Stumbling Toward God?

Parts: 0, 1, 2.

By the way, I hope it is apparent that each of the three previous parts was about a different person. To continue the previous story:

Knowing myself as I do, I figured that I had about a week to ask her out, otherwise I would most likely spend months overanalyzing the situation and probably never do actually anything. This seemed like one of those “hot iron” type of situations, and it was important to strike while I still really did not have anything to lose. Besides, there’s no way that I would get a third chance.

Five days later, I made the call. Now, if you have ever had a serious conversation with me, you would know that if I have something important on my mind, it takes a ridiculously long time for me to work up to it. In my hesitation, I lost control of the direction of that conversation almost immediately. But I was able to get around to my point eventually. And seriously, five days is still an amazing personal record for me. (I think somebody owes me a quarter!)

“Well… I’m flattered… but no.”

WTF?
You know, I’ve thought this before, and I’m saying it now: Aren’t there, like, genocides and stuff going on out there? Shouldn’t God have better things to do than to come up with funny new ways to mess with my head? Well of course not, God is omnipresent and omnipotent.

In a sense, I was a bit relieved for her sake. For I had a turbulent sea of things going on just below the surface. It seemed almost deceitful to try and enter a new relationship when I knew that I was on the verge of exploding. Also, it’s not true that I had nothing to lose. For one thing, this was the only girl who would consistently give me a hug every time I saw her. Now I mostly just get hugs from guys. That was just poor forethought. More significantly, there was the loss of hope. For every choice made means a door closed. My long-term plan had failed. My back-up plan had failed. What now?

Curiously enough, with these two events coming so close together, I found that to truly be upset about either one meant admitting that the other did not really mean that much. And oh, by the way what was I asking her for anyway? Was it not the very fact that I had rejected dating, and was fascinated by this idea of “Christian Courtship” that lead me to church in the first place? Had I then not sold out my principals the moment I entered a relationship with that other girl, when from the very beginning we both admitted that it probably would not last? Was this not a further step in the wrong direction, asking for, essentially, a single date? Shouldn’t I therefore be directing any inquiries of this nature toward her father? Oh no. Oh haaeeell no.

So, that all pretty much sucked. But it was necessary. For the important thing is, the spell was broken. Also, did I not say before that I had plural options? Ah, and wouldn’t the next girl be positively delighted to know that she was, at least pragmatically speaking, the third choice? While I’m at it, why not just go alphabetically through every girl I know until one says yes?

So, at last, I could no longer deny: my heart is a liar. My heart is not even a consistant liar. Forget about these women. Had I not been vexed for some time by the fact that the church group seemed to have become less about God and much more about socializing and “hooking-up”? Yet what was I here doing? Why not try leading by example, numskull? Forget about these women, man, you need JESUS.

Part I

Let me tell you a story.

Last spring, my Bible study group decided to go country line dancing. This, I probably need not tell you, is not my cup of tea. However, a friend and I decided to make the most of it by buying some fabulously awful cowboy-style shirts for $1.45 each at the thrift store, and we looked, as they say, “hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night!” (It was important to pick up some authentic cowboy slang as well. Ahem.) Anyway, that evening, I had the pleasure of dancing with a certain young lady and discovered, much to my surprise, that I really enjoyed dancing with her. A lot.

This was quite a conundrum for me, because at that time, the very idea that I was capable of having feelings toward anyone else was both unexpected and unwelcome. Yet, in the coming weeks, I could not help but wonder if she felt any of what I did.

“You’ve had this problem before,” I told myself, “of being unable to move on to something new because of your refusal to let go of the past.” I have to admit that it seems that I have sabotaged myself more than once in this regard.
“No!” I declared, “My problem in the past has been my unwillingness to make a choice and commit to it.” So there and then, I made my choice. And I committed to it.

The results of that decision, I believe, have already been made clear. Conveniently enough, as life and circumstances would have it, I did not see this particular young lady for awhile after that. Out of sight, out of mind, and my focus moved to other things. As I have described elsewhere, last summer was bad, and fall was worse.

But in November, things started to turn around. Among other things, I started attending that particular Bible study again as well as a new church service. Toward the end of the year, as I began to see her more regularly again, and as my other hopes were crumbling around me, I could not help but wonder if I had really made the right decision back then. But even if there had been anything there, surely that ship had sailed six months previously.

That was the state of things on that solemn day in January when I challenged God for a sign. The next day was Sunday, and I happened to run into her just as I was walking into church. Is that a sign? Surely not, for we often went to the same church service in those days. So I took a seat next to the wall as was my custom, she chose the one beside me, and before long three members of her family came and sat in the row immediately in front of me, giving the distinct impression that I was now boxed in by her family. Now that seems more like a sign, no? That was still a bit of a reach perhaps.

