Redirection in the face of...

Do you ever find yourself wanting to change things? As a result of so much change in my life, I find it time to go a different way at church. Pastor and I have been talking, I have been praying, and because so much work time is down time (sorry taxpayers) I have decided to try my hand at writing curriculum. Now I dont expect Nazarene Publishing to see it, and decide to actually update their material into something reasonably 2009ish, but I know what I see does not seem to be releavant to our kids today. We have been using "Good Book" by David Plotz as our research in Sunday School, and I personally like how it is going. It is a book about the Old Testament from a Jewish man's view. And so far, so good. And why not use resources other than dated material (like Matthew Henry or Vine's). So, tonight at the board meeting ( I love these times) I will see what the church board thinks. Hopefully, they wont even notice.

September 11, 2001

What I remember...
Gary Condit and the missing intern, shark attacks, and would Michael Jordan return to basketball. that was it on the morning news.
Then things changed.
By the end of the day I was happy to have family and friends and everyone safe.
I grieved for the lost.
I watched a special on CBS, with people falling out the towers.
I grieved for the world.
I slowly watched us forget about compassion, again.
But I still remember, every year. When I see stupid advertisments that seem to believe that it is okay to use 9-11 to sell their product.
It will never be okay.
Would we joke about Pearl Harbor?
Or Omaha Beach? Or Gettysburg?
Or anyplace where blood was spilled?
I miss the towers.
I still see them in movies and it makes me sad.
I dont think I will every understand the point that the hijackers were trying to make.
I never understand how death can prove a point.
Simple words would have been just as effective.
I would hope we have learned something.
I doubt it.
To those who lost someone that day...
I am sad for you.
For us.
For this world.
I wish that some lesson could be learned.

It has been a long time. I am adding this to the First Church of the Nazarene in Pana website starting today. I want it to be understood. Anything written on here in no way, shape, of form, reflects the beliefs of the Nazarene Church of North America, and definitely not the one in Pana, Illinois. If you have problems, concerns, questions, or anything please direct your correspondence to me via the web response in this blog. Don't stop by the house, where I work, or call me.
I will occassionally write about the political happenings in the great state of Illinois (sarcasm sign). Once again, my opinions, not the churches, the pastors, or the congregations. As we attempt to make this website more viable, I hope that others will add blog sites to it and it becomes as "cool" as the one that Decatur First has.
Come on people, we have a steeple now. We can move into the 21st century with a cool website as well.

Happy Birthday Mom

Today is her birthday. And I miss her. I would have called and sang Happy Birthday.
But instead, I grieve for this lost family.

It's Almost Over...thank God.

As we near the end of forty-four days of prayer and the drama, “Heavens Gates, Hells Flames”, there is definitely one thing that is noticeable. I could say it is the devil attacking us, or the Holy Spirit is so present in the drama, but what it really is, what is really defining about this time period, is how invincible we believe we are.
Now I know that we should believe that we are super, that nothing can defeat us, but when we get like that we become lazy and mundane. I noticed it last night. There were people laughing, farting, and generally discouraged about how they were doing in the drama. There was no uniformity, no sense of purpose, and no end in sight. Could I somehow chalk it up to exhaustion? Could it be that people were so tired that they were getting punch drunk? Or had we as a group lost our vision…
One thing that has bothered me over the last few days is the lack of a “saintly presence” in the evening services. We have older adults in the church who we consider “saints”, and they are being perfectly absent from the drama. I have seen a few faithful, but there are a lot of missing faces. It is puzzling to me that a praying church does not have more people actually visible, and praying. Maybe you are one of those people, just not there. Maybe you don’t like the thought of new people possibly coming to church, or maybe the NCAA tournament is more important, I don’t know. But I am really aggravated by it. If we want the church, and the kingdom of God, filled to overflowing, then maybe we have to be involved in the process. Maybe we have to sacrifice. I have only missed a few nights of the forty days of prayer, and I didn’t feel right when I did miss. I want to be at the drama, if for no other reason then to be support for the cast and crew. But I end up at the altar every night, praying for and with people. And then I stick around, just in case someone needs to talk. The first night I am glad I did, because a young man lagged behind, regretting that he had not gone forward earlier in the evening. I walked him to the altar, thirty minutes after the drama was over, and led him to Jesus. I stayed to talk to another young man, and have made sure that I am around if someone needs to talk.
Am I going to miss a favorite television show tonight? Yes I am. No I care? No I do not. I have the ability, or rather my television has the ability, to record it for me so I can watch it later. So do I have an excuse? Of course, I have several. Our dishes need washed, my back hurts, my feet hurts, I am tired, and the house needs attention. But I have discovered that people and their lives are more important than a wooden spoon with dried egg on it. My back and feet will get better, souls are more important.
There is a lot of work to do before we can grow as a church. Getting past our small church mentality is a priority. We are not a small church…we are not a small congregation…and we need to realize that we are being watched by the community.
And we need to get off our dead butts and start telling people about our God, who we can yell at, who we can not understand all the time, but who loves us anyway. The God who sent his son to die for us, me, you, that guy, what’s her name, and all the people in between.
We are not supermen or wonder women. We are flawed beings that need to show others that, so we can all work together for the greater good. It is almost time to go, and we need to be ready.

Dieting people around the fat not junior senator from Illinois.

I hate people that make you diet along with them.
If it is working for you, then great. I personally cannot eat that much meat and cheese all day.
I like bread.
So shut up.

