Frisbee Golf & A Motorcycle Race

After a great time playing frisbee golf with mc², Kovi and I went to Liverpool Speedway.  We had one of the best times we've had together.  We sat right beside the action.

Last weekend, while on a bike ride to the coast, I saw the sign for the race.  Part of the reason for the bike ride was due to one entry in the hat - "exercise".

I told Kristen, "I don't know how I'm going to pull the energy to go.  I can't imagine being there, but in an hour I'll be with Kovi at a motorcycle race."  What I didn't know, and couldn't have known, is how crazy good it was going to be.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

I thought "The Voice" translation was good:

Love is patient; love is kind.  Love isn't envious, doesn't boast, brag or strut about.  There's no arrogance in love; it's never rude, crude or indecent - it's not self-absorbed.  Love isn't easily upset.  Love doesn't tally wrongs or celebrate injustice; but truth - yes, truth - is love's delight!  Love puts up with anything and everything that comes along; it trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what.  Love will never become obsolete.

Tame the Ghost

Tame the ghost in my head that runs wild and wishes me dead.

This is my favorite line from the song Lovers Eyes by Mumford and Sons.

I know what this means. It strikes a chord with me.

That ghost is called many things - the past, the future, the devil, fear, depression, self-hate, Satan, evil, self, etc. Some days I feel like a slave to the ghost (like yesterday), and other times I feel that I've tamed it.

But, how often have I spent hours, days, and weeks trying to fight it and kill it off and eradicate it?

I need God to do that work, just like the songwriter pleads. Left to my own devices, my weapons are broken. They are of no use anymore, even though they may sound useful. Talk is cheap, and I'm starting to think that emotionalism is as well.

I need to surrender the fight. I can't beat it. I need to take all this energy I've been applying to sharpening up my weaponry, and redirect it to the Tamer.

I have a mind that requires extra precautions, extra work. What takes others a couple minutes to move past often takes me hours and days. All the irritations of daily life - the resentments and the fears - wish that I would just take a drink and die. The ghost in my head wants to see me dead.

So, along the lines of yesterday's post about surrendering the schedule is the surrender of fighting the ghost (or whatever negative is going on between my ears).

Jesus said, "Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

I've been spending so much time building up ammunition and strategizing and plotting the course to victory that I've gotten insane in the process. I've been playing God, trying to get rid of every little flaw by tackling it with more weapons, more work, and more energy.

But, doesn't surrender mean to die?

Doesn't surrender mean to let the ghost win?

Aren't I signing my own death warrant should I give up the fight?

My fear tells me yes, but that's just the ghost talking. The Ghost Tamer says, "Trust me, I can handle these bastards. Just get your weapons out of the way so I can do my work."

Maintaining emotional sobriety has two sides to it. On the one hand, I must do the work of keeping my side of the street clean - which means, I have to quit trying to clean the other side. That's somebody else's job.

Secondly, I have to do the work with an attitude of surrender - meaning, this isn't formulaic. This isn't mathematic. This is me doing what I'm supposed to do, and God doing what his will is. I don't get to produce the results any more than I can make someone else do what I want them to do.

I need more than anything to have the ghost in my head tamed, but I can't be the Tamer. I have to learn my part.

I have to learn that my insanity, my failures, my self-will that's run riot, can't be cured by more work or effort on my part. It's gotta be handed over.

This song's so powerful that I think it's good to listen to it after reading this post. It'll make sense if you're like me and can't seem to win the battle going on in your head. I need God in a big way and I'm willing to go to any length to let God tame the ghosts in my head.

Embracing the Unexpected

Yesterday, as I was sitting at Starbucks enjoying some down time and getting some stuff done, my phone rung. On the other end was a voice of panic.

The voices of panic seem to be really attracted to me here lately. I guess it's because I'm wired to jump into other peoples' chaos looking for some kind of spiritual experience. I prayed before I answered the phone, because if I don't it only takes one second for me to take what's being said on the other line the wrong way.

So, I paused, breathed, and answered.

I couldn't understand what was being said, except the part that said I need a ride.

So, I told the person I'd be there in a little bit. In the excited panicky state the person was in, I didn't understand exactly what I was getting into. I just took it as another opportunity to be open to plans other than my own.

It ended up being a good thing, I think.

The voice on the other line had plans to detox a mutual friend. So, I went and picked both of them up and took them to the motel for a three day detox. For comic relief, I picked up another friend who I thought would provide comic relief to the detoxing friend.

In all the craziness, I had a peace about the whole thing. I had a satisfaction in knowing that I was intentionally dropping my to-do list to be open to interruption - the panicky, freakin' out kind.

That's kind of how my days have been going for awhile. I make my plans in the morning, and they get blown out of the water by interruptions.

