Feeling Blue

"I just don't care about it." Those were the words that became the cake topper to a testy weekend. "I just don't do that sort of thing..." he said. The person was referring to a Bible study of mine, one that I was excited to start. "It's just that I've been there, tried that, don't care, and I doubt your 'new' group will be any better than that." That is what I heard anyways, it didn't really matter what he'd said, that's what he meant. And it was at this point my heart sunk, my head throbbed, and my emotions were shot. "I just don't care," resonated with me, and this was just the cake topper!

The day before, I was enjoying a peaceful afternoon in one of my favorite stores, roaming around, looking at books, and picking out movies for the weekend. I had seen some friends there, said hi, talked about how great the afternoon was going, and enjoying life. I went to the checkout line, the guy rung in my stuff, and I swiped my debit card through the machine. Error message: did not read. I thought, that's cool, sometimes that sort of thing happens. I did it again. Another error message. Then a third time. Then a fourth. My card was ringing through as an insufficient and I freaked out. I knew I had plenty of money in that account because I had just been to the bank and my card worked fine the day before, but now, it wasn't and I immediately thought my account had been hacked and the money was gone. And if you've ever been in line when something like that happens, you know how embarrassing it can be. I paid the guy in cash and raced home, eager to call the bank to find out what was going on. Unfortunately, it was Saturday and the bank was closed. The emergency help line was about as useful as an ice-maker in Alaska, and I went ballistic. I didn't know what going ballistic meant exactly before this; now I know. It involves a lot of yelling, a lot of hitting pillows, and a lot of screaming.

The next day, I went to church, enjoyed fellowship, and ate lunch. I decided to start working on my new small group and began letting people know about this new thing. I've been really nervous about it; I mean, leaving where I was at and going to off to start this new group required some backbone but I was really excited about it. But for the past several weeks, it just hasn't come together and overall, I have been stressed about everything- school, work, more school, life. There just hasn't been a reprieve and now, feeling as frazzled as I'll ever be, I just wanted to hear some good news about this group. And up to that point, everybody I'd talked to had given me a big "no thank you" when I invited them. I got in touch with one more guy, one of my good friends. "Sorry, I just don't do those groups," he said. "Not interested." And thus, my heart sank into my gut as life pounded me into the ground. (P.S. for all those I got in touch with about the group, this is not an effort to guilt you into coming, although, there will be pizza, and free pizza should guilt you into coming! Just kidding, no pressure).

Life can be terrible at times. I mean, it can feel simply rotten. At this point, I was upset, tired, angry, doubtful, and confused. I got in my car and just took off, driving for nearly an hour in plain silence trying to clear my mind. Along the way, I passed friends who turned me down, a sign that said my bank was switching owners (probably why my card didn't work), and my school which was an unpleasant sight as any. I was feeling broken and beaten. Tired and sore. Alone and down.

"Why are you doing this, God?" I shouted feeling like I was God's next Job. "Why are you letting this happen to me? What did I do?"

And simply, I believe this was my answer. "Why don't you stop worrying about who or what is making you feel so down and why don't you just adapt. You can't change anything right now anyways, it will take time. Besides, it's not about what is happening to you, it's about how you respond to what's happening to you. So will you choose to overcome or succumb?"

And I drove, a little longer, in silence, pondering this very thing. Since then, life hasn't been any kinder. Circumstances aren't any better. People aren't any more forgiving.  Hopefully, those words spoken to me will encourage you through anything you may be going through. But in that moment, I figured I only had one thing to say to something like that.  I simply shrugged, sighed, and said, "Okay. I'll give it a shot." I dunno, maybe it will work.

I dunno, but, okay.

KB

Fast Frustration

I am frustrated. Being the cynic that I am, this may not be out of the ordinary to you, but to me it is. I am frustrated with how stale things have gotten lately, and I'm not just talking about spiritual or emotional things, I am talking about tangible things. I feel so distraught lately, like I am not making a difference and while I know that statistically I am, I just don't feel it inside my heart. So far, I'm sure you are thinking this is a real down and outer type of blog and I'd almost agree with you. However, don't be upset or concerned about me. I'm not going through a total meltdown, I'm just ready for more, itching for more productivity. Are you?

