Saturday, January 28, 2012

Brick by Brick

January is about come and gone.  It has been surprising on some extent based strictly on the weather.  I expected frigid temperatures, lots of snow and a hunkered down mentality at home.  Instead, we've had rain, some windy days and more sun that I imagined.  Similarly, the season of my life has been just as erratic.  Cold days, a mood swing blows in like the wind, a thought pervades the conscious and hunkers down.  And suddenly the light shines and the reluctant soul becomes cleansed once again.

Life Group this past Friday asked several questions that I could blog about alone.  One of them was an extension from Luke which reads, "...no prophet is accepted in his hometown."  I remember the verse before but really hadn't delved into the essence of what Jesus was saying.  All the paragraph before says they were amazed, but questioned, "Isn't this Joseph's son?"  And there's the rub.  The people within our inner circle, they can sometimes judge one another to the point where you literally don't succeed.  Our group facilitator asked us how our surrounding shaped us, and how our hometown sometimes underestimated or overestimated our abilities.

Growing up in my culture meant making it was just graduating high school.  People my color didn't always go to college, despite the talk of my parents who always expressed college as a requirement for being allowed to live.  College wasn't a choice, it was the next step.  I only knew college from football games and Animal House movies.  My father had graduated but rarely spoke of it.  My mom didn't graduate high school.  My step-father played baseball for a few years, but it wasn't until much later that he returned for his teaching degree.  My grandparents barely made it out of junior high.  We attended high school graduations among the family like they were grand events.  Little did I know that for some people like me, it was the closest they were ever going to get to a college degree.

I had my mind set on two colleges; St. Thomas in Houston and Vanderbilt University.  Talk about underestimating my abilities!  My grades were hardly stellar, but Vanderbilt offered me a dream of being away from home, studying journalism, and far away from the people that I knew.  St. Thomas offered the prestige of a private school and a status I craved.  I remember being laughed at asking for the application money for Vanderbilt, and a stern lecture linking my lack of discipline to the rigors of living in a dorm rule free.  For St. Thomas, I studied the entrance essay like never before.  I might have written 3 or 4 copies, but in the end I was accepted.  It was a party for one.  I didn't even get a chance to light a candle for the cake.

My friends?  Not much difference.  Most were community college denizens.  I flirted with a writer's group and met Delcina at a time in my life when no amount of college was going to get me to a point of success.  I underestimated my ability.  I settled for the status quo.  I fought so hard to be different all through high school, dressing preppy, hanging with the white boys, being the teachers pet, class clown, the newspaper editor.  I was different.  I didn't speak Spanish and I didn't need to.  You sign up for the Marines, I have a future in education.  My uncle, who just retired, offered me a job at Southwestern Bell as a confused and bitter 20-something.  He said that if school wasn't for me, I'd have to work like everyone else.  He offered a life of manual labor, listening to a boss, working all hours.  I remember feeling the softness of my hands and thinking I didn't have it in me.  I think my uncle's overestimation in me was really his way of telling me to get it together.

So I ran from his house to my dad's, back to my grandmother.  I had delusions of grandeur that I would live in an apartment with 2 other girls.  My wallet laughed in hysterics.  My step-dad's facial expression had said the rest.

When I finally did marry, this is after securing my 2 year degree at previously said community college, we drove up to Toledo to see long lost family.  There were a number of younger cousins that were graduating college and enrolling in Toledo U.  The times of our family were looking up.  Months later, perhaps a year being in school myself, there came news of the Toledo cousins.  Dropping out, girlfriends moving in and pregnant, the professor doesn't like me.  The cycle of failure once again reminded me that I was brown, different, that I'd never amount to anything.  I hadn't really "made it."

Back to the Life Group question.  Driving home today, I told my wife if someone were to ask me if I had "made it" in any facet of life, in the ones that mattered--fatherhood, my spirituality, a husband--I'd say "no."  Not because I don't have enough confidence, but because I'm like the townspeople amazed at Jesus.

Isn't that Reynaldo, the guy who dropped out of college?
Isn't that the guy who I saw at that strip club back in the day?
Didn't he used to drink alot?
Is that the same teacher who barely passed his entrance exam?
Isn't that his son with the temper problems?

