I feel like my life is divided into four categories: the things I need to do, the things I want to do, the things I want to do but it’s a little too time-consuming, and the things I want to do if I ever become athletic/talented/a best-selling author/famous for a YouTube video where I hilariously crash into a bride during a wedding.

Recently, I’ve tried to make a point to conquer some skills that I’ve always wanted to do, but always felt like was too time-consuming to really do.  I’ve worked on making a good salsa recipe, I’ve learned how to fold a fitted sheet (ok, sort of learned, but still), and I made my own salad dressing tonight (delicious).

But for all of those mundane accomplishments (to you, not to me…I’m stoked), I am still that guy who spent forever today looking for his laundry detergent, only to discover that he had put it in the refrigerator next to the milk.  The refrigerator…next to the milk.  Somehow adding that it was next to the milk makes it sound even more pathetic.

The takeaway from this, as always, is I am hopeless.

From Erwin McManus:

I once met a girl named Kim, and I fell in love. And I pursued her with my love, and I pursued her with my love, and I pursued her with my love, and when I thought my love had captured her, I asked her to be my wife. And she said…well, she didn’t say yes. She said ‘Let’s pray.’ What a cheesy way of using faith! And I looked at her and said, ‘No two minute prayer is going to help you now.’

So I pursued her more with my love, until finally my love overwhelmed her and she said, ‘Yes’. You see, in issues of love, you can’t send your brother, you can’t send a friend…in issues of love, you have to go yourself.

This is the true Gospel: that God has pursued you with His love, and pursued you with His love, and pursued you with His love, and He hoped His love would capture you. He asked you to Himself and you perhaps had not said yes.

But in issues of love, you can’t send a prophet or an angel. In issues of love, you have to go yourself- and that’s why God came into human history as a man. That’s why Jesus is God Himself who walked among us, because in issues of love…you have to go yourself.

I heard this in a sermon today, and I had to write it all down.  I cannot begin to imagine how much God has had to pursue me just so I’d say yes.  This is truly good news.  Such…good news.

Snow.

Well, now that we have that out of the way, it won’t take too long to explain that this is not really a snow-hardened community, and as such we sort of shut down with major snowfall. So after some nervous moments, including being temporarily stuck in the middle of an intersection, I am at least with friends and not just by myself at home like yesterday.

Let’s see, let’s catch up some things.  After getting home from California, I had about 8 days and I made my way to Ohio.  My friend Dan knows that very few things will actually get me to go to Ohio (a challenging state when it’s nice weather, let alone frozen), but his wedding was the perfect chance to convince me to go.   I was able to catch up and bunk with an old friend for the trip, and it was an honor to stand on the same platform as Dan, Amy and their friends and family.  And then we left Ohio.

Look, there’s not a lot to tell about it.  Five times, I had people come up to me and apologize to me for having to be in Ohio.  I didn’t know what to say to that.

On my way home from the airport, I was driving to drive in icy conditions, but unfortunately my truck was not able to come to a full stop coming down a hill and I crept into traffic.  Even more unfortunately, a car coming towards me slammed on their brakes from a distance, lost control and slammed into my driver’s side front wheel-well.

Thankfully, everyone walked away okay and there were no injuries.  I’m hopeful my truck can be saved, but the insurance company doesn’t have much hope.  The tow truck company came to pick up my truck today, so we’ll see what they say.  As of now, I am driving one of my dad’s cargo vans, and I am super blessed to have that.  Many people would be stuck without any reliable transportation, and I am fortunate enough to not have missed a beat with my commute.

Which brings us to the last two days, when that commute has been shut down by nature.

I think we’re caught up.

The video is a little weird at first, but it’s so so good.  I never heard of Gotye or Kimbra before today, and now I want to hear so much more.  Isn’t that the best part of hearing a new song you love?  All credit to this discovery to my friend Shannon.  I hope she doesn’t mind that I linked her blog.

