Clown-Lipped Strangers

There are truths in every cliché.  People have been passing on quips and one-liners for decades.  Each culture has their own idioms that have become staples of their lives, even jumped the hurdles into stereotypes and superstitions.  My grandmother always says, "How about them apples."  My mother-in-law and others promise that death comes in 3's.  And for me, mine is "Truth is stranger than fiction."

Walking has become a cliché, too  Roads and highways, the walks of life.  I once wrote a poem about a road in a senior creative writing class and was politely given a C.  Road movies have been around for decades and they all represent a segment of the population, from "Easy Rider" to "Thelma and Louise."  So when I found myself taking a 2 mile hike Saturday night, the pop culture that infests my mind like some Cameron Crowe movie began playing its soundtrack.

After enjoying a college football game with a friend and his son(even if it was a loss, but I will not turn my peaceful blog into a sports diatribe), we returned to find my friend's car had been towed.  He had questioned the legitimacy of his parking choice early on, as it was close to the dumpster on the corner of a paved parking lot for an apartment complex.  We called and GPS-ed the name of the lot and began a 2 mile journey through campus downtown.

Now, had this happened in a movie, many of the following would have occurred.  Scenario 1--we end up being chased by thugs and some sadistic master criminal.  Two of us die and eventually we throw the criminal down a building alleyway (which stands for some metaphor of corporations v the death of industry or some other philosophically heady conceit).  Scenario 2--We whimsically travel from station to station meeting an odd assortment of characters.  One of us make a huge life decision (leaves his wife for a heart-of-gold hooker), one ends up "staying" in this version of Wonderland, and one finds his way out only to realize that the fantasy land was always around him to begin with.  Or Scenario 3--the men turn on one another in some survival of the fittest testimony about man's brutality towards one another.  A friend, a father and his son?  Oh, such a rich idea!

But my story was none of these.  Out of the three, I was the one panting, legs stricken with rigor, eyes affixed to the sights around me.   I didn't have the energy of confrontation that awaited at the impound lot (more on that later), or the will-power of a power walker reaching a finish line.  I was consumed at first with my body's denial.  Ironically, I had been thinking of my food intake all day.  How much beer should I drink? Is that one too many pulled-pork sandwiches?  So the first few blocks were a blessing in disguise.  Wait until I add this activity to the weight watchers database tonight!

Eventually, the crowd and lights of the city eased the tenseness in my feet.  Every establishment a dorm room of food and conversation.  The music of the bars echoed into the streets.  Not a taxi or pedestrian honked at us even when the analog hand of caution warned us to heed.  Couples shared rides, buses were full, their plexiglass a gauzy, grease-smeared transparency.  Neon signs, a-blinking advertisements and specials adorned each window.  We walked past a veterinarian shop, where it's medicinal tubs and clinical tables reminded me of some Eli Roth torture epic.  Several hookah shops dotted the landscape where it's colorful "blue milk" concoctions were something from Mos Eisley Cantina.

People too.  Couples, dancing girls who said hi to passerbys.  A student being heckled for being mistaken for a Pennsylvania native (it was his hockey jersey that outed him), bike riders, a girl clutching a pillow.  Girls crying on steps (I'm convinced that steps are better used for smoke breaks, girl-watching and crying than any other architectural structure ever made).  I fell behind numerous times along the trek, squeezing through groups of young men and women.  I craved pizza slices so I could walk like John Travolta down the streets of Manhattan.

By the time we reached Fifth, the area changed.  The lights grew dimmer.  Chain link fences that bowed from the implosion of its neighborhood wavered in the breeze.  The casual shorts-n-bike law enforcement turned more formal.  Industrial sized wood staples jutted from its foundations.  Will future generations look back upon the graffiti of its youth and study them like hieroglyphics?  Somewhere, there's an Incan ghost running around with an ancient spray can, laughing his ass off.   

