Home at Last

I am finally home. This was the first vacation where I actually felt more rested when I got home than I did when I left. That is a rare treat indeed so thank you to everyone who made it possible. I missed my little ones something fierce and I'm glad to be back and doing my part in holding down the fort. I think God is working on my about something. My dad and I talked about this a bit while out in the Canoe, and then God worked on me about it a bit more that night. Judging. I didn't even know this was a problem but it turns out that I had been doing it to my own little brother for a long time and it was creating a rift between us. I was having breakfast with him and his wife when I felt it was the perfect time to apologize to him for it and tell him how proud I am of many of his decisions. It turns out that the night before he had been talking to his wife, Amber, about me and how it seemed like I was mad at him about something. What I said to him was exactly what he needed to hear from me apparently and he thought that Amber had talked to me that morning. She hadn't, but God had. So now I'm back at home and I'm fighting with something. I am more than a little upset with the behavior of one of my neighbors. I want to have a civil conversation with them and work this out, because they have been good friends for nearly a year now. A single misunderstanding later and my wife and I are getting bashed to all of our friends. So now I'm trying to avoid judging them, or being angry with them. Perhaps this is just meant to be a lesson. It affected my child, so I'm having a harder time with it than I normally would. Just goes to show though, that most conversations I have with my dad end up having a direct impact on my life almost immediately. Now how does he do that???

Separation

So Holly and I have only been apart for about a week, and she is a strong woman who normally fairs perfectly well without me. This time around however, she has had the worst string of bad luck ever! The moment I touched down on the east coast she calls me to inform me that our daughter has a large lump on her bum which turned out to be MRSA. Holly herself had just gotten over a case of this right before I left. So they end up spending 3 days in the hospital while my baby girl is poked, prodded, stabbed and suffering through this. MRSA is no joke either. So they just get home and suddenly Holly's bumps return. Awesome. Now she is most likely going to have to have them lanced again but all of our friends are either sick, cracking mentally or somehow unable to help. I need to be there for my family but this was an unprecedented opportunity to see my family back home in Oregon. I just need to know why all of this happens to my beautiful wife when I'm not there to help her. To make matters more difficult, there are like 50 people wanting to talk to me and spend time with me here, but Holly needs my time too especially right now. This happens every time I leave. I think my mere presence somehow stops bad things from happening. Just looking at the trends of the past, that seems to be true, regardless of how unlikely that seems. I miss my babies and my babe, but it is really a problem because of all the things that are going wrong. I mean Holly sprained her ankle and the tv broke today too. Seriously, what is going on out there?

A Note on Prayer

I know I don't post much, but sometimes I just feel like I have something to say that might be worth putting out there. This is one of those times. I've been doing a lot of meditation on spirituality and the true nature of God. I'm not saying that I'm in to all the new age belief systems that attempt to de-deify God in order to make Him more approachable. I think that to do that is to miss out the key point. To de-deify God and find your inner god is just a new form idolatry where the idol is your self. We are not gods, but we come from God. He made us and as He puts it, all things are held together by Him. With that said, in order to find ourselves, we have to admit that we are of Him and must rely on His wisdom in order to even know what questions to ask of Him. This leads to my title topic. Organized religion seems to teach us to pray by protocol. "Dear God, {insert platitudes}, I humbly approach you with {wish list}, not to say that I'm not grateful for {more platitudes}..." repeat until you feel like He must have heard you. The problem with this methodology is that it requires us to assume we even know what we need! I can't remember the last time I felt like I knew what path was the right path or that I knew what I needed to ensure that I was doing the right thing that would end up best. The repetition also makes people believe that it's the words that make the prayer. That is not the case. Words, are a form of communication for use with other people, they can be in any language, any combination of sounds and still have the same core meaning. God said that He knows what we are going to say before we say it, so why even bother speaking our prayers, let alone repeat them over and over again. It is our emotions and faith that empower our prayers, and we speak them because our words are there to make it real to us. While praying in our minds is powerful, to say it out loud is to commit to it and give your emotions form. This is why I pray aloud despite the fact that words are for people, not God. I have been led to the fact that the most powerful form of prayer is God guided prayer. One must fully release any belief that they know what to pray for. Ask God to lead you in your prayer and He will often times guide you to the root of problems in your life and lead you to understand things that eluded you grasp. Many wonder how you know when God is talking to you. For me, it's when I suddenly have an answer that is way beyond what I could have come up with. Often times it contradicts what I wanted to hear. When I am praying, it's more of a conversation. I drop the protocol, let God guide my prayer and just hash it out with Him. I tell Him what my concerns are and he tells me what they should be, He answers my questions before I can get them out of my mouth and redirects my thoughts from the question to answer. It's a powerful experience whenever I make time. I should do more often.

