Post 11: What really caused the scar on my arm.

This is mostly a recap of what happened to me in June of 2009, it’s quite a story. It’s also the story of how I obtained the huge scar on my left arm.

Sitting next to my hospital bed in Harborview Hospital in Seattle (and typing with one hand) I want to take some time to reflect on all that God has done for me over the last few days. This desire stems a little out of boredom and a lot out of my desire to thank God for protecting me during and after my injury and for all the powerful things he showed me before my fall. For the sake of keeping things in a sensible order, I’ll keep it chronological. If you want the abbreviated version read the last paragraph.

Sunday afternoon (June 14, 2009) Stephen and I left for La Push, which is near Forks over on the peninsula. We left on our drive listening to Iron and Wine, Postal Service, the Album Leaf and all kinds of good chill music of that nature and talked about the whole point of why we were going: to give a weekend to God and to take some time to listen to his will for our lives, especially for the summer months. The whole trip over was very peaceful and our conversations were centered on God with the occasional tangent to talk about the sites we saw, like Kitchen-Dick Road just outside Port Angeles. The first stop of note was at Lake Crescent (or maybe it was Crescent Lake…irrelevant).

As we were driving around the lake my eyes kept losing the road for the sake of staring through the fog on the lake towards the silhouettes of the mountains and trees so subtly yet beautifully lit by the sun that was still surprisingly high in the sky. We decided to stop and have a look around so we pulled over and walked to the edge of the lake. Now my dad has told me that this particular lake is incredibly cold however, when I put my hand in, I felt the perfect temperature for swimming, I refrained from plunging in simply because I didn’t want to get wet before arriving at our destination. As we sat on the lakeside, I was peacefully overwhelmed by God’s presence to the point where I couldn’t keep from calling out his name as a thank you for showing off his power in such a glorious way. It was literally a small moment of what felt like perfection in our far from perfect world. As we continued to wander around the lake’s edge I continued to grin from ear to ear at the trees and waves and everything else that was around me, and honestly just the beauty of the whole setting. We then crossed over to the other side of the road from where we stopped the car, where God continued to show the power of his hand.

We entered into the dense wooded area to see an incredibly steep hill sloping up in front of us. As we began to climb the hill we realized the softness of every step we took was thanks to the thick moss under our feet, unfortunately this moss was easily torn up with every ascending footstep. Yet this moss covered every inch of the hill we were climbing, showing that no one had climbed that hill in a very long time. In other words no one else had bothered to pull over and look at the beauty, which was growing all around that area. What a shame to know that God’s beauty is everywhere if we just stop and look, yet it is so under appreciated because we wont.

Descending the hill to look at a clearing nearby us, I noticed a small plant that I had never seen before and it demonstrated so well what I think is one of the coolest things that plants do; they grow towards the sunlight. They will ignore their natural symmetry so that they can grow closer to their source of life. If I recall correctly this is a still unexplained phenomenon because though we expect plants to thrive near their life source, plants don’t have logic, conscious thought, etc, so how would they know to move themselves towards the sun? Pretty nifty I think.

When we reached our destination, we quickly set up camp and after getting comfortable we resumed our conversations about God and his will. We began talking about what we needed from God and after finding that we were in consensus about the need for first guidance and second comfort, we decided our time would be better spent seeking what God would like to show us while we were devoting time to him. Rather than simply asking for what we wanted or thought we needed we asked what our father (undoubtedly the greatest gift giver of all time) would like to give us. We then took some time for silent prayer and, this time in direct conversation with him, we dedicated our entire trip to God, yet again.

The following morning we awoke, ate and left for the Hoh rain forest, a beautiful place near where we were camping. The thing that sticks out to me the most about our stop at the rain forest was the fallen trees. There are massive trees of all types that have been torn up literally, at the root. Now, these impressed me for two reasons 1) they were so massive and beautiful and God designed and made them yet he also knocked over and killed them like it was nothing 2) something that died was still a source of life because there were plants growing all over these trees and in the hole where the roots once were. God made so much life and new creation out of the death of this tree.

After a few hours we left the rain forest and this is where I begin mostly repeating details rather than telling the story because I don’t remember much. We went to Rialto Beach, after leaving the rain forest, and we decided to play worship on the beach for a while. Then we headed up the beach and waded over to a massive rock we had decided to climb. I don’t remember the ascent other than that it was uneventful and that two Korean guys watched us the whole time. We reached the top and I remember looking off to the right and seeing three beautiful rocks/islands similar to the one we were sitting on. Then came the descent.

