Blogging bump in the road

So it's been a while since posting and I am struck by some of the unexpected oddness of blogging that I hadn't anticipated. Matter of fact, it has dampened my initial enthusiasm and caused me serious pause. Turns out there is your blogging public out there who have their thoughts, expectations, feelings etc.. In reading other blogs it's not uncommon to hear the author apologize for being gone too long, maybe offer up some feelings or circumstances that are behind their absence. They are conscious of having some regular readers/commenter's, supporters, even fans who they are conscious of and intentional towards. For many, even most, this is probably just a Duh? but it somehow sets me back on my heels a bit. Why?
I'm embarrassed really to have a dilemma I sense is not particularly common....on one hand I value reading comments and admit to being warmed and uplifted by the kindness of visitors. On the other hand, I find 2 difficulties that really give me the yips...
The first is relatively minor I suppose - in the school of just get over it. That is the maintenance angle of responding to responders. My knee jerk issue is the time it takes to respond but that is false....simple fact is that a quick acknowledgement and comment to a responder just doesn't require much in the way of raw minutes. No, the bigger issue to me is that in order to be intentional about those kind enough to comment requires one to sort of keep track/to be deliberately conscious of a post's comments (..."let's see, did that post have 2 comments last time I checked or was it 3?") to see if anyone new has weighed in lest you unintentionally ignore someone and perhaps add to their life's struggle of diminishment or invisibility or just come off as a rude, unappreciative dolt.
The second and really core issue for me is just the awareness of others, of an audience. And not just some amorphous, non-descript audience. They have names and personalities and profiles and styles and unsurpassable worth and somehow the fact they are there just seems to trip me up a bit. I am aware of a certain editing going on in my head, a kind of a governor on my writing engine. So, if transparency is a goal of mine, I guess this is my way of confessing to the encroachment of that dreaded disease of "people-pleasing", of "not wanting to offend", of "wanting to be liked". Yuk! How did I end up here? Where's the freakin' couch and the Valium when you need it? Medic!!!
My potential solutions range from just setting up this blog so it can receive no comments (not sure you can do this but I've heard you can) to learning to not let this be an issue and just bull full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes! Or, to just blogging without entering the 'community' as a participating member. To forgo being a new applicant for 'community' citizenship. Do I just electronically, unilaterally journal in a public forum or do I attempt to contribute to the community as a bilaterally participating member??
The blogging community I have been made aware of (mainly through the lists that appear on DK and TC's sites) has been amazing and rich. As a non-commenting lurker, I have been blessed by reading such talented writers and their pulling back of the veil that often makes me laugh and cry and sometimes just blush by being present as they offer their transparency. I find myself thinking, "Is it OK for me even being here and reading this?" It many times seems so private and personal. As I expressed to one of you, I'm scared I may be turning into a woman! DC, help! Where are the sticks and balls? Bring em' quick!
All this blabbering on to say that please bear with me. (Who are you talking to here Santiago?) Well, to both myself and any who happen to trip on into this little cup of murky reflection. It's like a little stone in my blogging shoe and it needs to come out so the journey can continue....

Really, this is embarrassing.....but it's there....