The sermon that day was all about going through storms and at the end of the service (being the first Sunday of the new year) the pastor called for anyone who had been through a storm in 2006 to stand. Oh yeah… that’s me. This was followed by a request for anyone who was facing a storm in 2007 to stand, and a time of prayer.

After the service, her mother engaged me in conversation and eventually invited me to lunch with them. It is not so uncommon to have lunch after church… I had just never been invited by anyone’s mother before. Which in itself is a point worth mentioning. I, along with some others from our Bible study group, had been to their house for a couple of barbecues last summer. So I had met her mother before, and on those occasions, she was always so extraordinarily nice to me that I could not help but wonder if perhaps my name had come up before.

Anyway, under other circumstances, I might have declined this invitation, but on this particular day, I was immensely curious to see where all of this was leading. It then came out that we would be having this lunch not locally, but at a restaurant some thirty miles away. This prompted a discussion of how many vehicles were needed as people had to make various stops both before and after lunch. My friend, however, declared that she would not be needing her car, and proposed to ride with me.

At that, we departed. While in route, my friend received a call from her mother, saying that the proposed meeting time had been moved back. We would have been early anyway, as we had headed straight there while the others had various errands to run. Now with this, we had an hour or so to kill, which we decided to do at a nearby mall. By this point, it had become very difficult for me to dismiss this series of circumstances as totally random. I had done nothing whatsoever to bring any of this about, yet things were unfolding in a way that I could never have imagined or planned.

So, we spent our time wandering around looking at various things and talking about various things. The thought crossed my mind that she and my sister might enjoy shopping together, which, in light of this post, is perhaps the best I could ever hope for.

I’m not sure exactly when it was made clear to me that the reason we were going so far away was so that her grandparents could join us for lunch. I do know that I was aware of it by the time we arrived at the restaurant. We were still the first ones there, and as we sat waiting, I was brought back to reality. What in the world was I doing here? For, in my mind at least, if a fellow goes out to dine after church with a young lady and her whole family (minus one, but I will come back to that), then I should think that there might be certain expectations and assumptions made by that family that really were not true here. But the family was quite welcoming and the lunch was quite pleasant overall. Toward the end, my friend’s sister joined the group, and I’m pretty sure I saw a distinct what-the-hell-is-Tim-doing-here look cross her face for a moment. It was actually a relief to know that it wasn’t just me.

At the end, my friend got up to use the restroom, and before she had returned, everyone else stood up to leave. As no one else made any move to pick up her stuff, I reluctantly took that duty upon myself. So I stood conspicuously waiting for her, holding her purse and to-go box, thinking, “What IS this? I’m not the boyfriend. I’m not even a good friend. I’m just SOME GUY from Bible study!”

She would be joining the other females in her family for a shopping excursion, so we said our goodbyes and I was left to drive home alone. I could almost here God taunting me.

I DARE YOU TO GO HOME AND PRETEND THAT THIS KIND OF THING HAPPENS ALL THE TIME, AND THAT I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

For in retrospect, this ought to have been a top contender for most awkward day of my life. Yet it wasn’t. I felt like I was playing the “boyfriend” role all day. It felt like a Ghost-of-Christmas-Future kind of thing. YOU WANTED TO KNOW WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE? THIS IS WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE. As I have said, when I asked for a sign, I expected something a little more subtle.

Part III

Where was I?

As stated, for months and months now I have been digging the trash out of my heart. I have spoken about love and the girl and the demons and the darkness and all that holds me down. I have been avoiding this for a long time, but hopefully by now, you have enough background information to make sense of the events of January.

Long had I waited and watched as new guys would come into her life, only to be rejected. Deep down I held on to the hope that she had not found someone to replace me… that maybe on some level she was really just waiting for me to get my crap together. But lately, guys were standing in line just to get shot down. It was not fair… I was in love with her before being in love with her was “cool.” Yet, ultimately I knew that I had less of a chance than any of them, because I had had my chance, and she had already determined that I was not what she was looking for. And though she hated being constantly put in an awkward position, she certainly seemed to revel in the attention.

One day, I was finally fed up with the fact that nothing I said or did or felt had any effect on her. I was done being one of the satellites orbiting in her universe. Her choices were her own, and I could no longer bare their consequences. It would not be polite of me to say what the final straw was. But I assure you, it was final.

That was a dark, lonely night. Yet, in one sense, it was liberating. I had been in the process of losing her for as long as I could remember – like slowly bleeding to death – now that she was truly gone, I hardly knew what to do with myself. I met with a friend to discuss, among other things, my options for the future.