Tough times, day two

Day two of “the tough times”, that is what I am calling it. I cant get Dad or Michelle off my mind. The other night at prayer someone mentioned another family where the matriarch had passed away, and how sometimes family’s struggle after that. If she only knew.
The loss of mom started a firestorm of problems for our small family. As she struggled for those 21 days before her passing, it drew us closer together, for the most part. I yelled at one of my aunts at one point, telling her to go home because she was so mean to my father. As mom fell into unconsciousness later that evening, I called her back to the hospital. We apologized to each other, but our relationship will never be the same. My dad wants nothing to do with another of mom’s sisters, because for years they helped her out, only to see nothing in return. But I saw a different side to her, and as Mom slowly left us, she kept reading about possible cures on the Internet, kept on the doctors and nurses, and even tried to see about moving Mom to a St. Louis hospital to help her. She cared deeply for mom, and sadly all my dad sees is that she owes him money.
Of course, my sister is angry at me over my relationship with mom. For many years my mother was more like a friend to me than a mom. She was an incredible listener, and she did more worrying for other people than she did for herself. And the one thing she craved more than anything else was a relationship with my sister. She would call and leave messages, cry over unreturned calls, and try to figure out how to make things better. And I really don’t understand what divided mom and my sister. But it was huge in the eyes of my sister. After my sister and her husband were hit by a drunk driver in 1996, I thought things were a little better. I watched mom spend four straight nights at the hospital, sleeping against a hospital table, watching and praying over my sister. And then she was there everyday after that, watching over my brother-in-law, doing what she did best, worrying.
But somehow Michelle is mad about something else. After my wife broke her back we went to Mom and Dad for financial help. I was unemployed, and Christmas was approaching. Bills were piling up, and Kim’s disability would not start for a few months. Aflac insurance helped a lot, but it was not enough. Kim’s surgery cost $194,000 dollars, and thank God for our insurance. But there were a lot of expenses. And we used credit cards to pay the bills, buy groceries, gas, and yes, sometimes junk we did not need. But we worked out an arrangement to pay it all back to my parents. And then Mom died and Dad started looking at his bills.
And my sister found out about our arrangement with mom and dad. And this made her mad at me, saying that I was taking advantage of them. I admit I did take advantage, but in a good way. I don’t know how we would have survived without them. And when times got tough for them, we also turned the favor around and helped them out. That is what mom was about, helping (and worrying.) Michelle then took her frustrations out on Andrew, our adopted son, blaming him for stuff as well. Then it was the Taylorville house, our moving to Pana, our driving to Springfield to work everyday, whatever she could think of to be mad about.
And I want to help Dad, because I crave a relationship with him. He is my father, and he has been a good one. He protected me from bullies when I was small, he taught me not to fight unless I had no other choice, and he taught me how to parallel park. He took me fishing, and started me on a love affair with that. He accepted my friends, my wife, and my faith, without too many questions. He was a lot of fun, but now that has all been severed by the death of my mom.

And my sister, how I miss her and Tracey being a part of my life. We were best friends growing up, spending time on the Taylorville square while Mom was getting her harir done at the beauty shop. We had a routine, going to Mortons and getting a nickel soda from their fountain, stopping at Rene’s and looking at magazines, then to Jubelt’s for a doughnut, then to Pearce’s for another cheap fountain drink. Then it was Woolworth’s Five and Dime, the Little Professor Book Store, the record store, and back to the beauty shop. When we went to Frank’s Food Fair on the weekly grocery store run, her and I would take hands and head across the parking lot to Sthiels Drug Store and the Ben Franklin Five and Dime while Mom and Dad shopped. I remember watching her shove her arm into a soda machine, and pulling out free sodas. I remember playing with the t.v. tube tester at the front of Frank’s, and checking for change at the Laundromat next door to the grocery store. I remember going to the free kids Wednesday matinees with her, seeing The Apple Dumpling Gang movies, Don Knotts movies, Planet of the Apes, and others. I remember getting her in to see Amityville Horror and Escape from New York, because none of my friends wanted to go. We went to rock concerts together, vacation bible school programs, and I helped her learn to read.
I remember being in the hospital room the day Tracey came out of his coma. I remember keeping their dog, Ted, so they could take a trip after they both had recovered. I remember staying with her until Tracey recovered, not being fast enough to stop Ted from grabbing a filet mignon off the grill, fixing cucumber sandwiches (I know, imagine me liking those), and sweeping out their flooded basement.
It was not that bad.
But now it hurts. If I did have my wife, and Andrew, and the people who tolerate me and call me friend, where would I be? And Jesus, who I accepted as Savior when I was eighteen, and even though I screwed the relationship up several times over the years, still somehow puts up with my crap. Life would be so different without these people in my life.
No matter what happens, I am grateful for God. Without Him, there would be no Kim, no Andrew, no Allens, no Glenn, no Paul, no Lori, no Nicoles, no Jerry, no Mr. Karnes, no Joe, no T-Dawgs, no Mikes, no Mindy, no Rosalind and James, no cats, no family to talk (blog) about, no Big Bang Theory or Lost, or Survivor, or Scrubs, or WWE, no books, no people that I love to tease, no Internet to ramble on, and no one to talk to when times are tough, like now.
Thank God for tough times. It makes me a better person, more aware of what I do have. Even though I still want to cry for mom.