The Pub

The one sure thing

You've heard the phrase before, "_____ is the one sure thing in my life".  Up until a few years ago I would have said that God is the one sure thing in my life.  But know I have no idea what that means, and looking back I can see that the one sure thing I had growing up was disappointment and frustration and anger.

Oh how little things change.  Now days things are very similar.  No matter what time of life it is.  No matter what my circumstances might be.  No matter what decisions I make.  The one true friend that I have I call Depression.  I like to refer to Depression in the male gender because men are shit, and so is Depression.  He (Depression) lives with me all the time.  Sometimes He falls asleep and/or doesn't care enough about me at the time to get involved.  But He is very consistent.  Not in His timing but in his indelible persistence to control me.  Sooner or later, greater or smaller, softer or louder, He always shows up.  Always!  He doesn't come in the same way every time.  Sometimes He surrounds my grief or mourning.  Sometimes He causes it.  When He causes it, it is always the mourning of myself.  The loss of who I hoped to be and how I hoped the world would turn out.  I hope and hope, expect the best things, then become disappointed and there he is again, in my disappointment.  In my shame, my self-loathing, my hatred, my rage.  Even my love and happiness is incomplete because He is a leach that slowly drains me of joy. 

He will back off just enough to allow me some clear vision of the world and some balance to my life.  But at just the right time, when I think life is going to deliver on its promises, I get blind sided by Him.  Then He puts the dagger in further by coming in desperation.  Desperation that is paralyzing.  Desperation that makes you do things that you would not normally do.  Putting me into situations where there is no chance to win.  Then he laughs and mocks me as I fall.  Helpless and alone.  Its in those moments that I wish He would overtake me.  End it all.  Let the painful existence we call life fade into nothing for me.  But He is far too clever, far too cunning, far too evil for that.  He will leave me then and allow me to dig my way back to life until the moment is right, then without a doubt, I will see him again, and without a doubt, I will succumb to Him because desperation is a one way street.  That is how I am ruined every day. 

Then there is Her.  I don't know who She is but I call her by manifold names.  Names that ring sweetly and even with the sound bring hope.  I call Her joy, love, hope, peace, kindness, satisfaction, forgiveness, reconciliation.  She brings tenderness, compassion, mercy, and all good things with her wherever She goes.  She is honorable and far more lovely than He.  She is good.  She does not possess the quality of goodness, no, she is much more real than that.  Much closer than we ever imagined.  Whenever you see kindness, whenever you see hope, whenever you see tenderness, you see Her.  She covers you, lavishes herself on you, and brings you to life when you are sure to die.  She is who nurses me back when He leaves me.  I am in love with Her.  I dream about Her every moment of every day.  I long for Her always and am constantly empty without Her.  When She is not there, I have only Him, only death, only despair.  It is like I can't breathe when She leaves me. 

I also hate Her.  I hate Her with the passion of a thousand ages.  I hate Her because She, in all of Her wisdom and beauty, can not be counted on.  She is unpredictable.  A hurtful mystery that will not be relied upon.  She is swift and untouchable.  She eludes me when I reach for her.  She brings me close, tells me that She is better than Him.  Seduces me into Her and then just when I reach for Her, She is gone.  She leaves me to Him.  She gives no reasons and answers to no one.  I hate her for this. 

Is She not strong?  Can She not overcome Him?  Her ways are not His ways, but why does He always seem to be ahead?  Why, sometimes, does he conquer lives even till death?  Where is the relief?  Where is the end of my pain?  When will I be able to say, finally, that She is the one sure thing in my life, and love her for it.

I speak not of god and satan.  I speak of life.  Because that is all that I know.

A Welcomed Guest

I have to apologize to everyone who stops by here periodically to read my ridiculous postings.  I have been negligent of them for a while now due to working through the angst and uncertainty of being a young adult.  Things are starting to shape up for me but because of all the new things in my life the posting will be a bit sparse for a while.  I do not, however, wish to leave you with nothing.  So I enlisted the help of a friend.  Today's post was written by her and I expect that you will find it deeply moving.  I will not embarrass her by telling you what an amazing person she is or how she is one in a small handful of thoughtful people that I will probably ever know.  Please take the time to read her story of leaving the church.  You won't regret it.

