Wonderful Feelings

There’s something about Opening Day in the Major Leagues that makes me love baseball. Maybe it’s the fact that I once played, and would still love to play, or maybe its when you crack open the old baseball card collection to see if you have  the rookie card of some new guy on your favorite team. Some of it is the appeal of the clean slate and new hope for your team to be top dog in their division. Whatever it is, its magical. For myself, the magic arrived with the Houston Astros debuting as an A.L. team. This year we got a new owner, a new manager, and very much so an entirely new team. I know I have none of the new guys ball cards, but I went to go check out my stash and see if I had Bo Porter’s card.

When I cracked the book, the long neglected pages stuck together. Dust billowed out as it does here in West Texas when you leave things abandoned for too long. Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio and the 1998 Astros glistened back at me with their gold colored lettering and black letter print. It reawakened that old feeling of walking up to the Astrodome with my parents and sister. Listening to the excited crowd chatter about the game, where their seats were, and who the starting pitcher for the night was. The peddlers carried their wears shouting out “Programs, get your programs! Right here!” I remember sitting in line waiting to get the newest set of baseball cards and souvenirs from them as well. We all lined up at the gates, my sister and I probably impatiently waiting and asking a hundred times if they had opened the gates yet, and descending down to the entrance of the stadium. We walked and we walked, never seeing the field, until the moment which we finally emerged to see one of God’s greatest creations. It was like for two seconds time stood still, as the crowd wandering about us filled their seats and made pregame preparations.

Then that gave way to a new era, one that had the old train station converted into a ballpark, yet left the old train station’s entrance intact. One that saw Orbit die, and come back, and just like Orbit did, maybe this will be the Astros year to come back as well.

Needless to say, wonderful feelings abound when it is Opening Day.

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In regards to the name above, no I am not talking about the city in Texas, and if I were you would have already moved on to another blog. Today I talk about nothing in particular. this might be a meandering post, so forgive me if we start off on talking about geo-politics and then end up talking about soap.

So I created one of those Cigar Box Guitars. Yeah total beast up in here y’all. Saying that i could play it would be a lie, although I do a great rendition of “Smoke on the Water” with it. I would totally post a video of it if WordPress allowed me to post videos on the free version of WordPress. Us redneck hipsters just can’t afford 99 dollars a month for a blog. Hell I can’t even figure out how the government pays for all them democrat political posters they got up in here. I mean how did they get enough entitlements to even own WIFI and a computer anyways?

Anyways it only cost me about oh say 3 years of my life, and 60 bucks all together, but that guitar would put chest hair on a skinned coon any day of the week.

I got a compliment this week. My teacher told me that I write like I talk, I told her that nobody had ever said that to me. Then she told me that your not supposed to do that, because formal papers don’t allow for the use of the word y’all religiously.

God knows me so well that when he wants me to perform miracles, he sends hot women to ask me to perform them. This week I cleaned my car.

If you got any good original one-liners post em in the comments section, and feel free to spell stuff wrong, I don’t give a damn!

A Poem

As this moon rises
Another soon will set,
The darkness that encompasses

the sun will  soon repress,

The most endless night will end

At the dark before the morn,
So close your eyes and I will help you find the light after the storm.

All this falseness that you follow,
Is as the moon shines overhead,
it’s not the right light I sent to save
the living amongst the dead.

See as the sun shines in the sky,
There is only one of me,
there are many stars that shine but aren’t the one true Trinity.

Another Untitled Poem

I see it standing there,
Great and big and strong,
It’ll leave me wondering where
Where did I go wrong?

It’s the product of my fear,
The pride that holds me tight,
It’s the whisper in my ear
saying a long goodnight,

Tear down these walls
Brick by brick,
Reveal the beauty of the lamb through the thick,
behind these walls
lay best made plans,
just remember he’s got everything in his hands.

Where do I go?

Can you hear?

I the light you gave and stumbled over fear,

what do I do,

Can’t you see,

I want to be with Jesus help me please

I see your pain,

I want your ear,

will you listen or ignore me, let me near

I understand

the pain inside

I saw myself was crucified….

Tear down your walls
Brick by brick
Reveal the beauty of the lamb
Through the thick
Behind these walls
Lay best made plans
Just remember I’ve got
everything in my hands

The Love Of A Father

This is a great story. It’s one of my favorites. This is the story of what some would call an adventure.

