Diaper stage

Anytime I'm growing it's never a pretty sight. Any growth from the old self to the new self is a tooth and nail fight inside that most often spills out into my life. Retaking any inch ground in my soul that hasn't seen the living life giving rays of the sunlight is full on trench warfare. Like huge pus filled boils God uses the truth to lance them to drain off deep held resentments, septic pus of hurt, and smells all kinds of foulness. Then the healing part comes in but man its never just a magic wand type for me. You cant be afflicted with such vicious wounds to your legs then run a marathon the next day.

I've been really thinking on how I can screw up my life in a major lately. Maybe pick up heroin, get into sex only in big fluffy animal costumes, join one of those pseudo religious cults, or something along those lines. Nothing s wrong that I need to go hide away in like in the past but worse everything is somewhat stable. I don't know how to manage stability. I know how to recovery well enough by now but have no clue how to keep it up.

That's why now that I'm taking Father by God again with most levels of the thick scar tissue over the wound has been dealt with over the last few years that it hurts so much. Last week was the overview which is easy enough because its a bids eye view. The messy details are white washed over to trick you into trying it out. So this week s homework was the foundational stage of being the Beloved Son. This stage has always been the most obsolete part to me because I was so oblivious to how deeply I was wounded. Over the years more has been revealed and most times that's a good thing but we are still getting damage reports from below decks. Geez how bad is it down there?

I want to stomp down there stairs and shake that filthy stupid kid yelling suck it up and be a man till he gets his crap together. After all these years why he cant hear me must be a problem with my volume being to low so I raise it no a more disastrous effect. What is so hard for me to wrap my head around is that part of me needs to feel love. That's my grossest handicap I think my ability to love myself. I can accept myself like a shipment of lumber. Some planks I can see making a house with some most are warped enough but able to hide in the walls. Then I see this pile of just miss match pieces left over. Good for nothing in my life today. That I can see. That's the problem I can not see any further than today.

God started working on me years ago on things that weren't bothering me at all to get me screwed up enough to be willing to work on them to prepare me for what's ahead.

Matthew 22:36-40New International Version (NIV)

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.

Truth is I don't love myself much so I cant love my neighbor much. I cant adore my kids until I adore myself. I get so frustrated with Zoe because I get so frustrated with myself doing the same selfish things. How I treat myself is the reflection of how I would treat others. These things scare me! I want to love deeply and be accepting to those in my life.

So the outline says to love others we have to love ourselves but that's jacked, if it was that simple we would be all ready. How do we start?  

We love, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19

before I can love myself  I must first be loved to teach me how to do it. I let God take that inner kid out of the basement and out to play in fields of green. That kid doesn't have to suck it up and act like a man. All he has to do is be loved and act like a kid. To run like a wild Indian, get into mischief, climb trees, tells story's of dragons he sees in the clouds, to take naps under shade trees. All these things he can do because his Father loves and protects him from all bad things. The yard is safe. He can run barefoot feeling the blades of grass between his toes because God has been hard at work working on the yard putting in the work so only grass grows. Man I long to toss my shoes and go running.

As I go through this reading asking deeper question than I had before it shocks me how much I hate surprises. I would even as a kid try to find out what I got for Christmas not so I could play with the toys but just out of fear that I wouldn't get anything. really like my parents would wrap up boxes in pretty paper just to laugh at the look on my face. I didn't have a bad childhood by any means but there was many many surprises that weren't fun. So I grew to hate surprises and took measures to insulate myself from them. I skipped little league because if I surprisingly hit the ball I didn't know what to do next. It was surprising to me when my dad left us. Maybe I have a genetic sensitivity true but I really hated change after that. I would sit in front of the television for hours spacing out because there was no surprises.

These last few years as I've been opening myself up to surprises as gifts from God. Earlier this year I was offered a deep sea fishing trip out of the blue. Everything in my threw up screams of how it wouldn't work out. So to feed them I made calls to make sure this wouldn't happen. Zoe would be a problem boom mom said no trouble. Work wouldn't let me off bang they ask if I need the following Monday off to give me some extra time.  Every time I tried to feed the fears they came up starving. All I had t do was show up and explore the ocean.

Blessings have just poured into my life that I never have ever thought of. After Pegs death I was as a child totally unable to take care of myself. Just stunned stupid I wouldn't of eaten if people didn't remind me or bring it over in some cases. Bills got paid some how. Christmas all I could do is sit back and receive surprise blessing over and over. Just a couple weeks I was talking to God about fixing up the back yard since Whitey ran off. I get two  calls from two separate parties offering my a grill and a lawnmower on top off someone upgrading their patio furniture and passing me four chairs for my table.

Safety, exploration, surprises is what it means to be a beloved son. In turn I have been able to give all these things to Zoe. She watched how trust falls work on TV and now I'll just be sitting there and she will fall back with all her weight without abandon. I haven't dropped her yet but have come very close to a run to the ER. She just expects that I am watching her and will catch her if she falls. How the hell did she get that impression? Man if I could trust God like that, he's willing its me with the trust issues. Zoe runs off without fear because she knows I'm watching her. She gets in the car and asks what I have for her. Not in a selfish way but just after so many times of having a surprise treat why wouldn't I? Geez I have prayed to God for no more surprises good or bad.

This week I might jus get paperwork I've been waiting for since 2005 to be able to see my first two daughters. What should of been a time of rejoicing was wretchedly stolen by fear. I let it run for a while but then I started to read my homework on being the beloved son and it stirred up stuff to where I had to chose if God really did call me his beloved still. Saturday I wrestled with that all day. Sunday I woke up to Easter and the answer was yes to the point of death. Every stage in the book builds off the Beloved Son all the parts like warrior and king I want to skip to starts with knowing how much I am deeply loved. 

