Another year...

Wow. Hard to believe I've been at this blogging thing for over a year. But there it is. Been quite a year too.

Started basketball practice for a new crop of young men today. Had two on the verge of puking and four in tears.

It was a good day :D

It certainly could have been worse. I was supposed to be in Japan this week. Thank the Almighty for small favors.

Saturday evening, my family got together to celebrate my brother's birthday. My mom, however, was at a women's retreat so the planning was left to my father.

Probably not the best idea.

The plan was to meet at a local pizza place. Turns out that was mostly so my nephew would join us. He decided not to come. And my brother, the birthday boy, had pizza the night before.

Spoo!

So we're all standing around outside this pizza joint that doesn't have seating for 5, let alone the nine of us. And my 78-year-old father and 52-year-old brother look at me and ask "So what do we do?"

...

Let me give you a little background here. I'm the youngest of seven. Waaaaaay youngest. My oldest brother turned 56 this year. I'm 34. My mother was too pregnant with me to attend my brother's college graduation. I've always been the baby (albeit an enormously large baby now). Respect from my siblings, particularly my brothers, has been very rare.

Non-existent would be closer.

My father was always in charge. If he had doubts, us kids never saw them. Dad is solid. Unshakable. He's got a faith that puts Job to shame. Natural disasters would crash against my father's will and bow to their master.

So here is my brother. Not the eldest, but still 18 years my senior. And my father - the rock that never cracks. Turning to me for direction on what we should do.

I immediately checked the sky for airborne pork and felt around to make sure that untamed primates weren't escaping from various bodily orifices. A thermometer in hell probably sounded an alarm.

Very weird.

And yet, not so terribly shocking at the same time. At home, I'm a dad: someone who speaks with the voice of authority and booms pronouncements of doom with the voice of Zeus. At school, I'm the coach. I vocalize my demands in a voice heard in the next county and even the slightest hesitation to accede to my wishes is met with the 4 most hated words in the gym:

"Get on the line!"

And now work has me in a position to make decisions. Decisions that affect others and their assignments. Decisions that change processes and how our products are made. Decisions that could make us money or cost us more. And get me fired. And get others fired.

Seems my life is about me being in charge. People call me "Mister" and I don't even think to look around for my dad. I know they mean me. SO I told my dad and brother what we were gonna do. And we did it. And it worked out OK. Sorta. I also ended up picking up the tab. :|

How did this happen? Am I that old already? When did I grow up? Just because I don't even worry if I try to buy alcohol at the store and I forgot my ID. No one has carded me in years. Some workmates are shocked to learn I'm under 40. I don't feel that old. Is the money I make and the respect I get worth the loss of my perceived youth?

What's a year worth?

What about 15?

I guess I'll go take some pain killers, rub some Ben Gay on my aching legs, take my heart medication and think about it some more. If I can stay awake that long.

The wages of sin..

... are death.

I don't know what, exactly, got me thinking about abortion while I was in the shower this morning. But I was thinking about it and it got me all riled up again.

I kept thinking about that quote from Mother Theresa. At some point she met with President Clinton and he made some comment about the poverty in Calcutta. Her response was "Poverty? It is a poverty that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."

Ouch.

Over 49 million of them since January 22, 1973. 49 million. We, as Americans believe ourselves to be the pinnacle of culture.

49 million murdered babies.

We rally and froth at the mouth because of human right violations in China and North Korea and Sudan.

We've callously performed and defended 49 million executions on complete innocents.

We give our convicted criminals air conditioning, education, food, cable TV, Ph.Ds, health and dental care, even sex change operations.

And we've killed 49 million people who never even got to take a breath.

What in the world can be going on in this country that compares to this mass slaughter of children? There is no terrorist in the world that can wreak the kind of devastation on our country that we have chosen to wreak on ourselves. And all in the name of freedom. Freedom! Freedom from responsibility. Freedom from consequences. Freedom from recognizing that each life has inherent worth regardless of the financial, economic, political, or personal circumstances.

How many children? Forty-nine MILLION. Let's put faces on those, shall we? Let's put those 49 million people into our country. Now walk through downtown at lunch. And count.

1
2
3
4
5
6
die
1
2
3
4
5
6
die
1
2
3
4
5
6
die
1
2
...

Get it? Every 7th person dies. We spend millions and millions each year finding cures for cancers that will kill hundreds each year. As we should. We spend more millions in lawsuits from people who chose to smoke themselves to death. We spend millions creating people so we can kill them and try to harvest their cells for a technology that will theoretically help thousands but doesn't show the slightest chance of being clinically feasible.

Help thousands. We kill millions to help thousands? Help me understand that. Michael J. Fox, help me understand that. Patty Reagan, help me understand that. Hollywood, help me understand that. C'mon Michael Moore. Where are your documentaries now? How much more of a story is there than the deaths of one in seven people because we feel like it?

1 in 7. Dead not from some illness. Dead not because of the war in Iraq or Vietnam. Dead not because some whacked-out militant terrorist group came and ripped those lives away.

