Thoughts.com Blogs - ... joy comes in the morning?

   i spent a good chunk of Thanksgiving listening to a guy i am related to if you go back to Noah tell me about his church experiences. i was actually mesmerized. he had been confronted and asked to leave this church that he gave HUGE percentages of his income to. the confrontation happened because my relative chose to miss a service to be with his kids. my relative asked me if that was legitimate of them to do. it was funny. my family has amazing character and would never tell a secret on pain of torture. but that doesn't mean we won't listen when given a chance. i noticed that the more my relative told me, the quieter those around us became. it was not just fascinating me.

   i am dumber than a two-dollar dog. but i have been to church a million times. some of it stuck. and to add to that, there is a three-hundred year old woman who comes each year and has a deeply strange religion. something about blue lights or something. so when people talk spirituality, we kind of all listen. and i know a lot of ideas from my history of churching. i don't know what his pastor was basing his nazi attitude from about church attendance. i bet if i had asked him, he would have said he believed in free will. that's an important church idea. but this pastor apparently believed that you have free will until you meet the Lord, and then you have mandatory attendance. i have never had a time while married that my wife had breakfast with me. now, if i found another woman willing to put up with me and she came to breakfast everyday, i would obviously be pleasantly surprised. but if i thanked her, and she said, "i am only here cuz the minister said i should be," i would sneak out of the house and eat at Bob Evans. if she wasn't there cuz she loved me, why would i want her company? if i am not at church because i love the Lord, i am stinking up the place. my relative's minister was inventing sin to keep his congregation under his thumb.

   i am crushed by guilt almost continually. if Pastor Don tried to make me feel even guiltier to keep me under his thumb, i would just go deeper into solitude with my life. i out-produced 350 brokers in four days so i could spend mondays with my son. we sat and watched Beauty and the Beast all day. my daughter has spent most of her life living with her mom. but when i had to quit working, i got more time with her than i would have. but i don't feel like i was a good dad. i failed at being dad, being husband, being friend, being writer. oh, yeah. God gave me a column and i failed. God can make water come out of a rock. He can still slip things to people through me while i am not looking.

   there is no condemnation for those who believe. but you know what? guilt and condemnation are not the same. "no condemnation" means that God is not standing there shaking His angry finger at me. but guilt comes from the inside. i was a disappointment as a son. i have lost wives while trying to keep them. it wasn't that i neglected them or drank. i am just not good company. i wasted every opportunity i have been given. i live terrified that people will find out that i am a complete vapor. throw your arms around the air and you will experience hugging me.

   it may seem like i am feeling sorry for myself. i have no sorrow. it has never been different. it is merely life as i know it. it is not a tragedy. children being kidnapped to work as sex slaves is tragic. loving, lifetime spouses that end up with one caring for the other while they waste away is tragic. brilliant, caring, compassionate people being murdered by an unjust, multiply impeachable American government that sends them into battle is tragic. being an iraqi losing half a million of your own non-military people because of "oops" bombings, "oops" slaughters of families ... and everything else that goes with it is tragic. i do not have the kind of importance that qualifies as tragic. but i was pretty brilliant as a kid. if i had done something with that, maybe i could be making a difference. i dream regularly of a rambo type of raid to free the child-slaves and permanently hurt the adults who mis-used them. but with my current body, i would collapse on my way TO the raid. once again, i am an idiot.

   God made a donkey talk. He made a bush burn but never burn up. He can use me. i love when He does. but if guilt could become so great that it collapsed on itself, i would be that black hole. God cleansed me of sin. i would give close to anything to be disconnected from this guilt. one day i will be. thanks for stopping by.