Fall.. the most wondrous time of all..

It is the time I sit on my porch and listen to the sound of the wind as it rustles the leaves in my yard on it way to a place I have never been. The crispness in the air reminds me of the coming winter and with it the promise of spring. My two Irish setters, content with a summer spent on endless adventures in the woods, rest beside me and seem to understand how special a time this is.. I read Winnie the Pooh, yes a children’s book but one that reminds me I am still young and life is still mysterious and wondrous. I wait for the night to settle into the valley and tomorrow and its cares are a lifetime away..

Man, why is it that the life I write about is nothing like the one I live!! But fall is still a pretty cool time and I will be very surprised if this is not a momentous one in some way.. Even if it is spent in a petless apartment that just reminds me of the farm I grew up on, in that it is NOTHING like it! I don’t read Winnie the Pooh, but I will quote him for you…

If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. i'll always be with you.”

 

The strongholds of the impossible

Well the diet is over… Well kind of..

The part I can do on my own is over. I have gone 100 days on a liquid diet and all I have had during that time are 5 juice boxes of chocolate stuff (not sure what all is in there and I don’t want to know) and one meal bar a day.. 960 calories a day for 100 days and I have lost 65lbs. I now weight less then I have since probably 1989 or so.. That is the good news, but there is some bad..

I now transition to a phase where I eat one meal of 300 calories or less a day and one snack in addition to one of the meal bars and 3 of the juice boxes of chocolate concoction. This unfortunately is the bad news. Phase one was actually the easy part, it was the part I could do on my own without any help. As amazing as it sounds to be on a 960 calorie liquid diet for 100 days it really was not hard… When I got the mindset that I was going to go 12 weeks (I went a little longer) without eating what I wanted the rest kind of fell in place. But now the genie is out of the bottle and food is back in my life…

During this time I wanted this weight lose to be a God thing and to a degree I think it was. The ease with which I started the diet, and the relative ease which I maintained it, I truly think was a God thing. However because it was something I could do, there was NO relying on God to make it happen!! So it pretty much was something I just did.. He helped a TON, but not because I had the mindset that I needed him to do this..

Now I am at a crossroads. I ate (planned cheat) Monday night and after cheating last night (unplanned) I was struck with the fact that now that the genie is out I can no longer do this!!! I do not have what it takes to try and do this from here on out.. Food is too powerful and too frequently a sin for me to fight through this..

I have often thought that me being grotesquely obese was a spiritual issue and not a physical issue. There is an intertwining of sin and willpower with biology and diet. All of which has brought me to the impossible and the impossible is losing all the weight I should lose.. From the beginning of this diet the voice was “when will you fail”. Not when will you cheat, when will you have a relapse, but when will you fail. In every single attempt there has been some point when I have failed irrevocably..

The psychological principle of learned helplessness is incredibly powerful.. I have a whole list of things, girlfriend and weight being at the top, that have over the course of 20+ years have reached the point where they are truly impossible.. Not improbably, but impossible. I might hope or dream, or even plan but the reality is these and so many other things in my life have moved from the ledger column of hope and possibility to the column of the impossible. All of which in my personality creates a ton of self -resentment and loathing!! The thing is I am not so sure that this place I have arrived at is not right where God wants me.. (not the emotion self-loathing part of course) Bear with me as I explain..

I was in a car one night with a young man. A cute friend of mine had a humongous crush on him (almost as big as the one I had on her) and me and this guy were talking.. The cute girl was first and foremost my friend (plus I had concluded that I would never have a shot until after they dated. I knew they would date again, I just did not know when or its outcome) so I was trying to find out what he thought about her and try to encourage him to pursue her. They had dated and it had not ended well. She had no clue how he felt about her and he had no clue how she felt about him. In fact when he started talking about this amazing girl he could not get over I actually thought he was talking about someone besides my friend!! I told him something that night that I think impacted him.. He had said that this girl he had a crush on was an impossibility and so I told him I wanted nothing in my life that could be explained by who I was! I said that whether it was my wife, or my job, my ministry or whatever, I did not want it to be explainable by who I was, but that people were left with no other conclusion then this was a God thing!!! That I had X or had done X not out of who I was but out of who He is!!! She was the impossible in his life and in mine for that matter, and in many ways he was the impossible in her life. Luckily God is in the business of doing the impossible and they are now happily married and have been so for close to two years.. The statement I made to him now haunts me as the reality is nothing in my life is explainable by God other then the fact he has not beamed me up already because of my sin!

