Therapy In Shadow

The hardest part about writing a blog, is to continue to write in that blog. Its REALLY easy to just throw it off for a day. But, when you do that you begin to build things that you want to write about until eventually the next post becomes this massive thing. I'm at that point this very moment. So sorry if this seems a bit wordy.

While I was at the office, one of our clients drive a VERY expensive car. His wife drove it in and was experiencing some transmission issues and it had to be towed. Now, this person is filthy stinking rich, to the tune of this vehicle costing $100K and he didn't even bat an eyelash about it. For all my life I would dislike a person like that. I would accuse him of flaunting his wealth and pushing it in my face. How dare he even drive that car in public while there are people in this world who are really struggling. But this is the view of the class war. The Have's and the Have not's. All of my life I have been one of the Have not's. But now its an ok thing. I'm happy in my financial bracket. This isnt to say that I want to stay here, but for now it works. As we age, our concept of "A lot of money" changes with it. When I was a kid, my dad would give me $5 in quarters to go down to the gas station and play Double Dragon. It was a TON of money that allowed me to play for hours! But in perspective, thats really not a lot. In fact, $5k really isnt a lot on the larger scope of things. In this mans perspective, $100K is the same to my $5 when I was a kid, all about perspective. For the first time ever, I didnt judge him because he was rich. I judged him on his heart, and he's a pretty good guy. I just didnt know until I stopped disliking him........maybe he'll hook me up with a high paying job in the Caribbeans. Here's to hope

I've always made myself a martyr for something. In my previous christian walk, I was taught that I had to suffer for my faith. That somehow if we suffered enough, whether it be from fasting or denying yourself a particular object that you've wanted, that you will win favor with God for your sacrifice, mimicking the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross. But by Christian theology, God doesnt want us to suffer, he did it for us. This is why I dont understand Evangelicals today. For some reason they seem to think that denying themselves something perfectly legitimate and non-sinful will bring the closer to God. Biblically, Christians are supposed to live life in abundance, yet are called to seperate themselves of this world. Thats the true quandary for me. The Bible says that sin is the breaking point for communication to God, that sin covers us and effects our ability to hear his voice, yet, we are born in to it. So, ultimately, none of us can truly hear the voice of God. But, this is where Jesus comes in to play, yet they dont live by his words. He told us to go into the world and preach the good news of Christ, yet said to turn away from worldly things. Many people do this at the cost of the person that their ministering to and their own happiness. I remember a time when I was on the worship team a few years in to my service. A young man was standing away from the Church having a smoke, not bothering anyone and not close enough for anyone to be effected by it. All anyone in the church could say was negativity towards him, that he should be doing that here, almost as if none of them had any addictions that they were fighting through. Me, after hearing the venom that was dripping from their gluttonous little mouths went to the guy and bummed a smoke off him. We talked for about 10 minutes. He was really cool and going through some pretty hard problems that I helped him talk out. Everyone kind of looked at me funny after that.

So heres my point with all that, getting back on track. Denying yourself something that doesnt effect your christian walk or is labeled sinful by your own personal law is hypocritical. For many years, as I stated before, I denied myself some pretty big things because I thought I was supposed to to be a good Christian. The breaking moment for me is when my weed eater was stolen off my front porch. This really burned me up and I wrote a letter to our local paper, just dripping with sarcasm about it.

To the guy who stole my weed eater off the porch. I must say that I was a bit shocked as I left my house that morning and noticing that my weed eater was missing. I checked out the local pawn shops and filled a police report as anyone was supposed to do. Needless to say, I was a bit perturbed. Even more so perturbed that you had also stolen the mix can off of my porch as well a week or two later. I’m a man of simple pleasures. All I wanted on my 30th birthday was a weed eater. I just wanted to cut my small lawn, be left alone, and be 30. It’s important that my home be warm for my stay at home wife and 2 kids (in which my 1 ½ year old has never slept through the night and my type-1 diabetic 4 year old who struggles with an incurable potentially deadly disease). All this time going through the same financial struggles that everyone else is going through. It seems as though I’m not going to be getting it back so I have a request of you. I ask you to please steal the line that you will eventually be in another week anyway. I wouldn’t want my weed eater’s career in the lawn maintenance industry to be but a shattered dream. It will be sitting on my porch, and I’ll even leave the light on for you. We wouldn’t want you do deal with the agony of stubbing your toe in the dark.

