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Waiting at the gate for my Huntsville flight. Woohoo!

I didn't think I was going to make it. I had 40 minutes to make the gate, and I made it in under 20. That's getting off the plane, going through immigration, getting my luggage, going through customs *and* security, and taking the shuttle to another terminal.

I'm currently sitting on the plane, breathing a prayer of thanks. If I missed this flight, I would have had to wait 4 hours for another.

Quote of the Day

"This is just delightful."
-Julianna

Sunrise

Ah, Friday

The weekend couldn't come at a better time.

Sky

Wondering what God has planned for me on the horizon...

Chains: Unfettered (conclusion)

As I began discussing the other day, the people of God are a free people (see the beginning of this stream of thought: Shackled). We aren't bound by the rules and the difficulties that mire us down.  If only we decide to see it that way.

This is all tied into our perceptions and how we see life.  I think this is why I love movies like The Matrix or Wanted that start out telling the story about a person with one perception of life, that later comes to realize they're living a lie - that the truth about life is something much deeper.  And when they find that truth - they're freed.

That's why living for God - living for Jesus - is freeing - he's freed us from all these things that complicate our lives. As I mentioned before, if I can be free from grumbling and complaining and dwelling on the things I don't like, I can be free from worry and stress; I can actually experience joy. (Though this process is going to be a bit more difficult than I first thought.)

When Jesus died he didn't give us a new law - the new testament isn't a new law; it's a new covenant - a binding agreement. A new law would only chain us down more (see the amazing letter Paul sent to the followers of Jesus in Galatia). Paul said that law cannot free us - it can only enslave us. The whole point of all the things Paul, Jesus, and the other apostles say is not to give us a new list of rules to follow - it's the opposite - to take away all the rules.  We don't have any rules to follow.  We have all these ways Jesus tells us to live - but they're not rules, they're things that help us have better lives.

We chain ourselves - God has given us the keys to our own freedom - and we stand here and hold them, not even realizing it.  It's living for Jesus, learning about Him, loving Him, that helps us to realize that connection. It's living for Him that helps us unlock the chains.

All rules do is chain and control - rules are about control.  I think that those who say we do have rules, and make their religion about catologuing those rules, want to control. They don't want to lose that control; they don't want to open themselves to God; give that control up to God.

Just because we don't have rules - does that mean we have license to do what we want?  I'm sure people will read this and thinks that's what I'm saying - if we don't have rules we can live however we want to live. But Paul answered this same question when he wrote his letter to the believers in Rome. Should we do whatever we want because we don't have any rules? No! We do these things not because we have to but out of our love for God and what he's done for us. As soon as we start doing them because we have to or out some sort of obligation, we take our heart out of it and are once again enslaved by the law.  That's why Paul wrote his letter to those in Galatia in the first place. He asked them if what God started, they thought they could finish by their own efforts.

The devil doesn't want us to open our eyes and see this - that we can truly be freed by God. He wants us to keep our eyes closed, shuffling along in our little lives, complaining about the little things that bother us, stressing about the other things. He doesn't want our eyes and our hearts open to the joy that God can bring.  If we can stay focused on being slaves to some rules, being shallow and judgmental - missing the bigger pictures of love and joy, he can keep us under control and keep us chained.  As long as we don't see what the truth is we're kept under control. "The Matrix has you."

Sometimes the difficulty and pain and sacrifice tears us from our own lives and opens our eyes. Showing us that the really difficult things - putting ourselves last, loving others, truly putting God first in our lives - are really what God wants for us and what really free us (I want go in more detail here, but have before, talking about what God really wants). I think that's why these movies speak to me - they are allegory for us keeping our eyes shut to the reality of life.  The process it takes for us to be yanked out of our reverie to see the truth can be painful.

As these movies show, it's our own misperceptions that keep us chained.  It's these illusions that keep us shackled.  Handcuffed to the cardboard box.  They keep our eyes closed to the real world around us. Keep us believing that we're ordinary and pathetic.

There's a character in Wanted - The Repairman - he fixes bad habits. I seem him as the metaphor for the pain we sometimes experience when we open our eyes and see reality for what it is, and how difficult it is to tear ourselves from the chained lives we live - to begin to live truly free lives.

I'm sorry - I had to get all this stuff out of my brain.  Last weekend we went to a memorial service for my Grandma who died last week.  And we took my Dad to Wanted  to get his mind off things (it was his Mom).  Plus, I finished The Shack a couple weeks ago. I've been doing a lot of heavy thinking over the last few days...

Chains: Shackled (beginning)

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau

I find it interesting how things in this life are woven together - like a giant tapestry. If we start to pull on a thread in one part of our lives, things start to unravel in another part. I came to a realization yesterday while driving home from a trip to Michigan, that the stress I have in one part of life is caused by the attitude I have in other parts of my life. All of my stress and anxiety is tied to the fact that I "need" to complain about and dwell on things I hate, things that bother me, things that annoy me. I'm overly sensitive. In my life, I spend too much time reacting to what happens to me. If someone makes me angry, I spend too much time thinking about it. If someone hurts me, I spend too much time dwelling on it. If something bad happens to me, I spend too much time complaining about it. And it's that very part of my personality that causes me stress when I worry about things that may or may not happen. That same part of my brain dwells on the details and the bad things that are happening to me.

When I'm complaining, I'm dwelling on the bad stuff that has happened to me in the past. When I'm stressed or anxious, I'm dwelling on the bad stuff that might happen to me in the future. If I wasn't sensitive to all the stuff that bothers me, I wouldn't be sensitive to the stuff that causes me stress.

