• Thanksgiving

    As I listened to Paster Joe’s sermon last night, I found myself a little struck — “soul punched” as Josh Schiel would say. Lately, I’ve been so frazzled and feeling worn down by events happening around me beyond my control, that I haven’t taken the time to thank God for all He’s given me. It’s easy to get wrapped up, and focused on what’s going wrong and forget everything that’s going right.

    It also doesn’t help that I’ve been putting God on the back burner more and more. I have no excuse for it. I have plenty of time to give God, but seem to spend it on myself. Seems to always be the way, especially when I’m stressed. I tend to retreat into my video games. They seem to allow me vent out my frustrations, or give me a task to focus on and let me cool down. The trouble is that, when I turn them off, I’m back to thinking about everything that frustrates me and I’m no better off than when I started.

    Pastor Joe had us do an exercise last night that I may try to do on a weekly basis — take a moment to sit and write down all the things I thank God for. There were quite a few. Despite being in the shop right now, I even thank God for my car. The exercise reminded me of something G.K. Chesterson said, “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

    Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

    You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

    How differrent my life would be if I were to live that way. I imagine in the least, it would go a long way towards delaying a heart attack from chronic high blood pressure.

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  • Life Sucks Sometimes

    Today has just been one of those days when I wish I knew the future. I think everything came crashing down today. I’ve been feeling dry for the last few months, ever since my car’s engine cratered, leaving me with more debt. It seems every time I finally conquer debt, life throws me deeper into it. I had just payed my last payment to the card my tires went on when this happened. It took me a year and a half to pay off the 600 dollars. How long will 3000 take me? I need another job, but I don’t know where or what. I’m not really a people person, so that limits me.

    I started the day without getting so much as a “Hello” from Kristen this morning, and nothing last night either. I think she and I are done, but she doesn’t want to face me and say it. I saved her the trouble and simply removed all contacts I had for her; phone, email, address, her mother’s phone, all of it. I suppose if she still wants to be my friend, she can contact me when she’s ready to talk. To be my girlfriend like she so badly wanted to be, she may have lost her opportunity. I don’t heal well and my urge to trust her with any of my heart again is almost nil right now. Though, she shouldn’t feel bad. My urge to trust anything that has breath with my heart right now is almost nil. So, it’s not just her. If she really wants it, she can fight to earn it back. I feel sorry for any girl that tries though. I’m not even sure where my heart is now. It may just be shattered into a million shards and scattered far and wide. I’ve never had some draw me in so strongly. Like all the girls before, she played games with my heart and eventually broke it. Only this time the drop was from a long ways up.

    Add the abnormally stressful day at work this morning and it just further set the tone. It culminated with me having an incident with a canister coming off a dolly and onto the ground. I’ve never been so close to breaking down in public. I did in the car on the way to work though. I almost thought I might need to pull off into a parking lot. Every song somehow fit my situation or somehow reminded me of Kristen. Today also marked 4 years since I last flew.

    Then conversation this morning at work just served to further drag me down as I realized just what a worthless pile of crap I am right now. 26 and living at home with my dad, in a part time job, and paying nothing but gas and car insurance. This isn’t where I envisioned myself being right now. 10 years ago, I would have told you I’d be happily married with a family just starting, just moving into a decent house, and a few years into my career as a pilot. None of those dreams are close to coming true. I don’t think they ever will. I wish I could see the future, but then again, I may not like what I see.

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  • Shameless Product Plug – The Apple iPhone

    I’ll admit it. I finally joined the iPhone nation a week ago after my father offered to buy one for me. My last phone was about 3 years old and the airport was starting to take its toll on it. Already this blasted thing is sucking the life out of me.

    Now I have the Internet at my fingertips, along with instant access to thousands of gizmos that can do just about everything — including the one I’m using to write this blog post — and the entire iTunes store. It was about two years before I started using all the features of my last phone. It took me all of two days with this one.

    I’ve already downloaded several games that have been highly entertaining, an app for tracking and sending prayers, one for tracking car expenses, and even one simply to take and categorize notes.

    The only complaint I have right now is that the battery life tend to be rather short, and the car charger for my old iPod doesn’t work with it, but I’ll be getting one for it soon. Now if I could only pry it out of my own hands for more than two minutes.

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  • Sometimes You’ve Just Got To Write

    It’s been a long while since I’ve used this thing — not that I expect anyone really reads it yet — so I figure I should at least make an attempt to write more regularly in this thing. After all, I pay nearly $10 a month for the server space that this and my world-building project take up.

    Speaking of which, the world building project is going well so far and I’ve mostly completed the main world my stories will revolve around. However, I still need to put some finer touches to the rainfall and tempurature data to make me happy with the results. Unfortunately, it seems everytime I load the file back up, both sets of data change up. It’s likely the randomizers built into Fractal Terrains, but it’s annoying nonetheless. It’ll be nice to just get it finished the way I like it, all in one sitting, so I don’t have to worry about it. After that, it’s a matter of fleshing out the history, geology, and other information. Normally, I wouldn’t go into so much detail, but I hope to someday make a role-play MUSH out of the setting. It also helps to keep me consistant in my writing.

