My friends wife left him several months ago. He had it all, a wonderful home, and a great family and all those wonderful assets that one hopes to acquire in the marriage. It all came crashing down. He of course had "no idea" how such a thing could happen... "The bills were paid, there was always food in the house, she had everything she wanted...I just dont get it" was his reply.
About a week later I ran into my friends future ex-wife and I asked her "what happened?"..... I was stunned by her reply; "Facebook" she said with a disgusted look on her face.
I confess I did not understand or believe her at first, but as she wove a tale of farmville, zynga poker, mafia wars, and old friends from the past that were continually popping up....she said she lost her lover to facebook. Her husband had gone from 30 minutes a day at the start, to being on facebook 6-10 hours a day 7 days a week. He no longer had time for her or the kids. How he ate breakfast, lunch. dinner in front of the computer...she would roll over in the middle of the night and he would not be in bed..."He would be in facebook" she stated.
The end came she said when it was time to take the kids to soccor one weekend morning. She said her husband had been up all night on facebook, and when she tried to rouse him he stated he thought he had the flu and was going to stay home in bed. Halfway to the soccer field she realized she had forgotten the teams drinks that she was to bring that weekend, so she turned around and headed home to get them... and of course when she walked in the house, there was her husband drinking coffee and on facebook chatting it up with an old "female aqcuaintance while playing mafia wars". There were no flu symptoms anymore...and she said she just snapped.
She said he made a weak attempt to reconcile...but when she told him she was sick of facebook he quickly changed the subject and ended the conversation...and this told her she needed to move on. It was a sad conversation...
They both have good attorneys now...and things are slated for court...and Im sitting here looking at how my time on the computer has increased since facebook came along. Not alot, but subtly it has been increasing. My wife and I always watch wheel of fortune together.... but last night I was on facebook, and when she called me to tell me come watch it... I replied back, "In a minute honey" and got there 25 minutes later...
If theres any moral to this story its probably "Dont do drugs!" My friend is addicted to facebook, it has cost him alot, and he cant see it because hes still busy doing facebook 12-18 hours a day...but when I talk to him he says hes hardly on it anymore. The similarities of my friends life, and a drug addicted person in denial are remarkable.
I guess an irony in this whole story is his future ex-wife who now refuses to even talk to him. She has moved on with her life and even met a wonderful new man who she says loves her and is good to her kids...and where did she meet him.... you guessed it....facebook. peace
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Feathers and gold dust
I have become somewhat of a poor attender to church lately. Being committed to a church that shut down has left me somewhat unattatched and disappointed. I went to church last night though, and it was great just to worship and be in His presence again. The message was great, the pastor of this church is an amazing individual whom I am truly inspired by. His view of God is very simplistic in nature. If I had to define it..."God is awesome and loves His kids, so much that He wants to be very involved in their lives". It keeps my focus on the right level, or shall I say it returns my focus to the right place.
It was the first time I have been back to church in a month. Apparently I have missed out on some things. I guess last week while in church a feather floated down from the ceiling. And he told of a persons legs being suddenly coated in gold dust. So coated in fact that when he touched that persons legs with his hands...his hand was coated in gold dust too.
I know...the feather could have been left by a bird who somehow flew in the building, and somehow it got stuck in the ceiling, and somehow the drummer dislodged it with sound waves while playing the drums...and the gold dust was a chemical reaction when the left over ivory soap never got completely rinsed off his legs, and came into contact with an unknown chemical that somehow came into contact with this person just as they were praying for someone else's healing.
Could it be that God was leaving little markers...almost like bread crumbs along the path saying your on the right track. My intellectual friends have already rationalized it away...but something inside me has been stirred. The child in me is getting giddy again. I keep sending this inner child to his room, scolding him for daring to believe in such nonsense, partially because my intellectual ascent has no room for such foolishness...because God has been absent so long, why would He show up now...and in such a preposterous way...come on man get real!
But this inner kid wont stay in his room...I can see him; eyes wide open and yelling "Gooooooooooo God!" Believing for the miraculous, expectantly looking for his Daddy to burst through the front door and make everything wonderful again. I dont want to be naive...I just want my Daddy.
It was the first time I have been back to church in a month. Apparently I have missed out on some things. I guess last week while in church a feather floated down from the ceiling. And he told of a persons legs being suddenly coated in gold dust. So coated in fact that when he touched that persons legs with his hands...his hand was coated in gold dust too.
I know...the feather could have been left by a bird who somehow flew in the building, and somehow it got stuck in the ceiling, and somehow the drummer dislodged it with sound waves while playing the drums...and the gold dust was a chemical reaction when the left over ivory soap never got completely rinsed off his legs, and came into contact with an unknown chemical that somehow came into contact with this person just as they were praying for someone else's healing.
