So many changes...

Life has this way of catching us completely off guard. We're going through it fine and dandy and then SURPRISE! We're in shock, our head is buzzing, the room is spinning, and we kind of collapse unsure of what to think or feel. When this happens to me, my temper boils and I can lash out on undeserving people. My brother has carried the brunt of these moments throughout our lifetimes, he has that stroke of bad timing where he does or says the one action/statement that sets me off. I eventually apologize, and all is made well. I've been thinking about this though, what causes us to lash out, to strike the undeserving with the full force of our wrath. It centers in our relationship with Christ.

I had a temper as a kid, ask my mother, and I would say and do anything to vent the frustration, anger, or hurt that was inside me. Mom taught me early on to never take out my anger on any living beings, be it human or animal. so I punched concert, or attacked trees. I even would make swords and other weapons to combat the evil infesting my backyard. Now, I still have a temper twenty odd years later.

I can't go out and punch walls or destroy trees. I can't display the raw and savage nature of my heart and soul with loincloth and spear fighting the invisible horrors. But I can find out what is out of place in my soul, what sin I allowed to reside in my heart, and/or what action I have failed to complete. I can surrender that to God, and allow him to change either the situation or my heart. I failed on this action yesterday, in fact I didn't even consider it.

I was so caught up in my hurt and frustration, and blinded by the stress that was building on my life that I focused on me instead of Christ. I allowed that horror that plagues all of mankind, the horror that is loss of control, to rise up and consume me. In doing so, I affected not only my own well being, but also the well being of my family and my friends. I so often forget that my actions and feelings affect those around me, in the same way their actions and feelings affect me.

What is this stress building in my life? Well, it stems from three sources: A discipleship class, money, work, moving to an apartment, and the end of a friendship. The class is a very intense personal class, highly focused on me and my walk with Christ. Money has gotten very tight with new insurance and rent. Work is a melting pot of complex situations. Moving into the apartment was going to happen weeks from now, and is instead happening tomorrow. Last and most certainly not least, the friendship between me and one of the best friends I have ever had was ended. On very healthy and good terms, our lives have gone in very different directions and I was holding on to an unhealthy hope. I'm hurt by the loss of such a friend, but if I was going to lose her this was the best way possible.

I think losing her as a friend was what really caused my frustration and anger, despite it ending well, on good terms, and promising to share what God does in our lives at the throne. It's still the loss of someone, it's still a ripping and tearing of someone I love from my life. But instead of focusing on the good, inwardly I focused on the loss, and if I allow that to continue it will become bitterness and anger. This is the day to day, moment by moment action and thoughts I need to learn.

This new habit is something I have to allow God to do in me, because I can't do it. My dad told me over and over again, never say you can't do something because you might find out you can. I can't change who I am, God can though and He longs to turn me into a fountain that overflows with His love and reflects who He is to everyone around me. To bring hope to the lost, and encouragement to the family. One day at a time, I'm a trickle of water right now, I can't become a geyser overnight.

So I continue on, ever on and on.

Back To Back

I had a thought while in class the other night. We watched a clip from Soul Surfer, in the clip a girl convinces a boy to get back in the water after a bad storm. She stood on the edge and beckoned to the child, step by step showing him it was safe to come in the water. Soon, everyone was in the water, laughing and playing.
Sometimes, I feel like God does the same thing. That he stands  at the next step in our journey, calling out to us, showing us it is safe.
But he isn't confined to that one place, he is able to be all places at once. Thinking of that reminds me of two of my fondest memories, memories I hold dear to the way a child remembers their favorite toy growing up, or the dog they grew up with. They explain my view of God being in all places quite well in my own mind. These are tales of two of my best friends, Kevin Fuller and Carrie Ann Wible.
The first is actually about how I met Kevin. We were both attending the same camp, and the crazy guy got so excited about camp and everything that was going on that he got dehydrated. I was in his cabin, so we sat together at the campfires. He asked if he could lean on me and I said sure... Was I unprepared. I had never had someone actually use me for support before, they always make it look easy in the movies. Kevin was my size, and heavier in muscle mass. But, I'm loyal and understanding of how drained he was, walking back to the cabin with Kevin leaning on me was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I walked beside him, the only thing between him and basically crawling. God does that, he stands beside us, one on each side. He's cool like that, he helps us over things, guides us through safer paths, and holds our weight when we can't hold our own.
Now the story about Carrie Ann happens at the same camp, almost 5 years later. She and I were dating at the time, and both working at the camp. We had just had a disagreement, and had both needed to cool down. We made up, and ended up going and sitting at the lakeside. Now, working at a Christian camp of course we couldn't cuddle up and stare off into the sunset. But, we did sit back to back. I love doing that, with anyone. There's something special about it, you're trusting that person to watch your back, for support so you don't fall over, and there's a chance foe intimacy that isn't a regular thing between people. We talked, shared our days, laughed, and enjoyed being together and looking at the lake. God has our back, he's there watching out for the things we can't see coming, and we can talk with him intimately and personally.
So, God beckons us to new adventures and closer walks with him, he stands by each of our sides to guide us along the path and to carry us when we're weak, and he stands at our back defending us from the past and from the things we can't see. He's there for us.
Right now, I'm not madly in love with God. Now, before you stone me :)
This is a realization I need, because relationships take time... And I'd rather be honest and say I like God and I looking to pursue a relationship with him, then lie and say I love him when I don't yet. I want to though... Deep down my soul churns and longs for that time when I know him, and trust him fully, and love him regardless of the day. One day at a time.