This past week, I visited a church in Lubbock, Texas called Church on the Rock. They seem like nice people and seem like they have a decent community there, but they are starting something today that pulled at my heartstrings and compels me to do it with them as well. They are starting a fast. A fast is simply sacrificing something in your life for advancing or bettering yourself, in this case spiritually. Protestants call it a fast. Catholics call it lent. Humanists call it streamlining your life. Self improvement gurus call it stress relief. I call it focus.

Think of something this week you wish to sacrifice for the idea of bettering yourself. This doesn't apply to just spiritual things. In fact, Biblically speaking for all my Christian readers, Mark 9:50 states we are to be at peace with one another. In fact, from Colossians 3:15 to 1 Peter 3:11 and all throughout the Bible, a call for outward peace with everybody and everything can be seen. So this call to fast can be for anything in your life; there is nothing to big or too small to deal with in life, it's all important. In fact it is sometimes the small things that ruin the big things. So starting today and for the next 40 days, join me on a "fast" of something, anything. Me? Well I doubt I could even go 3 hours without food (which is traditionally what is sacrificed in a fast), so that's out of the question. I think it will be of my time, I don't know yet. For you it may be the computer, priorities, reading material, music, or it may be food. Just make an effort to do something for the next 40 days to focus your life on what is really important again. Don't make a big deal out of it, just do it. After all, that's all a fast is, doing something for yourself, not unto others- focusing your life so that you optimize your impact on this world. Some call it self improvement. I call it clarity.

KB

Social Experiment No. 2

I'm sure you have an iPod. If you don't, you will. If you say you will never own one, you will one day say you love iPods. If you own a Zune, you will trade it in and use the cash toward an iPod. Fact is, the iPod is part of our everyday life, a facet of who we are, and an item some people use on a daily basis. On average, most people have over 2,000 songs in the song library these days. The average song length is around 4 minutes which means that a library of 2,000 songs with an average length of 4 minutes would give you 8000 minutes of songs or around 133 hours which translates to around 5 1/2 days of music, granted you play the music non-stop. That's a lot of music. I only have a mere 2 days worth of songs in my personal library. But it feels like 2 days of songs I hardly listen to.

In my music library, there are songs that I have listen to dozens of times. There are also songs I have listened to only once or twice. Some stuff on my iPod has never even been listened to. Reason is I get in these ruts where I like the same thing over and over again even though I have hundreds of songs on my iPod that I have listened to only a few times! I think about it and ask myself why I leave them on there if I don't like them. And when I put my iPod on shuffle, put the songs on random, I find myself just skipping through a horde of songs I don't listen to in order to get to the same songs I listen to all the time. But recently, I decided to try something new; I dared myself to set my playlist on random, let it run, and just see what happens. Richter once said, "Music is the poetry of the air." I certainly believe that writing is a powerful facet to society, but it is important to remember that music is just as powerful, if not more so. I like to think that the songs I listen to are like soundtracks to my life, they are a way to complement my feelings or emotions at the time being. That would be 2 whole days of music for me to feel every day.

Here is my call to you, the "social experiment" part if you will. I dare you to start your day tomorrow with your iPod on shuffle, starting out simply by listening to the first song and then trusting that God will orchestrate your iPod to play just what you need when you need that. For instance, as I was listening to my iPod one day, reminiscing about my friends Chris and Garret who like rapping to lame 1980's hip-hop songs and lo and behold, next song was a hit from the Digital Underground. Or the time when I was preparing for a speaking engagement and I was getting really nervous, and the Lord led me to listen to my iPod and the first song on shuffle was Stars by David Crowder, my favorite song in the whole world which put me at ease. It's amazing the power of song and even the irony behind it at time, and so I dare you this week to just let your iPod play, and not skip a song. See what happens. And as each day goes on, I encourage you to post what your song of the day somewhere (Facebook, desk, on this blog, etc.). May each day you live be filled with the perfect song for the perfect whether.

Today, my song is my favorites. It reminds me how God takes me and lifts me to heights I can hardly believe are possible. Beauty and redemption, undeserved- the soundtrack to my life!