Apparently I went down from the rock on some route Stephen had decided it was not safe to take and at some point I lost my footing. I then slid/rolled/tumbled about thirty feet, then took a five to ten foot freefall and landed on some rocks and I apparently had a small rock slide coming down after me too. I’m told I stood up for a minute, but honestly all I remember is hitting my head really, really hard and thinking, “oh crap” while falling. Less than a minute later Stephen got to me, he says only by God’s guidance, as he is not an experienced climber yet he moved like Spiderman down that rock. Stephen wrapped his shirt around my seriously bleeding head then went for help that arrived awhile later in the form of a coast guard boat which took me to an ambulance which in turn took me to the ER at Forks. From there I was moved to Port Angeles ER and from there I was airlifted to Harborview. I recall waking up in the ER at Harborview and seeing my parents and my dear friend and former youth pastor Ryan Schlect. I am told I asked the same four questions over and over again 1) is Stephen ok? 2) what happened? 3) Can you call Madison and tell her we won’t be able to go to that show tomorrow? And lastly 4) that tube inside me means I can just let go and pee right? All of this happened Monday and I’m still here in Harborview on Wednesday June 17th, 2009 with not but a fractured elbow in need of surgery and some miscellaneous bumps and scratches. I’m so thankful that I have no neck or back injuries, that I can get up and walk around on my own power, and that my right hand is entirely usable and unharmed (with the exception of one tiny scratch on the back of it).

Since all of this happened, I have looked back numerous times on all the ways I could’ve died, but didn’t. This is irrelevant however because the core of this whole dilemma is the fact that God saved me. I don’t know what in the world he is going to use me for, but he did it because he loves me. From here it’s just a matter of going forth and telling people all about him. He is wonderful: don’t you know?

Post 10: This Mountainous Life

Life is like a climbing a mountain, you get sweaty, tired and sore but it’s all worth it for the companionship and the view…

A few weeks back I went on a hike to Mt. Si, which is near North Bend, WA. Leading the charge was the good doctor Luke Reinsma and following him were myself and a few other students and alums from SPU. After about an hour into the hike the group became fairly split up, my good buddy Andrew and I leading the way by about five minutes and the rest of our motley crew following at various intervals. As we carried on with our hike I couldn’t help but feel like God was saying pay attention… pay attention.

Initially the hike was a jovial one, everyone was fresh and ready from a good breakfast, we were bundled up and warm, there was lots of good conversation, and everyone was having a genuinely good time. As the hike progressed and we began to split however, the conversations died down and were mostly replaced by heavy breathing and the occasional grunt or groan, though Andrew and I did manage to continue discussing theological questions despite this.

Shortly after the group split I began seeing clearings in the trees through which I could see the view; this was a wonderful motivator. As we continued up the path the view kept getting better and better and the trail started becoming more and more lit and the excitement of knowing the summit was nearby was tremendous. Finally, we reached the peak and what a view it made the toil all worthwhile. There were many mountains and valleys all around us, and a beautiful blue sky with some thick, white, cotton-candy clouds interspersed through out it. There was a huge rainbow too, starting on top of a cloud and ending somewhere very far away (you can barely see it in the picture). Off to the right, behind the rainbow, we could see the very top of one Seattle building, probably the Columbia Tower, just barely peaking up through the clouds, which were covering all the other skyscrapers. Seattle feels huge when your downtown, but from atop that mountain it was very clear how very small man’s accomplishments are when compared to the beauty of creation. It made the whole venture more than worthwhile. As we sat on top of the mountain feeding the Canadian Jays (who will sit on your hand for awhile if you have food to offer) I began thinking about our journeys of faith and the trail up the mountain.

When we first meet God all is well. We feel warm and fuzzy inside, were full on our first meal of the body and the blood, and we have our fellow travelers all around us. As we begin the real ascent however, the journey quickly becomes challenging. The people we set out with at the base we begin to lose touch with as they go on ahead or fall behind on the trail. The pain and soreness that are bodies undergo begin to make the journey feel very unappealing. When all we can see around us are those same repetitious trees we begin to wonder if we’re really progressing at all. But when we begin to see the sun shining through the clearings we have our first glimpse of hope. And when we have a companion with us we have the encouragement to stay strong. Finally, when we hit the zenith it becomes very apparent that the whole journey was worth it for the beauty and the glory displayed before our eyes. And as we stand on top of the mountain and see the rainbow in the distance, we are reminded of the promise that God made; you will find rest and you wont have to climb that mountain ever again.