What Do You See?

We go about our lives seeking fulfilment, our hearts longing to be seen, known, and understood. Some are trapped behind the image of another, others too caught up in the past to see the future, and rejection falls like an anvil on the hearts of many. There's a heartbeat to the world... pain and loss, misunderstanding, grief, fear, anger, pride, but also love, hope, passion, truth, acceptance.

I sometimes stop... and marvel at it's sound. The crescendo of the epic ballad that is our world, it's existence, our very essence! And then, I remember... No one cares. Their life is focused on themselves...even their love is a ploy to give themselves points, to make themselves feel as though they have done something good. I don't sit still very often in public...it makes me sad. To hear the broken songs, to watch hearts break, love die, and hope fade.

I've been told I'm childish, and immature... They couldn't see how I view the world, how the smallest things can be just as important as the ones that block the sun. The world has ripped away my joy of the building blocks...the daily things...the everyday moments that pass unnoticed. The feel of textures...the variance in sounds...the subtleties of facial expressions... the sheer volume of body language...the way a hug can resonate within the soul, and a slap can shatter it.

Loneliness... it is misunderstood. Someone says they're lonely and we jump them. "don't forget, God is with you!", "You're never alone!." I've done it, but I realize something from my own loneliness. If someone expresses it, if it's in their voice, the way they act. GET OFF YOUR ASS AND GO BE WITH THEM! Yeah, it might cost you some sleep, you might be drained and tired, your life might get out of whack. But if you really care about someone... Don't show it by throwing words... Not when they're asking for time, companionship, understanding, simply knowing that they are wanted, just...being there.
Do you see them? The misfits...the invisible ones...the hurting... They aren't all hiding in crowds, or staying at home. They're throwing parties, being popular, loud and crazy, they're known around the world, they have everything they could want. They also have nothing, they stand in corners and slip through crowds, they avoid and hide. They each are DYING! Their lives are being drained away by the world...and we speak words, words we sometimes don't even believe ourselves, words we would never dare admit we haven't experienced for ourselves. Because misfits teach, and preach. The lead missions, and prayer. They lay on hands, and speak prophecy. They partake of the supper, and sing with arms raised high. Misfits and hurting people are all around... Real People teach them to exist, Real Love gives them Real Hope. Are you truly Willing to give of yourself...or just when it's convient for you or your pocket book.

Disgust rages inside me at the world...but more at myself... for this is me...I have been this... A convient Child of God, a rich-and-guilty Child, a Look-How-Holy-I-Am Child.

I'm not better...I'm just a Child, and I still have so much to learn.

Rage and Fear

Sometimes we are overcome by emotion, anger leads us to action, horror leaves lasting scars, and desire leads to excessive care and attention. No emotion can exist without causing a reaction, and more often then not those reactions are outward. The effects can be quiet, like a person avoiding friends or family in sadness or hurt. They can be loud, such as angry outburst and destruction of people or property.

The one we don't notice or don't see is what we can justify as not reacting, which is the reaction of suppression or hiding emotion. This I am very familiar with, I suppress my emotions all the time. Like right now, I'm very afraid, but I'm hiding my fear behind keeping myself busy. The current thing I am afraid of is myself, I'm scared to dig in and find out who I am. The fear is so bad that I'm shaking... and cannot think clearly.

Take that fear, and throw a moment of rage on top of it. You now have two conflicting emotions fighting for the same spot, begging for a reaction. My rage was focused on abortion, the radio wasn't even saying someone was having one, but hearing it trigger the type of rage that I would not want people to see. The reaction was violent, and then suppressed. Why? Cause I have no desire to allow violence to dictate my actions, and because my fear watered down my rage but not before my heart was caught in a whirlwind of emotion.

I was left shut down and gasping, my heart aching in loss of ones that never had a voice. Sadness fills the moment....sadness I can't express. Maybe a day will come, when how I feel and who I am will be one and the same.

The picture is from this website.