After all, she was not the only attractive young lady I knew. Yet, I was sick of doing the “wrong” thing. I determined not to do anything without a clear sign from God. REAL clear.

“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 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.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
— Prov 13:12

Perhaps you have never had a roommate who left a bag of potatoes in an unused cupboard – which you eventually located by the smell several months after he had moved out. Or maybe you never had the opportunity to take apart a garbage disposal that had not been working when you moved in to the apartment and discovered what was clogging it up. Or perhaps you have not been exposed to the contents of a refrigerator that was first underwater for several weeks, then without power for seven months.

I have not been quite so fortunate. So I quickly came to the realization that it doesn’t matter what you started with; after enough time, everything organic decays into the same black filth.

So too with hopes and dreams deferred and things left unsaid. It does not matter how great they were in the beginning, in time, it all becomes one vile mass of black filth. I had this imagery in my head for a long time before finally coming up with the perfect word to describe it; and that word is putrid.

Do you guys ever wonder what the hell I’m talking about on this blog?

As I think I’ve mentioned, a little while ago I spent some time reading a lot of my old posts. Intriguing stuff, I must say… and I wished there was more of it. Yet frustrating too. I would read a few of the vague references and think, “Ooh… I remember that day…” Then other posts would be merely something like, “You won’t believe what happened today.” What, that’s it? TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED! I was there and I don’t even remember. Now what’s the point of a post like that? Sometimes I’m vague because I’m never quite sure who will be reading it. At other times I’m vague because I know exactly who is reading…

I suppose all along I thought that one day I would have the answers that I was looking for, and that someday this would all come together and it would all make sense. It eventually became clear to me that that day was not quickly coming. So, a few months ago, I reached a critical mass and decided that I just wanted all of this trash gone from my heart. ALL OF IT.

It’s taken a bit longer than I anticipated. I once had a particular piece of emotional baggage that I carried around for about two years before finally looking inside only to discover that it was totally empty. Guess I don’t need THAT anymore. I had somewhat hoped that a similar thing might happen again. But this time, I’m just finding bags inside of bags inside of bags. In trying to go back and fill in the gaps, I often find myself leaping over chasms just to get to the holes that I wanted to fill in. Here we are in April and I haven’t yet finished describing the events of January. I sure hope that I haven’t missed anything interesting in the meantime.

Last year I went to New Orleans to help people clean out the trash and start to rebuild their lives. Then I came home and did the exact opposite in my own heart. Mulling all of this over, it seemed like there was only one thing for it:

Back to New Orleans!

I don’t believe the Devil
I don’t believe his book
But the truth is not the same
Without the lies he made up
Don’t believe in excess
Success is to give
Don’t believe in riches
But you should see where I live
I… I believe in love
— U2

When I was young I learned a game
Where love and happiness were the same
Now I’m older and I don’t play
I found out the hardest way
— Dramarama

There are a lot of pretty girls in the world… but only one of them is beautiful

Though my beliefs in other matters have changed wildly over the years, I always believed in love. Love is transcendent, undeniable, pure, true… and above all, exclusive.

One of the hardest things for me to accept has been the fact that my heart is a wicked liar.

I have repeatedly alluded to a certain individual who challenges me greatly. To put things in the best possible way, this person has even more serious communication issues than I do. I became uncomfortable about the interest she was showing toward me a number of months ago. She would always try to engage me in private conversation after Bible studies. I am still uncertain as to the point or even the content of these communications, but I became very weary of the fact that she was capable of at least enunciating when in a group setting, yet when one on one with me she seemed too nervous to even form coherent sentences. Eventually, I grew tired of these little episodes and told her straight out that I did not want to have these conversations anymore.

That is when the proverbial feces hit the fan. For the next three or four months, she would constantly tell anyone and everyone that she had “moved on with [her] life,” (at least whenever I was around) occasionally adding that she was not going to let me control her. Also during this time, she would send me a great number of emails. A lot of these were perfectly innocent “Bible commentary” type messages, which I found merely perplexing in their intended purpose. The others were more disturbing, in which she would accuse either me or others around her of things that were blatantly untrue. These almost always included a reminder that she was not chasing after me and was not interested in being my girlfriend. I did not know what to do with that. I suggest the analogy: if every single time you saw me, I were to remind you in all seriousness that I was not plotting to kill you, would you not be just a little suspicious anyway? Due to a somewhat similar situation in the past, I made it my policy to never respond to her emails, no matter what.

I will be the first to admit that I did not best handle this situation in an appropriate and timely manner. In fact, I might be the only person to admit that. One person told me at a relatively early point in the process that he personally would have gotten a restraining order a long time ago. Another said that he really saw Christ in me in the way I was handling things. That was a particularly difficult statement, being quite certain that Christ was not actually in me, for him to say so meant that this whole thing really is a farce.

