Experimental Living

I wanted to say to everyone that hasn’t seen me in these past few weeks/months, this is what I look like this now:

[My absolute retardedness with tumblr prevented me from uploading the image I wanted so just imagine a bearded muscular man in plaid with the hairiest arms you’ve ever seen, wielding an enormous axe and one of his bootclad feet attached to his jean clad legs set astride a prostrate bear who fell before my might.]

 That is actually a picture of me, for real, it’s what I look like.

So far Suzanne and I have both been adjusting to married life proper, I say ‘married life proper’ because living in our own house has really brought home to us many of the challenges we sort of glazed over during our extended and wonderful honeymoon.  I’ve mentioned before, or thought about mentioning before that marriage really raises the bar in terms of manhood, I don’t think I could have pointed out a real man in a line up before I got married.  I have a new value system nowadays and measure my success differently, here’s some stuff I’ve done recently, see how it rates on your man-o-meter:

•       Killed THOUSANDS of ants with my index finger.
•       Challenged my neighbor to a boxing match.
•       Changed the oil on a car.
•       Drove 55 in a 60 to increase gas mileage.
•       Uppercut a bear.
•       Changed the cable on a dryer.
•       Used duct tape on a duct.
•       Walked around my house with my morning coffee jiggling door handles and making mental notes of what needs fixing around here.
•       Got angry for a good reason.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t do one or two of those but I think they’re all pretty manly.  I’m constantly faced with the fact that I’m truly unequal to this task, all through my youth, I made excuses about why I didn’t do much with my time, I got so caught up in the habit that I didn’t even know I was doing it.  Nowadays when I walk by that jiggling door handle, or dryer that needs a new cord I stop, make a mental note and actually carry it through.  I’ve had so much help, it seems unfair to sit here and announce my own arrival into manhood, I’ve got one million miles to go and I don’t think this is a lifetime’s work, I think it takes longer than a lifetime and I’ll never get there and I’ll still need the help of smarter/wiser/older men on my death bed even.  So don’t think that I feel I’ve attained anything but a woeful revelation of the size of my task, the big job of loving a woman well, being the pastor, protector and provider when I’m mostly used to being a chump. 

I have to go now, I’m watching Breaking Dawn with my wife.

Jon Foreman’s lyrics keep tumbling in my head on the eve of my 24th Birthday.  I kept forgetting it was coming.  My child bride will remain 22 and our cat is 7.  I think birthday’s are an important time to reflect on life thus far.

I woke up this morning remembering that I hadn’t blogged in a while and that sort of bummed me out.  I think when we don’t pause to reflect we forget the value of so many things that happened to us.

This year:

- I got married.

- I moved countries.

- I graduated.

- I inherited a cat.

- I remembered that the Game of Life (by Hasbro) is entirely boring.

- I installed laminate flooring.

- Attended a deer auction.

- Dressed up as a sailor.

- Changed my first diaper.

- Played Left for Dead with my Dad.

- Drove a car legally.

- Shared a cigar with some dear friends.

- Changed the oil on a car.

- Went to a restored Victorian Village.

Part of the foundation of this blog is reflection.  I think my life is awesome, genuinely.  I’ve got plenty of gripes, and they would soon overtake me if I forgot how good God is.  Happy Birthday, me.  Here’s to another year.

It’s always always been my heart to minister to the least of people.  I have Isaiah 58 tatooed on my right shoulder.  It serves as a constant reminder of the love we need to have for the poor both, physically and spiritually.  I heard once that if you want more of Jesus, if you want to find Him, you need only look in the gutter, because that’s where he’ll be.  I believe it, I believe that’s where Jesus loves to be and, as his followers, that’s where we should be found.  Addiction is an ugly thing, abuse is an ugly thing but believers who know about the power of God know it can be overcome.

Life Awakening is an incredibly powerful example of Christians finding themselves elbow deep in other people’s burdens.  I went there recently to help unplug their bathtub and it was inspiring to see the place where so many hurt people gather to be healed.  Scriptures lined the walls and so much attention was given to the place being beautifully decorated and clean.  I was inspired to see it all.  I became aware as I entered just how much love had been poured into that place but as I thought more deeply I considered the depth of what these people are getting into.

