It was like this at one time.

This video takes me back to the neighborhood days.

I personally believed I grew up in the best neighborhood in the world. We had our little gang and it was expected that once everyone got home from school, we headed outside to play football or pretend we were in the Army. We even had our own chain of command (if you must know, I was the Colonel). Life was simple back then, peacefully simple. Yet we all wanted to grow up. We wanted to be like the big kids. We wanted to feel cool, we wanted the world.

Well, we grew up. We still are growing up. We moved away, all went down our own path. We all found our personal vices. I stayed up thinking about all the things that ruined us. Drugs, sex, ego, alcohol, pride. Maybe if we knew what awaited us in our older years, maybe we would have wanted to keep that bubble in tact just a little bit longer.

The one good thing is that we still are that little gang from the neighborhood. We look out for each other and check in. And as we are getting married and starting families, I hope my kids view their childhood like I viewed mine. I hope it's like the song posted. I hope it's remembered like paper kites.

Laughing,

The little boy inside me.

P.S. Thanks to Gentri Lee for directing me to this amazing music video. She is also a pro blogger. No joke, half the world follows her blog. Check out what all the buzz is about HERE.

Come this time next year.

Just finished finals. Procrastination was a consistent theme over the past couple of weeks but I didn't let it get the best of me, for the most part anyways. After staying up intermittently writing a paper and drifting off to good tunes, I finished my paper and let my eyes give into the temptation of sleep, rest, rejuvenation. It wasn't enough. I laid there thinking of what awaiting me in mere hours. The dawn came early than expected. I wandered through the day dazed yet focused. Only to come home and collapse from exhaustion. My twin bed in the corner welcomes me with open arms. And considering all this craziness of the last couple weeks, I'd do it over again a million times rather than be where I was this time last year.

I can't really describe what happened other than the house of cards I had built in my head collapsed. The lights just went out. I just lost it. My days soon became a nightmare to go through. Fear gripped my body like a plague. I dropped out of life. Day became night and night became day to me. The only time I could calm down was in the quiet of the middle of the night, when the whole world was asleep. I would just sit and enjoy the fact that my mind had slowed down and that I could just breath. I went home for Christmas but I was a wreck. I couldn't enjoy anything about the holiday season. I was broken. A scratched record on repeat. I died for a little while. Whatever good was in my life had disappeared and I turned into a ghost. An aimless, starving, searching, worrying, lamenting ghost.

Every day sounded like this...

At this time last year I was certain that this misery was here to stay. This was the hand I was dealt. Some people having the blessing of living a happy and blessed life. Others are given the trial to suffer and have faith that there is some purpose in it. I was certain I was the latter. It was just my lot. Happiness wasn't was God had in mind for me, He had something else and I had no say in the matter.

You know it's weird some of the peculiar things you remember during certain times in your life. Last December I specifically remember just standing in the shower and staring at the tile wall for what seemed like hours. I would just sit there and think of every possible terrible thing that could happen in life. I would obsess over disaster all day. I woke up exhausted and went to bed exhausted from a mental obstacle course that I would run through over and over again during the day. I also remember the glimpse moments of relief, when the surge of darkness would subside and I could be in the moment. Like going to a trailblazers game with my family, doing a puzzle of Christmas eve, or just knowing that even if everything were to collapse all around me, my family would still be there.

The process was long one, it took months. Those months felt like decades. I had to learn to cope with pain. Not physical pain, but mental, emotional, and spiritual pain. I had to learn to accept it. I had lessons that I needed to learn, truth I needed to experience. Most of all, I had to learn to be grateful for that pain. I needed refinement.

And I learned some important things about God in the process. Some very personal things about me and Him and our relationship. I learned where I stood with Him. I learned what He is really like. All the false ideas I had were erased by His voice. And I started to realize that the grass still grows in the spring, the sun rises even when it's cloudy, and that whatever happens, things work out.

I sit here and am grateful for the fact that this Christmas, I can actually enjoy Christmas. I can laugh without having to worry about it. And that is the best present I can have this year. It's a good Christmas already.

