Confessions of an oldest son.

This semester at school has been ridiculously busy for me. I’m taking 17 hours this semester, and while I am enjoying Lipscomb Univ., I am trying to finish school as fast as I can. My work load has, however, hampered other areas of my life. The effort that I was putting forth in trying to lose some weight has gone to the way-side. I also find myself, dare I say it, too busy to consider trying the dating scene. Now, I could talk about the endless studying of Greek, the papers and presentations due at various times during the course of the semester, or the desire I have to be in a relationship, but what has really struck me the most this year so far has been the lack of time I have been able to spend with my family and friends back home.

One of the many classes I am taking this semester is a course called “Communicating the Gospel”, and it is designed to focus on the actually physical preaching aspect of ministry. I often refer to it as a Public Speaking course for Bible Majors. The class is taught by a man named David Fleer. Dr. Fleer is a tall, voicestrus man with a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and a long history of experience in the art of Preaching. Our class meets only once a week, on Tuesday from 2:45pm to 5:20, and while our class is small, I feel that we have been not only very forward but very honest with one another. I genuinely feel very close to everyone in that course and I think it is because of that openness that Dr. Fleer shared with us a very personal story.

We had been speaking about the different types of preaching styles and one of which is called the story-teller. This arch type, as you might have guessed, tells stories to better communicate the point he or she is trying to make, very much in the same way that Jesus used parables to teach in the New Testament. Dr. Fleer then assigned us a sermon from a lady by the name of Barbara Brown Taylor. Her sermon was personal, touching and relevant; it is one of the best sermons I have ever experienced and in the very middle of it, she told a story about herself as a child waiting to see a movie on a hot summer day. The story made sense, it fit and it was easily understood by everyone who listened to it, or read it in the case of our class. After our class discussion, Dr. Fleer told us that, on occasion, as he is pondering some thought or reading some article, he will day dream. He recalls a time when he is younger, a time when his mother, who has been dead for some 20 years, is still alive and able to sit and talk with him for great periods of time. He said sometimes, when he is sitting at his desk, he will day dream that his mother will walk into his office and ask him a simple question, “David, would you like for me to tell you a story?”

It seems silly for an educated, adult male to want to hear a story as though he were some child that needed to be entertained while falling asleep, but for Dr. Fleer, the idea is so much deeper than that. He dreams of a time where he can have one last story told to him by his beloved mother, someone who offered him love and strength during a very turbulent family life in his early years. I’m oft the sentimental type, and I became teary eyed in class, even now recalling him telling the story brings tears to my eyes. The simple story of his impromptu sermon touched my heart and I related quickly to what he was saying in his simple yet elegant message: enjoy the time that you have with your loved ones.

Later that night, when I was finished with the events of the day and I had plenty of time to devote my full attention to a phone call, a called my mom back home in Georgia. I didn’t want anything in particular, in fact, I was satisfied that she picked up the phone and answered it. Dr. Fleer’s day dream concerning his mom made me miss my mom and dad, and sometimes, even an educated, adult male needs to be entertained by his parents.

Don’t worry Mom, I’ll be home in two weeks for Thanksgiving =).

Stay with me here now and never surrender.

Earlier today, as per my morning custom, I checked the news via Yahoo! news and CNN.com and I was interested when I came across some information that the “unbiased” media has curiously overlooked.

Our president, Barack Obama, is refusing to allow his college records to be released to the public, something which every president since JFK has done. He refuses to do the same with his birth records, which has also been the common practice of many of his predecessors. Now, I am not one for conspiracy theories. I, however, do think it strange that with the rumor mill aggressively circulating the beliefs that President Obama is not a natural-born American citizen and that he was a foreign-exchange student in some of his college days, that he would not quell the rumors by simply releasing some inconsequential records for public viewing.

I also find it thought provoking that while the main criticisms for “W”’s presidency were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 900 billion dollar national deficit, President Obama still has us in Iraq, is increasing troop support in Afghanistan, and has already increased the deficit to 1.7 trillion dollars. These three things, as well as many other empty political promises, were what he spoke about consistently in his campaign, promising to pull us out of both countries and reduce our national debt in beautifully written speeches designed to stimulate the masses. I recall nothing but scathing coverage of President Bush in the media, and yet no one will dare say anything bad about President Obama.