It's all linked. So, in effect, all of these personality traits - my "enjoyment" of going off on things that bother me, my "need" to complain about how people have slighted me or hurt me, my "obsession" with how other people do things wrong - these, in a sense, cause the stress I have in other parts of my life. I make myself a slave to all my fears by dwelling on the things that make me angry.

So in trying to figure out how to be less anxious and less stressed, I realized that I need to be less complaining and less angry. I'm the only who has control over how stressed I am. If I want to be less anxious about life, I need to do something about it. I've always like this painting (based on a Mr. Boffo comic strip) that illustrates this pretty well.

"Handcuffed to the bars of a cardboard prison, he waits out his time like the fool he is."

This has always been real powerful to me because it illustrates how close we truly are to freedom - we just usually don't do anything about it.

I guess if I want to change some things about myself, I have to change some things about myself. I better dust off that bracelet that reminds me to stop complaining.

Our bad habits and bad traits chain us down - we all create our own prisons. What God has attempted to do is set us free from these things. If you look at our lives and all the things that Jesus said, all the things that Paul and the other apostles wrote about to the early Christians - these weren't rules...they're good things that help us live better lives. I've got some more to say about that, but that, but I'll save it for tomorrow, for the conclusion of this discussion. My brain is already starting to hurt.

More Customer Service Tales

We're in the AT&T store in front of the mall in Florence, and we've walked around for several minutes without anyone asking if we need help. But every time a young attractive girl with large breasts walks in she gets instant attention. Another arrow in the heart of customer service. If you need anything here, be sure to ask for Drew.

Is this a joke?

I'm sorry - when I first saw the trailer for Beverly Hill Chihuahua, I thought it was a fake movie. Like something you might see on Saturday Night Live.  Nope.  It's real. 

If we're going to boycott movies, these are the kinds of movies we should boycott.

Grandma Manchester

It's the odd little things you remember. You know how Grandma's house always has that certain smell? Well, the smell in Grandma Manchester's house was mostly coffee.  It was other things, too, that I can't place, but it had this coffee smell infused in the walls. I remember going to her house as a kid.  I didn't grow up on sweet cereal - we were a Cheerios and Cornflakes kind of house.  But Grandma always had good cereal.  Fruity Pebbles sticks out in my mind. And she always used to send away for stuff for me from the back of cereal boxes. I remember this one bank in the shape of a robot - when you put change in, depending on whether it was a penny, nickel, quarter, or dime, it would slide into one of its arms or legs.

When I stayed with her, I remember sitting on this massive cushioned swing she had out on the enclosed porch. And I think I remember playing Old Maid.

She had an immaculate lawn.

She liked the movie The Jerk - she thought the way Steve Martin danced was funny. I think she would catch it late at night, edited for TV.

At Christmas she'd do her trailer (she lived in a mobile home as long as I could remember) up like Bronner's - this massive Christmas store in Frankenmuth, Michigan. And she'd always buy the grandkids the same things. If one of the boys got sweatshirts, we all got sweatshirts.  And I think she was always an optimist. Even as I was growing out of XLs, she'd continue to buy me Mediums. Christmas afternoon with the Manchesters was always followed by a quick trip to KMart to exchange the stuff that was too small.

When I went to college she always sent me care packages.

She was very crafty.  She was always crocheting some new odd thing, or making needlepoint tissue boxes, or something.

I Love Lucy came on the TV yesterday.  People always said she had a lot of the same facial expressions as Lucy.  We watched it for a while. She did.

She was Grandma Manchester to me; Nor Nor to my kids; Ma to my Dad; and Eleanor to everyone else, as far as I could tell.

She was always going, though she'd had to slow down the last couple years. She turned 83 this year.  I didn't spend as much time these last few years as I think I should have. She left Thursday morning to be with God.

*sigh*

It's been a long freakin' week.

Sunday Night Sky

"Ah, the American Dream"

(I have to attribute that quote to Krista.)

Snapped

We just got Oxygen on cable - isn't that the channel that's advertised as being for women? Anyway, Krista's been recording this show called Snapped.

I'm wondering...is there anything I should be worried about?

Lars and the Real Girl

I've become a firm believer in the idea that the less you know about a movie before you see it, the better.  We went and saw Hancock this week, and I'm glad we saw it on sneak preview night, before the word got out that Will Smith is actually one of the aliens he fought in Men in Black. (oops!)  Just kidding.  Seriously, movies like this are only better the less you know going in.  Unfortunately, studio execs think that they can only get people into the movies if they give away most of the plot, except maybe once in a while the surprise ending. And unfortunately, that may be true to a great extent. I realize that the less you know about a movie, the more likely you are to walk into a real stinker, but I think it's worth the gamble. Because then it makes a great movie so much more wonderful. Especially if the things you wouldn't have known about from watching the trailer make it so much more enjoyable.

Lars and the Real Girl is a lot like that.  We pulled up Comcast's On Demand to watch a movie and we had a choice between this and Be Kind Rewind.  I'm sure that's funny, but Lars and the Real Girl was worth jumping into without knowing anything about it. It's enough to say that it's a great film.  It's a movie about people.  A movie that makes you think.  But not too much - it makes you laugh, too.  If you get a chance to see it, see it.  It doesn't have any action.  And the humor is subtle...not the getting-kicked-in-the-crotch kind.  But the humor is so much more beautiful and funny if you don't really know anything about it going in.  It's about a social introvert (Ryan Gosling) dealing with being socially introverted.  His sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) does what she can to draw him out of his shell, but nothing seems to work.  Until...

But that would be giving the movie away.  See it.  Before you see the trailer.  Before you look at the website. Before you know anything more about it.  That's how we saw it, and it made it so much better.