Hose Clamp Skull Cap

I want to try to paint a picture of what it is like inside my head.  I find it a circle of struggles that I deal with on a regular basis.  I would assume that a lot of guys have these same struggles and I bet many use the same techniques I do to cope.  Anyway, here is the picture…

When my mind goes idle I often cast about trying to find things to think about.  This happens to me when I am driving, falling asleep, mowing the lawn, stuff like that.  I often think of this as the times I am hanging out with myself.  My internal monologue kicks in.  I am daydreaming about stuff.  I come up with arguments about things I am passionate about.  And my mind falls prey to all sorts of selfishness, greed, hurtfulness…..sin.

Ok, so the scene is set.  I just started mowing the lawn 3 minutes ago and I have about an hour and a half of mowing ahead of me.  My mind has shifted into neutral….

I start thinking about cars.  I love automobiles in general but I really love my car.  I have big plans for it like a supercharger at some point in the future (this won’t actually ever happen…), but in the interim, I would like to get a header-back exhaust on it.  That would be sweet and it is sort of inside the realm of possibility even though it would still cost quite a bit.  My thoughts never seem to just be content with the pure love of automobiles.  It always leads to me wishing I could get this for my car or do that to it.  I've got plans.  Always wanting something else.  Never content.  It is frustrating and I don’t think the discontent is biblical.  I think it is sin to always be wanting something more – never to be satisfied with what you have.  Alright fine!  I take a firm grip of my car thoughts and mentally push them over there and I hold them away from me with one of my mental arms.

Next…..

Sex.  That is something that’s pretty interesting to think about.  Problem is, it is such a slippery slope to keep sex thoughts pure and clean.  So that lasts for a lot less time than the car thoughts and I throw a super vice-grip onto those thoughts and mentally push them away.

Alright, now I’m holding those away.  I can do this.  Next…..

I love video games.  I wish I could somehow be a professional video game player (that or a race car driver of some sort).  I would love to make my living that way.  Yeah right…  So I start analyzing my latest session playing Destiny.  “Last time I went into the big room I headed left and tried sniping the guy from there but I wonder if it would work better to head to the right and climb up to the balcony.  There is better cover there and I could duck and hide if need be……”  How much of my life gets poured into video games?  How much of my time and mental energy is spent on this COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS PURSUIT?  You know what, video games in and of themselves are not the problem.  Sure they don’t promote anything good and usually they do promote stuff that is unhealthy, but I see the problem as the time they take from my life.  I think the enemy is very supportive of the video game industry as it pulls me out of basically everything.  Volunteer activities, building meaningful relationships, studying God’s Word, building into my relationship with my wife, praying, and on and on…  Ok, grab that with a firm grip and push it away and hold it there.  (Something you may not know about me is that I have quite a few mental arms – not just two.  I kind of need that many because my mental landscape all slopes toward me.  I can’t just push thoughts away and leave them there because they all roll back to me as soon as I let go of them.  Mental arms people – you can never have enough of them).

You know what it feels like to have all those mental arms holding stuff away? Imagine a hose clamp that fits onto your skull. 

Now tighten it down REALLY tight!  There, that should do it.  Ok (through gritted teeth) the breach is contained; I’m good to go now.  And so I move forward one painful step after another on the path of life.  Guess what happens to me every now and then (in fact quite often) – the hose clamp bursts open.  Everything comes apart and I fail.

Over and over and over and over and over and over………

Every time I fail I beat the stuffing out of myself.  I cry out, “God!  Why is this so hard all the time?!”  I can’t do it on my own.  I already know that – which makes it really hard to even motivate myself to grip those thoughts and push them away in the first place.  What is the point?  I have never succeeded at this in the past.  What makes me think I can do it now?

God stands at the door and knocks.  Give it to me my boy, that is the only way you can make this work.  Crazy thing is I don’t even own these struggles any more.  A story Boyd Hopkins used to explain it to me once goes like this:  Boyd bought a property once in BC.  It was a nice large property with foliage all around.  He went and checked the place out, he liked it, he bought it.  It wasn’t until the next year when he was standing on his back deck and he notices something out back in the bushes that he hadn’t ever seen before.  Sort of looks like a chimney or something out back there.  Turns out there was an old structure back there that was full of the previous owners old junk!  Old bicycles, lawn mowers, rusted patio furniture, broken windows, probably an old clothes dryer – you know the sort of stuff I’m talking about.  So, now what?  Call up the previous owner and get him to come clean this trash up?  Nope, Boyd had purchased it with the property.  Well God purchased our property on the cross.  He owns it!  All of it.  It is His because he bought it.  Haha, what a sucker God is right?!  Nope.  Difference is He knew it was there when he bought the property but He knew we would never be able to clean all that up.

So here’s the key: I have to stop fighting and say, “God, I’m gonna need you to come clean this up because you bought it on the cross and I actually can’t even lift it.”  I need to surrender it to God, not keep fighting.  I need to walk away from the fight.