Could it be that God was leaving little markers...almost like bread crumbs along the path saying your on the right track. My intellectual friends have already rationalized it away...but something inside me has been stirred. The child in me is getting giddy again. I keep sending this inner child to his room, scolding him for daring to believe in such nonsense, partially because my intellectual ascent has no room for such foolishness...because God has been absent so long, why would He show up now...and in such a preposterous way...come on man get real!
But this inner kid wont stay in his room...I can see him; eyes wide open and yelling "Gooooooooooo God!" Believing for the miraculous, expectantly looking for his Daddy to burst through the front door and make everything wonderful again. I dont want to be naive...I just want my Daddy.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Whats wrong with me?
One of my wonderful acquaintances asked me that. Being the simpleton that I am sometimes, I began to rattle off what I perceived the answer to that question to be. Us males are generally "fixers", and so we find in a question like that an opportunity to fix. What I did not perceive was the asker didnt want to know what was truly broken about them, and so my earnest attempt to make things better backfired into a small atomic reaction that to this day is still having fallout. But it got me thinking...Whats wrong with ME!
I have come to the conclusion that my mind is much more deceptive than I realized. It fools others at times, but it seems to fool me all the time. It hides motives, steers me from the truth, rationalizes perfectly good behavior into shameful actions I dare not speak of. It teaches me to hide, to lie, to embelish, and generally do things I shouldnt do...all under the guise of I need to do them to maintain the facade of what I think I should be doing to keep society happy.
Now heres the deal...when someone points out a fault with me... they must be right because why do I get so defensive and offended? You see deep down inside, I know im not right....which is why I try so hard to hide it from you! Oh wretched man that I am... what do I do to escape this mental prison. Because my fear is I am only aware of about 10% of whats wrong....this earthly mind is hiding 90% from me and has built large walls of self protection and rationalization as strong defenses to keep it that way.
So Im going to give up self protection for 40 days. Im going to exclude rationalization for the next 40 days. Im going to open up my ears to hear what is wrong about me, without building a mental attack to defend it.
If you read this...you would be doing me a kindness to help me with the defects of character I suffer from. I am asking others I know to share with me anything they can think that might make me a better person. I would consider it an act of love on ones part to be honest with me. I can only promise I will listen, and my only response to what is written or said will be "thank you...I will look at that". You see Im a person who needs help, far from being self sufficient, I need people. I probably suffer delusions about myself in this world several times a day. Think about it this way.... if you were walking around with something hanging out of your nose, and you didnt know it was there....wouldn't you want someone to tell you before you went through the whole day like that? I'm looking for someone to hand me a tissue, and give me the high sign. Peace......
I have come to the conclusion that my mind is much more deceptive than I realized. It fools others at times, but it seems to fool me all the time. It hides motives, steers me from the truth, rationalizes perfectly good behavior into shameful actions I dare not speak of. It teaches me to hide, to lie, to embelish, and generally do things I shouldnt do...all under the guise of I need to do them to maintain the facade of what I think I should be doing to keep society happy.
Now heres the deal...when someone points out a fault with me... they must be right because why do I get so defensive and offended? You see deep down inside, I know im not right....which is why I try so hard to hide it from you! Oh wretched man that I am... what do I do to escape this mental prison. Because my fear is I am only aware of about 10% of whats wrong....this earthly mind is hiding 90% from me and has built large walls of self protection and rationalization as strong defenses to keep it that way.
So Im going to give up self protection for 40 days. Im going to exclude rationalization for the next 40 days. Im going to open up my ears to hear what is wrong about me, without building a mental attack to defend it.
If you read this...you would be doing me a kindness to help me with the defects of character I suffer from. I am asking others I know to share with me anything they can think that might make me a better person. I would consider it an act of love on ones part to be honest with me. I can only promise I will listen, and my only response to what is written or said will be "thank you...I will look at that". You see Im a person who needs help, far from being self sufficient, I need people. I probably suffer delusions about myself in this world several times a day. Think about it this way.... if you were walking around with something hanging out of your nose, and you didnt know it was there....wouldn't you want someone to tell you before you went through the whole day like that? I'm looking for someone to hand me a tissue, and give me the high sign. Peace......
Thursday, October 8, 2009
So Long Whistling Bill
I lost a buddy this week. He and I had a different kind of relationship. I didnt meet him until he was overtaken by alzheimers disease. He never talked, just whistled and looked at me with bewildering confused eyes.
