Read All About It

Hey there ladies and gents! I don't have a whole lot to say right now but I just want to tell you all about a really great book I'm reading. It's called Letters from a Sceptic by Greg Boyd. It's a series of letters written between a father and son. Greg, the son, is a 14-year Christian and his father is an Atheist. The father (whose name escapes me) is writing to his son, asking him questions about his faith and His God. My own religious background may invalidate my recomendation of the book to some, but I think everyone should read it, and by everyone I mean Christians, Atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and everyone else. If you are of the Christian faith, then this book will strengthen that faith. It has mine and I'm 50 pages into it. If you are of another faith and you live in the United States then you are, more than likely, being faced with Christian beliefs and rhetoric more often than you would like. I don't like it half the time. I'm not suggesting this book to make try to turn you into a TV-evangelical-watching, Hail-Mary-saying, Amening Christian. That's not my job. I'm recomending it because 1) I have found it interesting, 2) I want you to understand what's really going on in our crazy Christians heads when we talk about Jesus, and 3) I want you to have answers to give to people when they ask you why you don't believe the same as them. I'm not trying to "save" you, as many of my label-sharing friends like to do. I live in the Bible Belt, I get it. I'm sure some of my counter parts would disagree with my last point but, frankly, I don't care. But that's not what I'm talking about right now. So, everyone go check out Letters from a Sceptic by Greg Boyd! It's fantastic :)

Here's ya a bit o' scripture: "The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

Making a list

Now that the ship of 2010 has left the harbor, I'm making a list of stuff I want to accomplish in 2011. I don't know if I would call these new years resolutions, just a few things I think would be cool to do this year.

• Participate in National Novel Writing Month.
• Run at least two half marathons and one full.
• Participate in the Warrior Dash. There is a race in Manchester, Tennessee this year, which is not too far from home! Here's a video of the midwest course.
• Spend time with friends I rarely see but are only a couple of hours away from me.
• Get my drivers liscense.
• Put guitar chords with the songs I've written so far.
• Be a better friend, sister, daughter, and student.
• Do more mission projects.
• Learn to play piano.
• Figure out my relationship with Jesus.

I have a feeling this list is going to change as the year goes on, but this is what I've got for now!

The F-word

This weekend I went on a retreat with my church that was also attended by around 1800 other youth from the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church. That's not what this blog post is about, though. This post is about faith. Right now, mine is a little crazy. Because there are probably two people who actually read this thing (including me), I'll share it. I've been struggling to figure out why God would allow me, a disgusting, messed up, terrible person, into His kingdom. That question is becoming over-shadowed by another, much more distressing inquiry: Why does a God, so perfect and strong, love me? I've been trying so hard to figure it out. It just makes no sense to me at all. He has no reason to love me, and I certainly don't make it easy. Why would He put Himself through that? I've spent my entire life in the church being told that Jesus loves me. I believe He loves other people, people who haven't screwed up as much as I have. Those are good people, but I don't think I fall in that category. A part of me doesn't want Him to love me, doesn't want Him to give me that because I am so undeserving of it. I know, all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God but I just don't get it. He shouldn't love me.

Sorry if you just read that. It's not the most light-hearted thing in the world.

You've got a friend in me

Tonight is a good night. Nothing you would call spectacular happened, but it is a good night. Tonight I am writing about one of my favorite people in the world, Rachael Mogle. Rachael is a special person. She's eight years older than me but is one of my very best friends. She is probably the most loving person I've ever meet. Everything she does radiates with the love of the Lord. Oh and she's really funny too. I'm am so blessed to have her in my life, for sure.

Here's a list of a few reasons Rachael is awesome:

• The Lord's love pours out of her all the time.
• She has been through so much, yet has still come out of it all a wonderful person.
• She has such a heart for children, it's the sweetest thing I've ever seen.
• She puts up with me! (that takes talent!)
• She's a great writer!
• I learn from her all the time.

And the list goes on and on. This post is doing no justice to her at all. I'll have to do better next time.