Further more, why is no one talking about the fact that President Obama was the lawyer for ACORN, an organization responsible for potentially thousands of counts of voter fraud and giving advice on how to be better prostitutes to earn more money. His camp was also involved in an $800,000 campaign payment to ACORN, but again, we are given no media coverage that the president was ever affiliated with this group. I will make the bold assertion that if this where a conservative, republican president, he would have long since been crucified by the media with questions and documentaries from everyone of the major news organizations.

I was also a little ticked off at President Jimmy Carter trying to imply that most of President Obama’s criticism comes from racism. I myself didn’t like the idea of President Obama being elected because not only does he have no experience, but he has surrounded himself with crooked politicians, including the recently deceased Ted Kennedy. Now, I typically will support my fellow Georgians, as President Carter hails from Plains, but he was a horrible president. period. end of story. The reason we are having problems right now with Iran are directly related to Carter’s botched foreign relations and his aiding the removal of the Shah of Iran which allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran after being in exile. I don’t want to hear him make any comments to the defense of President Obama; presidents with his level of failure simply need to be quiet and not be involved in the current politics of the day.

I have had some  of this sitting on my mind for about a week now, and I needed to vent about what I view is the unfair preferential treatment of a politician simply because he happens to be the first black president of the United States. I have no problem with a black president, in fact, I had hoped Colin Powell would have run for office in opposition to John McCain’s nomination, but I refused to buy into the chants of “hope” and “change” that came from someone who was no more qualified to run the country than the mayor of Plains, GA.

Diet Coke and Green Tea.

Today, I had a much needed lunch date with someone I used to be very close with. I didn’t realize how much I needed something that was in the conversations that we had today. Something small and elusive, yet essential has evaded me for some time. I needed to know that this person didn’t hate me; I needed to know that we could have a conversation and be civil with one another. I have no delusions about what’s going on. There is nothing and nothing is going to happen, but at least we are back at square one, and I’m okay with that, because I can say that I had lunch with someone who used to be my best friend.

As I once told this person, God is all about harmony and relationships, and I’m glad that He has seen fit to restore this friendship. Hebrews 13:5

“Do you feel like a man when you push her around?”

So I have had some conflicting thoughts on the fairer sex lately. I seem to have finally gotten past the broken-hearted stage of my last break up, and I’m moving into the irritable, intolerant phase, which I have always known simply as “bitterness”. I’ve been told that healing makes a natural progression this way, but I hate being bitter. I consider it baggage, but at the same time, it is very hard for me to be tolerable to what I refer to as simply as “stupid girl drama”.

Something that makes me more mad however, is when someone is in a relationship and they treat their significant other like dirt. I cannot stand to see guys treat good girls like absolute garbage, especially when good guys would die for the chance to have an awesome girl, yours truly included.

Tonight in Karate class, I stayed after class and worked with some of the ladies on realistic self-defense techniques that they could use if they were ever in a hostile situation. It reminded me that, above all things, I cannot stand the idea of a man hitting a woman; I can’t imagine anything making me angrier than that idea. It is nothing short of cowardess and lacking in anything resembling honor or manliness.

No, no one I know has recently been the victim of some random act of violence, but I think, in some weird way, while I was showing two white belts the ins and outs of how to perform a perfect hip-throw, I let my heart heal a little bit. Somehow, pondering on how strong my desire is to protect my friends, family and loved ones allowed me to move past some of the bitterness and pain that I have been carrying from the last person I opened my heart to.

I think of it like fighting: If you leave yourself open, you’ll get hurt and take too many shots, but if you cover up to much, you can never move forward and take the shot you need to win. That’s why there is always punch-luck…

And now for some random song lyrics…

“I want to be the last first love that you’ll ever have. Lying here beside me with arms and eyes open wide, I want to be your last first kiss.”

“The sun is breaking in your eyes, to start a new day. This broken heart can still survive, with a touch of your grace.”

“Do you feel like a man when you push her around? Do you feel better now as she falls to the ground? Well I tell you, my friend, one day this world’s going to end, as your lies crumble, a new life she has found.”

Viva la revolucion! …not really

Over the past week since getting home from Honduras, I’ve had many questions about the trip, not only about the work we did, but also about the military coup that happened right as we left. As I began to type up a blog concerning the subject, I realized that Matt, one of the guys from the trip, had already typed up a pretty good blog summing up our visit to Honduras. I’m going to repost his blog here out of simplicity.

