What to do when it all goes wrong.

I know that many of you are probably thinking that the title must suggest that things have gone south with the interview process at the church. Nah not at all, I am actually interviewing at 12:00 tomorrow. So why the name for the post.

I am so anti windoze it's not even funny, I just can't stand the windows product line at all, I am in fact a mac man, have been for quite a while. I love Mac, I love the Mac OS. It's elegant and clean and I rarely if ever have had any issue with it. It's just a thing of beauty. However even a fan boy can admit when he is stymied and gets frustrated and so dear reader I must do so. At some point last Friday my beautiful machine that's several years old decided that it didn't want to boot past the blue screen that appears between the gray apple logo and the desktop. This is a problem my friend, especially when you are used to your computer, when everything you have is locked onto the laptop and at this time there is not hope of getting a replacement. I take good care of my stuff and pride myself on being able to make things work and get older systems and even some of the newer ones back up and running, I have successfully hacked the HP in the living room to run OSX, so imagine my chagrin when this problem stumped me. I ran every single trouble shooter I could, used disk utilities, went into the terminal and did some command line stuff, booted from a different drive and attempted to repair the permissions, the list is endless, and in that endlessness nothing worked.

Thank goodness for target disk mode. Plugged the computer into the beast downstairs with a fire wire cable and was able to pull all the documents and important files off of it, then I had to bite the bullet, reformat and start over.

In doing this I decided to see how Ubunutu runs on this old beast. I have to say not bad at all. I have it configured in such a way that it's as close to my beloved OSX as is possible with docky. There are a few things that I like that I wish they would integrate into osx. Namely screenlets being on the desktop instead of on a dashboard.

The bad thing is it's just a pretender, it's doing it's best to be what I am used to. I wonder sometimes if that's how God feels about us. We do our best, we pretend at faith, we look good we sound good we seem to be what we are supposed to be, but when push comes to shove and God looks into our life does he find what I have here. A great looking piece of wetware that knows how to sound and look and even act the part, that fails to reach a real place of communion with Him?

I don't mind ubuntu it works okay, but it's not what is designed for the hardware I'm working on.

God must feel the same way about humanity, He doesn't mind working around us but would rather we give ourselves totally to Him so that He can be glorified in our full potential.

Dear Self

Dear Self,

Remember when you could do anything? Remember when you were able to leap tall buildings with a single bound (in your mind at least)? Remember when decisions were simple and conversations lead to something more, when your ideas and dreams made a difference? Remember when you had hope?

There was a time self when the gifts and callings of God were more than just pipe dreams and thorns in your side. There was a time when you not only heard from God and knew you had but were able to act on it, to see that things were going in a direction.

Remember when you were not poor? When you could do things that you wanted?

Now dear self do you remember when it all went away, when it all went wrong? Do you remember the day you decided you didn't need to do things the way you have taught others.  The day that you started doing things in your own strength.  Leaving God to bless or not bless whatever I was doing, when things went well God was happy, when things went wrong people didn't understand what was supposed to go.  

Pride, the bottom line in my life has always been pride.  Four years later the pride is gone,  not just the sin part but all of it .  I look back and wonder at times if any of it made a difference.  I look back and wonder.  

The thing about this whole situation is I'm called and gifted.  Makes it even worse to be sitting not able to do the things that I am made for.  To feel like not only am I not heard, but also that the things I say and feel don't count or matter much in the grand scheme of things.  

It has to do with the idea of not deserving or feeling that I deserve to make decisions or have opinions.  I feel like I have to just do what ever is asked.  

God isn't that way with us and I know it.  We all need to understand that God has given us a life and intelligence and gifts, and callings, and while I know that and believe it for everyone else, I wonder for myself.  

So what does it all mean?  Well simple I guess.  It means that I sit, I wait, I pray, and I cry, not always on the outside, but daily on the inside.