label instead of having a logical conversation about what really is “common sense”.

Is it common sense to think that the police will be at your house in time to protect you from home invaders? Is it common sense to think that police are available in an instant to keep someone from robbing and murdering you in the street?

I submit, it is not.

While I have the utmost respect for the police officers I know and for the police in general, I know they are only human and not superheroes. They cannot be everywhere at all times, leaving the average citizen to protect themselves from those that would do them harm. To only allow criminals and law enforcement officers to have guns is most definitely NOT common sense.

My idea of common sense is in tune with the sign I saw on the door of a sporting goods store the other day. It stated that anyone entering the store should realize that all staff were armed and, instead of threatening violence against those who might cause trouble, it simply said after that, “be smart”. Common sense dictates that the store I entered had an extremely low probability of being robbed, even though the merchandise within was extremely valuable. Common sense dictates that those entering the store be mindful that every staff member had the proper tool to stop any attempt to pilfer.

But what really bothers me is what this administration is hiding behind those two words they are misusing. The expanded background checks they want are the first step to gun registration and confiscation. As much as they argue that the law explicitly prohibits this, logic and “common sense” still lead to this conclusion. To enforce these expanded background checks, particularly the ones aimed at private sales, the enforcing agency must first know what affected property is in circulation.

How is that done? Registration.

The argument that the majority of sales at gun shows do not involve a background check is pure fiction. The vast majority of sales at gun shows are between private citizens and dealers – who run a background check on anyone buying a firearm. A small percentage of private sales occur at these shows, but this is not where criminals buy their guns. These transactions are overwhelmingly between law-abiding citizens who happen to meet at the venue.

So please ignore the shallow, misused words “common sense” when the latest diatribe by the POTUS or his mouthpieces is broadcast by the liberal media. The proposals being offered are so much the opposite.

What to think? We still hear about passing “common sense” gun laws from every 2020 Democrat candidate, but some double down with even more nonsense. Francis “Beto” O’Rourke has made it known that he is after your “assault rifles” because there’s no use for them away from the battlefield. But don’t worry, the government isn’t confiscating them, they are “buying them back”, not that they ever owned them to be able to “buy them back”.

The only silver lining on this particular cloud is that “buy-back Beto” is polling a few decimal places south of one percent.