Seen

I long to be seen.  Last December as I hid in my room after getting the cold shoulder from someone close I cried out 'Doesn't anybody see me?!'.  So much of my actions flow out of that longing.  I'm either hiding in shame because I don't want to come out and feel that I'm not good  enough again, or I feed on anything that is comfortable and 'safe' until I develop a comfort zone that causes me to become lax and complacent.  Why do I so often feel like I have to prove something, like I'm always being tested to see if I'm up to par?  The anger that sometimes comes when I feel a weight of biased expectations - people 'shoulding' on me.  No matter where it is - work, home, with friends.  The shame that cuts me when I see people react to me funny and perceive that they are already making a 'thumbs-down' verdict on me.  The self-loathing that usually gets stirred up as I once again feel like I'm in the way or never going to be of any value.  This is not God's story of my life, I know, but it has been a constant assault.  The seeds that the Enemy has planted are deep-rooted and hard to weed-out.  I want to be restored now!  But, I know that God is on a different timetable than what I demand.  I must trust Him first, and walk forward no matter what I feel.  Keep moving, living(not going into survival mode), breathing, eating, sleeping, praising, thanking, honoring, Worshipping, battling, resting, laboring, laughing, grieving, sowing, loving.  'As a man thinks in his heart, so is he' or, 'so he becomes'.  I want to believe in my heart of hearts what I know factually!  You can think something all day long in your head, but what you are going to live out of is what's in your heart.  You can believe God loves you all day thinking about it, and never believe it in your heart!  I need that Truth in my inmost being to overtake me.  I have had doses, but so much of it is drowned out by the Matrix of trying to live in a hostile world that is completely enslaved to striving(really, almost killing oneself) to get ahead and then indulging to attempt to quench that thirst and vainly starting it all over because it never works - he who seeks to save his life will lose it.  

I guess the truth is, I don't think of myself as very valuable most of the time(and that is NOT humility-it's a counterfeit- I cannot stand the religious view on humility that interprets it as what is actually self-loathing).

Behind Bars of Iron and Bronze

This is Chapter 1 of a story that I've been working on.  Hope you enjoy :)

There had never been a time in his life that he was so scared.  Running so many years on the open road had left him hard and indifferent towards others.  Now this came along - a girl he had met at a bar two months before in Albequerque was pregnant with what she claimed was his child.  Always being able to take care of his own immediate want was easy.  The anger mixed with fear of what felt like an entirely unfair expectation was slowly boiling within him.  Drifters learned to be hard and tough, to show no honest feelings.  He had no idea why he was shaking, but as Tracy said goodbye the first thing that came to his mind was what he had always done - run.  After all, how can he trust this woman?  What if she is just trying to pawn off her need for extra support onto him?  He assumed that there had to be other possible candidates for the father of the child.  She had insisted, though, that he had been the only man she was in intimate contact with in over a year.  Still, until there was proof she had no grounds to put the responsibility on him, he justified in his mind.

Being a traveling man, he could get as far away as possible and find a quiet place to rest his weary soul until that town had had enough of him.  He remembered stories about his father, who had done the same thing that he was now doing - run from everything that was plaguing him.  How he wished he would randomly meet him, he would give him an earful - and perhaps a fist-full too.  His mother's passing right before he took to drifting only made his hatred that much more toxic.  Whatever happened, he did not want to be reminded of his abandonment, and he did not want to accept that he was doing the same thing now that his father had done.  He would go through cycles of depression and deadness, constantly hearing voices in his head, saying things like 'The apple never falls far from the tree', or 'Everybody's left because they don't want you', or 'You're alone in this world, so you've gotta stiffen up and scrap for what you can get'.  Always, the angered simmered down inside from some deep void, and he didn't know how to get rid of it except by alchohol and loose women.  The only thing about that was he would wake up in the morning dizzy and still in a bowl of sullenness.  This is why he didn't understand his emotional reaction to the news.  With all the fights and scrapes he had taken, he thought that his days of being weak and never feeling again were over.  As he pulled into a Motel 6 in Cheyenne, he tried to settle himself before going to the front desk.  The key he received was to room number 77, so he got his things out of the old Ford that his mother had left him and went into his room exhausted.  As he lay down that night, the front desk called him to tell him that somebody from Albequerque had called, but it was not a woman.  He returned the call five minutes later.  The man on the other line sounded strangely familiar, but Michael wouldn't believe it could be him.  The man was the young woman's boss, and he called him to say that it was wrong of him to not face up to the consequences of his actions.  After 10 minutes of arguing back and forth, the man on the phone finally tried to settle the issue by saying  that he personally knew the boy and his mother when he was younger and would not think  that his mother would be proud of a son who followed in his father's footsteps.  The young man dropped the phone on the ground, screaming 'Why can't somebody just give me a break?!'.  After kicking  the TV off of the counter, he picked the phone back up to hear the man on the other line sobbing.  He asked why he was so concerned about his own problem.  The man, hesitating to get the words out, finally blurted 'Because, I am your father!'