Fall quarter I was talking with my friend Daniel and he told me that he wasn’t really sure about what he thought of God in a lot of ways, but he also said that, “You can’t go to the mountains or go to the ocean and not know there is something bigger out there.” Daniel wrote a song called, “This Vast Expanse” which is essentially all about looking for God in the mountains and the oceans. The song is a beautiful ten-minute epic and it truly is a masterpiece. He performed it at the SPU talent show with a twelve-man band featuring a piano, two vocalists, a guitar, a bass, drum set, trombone, trumpet, cello, and several violins. That night as Daniel and the band hit the climax of the song with every member playing at full intensity, he not so much sang as shouted into the microphone, “Is this my God, this vast expanse?” I nearly cried as I thought to myself, yes, it is.

This is the view from the top of the Mountain

Post 9: There and back again; The sad story of human passion

This is a story that begins with sore knees and bloodshot eyes. It is also a story that has two possible endings. The first and the more common ending to this tale is that the passion, tears, and overwhelming emotions amount to nothing and almost as soon as the story begins indifference brings it to an end; a disappointing end to what seemed to be a very promising story. The other ending is that the heavy hand that made the knees so sore and the fire that made the heart burn and the tears that flooded forth in desperation are not forgotten, they are embraced. This second ending makes for a much better story though sadly it is rarely seen.

There and back again. This was the alternate title to Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, a well-known tale about a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who is asked to leave his home, the Shire, to go on a great adventure, the final destination of which is a mountain guarded by a fierce dragon. When Bilbo reaches the mountain he helps to bring down the dragon and acquires riches in an epic battle, but at the end of the story, our dear hobbit returns home to the Shire, to the comfortable life he had always known, never again to have the kind of adventure he first took.

I also have gone on an adventure to a mountain, multiple adventures for that matter. The dragon I fought may not have breathed flames, nor did it wear armor but it was far more terrible than Smaug and this dragon stood in the way of a far greater treasure as well. This great selfish dragon of sin stood between God and I and when I reached the mountain it was not I but God who slew the dragon that stood between us. When I realized how much it took for him to defeat the dragon and how much he loved me to go through with it, this is when I dropped to my knees and got sore bones, this is when I saw truth that burns even the most callous of eyes. This is when I met God.

Since this event God has broken my heart and brought tears to my eyes again and again for a diversity of reasons. Sometimes for my longing to be rid of my addiction, sometimes for my family, sometimes for more people to know him, and many more reasons. Sadly, my story for too long has been the first one, the story of indifference. While I seem to be drowning in my tears as they fall, their weight holds no sway when I get back to the Shire and my life carries on as usual. This is unacceptable and so the question is, how do we change? The answer is simple; we become child like.

When I was a little boy my mother and my grandmother used to read me a book called Love you Forever. This book is the story of a single mother raising her only little boy who never ceases to cause problems. As a toddler he flushes his mother’s pearl necklace down the toilet, as a boy he tracks mud into the house, as a teenager he plays in an obnoxious rock band and the list goes on. Yet despite this, every night the mother sneaks into her son’s bedroom and sings to him, “I love you forever, I love you for always, as long as I love you, my baby you’ll be.” a beautiful image of the kind of love our parents have for us. At the end of the book the mother passes and shortly thereafter the boy, now a man, goes home, goes to his daughter’s room, picks her up and begins to sing, “I love you forever, I love you for always as long as I love you my baby you’ll be.”

I sometimes see myself as a child in God’s arms, him holding me, telling me it will be all right. Other times I see myself taking baby steps, clutching to one of God’s massive fingers with one of my little baby hands and hanging on to him with all my might as I begin to take my first steps. Finally, lately, I have begun to see God with me everywhere, in class, in the car, in church, and when I see him he has a big beard, long hair, a brown vest, a white t-shirt, jeans, and sandals, don’t ask me why. When we begin to see ourselves in these situations and when we begin to see that God is never separated from us, then we can begin to act on our passions.