The Blob

Worked from home yesterday. Even though there was nothing unauthorized about it, I have a tough time shaking this background feeling of doing something illicit or cheating. It reminds me of feelings from the past experienced when I was a kid home sick from school. If I watched TV I would sit there thinking, "I shouldn't be seeing this program...I should be in school." The vague sense of guilt and illegitimacy would rob me of any enjoyment. Later, as a teen when I could drive, I sometimes pulled into a parking lot and just sat in the car instead of going to church like I was supposed to be doing. I would keep track of the time and would turn the radio to some religious broadcasting in an attempt to assuage the guilt. I would always wince when I came home and had to respond to the inevitable "How was church?" Unfortunately, it would help develop my skills of lying and subterfuge.
Anyway, I had a full day of being by myself, doing some work but also working on our taxes. Didn't choose to pay Dave this year...why spend $270 when you figure you will owe. Another one of those signposts that pop up on the highway of life...we have no more dependents. On a purely mathematical level that means that $6800 that was there last year to reduce income is no longer there. Yep, sure enough, turned out to owe the feds $222 and the state $38 and hey, Jake, don't be late. My fiscal-headed friends might say, "Way to go, that's perfect...you didn't give the government an interest-free loan this year." Whatever, I'm just glad to be done but I'm not quite. Let my work stew overnight and figure I'll giver er' one more look over to see if I am missing anything. But one thing I know, we are at least $270 ahead of where I would be if would have let Dave be the one who figured this out. (Notwithstanding that Sandi is bound to feel like he would have been able to find a pot of secret deduction stuff that only the Rosicrucian's and the cult of CPA's know about!)
Day took an abrupt turn around 5:30PM...Sandi called to report she was at her folks and Dad wasn't doing well...blood sugar of only 40, unresponsive, sweating profusely. Called back in 5 minutes, "I'm scared, would you come over". Hop in the car, there in 12 minutes. Diabetes, scary thing when it seems to have a mind of it's own and sugar levels bounce around despite best efforts to monitor and control with diet and drugs. Such a bite to be 83, have a number of health issues and then end up with the overlay of diabetes as some kind of diabolical parting gift (as Don Pardo used to say).
Things get stabilized but close call nonetheless...didn't like his color and the labored, gurgling breathing. And of course it's a Friday, try getting a Dr on the phone. Home by 8, finish up taxes (the really suspenseful part where you load all the lines on the form and get to look back in the schedule to see the results....scary stuff). Relax a bit, trying to hydrate as a 14 miler is on my schedule, go to bed, put in the ear plugs (greatest invention for light sleepers) and lay there maybe 10 minutes. Phone rings...Dad's not doing well, need to get him to the ER.
Rush over, kind of wondering about getting him transferred into a vehicle...too weak?
Glad he called it...."Call 911". A nanosecond of family panic and with the push of just 3 phone buttons the emergency response system is ignited. Short time later the cul-de-sac is veritably flooded with red and blue lights...2 squads, firetruck and an ambulance with maybe 8 or 10 responders. Into the house like so many welcome invaders, sort out who is driving in what vehicle and off to United.
I end up alone in the 03',sprightly 260 HP, 6 cylinders, dual exhaust, rolled and pleated head gasket and suddenly a relatively perverse, tension-relieving thought enters my mind...."I'm going to beat them to the hospital".
And so, full of concern and frustration at this fallen world and what aging can become, with only flash thoughts of tickets, how I will explain if pulled over, I head out and have to admit some exhilaration at traversing the no-to-very-light traffic with some impressive rates of speed. Bingo, I beat em'! No victory dance but an interesting little vignette embedded in the midst of a mess.
He's going to be OK...pulmonary edema, drugs, treatment, admission to chase out the fluids.
But there it is in the ER, which we have been to twice in the last few months. A lobby full of waiting family members that paints a picture and depicts a health care system that is somehow supposed to be so grand by world standards but is obviously dysfunctional, broken. The crowd I see there never seems to be a representative cross section of our population. Instead, it's sharply skewed towards the more newly arrived citizenry. Are they just more accident prone? Is the white majority just more careful? Or am I just seeing what one often reads about, the ER's have become the hyper-expensive health care delivery portals of the nation's uninsured.
Well, 4 hours of sleep later, I have done what I set out...just a data dump of random stuff that one Friday in history seemed to bring...no real analysis, conclusions, editorializing, just a dump. And so it lays there, quivering in all it's randomness, as an ill-formed mass reminiscent of one of the first movies that really scared me...1958....The Blob.
14 miles is feeling elusive...take care Rafiki...come for me Aslan! Come!

