God.  Father.

Daddy.  Papa.

I am comfortable addressing God as the first two names/concepts.  I struggle with addressing God as the latter two.  I used to think it was my upbringing, my faith tradition, doctrine.  Whatever, I thought I wasn’t comfortable with it because of something I was taught.

Recently, I have started to see the difference not as teaching but as experience.  I think of Daddy and Papa as terms of affection.  Terms I would use for someone who loves me in a fun way, hurts with me in a personal way, celebrates me out loud.  That’s not my experience with God.

Maybe it’s my fault.  Maybe I’m not approaching God appropriately.  I use the terms God and Father with great respect and with love.  I believe God gave his son for my eternal life and if that isn’t love, what is?  I believe he loves me but I don’t feel that close affection I feel with my own dad.  My life hasn’t been one where I experienced God is giddy ways but certainly in protective ways.

Papa goes out and plays catch with me, wrestles with me, builds model airplanes with me.  Daddy takes me hunting and holds me close when I’m hurting.

God loves me.  He provides for me.  He has given me the most important thing in a life to come.  He isn’t touchy-feely and I’m not sure he has much concern for my comfort and safety in this world.  I love God, fear God, respect God but I don’t feel affection from God.

I hope I’m the odd one.  I hope others experience God in ways I can’t imagine and that one day, I will too.  In the meantime, I pray to the God I know to help me, to provide for me, to give me favor.  I hope he will but I still see him as providing for my eternal life, not my present life.  It’s a struggle I have internally.  One I want to figure out and get answers to one day.

Grace and peace.

I’ve been reading in the Psalms lately and focusing on passages about taking refuge in God.  It’s where I want to take refuge but I still feel like I’m standing in the rain with no cover over me.

I want to have peace and even gratefulness with my present situation.  I just want out.  I don’t like it.  I don’t like the way I feel people look at me and talk about me when I’m not around.  I don’t like all the advice for what I should do.  I don’t like not knowing what I should do and think all the advice is great but don’t have enough time in the day to do all the things people tell me I should do.

Journeys aren’t easy.  I was telling a friend recently how proud I was to raise kids who could travel 12 hours in a day and only need to stop twice.  I want to speed along and get to where I’m going.  A couple of breaks for gas, for food and to take care of business and we are off and running again.  I wonder how I will think about my next vacation.  Heck, I wonder if there will ever be another vacation but I digress.

I am blessed to have some good friends who stay positive around me.  Friends who tell me they are praying for me.  Friends who know something is coming.  Friends who believe in the good.  I need that because it’s easy to see and hear and believe the bad.  Easy.

One of my greatest challenges in a time like this is falling away from God.  It’s easy to think he has forgotten me and seek comfort in things that are not of God.  I’ve spent a lifetime doing it and old habits are hard to break.  Maybe that’s why I am in this desert place.  Maybe it’s my time to decide whether I am going to break old patterns and seek God or stay in my regular patterns and simply acknowledge God.  For me, that is quite the battle.

God, please get me out of here soon.  I don’t like it.  I’m afraid.  I’m lonely.  I feel lost and forgotten.  Please God, lead me back to high ground.  Give me favor.  Show me my purpose and turn me loose.  Please God, get me out of this sad, dark place.

Grace and peace.

Life’s journey offers a fantastic view…it only requires me to slow down and look around.  I have sped through life relying on what I know (or think I know) or what someone taught me that I accepted as truth.

I’ve learned that Buddhists have some great insights on suffering.  I see their teaching within the framework of Christianity but the churches I grew up in didn’t talk much about suffering.

I’ve learned that introspection is painful as the layers are peeled away…and freeing as true revelation is revealed.

I’ve learned that faith isn’t easy.  In fact, for me, it is extremely difficult.  I have found myself on my knees, tears flowing like rivers, while hearing myself yell, scream and curse at God.  That’s hard faith because I trust He isn’t going to run like most people would were I doing that to them.  And then there are the days I go without ever talking or acknowledging God because I don’t feel His presence, don’t think He really cares about what happens to me in this life and certainly isn’t using his omnipotence to help my situation.  Faith isn’t easy.