I have said before that I have missed many divine appointments because I am a wuss and I become too scared to talk people. Despite the many tears I have shed for the lost and unloved in this world I have scarcely acted when God has dropped a situation in my lap and given me words to speak; it would take more than one hand to count the times I have done this. This needs to change and has begun to. Now, as I walk with God (beard, sandals and all) I have a confidence-inspiring friend with me wherever I go. I hate to say this due to the beaten dead horse of a cliché that God is with us every where, as such I’d rather say it like this: my best friend is always with me always giving me support. When I am with one of my best friends I feel far more confident than when I am alone, yet often the types of things that need to be said to change lives need to be said in private, however with God there I can say things with confidence and on a personal level. I simply need to grab God’s hand and go. In these times I sometimes see a box with a handle sticking out of it, the side of the box says T.N.T. and when I push down on the handle KA-BOOM, the walls of my comfort, the walls of my limits on God, and the walls of my limits on what I can do are blown down. Then I can walk forward in confidence.

All this being said it’s time for a change, it’s time to live like our tears, passions, bruised knees, and mountaintops have meant something. It’s time to live like strangers in this world who are more concerned with the truth then with the weak and incomplete social and worldly comforts this world has to offer us. Lets not return to the Shire with nothing more than self-fulfillment and a good story, lets run through the Shire screaming the truth of what we know and let those who would, join us as we go. Let our tears have weight, let the fire burn out our impurities and afterwards let us be shaped into the people that God wants us to be.

Post 8: Sick Doctors and Sleeping People

There is no such thing as a perfectly healthy doctor. Yes, even the masters of medicine have their diseases and broken bones, just like us.

I saw a movie recently called Awakenings featuring Robin Williams as Dr. Sayer, a doctor newly hired by a psychiatric hospital in the Bronx. Dr. Sayer has been hired to care for some particularly hopeless patients despite the fact that he is not at all a “people person” and desires minimal human contact. The patients he is assigned are essentially catatonic; they are in a state only slightly better than a coma. They shut their eyes to go to sleep and open them when they are awake, but other than that it seems they have no actual brain activity. They don’t walk, talk, eat or anything until Dr. Sayer begins performing some tests to see if these patients have active brains. He begins by throwing balls at them and seeing if they will catch them, and they do! He then begins various other tests in order to see what other stimuli his patients might respond to and finds a number of other things that will stimulate his patients’ minds, like playing Jimi Hendrix music to see if they will dance. After awhile, he begins to hope that his patients aren’t simply brain dead and that they due in fact have active brains that simply need something new, an awakening so to speak.

Prior to Dr. Sayer’s arrival the other doctors had given up all hope for these patients and had basically decided that these patients would be doomed to float around the hospital until they died. As Dr. Sayer became more and more involved with his patients he finally was able to find a medicine, which he believed would “bring them back” from their perpetual coma, or whatever it was they were in. The first subject he tried the medicine on was a character named Leonard Lowe, played by Robert De Niro. Initially there was no response to the medicine from Leonard, but one night Sayer decided to give him a little extra medicine and that night he “woke up” as it were and began talking and drawing and all the other things he had been doing at nine years old, prior to entering his catatonic state.

After “awakening” all of his patients, Dr. Sayer takes them dancing and out and about to do things and tries to help them have lives all over again, unfortunately it is not long before (spoiler alert) Leonard and the others begin to regress and lose their minds all over again. At one point as Leonard is fading back into a catatonic state he begins to twitch, talk funny and have a number of other issues and in a private conversation with Dr. Sayer he says, “Look at me! I’m grotesque!”

We are all patients and we should all be doctors as well. Just like Leonard, most Christians “wake up” to find that they were missing a lot in their lives. I don’t mean this in the sense that, they needed something that wasn’t there before, I mean this in the sense that they realize that a spectacular thing called life with God was waiting right in front of them. They just couldn’t reach it because too many people gave up on them and wouldn’t give them what they needed. For most people, this is just a matter of a little more love, a little more patience, a little more understanding than what the average person will give them. In my own life a significant part of what brought me back to God was a few good people showing me love when most people like them had only judged me. I see people like me all the time that simply need a little more love and when we “the church” don’t provide it (though we’re commanded to) they seek it everywhere else. All it takes is one person, like Dr. Sayer, to give them that little extra medicine even though it costs a little more and is a little less convenient. And when that little extra is given, people can start to see what Jesus was to the world and what we are asked to be.

