Our For Repair

He's a good man and he's worked hard to stay healthy.  He takes large portions of each day and does his due diligence to keep his mental, physical, and spiritual health.  He reads, he learns, and he works hard to employ what he has learned.  So he gets rewarded with this?  Smokers can go their whole lives and never experience one difficulty or abnormality.  And he gets this right after surgery on his head?  Yeah, that makes perfect sense.  My head knows you are doing something great with it, my heart believes whatever that great thing is, it could have been achieved another way.  Fix my heart.  In more ways than one.

Strength

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Temptation, Weakness, Will, Conviction, and Strength will all be words looked into with the thoughts that are about to be recorded, but strength is the one I'm hoping to focus on most.  

As a teenager, I was a model of restraint.  I will grant that was mostly because I was too scared to let myself do anything even remotely risky, but I was able to play that off as being a good boy who just resisted all temptations.  Finally, I got sick of being a good boy and not letting myself be free, so I splurged on freedom for a long time.  By the time I recognized what had happened I was too far gone to simply just make a choice to go back to restraint.  I had let myself indulge pleasures and give in to spontaneous whims for far too long to even know what to do with them anymore.  I played this off as me just being more of a 'free spirit', but that's not what it was/is.  It was/is weakness.  A lack of conviction brought to a point where I fed on any desire I had.  I was mostly a good man, so it went unnoticed for a long time.

Finally, the day came where the years of molding myself into something that was far too moldable finally bit me.  It took losing something of vast importance to me to finally see what I really lost.  And as important and cherished as what I first lost was, what I finally came to realize I had lost is so much greater.  I had lost my strength, my will, my conviction, my heart.  I had given so much of my heart to things that could chew it up--and in many circumstances, did--that I had little left to be steadfast with.

I now recognize my moments of weakness; I see the moments where temptation thinks it has an opening and tries to break through the line.  I have a much greater defense now though: awareness.  The bond forged by awareness and an infinite pool of Godly strength just waiting to be tapped will protect me long enough to allow regeneration.  That is a promise given to me that I plan to focus on for a while.  Even though I've made mistake after mistake and given too much of myself away to things that it was probably unwise to do so, God promises a renewal of chewed up, broken, shattered and lost hearts.  

Some of you will read this and many thoughts will flow through your mind.  Ignore those for just one second and hear me.  There is not one of you that I don't cherish and love.  Each of you have your own role in my life and I regret nothing.  I have made mistakes with all of you and for them I am sorry.  Understand I am attempting to the best I can with the bed that I have made for myself.  I am attempting to be a humble, convicted, steadfast man of God.  I will slip up, but I am asking for your help along the way.

In any case, back to the thoughts that some of you may be having.  Always will no matter what.  That's not just a phrase, I actually mean it every time I say it.  Thank you for the way you love me and despite what you think I do love you too.  Thank you for never leaving.  Thank you for keeping me accountable.  Thank you for caring enough to read this far :).

For those of you that don't read this.  You mean everything to me and if it wasn't for you I would be at a loss and probably on a corner somewhere.  You were the first to prove to me you loved me and the one that has always been there for me no matter what reminding me that no matter how much I love you that you love me more.  I love you more than anything in this world.  Thank you for always supporting me and never missing anything that was important to me.  You have been the model of consistency in my life and you keep me from doing anything too stupid.  Thank you for showing me how to laugh and smile and be outgoing.  Thank you for showing me how to love a family member.

And for you.  You already know.  I have taken you for granted the most.  I sometimes go months without even so much as acknowledging you then have the nerve to come and ask you for a favor.  You are the one to which I can give nothing, but owe everything.  You are my sight, my compass, my strength.

Identity Crisis

Reeds easily swayed by every breath of wind.

The solid rock that won't break or bend.

Akrasia

Akrasia

Look it up.

You'll see more on this.

I can't sleep, but I'm too tired to think hard.

Good night.

What tugs at you?

- A cross on a sign in the hands of a sullen man on the street.

- A new patron sitting alone in a church pew.

- A woman doing working 3 jobs to get through school and a year to complete.

- A group of people, heads bobbing, drink in hand, plastic parts, empty smiles and nothing better to do.

- Nursing homes.

- A fatherless child.

- Baseball careers coming to a close.

- Moving forward, no complaints, but nothing but pain inside running wild.

- Love.

- A dying pet.

- Signs from above.

- Mother losing a child before they even met.

- Habitual sin.

- This life I'm livin'.


How 'bout you?

Tough Choices

If you do not know what an incident commander (IC) is, here is a brief rundown:

In the case of an emergency response, the default guideline is to have one person in charge of all decision making.  Often times that person is the first responder to the scene until someone more qualified arrives and takes over the duties if they see fit to do so.  Where everyone goes, what everyone does, what resources are allocated where, which victims die, and which stay alive are just a few of the stressful decisions the IC has to make over that unknown amount of time.

The type of emergencies the IC runs are anything from fleeing suspect-at-large, to events such as 9/11.