Friends

Among the wild maelstrom that is my mind at the moment one idea is full and complete enough for me to as Dumbledore would use the Pensive to clear his mind of excess thoughts.
I realized tonight...and over the past few weeks, that I'm really rather horrible at showing people how much I care about them.
The more I care and the closer I feel that I get to people the more...awkward and idiotic I become around them. I question things I say, worry about things I do. It gets so bad that I end up shutting down, and seeming detached and distant because... I simply can't express myself. People that I love, and I don't say that lightly, really can't know how I really feel. I can't find ways to express it in ways that are not awkward...or just strange. I feel deeply and passionately about my friends...and deep and passionate things about people other then your mate are awkward.
I read old books, and the way they talk about their friends and the companionship expressed between people is so...deep and different, and the way I would love to express myself... "born in the wrong time" as some people like to say. But I was born here, and now, and God has a plan.
I don't know why I am this way, but I trust God has a plan for it, and that I will learn ways to express myself or get over my fear of showing it.
Onward I go...

Who am I...really?

The idea of who I am and how I truly act and how I am has started running around in my mind lately. Last night I had a very deeply hidden hurt flair up from what felt like no where. My first thought was that I was going crazy and feeling things that didn't exist, but I knew it was me. The hurt and passion in my mind couldn't belong to anyone else, and I knew that the hurt I felt came from so deep that I didn't recognize it.
I was talking to a friend and mentioned something I had done, which was kind of avoid another person. The reason was because they had said I was very important to them and to God, and in my heart I said that if someone is going to say that they better be damn well ready to prove it. In the past and over my life I've had too many people say how important I was but they never took the time to get to know me, never showed interest and so I took that mindset of rejection and turned it around. I became the guy that goes to friends houses at midnight, and will do anything for someone I feel led to take care of. Sacrificing myself, my personality, my hurts and fears, for the sake of others! How nobel, how caring, how foolish. I blew myself up for the sake of myself, defended my heart by defending others, and faked my happiness and passion.
Passion... A word often misunderstood I feel, because it has so many meanings. To feel or be moved or compelled by strong emotion is the way I normally think of it. Because I am passionate, and my emotions are slow to move but they are a roaring fire once started. And I'm speaking about my true emotions, the ones buried beneath all my crap and history.
This buried hurt is just the beginning of a pile that... I honestly don't want to go through, but if I don't I know I will forever be limited in my walk and growth for Christ.

Who is God... To me.

I may have posted this once before, but... I can't remember and I'm feeling lazy, besides if I've learned something new since I last "spoke" about it, then it does not matter anyway.

I had a moment last year where I was feeling an urge to help myself understand God better, now I have a serious problem with the whole "God is like this...to me." I feel when we limit our view of Him, and we limit our own potential. But I was really struggling with how...impersonal and distant God felt from me, which is a limitation of my own mindset. As you can probably tell, I'm trying very hard to make myself clearly understood. People have a habit of not actually listening to what I'm saying and jumping down my throat on the first thing that "goes against the grain", or "isn't quite right."

The nice thing about a blog, I can say what I want, how I want, and there's no one but my other thoughts to cut me off. :)

Anyway, So I was feeling that God was very impersonal, like high-end CEO, I know his name...I see what he's done and what he is doing, but I have never actually made friends with him. So, I started seeking ways that could make God more personal to me. One of the first things that came to mind was Names, or the names of God. Names are so powerful, more powerful then I think people really understand. My name, Michael, means "Who Is Like God?" and after growing in my faith and really pondering my own name, I view it as a challenge. Kind of like, "You! Who can you say is like God? Prove it, prove to me that someone can be like God, and I'll prove to you that one no can." Gloves off. Sword drawn. Line in the sand. WHO IS LIKE GOD!?

My middle name is James, and I struggled with this for a while, because by definition, the name is not a "good" name. By my mom really pounded this home when she said, "I don't care what any definition says, you were named after your father who is a strong, loving, caring, sacrificial man." I've never forgotten that, and I never will.

And Hudson.... means son of Hud. I don't know who Hud is... :)

Rabbit trail.....

And back. But I really started searching for the name for God that really...hit home. The name that defined who he had been in my life. It took some searching, but I found this

Jehovah Mekeddeshem, The Lord Who is Sanctifying You. My entire life is around God cleansing me, and making me holy and pleasing to him... and it is a full time job.

The funny thing is, I forget that name. I ran away, threw away that name and went my own way. After being back for a while, something triggered that name in my mind and I rediscovered how amazing and powerful it is. But I still struggle with making him mine...and understanding that I am his.
So I continue, one day at a time.

One Thing

Sometimes we don't need God to teach us ten or even fifteen things, just to walk away from meeting with him with ONE thing. That one thing you can then focus your attention on, or in my multiple-level way of thinking bring it along side my focus on the things around me. So as I go about my day or week, maybe even...a month. I think on that one thing. No, I don't. I get distracted, other things come up, and that thought gets shoved far back in my mind.