Because every day sounds like this...

And come this time next year, I am gonna appreciate where I'm at. I am not going to put expectations on the future. I'm just gonna let it be.

Letting go,

Little Lion Man

Forever Mirrors.

I had an experience Tuesday morning. It was one of those experience where I saw my life was one whole, not a past, present, and future. Not a book with chapters, but for one moment, maybe two, I was able to see the picture of what my life was and was to become. It was quiet, intense, quick, sacred.

Your future becomes a very real when you are shown what the future beholds for you. I saw my future right in front of me, everyone who was to become my future, well mostly everybody. As I peered just for a moment into the door that someone forgot to shut called the future, everything changed. It looked... familiar. Like I knew what was in the room awaiting me in time. I knew the people in there. I knew what they would be to me, what I would be to them. And for that brief few minutes I saw the whole picture in it's entirety. I had seen it before, somewhere. I just forgot what it looked like.

"If the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall, then I think we would see the beauty. Then we would stand staring in awe at our still lives posed, like a bowl of oranges. Like a story told by the fault lines and the soil" - Bright Eyes

It was sobering and exciting, heavy and relieving. It made me patient and anxious all at once. I wanted to cry and laugh. But I just sat there and took it all in and tried not to make it more or less than what it really was. I just appreciated it for its own unique nature.

Then the questions came. Is it all just wishful thinking? Is this some hypnosis brought on by years of wishful thinking and unfulfilled desires. Is this from God or something of my own device? Am I fabricating my own experiences? These questions always come after I experience something profound, something hopeful.

And so I asked someone in who's wisdom I trusted. And he answers me this, "What does it matter if it's from God or from your own desires? If you desire good things, then it doesn't matter. That is when you know your will is aligned with God." And then I realized when I was looking in the forever mirrors, I was looking into the heart of God as well as my own. What I wanted is what God intended for me. And I didn't have to question if it was really what I wanted. because there wasn't an option anymore. It wasn't about me anymore. It was about everyone before, here, and to come. It was about everyone except me.

It's about her.

It's about my kids.

It's about my brothers.

It's about my sister.

My Father.

My Mother.

Because I was made to be with them.

That was God's intention all along.

So I kept on walking Tuesday, going about what would be known as just another day. Except I walked a little faster, because for a minute or so that morning, I realized what was before me. I wanted to get there, because I knew what is awaiting me is home.

And so I find myself walking.

And hoping that I find that home sooner than later.

Home bound,

A postcard from the present to the future.

Sometimes Monday Happens.

I wake up before the sun is up and head off to work. My car is dead. It's ok though, I have my room mates truck, which is pretty nice. So I roll around in a truck that is not mine pretending that I am cool and I may have more than a few dollars to my name. It's not true. I am on my way to clean and vacuum the country club, the early morning crew. We are usually done and gone by the time the rich old men show up for breakfast and to talk golf. I put in my ear buds and wander off in my mind as I vacuum crumbs from last night's five course meal.

I am done and I head to class. Good things. I ace my quiz (which was not hard) but I ace it anyways. Then get out of class early. I enjoy laughing with friends in the hallway. I then see another friend and decide to hit up lunch. Supreme personal pan pizza from pizza hut. We talk about the usual thing for a single mormon in their mid twenties. Dating. We complain and lament about the same old things, give answers we have given thousands of times before. We end up passing the blame on somebody else, laugh, and enjoy the fact that we have once again let ourselves off the hook.

Sitting in my required philosophy class. The teacher is rambling on about some issue I really don't bother to know about. I hate generals. They make school almost unbearable. A six page paper on Friday, then a final on Monday. Just cramming my mind with issues that don't have any real solutions. I have no power to change it, or at least I don't desire to have the power to change certain things... yet.