Christians really like vows and commitments, we love watching people respond to altar calls, or vowing to end addictions or committing to missions or marriage.  So often we fail to realise that the gun shot that sounds the beginning of a race is not the race itself.  Broken people are difficult and messy, they are often not clean and cured immediately, they often have more than one issue to be dealt with.  It’s not easy, healing is not easy.  Jesus sometimes reveals his healing nature in healing miracles but sometimes and I think even more powerfully his healing takes the form of people investing their whole lives in the messy work of discipleship and counselling.  Dealing with relapses and painful pasts.  It’s great that we think of the highlights in ministries, there’s nothing wrong with it, but we must be aware that many of those were hard won.  I went into their house with my father-in-law to unplug a drain, it’s not glorious work but I take heart that in some small but meaningful way I contributed to a change in someone’s heart for the better.  I guess it’s just important to remember that sometimes breakthroughs in ministries take a lot of digging hairballs out of drains.

Here’s their website: http://www.life-awakening.org/our_residence.htm

My marriage has revealed to me the necessity of strength in men.  There are a lot of guys in this day and age, but not that many men.  Guys are intimidated by strong women because in order to love a strong woman they must be stronger still.  By ‘stronger’ I don’t mean tyrannical, cruel, or even powerful.  I mean they must have a strength of character, something that drives them to lead.  A strength of resolve that’s greater than their immediate emotions.  

This morning I shaved my face, put on my suit, gathered my resumes and decided that I’ll do what it takes to look after my family.  This is the smallest of baby steps, and only the beginning.  Many may laugh at this but somewhere in my soul I need this to be my one small step into something bigger, I need this to be my first step into an adventure.  Pray for me guys, I need power today, I’m going job hunting.

Love,

James

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable conclusion is that I was made for another world.

CS Lewis

About three years ago I got a copy of Heaven by Randy Alcorn and many of it’s 500 pages sat on my shelf unturned for that time.  I occasionally thumbed through the book, as it poses and answers some great questions about a biblical perspective on the eternal Heaven, but never read it with any gusto.  I’m glad I found the gumption to do this.

I love reading books that challenge ideas I’ve had, there’s this profound, sickening sense of change as you read them.  When you read a truth that just compels you to alter yourself in light of it.  Heaven was a book like that for me.

Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Colossians 3:1

Sometimes we just accept things as true regardless of their substance, I found through the reading of this book that many of my thoughts on Heaven didn’t really have any basis in biblical truth.  I don’t know where I got the idea that we would simply forget the things that happened during our lives here on Earth or that somehow eternity meant the absence of time or that we’d live in an eternal church service in an amorphous spirit state but it wasn’t the Bible.  It was as though I was just “not ‘spiritual’ enough” to understand why that would be good.  This book really corrected that perspective beautifully.

This book is for you if:

• You don’t want to go to Heaven.
• You do want to go to Heaven but don’t know why.
• You want to go to Heaven you know why but you have some searching questions.

or

• You just want to get stoked.

If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.

CS Lewis

I’m left with a feeling of genuine excitement and reverential awe of God.  I’m excited by the eternal consequences of life between Eden and Heaven, it gives an all new perspective. 

It’s possible that all this time I’ve lived without actually applying much of what I believe to be true about Heaven, giving intellectual assent but never applying what I knew.  I’ve lived day to day without my heart being set on eternity.  With Heaven on my mind the things on Earth take on new meaning.  I heard once that the Church is too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use but I’d say that a genuine appreciation of Heaven will lead to our greatest earthly use.  

I feel like an athlete preparing for a race, toning my body and mind for a great physical feat, just as Paul described the Christian walk.  Thoughts of Heaven stir me to actions of eternal consequence, it gets me excited about every prayer, every deed worthy of Jesus because I know that it’s leading somewhere, to some great goal which is being at home with my Heavenly Father.

Eden has been trampled, burned and savaged. Yet the stars in the sky nevertheless declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1), as do animals, art, and music.  But our vision is hampered by the same curse that infects all creation.  One day both we and the universe will be forever cured of sin.  In that day, we will see God.

Randy Alcorn, Heaven

The Horton’s had a fantastic christmas.

