I am writing this at the end of a day which was amazing to the degree that I am beginning to tear up a little bit, with a heart not less than full.

When I woke up today I was unemployed, there were three k-cups left by the Keurig (now 2), the fridge was empty enough to make a scrounging mouse whimper, and I had so little money in my bank account that I felt intimidated by the idea of going to the grocery store to provide for myself. I repeat, without an ounce of sarcasm, this day has been amazing.

Let me tell you about my day.

All the amazingness has followed from my prayer-time this morning (blog update: I’m a Christian. capiche. onward.). Basically, I sat down in my usual butt-on-the-carpet and back-to-the-wall position that I dig ever so much, and I said right from the start, “God, I’m really going to need you to provide for today, because seriously the fridge is empty, like really empty, like the kind of empty that the only reason I’m not worried about it is because this time with you is between the reality of me having to deal with not having lunch”. I was really banking on something happening before lunch. Honestly though, this was about more.

One thing I have become convinced by lately is that God wants to touch our hearts. I’ve also begun to suspect that literally can’t happen without a serious experience of him in our lives. The love which he claims to have for us simply can’t penetrate the heart without something real. I’ll explain this in a way that will easily make sense.

There are few memories I have from before the age of 5, but one of them is clear as glass. I was 4 years old, and my pre-school class was having a show-and-tell that day. I remember frowning at my mom, discussing hard what I should bring that day, and settling on the item which was most important to me at the time: Barney Quillow. Yes, that’s right, bow before the awesomeness of the name of my favorite stuffed animal, a koala bear wrapped in a neon-striped egg that could conveniently tuck inside a slot in his back. You wish you fell asleep next to that guy.

I remember the excitement I had, as my little hands clutched this extension of my heart, and all I could think of was how others would share that excitement. I got up to the front, unzipped the egg, held him up proudly, and declared “for my show in tell I brought in my favorite bed-time friend, Barney Quillow”!

Everybody laughed at me. I started crying. I remember it more than 18 years later.

This is what I talk about when I mean a real experience. It takes a real experience of humiliation to remember it for 18 years. When I use the world “real”, I mean something that has actually been backed by your experience, the kinds of experiences which have actually changed and formed you. So I will say it again, it takes a real experience of God’s love to penetrate deeper than the mind, into the heart.

It also takes a real experience of God’s action to grow in faith in him, like maybe being a centurion with a paralyzed servant (Mat 8:5-13) or being a naked man who is demon possessed and lives at a graveyard (Mark 5:1-13). Or maybe, just maybe, being broke with no food in the fridge.

I will cut to the chase. In my prayer-time I immediately jumped to read about the feeding of the 5,000, completely looking to receive some insight and consolation with regard to my own position. I had to go back and read the classic bible story now that my life truly reflected it. Now I had become someone standing on the shores, “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). When he looked with compassion he was looking upon me.

As I read the story it became real, and I understood the simplicity of it- Jesus wanted to give the people some food. That’s it. I am almost overwhelmed by how simple it is. He could have sent them away, but why didn’t he? Because he loved them, and when you have bread and you have fish and you love the hungry people in front of you you’re going to GIVE IT TO THEM. He just thanked God, and then had the disciples start handing it out. They were stingy at first, with their hearts so empty of faith, only breaking off a tiny piece of bread here, giving a pinch of fish there. When they finished being stingy with the first group of fifty their heart grew a little bit, and they realized what was going on. Their generosity expanded as their faith did, handing out whole loaves of bread and hand-fulls of fishes. Thousands were socializing and eating, eating and socializing some more until they were done: “They all ate and were satisfied” (Mark 5:42). Jesus looked on with joy, basking in the extra time with people he loved, provided for by the generosity of his father!

If it is not exceedingly clear by now, God made it clear to me in that prayer-time “you will be fed”. And I have been. I texted two friends afterward, asking them if I could eat lunch and dinner with them. Within 10 seconds of the first text I immediately received a text back that simply said “YES!”. Unbelievable. Today I dined on the faithfulness of God. God’s goodness, in a chicken and cheese sandwich, in a bowl of curry. I am truly overwhelmed.

Today’s eternal purpose was God providing two meals for me. Nothing else matters. Today was amazing.

“This world values money, power, and sex appeal.”- James Bryan Smith

I came across this quote in some casual lunch reading today and it struck me to the core. It put into perspective a lot of the feelings I’ve been having in the last 6 months, right up to some in-explainable feelings from last night. I’ll share about the past months first and then get to last night.

Important pre-story information: every reader should know that I am a Christian. It is frankly one of the only things I can say about myself with any confidence. The story can now continue. At any rate, a little over a year ago I heard God speak as clear as day that I should move to a small neighborhood in Shreveport. I went ahead and did that, life happened, I worked as a server, kept plugging at an online degree, and started hanging out with my neighbors. It really isn’t too glamorous of a life, but God was with me.

Fast forward to a semi-diagnosis of lyme’s disease, and I found out that I needed to leave Shreveport to come back to my parents house outside of Washington D.C until I could finish a long treatment course and get healthy. This brought me to an interesting place where I no longer had the consolations of being in the spot where I saw God acting in and around me. Moreover, moving brought me to the capital of America, a phenomenal cluster of 6 million people fighting to prove they have some combination of money, power, and sex-appeal. Stick around and just maybe you’ll start fighting for those things too!