Then my walk became arduous.  I clung to my bookbag tighter, then lamented whether or not I should have had my wallet handy in case I ran into someone who needed it.  I looked over my shoulder a few times.  I fell victim to the stereotype of the dark alley.  I began to think of the people in my life who couldn't make this same walk.  The ill, the forgotten.  Kris Sims, my wife's share partner whose thymoma has stricken her energy.  My walk was for them as much as it was for me.  Praise the good and bad.  A sign bore down on our last street.  Just what part of "thou shall not" did you not understand?

It was then I noticed a girl with Rolling Stone-painted lips.  She must have noticed I saw them, simply walked up to me, grabbed my face and kissed me on the lips. My friends and I shared a laugh.  A kiss from a clown-lipped stranger.

I don't know what lesson I was supposed to learn in that walk.  I talked to my step-dad earlier in the week about being thankful for each day isn't guaranteed.  Perhaps that was it.  Or to be grateful for the experiences of life.  The vice, the pleasure of girls in yoga pants, a kiss, the knowledge that our walk had an end.  What of others?  Theirs has just begun.  My friend's car end up being damaged too, and perhaps it was a lesson in patience.  A lesson in frugality--our sense of payment for "free" parking. (On a side note, another friend was towed that night too, from the same exact spot where we had once been towed.  Imagine that movie, the Tow Trucker who transports the lives of its victims.  Morgan Freeman!)

What I do know is that he was with me.  I had an old high school friend tell me that he was told, "Never trust anyone who is always smiling."  One cliché is another man's value.  I think mine was the biggest of the night.


 

Guarded Addictions

Last night I watched "Unguarded" an ESPN 30 on 30 special about Chris Herren, a basketball phenom from Massachusetts whose career was undermined by an addiction to heroin.  Brutal story.  It reminded me of watching the movie, "The Fighter" in which Christian Bale played the real-life brother addicted to smack.  He had those sunken eyes, that drugged-out look.  There are times in watching "Unguarded" that Chris looked much the same.  It's any wonder how he lived to survive.

And then I began to bury my mind with questions.  Why drugs?  Why did his wife stay with him though all the ups and downs, the travelling and over doses?  Why didn't anyone care enough to see the warning signs?  And better yet, where's God in all of this.  Many times during the program,  Chris is telling his story to several different audiences--the obligatory stay-off-drugs in a high school, a military audience, one that looks like a room full of ex-cons, ex-addicts.  We see clips and pictures of his past, all swagger and boastful.  We love these types of stories.  The cocky kid rises, falls, and lives to tell about it.  The entire story is a testament to the power of the human spirit.  And then again I get to wondering, are shows like this just a glorification of how humans can do mighty things without God?  I know I am being presumptuous and judgmental.  Bear with me.  

I've seen these stories before.  It's always the druggie, or the gangster, or the money launderer, the gambler.  They learn their lesson through a series of pratfalls and down-n-outs, but in the end of the movie, they survive with a smirk to the camera.  We're supposed to learn something from them, I guess.  The entire movie is filled with parties, naked women, drugs, crime but when their life changes it's dull (remember the ending of "Goodfellas"?) and uneventful.  We never see the movie about the after-life.  Those days where they struggled to stay clean, struggled to gain a foothold of being a father, being "normal."  For wise-guys and show boaters, it's always been about them.  And for Chris too, I presume.  He tells his story with a bluntness.  Some may call it courage.  Some may feel talking in front of an audience is much like resurrecting his basketball career.  Adoring fans, tears, hugs afterward.  You can hear the quotes right?  "You're such an inspiration."  "Your story made me reflect on my addictions."  Etc, etc.  

Addictions are powerful.  I didn't always understand the lure of drugs.  I smoked as a kid, and in my highest moment I realized I didn't need a bong hit to make me laugh cause I laughed pretty much anywhere.  Beer was this way too.  I was a happy drunk, a social drinker.  Perhaps it was through observing my own family that led me clear of needing that drug or alcohol fix.  My dad never drank and he rarely ever had a beer in his fridge.  We shared a few during a Monday Night Football game when I was in town years back.  It was the most awkward beer I've ever had.  My step-dad was a non-drinker too.  He played fastpitch softball on the weekends when the coolers were filled with more Budweiser than Gatorade.  These guys would smoke and drink between games, 9 am games.  But for him, he just never dabbled.  And then there were my uncles.