I had the privilege to attend a class that trains individuals to be prepared and handle the role of being an IC appropriately.  I was more than likely the LEAST experienced person in the class as the Department of Homeland Security typically requires prerequisite classes to even enroll in this one.  Additionally, most of those attending have job titles that require them to be an IC on a regular basis.  They all had a wealth of knowledge and experience and were quite funny to boot.

I will save the details of this class, I will just say that I learned quite a bit and one of the very few selected to be one of the scenario IC's.  I had to make decisions on situations where biological weapons were released into highly populated areas while simultaneously dealing with bomb threats and barricaded suspects.  All that to say, I found what it is to make tough decision in high pressure situations as the scenario was in real time and the people I was dealing with were real people.

It gave light as to some of the decisions I've had to and continue to have to make in my personal life that I have always thought to be tough.  They remain tough, but do seem kind of small picture in the grand scheme of things now.

I found this though:

To make the tough decisions in the amount of time I had to make them during these scenarios, I had to fall back on instinct and the man I have built myself to be up to this point in my life.  My character and the recent information learned in the class helped me in that decision making process.  Additionally, a new man was being formed as I made every one of those decisions.  It's an old lesson learned in a new and hard-hitting way.  The emphasis we put on building our character throughout every decision we make ultimately is our legacy because that character is going to be what we fall back on in high pressure situations; and high pressure situations are going to be where people remember us.

I have a lot of building left to do. 

Happiness, Freedom, Tolerance: Discuss. I did!

I think too many words have lost their meaning.  I shall try to reel back in three of them.

Happiness

I think happiness has taken on a purely emotional form in present day society (at least the society I'm surrounded by).  It appears to be the end pursuit for nearly any person and everything else seems to be a means to it.  Ultimately it seems that it is any state in which that person does not wish for anything to be different.  Typically, they won't be consciously aware of this, they simply are in that moment and content.

I do feel this applies, but isn't really sufficient...or even necessary for that matter.  Some of the earliest philosophers--and communities as a whole, for that matter--understood happiness thusly:

Happiness (Greek: eudaimonia) was understood as a life of virtue, and the successful person was one who knew how to live life well according to what we are by nature due to the creative design of God...So understood, happiness involves suffering, endurance, and patience because of these are important means to becoming a good person who lives the good life.  (J.P. Moreland)

I tend to agree that this is what happiness SHOULD be.  I do find myself having a hard time uprooting the common understanding of what happiness is now though.  My instincts tell me that I should limit happiness to just an emotion and that if I want anything more than an emotion, then happiness isn't exactly the word I'd be looking for.  I don't think agree with that though.

I find it a hard pill to swallow that happiness would be so self-centered, so inward pointing.  It seems to be a much grander word, and such a word would seemingly want to start inside and point outward...not the other way around.

Happiness is elusive, but it is worth taking the journey to find out what it is.  I shall continue journeying.


Freedom

This will be short.  Too many people think freedom is ability to do whatever you desire.  I believe that is wrong.  I believe freedom is the ability to do whatever you feel you SHOULD do.  WHAT you feel you should do is another story.  However, for the time being.  Freedom is not letting your every whim run rampant on the world.  That is chaos and will ultimately lead to lack of "freedom".  If you feel you SHOULD pray, freedom is being able to do that whenever you want.  If you feel you SHOULD speak up for or against something, freedom is being able to do so.  Etc.


Tolerance

Moreland put it best:

Traditionally, tolerance of other viewpoints meant that even though I think those viewpoints are dead wrong and will argue against them fervently, nevertheless, I will defend your right to argue your own case.  Just as importantly, I will treat you with respect as an image bearer of God, even though your views are abhorrent to me.

You can hear his fuse running low with society's view on tolerance; I love it.


Too many people have come to think that tolerance is being able to do whatever you want and other people having to accept it and be okay with it and to believe you are right.  No.  I won't treat you any differently, but I do not have to believe what you do is right.  I would be a coward if I gave in to every single person's opinion on what is right and I would lose all sense of identity.  I would simply be changing what is right minute by minute and ultimately you would have to do the same.  Unfortunately that really just leads to no one thinking anything is right since everyone would be waiting on everyone else to see what is right.  It's simply an irrational point of view that holds absolutely no solid foundation whatsoever.

You're gay?  I'm 100% okay with that and I will love you no different than anyone else who isn't gay.  I don't agree that it is morally correct though.  You think we all evolved from a gooey soup that itself popped out of thin air (thin air that couldn't have existed already anyway)?  Fine!  You're allowed to back that view until the day you die and I will fight for your right to do so right along side of you, but I disagree with you and think it's an incredibly weak stance :)  You get the point.  I will not form a full framework of my believes. 


I didn't end up really supporting different definitions of any of these words.  I simply recorded thoughts on them.  Oh well.  If you read this far, you obviously are bored or somehow I have done something else in my life that has convinced you I'm interesting and you gave this post the benefit of the doubt.  I hope you can do that for the rest of my oncoming posts too!