How hard is that to do?  I haven’t managed to successfully do it yet.  I’m pretty sure it is harder than doing the Crota’s End raid on Hard in Destiny.

Children

I have a couple children. I love them quite a bit. I try to reason with them all the time just because that is what I do. In my world things are supposed to make sense. So I try to explain that to them and I expect them to right away see that daddy knows what he is talking about, what he is asking of me is quite reasonable, I don't see why I didn't see it from his perspective right from the beginning. Yeah right...  I don't suppose I have gotten that reaction from them yet, but they're 4 years old so maybe I am expecting a bit too much from them.

I am often surprised though how many adults can't see reason either. They also respond like children. Tit for tat. You did this to me so I'm not talking to you any more until you say sorry. I'm not saying sorry first - it's your fault, you say sorry first. I'm gonna block you from my Facebook account. You hurt my feelings, now I'm gonna be mad at you.

Children.

I have a situation with my extended family right now where exactly this is happening. There is some sort of a perceived slight and then all of a sudden the bottom lip starts to stick out and it is all about me and my feelings and how could you do this to me, now I'm not talking to you any more. Grow up people! And I have to say, it's kind of funny for me to say this since these people are all my elders LOL.

I had an issue that came up between my cousin and I a couple years back. We definitely saw the issue from opposing sides and we had quite a falling out about it. The issue involved several thousand dollars so it was quite serious for both of us. We don't live near each other and we rarely see each other so that could have spelled the end of that relationship and we could have just written each other off completely. No big loss right? Just some very infrequent awkward moments at family gatherings right? No, not right!

I would then be living with that in my heart. I would have poison in my heart! Yes, poison! How can you be whole when you have a section of your heart that is black with poison? God speaks to this in Matthew 5:23-24. He is not interested in any gift we have for Him if we have got a feud going on with our brother (or sister or parent or child or friend or co-worker or......). How can we think that we can offer up good things to God on the one hand and deal dirty with people around us on the other hand? Nope. There is a crucial disconnect there.

I want to tell you something that I found interesting. Your motivations for forgiving people can be completely selfish. Stop the Presses! What?!?! Alright let's hear this, I think this might be something that could maybe work for all of us. I know I am as selfish as they come. I believe God wants us to forgive each other out of a spirit of love and compassion for each other, however, let's just explore this other side of the coin for a minute. Do you really want to live your life holding on to your precious pain? Wouldn't it be liberating to let it go? Just for a second imagine what your life would be like if you didn't have to nurture that pain in your heart. You don't need to say the other person was right in order to let go of the pain and the anger. Conversly you don't need to convince the other person that you were right in order to forgive them for the pain their actions caused you.  You don't even need the other person to want to forgive you in order for you to forgive them. See where I'm going with this? Forgiveness is your choice and your choice alone. Nobody can take that away from you. You don't require anything at all from the other person in order to forgive them. You don't even require them to be alive.

Here's the rub - if they are alive, you need to tell them that you forgive them. Crap. It would be a lot easier if we could just forgive the jerks and never talk to them again. Right, it would, and that sentence shows why that just won't work. If we've forgiven them then they can no longer be addressed as "the jerks", and we need to resume relationship with them. If we've forgiven them what reason do we now have to not invite them into our home? Jesus does not call us to "forgive and forget". That is a saying that we made up, not something Jesus asks of us. We are unable to forget. What this means is that we are not required to put ourselves back into a position to be hurt from "the jerks" again, but we do have to stop calling them that and we do need to resume relationship with them.

Guess what? This is a happy ending. My cousin and I contacted each other and worked it out. How did we do that? We both decided that we didn't need to live holding on so tightly to our pain. Our pain was not that precious to us. Our relationship was more precious to us than our pain. We both gave the pain to God, because after all, it belongs to Him. He bought it from us on the cross. This does not mean we are best friends. This does not mean that it does not still hurt for us to see each other. It means that we have forgiven each other for whatever wrongs we percieve were committed against us. We still don't see the issue from the same perspective, but that is not important to us anymore. Now I don't have that weight hanging around my neck and neither does he. My respect for him went through the roof after we worked this out. He is a man who is working to be closer to his Saviour just like me.

However, the situation with my extended family continues. It is sad that these people just want to hold on to their pain. I believe it has become part of them. For them to give it up at this point would be to admit defeat. It would show weakness. That kind of thinking is soooooo flawed. True strength of character is shown in forgiveness. It takes immense strength and it is the path to victory, not defeat.

When I was a young boy my Uncle Dave said something to me I will never forget. I had acted out against him for something or other, I can't remember what it was, and that is not the point of this story. I was standing on the stairs in our house on Neil Avenue in Winnipeg, Uncle Dave was standing at the bottom of the stairs.  I had just apologized to him.  He very graciously said, "It takes a big man to say sorry". So true. I have never forgotten that moment.