A verse: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." Romans 12:15. I'm obsessed with this verse.

Speechless

This has been a crazy week. We haven't gone to school at all because of the snow and ice that seems to have taken over the Southeast. Our biggest snow months here are usually February or March and tomorrow will be the seventh day we've been out this school year and it's only mid-January. What the heck. Here is where the blog post will turn into something weird. I'm not really sure what it's going to be so I'm giving you warning if you don't want to keep reading.

Thursday just ran by and I'm still trying to decide if Sunday was a good day or not. You see, there have been a lot (and I mean A LOT) of changes in my church over the past several months, particularly in the youth group. We've got a new youth pastor and everything is run very differently than before. As much as I miss our old youth pastor, I think this guy was placed in Hendersonville for a reason and that God has his hand in it all. What I'm struggling with is how much things have changed over the last couple of years. I've spent my whole life as a part of that church and I sometimes wonder what I have to show for it. In Sunday School, our teacher asked if we felt like we have a "family" in church, more specifically the youth group and Sunday School class. I think she was expecting the majority of people to say yes. If anyone felt that they have that they didn't speak up. I don't. I've been with most of those kids my entire life and I don't  feel like we're more than strangers anymore. I'm not complaining about friendships growing apart, that's just part of life. What I hate is that everytime I walk into that room I feel like I'm walking in as a guest. Right now, it's where I feel like God wants me to be so I'm staying but it's just not the same place anymore. I feel like I'm trying to hold together a relationship that's long left the harbor. I hate that when I see the place I once called home my eyes and my heart see the same thing, a building. That's never what church was for me. Where ever the people of the church were, there was the church. Now it seems like no matter how hard I try, that place is no where to be found. I miss being able to walk in our youth lounge and be able to put not only a name but a memory with each face I saw. It seems like every new person who shows up has a great time but those of us who have spent our whole lives there just get a little a more miserable every week. This is the first time I've been able to think about this and it not poor out of me as anger or tears. I feel like I've been dropped off by my family and told to hitch hike the rest of the way home. You know that old saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?" Well, I'm hoping that's how all this will be. If nothing else comes out of this, I want to know that this brought me closer to God. I have no doubt that it will, I've just got to learn to be patient along the way.

I'm going to put a disclaimer on this that it's not the whole church, just the youth group and a lot of people love it. I'm asking you to please not judge the place by this. It raised me.
I was going to talk about the rest of the reasons why this week has been crazy but my brain is now consumed with the previous topic.

I'll leave you with a verse: "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." Philippians 4:12. Yes, this was written by Paul, an imperfect mortal just like us, but every part of me wants to believe that these words came straight from the Lord. He identifies with us gross and imperfect humans. Wow what a God. That's a tangent for another night, though. Good night my friends.

All In

I've spent my entire life cheering for the tigers. I knew what "War Eagle" meant before I knew what Christmas was. Auburn University is in my blood. I started going to football games before I could count my age on my fingers. My hero, my Papa, taught me everything I know about that place. There's not a doubt in my mind that he is smiling down on Glendale, but more importantly Toomer's Corner, tonight. My Auburn Tigers are finally National Champions! When people talk about the Auburn family, they are speaking very literally. Once you are a part of it, there is no escaping. Where ever you go in the world, odds are you will come across someone who can yell "War Eagle" right back to you. Wow. I can't even tell if my sentences are making sense right now, so I'm really sorry if you're reading this. All I can say is that I am so thankful I've been raised in the family. I am truly blessed.


“…I believe in AUBURN and love it.”

A Bible verse: "The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him."
Exodus 15:2

Twister in my mind

Since I can't seem to get my thoughts in order today, I'll just post something I've been working on for a little while.