Several weeks ago my best friend was diagnosed with colon cancer.. One of the very scary cancers depending on when it is found. I texted him this versus the day we all found our.

"With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

It is a good versus and one which is just as appropriate for me at this crossroads. Do I, as I transition this diet, learn to relay on God and let Him do this thing in me for His glory and purpose or do I reach the stronghold of impossibility and determine once again I have come to that point and failed.. Eleanor Roosevelt is famous for a quote and I paraphrase it often, she said “sometimes you must do the thing you cannot do”. I like to modify it to say “sometimes you must let God do the thing you cannot do”.

All I am left with in life that is important are the things which I cannot do.. All of the paths are blocked. There are no longer option or paths untested, just strongholds of the impossible down each one. I am left with figuring out how to let God overcome the ones that should be and letting go of the ones that should not be overcome. The other option is to continue to live in the crevices of mediocrity between the world of totally failure and the abundant life promised by Christ..

My only fear is that I have been here one to many times and the impossible in so many areas of my life, is simply impossible..

I guess I will see as I am desperate to catch some type of meaningful break.. A win of some sort that restores my faith in the impossible being overcome.. Or is faith truly faith if it is based on the tangible, maybe the heart of faith and the point God wants to reinforce is that faith is trusting and believing when there is nothing there to whisper “this could be”.

The meaning of life… or Infinity and Jelly Doughnuts

Okay, I will by someone a pizza if they can tell me what Infinity and Jelly Doughnuts is referencing… Ohhh wait superchick is the only one who reads this anyway and she would just Google it!! It is a reference to a Magnum PI episode.. Near the end of its run when it stopped being crappy and started being interesting again. It is a great episode and the only show episode I every remembered, from any series. It revolves around Mack this fat guy in the navy Magnum used to bribe with Jelly doughnuts.. In return he would give Magnum satellite photos and all kinds of covert stuff.. Never seemed believable until I stopped eating, now I understand!!!!!!

That was a whole paragraph about the title to this blog which has little to do with the blog.. I am the king of random!!! Well someone has to be..

I was denied something in life I have been thinking about lately. There is an interesting thing that happens a couple times in life. One is at the end of High School and the other is at the end of College. The world is full of possibilities. This is especially true for the newly minted graduate with degree in hand. What job to take, what city to live in what to do. For many it can be a little overwhelming and many because of it simply follow the path of least resistance and find a job where they are, or back home. Since I got kicked out of College my options were limited and I did not get to experience that.

This December assuming a flawless Fall semester I will have a degree, barley, but still a degree! Now I am not naïve enough to think the world will suddenly open up for me and the options will be endless. The reality is it is in General Studies and my GPA, assuming perfection will be a whopping 2.1!!! Enough to into grade school? Maybe depending on where.. The question is hat now!

Interesting and powerful question… As a guy I am expected to have a job that can provide for my family and depending on who you ask offer meaning and is something I like!!

The short answer is do what you enjoy doing, or follow God’s will or some combination of the two. That is a problematic answer as I do NOT know what God wants me to do and I am not sure about what I want to do! Now there is lots I would love to do! I would love nothing more than being able to teach at a college. This something used to be International Relations, now I am not so sure, Military History, Sociology who knows. The problem with this is it requires a PhD and 4 or 5 years full time as a student. It is kind of like Everest. Sure I would love to be on top of the highest point on earth, but I am not sure I want to pay the price to get there.

I know this is exactly opposite of what women want to here from a man. No woman ever says “I want a guy who has no clue what he wants to do or how he is going to get there”.. I have a whole rant about that, that I will save for later.