Unfortunately, even when we give that extra medicine people will still regress. My six-year addiction didn’t die when I “found God” and when we “wake up” we sometimes feel grotesque because we know there is something better but we feel that we just can’t hold on to it because our old lives don’t just disappear when we find something better. This is when we must recall that Jesus didn’t come to heal the healthy because the sick need a doctor. This statement is I feel is two fold because I feel he not only meant that he came for those who didn’t know him but also that he came to help us with our problems not to make us perfect.

Life with God is always right in front of us but I, like most people, know how easy it is to allow ourselves to fall asleep rather than to wake up and embrace the truth. I have had people confess their sins to me and often with that confession comes the declaration that they feel they will never be good enough for God. They say “Look at me I am a terrible person, liar, slut, etc! I am not good enough for God!” Congratulations, none of us are, nor will we ever be. The beauty of salvation is that there is no such thing as good enough; there is simply the decision, followed by the awakening. Regress is inevitable, but God will always be right there in front of you. Our imperfection will always be there, but God doesn’t care about that.

I know it’s sad
That the gift we have
We keep it for ourselves
Most of the time
The world is looking
For a love that’s locked up
Inside these four walls
Break the door down and shine

We need to wake up, wake up
Live like God
Pour out love

-Leeland "Wake Up"

Post 7: Rocks that God "cant" lift

Can God make a rock so big even he can’t lift it? Or as Wayne’s World put it, “Can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he can’t eat it?” Many people have found this to be the single defining question that ruins any possibility of God existing. Some will tell you that if, in fact, God can make a rock he can’t lift, then he would've created something he can’t do and is therefore not all-powerful and not real. If you say he can’t make a rock so big even he can’t lift it they will give you the same answer saying that if he can’t make a rock so big he can’t lift, then there is something he can’t do and is thus not all-powerful and not real. I would say that these people have missed one thing in this argument, that is can’t vs. won’t. Unfortunately, I must now go a very long way around to explain why the short answer to this question is yes.

As a young man in the midst of some very intense moments of worship I have found myself saying over and over again, “Jesus I love you. Jesus I love you!” The need to repeat this over and over again is born out of the feeling that once is not enough and despite the fact that I know he heard me the first time, God is often so overwhelming that I feel those words can’t be said enough, that’s when we start to speak the language of emotion.

This idea of emotional communication is not entirely original, it is partially stolen from C.S. Lewis, however I hope my explanation is a little clearer and my expansion on this idea still somewhat original.

When you think about your friends and family, or anyone else you encounter in your life, what is the first thing about them that you think of? When I ask someone, “Hey do you know so-and-so?” how do they respond? Usually it’s with, “Oh I love so-and-so!” or, “I don’t like that kid.” This is because the first thing that comes to mind when we think about people is how they make us feel. When I think about my friends, the first thing that comes to mind is not, oh yeah they have blue eyes, or brown hair, it’s how they make me feel.

One could even say that how someone makes you feel is even more relevant to who they are than any other aspect about them. I, like everyone, occasionally find people attractive upon meeting them, however, if I begin to feel that this person looks down on others, doesn’t love their family, or doesn’t care about anyone I can never feel attracted to that person again. They don’t make me feel love and as such I can’t feel attracted to them. Most people don’t pick their friends because they are, “tall, dark and handsome” they pick them because they enjoy spending time with them because of how they make them feel. Thus, we choose our companions based not upon sight or sound but upon… feelings. This is why I choose God.

It’s true you’ve caught me. I’ve never seen God, heard God’s audible voice, smelled him touched him, or tasted him, though I would count the works of his hands as being awful close to it. No, my five senses are not convinced he is real. However, I have emotionally touched him and heard from him and spoken to him. These things, as I have just shown, are far more important to our experience of who people are than any or all of the senses combined. Emotion is the sense that most of us, whether we like it or not, find to be the most real and the most important, because it is, to us, the most real sense we have, even if no one else can experience it.

God doesn’t bother with being physically tangible because we can experience him on a higher level than sight or sound. I only wish that the feelings that I emotionally/spiritually communicate to God could be expressed to other human beings, but they can’t. When we try and verbally explain our feelings, we have to reduce them too far for them to be experienced as they were originally intended and as such people will never know how God really makes us feel. Instead, when I want to use my mouth to communicate God’s love to others I have to reduce him, which is getting closer to the point about God’s burritos.

