Occupational difficulties: please stand by

So actually Michigan football is back on the map. booya

My occupation will not define me. I am so tired of believing that. I figure what I will do now is build on what I just said because I learned something yesterday that I already knew. What I do will be the foundation for I do next. So this blog will not be an identity crises spill but it will be an unwinding of future job thoughts. 

I was always gonna be a youth pastor. Almost mirroring M squared except in a more relational way. I then began to despise the church and one of the qualities I hated was their fiscal sense. I would find my self saying I cant believe you spent money on that, douche. Even my new church, methodist, liberal, social, did some things, including running their youth ministry without care for the lay people's money. When money becomes no object is when I start to question what they are doing. 

Turns out I was a little wrong. the youth ministry was not so money whatever. they were speaking these kids languages for all the right reasons and basically, in short, I felt like I could be a part. Except before I came to this conclusion, I had began making plan B. 

I began to like plan B.

In fact I put more thought into plan B then plan A. I was thinking anywhere from Communications, businessish to philosophy and sociology. I was thinking anywhere from preparing for oversees to being a high school teacher. I had some plans let me tell you. 

Now, I am almost back where I started. Just confused and pulled. Even Elyse is sublimianlly telling me where life would be better. I feel like praying until God gives me an answer. problem is I dont believe in that. I am ready to experience it though. 

Michigan football sucks.

(my wife is a copy cat dork)

I love my jobs. I spent most of my week at them. I spent the week getting ready to lead worship with some awesome students and repairing computers. Both of which i love with my utmost. 

No blog would be complete without a struggle. ed43edsd56tfrs6fyew (my wifes contribution)

I am about 82% sure I wont be working at a church for the rest of my life. I dont think I can take it. I cant take the churches money. I cant take the churches goals. My heart for high school students and speaking value into their lives from our creator can be done in about 3000 different avenues. more thoughts later.

Cool gentle breeze

Internet at the house is dead. blogs        becoming       sporadic        .

So healing is coming in cool gentle breezes. I dont feel intimate with God any more but I think I may have killed the other one. I think he is dead. He keeps coming back, but only because the real hasnt taken up the space yet. Donald miller and I have a lot of things in common. I am re reading searching for God knows what and we were on the exact same pages for the first two chapters. Its kinda nice to see your feelings on someone elses paper. I like to disassociate. Fear of intimacy. Running away from problems. Kinda a loner. Really unhealthy. Luckily the God I killed (or am killing) has nothing to do with those problems. The real God, the father one who reveals himself to people and escapes religious hoops, tragically has everything to do with those issues. He wants me to be his friend. close friend. I am thankful I have no idea how or what that means so I cant put a how to on it. 

Now, I am just working on making room for him.

I want a Hamburger

Ok so I was reading the bible the other day and well it was good and life giving. God is still who he is i guess. 

I am hungry.

Spoon fed Knives and Forks

I have come to the end of a street.  

The thing is I have been on this road for pretty much my entire life. It has been a wide road and I think I may have taken it as slow as I possibly could. I could walk to one side of the road and then the other side and see completely different things but still be on the same road. It has been getting darker and darker on this road these last few years and I think I have come to slow down and think about my steps a little more. even as much as to say, I have developed new thought patterns walking the same road. 

Now I look at a fork.

I look to one side and I see this: (Seriously a lot cornier if you heard it sung) 

Now's the time 

let the redeemed celebrate 

if you know what I know 

you cant wipe the smile off your face

Oh people, stand up and praise

All glory to

The king of kings, Lord of Lords

oh the value of your worth

no worldly treasures can afford

Or on the Other side I see: (So much scarier if heard sung)

Out of his mind away

Pushes him whispering

must have been out of his mind

Mid-day delusions of pushing this out of his head

maybe out of his mind

All alone he turns to stone 

while holding his breath half to death

terrified of whats inside 

to save his life he

crawls like a worm from a bird

Those of course being the gross extremes of what has happened to me. I feel it would be best talking about how I got to this place. 

I have always wanted God. I think I always wanted to be in the right place with God and at some point I feel like i got there. I had a conversion experience where I had finally given my life to Jesus or just gave definition to whatever happened in the field. Whatever it was it was an experience with something outside of myself or so I think. The real question is there anything real outside of our human minds anyway. I have always been able to manipulate the "God inside my head" who whispers to me and a million other people different things. That little whisper is apparently my connection with the supernatural creator. Not just mine but every ones. including the Pentecostals down in Florida. I believed in that for a while. the holy spirit could literally speak to you for every little thing you do and that was encouraged. It was complete abandonment of self to hear that little whisper. That sort of came and went right along with everybody else. I dont really know why. I guess we all just figured it was to "extreme" and not balanced enough. God must have been leading us in a different direction then other Christians. So then after high school I went to rich powerful Conservative liberty university. I pushed for the holy spirit because they did not believe in that sort of power at all. they believed in sound fundamentalism and that was how God spoke to us in every little word the bible said. The problem with these people was simple. There were sick agendas in everything they did. I began to notice the heaven agenda here at liberty. Heaven and our eternity was where it came to an end. Questions were dangerous and doubt was unholy. They hid behind their lies of "faith" when really they were more suppressive then I was. I began to hate everything that American Christianity stood for. It was no longer about God or love. it was about every other thing. Purity, Battle, Quiet times, Money, and Eternity. What about people? I was getting to the liberal side of the road to be on the opposite end of this Christianity because it was just as bad as quixtar. they are just friends with you so you can buy their product. sure it will help them but there is something deeply wrong with quixtar. I wont go into it to much but the resemblance is striking between the two. Cant think of a difference. So, I left Liberty and came back to what I thought was a safe haven. My BCC. What I had come to find was that they were just the same. The same Christians, the same motives, the same issues. Different people. I could never really pin it on any one person but the ideas they all stood for. I noticed that they jammed a set of beliefs down your throat before they cared and then they sent you off with nothing to fill your lives with. You pray the right prayer and you are done. They cover it with the holy spirit living idea but it is just an excuse so they dont have to give or they dont have to be themselves or honest because its just about Jesus and the holy spirit and the people. Its not though, its about your sick sick ideas of how things work missing some of the most key things in all of life. Now I fucking hate the church and all of Christianity. I hate it......................

The truth is I need saving, the church needs saving, and i am not talking about salvation I am talking about something deeper from a creator to his creation. 

This fork in the road is what i have come to. I can continue on this bitter trail of hate and turn to stone and leave everything that may just be what i need or I can stand up to my past and the stuff that has lied to me and gave me one side. 

All of my life I have been given one side and have desperately searched for the other side, all in hopes I would know where I was. Now I do. I am at this fork. Hurting. Bleeding. In need of something real. I may die tomorrow. But I know I have one more step. It cant be forward. I always just move forward. It has to be right or left. Bitterness or Healing. Hard or Accepting. Never fake. Always real. No more running away.