I’m fascinated by people who claim their life has followed a plan.  Mine seems to be all over the board.  I wonder if I’m a bad planner because I didn’t think I would be divorced, unemployed and having to move to get work.  None of that was in my plan.

I understand people are all different.  Maybe some people are created to follow their own scripts and some, like me, are tossed around like a salad getting mixed in with lots of other veggies and stuff we never intended to be tossed with.

One thing I have come to know is perseverance.  I wonder if people who’s life follows a plan understands perseverance the way I do.  I wonder what they understand that I don’t.

Supposedly God has plans for me.  I wish I knew what they were.  I wish he would reveal them in a very understandable way.  I wish he would speak to me in a way that I know it’s all going to be okay.  I don’t have a clue what the plan is and what is going to come out of the blue next.  I wish I knew the plan.

Grace and peace.

I’m currently in Aracaju, Brazil.  Aracaju is in the eastern time zone, only 2 hours ahead of my home in Texas.  Yet, somehow, it takes 26 hours of travel time to arrive in the city.  Three separate plans.  Dallas to Sao Paulo.  Sao Paulo, south to Rio de Janiero.  Rio, north to Aracaju.

I’m here to work with a missionary who has been located in Aracaju for 10 years.  A great guy who had a team of 4 families coming with him and all fell out for one reason or another so he came on his own.  What a warrior spirit!  He’s a meek, timid guy when you meet him but inside is a warrior willing to take on a different language, different culture and leave all he has known behind to advance the gospel.

Oh God, create in me a warrior ready to do battle for your kingdom.

Grace and peace.

I want to recommend the book Why I Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore by Wayne Jacobsen.  It’s a book about developing relationship with Jesus.  I have a friend who wanted me to read it for 2 years and I didn’t.  I finally went through it last week and it hit me with just what I needed to hear at just the right time.  It’s good stuff.  Jacobsen also wrote a book titiled He Loves Me that I read a few years ago.  I recommend it to all my friends who express trouble in understanding God’s love, mercy and grace for His children.  It hasn’t fixed me in that area where I am weak but it sure has helped the process.

Have a great weekend.

Grace and peace.

In 2006 I took my first trip to Brazil and saw things I never expected.  People who were poor, people who had nothing, people who couldn’t imagine the world we live in with cellphones, iPods, laptops and everything we want at our fingertips.  They had nothing but pure joy.  Joy in God.  Joy in each other.  Joy in knowing what lay ahead of them because of hope in Jesus.  They have joy in relationship.  It was an incredible experience and it began to change my heart and my life…and my desire to know God.  I came home a very different person from the person who had first boarded the plane.

I learned early in life to maintain relationships.  There was the picture everyone needed to see and there was the stuff I needed to “work on” (another time for “hide”).  In my faith tradition, understanding the rules and doctrine was more important than honest relationships.  James 5:16 meant we went down front to confess.  Few people did because they knew a bunch of people would be talking about them at Luby’s while eating lunch…but that’s what we were supposed to do.  We didn’t let people in, we just talked about what life was supposed to look like and we made sure to point out the people who weren’t doing it right.  Easier to focus on someone else, right?

I came home and begin to pray that God would reveal Himself to me and open my eyes to what He wanted me to see.  I asked to see things through the eyes of God, asked to hear things through the ears of God and asked to speak His words.  I asked Him to prepare me to reach others and be effective in building the kingdom.  I asked Him to begin to restore relationships and build new ones.

I never expected the pain that would come from my prayers.

Grace and peace.

A few weeks ago I experienced one of the lowest of lows.  It was a time where my mind was my enemy as I listened to the voices that worked to push me down.  I never like using the word depression because I don’t want to be “one of those people” but, suffice it to say, I was down in the dumps.  Fortunately, I have some incredible friends and I got with a few of them who all spoke some revelation to me.   Those conversations led me to begin some newer, deeper conversations with God.

I’m going to begin chronicling some of those thoughts and some of my story here.  I started a blog years ago to do just this, wrestle with my thoughts and my fears and remember some trips to the mountain top and days of inner joy and excitement as I get closer to God.  I will leave some gaps and not include some things that will hurt the innocent and guilty but I promised some people a few years ago I would only confess my own sins and that is what I intend on doing when it comes to those issues.

As is the case with all my blog posts, this is about me and for me.  It is healing.  If, by chance, it speaks to others who may read it, praise God.  I want to be His instrument for peace in all that I say and all that I do.

Grace and peace.

Be careful what you pray for.  You may get it.

Grace and peace.

I grew up thinking I was failing if I wasn’t perfect.  I would not try things if I didn’t think I could do it correctly, the first time I tried it.  I put myself down when I failed.  I felt shame.  I learned self-deprecation as a defense mechanism.  I worried far too much about being perfect.  Throw in my religious upbringing with “you are not good enough” and perfectionism drove me to some dark places.  I’m sure I have said some things to my kids I wish I could take back about being perfect.  I just want them to be them.

Brene Brown has some good things to think about on perfectionism.  I’ll share and shut up.

http://catalystconference.com/read/want-to-be-happy-stop-trying-to-be-perfect/

Grace and peace.

A friend told me my mortgage company would help work out a modified loan payment since I was unemployed.  I called today and they said since I have no income, they can’t do anything for me.  Seriously?  When I had income I didn’t need their help.  Now, I need their help and they will only give me a break if I have income.  How crazy is that?

I went through 2 people who said they could help.  The third stonewalled me.

I want to strangle someone through the phone.

Grace and peace?

This post is my 1,213 blog post I’ve ever written.  I wonder how many words are included?  I wonder how many repetitive posts are included?  I wonder how many posts, written to me, by me, for me, have impacted someone else?  Bug Guts may be my favorite post in general because I know one person who was impacted by it and helped me see how God uses me.  Plus, I gained a trusted friend and advisor in the process.  It generally reappears every year in September for personal reasons.

When (hopefully not if) I get a paying job and get my finances back in order, I want to hire someone to catalog my posts and help me create a book.  The Random Ramblings of a Baffling Buffoon may be a good working title.  So much of what I have written has come straight from the heart about a journey I started with God some eight years ago.  They are personal though not too detailed to protect the innocent and the guilty, but they are honest about my heart.  I don’t care if a book actually made it to market to sell, I’d just like to say I wrote something worthy of me self-publishing.

1,213 posts is a lot of writing.  It’s a lot of laying my heart open in a fairly open forum.  It’s a lot of freedom from getting things out of my head and on to “paper” or whatever medium this is best referred as.

1,213 posts.  I would never have guessed.

I’m thankful for the passion to write.

Grace and peace.