*I give full writing credit to Matt Matthews of Westwood Church of Christ for the following blog =)

So I had the chance to be a part of mission team to Honduras over the last week. We returned to the states on Saturday afternoon, and if you’ve been watching the news, it was about 12 hours before things went really south. We got word that there was a potential coup in the works, and none of what we heard sounded good. So within a couple of hours of getting word it could get bad, we left Gualaco for Tegucigalpa, heading into the hornets nest. In the village where we were people couldn’t care less. But we had to leave that area to get back to the capital, so that we wouldn’t be caught if the roads were shut down…So after 4+ hours of driving through rain, dirt roads, and on back country roads we roll into Tegucigalpa, a city of over 2 million. We passed a total of 12 cars on the way to hotel. 12 CARS. . .THAT’S IT! That made everyone a little nervous, you know how it is when people in a car just get quiet…eerily quiet. We get to the hotel without any events and no protests or problems. We spent the next 36 hours waiting for a plane. Now in the process we got to relax at a 4* hotel, sit in the hot tub, swim a little, eat great food, and do a little souvenir shopping…you know the suffering part of the mission trip!

But on Saturday morning we left the country and once we cleared Honduran airspace there seemed to be a general sigh from everyone on the plane…And then on Sunday everything broke loose. They arrested the President, swore in a new one, and flew the former president to Costa Rica…Was he getting a free vacation? Because within hours he was on international tv, in a nice suit, telling the world how abusive and terrible his arrest was…hmmm, I’m confused. I thought coups, and overthrows were violent, people died, especially leaders at the epicenter of the problems. In a suit, in Costa Rica, on International tv? Wow, someone please come arrest me!!!

Who really knows what’s going on in Honduras? Who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys…I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I don’t like anything that smacks of Hugo Chavez and his antics, and this is the same path that Zelaya is headed down. Maybe, just maybe the international community isn’t really saying what it seems to be saying…put a Chavez-like president back in power? Seriously, he tried to legalize the sale and distribution of narcotics, Cocaine, and Marijuana, saying that they could educate the people on how to manage them, and then he tried to sale the people on the idea of rehab for addicts… Really? Really?? Is that what we want, another trash talking, small army having, drug distributing Napolean in Central America? Let’s hope not!

What the news is not telling you is that Zelaya, former Honduran president, illegally tried to ammend the Constitution of his country as to allow him to stay in as president . The people of Honduras and the Congress overwhelmingly said no to the idea but yet he stubbornly continued forward with his want to continue presidential term, all with the great support of his buddy Hugo Chavez. Why are we as the United States backing his presidency, he is trying to make himself a dictator?

“Promises are what I seemed to be…”

Another blog from while I was in Honduras.

06/21/09

It’s Sunday night and I’m exhausted. We did so much today. We woke up this morning and had church with the normal congregation here. I was really impressed with how much Spanish I understood from hearing Pablo, our construction supervisor, speak. We painted the main porch here also, it needed it badly. Afterwards to cool off, we drove to a natural stream not far from the church. Everything about it was gorgeous; the drive there, the scenery and the stream itself were all mind-blowing. Lastly before dinner, we played soccer with some of the locals at a public soccer stadium. For the record, I never claimed to be any good at soccer,  just that I like playing it. I can’t believe how good the Coca-cola is here, and since there isn’t much clean water here to drink, I’m going to enjoy only being able to drink Coke.

To Honduras and back again.

I spent a week in Honduras on a mission trip and I’ve been back in the United States less than 48 hours. I’m still trying to process all of the images and memories of everything that happened while I was there. Over the next couple of days I’ll be typing up the hand-written journal entries I wrote while on the trip. You can also find some pictures of the trip on my facebook page with more to come in the next couple days as well.

06/20/2009 Saturday

It’s bed time here at the Iglesia de Cristo (Church of Christ), the place we are staying at. The city of Gualaco has very little light leaving the stars in the sky to shine like Christmas lights in the sky. The ground is damp from an entire days worth of rain and it is almost cool. I’m told the rain will happen several times here over the week, that it is the rainy season.

It’s very quiet here, so quiet that it almost seems surreal. The dorms here remind me of a summer camp and they are honestly much better than I expected. The food that they made for dinner was excellent and all I have heard from the people who came last year was that it will continue to be so. The people so far have been very warm and welcoming; they seem to have no initial dislike of Americans, which is awesome, but completely not what I expected after our luke warm hospitality in Jamaica.

The drive here was beautiful, the horizon lined with rolling hills and full of lush green trees and plant life. Americans would pay millions of dollars for this kind of land back home. Outside of Tegucigalpa there is only remnants of American influence, in the forms of cars, advertising and locations.