I got tools (that’s great!).

I laid flooring!

We made a bed in front of the fire and watched Downton Abbey.

More on this (and a lot more besides) in the coming weeks!

I have three pairs of jeans, or I should say had three pairs of jeans.  Two perished in this weeks events, one directly before the furniture auction I attended and the other while bending down to pick up scraped scraps from my carpet in my house.  That’s right, my house!  I’ve been a dedicated nomad for some 23 years but I have a home to call my own now and it’s in Harrisburg.  We’re excited to move in but the preparation work is endless, and where work abounds procrastination abounds further, hence this blog.

So far Suzy and I have been working on fixing up the house along with other sundries, turning on gas (if we could only convince the gas guy to turn up), disposing of a couch and all its inhabitants, and ordering a recycling bin.  Oh, and the visa.  The visa is what I should be doing right this second, but it’s haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.  Normally with visa work you find that there is only one form to fill out, along with 20 or so satellite forms and evidence to provide from your grandmother’s inside leg measurement to my noninvolvement in the atrocities committed in Nazi Germany between 1933 and ‘45.  Marrying Americans is hard.  I should say here by way of disclaimer that it would probably be just as hard going the other way, so I’ll correct myself: ‘visas are hard’.  She was worth it though, and still is worth it, and will always be worth it.

Pray for us, guys.  Nothing draws a man out of a boy like marriage.  In these unfamiliar surroundings I find myself looking for someone to take responsibility and wind up finding a mirror instead.  God has been abundantly gracious, that much you can rest on, but it doesn’t stop change being difficult.

I recently went to a truly triumphant wedding, God attended, you should’ve been there if you weren’t.  It was a genuine honour to be there, the happy couple were totally committed to Jesus, head over heels in love with God and each other.  There was something truly unique about the experience and made me hunger for more of God.  My own wedding was precious and God was every bit as much there but their commitment stirred me.  ’We just decided to stop leading our selfish little lives…’ the groom talked about their future plans.  I can’t do it justice with my fumbling words, typing here at my computer I just remember his conviction, to go into all the world.  He echoed an ancient command, one that I’m starkly reminded was issued to me and my wife as well.  I’m not sure how radically we’re supposed to live sometimes, am I an Ezekiel or an Elijah, a Paul, Peter or just one of the many that they praise for supporting them?  One thing is for sure, even if you’re not called to darkest Africa, you are called to a radical relationship with Jesus.  Awesome Awesome Awesome.

This past week has left me pensive and stirred.  I feel like those old ripped jeans, like I’m shedding parts of myself I don’t need anymore and moving on to something brighter. Those jeans were still good, they’d been with me for a long long time, they had stains from the time I worked as a painter and a hole worn through where I sawed them by mistake (don’t ask). Maybe those jeans just weren’t any good for cleaning the floors in my house, paying bills, or clenching butt cheeks at a furniture auction.  I sure will miss those jeans…

Suzanne and I have had a ripsnorting good time this week.

Have any of you guys been to an auction?  I’ve been to my first two since I arrived here, one was selling deer and the other furniture.  The former I talked about in an earlier post, the beatboxing banjo twang auctioneer guy, the latter was part of a fun day out with my sister-in-law.  The furniture auction was unlike anything I had ever seen, the deer auction I saw as an outsider but this auction I saw up close.  The place was packed with furniture, people, plaid shirts and baseball caps.  It was like a wooden jungle, the auctioneer stood atop a menacing platform fitted with a speaker.  I found myself transfixed by the otherworldy language he spoke in between the english numbers.  What perhaps made the spectacle even more ennerving was that the platform moved.  More than once I turned to see the platform on my heels, seemingly moving with the furniture he sold as he made his circuit of the room.

The buyers were even more fierce, they stood in silence occasionally twitching to signify a bid, I tried to spot the bidders to no avail.  I was shocked to find that the man next to me had been bidding the whole time.  The only way I can concieve of the man bidding without my knowing was by clenching his buttocks in the direction of the auctioneer as he had his back to the moving platform that carried him.

Great furniture went as cheap as $1 with whole sets of bedroom furniture going for $150 or less.  Inspired, I’ve resolved to furnish my house with auction winnings.