As I may or may not have said before, God is bigger than human comprehension; this is beautiful to some, beyond frustrating to others, and wholly unacceptable to others still. Thus, God reduces himself so that we can experience him without our heads exploding. Some people would ask, “Why would God bother to walk through my trials with me when he already knows how they will turn out?” The answer? Because he loves you. When my drum teachers showed me how to play they reduced themselves to a fraction of what they were capable of in order to teach me and show me how it is done. Did this diminish their capacity? Not at all, it simply made a big idea manageable for a young student. God does the same for us; he shows us a fraction of the bigger picture so that we can take in who he is. He reduces himself because that’s the only way we’ll ever begin to understand him. God could look into our futures, know where his angels will step in and out, let it happen, think no more of it and give us a pat on the back as we walk through the pearly gates, this is the what those practicing deism believe. Instead, he wants to come down to our level to show us how to keep a beat, hold a stick, and play a perfect rhythm, and as we learn he wants to share in the joy with us and even though he knows we’ll get it eventually, he’ll ignore that so he can experience the best moments, and the worst ones, with us. William Young gives a wonderful depiction of this in his The Shack.

In The Shack the main character, Mack, is sitting down having a conversation with God incarnate. God the father is a large black woman, God the son is a Jewish carpenter, and God the Holy Spirit is a translucent Asian woman. They sit down for dinner one night and as they are all eating together they ask Mack how is children are doing. As Mack responds he quickly realizes that they must already know how his children are and that they don’t even need to ask him. He also at this point realizes they don’t need to be eating with him either. Mack then asks God (all three of him) why he (they) asked about his children and why they are eating. God the father responds explaining that while he doesn’t have to eat he does enjoy eating with Mack and would rather reduce himself to having hunger for the sake of eating with him. He also tells Mack that while he could know exactly know Mack’s children were at that moment he would rather hear it from Mack and hear about what Mack is experiencing. Now back to God’s burritos.

Can God create a task so great even he can’t perform it? This is the question, enter rock lifting or burrito eating or whatever as the said task but this is the core of it. The answer to this question is a simple yes. Why? Because God can and will place limits on himself for our sake. He will make himself incapable of completing the task and will not ever reverse that inability because he is a just God who will not go back on his word. Yet, God could have at one time done said task, but as I already explained, self-enforced limitations do not affect one’s capability of doing. God would have the strength and everything needed to complete the task but would be entirely incapable of completing it because he made a law for himself saying he wouldn’t. This doesn’t make him any less capable, only unwilling and because he is just (a rule he made for himself) he could never make himself capable of doing the task.

Post 6:Is happiness hidden in turkeys?

What can Emile Hirsch and a discounted mocha teach us about happiness? Well, my experience this weekend has been that they can teach us an awful lot about happiness.

My sister Tara came to pick me up from SPU on Wednesday and before we set out towards my parents place I decided to get a mocha for the road. I had about two dollars left on my SPU card and it was going to cost me an extra two dollars to pay for the drink. The barista quite kindly said not to worry about it and to have a happy thanksgiving, so I walked out of the SUB with two-dollar venti mocha. Tara commented on this saying that she loves the holidays because everyone is so nice to others from Thanksgiving to right around New Year’s Eve. This comment quickly turned to discussion about this question; why cant we be this nice to people all year round? My solution is this; people are generally happier at the holidays.

Thanksgiving is sort of like the “kick-off” event that signals the commencement of the holiday season and during the holidays most everyone is happier than the rest of the year. Almost everyone has days off, great food, presents, and time with family to look forward to. Thus, “…since I am happy, everyone else should be happy too” so people try and be nice to everyone because “everyone deserves to be happy at the holidays.” This sentiment was confirmed for me on Thanksgiving.

My clan decided to take most of our leftover food (about twenty-five plates worth) and give it to the homeless in Seattle. While this may sound crass, it was like Halloween on the streets of Seattle that night. Our idea was apparently highly un-original as almost everyone we came across already had a plate loaded with food just like the ones we were handing out, which had been given to them by some other family with leftover food. Like I said, we get into this mind set that “everyone should be happy at the holidays, just like me” when the rest of the year almost of all of us can be accused of ignoring the people who are in need.