Change

It seems like everybody that I know that walks with God is going through drastic changes.  God is calling me out of the familiar and the comfortable, and He is weaning me off of things that I tend to depend on to quench my thirst.  It's a difficult and oftentimes miserable-feeling process, but things almost always get worse before the release and then things get better.  Probably going to move into an apartment within the next month, which is a drastic change that I am soooooo ready for.  I feel that it's time for me to move out and leave the comfort of having myself provided for by people that are right there. 

I've also been a little sad because I have a friend who will be leaving for a while, but what I am more attuned to now is that I am so blessed to have them as a friend and honored to watch them move forward in their Walk.  I expect unbelievable reports! I've been sad too that my relationship with my parents is not as deep as I long for it to be, but once again I am grateful that they do care - even if that care is sometimes mixed with fear and reason instead of Faith and Trust.

 Jennifer posted a status this morning on Facebook about gratitude, and it really was prophetic in a way because at APEX tonight we talked about thanksgiving and gratitude in the face of these rough seasons which proceed a big change.  It really hit the spot, and I wanted to commend you on that!

Anyway, that's all I have this time.  Brief but to the point.  Latuh

I've heard the Call of the Wild

Storm clouds a building above the timber line
Lightning flashing across the mountain side
Thunder rolling down the canyons of his mind
Somewhere beyond the Great Divide.

The bugle of the Bull Elk echoes thru the pines 
The North wind moans her lonesome lullaby 
He hungers for the freedom of an eagle as she glides
Somewhere beyond the Great Divide.

He's heard the call of the wild
He's heard the call of the wild
The mountains callin' to him 
Like a mother calls her child
He's heard the call of the wild.

Living in the city, oh it gets to be a grind
Putting in his hours working overtime
Waiting for the day he can leave it all behind
To go somewhere beyond the Great Divide.

He's got to get away from the city for a while
He's got to answer
The call of the wild.

He's heard the call of the wild
He's heard the call of the wild

Courtesy of the late, great Chris LeDoux :)