I had a woman track down my phone number and give me a call early the morning it was published and offered to buy me a weed eater. I didnt know how to handle the situation. I turned it down because I was able to borrow my Dad's trimmer at any time and I didnt want to put the lady out. about 30 seconds after I hung up the phone, I regretted it. How often to great things come our way in life that we miss out on due to our misconceptions. This person was GLAD to do it, and felt compelled to. I not only robbed myself of resolving an issue, but I robbed her of feeling good about a generous act. Kind of a foolish thing to do when you think about it. But good fortune came why way and I took it this time. A client of may father's stopped him in a local hardware store and told him that he read my article and commented on how much he liked it. He gave a weed eater to my dad to give to me just because he "had a spare lying around". This spare was loads better than what was stolen from me. And I decided to let good things happen to me and I took it. God I love that trimmer, its a tank. And I now have the new perspective on life. I MUST allow good things to come my way and accept them at that moment. I refuse to set myself up as a martyr for a cause that I'm not even aware of that will deprive me of good things. Isnt that what God wants anyway? Christian or otherwise?

IN CLOSING

Even funnier, is that my old pastor (still not aware that I'm a Wiccan) spoke to me about it, asked me if I had gotten a new trimmer, and that he liked the letter I wrote in. I told him no, and he didnt even attempt to try to help me out with it. I know you may view this as a selfish expectation to put on him, but theres a history there that I'll get in to another time that made that emotion perfectly legitimate. Amazing to me that a man who is willing to give so much to those who he doesnt know would be willing to not give to one of his close friends in need. Seems as though he should be worrying more about his current flock leaving in droves more than his potential new flock getting false expectations. A bit harsh I know, but like I said, I'll get in to that history at a later time.

I used to tell myself that "The greatest lie the devil ever told was that he didn't exist". This was almost a mantra to live by for several years for me.

When I moved into the Bible Belt of Western North Carolina I was truly searching for some kind of meaning to this whole thing and eventually became a Christian. Things seemed really nice for a while. I would go to church, come home, go to work. I was a music minister for 7 years, a youth pastor for 2 years. But I always had some kind of inner struggle with the concept of Jesus and God. I always viewed God as a loving father figure (even more so after the birth of our first child Lyric). But the more I went to church, the more I saw something that was not loving. Now, I'm not saying that I don't think that God is loving, I'm just saying that the God of the Bible and the God I experienced weren't the same God. And this same polarizing viewpoint also crept into the Christians I new in my life.

The Pastor of the church, I'll call him Paul for the sake anonymity, and I were good friends. I was a rough kid, long hair and various piercings. A respectful smoker, yet a bit brash in my political views. But he took me in, he saw a bit of himself in me. We would eat breakfast or lunch often. We took the youth group to various out of state revivals where people would be slain in the spirit and speak in tongues. There was an amazing energy to the place and I had thought that I had finally found the authority over my life I was looking for. Unfortunatly, after 7 years of service to the church, he asked me to step down from the Worship Team for being a smoker and then proceeded to not speak to me for a year. So, I lost my position in the church, and also a friend in 5 minutes that was 7 years in the making. The church, the people who are supposed to be the hands and hearts of their God were no longer righteous in my eyes. They had no more power and authority over their lives then any other person. STRIKE 1

