Power in Weakness

Some people seem to be unaffected by the Lord of the Rings obsession of the past decade or so.  I am not one of those people.  I was inducted into the cult-like following after a movie-watching marathon in 2003 that culminated with the premier showing of Return of the King at midnight in December.  Not much of a fan before that, I gathered with a group of friends at Walta's house to watch both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers back-to-back in one day, which turned out to be a six hour venture on its own.  By the end of The Two Towers I had been caught up in J. R. R. Tolkien's epic storyline and couldn't wait until midnight of the next day to see the finale of Frodo and Gandalf's adventure.  I was not disappointed.  A large group, mostly from the old Savior's youth group, filed into the movie theater a few minutes before 12a that night with coffee in our blood and expectation in our souls.  The movie didn't end until close to 3a, and I d...

I didn't take the comment personal - I promise.  And I don't think they meant any harm.  It was a little surprising, though.        Mostly, it made me sad.  For them.      I was with a group of people the other day, and one of them made this remark: "I am so thankful to have my health.  If you don't have your health, you don't have anything!"        I cringed when they said it.  Not because I was upset, like I mentioned, but because I was the only person in the room with an obvious and serious physical ailment, and I self-consciously feared all eyes would turn towards me.  Thankfully, they didn't.  The conversation resumed, other ideas were brought up, but my thoughts were still contemplating that statement.        It sounded like a clever maxim, the kind that is passed on from grandmother to parent, from parent to child, and...

I recently finished a book!  The following blog entry is a peak into what it is all about.  I hope to have it published in the next month or so.   Not too long ago I sat next to a grieving friend who was weeping over another loss in her life.   The emotional tragedies seemed to be coming in successive waves, each one more disheartening than the last, with little recovery time in between them.   I sat there silent, not knowing what consolation I could give.   After a moment she looked up at me and a few others that were surrounding her.   She wiped away the tears from her mascara riddled face, and from a broken heart moaned, “I just want to be happy!”        The memory is particularly vivid because I related to her in that moment.   Perhaps we can all relate to a statement as simple and fundamental as such.   I had been wrestling with a chronic illness for several years at this point, and I, too, knew w...

There are memorable exceptions, but for the most part, I don't like to write when I'm not doing well.  I'm helplessly honest when I write, usually more so than in teaching or even in conversation, and I fear that my transparency will reveal the negativity inside.  There's nothing wrong with pouring your ugliness out before God, or before a best friend, but to the whole world via blog or Facebook?  I think there's more than enough of that going around.  And it probably isn't helping the general public to hear that you're broke, your car won't start, or you are mad at someone.  This is probably what the psalmist Asaph had in mind.  At first he complained, "All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.  For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning" (Psalm 73:13-14).  Then he realizes that this private struggle is not exactly ripe for an open forum of discussion: "If I had said, 'I will s...

I've been a book lover since as early as I can remember.  In third grade I was chided by my parents for reading Frank Peretti's supernatural thriller, This Present Darkness , a near 400 page fiction book, because of the nightmares it was causing.  This warning, however, hardly stopped me.  I went on to read the sequel, equally as long, and the next book he had written as well, The Prophet , all in the course of a few weeks.  Sometimes my hunger for literature would fix upon unusual selections, like the ones above, and other times on adolescent favorites, like the My Teacher Is An Alien series, or Roald Dahl's Matilda .  No matter the particular book in view, I vividly remember coming home from school only to plop down on my bed at 3:30 and devour page after page until dinner time, and sometimes until bedtime.  (Nobody told me that this was nerdy behavior; it was simply what I loved, and my social status at private school didn't seem to be affected by it.)...

Like any good 90's kid, I grew up adoring Jim Carrey.  I still remember watching Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for the first time.  I was on my living room floor at about 11 years old, watching wide eyed as Carrey's face distorted to almost-inhuman degrees in comical expressions and, just as frequently, altered his voice for increased effect.  I was laughing so hard I almost peed.  I was addicted. I followed him carefully for years, sometimes disappointed by his more childish roles (at least in my "mature" adolescent estimation) such as in The Mask , but more often impressed by "classics" such as Dumb and Dumber , Liar Liar , and The Truman Show .  (I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed by this, but I still spontaneously quote lines from Dumb and Dumber , and if any of my fellow 90's childhood companions are present they invariably laugh or chime in with their own beloved quotes.)  As I got older, Carrey's roles got more complicated, and less fr...

If only time flew like a dove Well, we could watch it fly and just keep looking up And we've got time on our hands Nothing but time on our hands - Paramore, "Hallelujah"   Lately I'm finding myself with more free time than usual.  Well, that might be a bit of an understatement.  I don't have a job, I'm not leading any ministries, and I don't have any real friends here at Grover Beach.  I've joined a small group at church, and there are nightly prayer meetings going on throughout the week that I look forward to participating in, but for the first time in a loooong time for me, these events are all optional. Really, I can do whatever I want with my time.  Then again, that's why I moved here - to separate myself from the overdose of commitments to rest more and do whatever it takes to recover my health.  Now, I know that saying I can do whatever I want will sound like I'm trying to do the typical make-my-life-sound-awe...