Sunday, October 30, 2011

Team Temptation

The topic in Sunday school with our sixth graders was temptation.  When asked about their own temptations, they discussed to curse or not to curse, to lie, to follow the misguidance of a friend.  I told them the topic was soon going to get awkward and we led them into a discussion about boyfriends and girlfriends.  Knowing that almost all the parents of our kids have expectations of dating and relationships for their kids (and they don't really "date" anyway.  Kids just say they are "going out" which means they take an occasional picture together and allow themselves to be teased by their peers), I knew none of them would have any.  They all raised their hands when I asked them if any of their friends did.

If they only knew their teacher had a pretty interesting sixth grade year.  My budding relationship with adult magazines was thriving thanks to a cable box and little supervision (and a kid who waited for opportunities).  I hung out in the neighborhood with two kids that reveled in mischievousness.  We cursed often, spit wherever we walked and dared anyone to tell us otherwise.  I don't know if I was bad because I wanted to or because I wanted the attention.  I know I clung to my sin like a badge of honor.  And that's sin, too, because we only choose sin that makes us feel good.

I also remember my sixth grade year as the last one with my parents.  Perhaps my attention seeking endeavors derived from their arguments, the time away.  My mom and step-dad were polar opposites.  One wanted to party, one wanted dinner immediately upon his return from work.  One was sarcastic, the other serious.  One said everything on their mind and the other reserved. Perhaps it was the lack of supervision of all my street friends.  We all had lax curfews and were given whatever we needed.  I wasn't spoiled, per se, but I did not lack of anything.  I know it was different for my parents growing up.  Perhaps that was a generational curse.

Today's kids have plenty of temptations.  I could wax poetic and old-man myself about today's technology and the freedom of access that kids have.  I remember sending my own daughter off to bed and being instant messaged by one of her friends.  Instead of not replying or just saying she had went to bed, my initial response was, "Why would you think my daughter would be up this late to talk to you?"  It was the beginning of any eye opening experience with boys.  Our little argument ensued and I don't know if I can say that kids today have more courage or lack of respect than before.  If I would have called a girl late in the evening and a parent answered, a dad, I would have been lucky to not hang up.  Having that keyboard and screen in front of you either makes us insensitive or braver.

Media too.  Twilight movies have our girls brainwashed to follow a brooding guy no matter the circumstances.  It's almost sickingly suicidal, all the talk about "not living without you" and scenes of despair when they aren't together.  Team Edward.  Team Jacob.  No Team God.  Popular shows have absent parents (I'm looking at you, iCarly), cartoon characters seek dates (Phineas and Ferb) and every teenager is sarcastic, a know-it-all or pregnant (thanks, MTV).  Temptation is everywhere.  But it isn't a sin.  It's the choice we make after that means everything.

So our sixth graders beg for phones, a facebook, sleepovers.  All I wanted as a sixth-grader was 100 friends, a pretty girl to talk to and to be left alone (unless it was with my mom).  I had the video games, the movie nights, the clothes. I had plenty of freedom too.  I wrote, I was constantly living my life in my mind.  Free to ponder, free to choose.  It was the best gift I was given as a child.  I know that my parents didn't know any other way.  Family time was dinner, going to see my dad play softball, a car ride to San Antonio.  They probably received less time that that growing up.  I tend to think my grandparents' lives were even tougher.  How many people my grandma's age didn't even finish school because they were working the fields?  Now my family time is spent doing all sorts of events.  Games, life groups, church functions.  My kids are growing up so much different than I was.  Same love, different method.  In the end, they'll face the same temptations we had growing up.  They'll have choice too.  A choice to love.


Thursday, October 13, 2011

The Ministry of Failure

I'm officially a member of the Ministry of Failure.  Please follow along as I tell you why.

I feel my story speaks for itself.  Not anyone can join the Ministry of Failure.  Surely not perfectionist.  Surely not self-help gurus who know every concoction to ail thyroids and throbbing muscles, the TV doctors who can bend and twist their way into our lives, like some yoga pick-pocket.  Snooty know-it-alls are also not invited.  The Ministry of Failure only takes the best.