Two of them never met a shot of tequila they didn't like.  I mean, when one has "Tequila" as part of a nickname, you know what kind of person you're dealing with.  I know there was a lot of unseen drug use, the rumors of.  I didn't know all of their friends, only that they never really stayed around.  I guess that says something too.  

And then there was my own fear and crossed-messages.  I grew up with that Catholic fright.  I would sneak a look at my step-dad's stash-plate he slid under the sofa when I entered the room and wonder what the little green seeds were, that pungent smell.  He raised me too, and held his jobs, worked up to management.  If this was a drug addiction, how was it able to manage a family?  How was it able to hold a job?  And fear again.  I once saw cocaine left aside after an uncle's party.  Rolled-up dollar bills, lots of scary-looking white guys.  I always presumed that with my stupid luck and that Catholic fear based mentality, that the minute I took anything stronger than a Tylenol, that I'd foam at the mouth and die (with a pair of skid-marked underwear on no less, that was grandma-induced fear in itself).  I remember once going on a drug run.  I was just out of high school.  Being inside that guys house, all that fear just boiling.  I kept thinking we were going to get killed.  That this guy would get pissed and shoot us all.  His wife or girlfriend were watching tv at the time, watching us buy.  His kid was there too.  Here I am, just out of high school, with my friends in a kitchen trying to smoke something from a manipulated coca-cola can, the room illuminated by the blue light of the television and the eyes of a child burying a hole in me.  No wonder I didn't get a buzz.  

And going back to the film, he confessed to spending thousands just for a fix.  And I thought to my own addictions.  Pornography and food.  One hidden, one in plain view.  On mornings like this when I would have the free time (I took the day off of work to be a prayer partner for my wife), I would awaken to the thoughts of what I would visit on the computer screen.  Then some heavy lunch of fried chicken, hiding the evidence in the outside trashcans.  Then back to the computer.  Then food thoughts again.  Repeat.  

When I was younger and struggling to live on my own, it was much the same.  I would leave work in the early morning, buy some breakfast tacos, gorge, sleep, then awaken and venture out to rent video tapes from any place I could get them.  I think there were about 20 mom and pop video stores along Aldine Westfield and I had a membership to all of them.  They each had their curtained adult video room.  Those were my days.  Porn and pizza.  

And when Chris Herren talks about living one day at a time, I understand.  Each day I don't view that is a blessing.  I notice food habits now as well.  Why do I always have my necklace or shirt collar in my mouth when I watch tv?  Probably because I would be mindlessly eating.  Part of going to Weight Watchers is to change those habits.  Right now, I'm home awaiting the afternoon prayer vigil for my wife who is speaking in the Emmaus walk.  My mind drifts to lunch time  because that's the safe place my mind remembers.  I spoke of fear in an earlier blog.  

But I have one thing different lately.  It's not my power or a program.  All God.  I hope Chris has that for his family, instead of the humanistic approach to battling what ails us.  We can only do so much.  Chris says he thanked God a few times in the film.  I hope it wasn't just a flippant remark of a man in front of a camera.  No camera is on me or the men I look up to.  I wonder how their stories will play out.

  

The Yoke of Hope

I'm not sure when was the last time I worried.  Now, mind you, I have worries.  Typically the ones of late have been minute.  What will I try to accomplish at work in Reading?  What can I delete from the DVR to create space for the next 5 shows that are going to record on Monday?  Did I leave the garage door open?

Trivial matters.  Inconsequential wastes of time, one might say.  I think the last time I actually worried about something that gave me that upset stomach feeling was last year with a parent.  There had been some lingering communication issues and there was a meeting to be held later in the week to discuss what would be the next course of action.  It made me walk on egg shells in my own classroom.  How dare some parent dictate what I say, how I say it, or why I say anything.  Accuse me of what?  How dare they!  And I tried something I hadn't quite learned how to do after becoming a Christian about five years ago--I prayed.  And after I prayed, I gave it to God.  And he took care of me.  Since then, there hasn't been worry.