But, it's the interruptions, or, the distractions, that usually end up placing me in direct confrontation with a God who has plans way bigger than mine.

The author of James once said, "And now I have a word for you who brashly announce, "Today--at the latest, tomorrow--we're off to such and such a city for the year. We're going to start a business and make a lot of money." You don't know the first thing about tomorrow. You're nothing but a wisp of fog, catching a brief bit of sun before disappearing. Instead, make it a habit to say, "If the Master wills it and we're still alive, we'll do this or that."

There's always this tension between our plans and the interruptions to those plans.

How often do we make grandiose declarations to ourselves and others, insisting that we know our own futures, and we've got it all lined out? And how often do those plans change?

I'm not against planning at all. I carry a planner with me everywhere I go, and I make lists more than anybody I know. Planning is just a start, a drive to get me off my feet and headed in a certain direction. But, once the day starts, it's all up in the air. It's given to God. It's surrendered, if I choose to surrender it.

The way we plan and order our lives has everything to do with the heart.

Our plans represent our identity, our ambitions, and what we know. We know that if we stick to the course, then we're doing everything we can to reach our fullest potentials. But then, right in the middle of it all comes the frantic voice on the other line or the coworker who needs to talk.

We wonder, "Really? Aren't there ten other people you could have called?"

And the moment of surrender hinges around two simple words, "Yes," or "No."

For me to say yes means that I'm surrendering whatever my next thing was on the to-do list. To say no means that I'm sticking the course. It's not a matter of right and wrong.

But, I'm at a point in life where I need those interruptions. I need those opportunities to experience God in new ways. I need to be able to die to myself, and think about someone else.

Why did James write this?

He was trying to convey the message to his audience that the things of God are active here and now. They're not a year from now, a week from now, or tomorrow. They're here and now.

So, when we wrap our lives around plans for the future and forget that our feet are touching the ground today, we have the very real possibility of losing out on a God who is for us and with us and working for us today. We have the possibility of only seeing a God who is in the future, and not in the now.

What can we do to experience God now?

Make our plans and then surrender them by saying a quick prayer that goes something like this, "My time is not my own, but Yours. I'm merely a vessel, taking Your love wherever it needs to go today." Then, be ready for the interruptions. Be ready for the tug-o-war inside that wants to pull us in the direction of self.

Today's Action: Write out plans for the day. Surrender them. Embrace the unscheduled events by saying yes.

Heart Strings Attached

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend about a situation he was in where someone he knew and trusted asked for $100. He was torn up about it, and didn't know what to do or how to do it.

We talked about how loans are toxic, and how when we give loans we end up hurting ourselves because we're full of these expectation of the other person to pay us back.

And then

a month passes

and two months

and a year

and ten years

And we're still pissed off at our college roommate for not paying us back the $35 that we loaned to him so he could pay his share of the electricity bill.

And we end up deciding that we're never going to loan money again because we don't want it to end up like the last time. And we become hoarders of money, investors in our own futures, all for the sake of protecting our investments, but really based off the fear of that ever happening again.

But after all these years, we never even bothered to question our own affinity to loan money to other people. We never stopped to even think about the possibilities of giving gifts.

As I was doing my taxes this year, I gave myself a little pat on the back as I scrolled down my bank account earmarked with lines of financial gifts - from packs of cigarettes for my homeless friends to oil changes for friends who were jobless. In all, I'd given more last year than I ever had. I made it over the 20% mark in giving for the first time, and it felt great. It made me want to do more.

But, usually the self-applied pats on the back come with a string attached. It wasn't as hopeful as I thought it was.

And the truth was right around the corner.

I woke up one morning to find a handwritten letter from a friend of mine asking for money . . . again.

Immediately, I tore the sheet out of the notebook and started making a list of all the conditions he would need to meet in order to receive this money. I felt justified and right about it. Then, realizing how silly I was being, I wadded the paper up and threw it away. I wrote that he could have the money, but the insanity going on between my ears didn't get thrown away with the paper.

I went to work insane. And left work insane. And went throughout the day insane. And went back home insane.

And then I saw my friend. I was ready to pounce on him like a fox watching a rabbit, hungry for a kill. It only took a couple of minutes before all the conditions I wrote down on that wadded piece of paper came spewing from my lips. My anger burned, my voice rose, and I lost it.

I couldn't sleep that night and couldn't think straight. All I could think about was how I deserved better. It was his fault.

The next morning, I couldn't even remember what I or he said. All I could see was my wrongdoing. And what was it?

Although I'd given financial gifts numerous times to my friend, they all had strings attached. They were heart strings.

It's easy to say that we don't expect anything back, whether it's a gift of time or money or stuff.

But do our hearts say the same thing?