I began my application process early.  Among the several elementary schools I attended, several incidents come to mind.  I remember Magrill Elementary, fourth grade.  My first week of recess I threw a pine cone at some girls' head.  Nice first impression.  No one picked me for kickball games.  Third grade was brutal.  Kids actually picked each others' teams based on height, popularity and size.  I was short, unpopular and fat.  Just wearing skin-tight parachute pants should be reason enough to grant admission into the Ministry.  Perhaps I could sing my x-rated rendition of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" I developed while my classwork was being avoided?  Or perhaps I could sign something using my mom's signature like I tried on my report card?

 If my early years do not convince you that I belong in the Ministry, perhaps my intermediate years will do.  My seventh grade year was perhaps my biggest predictor of failure to come.  After joining football to help me gain friends, I ended up walking to and from school as my bus passed with everyone yelling at me through the window and giving me the finger.  The highlight of my day was walking down by the creek to see turtles scurrying away from the scent of failure I was emitting.

 Junior high years was one failure after another.  My sixth grade year consisted of various comedic episodes that were simply re-aired like some bad tv show.  Find dad's porn stash, hide porn in vacant "safe house", smoke cigarettes with seventh grade neighbors, hide cigarettes, tease my sister, repeat.  My parents separated that year which is a prerequisite for the Ministry application, and I made matters worse by shooting a kid in the leg with a bb gun at the bus stop.  The principal of my junior high had enough of me.  Earlier in the year I bought myself a week's worth of in-school detention for passing notes in AFTER school detention with disparaging words about his toupee.  So, sending me for expulsion for the remaining school year was like giving out candy.

High school was four years of blurry ineptitude.  Failed algebra as a freshman, transferred schools because I was terrified of anyone brown (it's scary to be around too much machismo and latina-girl hairspray).  My biggest moment of failure occurred during my senior year of high school, homecoming dance.  I knew my date since junior high and all her friends had me convinced I should ask her out.  She said yes and we had a date.  Showed up at her house and noticed her friend was there.  So were two guys.  So we went to dinner, the dance, and this other guy, perhaps a boyfriend she didn't want to tell me about, tagged along.  After dinner, she parked in a car with him while I chilled in the backseat of her friend's car.  It was the longest night of my life.  Maybe two people know about that night.

My dormant years before graduating and marrying were slow and confusing.  Did you know my ex girlfriend was pregnant before I met her?  No?  What about dropping out of community college?  Perhaps it was coming home from working the night shift at the toll road (where I spent my time reading dragon-fantasy novels, cranked loudly to classic rock and sports radio and ate constantly) to an empty house, calling 1-888 numbers for "friendship", eating again and sleeping until the next shift began.  I pitted family members against one another.  I cursed my grandmother for enabling me to live like I wanted by cursed her for cleaning my room and throwing my mistakes at my mother.  I shuttled between getting kicked out of my dad's house, my uncle's house, was made fun of by my mom and step-dad when I told them I was moving out into an apartment with three girls from work.

The rest of my blogs can catch you up from there.  And so it's been, working towards the Ministry of Failure.  But one thing I have been learning the hard way lately, is that we weren't made for perfection.  We were made human.  Granted, we had the ability to be perfect.  One apple.  One bite.  Welcome, sin.  We've all been herding ourselves into the Ministry of Failure ever since.  It's only the contestant-reality shows that award talent which reminds us that people can be perfect by having one gift.  Dr. Phil reminds us we are perfect through tears, audience applause and commercial breaks.  Food makes us feel perfect too.

We all fail.  I have and will fail better than some.  But all these stories are mine.  I own them.  I have a unique copyright with my past that will not let go.  God loves our pasts.  He loves our future more because he loves us too much to let us stay the same.  These past few weeks have been a start.  2 bread sticks with lunch instead of 6.  Salad dinners.  No stops for donut holes.  Fruit snacking at night.  Did I mention the Ministry of Failure has a great buffet?  No guilt, no worry.  It's the best food I've had in years.


Friday, October 7, 2011

Melted Mushroom Tops

I didn't realize just how much fear I keep bottled.  I figured it was guilt that I was trying to suppress; the guilt that I keep fishing for.  Fear, however, seems to be one of Satan's allies.  And he's a punk and fights dirty.

Del and I have been taking a new class on Wednesdays based on the book "The Search for Significance." Our great friend who leads the class told us before signing up, you're going to fight, you're going to cry, and sure enough all have happened.  This book, and mind you, it's only the workbook for the actual book, opened up this gaping wound that I thought I had defeated.  Fear.  