A verse for today:"We love Him because He first loved us." 1 John 4:-10

“Ronny, would you hurry up! Your dinner is getting cold and your family is in here eating alone! Ronny! Ronny? Honey can you hear me out there? I have been hollering your name for the longest time! Ronny I am not bringing your plate out there again, it is just too daw gawn cold for that! How you even sit out there in the first place is beyond me. Ronny, are you listening to me? Ronny?”

~~~

“Jocelyn Haynesworth?”

“Yes?”

“I am Dr. Jay Recedeen. I am caring for your husband.”

A solemn-faced, “Yes?” was her only reply.  

“Well, we aren’t exactly sure what happened to Ronny. It is possible that he had a minor stroke, but that would not explain any symptoms except for his unconsciousness.”

“What other symptoms?”

“Mrs. Haynesworth, your husband is in a coma.”

“Oh God. Oh God, this can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.” She buried her tear-stained face, the one that had been worshipped for so long by one man, in her delicate hands, that she longed to enclose in that same man’s powerful fingers.

I was three and three quarters years old at the time. My sister, who was in first grade, had just learned fractions and had passed her much-envied wisdom on to me, so when Dr. Recedeen asked me how old I was, I replied to him that I was three and three quarters. He gave me a grin that I’ve learned to read as a pilot would a meter and said, “Three and three quarters eh? I’ve got a little boy about your age.”

I just stared up at him, an awkward stare, unsure what to make of this man. After what seemed like eternity itself, I remembered my manners and gave a halfway smile that even at that age I knew would send him away satisfied. It was my father’s halfway smile.

~~~

There she is: Macy Haynesworth. She’s been my best friend since we were kids. Twenty-three years later she still calls me almost everyday and we have dinner 3 times a week. I can’t believe she’s stuck around this one-horse town for as long as she has. I’m glad she has though. I can’t imagine my life without her, but then again I’ve never had to. God, she’s beautiful. Those dark green eyes cut straight through any wall I’ve built up to the world.

All of a sudden a tug on my pant leg pulls me from my day dream. The sound of little feet scampering back and forth behind me brings a smile to my eyes. She’s gotten good at this game; the only thing that gives her away is the light-up dump trucks on the side of her little boots. She’s a tom-boy, just like her mother. “Now who in the world could that be? Rosie Haynesworth maybe?” Her giggles are a dead giveaway. “Nah, it can’t be Rosie.”

“I don’t know anyone named Rosie.”

Her best attempt at a masculine voice nearly had me doubled over from laughter. She was really turning into her mother’s girl. A second later she was zooming through the air, her little mid-section tightly secured in my hands. If only she had been mine.

 “Hey Mace.”

“Morning Jesse.” It seems like a mediocre greeting to a curious onlooker but we both know that the other can read those two words like a book.

“So, how about it little miss? You ready?” I helped Macy into my old, beaten-up canoe then lifted Rosie to her mother’s lap. As I climbed into the driver’s seat in back, Rosie announced that she wanted to steer the boat today. Objecting to such determination would have been a crime of the worst kind, so Macy and I played a careful game of hot potato to get the wiggly little girl to me. She sat on my lap with her paddle in hand, concentrating with all of her might to follow my every stroke. She wanted to be perfect at it, just like her mother.

