[muse]

     Okay, so Monday night, I watched the season opener of my FAVORITE show, Heroes.  I’ve loved comics since I was a kid, and can pretty much answer any trivia question concerning superman, who I consider to be the absolute APEX of all heroes.  There’s something about comic book heroes that show us what we could be and get our imaginations going as to what we could do to make the world better.

     In the spirit of every childhood fantasy I ever had about being a superhero, I’d like to do something a little different with this blog.  I’d like you, the reader, to blog about something I could spend HOURS on.

     Here’s the deal:  You’re a superhero.  What are your powers?  You can take this as shallow or as deep as you want.  I’d like to see some of those prolific bloggers out there give me whole backstories about how you got your powers and all that stuff.  (No cheating, either.  You can’t just be a “mutant.”)  Chop, chop, my peeps.  I wanna see some good powers.

       Leave a comment linking to your blog or just leave a comment with your answer to the question.

      Pass this assignment on to your friends!

BIG FAT DISCLAIMER!!!

-The following post is a prologue to the post “It’s Okay that I’m Not Okay.”  I just figured that it would be beneficial to you to see why my last post was such a big deal to me.  It’s a little drama-queenish, so just bear with me.  So…gulp…here I go. 

(Originally Drafted 8.23.07 at 2:00 AM on my home computer)

God’s been dealing with me lately to be more vulnerable.  So…here I go.

 I’m not okay.  I’m not doing well.  I’m not fine.  I walk around with a tight feeling in my chest constantly, and I can’t go to sleep at night or get up in the mornings.  I’m stressed, I’m tired, and I’m sick.  I’ve got bills to pay, a new car to buy, insurance to get, a speeding ticket (for going 62 in a 50…why?) to pay on top of having a sprained ankle, food poisoning, and constantly being tired.

I’m at a place right now where I don’t really like myself that much, absolutley despise my habits, and detest the person I could allow myself to be if I didn’t constantly keep vigilant.  I feel like everything’s slipping out of my hands and that I’m losing control of my life.  Imagine sliding down a muddy hill into the open mouth of an active volcano, knowing that your only hope to live is to climb up the muddy hill, but the only problem is that you can’t seem to stop sliding down it.

 God is painfully silent.  My family is painfully judgemental.  My friends are painfully distant.  I don’t feel like I’m burning out.  I just feel like I’m falling apart.

 I wish I could be the strong person I pretend to be now, but I can’t.  I wish that there were some semblance of a spiritual truth that I could glean from this time in my life, heck, I wish that I could even make sense of it.  The truth is, I’m absolutley helpless and scared to death because I have this sickening feeling that worse stuff is on the way, almost like I’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg.

Some people would say that I should wait it out for the eye of the storm, but the only problem with the eye of the storm is that you’re only halfway through the storm.  Sure, it’s calm, but it’s all false.  It’s a false sense of hope because the other half of the storm isn’t far away, and it’s a false sense of security because the worst isn’t over, it’s only begun.

     We all know about stress.  As Americans, we thrive on it.  Heck, we even create stress for ourselves.  I sat across the table (or desk, whatever that odd piece of furniture was) the other day and listened to a woman talk about how she was frantically looking for ways to not stress.  I wanted to laugh out loud and point out the irony of the situation to her, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.  The poor lady was stressing over stress.

     That situation has stuck with me and has sort of served as an inspiration for this new (long-overdue) blog.  Those of you who know me personally know that I’ve been going through bit of a tough spot.  I had some things at work, I had some things with my car, I had some things with an overzealous policeman, and some things with my completely stereotypically southern family (they deserve a blog, and it’s coming soon).  All in all, I just had some things…going on…in my life.

     Anyway, back to the story.  So, I sat down in my office the other day with my bible and my journal and was just chilling out, doing my thing, when I decided to ask God a tough question.

     “So God,” I asked, “why am I always so stressed and what can I do?”

     Silence.

     I shrugged and went back to reading what I was reading, and then a thought struck me.  I remembered back to my first year away from home while I was going to Masters.  This was, without a doubt, one of the most stressful times in my life.  I even had a nervous breakdown (granted, that had to do with repressed memories of some tough stuff that happened to me as a kid, too much work, and not enough sleep, but we won’t go into that right now) that year. 

     What followed that nervous breakdown was one of the most intensely sweet spiritual times in my life.  I was utterly overcome with how much God loved me and that I had to do nothing to deserve that love.  It literally changed my life.  It changed my attitudes, my habits, and for a space of about six months, I felt completely at peace with who I was and what God wanted to do in and through me.

      Alas, though the good times may roll, they also run out of steam if not properly maintained, and I didn’t properly maintain myself during that time, and I allowed myself to slip in some areas, and so I come back to the place of recognizing that I do NOT have it all together, and that’s kinda scary, but you know what?  It’s also very liberating.

     I bet there are a blue million folks out there who feel as overwhelmed as I do at times, but I wonder how many finally got to the place I did where I did.  It’s the place of “Okay, God, you gotta take care of this one, because if you don’t, I’m gonna go frickin’ crazy!”  It’s the place of being totally weak and being totally comfortable with your weakness.

 After all, in our weakness, the fullness of his strength is shown to be absolutely, totally, and completely perfect.

Okay, so if you’ve read the comments on my blog “Lessons from the Life of David part 1″, then you’ve seen the comment from Amanda Moncus where she tagged me.  This post is a response to her request for “Ten Things, Random or Significant that has happened in my Life.”

1.)  I was born the youngest of EIGHT kids.  I had THREE older brothers, so even now, I flinch when people’s hands get too close to my face.

 2.)  When I was five, my mom taught me how to make a grilled cheese.  I’ve been cooking ever since.

3.)  When I was 10, I took up the trumpet, then the trombone, then the tuba, baritone, and the rest of the brass section.  Piano came about five years later, and I’m still working on guitar.

4.)  The first album I ever bought was a cassette tape of Garth Brooks, I think it was the Red Strokes album.  I still love Garth.

5.)  The first time I ever sang in front of a crowd was in my kindergarten play “Santa Claus meets the Dinosaurs.”  I was the T-Rex and got rave reviews, although the show never quite made it to Broadway.

6.)  I loved the idea of being on a real football team until sixth-grade tryouts.  This was the year that I discovered tackling, and, consequently, joined the marching band.

 7.)  I once stayed awake for three days straight on a dare.  I still don’t remember all of the last day, but the friends who dared my actually just went ahead and payed me the money they were going to pay me and made me go to sleep.  Apparently, I was saying some pretty…ahem…colorful stuff.

8.)  I once dated an African-American girl (mostly because I thought she was hot stuff, and a little because I wanted to spite my semi-racist parents), but after about three months of cold stares and veiled threats, my parents finally came right out and said they’d kick me out if I continued to date her, so I caved.

9.)  My cousin Cheri once convinced me that if I jumped on the spiked-shell turtles on Mario Bros., that I’d get an extra life.  I never could quite jump on them just right, and I never could figure out why she never bothered trying.

10.)  In a fit of blind rage, I once ran away from home for three hours after getting a whipping.  I got hungry, though, and my treehouse was close enough to home that I could hear my mom call me for dinner.  Blast!  Foiled again!

So there you go.  Ten random things that have happened in my life.  Thank you, Amanda Moncus.  I hope Shannon Lewis doesn’t have anything important to write about because he’s getting tagged next.