I was talking with a friend yesterday, and she spoke about her grief at damage caused in the past, and the potential to be caused in the future by her current actions.  I didn’t know what to say at first, because I’ve been there.

One of my heart issues has been a belief that I am still paying for mistakes and sins that were committed long ago, years ago even.  When I slip into that lie of self-indulgence and I become despondent that life isn’t what I have always wanted it to be, I tend to want to put all the focus on my role and take God out of the equation entirely.  So instead of seeing this life as a process of refinement, I’m tempted to want to see it as a journey of solitude, as if that justifies the pointless self-centered behavior I want to remain enveloped in.

But when I do look away from myself for a moment, I see that these times are not a series of meaningless strings of unfortunate events tied together because I’m an unlucky person or just a bad person.  Instead, I am part of a refinement that is so silent and subtle, that it’s impossible to notice or take joy in unless I’m focused on the Cross and not on me.  God has brought me through sadness, depression, ridiculously selfish behavior, subversion, and an insane desire to bring glory to myself, and still loves me…and keeps writing.

On the whole, to say that we have such control over our story that our mistakes and our behavior will certainly doom us, is to believe that somehow we have creative control over a script we have no ability to write.  I don’t deserve to be as blessed as I am, and I constantly find myself struggling with the temptation of wishing for things, dreams and people I can’t seem to have in my life.  But He is still patient with me, and reminds me that it’s a good thing I don’t have the power to control it all, because it would be a brooding mess.

But He makes it beautiful, especially when it’s not the way we would have written it.  And the beauty of what He writes centers on that damage I caused, because in that I can finally see that it was never my story to begin with.

* I’m writing this post also as a reminder to myself, because this is truly a wound I struggle with very much.

So I get up there and nervously stare at the screen and sing and do all that and sit down.  A few minutes later, a man walks up and asks me what I like to drink.  I stutter a bit and name a beer.  Then he asks what hard alcohol I like, and I gave him one (at this point, I’m thinking he’s a drunk guy just asking people for what drinks they like) and he walks away.

A few minutes later, he brings me back both drinks and tells me he was so glad I sang that song and made some kind of toast with me about how there will always be good times despite, well…I don’t know what he really said.  I was pretty confused at this point.

In no way did the party I was with take joy at my confusion.

When I was three years old, the doctors told her that she had 3-6 months to live. She lived almost four years. In that time, she was my favorite person to visit and I still remember her kindness to me. She used to make me these Concord Grape Turnovers that she knew I loved. She taught me my first song on the piano. She was always so happy to see me.

Talking to my dad, he said that she was a stern woman who didn’t really open up to many people, but she would be a totally different person around me. That was perfect, because she was the first person outside of my parents that made me feel truly loved and cared for.

It was late on December 20th, when my dad woke me up and told me that she had finally gone. I remember everything. I remember the flight to Virginia, the gathering with her husband and their children, the memorial service, and that the first tears for her didn’t come until I got on the plane to leave.

I think it’s because she is one of my first friends and my first real loss that I still think about her so much. I thank God for her life and that I knew her. It reminds me a lot of my nephew, and the influence I’m having on his life.

I’m thankful for him, too.

This is one of my favorite songs right now. I love stumbling onto amazingly well-written music when I least expect it. I’ve always loved Greg Laswell because he does incredible covers of two songs from way back, but this weekend was my first time to foray into his original work. This has been a good weekend of reflection, and this song fits perfectly with that theme.

Could there be mold in this side of the building?  Sure.

Could I actually be suffering from a plague?  It’s possible.  I’ve always assumed that I would be one of the survivors of a pandemic because of my street smarts and snarky attitude…perhaps the joke is finally on me.

But no, more than likely it’s because I sit close to two young parents who have 5 small children between the both of them (in separate marriages, not with each other.  But if you knew them, oh how funny that picture is), and they always seem to have a sick kid or they are sick themselves.  One of them went home sick earlier today.

It’s a conspiracy.

A conspiracy to make me as pansy as Derek Zoolander after 1 day in the mines.

Unacceptable.