I’ve learned that things I often think are important are really trivial, if not meaningless.  I’ve learned that things that matter the most are often overlooked or taken for granted.

The journey offers so much opportunity to learn.  And often I pass on the opportunity to continue doing what I’ve been doing.

It’s time to open my eyes and my heart to what the journey holds for me.

Grace and peace.

I first posted my blog post, Bug Guts, on September 23, 2010.  Since then I have referenced it a few times because it was a good lesson that day following a very, very hard stretch of years.  The 22nd of September was very hard for me that year and it’s a date that still tears at my heart thought time is softening the blow.  Even though the pain around that date subsides there is other pain, other dates, other events and the emotions I was having while writing it and thoughts that surrounded me are still appropriate today.  The 22nd now represents an unraveling, an exhibition of what evil in this world can do.  The 23rd represents a new day, a new hope and the power of what God can do to make all things new.  For the first time in a long time, I’m feeling hope and Bug Guts reminds me of what happens when we survive the storm.

I’m driving home from Abilene and the windshield is a mess of bug guts and other stuff from the road that makes looking out the windshield a mess, not impossible to see but certainly not clear.  Add driving at a rate of speed that might just be a smidge over the speed limit and it’s a recipe for a mess.  I can’t see clearly but I’m still going 80-to-nothing (no, I wasn’t going 90).  I seem to go through life that way too often.  Anyway, I’m rolling down the highway and all of the sudden I am driving through a downpour.  Buckets of rain are falling and I have to turn the windshield wipers on high to try and keep up.  I’m listening to the rhythm of the wipers and doing my best to see the lines on the road and then, poof, the storm is left behind.  It is then that I notice I am driving with a much cleaner and clearer windshield.

It’s a true story but also a story of God.  I am speeding through life, going too fast, vision impaired and then I hit a storm.  As bad as the storm is, God uses it to slow me down and clean up with the windshield so I can see His desire for me more clearly.  The storm helped me, even though it caused some problems at the time, because it made me slow down, think and it helped clean my windshield so I could see my way more clearly. 

Thank you God for knowing what I need, always better than I know myself.

Grace and peace.

This isn’t my dream life.

When I was young I dreamed I would play basketball for the rest of my life.  I worked hard at it.  I practiced daily.  I shot free throws with my eyes closed.  I worked on my hook shot.  Hundreds upon hundreds of shots every day of every week.  My basketball career ended in high school.

When I was in high school, I wanted to be a dentist.  Then I took chemistry.

When I went to college I wanted to be a psychology major and play with people’s minds.  I got an accounting degree instead.  I left college thinking I was going to buy out a solo practice I had interned at over the summer.  The job lasted 3 months before he laid me off because his biggest client went bankrupt.  I still thought I would be a hotshot accounting guy and got a job with a firm in Fort Worth where I learned I preferred the legal aspects of the job and the consulting opportunities.  I got laid off after 3 years because I didn’t want to be a tax accountant and the firm closed their consulting division.

Somewhere along the path I applied to and was accepted to law school.  I was going to go through the night program but realized I would spend no time with my 4 and 6 year old children for the next 4 years.  I went to work for a couple of private businesses where I thought I would stay forever and have ownership.  Talk about a pipe dream.

I thought I would be married forever, raise great kids (the one dream that is still real and active), travel and fly-fish all over the world.  I dreamed life would be great.

I’m unemployed, divorced and see my children as much as the law allows.

This isn’t the life I dreamed.  Not even close.

It’s easy for me to focus on the bad days, the hard days, the down days.  I don’t know that it is uncommon that I can do that.  However, as I told my daughter one day, were it not for a marriage to her mom I wouldn’t have her.  If it wasn’t for one job ending I may not have had the experiences and met the people I’ve known over the course of my life.  Were it not for the challenges I might not strive for nor appreciate the good  times.

I hate were I am in life.  HATE IT.  Yet, I also believe there are things I am learning I will appreciate greatly in days to come.  There are people I am meeting that I would never had known otherwise.

It’s not the life I dreamed but it’s the life I have.  It’s my choice to make the most of it.

Grace and peace.