Tomorrow morning is church here at the compound, lunch and then after that we begin work. I don’t know what it is we are doing, but whatever help we can be is all that matters to me.

“They knew better, but still you said, ‘forever and ever’…”

I had lunch today with one of my best friends and favorite people, Nick, and during our conversation I mentioned that I would love to find a good girl. He made the comment that it seemed as though I was a little more hard on myself when I am not in a relationship, sighting the example of an often used joke of mine, that I am “terminally single.”

I don’t like being single, I see no real point in it at this stage in my life, but the more I pondered on our conversation, I started realizing how big of a part I play in me being single right now. You see, I’ve been single since Janae and I broke up last summer, and while I have slowly started to casually date again, I am very reluctant to get into a serious relationship. True, I still bear some wounds from the pain of last summer’s break up, but for the most part my hesitation has been very intentional; I am holding out for something, and, to be more specific, someone.

I haven’t yet felt the chemistry that I want to feel with someone that I’m dating, and to be honest, I have no intentions of settling this time. I know what I want in a woman and I know what I want from her, just like I would expect her to know what she wants from her man. I have always said that I want a partner, someone that is my equal in all ways, not some sidekick that I have to take care of at every turn. I want her to be smart, charming, strong, confident, self-sufficient and, of course, intoxicatingly beautiful. I have this image of what I want from a girl and as I played back the conversation with Nick in my head, I realized that I wasn’t single because I couldn’t find a girl at all, I am single because I’m picky, and that is something I am very okay with. I will not compromise to just feel better right now, nor will I trade in my long term satisfaction for short term fulfillment.

“I hope you like dancing in the rain, I’ll spin you around and pull you back to me. I sure am glad you wore that dress, it reminds me of the night that we first met. Don’t you love the evenings in July, when I’m staring at you with my blue eyes? And we could be fine, we could be fine…”

“Tonight the sky above, reminds me of you, love…”

Today, some friends and I enjoyed a long awaited, and much needed, night out of town. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Beau, has a house out in Buena Vista, GA. His place is about an hour away from Albany and about 30 minutes from anything that even resembles civilization, and no, I am not counting Plains, GA as civilization. We did things that any group of friends would do; we grilled out, watched movies, played pool, told both old and new stories and enjoyed the wonderful simplicity of each others company. I enjoyed the chance to get away from the routine that I seem to have settled into over this summer.

Just being forward, during the course of the evening, I felt lonely. In the midst of a night filled with male bonding and all things testosterone, I wished that it would have had a little more estrogen. The need for a female companion really hit me hard tonight. I wanted someone to flirt with, hold and cuddle with, have fun with and joke about any dumb thing we wanted. I wanted to be close to someone tonight, but not too long ago I realized that I wasn’t ready for anything emotional when I was given the chance to go out with a good girl and the idea freaked me out a little. There is nothing wrong with the girl mind you, I just simply can’t be comfortable opening up again, at least for now. To be honest, I haven’t really wanted to go out with anyone and try the dating game, I want the perfect girl to come along and sweep me off my feet. I want her to make me feel good about myself and to open all the doors I close off to everyone else. I want to forget how much I still hurt from the past and revel in the future that we have together. As the song goes, “I want to fall in love tonight…”

I ask God everyday for these things, for an end to loneliness and to the beginning of love, but He knows what I need most and I am trying to remember that in His perfect will is my true source of joy. It doesn’t mean that I won’t ever find someone, it just means that I need to work on that whole being patience thing again…Heaven help me.

“Would it help if I turned a sad song on?”

Having been home now for almost a week and a half, I have had the chance to process the past year of school and what all has transpired since early last year. In general, when I’m talking about the past year, I’m speaking about from when my Pac Sun store closed to the end of this past semester of college. For me, it has been one of those years that I know will influece the rest of my life and I honestly can’t recall so much happening to me in such a short amount of time. I once wrote that I want to be made of sterner stuff, but I think now, after looking back on everything that has transpired, I wish I would have rather wanted the strength to do the things I should have done sooner or to do the things I should have done period.

I get tired of hearing people say that they have no regrets in they’re life. Simply, I think that statement is a lie. I can’t imagine anyone, even Jesus, not wanting at least some events to have transpired differently. I have regrets, and while yes, they have helped to make me the person I am today, I’m not entirely sure that regret is a bad thing. I think of it more as a constant reminder to never repeat the mistake that I once made, whether in decision making, in life, or in love.