This past weekend, I went to Denton, TX with some friends to go to a retreat up there at Camp Copass. Now let me back it up a little here because the story doesn’t start there, it starts a few weeks back.

I am one of those people that will jump blindly into really scary situations,and will sometimes unkowingly do that, and basically that’s when I got a job in  November. I work with a few pretty messed up kids, their dad’s are gone, or the family is split, and in some cases, I am the male that they have most contact with. That’s part one. Part two is this conference gets close, and I don’t want to go. But the people who are going are constantly presuring me to go. They’re saying things like “We’ll pay right now if you will pay us whenever you can! You should definitely go!” I told them “No! I don’t have enough money!” And they kept at it.

Here’s part 3. Now all these different parts are going to combine into different sections of the weekend, and different take-aways from the conference, but just let me get there first. When I go to work I sometimes stop by the chapel to check out and see what word God has for me that day. One day, after I had sinned rather badly, I prayed to him and asked him if I could be forgiven. He answered me when I woke up the next morning, with snowflakes flooding the field behind my dorm. This was as if to say “You are white as snow!” I went to work, I checked the verse of the day, and it was Jeremiah 33:1-3 which speaks of how the Lord, the creator of the earth mind you, came to Jeremiah when he was in bondage and said “Ask me, and I will show you great and unsearchable things that you do not know.” I had been lead to that verse by a feeling. A feeling. So I visited everyday for about a week, and the few times I visited that place, the things I read about, were actually not in the bible, I was guided to the wall to look at the prayer guide.

Now, tensions mount at work, as kids get further and further into their struggles, and come further and further out of them at the same time, the guys push harder.  I find out that the main speech is going to a three part sermon series called “The Love Of The Father” I told myself, “Well, I think I should go, but I still don’t want to, but that’s exactly what I need to go there for. So I can be more father-like to those kids up at work.” I was legitimately scared to go to this bible thing, not having enough money was just a cover to try and hide under. I became a stress ball for about 2 weeks. I was so scared that they were going to force feed me bible verses, cram them down my throat, make me read the bible so much that I wouldn’t pick up a bible for another year. But they cracked me. I would have to pay them guys back. That got even more stress on my back.

I looked at the online registration form and one of the other things than the main speech was workshop time, and we could choose between prayer, discipleship, and life after college. Because of the chapel, I signed up for the prayer one.

To add on to that stress, I watched another sermon with 2 friends of mine, about how kids turn gay, and as it turns out, it’s because they’re sensitive, and dad isn’t he also doesn’t know how to deal with a kid like that. For a non-sensitive child its all good with them just to chill with their dad and watch TV. For a sensitive little guy, they need extra special attention. In fact I believe the guy said the three A’s:

Attention: eye to eye contact with meaningful conversation,

Affection: Yes it is manly to give out some hugs, just to the right people.

Affirmation: “Good job son!” Is actually good enough encouragement.

Anyways, he said that kids will start to look at guys differently through a series of chain reactions that directly corellate with the absence of all three of those above listed things from father. Then he proceeded to explain that for single moms the church is the best place for that boy of hers to find a father figure. So I said “sounds like I have a bit of a Job to do…”

Then Friday came. We left for Denton, and got there safely. Our speaker (named Eddie Broussard) delivered one of the most memorable sermons I have ever heard. My favorite point of his that night was “God was running around the rings of saturn with his son Jesus, thinking about you…… He’s gone so deep that ya know, its like he’s doin a 360 degree dunk while puttin tha ball between his legs and windmillin while he’s blowin his nose! That’s how much God can do!”

I realized that night, that I didn’t have to be a dad for these kids, but I do need to show the Love Of The Father, and exemplify myself as a man of God that will be beside them in their so far young walk with Christ. I will show the three A’s to all, but I will not carry the burden of being their father, because their Father in heaven wants to love on them, and he wants to do it through me!

I also realized that if the first night was that great, then I had a great group of loving people to be around and I was so glad that I went. All those worries that I had, all the stressing out, all the lies were knocked out that night, and that great burden of being a fatherly figure vanished, the weight floated off of my shoulders like angels were carrying it off and tossing it aside.

I was in store for a great weekend! There’ll be more tomorrow!