As people have asked me about my life since I moved back it has become abundantly clear to me that my last 6 months have produced no money (“part time server” if you recall), nor is my life really on a track to produce a lot of money. As for power, I don’t have much of that either. I equate modern day power with the ability to convince people that what you are doing is of worth and worthy of their backing. Normally doing something like moving to a poor city gives you a different sort of “power” that the world values, but it turns out that people have standards for what it looks like to do something charitable as well, and if you don’t meet those standards then you don’t really have their support. I don’t work full-time for the neighborhood school, I think that one of the best things I’ve done with my time is drink beer with my cross-the-street neighbor on his porch, and I don’t meet the D.C standard for what it would look like to use my time worthily in Shreveport. Support gone, and power gone.

These things really haven’t troubled me too much, though. Due to some heart level scripture understanding over the years, I have come to not care about making money at all. God has never let me down in the way of providing, and frankly I have aspirations of being lower class and watching him provide even more often. In the same way, slowly but surely God has also been convincing me that I don’t need to have any sort of “respectable” career or job title; I am coming to a place where I truly understand the joyful janitor concept.

That said, “This world values money, power, and sex appeal”.

Last night at the climbing gym I was growing incredibly frustrated as I kept falling off of routes which I felt I should be able to finish. No thought to the fact that I might be fatigued from the most successful outdoor climbing day of my life 4 days earlier, just frustration. No value for the fact that I climbed the first 4 routes I tried with smooth perfection, just frustration. There was no enjoyment and I had no idea why. Reading the Smith quote made me reflect on the climbing experience and then everything clicked: I totally still value having sex-appeal. I probably have been too much of a wimp to name it that strongly, but attention to fashion and fitness have all indicated as much. This is vulnerable territory, but I will explicate.

Climbing gyms are like temples to the body. Think Da-Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” or Michelangelo’s “David”. There are probably some people who would like to prove me wrong on this statement, but it is exceedingly hard to be a top level rock-climber if you are not in exceptionally good shape; this applies to every single muscle group. Best believe if you want to climb V-10 you better have a 6-pack, jacked fore-arms, pinky-fingers which you can do pull-ups with, strong quads, but all of that on an incredibly lean frame that you probably have to run and maintain an excellent diet to keep. Essentially, if you are an amazing rock climber then you probably have the kind of body which totally meets the American standard for physical beauty. Adding onto this, climbing gyms are more interactive than other gyms since everyone is working on the same routes and has the same metric for success and improvement. The climbing community is easy-going and wonderful at its best, but in my experience everyone is conscious of the fact that there are a bunch of gorgeous bodies around them and want to be a part of the club.

So every time I fell off a route my sub-conscious was telling me, “you’re not a part of the sex-appeal club”. No wonder I was experiencing so much frustration. The only thing which the world values that I remotely have any access to is sex-appeal. As I said, I definitely don’t have money, nor do I really have much power, so every time I fell off the wall it represented hitting the ground with nothing. That is a tough spot, but it also isn’t where things end.

The important thing here is naming that I don’t want to be a part of that club. I repeat, the sex-appeal club sucks (just as the money and power clubs suck too). As I said before, pretty much the only part of my identity which I am confident in is being a Christian. This inherently claims the truth that God loves me even if I hit the ground with nothing. This truth will continue to require reminders over and over again, but I do believe it. Staking that in the ground leaves me freedom to climb, to fall, to be poor, to be powerless, and to be butt ugly all on top of it. But also to be fine with that, seriously, deep down in the heart. Jesus wants to be friends with that guy who hits the ground with nothing. What a good place to find oneself.

I would be curious to know how many bloggers preface their first post with the whole “I NEVER could have imagined myself blogging, but hello world and buckle up!” cliche. I will not tell a lie. That is exactly how I feel right now, and you won’t be needing seat belts for this one.

I am writing like there is going to be an audience, but this isn’t for anyone but me. If you are reading this, then you can picture my grandpa saying “bully bully bully”, but it still isn’t for you. This blog is for me.

I am writing this for a few reasons-

1. I am motivated by actionable tasks, writing about an experience being such a task.
2. No one has the ability to track with any worthwhile number of goals without written documentation.
3. Life is an epic, but I don’t believe that yet.

“Is the answer seriously a blog?” you-the-fake-audience might ask. Yes it is “mon frere”, because I am not some lame-o bum who will be conjuring up life to write about in their blog. The goal is to translate real-life valuable goals into a well documented form, and maybe just have super cool alliterated titles and inspiring pictures to go with that documentation. Boom.

Look, I still have a dumb-phone, so it is more than likely that I am behind on the blog-train too, but you better believe I am hopping on board now! Heck, This is 2019! The year of the pig! CNN said in their “2019 things to look forward to” that this year there may be “hope for the opioid crisis”! I mean come on, try NOT to start a blog!

On a more serious note, I really do believe that this year is a breakout year, and I’m not going to let it go by without documenting it. My lyme’s disease treatment is bringing back memories and clarity of thought which I thought were gone. I am going to take those, and build more, and lay it down for the books right here. Come with me- Jail to the Palace.