This is my goal, to have one thing that God wants me to focus on that must change about myself. At a class last night I read something that made my head spin for a second, and I threw the thought in the "Melting Pot" second. The part of my mind that just rolls things over and over, breaking them down until they're better understood. But the quote was talking about how God separates us from sin, and my first reaction was...huh? I've grown up hearing all my life about sin separating me from God, how my sin creates a wall between God and me and how Jesus removed that wall to bring me to himself.
I never considered that God might...defend me, or build a wall to separate me from sin. Sin was something I've viewed as consistent, always, but I can't view it that way anymore. It will fade away, Christ will remain. Have I partaken in the gift of defense from sin? Not yet, for already the day begins in darkness. It will not remain such, for my Lord is light and he will not allow darkness to rein in me.

So, as I go about this day, my intention will be to allow Christ to stand between me and sin, as a father will stand between his child, or a friend to protect a friend, a husband between his wife and the world, this is how my Lord stands between me and the evil I can choose to partake in.

A Concept of Possibility

People play with possibility, saying "If I do this, then this will happen." Maybe they do not say it out loud, or even realize that it passed through their minds, but at some point someone has thought of what would happen in a given situation based on their actions. I am not innocent of this, I would even lay some claim of being a chief of this action. This though of "What if I..." has been apart of my life as long as I can remember, to the point of panic and sickness of both spirit and mind.

This way of thinking is good for chess or starting/running a successful franchise, corporation, or business. As a life style though, it leads to paranoia and fear. You feel a sense of total loss of control, and the thought that sneezing in public might scare the person next to you causing them to bump into someone else and that person having lost their balance falls off the bridge onto the highway below cashing through the windshield of a CEO of a very important corporation killing him instantly which causing the car to logically lose control and crash starting a chain reaction of wrecks which become a massive fifty car pile-up making a specific scientist late who was going to cure cancer but because he wasn't there the cure mutated and killed the world.

Now, reading that it makes sense right up to the of the fifty car pile up and then it starts getting ridicules. You, who are reading this, are probably thinking, no one really thinks like that and he just made it up, it's crazy. Well, the reason you've never heard of someone thinking that way is because in their minds they said "If I tell them how I think, they'll think I'm crazy, and they will either reject and mock me or lock me away." That way of thinking that I wrote out is a little extreme I will admit, but closer to home for me is the thought of relationships, friends and family.

The world isn't going to die because I said the wrong word to a friend at the wrong time. The peace between two countries isn't going to end because I lost my temper while I felt scared and cornered. I might hurt a friend though, and that might drive them so far away that I've lost them forever. The way of thinking "If I do this, then they'll do that" like I said before works well in chess. Because there are only two factors that determine the game, the moves you make and the ones your opponent makes. Life and relationships for those of us that think in this way can easily be viewed as a chess game, because it's only between you and that person. But that is a trap, and it starts a domino effect.

This in my mind is what I consider a Concept of Possibility. The idea or thought that any action I take in any circumstance will merit a reaction or cause an effect on something or someone else. Chess is a simple game of moving my pieces to block your pieces til you can no longer move. The game becomes complicated when you add in the factors of: 1. How long has the person been playing chess? 2. How creative are they? 3. How many moves can they keep in their head at one time? 4. are they smarter then me? 5. has someone taught them something I don't know? 6. is the fact that I haven't eaten going to effect my ability to perform? 7. was staying up all night researching strategies going to be helpful or will the lack of sleep hinder my judgement? This list can go on and on.

Take a simple idea, then start adding to it. Next thing you know you've built an entire web of possibility, and before you can even act on the idea you've built the web has become a thing of it's own, and it tangles you up and fear and doubt and the possibility of loss, rejection, and mockery paralyzes and turns you to mush and then it drains you like a spider with it's prey. You're left with nothing but "what if's" and regret.

Now, how does chess relate to relationships and life? Go back, read numbers 1-7 and replace them with any question. "is he going to think I'm ugly?", "can they every forgive me for what I did?", "am I going to sound foolish?", "will they give me the time of day?", on and on. The Concept of Possibility is a trap of Satan, he built and designed it so that we would be more worried about ourselves and how our life will be, then how God wants to reach and effect people. That web of God's that you're so scared of getting caught up in because of what people will think, well it's not a web, it's a safety net to save us from the burning building or the eternal fall. The game of Chess that Satan has you playing, the mind games that he throws at you to trip you up, well you don't have to play. You're free to get up and walk away from his game, in fact you should cause he wrote the rules and when playing games with the devil you always lose.

God has called us to love him, and IF we love him we will love the things he loves, and we will want to do the right thing, and we will follow him and he will guide us through every awkward conversation, scary interview, and dangerous situation. We won't have to worry about "what if", we'll only have to act on "What is the next adventure of sharing and knowing Christ more?"

What could possibly be wrong with that idea? :)