John 3: 16 and John 3:17

I have seen John 3:16 spray-painted on overpasses a few times, and it is a well known verse.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Jesus spoke these words in a conversation during the night with Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews at the time. Nicodemus believed in Jesus because of the miracles he performed, but could not come out openly, so he approached Jesus in private as a teacher come from God. John 3:16 is part of that conversation, and has affected many people so profoundly.

Lesser known is John 3:17, which seems to have a tough act to follow, but I am thankful for it:

"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."

I condemn myself with self-loathing and insecurity. I think it is a defense mechanism of some kind, trying to win over some imagined critic, or to brace myself against some inevitable disapproval. Or maybe I have been like a whipped animal on my back in submission, putting myself down so as not to rile up the anger of people higher than me in some kind of social hierarchy. Or maybe, sometimes by putting myself down, I am fishing for some kind attention from others. I love John 3:17 because it teaches me better than that. I too, in my quiet time, want to learn from Jesus, teacher come from God.

One other thing I love about John 3:17 is that it teaches me as a Christian to never condemn (or judge, or push my beliefs onto) others, because God himself did not send Jesus to condemn the world.

My Father's Business Luke 2:40-52

This feels right, writing a little about a passage from the scriptures. Today, I had a very emotional day, with tears streaming down my face most of the morning. I strained to hold my composure while I was driving, and nearly lost it while exchanging cylinders in the yard at work. I think what's happening is a reconnection to the emotions I stuffed away for so long. I grieved about my father, and about the mistakes I've made in life.
The Bible doesn't tell much about Jesus' childhood and adolescence, but in Luke there's a snapshot. Mary and Joseph had a tradition of travelling to Jerusalem every year to celebrate the Passover. When Jesus was twelve, they had gone to the city, celebrated as usual, and began the trip back home. Mary and Joseph couldn't find Jesus among all the family and everyone with them. They went back to Jerusalem, worried and searching for their son. They found him in a temple, engaged in discussion with doctors, hearing them and asking them questions.  Mary asked Jesus why he had stayed behind without them knowing, and told him they sought him sorrowing. Jesus responded, "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?"
I am a fallen priesthood holder. Is there any place for me in our father's business? Am I of any use to God at all anymore? Do my words matter at all? Maybe my words don't, but when I don't try to show off, and when I listen for what Heavenly Father would have me say, I can say the right thing.

The Holy Ghost, the Comforter

I need the companionship of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I do things that invite the Spirit, and sometimes I do things that don't.

John 14 is a chapter about Jesus telling his disciples that he would soon leave to the presence of God. This was Jesus, who performed miracles and healed and taught the words of life. The disciples loved him, and wanted to go with him. Jesus explained that they couldn't at the moment, but God would send the Holy Ghost, which was the Comforter:
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." (v. 26-27)

Sometimes, when I feel lonely, or am faced with a temptation, this is the promise I need to remember.

Jesus

Not everybody liked Jesus. That could be the understatement of millennia. He was not born into a prominent wealthy family, nor a powerful military family. He was born in a stable and slept on some hay, with farm animals all around. It took wise men to see his potential at the time. Isaiah 53 is a prophecy all about how Jesus would be "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief..."
Insecurity has troubled me most of my life. Plenty of it has roots in my childhood, and branches have sprung from my own sins. I got a look at a passage in the court report on my mother's endeavors to return me and my little sister home from foster care. One social worker had written something like I "had an odor, and was an outcast among the other children." I can see how that was true. Painful, but true.
I can appreciate Jesus having been "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief..."
I love verse 5 the most: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."
Maybe there's hope for me, and I'm not so beyond salvage. Maybe worldy acclaim and "the praise of man" doesn't matter. Maybe it's God's love for me that matters. Maybe I'm in His hands, and I'll be alright.

Rise, take up thy bed, and walk

I've stressed myself out pretty good recently, attempting to deal with all these repressed hurt feelings and insecurities. I've been to many therapists and ecclesiastical leaders for guidance. I sought approval of adults when I was a kid, and acceptance among peers as an adult. I obviously haven't really accepted myself as I am. Of all that I've tried to help myself over the years, simple honest prayers and some ponderance of scripture have done the most good.

There's a story in John 5:1-9 about a pool in Jerusalem named Bethesda, where people who were sick with palsy, blindness, and all kinds of ills would wait for an angel to reach down and gently ripple the surface of the water. The first sufferer to touch the water would be miraculously healed. Verse 5 says, "a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years." I am thirty-eight this year. My father lived to be thirty-eight. Maybe that means something.

Jesus apporached the man, knowing he had been there so long. He asked, "Wilt thou be made whole?" The man explained that someone always got to the pool ahead of him. Others were faster than him, and got the healing they needed before he did. Jesus raised the man up with a few words: "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." I need some of that.

I don't want to wallow any more, protesting cruelties and unfairness. I want to write and speak all the talks in church I've never gotten to give, and  may never. In daily life, I'll use words only when it's time for them.

