And I think to myself...

Summer school is over, pretty much an anticlimax with how it ended, however that was to be expected, so why the title?  A few days before school ended as I was working with Emily a little boy went walking down the hall singing "and I think to myself, what a wonderful world." Here's a kid that will have challenges his entire life and he has a grasp that I don't have on how to live.

As we sit in church today, and yes I realize I'm blogging during  worship, deal with it, Gods speaking something to me and this is how I process, anyway as I am here things are clearing.  God has been dealing with me for years now, some know this because of what you have read, some may read more now out of curiosity.  I have learned about my pride, my lack of trust in God and my family, my temper, my sorrow, my joy and angst, all of it is there,all of it a reminder to me of how broken I am and have been, and its not only okay, its actually desireable. 

If this little broken boy can sing this, I can too.  I can make the active choice to THINK, to myself what a wonderful world.  See if I believe that I am letting the mind that was in Jesus, if I am really trying to be more like Christ I have to do that.  I have so much that others don't or refuse to have because of the choices that people make, the same ones I have made and to my discredit still do at times. 

Today we are visiting Covenant Life for Amberly, she wont be at the school any more and wanted to see her friends one more time.  I feel an intense desire to be at Immanuels, I am not sure why but strange things have been happening.  Dreams have been disconcerting, however last night was clearly different, I am at times forever the skeptic, however Phillipians and the all sorts of number combinations that made little sense were there, I looked up all the combinations, amazing how strange occurrences and dreams can be used.  What's it mean, well that remains to be seen.  I know what I want and I know what I believe is supposed to happen, and I know that if it doesn't it will still be a wonderful world.

Summer Time Blues.

Summer in the Newell house is not really our favorite time of year. Sure there was a time when we enjoyed Summer, there was a time that things in the Summer were fun, we were working in ministry, we were doing camps and planning Fall retreats, and enjoying life. We had cook outs, and planned missions trips and went on vacations. One summer we even had a first Summer with our first child, that was pretty spectacular. Birthday’s were fun we celebrated our anniversary, actually celebrated it, Summer used to be fun, summer used to be something that we looked forward to.

I’ve always been a person that loves camp. I think camp is one of the most important parts of growing up. Kids need a camp experience, and parents need the time to reset after several weeks of kids all over the place under foot. Camp was the thing that I loved to do, I loved planning camp, teaching spotlight sessions, working with students, time around the altar, leading worship, planning Smash Hour and then Tribal Council. I still have the packets from Camp in the NWD. Later I really enjoyed planning Extreme camping adventures with my students, taking them white water rafting, and cave exploring and spending time in God’s creation, teaching and exploring some of God’s truths. Two years at Summer music festivals, one year with Amberly as a little baby, we even spiked her hair.

The thing is Summer is supposed to be enjoyable, and it so rarely is for us any more. In fact we actually hate Summer, at least I do. It seems that once May June and July roll around things get harder instead of easier, they don’t slow down and lighten up, on the contrary they actually get more intense, and we have to really plod through it.

We were really hoping that this Summer would be a good Summer, a pleasant one, take some trips, enjoy our kids, spend time together, even with J pregnant it still had potential, alas this was not to be. From my journey through the wilderness back in June, to Summer school with the Turtle ( don’t get me wrong I am extremely grateful to God for allowing me to work Summer School) it just hasn’t been all that pleasant.

So much of my life seems to be doing what has to be done, or doing what others want me to do, or doing what no one else wants to do. I get it though, as a man that is trying desperately to be more like Christ, I am learning the concept of becoming less and less so He can become more… Still I am human and there are times that my selfish genes kick in and I want to do what I want to do or even what I was told was going to happen.

In just a few more weeks I will be teaching at Immanuels, then comes the worst part of the wait in this whole endeavor. See up until now I have been very sure that things were going to go a certain way, I have really felt that God was in this and that He was opening the door. I still feel this way but there is this specter that looms large in the background of Aaron Land that says it’s just going to be another ray of hope that ultimately goes down the tubes, it’s scary how much I really am wanting this. I keep telling myself and other people that I’m going to be okay with whatever happens, that God is in control, and while I know this in my heart, and even in my head I really am building myself up with this one.

