And now to write and ramble some more. 

I was talking with my manager at work and he was asking me what motivated me to do well at work.  I thought about it for a minute, basically it came down to i have no other safety net and if i want to be comfortable I have to work hard.  A little afterwards I realized there a lot of people who we just expect not to do well, since, well, they are bob or Joe. Just they are who they are and this is the type of job they do and now lets move on. 

I realize this isn't just a mindset that is at my job.  Where you'll hear it more is in phrases like, " boys will be boys" or " that's just how it is".  Basically, I'm realizing that there is a cultural norm to excuse wrong doing, laziness, violence, sin, because we just assume that's who they are at their core.  Where you'll see this a lot is either in parents or authorities brushing off sexual abuse or a girl excusing an abusive boyfriend.  The more I thought about this the more I realized brushing off sin in anyway is denying the gospel and denying the ability to hope. 

As far as with boys being boys, especially in the area of sexual abuse or other forms of sexual sin, excusing sin removes the hope of change.  Boys will be boys makes the situation such that the boys are unable to change, they're unable to be anything different, they are forever these abusive beings, so, get used to it.  boys are boys, expect to be hurt. 

The other sad thing i'm realizing is excusing and having no accountability for sin emasculates your boys.  They are not actually autonomous beings anymore, they're slaves to their own desires and sin.  They are never taught to actually fight, rather passively give in to their own desires by our passive acceptance of their sin. 

Now we have made them passive to themselves and now through our acceptance and our writing off that it is their nature to since we have denied them the hope and redemption of the gospel.  The gospel has the power to change, but if we never admit sin there is no need for change. If we never bring darkness into the light no one can ever see their need to be changed. 

Given, a guy being lazy at work and being excusing it since he is always lazy is not at all the same as abuse, but I was just noting that with anyone, if we write off their sin or even just their struggle as being part of them and never dive into bringing into the open we never give them hope of being anything more.  If we say, oh, it's just bob being bob, when something damaging happens we have already defined them by their struggle and trapped them in their struggle.

Life of a Car Sales man

I think it is time for me to start writing again.  Adjustment would be a way for me to describe the past year.  I am now sell cars. Used cars ( I don't wear cheap suits and gator skin shoes...) ( Actually I wear cheap pants and sneakers).  This is a " i'm going to start writing again, since it's probably healthy for me and i enjoy it" post. 

How the hell did i get here? BTW, where the hell am I?
 I think these are questions we need to ask frequently.  Well, i never really had a choice about asking these questions, since i am easily confused.  A year ago I was shuffling living situations, had a breaking car, waited tables at a fledgling restaurant, and was rather unsure of where I was going.  So, I am not in the same place anymore, I'm rather sure of where I am at ( My living room on my couch) and I actually have a direction my life is moving. 

One of the constant questions I ask myself is " where is tomorrow going to come from."  Mostly this concerns financial things, since reality is, however sad it is, money is what we function on daily.  There is this struggle between knowing what is immediate and what is the long term reality.  Reality is we don't really know where tomorrow is going to come from.  The struggle I find, with being a commission sales associate, is all the things we own are simply a loan on this earth.  As quickly as i've been able to move from earning barely enough to eat to having excess is somewhat overwhelming because it came out of nowhere. 

I was going to write more, but i just lost interest in writing. So, i'm going to write more at a later time.

i'm finding out, rather abruptly, that leadership is lonely. I am in a new position and am now the boss of a group of people i used to be dear friends with. the friendships are still there and in some ways have deepened, however there is a distinct difference that is easting at me. People turn to you to solve issues, people turn to you to resolve conflict, they look to you to lead. There is a type of pressure on you and the tempation is to take that pressure and try to solve the problems they ask you to in my own strength. The downfall of that is that strength is found in the weak, since strength is a gift from God himself. When we ask ourselves what our greatest good is, we tend to think about helping people, but the down fall of helping people as the greatest good is when we die, our ministry dies with us. When we place Jesus as the greatest good, when we die, the part we played ends, but the ministries grows in glory through our death. I am learning that we lead best through our weakness and living in honesty through them. By openly showing my mistakes i invite people into brokenness and allow them to show my grace and also allow myself to die. Jesus has a habit of calling misfits and rebels to him for his purposes and i am learning i am a small rebel that he is redeeming to make his instrument. Moses was a murderer and had temper problems, abraham gave his wife away, jacob cheated and lied his way to power, david lusted, solomon doubted and lost faith, peter denied jesus, and paul killed the church. The beauty of this is the story is not about us. Your life is not about you and your success, rather the story of a faithful God loving his unfaithful lover. Our job is more to represent rather than to save, to exist in something instead of recreating. Death becomes another beautiful thing that just takes us one step closer to our faithful lover.

Peter and josh are laying down on the couches and i am sitting on the floor while watching ninja warrior. Peter leaves to go to the bathroom and i take his couch. Josh and i decided to make a cautionary limerick about peter loosing his seat

peeing peter lost is seat
while his bladder went to weep

use this to guide your seating decisions.

a brief picture of saint mary st:

the setting: blinds drawn, door open, five people in the living room around sun set. Music is lightly playing in the background and the room is gradually getting darker much like our eyes and everything dims out the conversation slowly stops and we all begin to doze off. Peter falls asleep holding his new thommy gun and his hood up, billy falls asleep in another car reading an article on his phone, mike and abby are asleep while cuddling on the couch, and i am asleep with my legs on top of mike. an hour later we all come to gradually with just the street light coming in through the open door. it was a beautiful moment as murmurs of conversation began to grow into loud laughs and an unspoken love floating through our houses odd relationship that is a family.

Saint mary st.

YYYEEEEHHHHAAAWWWWWW

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.