Restless leg syndrome

I can only imagine that one day, when I am moved to actually make this blog-o-rama public, that someone is going to read my angst about blogging and just want to yell at me..."For cryin' out loud, get over it dude....it's no big deal." Alas, every time I sit down to click the keyboard "it's" there again....Why are you doing this? You figure you actually have something to say? Go back to your fortress of solitude and journal.
Anyway, to any future reader, sorry for this opening theme in most of my posts but heh, I just can't seem to relax and let it flow. Maybe it isn't meant to be....
But there seems to be a dynamic to all this that draws me back...I just can't articulate it. Something about the way I think when there is a possibility of someone reading over my shoulder that stimulates thought in a manner different than the guaranteed confidentiality of a journal entry. Heh buddy, you're the one who has always valued transparency and being transparent requires another person looking in doesn't it? (If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a sound?)
OK, enough. This blogging angst moment brought to you by Caribou coffee, your neighborhood purveyor of black adrenaline.
So,life goes through these chapters and the chapters seem to fall into overall sections. By most anyone's measure, I'm certainly in a mature phase chronologically. I remember looking at people my present age when I was younger and thinking that I doubt much is happening in their life anymore...just in an extended wind down phase headed for that spiffy assisted living facility just down the street.
But no, that's not the way it is and I continue to wrestle with being this authentic person who lives out life in conformance with what I say I believe. And so it's like this, I get most of my heart back, get healing (or at least in process) for most of the wounds sustained earlier in life and awake once again to understanding that it is not about me. I, as a friend of Christ, (He said it so I claim it) am motivated by being somehow used in advancing the Kingdom of God. A lofty sounding goal if I've ever heard of one. But that is what makes sense to me, gives me overarching purpose to the daily grind of schlepping out the same ol',same ol'... of slugging out a living 5 days a week, making ends meet. I am an itinerant Kingdom advancer and I am getting quite restless. (The pharmaceutical companies would probably like me to be diagnosed with "restless leg syndrome", the latest disease invention that they just luckily happen to have a product for .)
You see, as a believer in the 'good news', I have spent an inordinate amount of time applying spiritual truths to my life, bringing the old man under the authority of my Creator, participating in sin management, patching my life back together after amazing amounts of self-absorbed idiocy including masterfully assisting in an overall family and life implosion back in 92'. Seven years of my own version of wilderness, then years of getting dusted off, sort of reclothed and regrouped, remarried and generally recalibrated and voila!, I sit here clicking away. (All, I might add, described in a rather cavalier tone which is only a fake mask to hide the soul-wrenching,self-loathing that such historical self-reflection can so easily unleash.)
So the intercessory ministry has been very rich...so good because it has so obviously been choreographed by Him...I certainly would have never even considered it, wouldn't have sought it out....you know, you just can't make this stuff up! Father, thank you for your invitation to participate. As Elizabeth Elliott said, "Next to the incarnation,I know of no more staggering truth than that a Sovereign God has ordained my participation." Thank you Father.
But I am aware of "there is more" , "there are some new next steps" and I have learned that all I really have to do is say yes, bring me into all You have for me!
Somewhere along the line, I let the disparaging term "social gospel" preempt my activist side, my outward focus. The poor, the disenfranchised, the discriminated against, they all somehow didn't seem all that pertinent to me in my personal-spiritual-quest-space.
Too much of my spirituality has been inwardly focused, just dealing with all the "incoming" and the press of circumstances. Emphases too imbalanced...personal salvation, bless me club....community, what's that? Too much focus on fast forwarding to co-reigning for all eternity with Christ on the other side of death. And for now, what about the NOW between right here and cremation? Just hangin' out? Trying to stay out of trouble, keep your nose clean,concentrate on transformation, do the right thing while biding your time til the sweet bye and bye? Little ministry in the local body, throw a few logs on the church fire while being always subtlety conformed to the system of the world? Where is the agenda for NOW! We're burnin' daylight here Hoppy....you have been transformed by enough renewing of your mind to now see that it's time to be more of a change agent for the Kingdom!
Things are really swirling around me, Shane Claiborne and Brian McLaren end up in my hands, Beyond Belief series comes into WH and pow!, it is like I am being awakened out of some kind of coma and I want to sign up for mobilization. I had previously signed up to "toe the line" in joining the invisible war against the powers and principalities...that is right and good for me and that will not be going away, only growing. But there is to be more! Yes, I am excited to find out what that is (and also am sobered at what that will cost). I want to become a more dynamic part of the solution, to resist the insanity that is the very fabric of this fallen world's system and to live in more overt rebellion, to be more active in my revolting.
And so, I am in transition....I feel an impending growth spurt (heh,it's my domain, I call it growth)coming and I want to get it right. Fortunately, there is now some measure of modest wisdom and I am not at all tempted to author this myself. No, that is something I only need to hear and see as Jesus unveils it for me, either suddenly or gradually, my role is just to say Yes at the right time. And so I am looking, I am listening... show me those next steps Abba. And so I practice my response..., "Yes Father", Yes Father" "Thank you Jesus" "Yes, of course"......
Still in process Santiago....still in process....steady as she goes mate.....deep breath....