The real trouble I faced was that in confronting her, I only saw a mirror. I intimately know what it feels like to care about someone who does not feel the same way. I know the profound sense that if you could just talk things out, to be able to connect, if the person would just see… and I know the overwhelming pain and frustration when it repeatedly does not happen. Facing her, I knew that if her heart could tell such lies… then so could mine. I could not take action to resolve the situation, because deep down I knew that whatever I might say to her, I should really be saying to myself, and I just wasn’t ready to accept that. The difference I saw between us was merely a matter of degree. I’m not sure it’s even fair to say that I had a stronger grasp on reality than she did; the only real difference was that I simply had a slightly better sense of what constitutes appropriate public behavior.

Breaking the Spell

I somewhat fear that God may be conspicuously absent from my narrative about God. So here we go. I tend to see God in amazing coincidences.

A few weeks ago, some folks from my church group went out swing dancing. I did not go, for a whole list of reasons, starting with, “I wasn’t invited,” and ending with, “It was ol’ Jingle Pockets’ birthday.” My favorite reason though (not that anyone asked) was “Not after last time!”

For one thing, I was still bitter about the fact that when I had tried to organize a group to go swing dancing back in December, no one wanted to go. (Which, come to think of it, might be exactly why I wasn’t invited this time.) I did actually go that time with the friend who had suggested the idea. (Confused you for a minute there, didn’t I?) Afterwards, when asked how it went, I would reply, “It was terrible… but I had a good time!”

What was terrible? My dancing? Well, obviously that… but I was actually referring to the situation as terrible. It was bad enough that no one else wanted to go, but in particular, that no ladies wanted to go. So it was just us two guys in a room full of dancing strangers.

Now, I knew that someone would probably ask me later if I had actually danced, and I would hate to have to say, “No.” More to the point, it would be quite a waste to have come all this way just to stand around and watch, because quite frankly, that wasn’t much fun at all. So I came up with the plan of observing carefully to find some wallflower who also didn’t know anyone there but clearly wanted to dance and was just waiting for someone to take notice of her. The only question remaining was, “How many beers do I have to drink before I’m willing to ask a total stranger if I can stomp all over her feet?”

I am not fundamentally opposed to drinking. I just decided a long time ago that it wasn’t something that I needed anymore. I really don’t care for the taste of alcohol, I would only drink for the effect, and that is something the Bible is clearly against. I do, however, drink on occasion under special circumstances. (Some of you are perhaps remembering a certain other recent occurrence, which was also rather questionable.) So there I was, a beer and a half in, already feeling rather tipsy (which was pretty disappointing for a guy who used to put down half a bottle of tequila in a single sitting), and I suddenly started thinking, “What the hell am I doing?” I may drink on special occasions, but this hardly qualifies. Here I was, drinking specifically for the purpose of getting drunk enough to do something that I would never do otherwise.

Having recently renewed my faith in God, I began to pray. I don’t remember what I prayed. I don’t think I even finished before my inebriated mind wandered off to other things. However, shortly thereafter, a girl came up to me and asked if I went to Trinity. Being a good fifty miles or so away from the church, I could only think, “Is she talking about the same Trinity? That was a hell of a guess.” She asked if I remembered her and told me her name. The truth is, I didn’t recognize her in the slightest… but I did remember meeting someone with that name not so long ago.

The point is, now I had someone to dance with. From my own church no less. Trust in Him, and God will provide.

Another incident also occurred in December. I had convinced my family to make charitable donations in lieu of Christmas gifts that year. So I was poking around online and got off on a slight tangent involving foreign adoptions. I don’t generally like to admit to even having any long term goals, but let’s just say that if I did, foreign adoption would be one of them. So I was reading about this organization that specializes in that, and there was a link to find out where they would be holding informational meetings. So I clicked on that. There were only about half a dozen states represented, but California happened to be one of them. So I clicked on that. I discovered that there was a meeting that very weekend, only three days away. Now if it was in LA, that would not be particularly surprising. In fact there were a few in LA in the coming months, along with San Diego and other metropolitan areas. However, this particular one that caught my attention was being held in Redlands, at The River church, which is WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE OF MY HOUSE. Could this have possibly been any more neatly packaged and delivered right to my front door? It had also recently come to my attention that not one but two of my female friends were also passionate about adoption. (Though they never actually mentioned the word “foreign.”)

What does all of this mean? As it happens, I had already planned on going to Mexico that weekend, and after mulling this over for awhile, I told myself rather sternly, “It doesn’t mean anything! Just stick with the plan, and whatever you do, keep your mouth shut!”

So I did, and I did. Well, up until now I guess.