Thus I have to come to this unfortunate and highly pessimistic conclusion that I really hate, and it is this; at the holidays we are nice to people because we are happy and we feel others deserve the same. Yet for those who choose to follow God we are called to love people always not just when we are happy and it’s convenient. Now I want to get into what it means to be happy.

In the film “Into the Wild” Chris McCandless, the main character, is a bright young man who has been accepted into Harvard Law School and is well on his way to becoming a “successful” man. However, his family life has been nothing short of awful due his parents putting their business before their children, their endless arguing, and finally Chris’ discovery that his parents had lied to him his whole life and that he was actually a bastard child. And so, tired of his parents and of their forcing him to pursue success, he gives almost all of his college money ($24,500 dollars) to charity and sets out on the road hitching around the country. His goal is to simply be alone, free of any social obligations, live off the land and discover who he truly is with his final destination being the Alaskan Wilderness.

The whole time he is gone he doesn’t bother to tell his parents where he is and he hopes they don’t find out because he never wants to see them again. However, on his final stop before reaching Alaska he meets an old Catholic man named Ron who lives by himself because he has no family. As Chris gets to know Ron better he begins to challenge him and shows Ron that he has no life beyond the comfort of his own home. Shortly after pointing this out, Chris challenges Ron to climb a big hill with him, which he had refused to do earlier in the movie. Ron climbs and reaches the top of the hill, much to the joy of both of them. As Chris and Ron sit on the hill together Chris explains to Ron that he feels the principle joy of life isn’t found in human relationships but in the world all around us, to which Ron responds, “…there is some kind of bigger thing we can all appreciate, and it sounds like you don’t mind calling it God, but when you forgive [for example his parents] you love, and when you love God’s light shines on you.” Right after this the sun peaks out from the clouds and Chris exclaims “Holy S**t!”

Towards the end of the film as Chris is alone, highly emaciated and dying in the Alaskan Wilderness, he realizes that the only thing that can save him is medicine, in other words the society that he tried so hard to be rid of. Just before lying down on his deathbed, he reads in a book (I think one by Tolstoy) that a man could want little more in life than music, books, a quiet country life and a family to share it with. After reading this he writes his last words, “Happiness only real when shared.” This demonstrates his final epiphany that happiness does not lie in society at all (which he knew all along) nor does it lie solely in relationships or solely in nature, instead happiness lies in experiencing the joys of this world with the ones we love.

The bigger picture that I am trying to get at with all of this is that we can be happy and show love (be nice) always. We are a people called to show the world we love them because God loves us and we know the power of love (just like the Huey Lewis song). As were trucking through the mountains and especially the valleys of this life, God asks that we shine his light and his love even when we are covered in mud and we don’t know how. We can be happy people in the midst of tragedy when we embrace that there is good in everything not just in presents and turkey. We can show love even when we don’t feel like it, because we know that we have perfect love on our side. Finally, when we live in happiness and love, we live the life God intended for us. When we do this we can be living proof that God is good and that the only reason people don’t like him is that we have misrepresented him.

Post 5: Let's get intimate...

Ewwww gross! Intimacy! You can’t say that in church! How nasty! I hope that wasn’t your reaction to my title, but it may have been, and I won’t lie; I do make these titles to get your attention.

Whenever I say intimate people usually think sex, being married, and maybe chick flicks, specifically The Notebook comes to mind. This is really too bad because none of those things are the intimacy I care to talk about. I am not married nor do I presently have a girlfriend (so yes ladies I am available… just kidding) and as such I don’t have a physically intimate relationship, nor do I plan to until I am married. I don’t want this to be a blog about sex or adultery or lust because those topics have long since gotten old to most people so Ill stop here and say that this is about intimacy between friends. As a side note I’ll just say that physical intimacy is (obviously) intimate but in my minimal (and entirely regretted) experience it was even more performance based than real life and as such is untruthful and irrelevant to this.