In high school Macy dated the starting wide receiver on the football team, Nick Satton. Most of the girls in town were crooning over him by the eighth grade, but not Macy. She had some magic ability to resist the charm of the small town hero, but he couldn’t say the same of her. He fought for that girl nonstop until middle of our junior year of high school when she finally said yes. Senior year they were voted “cutest couple” in senior superlatives. Then, sometime between spring break and prom Macy wound up pregnant. Nick got a football scholarship to Notre Dame, a long way from our little town outside of Tulsa. The day he left I went with Macy to her five month doctor’s appointment.

~~~

“Yes dear.” She was asking me to make a pot of coffee.

“And if you could, put a little cream and sugar in it, just like you know I like it, honey.”

“Yes dear.” It seems like that’s all my vocabulary consists of anymore: yes-dears and if-that’s-what-you-wants with the occasional as-soon-as-I-get-home thrown in to spice things up a bit. Thinking about it that way, I see that I am what most women would call a good husband and most men would refer to as whipped. Forty-three years, four months, and sixteen days I’ve been doing this, answering to the calls of the women in my life. When we I married Charlene we were the definition of love birds in its most blissful sense. She twenty-three year-old farm girl from a wealthy family in North Dakota and I was a twenty-six year-old sailor born and raised in Savannah, Georgia. My mother was an artist and my father a merchant. They were the first encounter I had with love. Yes, they loved each other and my brother, Tom, and I, but they loved everyone else in that city too. Mama would make quilts, jackets, pretty much every article of clothing you can imagine for the homeless and every night before Tom and I would go to bed, she would let us hug each one of her creations. As we pulled the soft cloth against our bare chests and pressed our little faces into it, she would tell us that we were planting seeds in the gifts, seeds of love. She used to say that we did this so that no matter where the people who received the clothes ended up, they would always know that they were loved. My mother believed in love more than anyone I’ve ever known and to this day I am in awe of it.

“Ben, is the coffee ready?” So this is where I’ve ended up.

“Almost dear.” Forty-three years, four months, and sixteen days. Those who say time flies and have never been married are just vomiting words.

On Thursday nights I go downtown to what I tell my wife is a book club for retired men. The book club is composed of two men, Bill O’Jonsohn and I, tonight at least. Bill is a columnist for the Savannah Star. I’ve already read the most recent National Geographic and Time magazines so I’ve settled for the local paper. Every week it’s someone different. When no paper or magazine is available I am joined by the likes of Anderson Cooper, Ross and Joey, or Cory, Sean, and Eric. Our man-cave rotates among the waiting rooms of central hospital. Sometimes it’s oncology, sometimes long-term care, sometimes cardiac. The boys and I try to avoid the trauma ward and Intensive Care Unit, though. The people who occupy those chairs are anxious and agitated. They have their eyes pealed and their ears poised for any sign of a physician, nurse, secretary they recognize who might be able to give them the slightest bit of information about their loved one. These are places of desperate and devastated people. There eyes shine like a gateway to the pain that their shattered hearts contain. Even if the sick or injured survive, those who spend too much time in one of these rooms do not come out unscathed. Ever.

Today I am in the long-term care. A young woman with brown hair is also here, sitting across the room with her daughter who looks to be about seven or eight. They have the same eyes, a deep, piercing green. There is something about the mother that holds my attention, though. I can’t put my finger on it but I am incurably drawn in now. After a few minutes a nurse come out to greet her and leads the pair out of the waiting room and down a long hallway. My wife has said for years that my curiosity cannot be tamed, and she is one-hundred percent correct in this statement. After they have been gone a moment or two I am unable to contain myself any longer so get up and begin down the hall.

Going to the Chapel...

My family and I just spent our New Years in the lovely Savannah, Georgia. The weather was fantastic, around 70 degrees, and the city was historical and not to mention beautiful, but what gathered us together was something of a different nature. My cousin, James, got married this evening, to his high school sweet heart, Danielle! The ceremony was great, officiated by the groom's father, John, and the food brought the rumbles of "Yums" and "Mmmms" back into all of our vocabularies. What intrigued me most about the weekend though, was what it represented. Technically, marriage is the bonding of two people, but they are not the only ones involved. On New Years Eve, we all drove out to Danielle's parents' house for a party and got to spend time with lot of people we would have otherwise never meet. Her father, Brad, allowed us to meander on to his boat and hang out in their theater room. Our family was invited into the home of Danielle's family. We have gotten to know eachother and then, tonight during the wedding ceremony, we became one. The Donaldson and Word families are now one great, big, happy family. No matter where we all go from here, we are undeniably linked. I love how Yahweh takes something like marriage and gives it so many levels. On the surface, it seems as though two people are gettin' hitched and that's the end of it, but if we look a little deeper, we can see the relationships that are formed out the first one. Oh how His ways are so much greater than ours. He can see past the surface and into the beauty of what is to be. We've got a really cool God.

A verse for what is now morning (when did it get so late?): "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." -1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a