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| Back in Abilene. It's always a strange feeling to be here, not really knowing that many people in town anymore, running into old professors and answer what I'm doing with my life. It's also strange to be this close to a diploma. In the end it is just a piece of paper and lacks the kind of significance for me it might otherwise have had due to various delays in my education. Still, it will be nice to be able to move on to the next thing. Found out yesterday about a wedding for one of the Hillcrest guys, which was quite surprising. It was a very nice service and a good opportunity to see some of those guys. Not sure if I'll be able to make it to Perry's wedding. The joy of not having a car. Still trying to make a plan but it will be tricky. In any event, busy times all around. I look forward to seeing you guys, hopefully sooner rather than later.
P.S. I don't know what it is about being in Abilene or staying with my great aunt but I am now pretty sure that I am going to get shivved. Yeah...not looking forward to that.
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| Not a lot too add right now. Sinuses have been keeping me down for a couple months now. I'm getting better, which is good because I have a class coming up in a couple weeks, the last undergrad class I will ever take at ACU (knock on wood). My little nephew is consistently awesome. I'm working full time for my pop. I have submitted my idea to a major lock company but have yet to hear anything back, which to tell the truth is less than surprising as they would have only had the submission for a week or so now and at the very least it would take some time to test it out. I don't recall if I ever said what my idea was. Basically it's a rather simple modification to a lock which makes it more difficult to break into. That's all I have for now.
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| Yeah, so it's been so long since my last post that I forgot to mention that I have a little nephew now. I might post a pic later, for now all you need now is he is the greatest child who ever drew breath, save our Lord Himself. He is part White, Black, Native American, and Mexican. He will herald the next age of men, though for right now he mostly eat, sleeps, wets himself, and cries for said things.
Over the last several days I have slept about 4 hours a night so I was more than a little frayed this morning. I also ran over a dog, which is more than a little distressing. I had to drive to the office last night to do some work. It was rainy and dark and a couple of black dogs were out on one poorly lit stretch of road. I saw it's eyes before we hit, felt the impact and the sudden bump in the road. It was the first dog I ever hit and the first time I am left to wonder if I could have done more to avoid such an accident.
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| I guess I never said that my sister moved back in with my folks. It was a weird experience and remains so. Long story short, my sis exhausted all possible options before moving back in and at several points she would be at the house for a couple hours while trying to find another place to live. In the end, she was allowed to stay but with additional restrictions in place and if she leaves again, she can't come back.
And now that the old business is done...
I'm working on getting a patent for an idea I have. Too early to go into any details but it's got me thinking about what I would do with barrels of money (aside from buying barrels of monkeys). Most of the stuff I would do are practical (pay off debt, get a car, insurance, etc.), some are investments, either personal or professional, some are benevolence. The only 100% frivolous item currently on the list is to buy a set of Master Chief Spartan Armor. It would make paintball exceedingly interesting.
Saw 300 with my bro and sis-in-law. Very much a guy film, I thoroughly enjoyed it. My brother picked up the trade beforehand, which is wonderful, and I would say that the movie is pretty faithful, with nothing major and very little minor added or removed, with one notable exception. The Queen's side story was added, I can only assume, to make the movie somewhat girl friendly. I could easily do without it, just because I think they weaken the Queen's position simply so they can give her a subplot. Regardless, the film is full of fantastic cinematography, awesome fighting, excellent one liners, and oddly enough some very bizarre (and thankfully brief) porn. I read one review that made an interesting point that it was the only pro-war movie of the last several years. The reviewers I have read talk about the movie in relation to the current political climate, and there are certainly many connections to be made. But as I am more theologically inclined, I will speak to that briefly. There is this one line where Xerxses is trying to sway Ephialtes to the effect of:
"Leonidas demands you to stand, I only ask you to kneel."
More than anything else, 300 is a story of corruption. Xerxses has no need to fight anyone, just give him what he wants, a title and tribute. It's not much. What did you do with your freedom anyway? I'll let you keep your things, your friends, your family. Just don't resist. Sure, maybe tomorrow I'll need you to run a little errand for me but it'll only take five minutes. That's no problem, right?
The story illustrates pretty vividly what the actual price of the loss of freedom is. It's grisly and cruel and deformed. It is weakness and fear. And ultimately, it is doomed. Could work pretty well in a sermon, though you would have to skip over those freaky porn scenes.
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| My sister moved out of the house under less than ideal circumstances last week. She posted pictures of herself (fully clothed but skanky) online, my parents found out about it and confronted her and so she decided to leave the house. Since then she has been by to visit and has called numerous times and, as my Dad put it, has spoken more to my parents in the last week than in the last several months. The unfortunate thing isn't that she left but that it is not unfortunate. My sister is the black sheep of the family and neither patience nor tough love has changed that. With her gone all of the lives of my family who are still here are easier, even my brother and sister-in-lae who live next door. And I hate that that is true. I won't make any statement of how much I love my sister because I don't like her and have no desire to spend any time with her. There are less than ten people I have met who I dislike in my entire life, and all with good reason. My sister doesn't deal with things in a way that makes sense. I think I've talked about her briefly before. Short version is she has intimacy issues as well as a serious inability to process information. I have no expectation that she will or even could be any thing she wants to be, certainly not anything technical. And that would be okay if she just wanted to be the kind of person that our parents raised her to be, a loving and obedient daughter. And so I saw something like this coming, where she would do something so wrong as to be unwelcome in this house. Pray for her if you wish, she is a troubled woung woman. My prayer is that she will come to a realization that her life is not what she wants it to be and that she has no one to blame but herself and that this realization comes sooner rather than later.
Unrelated to this, a friend of my parents recently came by for a visit, a woman who is basically my aunt and has known my parents since before I was born. My Dad brought up my plan to go to a monastery (which has not gone over real well with the family) and so my aunt and Dad and I talked about it. I lost ground in areas of exact expectations for what I will learn (to be honest I'm not sure but have no problem with that) as well as me being young and being too hard on myself (which wouldn't be new). What I didn't say, partly because I was on the spot and partly because it really got to me when I thought about it is that the reason I'm going is to find healing. I always feel off around people, always feel like I have something to prove and am always worried about being attacked. I keep waiting to feel better, to get used to being around people, to be able to trust people and it just doesn't happen. I don't know what it will take and though this is far from the only thing I want to work on while I'm there it is one of the big ones. It cripples me from being able to be at odds with someone and not break down. There are other big things though, that I fell apart after the death of my grandfather, that I am lazy, gluttonous and addicted to porn, that I am squandering a great many gifts, that I want to be a minister but don't want to be a leader, that I am spiritually undisciplined...I think that covers most of it.
There was something my old youth minister told me once. He said that our former preacher had a misconception about his father that had bothered him greatly until he was well into his sixties and learned he was wrong. The idea of struggling with something significant for so long disturbs me. I don't think I can get this all taken care of but maybe my load will be lighter when it's done. I know something is coming, something important and I have to be ready to do what I would most like to avoid: lead. I hope this will be enough, I hope to become the man I have wanted to be for so long, strong and sure and ready to serve. I hope to find more.
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