Stumbling Toward God?

“When are you going to get on Facebook, Tim?”
“As soon as I’m convinced that it’s nothing like Myspace.”

Well, I’m still not convinced. But I was assured that it’s a lot “cleaner” than Myspace, with no Victoria’s Secret ads or random naked people asking to be your friend. Also no annoying flashing things or multiple songs and videos all trying to play at the same time. One person even assured me that it is much more solid than Myspace, which was obviously built with Microsoft tools. (His words, not mine.)

So like a chump, I did it. Honestly, I really just wanted to log on and have it tell me something like: Welcome timoth! You have 0 friends. It was that kind of week. Disappointingly, Facebook has more tact, and merely told me that I had not listed any friends. So that was lame, and now I don’t really know what to do with it. I guess you can come find me if you know how it works. But you’ll need to know a little something about me, because I’m the seventh person with my name on there. That’s right.

Some things are too broken to ever be fixed. Sometimes this is expensive: a car that would cost more to repair than its worth; a project or a plan so flawed that it’s better to abandon. Sometimes the price is of a different kind: as in a relationship, a family, a life.

Mother was so strong. She would schedule her treatments around her transatlantic trips, because this thing wasn’t going to keep her down. But eventually it was all too much. I never thought that it would end like that. Breast cancer is a horrible thing, it’s an evil thing, but there are treatments and surgery, and then it’s all over and you’re fine again. I know several survivors. I never actually believed it was fatal. So I did not understand when I got that phone call.
“Mom is in the hospital. We would like you to come [to Geneva].”
“Ok, I’ve just got four weeks of school left.”
“No, you need to come now.”

They weren’t strictly out of options. But further treatment would be very harsh and the chance of success was not great. And she had had enough. Sometimes things are too broken to ever be fixed.

Some say that everyone dies alone. If there’s anyone of whom that isn’t true, it was my mother. That was two years ago. As for the rest of us…

My grandfather, who always said he would live to 100, died at 86, ten years after a stroke left him but a pale shadow of the man he was. Too broken to ever be fixed. My grandmother, who never gave up for all those years, left so frail and so lost without anything to do.

My family is broken; scattered all over the world. Too broken to ever be fixed. So I foolishly long for the day when I will have a new family of my own, a close family. But I fear that after this life, I am utterly incapable of forming and maintaining any such bonds. Too broken to ever be fixed.

i wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar’s chair
full of broken thoughts
i can not repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
i am still right here

-hurt (johnny cash version)

All that I’ve really been looking for this whole time is someone who will not leave. They say God is always there no matter what. Whatever else I say or do or get distracted by, deep down that is what I came looking for, and that is what drives me on. If only…

this is the LAST NIGHT you’ll spend alone!
look me in the eyes so I KNOW YOU KNOW!
-Skillet

I know that I still have a story to finish from which I got off track. Actually, I have consistently managed to find other things to talk about for about four months now. I hope to get to that soon, just not now. Not today. Not this week.

When I mentioned shoveling all of the trash out of my heart, I was not actually anywhere near this one. But a couple of weeks ago, I was talking with someone who made a statement which (inadvertently) cut straight through to it. My, but that one was deep. So, nice day for it.

Sometimes I forget that she never met my mother. I know my mother would have liked her. Not that she had anything against my other girlfriends, but she didn’t particularly connect with them either. This one was different.

When I was visiting my parents for Christmas in Geneva, my mother told me that she would be coming to San Antonio for a conference in a few months. She said that she was going to invite ~ and me, until she realized that it was Easter weekend. Which to me implied that somehow because it was Easter, she wasn’t inviting us. (Those Christians do take their Easter seriously.) I mulled over that for a month or so before deciding that, formal invitation or no, I wanted to go. But I never passed along the pseudo-invitation. For one thing, I did not think that we were at the point in our relationship of taking trips together. In particular, my mother was making the lodging arrangements, and I rather suspected that she was not on the same page as to our situation, and that was certainly not a conversation that I wanted to have. A stupid thing really, for it needn’t have been a long conversation. Oh yeah, and it was Easter.

I did not know that it was to be the last chance. I never even asked. Even when it was all over, to this day I don’t think I ever even brought it up. How many unilateral decisions have I made, simply by never mentioning the option?

She never met my mother. But she knew me when I had a mother. And, perhaps more importantly, my mother knew of her. Which will never be true of anyone else I meet from that point forward. All I have now is a picture. It’s a nice picture. I… we went to every store, and looked at every single frame that was for sale in this town before I could finally choose one that was worthy. But ultimately, it’s just a picture of some stranger that my wife and kids (…your what?!“) will never know.

So it was that I got these two hopelessly intermixed in my head and in my heart. I needed the one just to keep the other alive. An important thing, surely, but it’s certainly no basis for a relationship. I also have a song I can no longer play, because it’s dedicated to both of them in different ways.

It’s hard to let go of so many dreams all at once.

When I returned from New Orleans last year, I was passionate about God. The next day happened to be “Student Ministry Sunday” or something at my church, so a group of high school and college students were leading the music that day in lieu of the usual band. They played a lot of songs that I did not know, but I sang along with all my heart… because the words are up on the screen and knowing the melody in advance doesn’t really matter much for a guy like me anyway.

I started writing a song back then too. The lyrics were based on several of my blog posts at the time. For awhile it had the working title of “April 1st”, merely because that was the day on which it was born. A year later, April 1st has come and gone and I still haven’t finished it. How soon we forget indeed. I also happened to notice that this week was the one year anniversary of my “new” blog.

On one of the last days of my trip to New Orleans this year, one member of my team commented to another, “It really makes you appreciate what you have back home, doesn’t it?”
Home? I thought, I’ve got NOTHING at home. Nothing and no one. So painful was the thought of having to go back to school on Monday that I was honestly hoping that that the plane would crash. It’s perplexing to me that while in New Orleans, more than one of my team members mentioned that they were encouraged by my work ethic, Whereas around here, especially concerning school, my work ethic is almost non-existent. “How come you never have homework to do?” I was asked recently. “You mean- ‘Why am I never doing my homework?'” I replied.

But I was talking about music. Last Sunday my church group had another “worship night.” Or at least, we were supposed to. Due to some miscommunication, no one was there to lead it. Of course I realized, living quite close to the church as I do, I could procure a guitar fairly quickly. Nor was I the only one to realized this. But I just didn’t feel like it. Curiously, I had considered bringing my guitar along that night anyway when I thought that someone else was going to be leading, but had decided against it.

Perhaps it was all those times last year when we kept scheduling worship nights which I felt obligated to lead by default, despite the fact that I was in open rebellion against God at the time. I would sing about loving and praising God, and then go right home and break things in frustration. So I just had a bad taste in my mouth for worship music.

But haven’t I been waiting for just such an opportunity for months? Well no, not this opportunity exactly. And I had fallen out of practice again anyway. But in a sense, yes, I suppose I was. So that’s another chance come and gone. I considered having a little worship night at my house this weekend to make up for it, but if there’s one thing I avoid more than playing music… it’s having people over to my house.

So at last I see the depravity of my ego. It’s not even enough that I be asked to play… I need to be begged. Speaking of which, a month or so ago, a friend was showing off his new piano and this girl was positively pleading for him to play the “Moonlight Sonata.” He declined repeatedly, as I sat there quietly fuming all the while. Now, how could I possibly take that personally, you ask? Well, as it happens, I had been struggling to learn to play that very song on the guitar for about four months, (which I consider to be no small task) and now suddenly I would never be able play it with out appearing to be catering to her whims. Bugger it all.