Finally getting to the point intimacy is fantastic! I have a dear friend named Ben Fader, he is a curly haired theology student from Sea-Tac and his girlfriend’s (along with many others’) favorite word to describe him is, SASSY! He is a fantastic man and a dear friend. The other night Ben and I played “love drums,” a term I coined on the spot that night for drumming to bring God glory and tell him we love him. We played for probably fifteen maybe twenty minutes, we didn’t stop the whole time, we never lost time, and only four human words were said that whole; “let’s bring it down.” It was a grand old time and I think God provided a little soundproofing to the room we were in because it was one thirty in the morning and we were very, very loud and not one person complained, even though some people heard us down the hill.

The reason I bring up Ben Fader is that we have hung out five times by my count and never for more than an hour or two. Yet I consider Ben among my closest friends because we have a remarkable intimacy.

This is where some macho guys would shout, “GAY” and get really uncomfortable. However, I don’t see anything gay about exceptional openness and transparency due to a mutual feeling of comfort and understanding. Ben knows almost nothing about my history. He knows I’m from Lake Stevens, he knows I have had two real girlfriends, and he knows I am a youth pastor and a musician. Yet I have many other friends who know much more about me, more of my life story and more of how I react to things yet in spite of this they don’t see my heart and soul like Ben does. I don’t know why God established this between Ben and I but I wish more people could know one another like we do with as little time together as we have had. I know that to some degree this doesn't happen due to fear of people seeing who we are, and I spent a lot of time in my last blog talking about that so I won’t go too in depth here but I do want to share two relevant stories.

A week or so ago I was apparently sitting at a largely female dominated table at the SPU cafeteria. Some guys from my floor and girls from my sister floor were sitting one table over and apparently were spying on me. One guy in particular, big blonde and beautiful Collin, saw me being me and saw that some of the girls I was with were pretty entertained by it. At this point he said something along the lines of, “man, if I made half the crazy noises and said half the stupid things Kenny does people would think I was crazy!” I take that as nothing short of a compliment because quite frankly it means I pull off the role of Kendrick Barnes pretty well.

Today my friend Christa the highly convivial (I used a thesaurus for that one) art major from my sister floor told me a story that is quite contrary to mine. She said she was in one of her classes and was acting a little wild; as she said, “a bit too much like her self.” She didn’t really say what she did but apparently afterward some people basically shut her down for whatever it was. Hearing this did little short of break my heart, though I didn’t say it at the time. What I did tell her was that there is no such thing as being you too much and that I would whole-heartedly encourage her to be herself all the time in everyway, especially in front of me.

This is where I suppose I have to come back to Ben and I and how this all ties together. Our intimacy is born from the knowledge that there is absolutely no judgment in our relationship and that it is all love. With Ben I am more confident than I am with most people. This is also aided by putting God in the middle of us and praying together however, I also need to clarify something here. I cannot say that I am always, invariably myself. While I encourage everyone to be themselves and I always do my best to be me, when it comes down to it I am still human and still have fear of what “they will think.”

Last night I was thinking about condemnation and other social unpleasantries and I began to feel some confidence dropping and began to think, well maybe I need to chill out and be a little less… In the middle of those thoughts God said, “no you don’t, I like you just how you are.” Yes he said like, not love.

The reason he said like not love is this; we often see God’s love for us like we see our family’s love for us and that is that they love us despite our faults, however this is not what John 3:16 says. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that who so ever believes in him shall not perish…” You have probably heard this before and maybe your thought right now is great, what of it? In this verse the Greek word phileo is used for love. Phileo is the term for brotherly love or the kind of our love that we feel for our friends. So lets look at this verse again. John 3:16 “For God so [desired to be you friend] that he sent his only begotten son [to die for you]…” God who knows you better than anyone (whether you like it or not) wants to be your friend! How much does that rock? God, who is the only one with a legitimate claim that he is better than us, who can see all our faults, but still wants to be our friend. How do we respond to this?

Like I said last week, we often judge people for who they are. I would so prefer it if we could kill this habit and become who we are, because there are NO pretty masks in this world. This starts with transparency with the people around us who we know (or maybe hope) won’t judge us. Our best friends, our family members, and our significant others because if we can’t be transparent with them then how can we ever become intimate with them. Again, I will point my finger at myself here. I didn’t tell my parents about my biggest regret in life until two years after it happened, and wish I’d told them sooner.

I hope we can all learn to be intimate with one another because it is amazing, especially when you hardly know the person. This starts with putting judgment behind us and looking forward to start becoming who we are. All of this is difficult, just like most things are when it comes to following God, but it is worth it, and it is best while done holding God’s hand along the way.