Confidence doesn't come from talks with a mirror, thank goodness.  It comes in the form of losing weight (goodbye 28.6 pounds), from the kids who will not leave my side in the hallways at school, from my wife who makes sure my lunch is warmed up, from the security of my share group partners and even from nailing two three pointers in a church gym.  I read in Genesis about the tower of Babel.  How the men in that time were building a monument not in God's honor, but to show that they were independent, that they could reach the heavens by means alone.  So what did God do?  He scattered them.  Changed their language.  And it says, because "....then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

You see, God gives us the confidence.  It's not the long hours at work, or the number of soccer teams I coach.  How will I know that I have "made it"?  I wont and that's okay.  The mirror can snicker at me, the bastard, but in the end, it's not me I need to impress.  Let's break down the tower brick by brick.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Rewritten

This Sunday was pretty eventful.  It started off with a great church service where I was again reminded that my faith will not simply work to change me unless the darkness that resides in my heart gets dumped out .  I guess that's the need of Bible Studies, church service and life groups, missionary work and the other ways we can be stewards to others that eventually works its way into your bloodstream, and then after time, you become changed.  My pastor said that whatever seeps into the well eventually has to come up in a bucket.  Why do we need God?  Because we leak!  Duh.

So here I am Sunday night, walking into Bible study.  There are two elderly people attending class.  One had a hard time turning around from a condition in his neck and the woman who entered had a facial expression that to me signaled the remnants of a stroke.  My "well" has been filled with pre-judgements and misguided stereotypes before.  When I served on team the first time on Emmaus, I know the Lord placed a certain man in my table simply because He was telling me that I needed to stop realizing on my eyes to see the qualities of someone.  As a teacher, I can easily pigeonhole my kids into groups of success and failure.  I used to cram through the records folders of future students so I could know everything about them.  But, the more I dug, the more I found out about their disciplinary or attendance history, I began to lose my passion for serving them.  Easy excuses permeated my thoughts.  "He'll never come to school anyway."  "He's not going to pass."  Etc.  The teachers lounge became that refuge for these thoughts, and what came out of my mouth were the result of infected well.

So my mind goes to these elderly few, and it wasn't a thought of sympathy or respect, but "How are they going to get through this class without keeling over right here on the table?"  But class started, and soon they had a chance to share their thoughts, and I thinking of how wrong I was.  I began to wonder if becoming older somehow would make everything in our lives calmer, more faithful, easy.  No kids to wrangle for bedtimes, no worries about work, a cat sitting in your lap purring the time away.  Perhaps when I am older the well in my heart will become filled with different priorities.  The frustrations of work, that kid that just wont listen at school, that girl who walks by at the mall wearing the yoga pants and the low-cut shirt (hey, I'll be old, so what would it matter what pretty girls wear, right?).  She mentioned a son she had who had once been a cocaine addict, and who now serves others get off drugs.  She says that peace comes from coming to terms with the parts of the Bible that you don't agree with.

Our sermon series this month, "Stuff Jesus Wouldn't Say," has a promo picture of someone erasing an unknown verse from the Bible using white out.  How true.  There is so much worldly conversations about what sin is bigger than the others.  Homosexuality, gay rights, gay marriage, divorce, pornography, abortion, women's rights, creation v evolution and poverty.  Both sides use various quotes, Biblical verses, and scientist to stake their claim for your vote, your money, your time, your blog space.  The Bible is filled with people acting badly, and lowly people becoming great.  What it doesn't do is contradict itself or always tell you what you want to hear about yourself.

In the Bible study I am taking, there is a section titled: The Human Condition.  This week it read, "The world was created for man."  This one line drive us into different tangents of world religions, Biblical truths and the peace quote from above.  What it made me realize was that the world wasn't made for me, it was made to glorify Him.  It wasn't made for me to squander my resources, my time, on endless quests and mindless journeys.  I was made to serve, to be a steward, to use the resources of time, family, my church and all my mind and facilities to further His glory.

So for this Bible study we are on a quest to rewrite the human condition.  Who says it's going to be easy?  Anyone with me?

Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Lullaby of Burps

Habits.

Little did I know that in my early years, they would now become snares, footholds on my daily life.  Do you end up being mastered by them?  Somehow, don't your habits eventually shape your personality?

I've figured one way to deal with stress, presumably, is to bite my nails, the inside of my cheeks and sometimes even the front collar of my shirt.  Bad habits.  I can't fully blame my father who also bites his nails as if he's collecting the remnants to build an ark.  But I've always done so, openly probably more so than I realize.  Delcina hates to be in the van with me because I leave the shells of my work randomly on the floorboard (at least I don't spit them wantonly on the dashboard to collect like a bee that has found its way in your vehicle, only to lodge himself on the furthest point of the window, away from arms reach, to slowly wither away throughout the season.  Dry and crunchy).