Facebook and Vaguebook

I am really enjoying things on facebook right now, too, finding others raised in foster care. I have felt so alone for so many years, strangled in my own mind, ruminating over my childhood. Now, when I get to read about another real person's experience, I feel like I might actually be from this planet instead of some oddball who doesn't belong. When I get a chance to help somebody else feel better, it does worlds of good for me. Maybe I'm not so pathetic and weak if I can do some good in my lifetime. When somebody acknowledges the things I say or clicks "Like" on them, I feel like a dog that got a pat on the head. I needed that. Very much. Especially after the shutdown I've had when I shared my life stories before.
I've also gotten hurt and angry, when I would share something that made me vulnerable, and somebody would post something that seemed to be ABOUT me or what I said, and wouldn't talk WITH me about it. I call that VagueBooking--posting about somebody rather than with them, not naming them, and using the ambiguity of whether the post was about them to avoid talking with them about it. Vaguebooking widens distance between people, and hurts my feelings. Talking with me about things can't be forced though. I'd rather somebody talked with me because they want to. I guess I'm VagueBlogging right now!! lol Still, good times.

For Now

I can just manage to eek out a few things I'd like to accomplish in the near future.
I'd like to improve my health. Get into shape. Eat better. Exercise as a habit. (damn skepticism)
Fix up my mom's home, my childhood home. I love doing that. I love being a handyman. Makes me feel like a man, and flips a double middle-finger at the painful perceptions of my teen years that it was a crime to be male. I'm not perfect at it, but I've replaced the toilets, rotting floorboards and linoleum in the bathroom, carpeted the patio, built a decorative porch entry, and even replaced the whole front door. I love woodworking with loud, powerful noisy tools, and building beautiful things. I want to do this the rest of my life.
I love drawing, too. I have been so damned depressed and bogged down with work and paying bills, and escaping reality with movies, TV, video games, etc., that I have neglected doing much drawing for a couple decades now. I love to draw something beautiful or cool, and get a little positive attention for it. Indeed I do. Time for some more of that.

She's Not Your Girlfriend

When I was eleven or so, living in a long-term group home where kids wait for families to adopt them or become permanent placements (damn clinical terms!), Rick, one of the houseparents (damn unnatural terms!) asked me what I wanted to do with my life. All my young, shocked mind could produce was that I wanted to return home to take care of my mother. He got really mad, and said forcefully, "She's not your girlfriend!" and something else about how that was wrong for me to do. His wife, Barbara, added that they had another kid grow up and take care of her mother. At least it wasn't unheard of. Well, you know what? Maybe things were unhealthy for me and my baby sister to be raised by our mother, but during those years I was being raised by "normal," "conventional" families, and my mother was villainized so much for saying weird things, my mother showed up every other week to visit just because she loved me. She didn't have to. She just wanted to. Very much. That's more true love and natural affection than I ever got from anyone. So, I think my wiring's confused deep down in there. There's distrust ingrained in there. My mother, who was considered abnormal and mentally ill, loved me very much, while "normal" families entrusted by the state with my upbringing, kicked me out, yelled and screamed, divorced, needed me for money and to pay rent, ad nauseum. I have some issues.
I have no time machine, however, and cannot go into the past to say or do what I should have to stand up for myself, to make things better today. I'll never know how things might have been different were the past different. I have to deal with now.

No Career Focus

I have meandered around about pursuing a career forever. All I ever wanted to do since I was a kid ripped away from my mom was come home to my mom. Here I am, and very happy about it. It won't last forever, though, I know. I need to prepare for the future somehow. In high school, I was voted Most Artistic, and we all thought I would do that for a living. I totally missed the boat on that. When the time came for college, I was preoccuppied with escaping from an angry screaming banshee woman I lived with, was just so happy I got accepted to college, and wasn't aware there was an entirely separate admissions process for the Art/Design department. I had also made the mistake of listening to a friend from high school tell me that I needed to get a real career, and that graphic artists starve, etc. I believe plenty of them probably do, but I allowed that to create doubt about myself, and have been at a loss ever since. I went on to my first year of college, just taking general ed courses and glad to have escaped that miserable home. My former foster mom was so pissed that I didn't stay there and pay rent to her. I went on a church mission for a couple of years, which I count as a good thing, a strengthener in my life. When I came back, I got lost in search of some profound meaningful quest about what I should do with my life to cultivate the attribute of charity, which is the greatest of all, and renders all others worthless. I didn't know what the hell to do. I studied Chinese for a few years, then switched over to Psychology.  I tried out for Police and Fire Departments, passed the physical and I think the written exams just fine, but those verbal interviews--weird! I taught English as a Second Language part-time, which was a lot of fun, but I'd go broke. I went back to a little trade school to study multimedia, and enjoyed that, and then the school closed down abruptly about three weeks before I was to graduate. I stayed on with the job I had selling Apple computers in a retail store. I was good at it, but really did not like having to endure abuse from customers who were "always right," and happened to walk through the door in a bad mood. To this day, I try to be nice to people who work in retail. I tried selling computers on a corporate basis, and hated all the cold-calling. The boss kept track of how many calls we made and how long the calls were. There in that cubicle, I asked myself what I enjoy doing. I remembered enjoying road trips between Utah and California when I was in school, driving long stretches, enjoying the natural landscapes, rocking out to whatever music I wanted, and stopping at little outpost truck stops which I like so much for some reason. Don't know why, really.
So, I quit my sales job and tried driving limousines. I worked all night most of the time, taking bachelors to strip clubs and bars, with insane irregular hours, uncertain pay, got in trouble for taking a nap in a restaraunt parking lot after no sleep the night before, and got in dangerous drowsy-driving situation, endangering an entire family once because the other chauffeur was a drunk jackass and couldn't cover his shift. I quit. I landed myself in the hospital for a few weeks, so depressed I wanted to kill myself. I got a commercial drivers license, and over the course of a few jobs, have been hauling Hazardous Materials--chemicals, and compressed gases like oxygen, etc., to this day. I do enjoy delivering things people need and who are happy to see me. That's much better than sales, where people didn't want to talk with me. I enjoy the physical exercise and fresh air, and not having to deal with office politics so much, which would really drive me batty. Overall, in regard to career, I feel like the devil's got his foot on my neck, keeping me down hard. I'd really like to cast him off far away, and emerge. Am I having some kind of a mid-life crisis?