A few blogs back I wrote about embracing the idea that Paul put forth when he said he had learned to be content at all times. I am still working on that one and I know that if God isn’t taking us to Immanuel’s there’s a reason.

Still it would be awesome to end a Summer of Blues with a return to full time ministry. Who knows whats going to happen I guess we wait and see.

See you around the blog oh and look for chapter three or is it four later on tonight.

I don't wanna move.

Well dear reader, it’s been entirely too long. I know I know I should be more on top of things, especially when there has been so much going on, there is however a problem with that. While things have been hectic and busy I have found that most of what has been happening seems to be un-noteworthy. I know this seems counter intuitive. I mean since my last post I have traveled across the country and back, worked on and been praying about the very real possibility of being Pastor Aaron again, drove across the country, started working in the KTHS Summer School program, oh yea and did I mention I drove across the country.

What I thought I would do for my triumphant return to blogland was take each thing and wax eloquent on them.

1. The whole pastor thing

• I have been praying for the past months a very interesting prayer mainly because of a feeling I have had. I know our relationship with God is not about feelings, however this prayer is because of it. I am beginning to understand a bit more of how Paul felt. Incidentally I also am having less and less of the “problem” I had with Paul a few years back. Don’t get me wrong I was always amazed at all he did with God but I also sometimes felt he could be a bit cocky, anyway Paul had this thorn that was given




• 2 Cor 12:8-10


• 8 At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, 9 and then he told me,




• My grace is enough; it's all you need.


• My strength comes into its own in your weakness.




• Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness.


• (from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)

                

                See Paul had his thorn the thing he asked God to take away and God left it where it was, well I sometimes feel the same way about the call and the gift I have been given when it comes to working with students. I have been begging God to just take away the calling and the gifting, replace it if you want to but take it away. Thats pretty much how my prayers had been going. He just won’t do that and that makes life so much harder.
                
                So today as I finally finish this post that should have been finished days ago I am waiting for a meeting with the founding pastor of a church here in MD, I have been through several interviews, and I know what I believe is supposed to happen, I just don’t’ have the confidence I used to in my listners if that makes sense, mainly because I have thought that God was doing something only to find that I was off base. So who knows at this point but I believe that soon I’ll be Pastor Aaron again and if not well God has some reason for leaving this whole calling thing in place.

1. KTHS Summer School

• This one is one of those amazing things that is not necessarily the good kind of amazing. When I was on my cross country adventure a few weeks ago things changed in my school employment. Initially I was to be working half day’s in the afternoon, now I am full day one on oneing with a student. Not something I mind it just threw our planned childcare into a spin, and as is usually the case our other plans got totally spun around when it came to how the kids and who the kids were to be taken care of by. Babysitting week one was, how should I put it not the most positive of experiences. Still we made it through and are now working through the rest of the summer with various things in place. The girls are going to go to my parents for two weeks, Zoey calls it two feet and one hand, she is really excited, mommy and daddy however are going to greatly miss our girls. Still they will be back in time for the 31 daddy’s big day of teaching at Deep Waters, the church that I’m meeting with from the first part of this post.




• Driving across the country

                Yea this was a big one. J tasked me with helping her cousin move and driving her mom and her mom’s cousin all the way to Idaho. We saw some beautiful things and I was again reminded of why I love the City and of how I like to travel. Still Camping out at the foot of Devil’s Tower was quite awe inspiring, and seeing Mountain goats in the badlands can’t be matched. Watching the mamma goat care for her young as they played.

Well dear reader I of course will write more soon.

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.

Glimpses of What?

Humanity, myself included, lacks so much when it comes to being what we were designed to be.  Still it would be so much easier if the God that I belive in were more available.  I dont mean that he's not,  I know I can talk to him whenever and find myself doing so increasingly, but thats not what I mean.  I mean that there are times in my life where I wish that God were actually sitting next to me, physically.  I would like to be able to look him in the eye and as why questions.  I would love to see him sit there and squirm in his seat.  I would love to be able to take him to task for where things are in life.  I would like him to feel uncomfortable as I interrorgate him for all the problems that he has allowed to come my way.   