Biting my nails turned into biting the inside of my cheeks.  There have been times I bit them raw, both sides.  I've found myself chewing away without even realizing so.  I was granted a short reprieve right after my Emmaus walk almost 4 years ago.  Perhaps it was God's way telling me to relax.  Lately I've felt myself returning to the comfort of pain, that gnawing sense that I can somehow bite my way through a problem.

And now my shirts.  I am constantly biting my collar, sometimes my necklace when I am at home.  It's almost unconscious.  As I'm typing this out, my t-shirt collar rests on my bottom lip.  I think after trying to figure out why I was behaving this way  I realized there was another long habit that I had overlooked.

Overeating.

I have a love affair with food.  Some of my earliest memories deal with food somehow, from barbecue parties at my Uncle David's house where he smoked brisket like a champion, to being in my grandmother's house where the assembly line of meals never ceased.  I even have stories recited back to me from before I can remember that deal with food.  How is it that three of the most vivid memories of my grandmother, two deal with food and one with a second-story open window that I almost sailed out of?  Let's take the leap through time, shall we?

Picture a toddler falling asleep with a fried chicken bone in his hand.  I used to be a skinny kid, one that I can back up with the one photo of me on my apartment porch when I lived off in Park Place.  I have some great memories of that apartment complex.  My first kiss, losing a tooth playing football, rolling a noisy Tonka Truck through the courtyard, bouncing tennis balls against the wall.  Playing Monopoloy with the downstairs neighbor (what was her name?  wow, can't even remember) and my buddy Frederico (was it Frederico?) and dancing to Blondie in her bedroom.

I failed at outrunning wasps but excelled in running through the complex in my bare feet when it rained.  I once threw one of my infant sister's dirty diaper in an open car window, shuffled through dirty mags behind the dumpster with the neighborhood boys.  I remember making paper gliders just to watch them majestically  float through the complex.  My step dad's canary-yellow pick-up truck.  My Uncle Steven who called a girl a "broad."  I also remember staying up late on Friday nights watching Cinemax kung fu epics downing the left over pieces of fried chicken from Hartz.  Simply, that's when the pounds began.

For years all my om said was that when she bought jeans for me I had went from slims to huskies.  I was a husky kid, a panson in Spanish terms--the fat kid.   

Fast forward to my high school years where I battled weight issues with a variety of dress styles, diets, and work outs.  Perhaps my weight issues led to all my other issues that I thought I had or manifested itself into issues I wanted to use as crutches.  Don't have a girlfriend?  Cause you're fat!  Kids making fun of you?  Cause you're fat!  Why didn't you run harder at football practice?  Cause I'm fat!

Later I was known as "Big Ray" or "Big man."  Society sure does put you in your place.  People like to rub your belly like you're pregnant.  They remember your name cause you're the big one.  Grandmas love you cause you never say no to a hot plate.

And eating too much was fun (a bible study instructor once said, we keep committing the sins we like because they make us feel better).  I used to order a Domino's large pizza, eat it all before my grandma came home, then in an effort to not upset her, always responded to the call to a dinner of starchy tortillas.  When I outgrew my high school pants, i began working overnight, which undoubtedly led to more complex and habitual eating.

Once a week, a  guy who drove a medical food truck would drive through the toll way I worked and leave us plates of chicken wings and other goodies for free rides.  And if I wanted something, Houston always had something open 24 hours.  Whataburger.  Jack in the Box.  When the morning finally came and my shift was over, I'd drive to Shipley Donuts or a taqueria for a generous helping of donuts, kolaches or chorizo before the lullaby of burps settled me into sleep.

When I met my wife I was under 300 pounds.  One thing I later realized was that my wife liked to eat just as much as I did.  As she grew through her stomach reduction surgery, I grew along with her.  Our habits included late night Taco Bell runs, or heating up a pizza before bed.  Eating, for us, became our love making.

So now there's Weight Watchers.  I've been going on 2 months now, and have lost about 20 pounds.  I've recently gained about 5 pounds in a two week span.  Reflecting on my habits I realized how much my routine deals with food and the food I serve others.  I ate during late night card games, or watching a football game.  I charted my points and watched the graph get higher, but I never got that full sensation you get when you eat too much.  Scary.

But before you get down on me, or start worrying about me (yes, my shirt is still resting on my bottom lip), realzing one's habits and pains is the key that will unlock my future.  I've begun new habits over the past few years, like reading my bible daily.  I am the dad that does laundry routinely and bathes the kids, reads them stories at night.  They aren't so much habits as responsibilities and a quest to change.  Now I'm wondering how to do just that without changing everyone else's life in the process.  I'm beginning to think they go hand in hand.