Abandonment

So often I get this feeling over very subtle things that I'm not important to anybody, or that I'm not worth their investment of time and honor. I'm not writing this to whine or belly-ache and make excuses like a little kid, I'm just describing what I've been going through. So much of my life I've felt like I'm expected to figure everything out on my own. Since men are made to come through in the clutch, it is natural for humanity to expect that of us. It is a design that even unregenerate people can sense, just like that women were made to be captivating and inviting and nurturing. However, we were not made to do this alone. Like the Scripture 'Less men should boast', we were not designed at all to blaze our trails on our own. It is a part of us to want to make a way for ourselves and blaze our own trails because we were each created with our own individual identity that was intended to reflect God's glory in it's own way. It is unique, and if it doesn't come out, then a part of God's creation is not complete. So much opposition comes against us through shame with this area. However, like the phrase 'Turtle on a fencepost', it was not at all in our makeup to conjure up our own identity by ourselves. In the Old Testament the fathers always gave the name and the inheritance and passed down their blessings. This is a double-edged sword that Satan can obviously use to cripple people if their parents are not whole in their own identity, but nonetheless it shows that God intended for others to play a part in our growth and identity. One defintion of the word father is 'The one who gives meaning'. Fatherlessness creates a disease of lack of identity and direction, so naturally people will rely on their own survival instincts(i.e. their strengths which are chemically driven) to try to stay afloat. One of the reasons why teenagers are sexually maturing so much faster nowadays can be linked to this, because broken families mean less affectionate love being given, so the body starts looking for other ways to get that need met, and sexual oneness is the first place where that feeling of intimacy and adoration can be FELT.
Anyway, at my job I have felt often fed to the wolves to figure things out that I have no clue, and customers of course expect the employees to do so. It makes me feel hung out to dry and expected to somehow conjure something up that's just not there. Like somebody who has never read the Bible and is expected to recite John 3:16(outside of God inspiring that, because I know that that is always possible). I feel just this weight of isolation and loneliness, really orphanage. It brings up alot of anger and frustration because it doesn't seem fair for me to be expected to offer something that's just not there. On the other side, it brings healing because alot of underlying hardness and brokenness finally comes out of hiding so that it can be dealt with. I also have noticed that most of the customers and people in general that I'm dealing with are middle-aged men who put on a bravado of 'self-made man' toughness as their identity. I do not all condone wimpiness in men, because that is what has castrated this country, but posing I do not like either. You can't solve the problem of violent, over-bearing, self-righteous, bigoted men by trying to turn them into geldings! But alot of times people use their strengths as a crutch to barge their way through life, and it is an exalted form of pride, often combined with shame because they feel if they don't, then they will never win the approval of other men, and at a deeper level, their father. It's the difference between William Wallace and Edward the Longshanks in the movie Braveheart. Posing aggressive men are not moving out of a center of knowing who they are, and therefore they will fall on their strength that is driven by testosterone to try to make it through life. This is one reason why many men go through what psychologists call a 'Mid-life crisis'. The physical strength and bravado starts to wane with their testosterone drop, and their is no grounded strength in their soul and spirit because they were relying on outward things for their identity(remember, whoever seeks to save their life will lose it). They were not founded on a Rock, but on sand, just as church bodies that are founded on knowledge and doctrine alone quickly fizzle out because the real need of Intimacy and Relationship with God is not there, and they fall into Phariseeism and worship of the Law instead of the God of the Law.
Oh how I need to be aggressive about pursuing father-figures in my life. It's one of my greatest desires, but also one of my greatest fears, because I have been rejected and downgraded so much by men who still look at life through the lense of outward performance instead of performance flowing out of Truth and realness(if that is a word). Six years ago my mother and step-father almost divorced, and problems began to come up in my step-father's life. He was the person that I looked to to be what my father cannot, and it never came through. In a way it was good because for so long I thought he could do no wrong, but the deep wound from that I still feel to this day. Last fall God orchestrated through a situation where I felt alone and abandoned and left to face the onslaught of this heartless world alone to bring to the surface this gash. A part of me died back then, and I remember after that that I quit caring and started to increasingly turn to comfort and gratification and pleasure. I never slept with any girls or got into drugs or stealing or contraband trading, but my desires and dreams to live my life to it's fullest were shot right through. God has done so much over the past few years, alot dealing with the way my father has treated me and He has helped me to release him from my grip. I just feel right now once more that deep void of loneliness and abandonment that I felt back then. It was almost like in my heart that the other person died, even though they are still here. I so much wish that God would restore in my loved ones' lives the rifts that have taken place in them. It really stands out to me how those rifts drive us to follow our flesh into sin to try to meet those unmet needs. I'm not trying to excuse sin, because God is not mocked and there are consequences, but God is patient, merciful, and certainly understanding of all of our deep cuts. He wants to heal us and bring those places back to life.
I know that God is going to continue to Father me and He will never abandon me, even though in situations it does feel like it. I just have to be honest that for so long I have just wanted to be accepted for who I am through all of my faults and vices. Not to be flattered and excused for wrong living, but to know that I do not have to do something in order to be who God says that I am. Our 'doing' is supposed to flow out of our 'being'. Religion reverses that.
Also, I have a friend who is going to be going off to war very soon, and I have to say that although I have had some pet-peeves about the way he has previously acted towards another friend, I know that his true heart that God sees is good. I pray that God will keep him and bless him and make His Face shine upon him, and that he will grow into the mighty warrior that he was created to be.
I have another friend that is going to be going to England sometime in the not-so-distant future. I really feel like this is the change that she needs, and that if she stays where she is she will not be fulfilled. God has done so much for her and has so much in store. I have always had good friends that are girls, but this one is very dear to me and will always have a special place in my heart :). I don't want to get too mushy, but I can't help but say that. Oh, and to be fair to the previous friend I described, I have had pet-peeves before about her as well, hehe ;). I know that so much of the life that she has longed to live, free of any obligation and binding to be somebody that she's not, is going to come. At the end of next week my contact with her will be severely cut due to phone issues, and although I'm going to miss it and probably will have to deal with withdrawal and readustment, life is going to go on and God's going to bring other people in the coming seasons, so unlike 3 years ago(she knows what I'm talking about) I'm not at all upset about it.
Anyways, that is what I had on my heart to talk about this time. So much more I could expound upon, but so little time.