I ended up doing some intensive work on my resentment and fear in the situation, and came to the conclusion that I'd been giving out loans all along. There was always some form of expectation tied to my generosity. I expected the other person to do something for me, or to change, or to meet some made up rules in my head.

And when I didn't see those changes, I would try to make the rules even stricter. Except, I would never verbalize them, because that would make me look like an asshole.

I would keep them inside, for me to know only.

A few days later I went back to this person to make amends. I had extracted twenty (yes, twenty) fears and flaws in myself, and listed all the ways I'd wronged my friend. All these wrongs had stemmed from thing: I gave with strings attached, even though I verbalized it as a gift.

When we give, do we do it without strings? Or do we have all these past experiences and fears that fill our heads every time someone needs something we have? Do we secretly expect the recipient of our gifts to change in some way, or to pay us back somehow?

Some questions come up:
How do we know that we are giving with no strings attached?

A couple things. One, we realize that the recipient of our gift(s) is actually helping us just as much, if not more, as we're helping them.

When people need help, they're actually opening up a door for us in the way of growth. We get to give, and when we give, we're making an outward sign of an inward commitment to trust God.

Another question:
What's a practical way to "let go" of the gifts we give?

Pray. And, if that doesn't work, call a friend and talk it over. Get a referee. Then, give the gift. Chances are, the little time spent praying and talking it over will eradicate the strings that were connected to the good deed.

It's easy to talk a big game when it comes to giving, but making sure there are no strings attached is another story. If we're to experience peace in our giving, then we have to make sure that we're not giving out loans.

Is the love we give out actually a loan? Are the random acts of kindness we do for someone filled with expectation? Are we giving gifts, but inwardly treating them as loans?

Today's Action: Someone is going to want something from us today. Are we willing to match the request with a peaceful, stringless gift that expects nothing in return? Create a practice that will ensure that our giving is not tied to a litany of expectations, so we don't have to create any more chaos in our heads than is already there.

Dogs and Horses

The other day, I was watching the horse at the house next to my girlfriend's.

It was trying to make contact with the horse just across the fence, but they were separated. So, this horse kept standing up on its hind legs, almost as if it was trying to climb over the fence.

Every time it did this, the owner would send the dogs over to the horse to calm it down.

The dogs would come, and the horse would start running wildly, trying to get away from the dogs.

As I was watching this, it made me think of how, lately, I've been trying to get connected with my innermost self. I've been trying to stick to what I know. I've been trying to pave out time to work on my writing, and do the things that I'm passionate about.

Yet, as soon as I attempt to do so, the dogs come chasing after me. I start running like a wild man, trying to get away from the voices, and they push me away from doing the things that I want to do.

So, each day, as I fill out my planner, I include writing on my to-do list.

But, for the last three weeks my plans have gone out the window. There's been a detour every time.

And it doesn't help that lately I've had some insanity going on between my ears.

What I've found is, these detours from my plans have shown me a whole new way of thinking (and living). Self-sacrifice is doing those things that I don't want to do. It's knowing what my plans are for the day, but realizing that God may have something completely different on the agenda. What is humility but saying yes to those things I really don't want to say yes to?

I've needed the detours it turns out. I didn't know how complacent I was until I started getting out of my routine. I didn't know how much of a tornado I was being until I started telling people yes instead of telling people that I had stuff to do.

At some point I stopped doing the hard work of paying attention. I stopped living for the moment, and stopped taking stock of my day.

So, resentment, fear, selfishness, and dishonesty were going unchecked.

As an extremist, I don't do well at maintaining balance. But, somehow I've got to learn how to do the things I want to do as well as the things I don't want to do - not to throw one or the other out the window.

It's nearly impossible to do the things God created me to do without seeing through the filter of emotional sobriety. If I can't keep my side of the street clean and keep the demons in check, then it's gonna be hard to pour time into the things I love to do. But, it's gotta come first.

Romans 15:27-28 - Trading Goods

This is "The Voice" version:

I must tell you that they were thrilled to be able to help.  They realize that they are indebted to the believers in Jerusalem.  If the nations share in the Jews' spiritual goods, then it's only right that they minister back to them in material goods.  When this work is complete and the funds we've collected are delivered, I will make my way to Spain through your grand city of Rome and enjoy some of your hospitality.

It struck me as odd.  I didn't know one could trade spiritual goods with material goods.  I thought they weren't interchangeable - like spiritual goods would be free, priceless.  Paul got a road trip out of it... and the negative side of me says he mooched off of the people in Rome once he got there since he was delivering his "spiritual wares".

I suppose that can't be correct.  How would we pay our pastors?  It's worth it to me, I guess.  But I'm not buying spiritual goods, am I?  I've never thought of it as a transaction.

Shoot.  I'm sleepy.  I'll leave the half thought there.