Not that my life is peaches and cream.  There are peripheral happenings that are beyond my control.  Cancer seems to be ravaging through the body of a close friend.  Terminal.  Ironic that a terminal in an airport signifies the destination point or loading station to board a plane, but if a doctor tells you that the unfair sickness invading your body is terminal, your next destination is most likely death.  Two of my colleagues are fighting new battles with breast cancer as well.

There is a student at my school who walks as if his ankles have been stricken with polio.  They turn in , and his walk is a bastardization of what God created.  Sinews twisted and rigored.  Bones crumbling under the weight of a seven year old's desire to run and play.  He was equipped with a wheelchair today.  All smiles this kid, being carted by his brother in the hallway.  "I'm popping a wheelie with you next week," I told him.  Do I worry about that kid?  Yes.  But hope runs deep in my mind.  One day him, the kids across the hallways that have been dealt some terrible deck (autism, brain disorders) will one day run in the full splendor of God's kingdom.  Whether or not we greet one another is probably a humanistic question our minds drift to.  Of course we want to see loved ones, we have trained our minds to expect such a sight.  But my mind drifts to the kids taken early, the disabled ones, the enabled, the kids who know all about love because that's the only emotion they can probably fathom, all healed, all brokenness, unified.  Am I distant with the situation?  By no means.  But hope wins over worry.

 Many of my students have their own lives to contend with.  A colleague of mine sarcastically declares to a moody fifth grader, "What you mad at?  You don't even pay bills."  If monetary stress was anything close to what they are trying to do themselves.  Dad in jail, the caring for of younger siblings, the lack of a decent meal that urges them to take extra food from the lunch room, moving to new schools on a whim, drug abuse.  This past week, a teacher finds a note in a kid's book bag talking about adult things reserved for Comedy Central of F/X.  After some questions, she finds out his dad has them watch movies with "nude people" at night over a bowl of popcorn.  Cruz's age?  Possibly watching pornography with their kid--with a snack?  So do I worry, oh yes, but God has us in the right place.  To listen, to inquire, to step in and hear those warning cries.  That case of the one girl, locked up in some shed for over ten years.  God sent people to that house.  God gave plenty of warning signs.  We just didn't catch them.

Tonight during Life Group a new couple shared some of their grief and hesitance with "giving it to God."  It sounds blasé if it were coming from my heart years ago.  Disturbing grief.  Painful memories.  Forgiveness that is a 4-letter word.  The world wants us to dismiss God, blame him for "letting" things happen.  The hurts and actions of evil hearts are somehow attributed to the same creator who made something as complex and amazing as a the human body.  That's free will.  Would it be better to make us all puppets so that no grief would befall anyone, keep everyone safe.  Man hurts one another.  Man's free will.  Man's choices.  Do we know why?  Do we understand the choices people make?  I don't think we are made to know all those answers.  I don't have that hurt in my life.  I'm blessed.


But I know one day my comfort will be rocked to its core.  It could be cancer, it could be a sudden highway death that took my uncle Richard.  It could be a stunning act of evil.  Do I worry these things will happen?  No.  Worrying will not give me an extra day.  Worrying won't give me more money or opportunity to spend more family time with loved ones.  But "Giving it to God" is replacing a heavy burden, that yoke on my shoulders in exchange for His.  Hope.  

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.

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.

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.  

The Reservoir

Nothing fires me up more than complaining.  I know because I'm the king of complaining.  This blog of mine sometimes is one bug rant.  Usually I ponder over something way past my pay grade, end up reminiscing about my life (especially my life before Christ) and then I bring hope into the passage with something spiritual.  It's my pattern.  Every blogger probably has one.  Maybe mine is more evident, but it's there.