I Haven’t Done One Of These In A While-

Well its been a while I have had a not serious post, so let’s get on with it! (Insert Monty Python’s annoying crowd of knights and extras yelling “YES! GET ON WITH IT!”) So one day my best friend and I were being stupid and we decided that (more like I decided) that it would be a great idea to take our lives and put them into my own hands and drive in reverse all the way to my girlfriend’s dorm!

So we get into the car and of course I didn’t tell my friend that I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to do this, or else he would have done what any other sane person in this world would have done. That means he would’ve walked to the dorm, but now he’s stuck with a crazy lunatic that’s trying to reenact the movie scene in Cars where Mater is showing off what he can do with his rear and side view mirrors.

Well this Mater can’t drive backwards at all, in fact on the very first street we drove down, I believe I came within an inch of hitting three different cars, on opposite sides of the road. Now thank the good Lord they were parked on this residential street. The next street that we came to is busy by Canyon standards, and by far the busiest street at the College I currently attend.

  So we made it onto the busiest street on campus. Left turns in reverse are no small feat. Well everybody and their oversized genetically enhanced hunting dog drives a truck out in West Texas except for me. I drive a nice little puny car that has a car alarm that mule deer sit and laugh at when their about two feet away from it. In fact I think sometimes they hit my car just for laughs. No I have not had a car accident, but my car alarm has gone off for unexplained reasons. Yes I think Mule Deer have found a way to sort of ding-dong-ditch my car…. anyways back on subject now…. So now there’s a gigantic Ford F-150 superdeluxe extended cab V8 Texas edition (yes it really does exists) that has emerged from a different dorm that we’ve just passed, being viewed in what you would normally consider the front of my car.

So my car really doesn’t go past 20 or so when in reverse, but the speed limit is 45. Not only does this truck not go around me, he rides my front bumper like a rollercoaster. My best friend is praying to Jesus to spare him, while I am laughing histerically trying to find lane markings on the ground to stay inside of. I stayed inside the lines like a 2 year old with a coloring sheet. A little time passes, and the driver of the truck decides that even though watching the guy in front of him fail at driving backwards is funny, it is dangerous, and the club is a whole lot more fun at this time of night than Canyon. So he speeds around me, and I pull into the girls’ dorm parking lot. My now very relieved best friend catches his breath, and we would never tell that story to my girlfriend, or to anyone else until this very point at which both of us consent to the dissemination of this information.

Moral to the story:

1.If I ever get drunk, don’t let me have the keys because I did that when I was sober!

2. There is something to be said for having fun, but do it responsibly.

Lastly for those who were questioning why I had my best friend in the car while I was going to get my girl, we were all going to go to Taco Bell or someplace like that. I offered to drive them backwards, but the answer was a rather blunt ” No! Why would you do that?” And my dreams were smashed and made into sharp objects so I could become emo and cut myself…. but no really I have scars on my arm, but they’re from my sister’s dog!

A little Peice of Heaven

Lots has gone down in my life in the past few weeks. “Lots? What’s lots?” You ask. It’s kinda personal, so I’ll have to leave you in the dark except for one part. Seems my favorite child in my mom’s class is close to death, but the amazing thing is he was supposed to die sometime last year. He was once again supposed to go down this Christmas, but it’s not going to happen, because God’s grace cures more than any chemo, any antibiotic, and he can bring back anything from the brink of death.

I was driving through Canyon, TX today, and I was looking at the dry creek bed that winds underneath Hunsley Hills road, and down below the busy railways of the BSNF railroad, down to Palo Duro Canyon, when this feeling came over me. Of course this feeling caused me to forget that I was
supposed to turn at the next street, but that feeling reaffirmed my belief that God has a plan for us. If he can shape the land we live in, if he did it for a reason, then how much does that prove that he loves us. He made the mountains to show us he can move us, the plains to give us food and clothes, the rolling hills to give us meat, the forests to give us shade and let all the animals have a place to live. Thank you God for your provision.

Hey Dad! Remember that? Well this one’s better!

Hey remember that time Steven said it was almost as if I had terret’s syndrome at the Casting Crowns concert? Well the pigskin revue yesterday was way more awesome!!!!

We had this gigantic pep rally for the football team today, and I got to take my shirt off and yell! It was quite fulfilling! My friends who are of the sort that raise their hands, clap, and sing during church, were looking at me as if I had elephants coming out of my ears! But the group I was with got 2nd place for being the most spirited organization in attendance, so it was absolutely and without a doubt worth it! Go Buffs! And Go Maroon Platoon!