I didn't see fear coming around the corner.  Week 1 was God stories, singing, laughing about seating arrangements with friends.  Week 2 sliced my guts open.  I realized I had plenty of fears.  Fears of parenting, fears of being a great teacher, fears of old sins and habits, fears of being an adequate Sunday school leader, fear of being a good enough husband.  Fear is so prevalent in my life that it made guilt jealous.  

The drive that fuels me at work--fear of perfection peppered with a fear of failure.  That cringe I feel when I open my son's behavior log?  Fear of failure.  Everyone's going to know that's your son.  They'll be whispering behind your back before you know it, Ray.  I read a Facebook post recently about how jokes have some truth in them.  When people joke with me, "The apple doesn't fall far," is it a veiled attempt to remind me of that fear?  Apple.  Sin.  Fear.  

I used to have a distinct and deep fear of dying.  I would lie awake and chills would run through my bones with the guilt of my life, that shame.  I don't necessarily have a surefire guarantee that when I die that I'll be lying in grains of honey, but I have hope now.  No more chills on Houston summer days (and a wicked chill it was, the old fear that would freeze a man walking in the stifling humidity of a Houston afternoon).   

I used to have a great fear of being alone.  I see my dad, alone in the home he was raised in, surrounded by his memories and stacks of albums.  I don't know if the music he collects soothes him on solitary evenings, but meeting Delcina dispelled that fear of being alone.  

I once had a fear of not being popular, wanted.  It's the feeling I still get when we host parties, that five minutes before the first doorbell ring.  What if no one arrives?  What if everyone leaves early?  God has blessed me with so many friends, I could have a party every weekend and still not meet them all.  Who can say that?

But let's go to the root of the biggest fear I've always had--my weight.  Most who know me, have ever known me, knows I haven't necessarily battled weight as embraced it.  I was an overweight kid who used humor and sarcasm to gain friends so that my one glaring flaw would not sag underneath my too-tight shirt like some melted mushroom top.  I played football because guys my size played football.  All others were schizo nutjobs who wore leather jackets and sweated though gym class.  I was a fat high school kid who was too shy to ask girls out but not shy enough to flirt with all of them.  I became wordly.  Someone would make a passing comment, pinch my man boob, I defeated the laughter with viscous put downs or and occasional Tony Montana, crazy-mexican eye stare.  

I worked out some from those days, sometimes I lost weight and sometimes I didn't.  I took phentermine pills at some local free clinic that services minorities, welfare families and immigrants.  I took so many that I used my best friends' name on the form just to get a monthly supply.  I drank Slim-Fast and soup diets, I once even went without a burger for one month.  And by the end of all the work, the lemon-twist flavored salads, the running and half-walking laps with my mom at Aldine High School, the portion battles and calorie counter apps, I still gained it all back.  And more.  

So there's that fear again.  Our class leader asked us to respond aloud what fears we were holding back, the fears we jotted in the margins of this cruel book.  Jobs, motherhood, parental.  I said if i didn't have fear, I would probably be thinner.  Recently I kept telling myself that God is keeping me this way because he knows my sinful heart.  A thin me would be unreachable, too egotistical.  Suddenly I'd be that douche bag at the bar who screws the divorcees, drinks all night and still has a decent waist size.  Screw the Christianity and love and service for muscle shirts and rockin the guns!  But I know that is Satan again.  Trying to talk my way out of things.  Making me feel like less of a person.  

Both my wife and I have this same fear.  Our kids have digested our lives well enough that they don't say much to us.  They don't notice the late night fast food runs, the extra butter, the donut breakfast.  But my eldest has.  That fear regurgitated in that form of judgmental love only provided by mother-in-laws and that mean friend who has no filter.  The fear of the awkward inner eye that watches me when "Biggest Loser" is on.  That's all I need, some yelling celebrity to punish my way into losing weight.  And then I head to the kitchen for something sweet.

I'm joining Weight Watchers soon.  Loving promptings are leading me there.  Satan is already packing the bags to my return.  Every bite he's going to mock me.  Fear.  There aren't enough lines in the margin of my book to write the pounds of fear that weigh on my heart.