So back to complaining.  My wife would say I still complain.  Lately it's been about spending quality time with my wife.  She's busy cutting and slicing in the kitchen while I (sometimes) end up doing random chores when I feel like I've been provided with enough energy.  My wife has plenty.  Either that or she knows that when she sits, her body is going to hibernate.  There was a movie lately with the ever-hateable Sarah Jessica Parker called, "I don't know how she does it."  The trailer shows some professional office worker married to Greg Kinnear and looks to impress women by understanding what they go through as they juggle careers, marriage and kids.  And all the while looking like a shrunken head of her former self.  My wife does that and more.  No movie could represent that.

My other complaints have been about my older daughter.  She's pretty much perfect.  I love her to death and all I want to do is hug her.  She's going on a college visit/practice/stay over tomorrow on her own.  She has her Google directions printed and all her forms signed.  She's worried about missing exits and getting there late.  I know I should have probably taken the day off and driven her up there.  Her dad in shining armor.  I also know it's probably best I send her on her own.  Slowly letting go.  Cutting the chord one by using a dull butter knife.

Other complaints.  Small digs here and there without sometimes knowing it.  We probably all do this in some form or capacity.  Living in Houston I felt it was my right to complain.  Traffic, bad sports teams, Mexican people who weren't born here, Hispanics who held it against me that I didn't speak Spanish, rednecks, etc, etc etc.  Once deep in my own filthy life and spewing it for all who would listen, my Mom's husband told me basically to shut up.  He was probably the first person in a long line of people who probably who had enough of me.

Then I became a teacher.  I didn't know complaints until I became a teacher.  I had fun and new things to complain about.  Not enough planning time, loud kids, principals, district policy, bad parents, good parents, hip hop, fellow teachers, broken copiers and not having a substitute when it's your day to have Art class.  Teaching was not just an outlet for bouts of creativity, but it was a reservoir of negativity if you were willing to find it.

But that's another blog.  The demons of my first five years, my last five years before Christ are a strange trip indeed.  Those stories are push their way through whenever I face a challenging kid, a bad afternoon or when I speak to an old colleague.  Sometimes I feel that my last five years teaching, my first five years after making a decision to follow Christ, was somehow going to wipe away my past teaching sins.  I know this is a futile attempt at perfection (and a big fear of failure that's always been there with me, hand in hand like a demented demon just ready to pounce when my confidence gets too high).  I know I cannot exempt the screaming I've done, the overtly aggressive hand-gestures and the days I phoned in a lesson.

And work isn't the only thing I've tried to fix (instead of letting Him in more, like I had anything to do with my own salvation other than to make a choice).  My bad parenting of Cruz has me sighing each time I come home.  His daily behavior log is becoming something I dread opening.  When I was a kid, my Dad collected Time-Life books on everything from wars to nature.  The pictures were always life-like, and the ones with sharks or insects always creeped me out.  I would peek before opening the page so I wouldn't be scared.  That's how I feel when I go to open his behavior log.  He has good days and I don't believe him.  I check for the good stamps and wonder if he somehow stole the teacher's stamp pad.

So it was without a sense of irony when Wednesday we had a district-wide professional development day. All morning I was between creativity, joking (not sarcastic ribs at the presenters like I've done countless times before) and loving the day that God had given me.  By the time the day was over, I was almost in tears, wondering what the hell happened to such a great day.  I don't know when it became to change.  Was it the men who were callously reading the sports page during a keynote address (like I have done in the past,?  I used to do this in high school!), or the people leaving early?  Perhaps it was my own fatigue, or the stress of our own carpool driver?  Once we arrived home, about an hour away from going to church for Bible study, I think I had uttered profanities at my wife, almost refused to go and wanted to sell my kids on e-bay.  It happens just that fast.

Maybe my former life wants to have another go-round with me.  One more bachelor party for old times sake.  Maybe it never leaves us.  I hear stories about radical transformations from sin to salvation.  That is surely not my story.  Mine is going a different path.  Slow.  God doesn't want me moping about my 33 or so years when I wanted to do things my way, but he's not going to just whisk it away either.  What fun would that be?  In the meantime, I'm going to keep praying, keep stepping and avoid the complainers.  I feel embarrassed for them.  I was once them and I just want to hug them.  Their God-man in shining armor.