Right Here, Right Now. Broken.

For the last week or two, I have tried to write up something about my family background--or lack thereof, and just depressed the hell out of myself. I wrote and deleted, but saved a copy. Introspection has led me to realize I haven't dealt with a lot of my feelings, escaping reality how I can. I will still do good where I can, but I had a hard time acknowledging these feelings, because I felt my strength rendered false, and my wisdom cheap. I am getting a bit long in the tooth, maybe having a mid-life crisis or something. When I consider how my life will play out, it occurs to me I don't have much of a plan. I've tried several plans, and things just went wrong. Have to keep trying though, and for now it seems to mean discarding appearances. Getting to the root and not just hacking at the leaves.

Right here, right now, I am broken. I don't have any objective way to explain that, I just feel that way. I feel like life kicked my ass, and I went home to my mother. Literally. I know, I know, at least I have a mother. My spirit is crushed and depleted. I have no ambition or dreams beyond enjoying some good movies, some good food and a few precious good friends, and making enough to pay the bills.

Ever since the summer of 1982 when I was turning ten, the day my mother and I were handcuffed, she was taken in for psychiatric evaluation, and I was taken into foster care, all I've ever wanted to do was to return home to where I belong. To where I am a son. Here I am. My mother's smile and laughter--after so many years of her screaming in the middle of the night, and in and out of the psych ward--are my greatest reward. Those are the hope I hang onto that maybe I haven't entirely been wasting my life. (Addendum: I also hang onto the hope that I might be able to help, heal, and protect others with similar trials.)

I have wept bitterly under the weight of my failures and follies--in trying to please others all my life. I have lamented never having been married nor brought children into the world, yet am paralyzed with fear of it. I have never felt I was an eligible bachelor at all. I am the son of a schizophrenic mother, and a manic-depressive father who died of suicide. I grieve to this day, like when I saw the new TRON movie, when the father and son were reunited. My parents divorced or separated or whatever it was. I was three or four. I have always--yes, irrationally, I know--feared I would die so early like my father did, and with all the other traumas of my life, bring tragedy to an innocent wife and children. So, I protect others from me and my life. These fears seem to be ingrained into my nervous system. My hard-wiring. Think I'm selfish or indolent or cowardly or whatever. It hurts my feelings, yes. I am so damned thin-skinned and overly-sensitive like my father. When people judge me like this, verbally or non-verbally, I turtle up and don't connect. Why would I want to?

A beautiful foster family kicked me out because I freaked them out listening to heavy metal music and reading Goosebump novels. Nothing was ever mentioned in my file about what was happening behind the bedroom door where I slept for the first six months I lived there, or why I slept on the living room floor in a sleeping bag for the last few months.
The next foster family divorced six months after I came to live with them, and the mother erupted with anger every day for the next four years I lived there. I escaped into college with the idea deeply ingrained that it was a crime to be male, that we're all just selfish lecherous jerks like her ex-husband. In her mind, she saw him everywhere even when he wasn't there, and constantly brought him up.

I crammed a whole four-year degree into six years, and graduated with no career focus. I just wanted to have finished college. I studied Chinese to try to merit the approval of my foster dad, and of church. When my mother went missing, I changed over to psychology to hurry up and finish, and maybe learn a few things about being well-adjusted. I never became the artist we all thought I would be, in high school.

I have never been able to express any anger about these things. I have been told to shut up and get over it. The people who were so cruel were so kind, and it would be ungrateful of me. And I love them, and they love me. Really? Or do the years of kind words stem from shame and the need to keep up appearances?

So, here is the truth for now, barfed up from the depths of my guts. There's plenty more, and I have a long way to go. So, where exactly am I going? And why am I inside this handbasket?