A Procedure

Just got done with my "procedure". I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable at the moment. Ok, a lot bit uncomfortable. Aleric made a running head butt straight for the effected area just like I did at my dad so many years ago. Nice to know that some things never change. I'll let all you thinkers out there figure out what procedure I had done.

A message from my phone about my phone

We just got new phones. They are message phones and everything works as you'd expect. Funny how the blackerry didn't...

An Enlightening Day

Yesterday didn't start out that great but it unrolled in ways I never could have predicted. I got up early so I could go to stand watch at 5 am which is never fun. On my way into work I spoke with God about my life and the direction that it is going. As I prayed for guidance as to which path I should take I decided to allow my prayers to be guided by God. This turned out to be interesting and more fruitful than I imagined possible. It is a little wierd to do this, to open myself up like that. I found that I stopped praying for guidance and felt that the answer to that question had already been given, and instead had started praying for my relationship with my family. I prayed that my children would be healthy, happy and creative individuals and that Holly and I would have the wisdom to raise them right. I also found that I was telling myself that I needed to eliminate video games from my life for now. This is not going to be easy, but I know that it is because I was allowing them to take my attention away from my wife and my family. So for now until I feel that the situation has changed they are all going into the closet. The final thing that I found the need to ask for was that He would guide me toward understanding the true nature of God. I will be writing blogs more on this in the future, but He has already begun to show me His nature. Then I got to work and discovered that I had gotten up early apparently just for the time with God because I didn't have to be at work until 1pm. So the rest of the day unrolled as you might imagine. I went home, slept in, woke up, went to work and eventually came home. So last night Holly and I were talking, it got really late but I was thinking about what I had prayed about in the morning. I remembered thinking about how I never talk to Holly about spiritual matters despite the fact that they are important to me. It occured to me how ridiculous that is. So I broached the subject. As it turns out, she still loves me and in fact I feel that after our talk last night we have never been closer. I was able to say some things that put Holly's mind at ease, even though I had no idea she was stressing about them. We communicated on a level that we never had before and it was amazing. I feel that our relationship has improved so much more in one night than I ever would have thought possible. All of this was because I woke up earlier than I needed to and spent an extra hour alone with God.

I must be crazy

So my inner child came out and compelled me to stay up until 1200, waiting outside my local gamestop so I could get my hands on a game that I won't even be able to play until tomorrow. I've been following this game since it's conception about 4 years ago and it's release has been delayed for two years. It's finally here and I splurged on the limited edition so I could get some special in game units. I know, it sounds pretty ridiculous. I feel the need to explain my theory of why the store was full of guys like me and the occasional understanding, if not patronizing, girlfriend/wife. When I was a little boy, a new toy meant more than just another object, it was a whole new world of possibilities. My army men were tactical pieces in a war between me and my brothers with personalities of their own. Maybe they came to life when we weren't looking. My simple electronic toys became sophisticated remote control devices to space ships that existed only for me and my brothers. As I got older, reality imposed it's rigid structure upon my dreams and the toys lost their magic. This is where video games come in. People pour their imagination and creativity into these games, bringing the worlds that existed only for me and them to life before everyone elses eyes. There is no disappointment, reality's influence is limited to whatever the dreamer allows. This is what these games are to grown men. They are the chance to feel imagination at play.