    In other news, I just completed my first league on Power Soccer, and actually grabbed the top spot in my bracket. I’m still waiting to see if there is a playoff or not for the Amature League brackets. It’s not a huge bragging point since I’m only one of two that bothered to complete all 24 games. The 2nd-place finisher was the other. 3rd-place only bothered to finish 19 games and 10, 11, and 12 only played one game yet are still considered to be passing on. It seems there are others on Power Soccer that would like to see some sort of change up to get more participation out of people that play just enough games to pass over the little green bar in a given bracket.

    Still, the experience was enough to make it seem worth it to purchase a club membership to keep playing league games and to unlock the extra formations not available to free members. As much as I love the 4-4-2 and 3-4-3, I do like the option to change it up every once in a while. The ability to set specific players attack attitudes is also nice. We’ll see how I do in the coming league next month.

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  • The Trouble With Politics

    I don’t know how many of you have been following the American Presidential Race, but I’ve noticed that this one has been particularly bitter and cutthroat, and the fact we’re embraced by the Information Age plays no small part in it. It is easier to find the dirt to sling thanks to background searches on the cheap along with the advances of Google and Wikipedia. Mud-slinging has long been the favorite tactic of the politician; now it’s just easier to dig to the mud.

    It’s unfortunately gotten to the point that I feel I know so little about the good of any candidate. I know just  about every single skeleton in the closets of McCain, Obama, and Palin — Biden’s been oddly untouched by the media. I was fortunate to watch the Saddleback Forum and hear McCain and Obama give answers on the same subjects, which made me like Obama more than I had, but I found myself still more enamored by McCain. In that forum, I felt McCain had stronger, clearer convictions. He was able to answer quickly and to the point, throwing in the occasional joke. He talked like most of the people I have grown up around. Obama on the otherhand, came off to me as unsure of himself and his answers. He scanned the audience a lot which made me feel he was reading their reactions before saying anything.

    After the forum, Obama supporters claimed that they must have given McCain the questions before hand. I doubt that is the case, but I do have this to say. They’ve both had these questions long before the forum was announced. They’re hot button issues, many have been around for at least the last four presidential campaigns I’ve been old enough to remember. They weren’t new. Others were more current issues, but they’re still at the forefront. The fact that Obama’s supporters feel he was unprepared compared to McCain makes me wonder if Obama even thinks about these matters when he’s not in front of a camera or podium.

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  • An Imperfect Analogy

    I actually sat thinking about a a pair of phrases that have long bothered me. They bother me because I feel they both are poor theology, or at least do not reflect my experience or the experience of anyone I know. “God is my co-pilot” and “If God is your co-pilot, change seats”, neither phrase sits well with me. Both phrases were likely coined by non-pilots who have an idealized and, frankly, misunderstanding of how aviation works. However, the latter phrase I feel is fallacious.

    As a human with free will, I am the pilot. That is something that God never takes away from anyone. Even as follower of Christ, I still make choices daily and could choose to turn away at any time if I so wished. No where in scripture have I read that God will take over your body and mind and do everything for you. It is wishful thinking at best, though I do not know that I’d wish to follow such a God anyway. The concept of becoming a spiritual zombie not in control of my own body and mind rather disturbs me. All of scripture calls on you to make the decisions, you pick up your cross daily, you deny yourself daily. God does not make your decisions, God does not pick up your cross daily, God does not deny yourself daily. Only you can do that, that is the way God intended it. It takes faith to follow Him daily and active submission out of love. For God to be the pilot, it would require no faith or love toward Him on your behalf. For God to become the pilot would require no faith, you would sit back as an outside observer as God does it all for you.

    The former phrase is also poor as a co-pilot’s job is relegated to doing minor tasks (or really any task the pilot cannot safely devote time to without distracting himself from his other responsibilities) and being there should the pilot be unable to perform his duties. He is also under the pilot’s thumb, though it is his responsibility to take control should the pilot put the plane in jeopardy. This is not God. God is not under your control. You cannot order Him into action, you cannot tell Him what to do. He is not there for the completion of tasks you have no time for yourself. He will not take control of you should you put yourself in jeopardy. Oh, He may bring a miracle about to rescue you, but He will never take over your body and mind then force you to make an action against your own will.

    If you must use an aviation metaphor to describe the Christians relationship with God, then “God is my Air Traffic Controller” fits much better. When I am flying in low visibility (less than 3 miles), cruising at 106 knots (roughly 122 miles per hour), I am required to be in constant contact with air traffic control, and for good reason. They can see what I cannot. They — like God — know where I am at right now and where I need to go. After all, they have a strip of paper that tells them my origin, destination, planned route of flight and altitude, as well as my aircraft and equipment on board. They also have their radar, which is telling them my altitude and position at all times. In these situations, when I cannot see anything around me, these voices in my ear are the ones I put my faith in to safely get me where I need to be. They tell me to turn, I turn. They tell me to climb, I climb. I let them know my intentions. They let me know if it’s possible or not. Choosing to ignore them and go my own way, flying blind, I likely will find myself slammed into a mountain somewhere. I’d be extremely lucky to do everything right on my own and make it to my destination, but more than likely, I’d end up at the wrong airport. Either way, I’d have to answer to the FAA for my willful disobedience to ATC guidance.

    How much like our God is this relationship. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it is the closer of the two. I do not plan my route. God has already chosen my plan. He guides and directs me. He leads and I follow. He tells me to do this or that, go here or there, and I obey. I put my faith in Him that I will end up where I belong. I hope you do to. If you haven’t already, take that step into faith. Much like flying in the clouds, it’s a thrilling adventure waiting to be experienced.

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