"I was the ideal Baptist girl.  I went to church three
times a week.  I hosted youth group shindigs at my
house.  When it was time for me to go to college, I
turned down seven full scholarships to attend an
overpriced, glorified Bible college because I wanted
to be a missionary.  What happened after that is hard
to say.  Do you ever have one of those moments when
all of the sudden you become aware that you’re in a
car, driving, and don’t exactly remember how you got
there?  You try to remember where you’ve been and then
quickly try to decide if you’re going the right way.
I had one of those moments where I suddenly came to
and found myself writing the narrative of my life and
wondering what I had written on the previous pages and
what I was supposed to write next.
That moment came when I checked my mail one day and
found a magazine published by a Southern Baptist
Seminary.  This magazine was devoted to unearthing the
“biblical” role of women.  I was eager to read every
word in the same way that passersby are eager to look
into a wreck, both hoping and, at the same time,
fearing that they will behold something gruesome.
After more than an hour, I put down the magazine and
stared at the wall, not knowing what to do next.  I
then decided to blindside my mother.
I called home in tears.  I told my mother that I
appreciated the amazing parenting that she and my dad
had provided but I had a big question.  Why did my
parents tell me that I was a worthwhile and important
person and that the world lay open before me with
possibility and I could do anything, and then take me
to a Southern Baptist Church every Sunday and
Wednesday of my life?  It was the equivalent of a
family adopting a black child and then making it their
top priority to see that he attend at least three KKK
meetings a week.  One day that child, after years of
these meetings, realizes that all the hatred and anger
is being directed at him.  Why didn’t my parents weep
after having delivered a female baby and why didn’t
they just tell me from the start that I could only be
what my father or my husband or the majority of
constituents at a given southern Baptist convention
saw fit for me to be?  While we continue to disagree,
my parents are open minded enough to understand my
position.
I began to examine my affiliation with the church as a
whole.  This is when I quit church all together.
There are two major reasons.  One:  my experiences
over twenty two years in church had culminated in a
deep bitterness toward “Christians.”  Every time I
stepped into a sanctuary, I began to feel resentment
and anger toward many of the people there.  Church
consisted of me stewing in my pew over all of the
personal wrongs that had been committed against me and
the bigger, systemic wrongs that had been committed
against a wide range of people over centuries.  I know
that the Bible says to forsake not the gathering of
yourselves together.  It also says to love your
neighbor as yourself.  I had to choose which of those
commandments is more binding because, honestly, I
could not both attend church and consistently love my
neighbor.  I chose love.
Two:  I do not want to ever receive a phone call like
the one I made to my mother.  I hope to have children
someday.  I haven’t met them and I have no idea what
they will be.  They may be smart and choose to love
God with their minds.  They may be mentally ill and
hear things that aren’t really there.  They may be
male, the kind of males who don’t want to attend men’s
prayer breakfast on Thursday mornings.  They may be
females who don’t want to serve on the hospitality
committee.  They may be gay.  They may be straight.
Whatever they are, I plan to love them and I won’t be
part of a community who cannot promise to do the same.
I never want my child to ask me why I brought him up
in a church that shuns him for who he is.  I’ve yet to
find the congregation that I feel would accept people
without judging on at least one of those conditions.
This is why I remain a free agent.
I have been classified as disillusioned.  Illusions
are very important things because, inevitably, some of
them turn out to be true in the end and we can almost
never tell which ones will be false and which ones
true.  We have to sift through them, select a few and
then believe them as much as we can.  I am not
disillusioned.  I just realized that I was operating
under the wrong illusions.  I used to think that I
could find a place of importance in a church that
would not listen to my words.  I used to think that
people who were not like me were not just wrong but
evil.  I used to think that Jesus could only love me
if I presented in a very particular way.  My new
illusions, things like love for the other, are more
important than love for the denomination.  Approaching
people and situations in love and compassion is more
important than ensuring moral uprightness.  At the end
of it all, we don’t encounter punitive judgment but
total reconciliation with God and each other.  My
favorite illusion:  The world can be saved, it should
be saved, and it is worth saving.
I consider myself in exile from a place that should be
my home.  I continue on because I know the long
history of exiles who, after varying periods of time,
were able to return to a place they had once loved.
If I truly believe in the redemption of the world, I
have to believe in the redemption of the church.  I
wait expectantly for that day."

If you can't take the heat, find a new job.

So I just finished my first week of fire academy and I'm convinced at this point that they are trying to scare us to death with the first chapters of our training manual.

Chapter 2 is called "Fire Behavior".  The title is pretty self explanatory as to what the chapter is about but here are some things that perhaps you didn't know about fire.

- Whenever a fire starts in a compartment (i.e. your living room or kitchen) there is a plume of hot gases and smoke that rise.  Whenever it hits the ceiling it expands to the walls.  As the fire continues to burn the hottest gases remain at the top and the less hot gases layer underneath that. 

- As the room gets hotter it transfers heat to every combustible material in the room by convection, radiation, and conduction.  The walls, couches, gases, and anything else that will burn is getting hotter. 