Counseling seems compelling and something I think I could be good at, but it seems less like something I should be doing with my life and more like something I do with friends..

So in the end I have no idea.. There is a fascinating psychological principle called tyranny of choice. It basically says the more choices we have when making a decision the less happy we are after making it. The less choices we have when making a decision the more happy we are after making it! Seems backwards, but it explains the success of arranged marriages and a host of other things. It is actually is verifiable in the lab, Google it sometime and read a little about it. I will be dealing with this tyranny for a while I guess until things work themselves out, or I get a clear idea of God’s direction in my life..

 

 

Hunger..

I am very hungry..

It is a gnawing thing.. Not just a feeling or a sensation but a thing..

Sometimes it is massive almost overwhelming, an all consuming thing… most times it is just there… waiting.. Like this Lion that is just waiting for something.. A slip, a failure, a moment of weakness, any opportunity to show it face and take over again.. Sounds like an addiction doesn’t it..

Been learning a lot about hunger. It has been 67 days since I ate a real meal. Sixty-seven days chocolate shakes and one meal bar a day.. Hunger is not a happy camper.. I have learned about physical hunger. Miss a couple shakes and my body reminds me that 960 calories a day is not much and you skip a third of it you pay for it. That is an easy hunger, I know a shake or meal bar and it will go away. There are other hungers more nefarious that lurk not in the stomach, but in the mind (sounds like a line from a book about a serial killer, but I am talking food).. Hungers that a 160 calorie shake do little to help, because it is not Pizza!!

It is amazing how powerful the sensation of need is!!! I need pizza and I know how to fix that need!!! If you car needs new wheels, ne paint won’t fix it. When you need pizza, 2 quarts of water and a diet shake won’t fix it either!! You can try, but it is futile! It will solve the physical hunger, but the need is still there.. Now this could break down into a whole blog about needs and maybe someday it will, but I am on a diet so this is about Pizza!! I mean food… Or hunger, or something!

So where was I.. Ohhh yea, in the dark recesses of the mind lingers nemeses, always watching always present. Freud called it the “id”, but he was wrong as it is far more primal and dark.. blah blah blah.. Yes, I like to hear the way I sound sometimes, insightful, deep, or something profound. The reality is I am just full of it LOL but I will shut up if you give me pizza!!!
So this could be very serious and I could talk about how hunger scares the #@$#% out of me.. How in general there is a lot of fear in my life right now.. Most of it surrounding failure..

So I have been on a diet for 67 days and have a long way to go… A very long way.. So I will wrestle with hunger for awhile longer before tossing it some pizza.. When I do I will wonder if in doing so I am letting something uncontrollable, back into the realm of reality..

Cancer, best friends and an amazing God

Time… Such an interesting thing.

Cancer… The C word.. It is a word that has been in my life for a very long time…

I found out my older brother had melanoma at Scout camp when my parents picked me up. We were supposed to be going on a family vacation instead my mom and brother flew to the Mayo clinic for options. Two years later it was my fatter and then two years after that it was back and would be terminal in my father.. Years later it would be the same cancer in my mother…

My life has been filled with the specter of cancer and often I have wondered not if I would get cancer but when and what type. There is a great scene from Sex and the City where they are talking at the café and the redhead is sick and she tells them she has been using the internet to try and find out what is wrong. The other girls were amazed and said “you can do that”. To which she responded “sure just type in your symptoms and wait for the word cancer to start flashing on the screen!!!” I am all too aware of this as it seems like every ache and pain has a potential cause linked to the C word.. The foods we eat and things we do either help prevent it or contribute to it.. We are bombarded by it.. We race for it, we have customized license plates, and ribbons for it. We celebrate the 5 year milestone of people who have had it like a conformation ceremony of being free from it..