The cold is starting to make it hard to breath. I come home to an empty apt. It's on cold days like this I wish I had a Mrs. to come home to, just for the company, just for the love. It will come in time. I have patience that something will work out. I make blueberry pancakes just for the sake of eating something warm. I make the batter thin so they come out like crepes. I feel like I have a special talent for making these pancakes just right. I work on this blog and go fishing for compliments. I enjoy some conversation in the vastness of the internet. I find common ground with strangers. I find common ground with myself. It's a beautiful thing to behold. People can surprise you by their generousity in sharing their thoughts. It's one of the most unselfish things I believe we can share, ourselves.

I am starting to stress. Worrying gets the best of me as I wonder how to accomplish what everyone expects of me and even more, what I expect of myself. Too much, and the Monday night football game is a snoozer. Two losing teams, two reasons not to watch. I put in a movie to make me think. Garden State it is. It's been too long since I have viewed such fine cinema. One line sticks out.

"I'm fine with being unimpressive. I sleep better." - Garden State

I get up to switch my laundry out and it gives. My achilles heel, which happens to be my right knee. I have no clue what happens but it buckles and I fall to the ground like a sack of bricks. My body is giving out long before it is supposed to. I roll around on the ground, wondering how in the world my knee gave out just walking.The pain is so bad I feel like I might vomit but what do I do instead? I laugh. Because it's Monday, my car is dead, I am a janitor, finals are gonna kill me, my knee is swelling up, and I realized I was due for a bad day sometime. Mondays happen.

TGIT (Thank Goodness it's Tuesday)

To a better Tuesday,

A hopeful gimp

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A Sunday prayer.

Here's my heart, Lord.

Take and seal it.

Seal it for Thy courts above.

The Right Reverend

The Right Reverend

A man who is right with God. A man who exemplified God through action, never through words. God is never found in the walks of fame, the riches, the glamour, or the fame of the world. The most grand Creator of all things is found in the humble corners of the soul, of those people who knew their weakness but made no excuse for it. Not for the perfect but the sinner who keeps trying; of those who just want to be good for the sake of being good.

I had a grand father who was those things, he still is. He was the right reverend because he lived the right way of God. Was he perfect? No he wasn't, he would be the first tell you it. The first to admit he was a drunk. Yet, he was man of God.

He saved lives not because he lived some perfect life, but because he used the experience of his mistakes to help and save others. Sometimes we get so caught up on running the straight and narrow path we lose sight of the fact that there are people stumbling next to us on this path. The right reverend never was trying to get to heaven that fast because he knew heaven is about who you get there with, not just the sole fact of getting there. And so he went on walking and taking a minute to talk to the down trodden while some people scoffed at him for taking so long, but he never gave into their criticisms, because he was the right reverend. There is always room for one more, always time for a visit, always a pot of coffee ready for the weary traveler, because the right reverend knew the way heaven really worked. Heaven is a lot like the house on the corner of Russell Avenue, a lot like the Sahara Club, a lot like the old man whistling while playing cards in the corner of the room. If you are in such a rush to find it, you will drive, walk, see right past it.

Yeah, the right reverend showed the right way.

And this is what keeps me up at night sometimes, the thing that strikes me as I look out to the vastness of the great salt lake. Will people say the same thing when they bury my tabernacle down into the mud? Will I leave the earth with footprints or just finger printers smudged on a bathroom mirror? I pray mightily that my death bed will be surrounded by many, not just a machine and regrets. And will people smile when they think of the time we spent together, or will I just be a tombstone? Will I make my family name proud? Will people be able to easily see that I was the grandson of the man known as the Right Reverend? This is written in the back of my bible and spoken on the letters of incessant prayers. That I make good of his legacy. That I keep it alive.

And so I go on, making sure my hands are never too clean to help the downtrodden up off their feet and never too busy to let someone know that it will be alright. Yes, I am not running to salvation. I am doing it one step, one person, one mistake at a time.

And when the black disease comes to my name on his list, if I am surrounded by many instead of a few, then I will hear the words "All is well, All is well"

Throughout all eternity on Russell Ave,

The faithful (at least trying) grandson