Don't Bring a Quarter to a Gun Fight

As a boy, I remember seeing a man come to speak with our class during a presentation day. I loved presentation days. It meant we got to sit around and listen and even if the guy was talking about something boring, like wearing helmets on bikes or not taking candy from strangers, we got to do something besides sitting in a stuffy classroom. I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 years old, my hair combed perfectly with a crease off to the side, my goofy smile with a few teeth missing here and there, and my strange heighth (even back then I was a sasquatch for my age). Our school was having a "western day," with everything from hay rides to lasso contests and BBQ. Like I said, though, I didn't really care a whole lot about that, I just liked that we didn't have to sit in class all day. We moved from station to station, learning all about the wild west and a bunch of other country-related stuff, of which I don't remember, with the exception of this man.

He was a tall, scrawny man with a handlebar mustache that dipped low on his chin. His hair was coarse, plastered down by his bulky, wild cowboy hat. His leather jacket covered his flanal shirt that was tucked into his starched, brown jeans. His belt buckle was huge as I recall, but none of his apparel caught my eye except for one thing. Hooked around his belt loop, clutching tightly to his hip was a silver pistol. It stole my attention as it did with all the other boys around me. We watched as he pulled it out of the thick, leather holster and raised it up in the air. We leaned forward with intense excitement as he tossed a quarter up into the air and shot the pistol, the sound of the gun clashing through the air. The coin plumeted to the earth and in the coin was a hole the size of a bullet. Right then and there, I thought guns were the coolest and I wanted to be able to do that one day. That initial shot never stopped resonating with me.

Years later, here I am shooting guns like a madman. I am somewhat of a conesure, as I am sure I have mentioned before on this blog. As a kid, my dad would take me to the range and he instilled in me a respect for guns as well as a passion for them. Today, I go to gun conventions, go to gun ranges, watch shows based on guns, speak about guns on a regular basis, and even spoke at a business/economic workshop about, you guessed it, guns! I am a little obessed, I realize this, but it's not called a passion for nothing. I consider it a gift, one area of my life that I excel in.

Ephesians 4:11-13 says this in the Message translation: "He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christ's followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ's body, the church, until we're all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God's Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ." God has given out different passions for each of us, no matter how unconventional they may be- singing, dancing, writing, speaking, selling, driving, shooting- all of which have the fascinating potential to be made into something awesome. When someone mentions "using your talents for the Kingdom of God," I often wonder what that means. How do I do that? In truth, I believe it means that you should enjoy what you do. There is a book out there called "Strength Finder 2.0" which talks about developing your strengths over developing your weakness. It reasons that using your strengths compels you to greater heights where as dealing with your weaknesses only fill you with stress. In their book Jim and Casper Go to Church, Jim Henderson and Matt Casper talk about how we often focus our spiritual life to become a one-stop-shop for God instead of using what we are gifted with, our strengths. Too often, we find people who aren't necessarily disgruntled with life, but just average. They are glazed over with indifference and filled with an absense of consideration for others. It seems that this "average" mentality is a result of not using your strengths and thus not doing what you enjoy on a day to day basis. They simply feel unfulfilled, a feeling Christians often feel in their walk. We like to dwell in our weaknesses, but in 2 Corinthians 12:10 God assures us that "When you are weak, I am strong." Life is covered, whether you are struggling or sailing, so why not sail?

My point is about finding your strengths through finding your inspiration. We cannot be everything at once. We cannot be a one-stop-shop for everybody's needs, but we often try to solve the world's problems as a one man band. One of my strengths is shooting, and it was a strength I discovered by inspiration. Likewise, we each have an intergral part in the kingdom to play, a place we each have to stand in the body, but I doubt we will find that place if we don't have our inspiration. Like DaVinci had his board to paint a Mona Lisa, like VanGough had his starry night to gaze upon, so the Master Artist has us to shape and mold-- clay in the potter's hands. So my prayer this week is that you find your inspiration from the Father much like I found my inspiration from the man at my school. May you sit at his feet and listen with intense excitement at his words and may they encourage you to strive for higher places.

As for the inspiration in my life, the funny thing was, the coin already had a hole in it. 7 year old kids don't realize that a man can't just shoot a loaded gun on a school campus so he used blanks and a pre-shot quarter. It didn't stop me though and I doubt that if I knew that back then, I would be any less impressed.

KB