Dead because we wanted them dead. Dead because we decided our plans were more important than their lives. Dead because we felt like it.

You wanna bash George W for the war in Iraq? Go right ahead. I don't much care for it either. You wanna bad-mouth him for sending American jobs out of the country. Ok by me because I'm rather upset about that myself. But he's the first president I've seen man enough to stand up and protect the children. Where were your other presidents when those babies were having their skulls punctured? Where were your other presidents when the little fingers flexed for the last time and the hearts stopped beating? They were in Washington chanting "You go girl! Take the life from that baby! It's your right!" No, I don't agree with a lot of what Dubya's doing. But the single greatest human rights violation in the history of our world has happened and continues to happen right here in the U.S. entirely with our blessing.

Hey, I'm all for women's rights. I just wonder what rights are there for the 25 million women we've killed so far.

Failures of the Lost

What is it about these June pregnancies? *sigh*

I've been thinking a lot about my earlier blog post from last November about hope. Phil and Christy had that beautifully healthy little baby and honored my wife and I by asking us to be Anna's godparents. Poor little Anna is just past 8 months old now and is miserably cutting teeth. Poor thing :(

And somewhere in all this, my wife and I have tried to have our third. Tried and failed.

Twice.

Two miscarriages. Two failed implantations. The best the OB can give is "bad stuff". What the heck does that mean? Does the sperm have a criminal record and is thus doomed to fail? Do the eggs have issues with self-worth and self-esteem and give up before they've had any real chance to succeed? There doesn't appear to be anything physically wrong with either of us (except that I'm old and fat).

So do we keep trying? Where is my sermon on hope now that I need it? Where is my faith now when the random emotional breakdowns come from nowhere and disrupt my safe little cozy life?

Sadly, I don't know. I've been working too much to tell you. 55 hours one week. 65 the next. 75 the next. Since February. And no real break in sight. Supposedly it's earned me a promotion but I wonder if that's just a gateway into more of the same. Odd that I would choose to see Adam Sandler's movie Click in the middle of all this. The last place I expected to find a wake-up call to my life was an Adam Sandler movie!

Family Force 5 has been a bright spot though. Sometimes I crank up FF5 in the car on the way home so loud that the tires rattle. And it takes a lot to make tires rattle. I should add them to my player here on the blog. *shrug* Maybe later.

So, with no more answers than I started, I'll leave. No meaningful homilies today. No words of hope and wisdom for the masses. No annoyingly profound messages to salve the tormented consciences of my non-existant readers. I'm human too and subject to fatigue and despair.

Why despair? Because my prayer life sucks. I know the answer to this problem just as I know the answer to my obesity. I just haven't found the will to do anything abut either. I have chosen not to pray just as I have chosen not to jog. I have chosen not to read my Bible just as I have chosen not to eat healthier foods. Because I'm lazy and apathetic.

Disappointed? *nod* You should be. I know I am.

So now what?

Well, I got the news yesterday that I passed that exam I took. So why do I feel even more confused now? Now that I have the certification, what do I do with it? Do I take it to my boss as of September and try to leverage a promotion out of him? Do I talk to the Quality Systems group about turning me into some sort of protégé since there doesn't seem to be anyplace to go in the Software Quality group?

And my active interviewing is over, for now anyway. I decided not to take the job for which I had been interviewing. It seemed pretty clear that they were going to make me an offer, but that job was just as dead-end as this one - probably moreso. So why would I take a pay cut for it? So I removed myself from consideration.

Plus, here I can still coach basketball in the winter. If I took the other job I might not be able to do that. And here I have the Tuesday golf league in the summer. That's a good thing.

Maybe I should just forget about certifications and new jobs for a while. I have a project to finish and 15 days to complete the testing. And I have a mere 8 days to the Pro Life Music Festival in Warsaw.

Speaking of which, I added 4 Sanctus Real songs. They will be playing in Warsaw next Saturday, so they're on my mind.

It's about time

Well, it's long past due, but I consider summer to finally be here. I got a birthday next week and that always convinces me that the snow here in northern Indiana is really gone. At least until October.

I had a professional certification exam this morning to get a national certification for auditors. Quality auditors, not financial. How frustrating. All of the practice questions are so clear and obvious, but the questions on the actual exam are oh so different. It's all multiple choice and all questions have 4 options (A, B, C, D). But on so many of these things, 2 or 3 of the answers are correct. But only one is right. It's like seeing this:

4 + 1 =
A) 3 + 2
B) 5
C) 6 - 1
D) Florida

What's the answer? Why C, of course. Why? Beats me. It all seems to depend on what hallucinogenic drug the question maker was on when he came up with it. So, I don't know if I passed or not. I'll find out in 2 weeks.

In the meantime, my golf addiction is really taking over big-time. I'd play 36 holes every day if I could find a way. *sigh* But my project at work is high pressure and the next 4 weeks are the culmination of it all. At the same time I'm actively interviewing elsewhere since I just don't know if I can go back to my old job in September - even though that's exactly what I just took that exam for.