Now before you take me to task for what I just said,  and before you tell me that I'm being disrespectful of God understand I'm not.  While I would love for all those things to happen, I realize that they never can or will.  Mainly because in my humanity my view of God is so finite.  I personify Him, just like carttoons personify animals, or comercials personify food, and that dear reader is the problem with Huminty as a whole and with Aaron in particular. 

Starting with the concept of grace and mercy we humans fall way way way too short.  We don't have a clue what true grace and mercy look like.  We fail to offer it to the people in our lives, we justify our feelings and actions giving them all sorts of religious names, we are righteously indignant, we are being angry but not sinning, we feel godly sorrow, yes I know I put a small g mainly becasue the sorrow we feel has nothing to do with God.  Moving into the realm of love we have a twisted and sad view of what real love is.  I think the only way to come close to understand how God loves us is to understand how I love my kids, and even then it's a poor excuse, mainly because I can normally count on some reciprication from my family, God has no such guarantee.

You get where I'm going with this.  For me to think I have any hope of standing up to God the way I talked about in that first chapter is one of those things that has to be marked in the poor human catagory.  I can see God looking at the beginning of my life and the end and all the things in between and telling me.  You have no idea.  He would be right, and I am trying my best to be okay with that. 

Every so often when I feel like the calling that God placed on my life and the giftings that he gave me are just going to dry up and wither because of my mistakes, God sends a reminder that he called me and chose me and he is the one that will choose when that is over, and while I get tired of the glimpses I have to take them for what they are.  God showing me that he loves me even when I"m frustrated and don't understand him.  God telling me that it's going to be okay and that I'm not forgotten. 

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The more things change

I used to not really understand the statment that starts today title.  The more things change the more things stay the same.

Seems pretty cyincal to me, right up there with Ecclesiasties everying is pointless rant, the thing is I get it now.  I utterly and completely get the whole process of things meaning nothing.  God is an intersting concept to me at this point.  I know all these things about God.  I know what I believe.  I know all sorts of things about God and churches and relationships.  I have taught groups from 2 to 200 plus and one of the things that always gets me is how quickly it all can just blow through your fingers. 

Sitting in Church on a Sunday is one of those things that I do because, just because.  I dont like going,  I dont enjoy the songs,  I don't like the time to shake hands,  Sermons are many times empty to me. 

See people don't get it,  I dont even get it to be honest.  Thins are supposed to be and they are not.  I'm called but it really doen'st matter not only called but gifted.  I can recognize it and the thing is other people may even recognize it.  Then nothing.  No outlet, no reason to even bring it up.  Sitting in church is an excersise in obdience for me at this point.  I go because I should go for my family.  I sit there and I bite my inner lip because it's sometimes the only way I can keep from breaking down.   

You would think that four years later things would be different or better, you would think that two years out I would be able to see what I am and who I am and how I am supposed to be.  You would think that God would have given me some sort of clue as to what is next or to if I should even want there to be a next, but no thats not the case.  I still get up on Sunday, I still go to Church,  I pray ever saturday night with my family that God will prepare us that He will make our hearts ready, that He will make my heart ready, and it just seems to bounce off of the clouds. 

I'm pretty sure this is going to seem like a pretty bipolar post, especially to those that read my facebook updates and relize that I have actually enjoyed a couple of church services lately.  I dont want you to get the wrong idea.  I do enjoy church on occasion, when I say those things on facebook I mean them.  I do like it somtimes,  but not as much as I would like or as I should. 

Sitting in church always does the same thing.  It always makes me sad, it always makes me remember, it always makes me look at who I was and it always makes me feel less than what I should be.  It makes me feel like a collosal failure.  

Anyway I know that there are people who read this blog that Love me that don't see me that way.  I appreciate them.  I love them too.  Just have to make sure people understand.  When I started writing a blog all those years ago it was for me to get feelings and thoughts out there, to keep them from bottling up and I write in it for that purpose.  If my random thoughts help someone else or encourage them thats all the better.

Thanks for reading

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