I have always expected I would get cancer. So last week came as a shock when my best friend called me.. He was at the hospital and the routine procedure which no one expected to find anything found colon cancer. That was Thursday. Surgery was Friday and today (Wednesday) he is home.. Less then a week and you go from thinking everything is fine, to finding out you have cancer, to finding out they were able to remove it, to finding out it had not spread.. The news has been great and it could not have occurred in a better way. God has been faithful, He has shown His provision and He has answered countless prayers!! It was a whirlwind week and one I never expected to be in the position of the best friend.. A week I had always assumed would happen to me not Lance…

All men are romantic once!!!

I did a blog about The worst dating experience EVER!! And some of the comments got me thinking about something that I have thought for awhile!! In it I talked about a stupid idea (the digital equivalent of writing a girl's name on a water tower) inspired by the desire to be romantic! I think ALL men at some point have tried to be romantic! Now conventional wisdom is that some men are and some aren’t, but I don’t buy it!! I think all men ARE, some just stick with it..

I think what happens is most men are not naturally good at romance. It is a learned trait. Unfortunately what happens is many try and in doing so do something silly or stupid, bad poetry, a web page, you know your basic stuff!! And it bombs and we feel foolish! As a guy there are few things in this world worse then felling foolish! So we back off the next time. We withdraw a little, we become more cautious!

Now for guy A who is not a natural romantic often this means he STOPS being romantic. He learns that there are enough women in this world attracted to emotionally distant guys in the belief that when he meets the “right” girl he will become romantic and that he does not have to be romantic to date and marry. He realizes if romance means risking being made a fool, well romance is just not worth it!! A note to the ladies, romance is a function of personality NOT love!! Love is the playground of the romantic NOT its creator.

Now guy B who is naturally a little bit more romantic (or emotionally desperate) backs off a little. He leans to temper his romantic impulses. He learns every romantic idea is not necessarily a good idea. There are fewer web sites, less flowers on the first date, he does not send her mom flowers (I think I am going to have to give up on that one, but guys when you get married send your mother in-law flowers on your wife’s birthday) you get the picture. Now sometimes this is an amazing thing. Guy B leans the art of romance, he delves into it and studies it and he becomes dang good at it. He realizes love and romance are worth the risk of being made a fool, but he is still cautious and guarded.

I wonder if any of us love as freely and as foolishly as we did that first time. Somewhere back in our adolescent past when we were naïve to the certainties of it all. When we were carried away by the wonder and newness of romance and love, to find at its destination something different then what we expected.

So to the type A guys.. It is worth it, she is worth it. Life is about taking risks and romance and love are worth the risk!! To the type B guys, put the spay paint down, climb down off the water tower and take your time.. Just because you can or your want to does not mean you should!!!

Hey Eve where did you get the apple?

I was going home the other night and as I was walking up the stairs I was thinking to myself how it would have been nice to come home to someone. To have someone there on the other side of the door who was looking forward to me coming home… Not something I often ponder, but at that moment the absence was striking.

Then as I contemplated writing this I was struck by the reality of it all.. How many men walk up stairs each day dreading the thing on the other side of the door? How many women instead of looking forward to their husband coming home are dreading it?

Amazing how in our mind the other person is always just what we want and we are just what they want.. The sex is always great, the romance is always tender, the environment is always nurturing and the other offers us unconditional love and a safe haven to love in return..

I have been wondering what it was like for Adam and Eve.. No taint, no expectations, no delusions, no baggage and no foreknowledge. Just the mystery that is the other person and the time to discover in a thousand moments the amazing gift that they are….

How radically different from the practical application of marriage in a fallen world. Still the call to be married, each hoping that theirs will be different, that they are different!! Each expecting a relationship filled with Love, hope and passion. All of those needs we assume marriage is capable of satiating.. Like a man dying of thirst we lunge into the oasis of marriage desperate to drink, to be quenched, to live, to experience that which we have dreamed and longed for all of those dry days…

Do singles somehow naturally, or instinctively, long for a relationship that only existed that first time? Were all of us created to long for that which only Adam and Eve had before the fall? Were my musings, as I walked those stairs, nothing more then an extension of that innate longing? Is it nothing more then hope reaching out for something to provide us that with which we are missing or perceive to be missing?

Or is it all just Vane Ramblings.. I will leave it all to someone else to figure out…