The constant influence of my grandmother traveled with me most of my life. She is an old school Pentecostal, tongue talkin, God fearing woman. Short and chubby she was huggable at a young age. She used to always make me crackers and cheese as we watched pirated VHS tapes she copied from the video store. She told me that Jesus was always watching and was ready to judge me. At family functions, she would attempt to minister to my sister who was a punker (back when punk actually meant something and Birkenstocks were meant to kick ass not look cute). It always fell of deaf ears. She was who she wanted to be. Unfortunately, my grandmothers influence turned oppressive after the death of my Grandfather. She literally lost her marbles and became a tremendously judgmental person and used the Bible to justify her actions. Its like she could say that anything she wanted no matter how rude or disrespectful as long as she said it was the truth. This influence was the most difficult to shake for me. If anything else I had the fear of hell to deter me from straying from the faith. STRIKE 2

Our daughter was diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes just before her 3rd Birthday. This perfect little creature whome I love more than anything on this earth had just been given a life expectancy of 10 years less and a lifetime of struggle. If God doesnt create imperfection, then how could this have happened? Doesn't this fall in the line of the "Age of Reason" that many Christians claim to be truth to make themselves feel better that unsaved children dont go to Hell? This situation was compounded by my Grandmother (The crazy one I mentioned before) stating to me that "The sons of the father falls onto his children". As to somehow imply that its something that I had done. STRIKE 3

The breaking moment for me was attempting to rationalize a concept I adopted called Universal Salvation. I had thought for a while that the Bible has been used as a system of control for a while. I understand the will of evil men is absolute and nothing is sacred. What better way to enslave people then to paralyze them with fear of an eternal torment? To capitalize on their imaginations. Universal Salvation changed This concept really fit in to my line of thinking at the time. It goes something like this. The sacrifice of of Christ was for all men for all time, going back to Adam. This covered original sin and all other sins no matter how obscene, so no one goes to Hell. I presented this idea to a group of people that knew the Bible forwards and backwards and weren't going to shut me out for a differing opinion as Christians don't like to ask themselves basic theological questions. Atheists. It was a lively theological conversation and really fed my intellectual side. You can check it out HERE if you would like. My wife was also following the thread and we had great conversations over the span of a few days as well. But after a while, I realized they were asking me questions that I couldn't answer, and truly should had been asking myself. I started to sway a bit and really wonder if I was a Christian at all.

Towards the end of my time on the Atheist forums, my wife hit me with something VERY deep. She asked me that without the fear of God, what is truly keeping both her and I in Christianity. I really couldnt give an answer. After truly believing in Universal Salvation, the concept of damnation was no longer in my system of belief. She informed me that she always had a hard time believing in the Christian God, that there was something wrong with the whole thing. After about an hour of REALLY talking about our hearts and feelings, things were different. And in that moment, I no longer believed in the Christian God, the Bible, even in Jesus.

But she wasnt done with me yet. Turns out my wife had been a closet Wiccan for some time. She was afraid to tell me as a HUGE portion of christian marriages wouldn't make it through something like that, I was HARDCORE. And my wife made total sense to me from then on. She has always been a cloth diapering, anti-vaccing, booby baby mama. In touch with the earth and her love of people. A feeler of others emotions. Neither of us ever fit in to the typical christian mold, but she was unhappy in a way that a christian shouldnt be. It was something fundamental. She had been so unhappy for so long, but she was so afraid to talk to me about it. I love her now more than ever and we're actually HAPPY in our marriage for the first time in a long time. We had become stagnant. It opened up a massive door for our relationship.

IN CLOSING

This path that I had chosen to take for a lifetime, and over 10 years devoted, was crushed. Now, this took time. I think in reality I was closer to STRIKE 1,264,798. It was a culmination of many factors, as some listed above. But the one thing that kept me there was the fear that was instilled in me by my Grandmother and when she passes on, so shall ultimately my fear. I am a Pagan.

The greatest lie the church ever told me was that the Devil existed. Certainly a good matra to live by for a lifetime to come.