Clarification

I'm posting this particular blog to clarify something that I said in the "About Me" section of my MySpace profile. Those who know me can look there for what I'm referring to. I found out about two different instances lately where things I have said have bothered people. One was here on my blog and the other was on MySpace. In talking about myself I mentioned that I was a former youth pastor. I referred to being a youth pastor as a great job if you liked "being in a no-win situation and continually getting crapped on." I'm not exactly sure who it offended or why it offended them but I thought I would offer some clarification. I was truly speaking from my heart. Anyone who has been in ministry before knows that it is a burdening job, continually wrought with disappointments and discouragements. As my pastor would say it is all-consuming. It invades every facet of your life until it becomes your identity. That is why to this day I still have dreams about taking students to camp or on mission trips at least four or five nights a week. As I sleep my subconscious mind spits out all that filled it for nearly three straight years.

The definition that I gave was exactly how I feel and I don't make any apologies for it. I think if the Church were more what it ought to be it would allow ministers to be more what they ought to be and then ministry would not deserve such a grim description. But even thought it describes what I feel, it doesn't give the full description of what I feel. There are many great memories I have of my time in youth ministry. Most of those great memories are in the form of students that I love and got to share life with. Some of the most incredible people I have ever known were students in that ministry. They weren't perfect and they made tons of mistakes, just like those who came before them, but the best they knew how they sought to be more like Christ. I also got to work with some of the greatest parents and volunteers on the planet. There are so many people (I hope you know who you are) who helped carry me and empower me and were used by God to make me a better person. And the truth is, in my heart of hearts, I know that I wouldn't for one second ask God to have spared me from the crap if it meant that I wouldn't have gotten to know each one of those people and shared life with them.

So, for the 3 people that happen to read my blog and my MySpace you now have some clarification. Feel free to pass it on to others. Hopefully you feel more like you've got the whole story.

Moving Day...

Life is changing among my family these days. My mom will be retiring in December and getting married in January. In preparation for that she is currently in the process of selling her house so that she is able to move to the bustling metropolis of Marlow, OK. I've never been there but oh the stories they tell and the songs they sing about the place. (FYI - I'm kidding. I can't imagine anyone singing about Marlow. I mean who wants to sing about life in the backwoods of the biggest hick state of them all? I can't imagine that lighting anybody's fire. But then I think of the humongous hit that was the musical "Oklahoma" where they sang about honey lambs and surries with fringes on top and I guess I figure that means there might actually be a market for these sort of things...anyway, I digress).

So my mom is going to be moving. This will be the first time in my lifetime that she has moved. She moved into the house where she currently lives in October of 1976. I was born just two months later. For thirty years she's been living in the same house, accummulating an unholy amount of crap. Tomorrow she has a walk through and next Monday she'll sign the thing over to somebody else. I do get a little emotional when I think about all the memories from that house.

One of my earliest memories is when my sister was born. I don't remember much about it since I was only two but I do have some vague recollections. I also remember sitting on the bed in my parents room with my brother and sister when my dad told us he was moving out (not all the memories are happy). I remember holidays and just hanging out. I remember getting out of school and playing in the snow. Growing up it was the only house I had ever known and I can hardly imagine anyone other than my mom occuppying it.

One of my last memories in the house will be of moving out the unholy amount of crap. Because she's living in transit for a few months and the guy she's marrying already has a fully equipped house (it even has electricity and indoor plumbing - he's the envy of all the other citizens in Marlow) her furniture was doled out to her children and others. Because we know the depths of our laziness and that it would never get done if stretched out we decided to move it all in one night. My brother happens to be moving too so we decided to move his stuff from his house in the same night. We were zig-zagging all over town, hauling all kinds of furniture, rearranging the junk between my house, my brother's house, my sister's house, and my mom's house. I'll never forget hauling a one-ton entertainment center into our house at midnight, drenched in sweat and barely lucid. There were six couches, three beds, two massive TV's, and a refrigerator that refused to fit through the door (**to the woman buying my mom's house - I'm sure you can use a touch up pen on those door frames and no one will ever notice). It took somewhere around ten hours to get it all done and as I was laying down to sleep at 2:30am, knowing I had to be up in about 4 hours, I thought to myself...we do all right for the dysfunctional family that we are.

Does This Make Me a Bad Person?

Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, died suddenly this week. His death was conveniently located between being found guilty on all sorts of fraud charges regarding the demise of his company and his sentencing. He actually died at his vacation home in Colorado. His lawyer described it as though his poor old heart just gave out on him.

Lay had continually proclaimed his innonence but that proclamation was very weak set against a mountain of indisputable evidence that shows he lied and cheated for his own personal gain. Apparently the hundreds of millions weren't enough, he needed more. And he got more at the expense of his employees, many of whom lost all or part of their retirement savings when Enron floundered. When things started coming out that revealed there might be problems in an otherwise seemingly healthy company Lay stood before his stockholders and employees and assured them that everything was going to be okay, absolutely nothing was wrong. Many employees trusted him and stayed, to their own demise, based on what he had said.

So Lay dies without ever serving a day in prison for this ultimate action of greed and selfishness. He never had to pay for what he did on earth. In fact, because of the timing of his death, the jury verdict of guilty will be vacated by a judge and history will never even record that Lay was a felonious self-serving law breaker. Most frustrating of all is the fact that it feels like the people he hurt the most will never really get vindication. It's like he managed to escape paying the price for his crime. Adding insult to injury is the fact that this supposedly destitute man died while vacationing at his home away from home.

At times like this I want to shake my fist at God. Why couldn't you have left him here to rot in a jail cell for 30 years? Why couldn't you have allowed him some level of physical discomfort here on planet earth before being carted off to the sweet by and by? There are times when believing in the sovereignty of God gives me no great pleasure, rather it ticks me off to no end. This would be one of those times.