And said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Matthew 18:3 ESV         

We are God's children but today I quit fighting and accept that I am the apple of his eye. 
 

Fixer Upper

Between music video channels and food network is HGN the home and garden network. It's all about remodeling the house and the yard. Two things that hold no interest to me at all. I was journaling about what I want to get out of fathered by god this year. I wrote down that I give more this year to the other guys because in my innermost heart I felt like I had taken in more than my fair share. There was only so much he could do.

 

I flipped the channel up but the remote slipped fell to the floor. One rolled under the couch the other under the table both a pain to that would require me to get on my hands and knees to retrieve. So I figured to just leave the channel until Zoe got up from her nap. 

The program was just starting. It's called rehab addict. The episode playing in the background caught my attention was hoe she bought this awesome house for a dollar because no one else wanted it. The house was abandoned but in good shape the was the basement wasn't propperly set in the first place nor maintained over the years. The house was in suburban Detroit where the deep winter and hot summers had turned the basement walls to paper mache.

It was a waste of money to fix, up the above ground house for anyone because it was just a matter of time before it would fall in on itself under its own weight. The coolest thing happened next a company came in and used new tech to hydraulicly lift up the entire house off the ground using Jack's and steel beams! They proceeded to use a bobcat to knock the walls down to the foundation then drove down and dug they up to!

 There was a 414 ton house right above their heads but it was no big deal. They slapped cinderblocks up and concrete down like the house didn't exist. When they were done they just lowered the house onto the new foundation and basement with enhanced supports. Then they started on the house like every other week it seemed.

The words just let me fix your basement floated in my head. I knew it was the holy spirit. That's a tough choice. It should be a no brainer but for people like me its a tough call. In AA they say it that a man has to choose to die a excruciating death by alcoholism or choose a spiritual way of life. The Bible tell us sometime Jesus just flat out asks do you want to be healed? 

This isn't my first go around with this class. But I'm catching so many more nuances than ever. It's like taking muddy water through a purification process over and over again. Each time more crap is taken out to reveal cleaner water. The,strainer keeps on getting smaller. From big holes to catch my grosser handicaps to smaller ones for things like motives.

1.2 Gigawatts

When were the good old days anyway?

The greatest lie I tell myself is things were better in the past. Even though I have bitched and moaned through out my life about what has been going on for some reason I have been wanting the good old days back again. Intellectual facts have had no effect on a emotional remembrance. I think I don't want to go back in time as much as I want to lose experience. To return to blissful ignorance of being less scarred by life.

What wouldn't give to have the worst thing in my life was a zit! To have real hope that if I just got out of this one horse town life would be so much better. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain. Ecclesiastes 1:18 Solomon was right on there. The longer we live the more knowledge we accumulate. When we are young sitting around drinking from bottles in bars or coffee cups in diners we had the freedom to have theories of how the universe ran. Twenty years later we sit in our lazy boys with facts of how our theories were blown away an begrudgingly accept the facts of how the universe works.I stand back looking at my white board like Wyle E. Coyote looking at the plan and just baffled why that Roadrunner isn't dead. All my numbers were good and bought all the right ACME products right? All wing nuts accounted for? Things weren't better in the past they were just as shiny and just as tragic as they are now in equal parts. The only thing different is my capacity to recognize the weight has grown.

The second greatest lie I tell my self is If I would of just known then what I know now how I would of done things different. If I just would of saved my money and bought Yahoo stock then turned around and bought Google then turned that into whatever. If I knew that my first wife would turn out to leave me for a lesbian would I still of married her? Knee jerk reaction is hells to the no but gut level is hells to the no because I would lose my first two daughters. Would I keep my mouth shut in 04 to avoid going to jail? I can only imagine the absolute self destruction I would of done keeping secrets like that.  I have read enough science fiction to understand the quantum level effects of the smallest choice different has on the time space continuum. My today is so fragile I wouldn't dare change a thing in the past. The cascading avalanche would completely wipe my world away from the force of a butterfly's wing.

The only thing that changes in a person as we grow older I think is our capacity in our heart. The amount we are to take in of this world is equivalent to the amount of heartbreak we go through.  I can break Zoe's heart with a lollipop. By giving it to her heart breaks and a deeper level of love can build up a bigger storage to put all that extra love she suddenly has. By denying it her heart can break and storage area for hate will be constructed. Beautiful things break my heart Just as easy as pain and tragedy these days.  As my capacity grows through using my heart God keeps pushing on my borders.

I like dropping Ecstasy or other hallucinogenic material to push the borders of my conciseness because I can dictate the timetable of being blown away. I'm not ambushed by waking to a still morning in warm blankets and birds singing as sunlight filters through my curtains to a wave security and love. A grief bubble doesn't get past all my defenses and on a Tuesday afternoon at 2 pm I'm hiding out in a closet at work balling my eyes because I heard a song Peg used to play. Such brilliant highs and abysmal lows I am exposed to sober are just so inconvenient really.

The present is such a mystical place to reside in that  have to lie to myself to just feel normal. When I live in this supernatural world of limitless wonder I am paralyzed. I have been given wings but never leave the nest. Thanks for the wings God but I just really wanted them in case I accidently fell out of the nest to fly back up to where I started from not where I could go. The sky is so immense I have to build walls. I tell myself lies to build walls with a window in them so I can still dream about flying. So much easier to dream about flying than it is to take wing.