Fooey. I obviously need to just be a MUCH better golfer.

Listen to the Dakona song I added today.

20 days to Warsaw.

Pride

Can you imagine just how fantastic relationships would be if we cared passionately about our beliefs but didn't care about being right all the time? I'm not sure how that could happen, but it sure would be nice.

What is it about pride that makes it so darn hard to put on a shelf? Particularly for us Christians. We talk about ways to battle lust. We talk about loving each other. We schedule time to study the Word. But all it takes is a simple conversation for our dander to get up and suddenly nothing else in the world matters except being right. It only seems to take about 5 minutes for "Really? Well we belive that..." to go to "... and that's what God really meant and if you don't believe that then I hope you like it in HELL!"

*sigh*

I think I'll add some Kutless to the music player today.

Radial Angel - Luring the folks from kutlessrocks.com

Just an update to the blog template. Thanks to my friends John and Tim, I managed to add a music player to the blog page. Happiness!

This update is an unashamed lure of my friends at www.kutlessrocks.com to my blog. I posted a thread over there touting Radial Angel as a cool band, so I had to put some music up as evidence.

So, no more Today's Music with a single song embedded into the page code. Now I'll just add songs to the RadioBlog player and switch which one starts playing by default.

For now, I have 2 (or 3 if I get it loaded) Radial Angel songs. Enjoy.

There Is No Strength Without Pain

(Today's Music: Photograph by 12 Stones)

Lesson Five: There Is No Strength Without Pain

This one is quite familiar to most. This lesson is more succinctly quoted as "No Pain, No Gain." Similar to the previous lesson, this one just further punctuates the point that it's really the hardships in our lives that define who we are.

We've almost reached the end of the basketball season for my boys. Over the course of the season they (well, some of them anyway) have finally gotten it through their heads that it's going to take work, work that hurts, if they want to achieve the strength and endurance they will need to win. Sometimes that pain is physical, sometimes it's not. We held practices over Christmas break, for example. That was psychologically painful to many of them, but it meant that when they came back in January, they hadn't lost their edge. It was clearly worth it to them then and they have, so far, gone undefeated in January.

I've seen one movie that got this right. Star Trek V. The movie sucked, but they got this right. For those of you who don't remember, the focus of the movie is a half brother of Spock's that has ability to reach into people's minds, pull out their biggest fear, make them face it, then absorb their pain. This liberates these people and makes them fiercely loyal to him. He then steals the Enterprise in a quest to find where God lives (Voyage of the Dawn Treader, anyone?). Anyway, when Dr. McCoy tries to convince Captain Kirk to take the crazy Vulcan up on his offer, Kirk responds, "Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!" Regrettably, perhaps the only good thing about Star Trek V.

I know. Star Trek quotes. I'm not only a geek, I'm an old geek.

The lesson is simple: if you want something, you're going to have to work for it.

We had a player last year who was phenomenal. He was, and possibly will be, the best 8th grade basketball player I've ever seen. We'll call him Timmy. Timmy routinely scored over 30 points per game. He could dribble and shoot and there was often no need for the coach because Timmy already knew more than the coach. Not that he was prideful and arrogant. Quite the opposite. He was confident, but not cocky. He was also a huge crutch for the team. There were some other really talented boys on this team, but they had no reason to work. We didn't have a team. We had the Timmy show with 4 accompanying custodians to try to clean things up when Timmy occasionally missed a shot or was sitting on the bench for a rest. We had a guard who launched ill-advised 3-pointers (that rarely went in) and who never learned what it meant to be a leader because he never had to be. He never had to endure the pain of pushing his pride aside for the sake of the team because Timmy bore that burden. We had a forward who was, by nature, a hard worker and truly had a Jesus heart. But he, too, never had to step up and lead. He worked hard, but really only for himself. Again, Timmy bore the burder of leading the team. Timmy took the pain of the one loss we had when he played and grew stronger for it, as much as he could gain strength when playing for coaches that knew less about basketball than he.

And maybe that's where this is leading. There are really two kinds of pain: physical pain and psychological (emotional) pain. At some point, athletes learn that the physical kind is much less disturbing than the psychological. It hurts less to be tired with aching muscles than it does to have failed in your weakness and to have let your team down. And so they run harder and learn more so that when it comes time to perform they are ready. They can stand in strength and declare "Not Today!" and "It Doesn't Matter!" and "Finish It!" Or they can say those same three things while sitting in defeat and those things mean something very different.

You endure the pain to gain strength.
You face failure to grow and don't fear failure.
You never stop until you're finished.
You dismiss past failure or looming obstacles as irrelevant and focus on the now.
You adopt an attitude of success that leaves no room for failure.

It's really got nothing to do with basketball. But it has direct relevance to basketball because it applies to any athlete in any sport. But it's not about sports. Yet it has direct relevance to sports because it applies to everything in life.

Think it. Do it. Finish it. Learn from it. Work at it.

Make Jesus proud.