Functional Dysfunction

Most of the time, I'm a total mess.

Let's just admit that fact right off the bat.  If you're a first time reader, you need to know what's coming.  Stories about a sinner who sometimes reluctantly and other times blatantly embraces the good types of life affirming change God has been asking of me all along.  I'm really no different from the person to my left or right.    Perhaps I can eloquently summarize a week in a few paragraphs better than the average blogger.  Perhaps I can express that thought, but most of the time I am pretty much in awe of what responsibilities and events transpire in my life.  I am the great observer.  Sometimes I'm allowed to intervene, and other times I am asked to intervene.  But in the end, I'm here for what amounts to a split second of time.  And when I don't allow God in, and even when I do, I'm still pretty much a mess.  Dysfunctionally broken.

These past few weeks have been a reminder my connections to the overall scheme of things.  The role of fatherhood, mentor, coach, husband.  The role of being a son was remembered for I truly found that to have been missing.  You never stop being your mom's son.  You feel at times that Dad has bequeathed some sort of manliness on, as if manhood was somehow given like a favorite recliner, or a worn glove passed from one person to another.  The torch.  But you're never really far from your mother.  I can be 50, and if my mom is still around in 20 years, or 30, you can bet she's still going to be my mom, and me, her son.

For the past month, and especially these last week or so, I have been resistant to criticism.  It could have been from parenting, teaching, being a husband, but amid all this stubbornness I had been praying about feeling "attacked."  While some of my feelings are true in the sense that the devil likes to make us feel like we are in charge, I had to remember the motivations behind the God whispers.

So there was work.  Perhaps the boss' rebuke isn't rooted in Biblical love, but in the corporate manifesto of "to cover one's ass."  Bosses are pressed by the numbers, the data, and the suit behind some fancy, cherry wood, stained desk.  Still, there's lessons to be learned and strategies to implement.

But from my wife or my mom?  That's the love true rebuke comes from.  The kind I felt at church this morning when my pastor began speaking about today's "modern" family.  I smirked about his disclaimer at the beginning of the sermon, where he began making the congregation feel better about the inevitable families out there who think they are doing "enough" in their lives to live a Godly way.  If I go to church simply to feel better, I might as well not go.  If I go for conviction, then, that's where I want to worship.  I'd cry if I wasn't on so much medication.

Perhaps that's why there are so many women out there raising kids on their own.  The men simply could not handle the conviction that comes with being a leader of the home.  Or perhaps that's why so many people don't attend church.  Who wants to be told that there's so much more than what the world wants?  And while many similar thoughts get me fired up on any particular day, why don't I ask myself the same question?

Many friends tell me, "you're too hard on yourself."  There's some truth to that I'm sure, but there's also a great amount of selfishness in the line as well.  Even self flagellation has its limits.  God doesn't want us lamenting past behaviors and choices.  He doesn't want us worrying about tomorrow, so I'm pretty sure he's not throwing our sins in our face either.  It's forgiveness with an expectation of change.  That's love.  He doesn't want us making excuses for making the same bad choices.  That's love as well.  And when conviction does change, it hurts.  It humbles.  It pushes us into action.  And conviction doesn't want us sealed off from the world like some basement jockey, whereby spending the day using our opposable thumbs to direct the actions of video game character along some dystopian landscape.  Hand me a lightsaber and I'm the most fearless of adults.  Hand me a Bible and I become meek.  Why is that?

Summer beckons, and reflections are sure to come.  I'm already 3 blogs behind and several books are calling my name in a soothing cacophony of temptation.  What will I give in with this summer?  Get away with?  Give away?  My God shoes sit beside me.  They're dusty from wear and have those green lawn stains from mowing.  The laces are unraveling.  The great thing about the God shoes is that there is always a new pair whenever I need them.  And their free.  Absolutely free.  Who else can say that?