- At a certain point the entire room will reach a stage call flashover.  When Flashover occurs everything in the room that can burn catches on fire.  At that point the temperature in the room becomes somewhere between 900-1200 degrees F.  Just before this happens you might see some rollover which is the cool thing in movies when you see the fire sweeping across the ceiling. 

- Now this would be pretty neat to watch except that if you had not died from carbon monoxide or hydrogen cyanide poisoning yet, from inhaling the smoke, you would be dead really soon because almost nobody has survived a Flashover.  Even in our bunker gear we are still probably going to be toast. 

- Also if we spray water at the ceiling when the hot gases are collecting there the water will immediately be vaporized and the gases will mix through the room and burn anyone in the room as well.

So in the first week, neglecting to mention the ten other fatal conditions, we have identified about 20 or so ways to die as a fire fighter.  But don't worry about me being burned up in a building fire.  The massive killer of fire fighters is heart attack from all of the stress related to the job.  Has this deterred me even one bit?  Not on your life buddy, or even mine. 

Cheers

From a Distance

I have always been contented to watch people from a distance.  There is something about having to actually interact with humanity that is a source of considerable anxiety for me.  My soon-to-be-over job of watching security camera's was a perfect job for me.  I could watch people from a distance.  I could see everything they did for hours and not only did I not have to interact with them, but they didn't even know I was there or that I was watching.  I could make up fantastical situations and what my relationship would be with any given person.  It was a perfect relationship because it existed within my imagination.  There is no real danger when you have relationships like that.  As long as I kept the camera between me and them I could control them and they could never disappoint me or see what a mess I am.  I would never bumble a casual conversation, everyone laughed at my jokes, and all of my  swav pick-up lines worked every time.   I would sometimes think, "It would be great to actually meet that person". 

Then I would leave the monitors and venture out to the floor for some reason.  It was like walking out onto a stage.  It was so dangerous to have people actually see you and possibly interact with you, because they may discover you, and they may discover that they don't want anything to do with you.  So when I'm on stage I prefer to say nothing, when I'm spoken to I say just enough to dodge the arrow of actual human relationship. 

Now that I'm a fire fighter I'm in an even more perfect situation.  My job will be to save peoples lives and protect their property.  How can they ever not like me when my existence to them is one of servitude?  They can't, at least they shouldn't. 

The only dangers will be dangers that don't know me.  Dangers that don't know how to cut me with words.  Dangers without expectations. Dangers that don't love or hate, only exist.  In my world I am not afraid of fire and smoke.  I do not run from collapsing buildings and downed power lines.  In my world, only people present the real threat to me. 

What if they discover me?  What will they do to me then?  I cannot trust them.  I have been hurt by them too many times.  But oh how wonderful are the times when they wanted me for me.  But there are so few of those times, too few.  I can't let them see me.  I can't let them discover me.  What if I can't handle another rejection?  What if I'm just not strong enough?  I've made it through in the past but that is no guarantee of tomorrow is it?  Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not. Perhaps someone, or something, at some time, will lead me onto the stage and help to open my eyes and see that everyone else is on the stage along side of me.  That there is nothing to fear in love.  Perhaps.

It's Official!

It's official folks!  I have officially been approved by the Oklahoma State Fire Pension Board for acceptance into the pension system.  Which means everything is completed and I am officially a Fire Fighter!  Exciting stuff.  It has been a long process and I have been incredibly fortunate for everything to fall into place like it has.  Thank you all for your support and encouragement.  Just know, that if you lived in my city, I would gladly save your lives anytime. 

The best part about all of it at this point is that it comes at a time when the financial situation was getting worse and worse.  I will be making over twice as much as I've ever made before.  I'm Riiiaattch Biiiaatch!

EEEewwwww!

So I finished my physical yesterday morning.  Everything went fine and the doctor felt like everything would turn out fine.  Because of the holiday I might not find out the result until Tuesday.  Which is okay but I'm a little ready to finally get it all over with. 

I got the dreaded prostate check yesterday as well as a nurse who couldn't seem to stop talking about sex when I was half naked.  I was a little flattered but evidently she did it to the other guys testing as well.  Maybe she has a thing for firefighters, or maybe she is just a really horny middle aged single woman.  The prostate exam was miserable.  It didn't really hurt, but the psychological damage of having some man's finger up your ass is enough harm.  He put some Kleenex up by my head before he started and told me "Your gonna need this".  I thought, "Does this mean I'll probably start crying".  No tears, but I was definitely crying inside. 

Anyway, all that to say I don't really know yet, but it should turn out well.  I will keep everyone informed.