Whistling Bill had been quite successful in life. A successful businessman, family man, and very prominent in the community. He was a man of importance at one time, and from what I was told "a good man". I would often times find Bill walking the hallways, not knowing where he was, or where he was going, just walking and whistling as he went on his way. I would stop him and ask him how he was doing, but he would just look off in the distance with faded eyes as if I didnt exist in his world. This went one for over a year.
And then God gave me a gift. One day as I was sharing about God, I noticed Bill was looking at me. His eyes were following me. He wasn't whistling and there was an attention in his eyes I had never seen before. He was nodding and even smiling as I spoke, and for that moment in time I knew he heard me and understood what I was saying. When it came time to pray he even bowed his head to pray, and I even placed my hand on his head and asked God to heal him of that awful disease...fulling expecting God to do it. When I finished praying he looked at me with moist eyes and nodded...and in that look I saw something. I saw all the years he had lived, all the trials he had been through, all the pain he was living with now, and the acknowledgement that God was his hope. I know he and I had both been given a gift, if only for a few moments, it was a gift.
I went to talk to him a few minutes later. The clouded look had returned in his eyes...he didnt see me anymore and he just struggled to his feet and headed down the hallway...whistling as he went. Everytime I saw him after that day I would look to see if there was recognition in his eyes, but it never came again...and I found out he had passed away early this week.
So Bill, this post is for you...you are the first person I loved that never spoke a word to me, yet taught me so much. I applaud your courage, and your life, and my greatest joy is that I will see you again, and when I do.... we can talk. And when were done talking...maybe you could whistle a tune for old times sake. Good bye my dear friend.
Whistling Bill had been quite successful in life. A successful businessman, family man, and very prominent in the community. He was a man of importance at one time, and from what I was told "a good man". I would often times find Bill walking the hallways, not knowing where he was, or where he was going, just walking and whistling as he went on his way. I would stop him and ask him how he was doing, but he would just look off in the distance with faded eyes as if I didnt exist in his world. This went one for over a year.
And then God gave me a gift. One day as I was sharing about God, I noticed Bill was looking at me. His eyes were following me. He wasn't whistling and there was an attention in his eyes I had never seen before. He was nodding and even smiling as I spoke, and for that moment in time I knew he heard me and understood what I was saying. When it came time to pray he even bowed his head to pray, and I even placed my hand on his head and asked God to heal him of that awful disease...fulling expecting God to do it. When I finished praying he looked at me with moist eyes and nodded...and in that look I saw something. I saw all the years he had lived, all the trials he had been through, all the pain he was living with now, and the acknowledgement that God was his hope. I know he and I had both been given a gift, if only for a few moments, it was a gift.
I went to talk to him a few minutes later. The clouded look had returned in his eyes...he didnt see me anymore and he just struggled to his feet and headed down the hallway...whistling as he went. Everytime I saw him after that day I would look to see if there was recognition in his eyes, but it never came again...and I found out he had passed away early this week.
So Bill, this post is for you...you are the first person I loved that never spoke a word to me, yet taught me so much. I applaud your courage, and your life, and my greatest joy is that I will see you again, and when I do.... we can talk. And when were done talking...maybe you could whistle a tune for old times sake. Good bye my dear friend.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Eyes to see
There seems to be a thing happening to many of my christian friends lately. I woke up this morning to a show about a lady who wrote a book. The name of the book was "my divorce from God". She was a lifelong believer who trusted God until Sept 11, 2001. Then the towers in New York came down, and with them came down her faith in God. "How could God let that happen?" was the question that began the road to her deserting her faith. She had started down the road of "losing heart" and had walked the road to its dead end. She had abandoned her faith for a lie, and I realized her faith was conditional. God was not allowed to step outside the box of her expectations, and when He had....she fired Him.
It was a wake up call for me. I have come across alot of "faith frustrated" friends lately and if im honest...I have felt that way too. "for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternel glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2cor 4:17-18. God is unseen, but that doesnt mean He isnt behind the scenes at work diligently bringing about His will and ultimately good in our life at the same time. But we see it with earthly eyes, and lose our heavenly vision when we make faithless judgements about what we see.
If God could not do this He wouldn't be God....all He asks is we believe long enough to finish the race....without letting anyone cut in on our faith. Peace...
It was a wake up call for me. I have come across alot of "faith frustrated" friends lately and if im honest...I have felt that way too. "for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternel glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2cor 4:17-18. God is unseen, but that doesnt mean He isnt behind the scenes at work diligently bringing about His will and ultimately good in our life at the same time. But we see it with earthly eyes, and lose our heavenly vision when we make faithless judgements about what we see.
If God could not do this He wouldn't be God....all He asks is we believe long enough to finish the race....without letting anyone cut in on our faith. Peace...
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