Insidious Adaptation

With a new book in the works (for there is always a new book in the works) editing has taken over my free time. What this leaves is scraps of time, like pieces of bread, unworthy of your time, your clicks, your thumbs up. So I will make this brief. “Instead, be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you.”   Ephesians 4:32 NET This the premise, turn around now if you took a wrong turn.  Where this road goes is nowhere but within, you get to indulge a little self-idolatry here. Not the kind you want, but even an anti-hero gets to have a movie every now  and  then.   This  one is obvious, or at least should be. Yet, somehow what gets lost in translation is our part in the matter. What have we done, or not done, to allow ourselves to get stuck in  such   debacle ?  Why  are we forever caught in this limbo of things being good to not good enough, satisfied to  disc...

"Trick or Treat." "Yes, good, say that. We knock and we say that." My coaching is weak, I don't think I ever said "trick or treat" when I was a kid, probably just a "hello." But us fathers want our children to be better than us right? So, the follow through, the delivery, that is what has to happen here. Let's see if she sticks the landing. ... "Look at them run up there." A few houses in and a neighbor and new friend of our daughters are together, no longer needing an adult to guide, but convince each other this is safe, this is what we do. "Did you say thank you?" I ask my daughter, "Thank you." She says to a now-shut door. "Sweetheart, let's say thank you to them." "Ok." The walk from one house to the next started slow, apprehensive, turned into a slight jog for the children, then a run from the house almost going into the street. A few falls, a couple crash...

(flick) Light comes on, synonymous with a vent fan. My movements, quick. I time the morning just right to get all that I can done all by the minute. One variable, any instance of unaccounted for time, I will be late to work. (Flap) Opens shower curtain. "Jeeze, look at that!" A spider, a "Mr. Skinny Legs" as our favorite cartoon pig in this house refers to. I can't help but find the humor in the fact that in one episode of the infamous, Peppa Pig, Daddy Pig, makes a claim about how he likes spiders, until he meets a large one. Then he goes to get Mommy Pig. If those were the rules, then I should go upstairs now, wake my wife from her slumber, and let her deal with this thing. He is a large spider, probably one of those, "wolf" spiders, which are any other spiders I see here in Nebraska besides Daddy Long Legs. Names of spiders are not a specialty, however if they are poisonous or not is. I do know there are spiders that are poisonous with...

Pretty audacious title right? Well, what can I say, living a, "better" life is what everyone is looking for, so might as well cut right to the chase. It is the chase after all, or as I inked on my skin in my early twenty's, "For the pursuit of Happiness..." that we are all active participants in. Even if your race is a passive one-mundane job, spending most time avoiding stress, or distracting from self; we are all in this same race. The only difference is the varying time frames, so we never know who is closer to the finish line until we turn back around and they aren't running anymore. Recently a trip to South Dakota with the family (my wife and daughter of closer to three than two) taught me a most-valuable lesson: to be grateful, yet, I am not responsible for things as much as a part of me says I am.  Gratitude, meaning , " the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness." T herefore,  being  gr...

"Noooooo!" Screams an almost 3-year old 2-feet from her father's face. "Yes!" Father concedes to the game.  "No daddy!" She is in control now.  "Hey, we are getting this shirt on because I said so." Because, well, I said so, and I am an adult right, so I must know best, father knows best, right?  The game all parents are familiar with, a tug-of-war in words, where a child's ability to take on all possibilities of a situation, including downright refusal, exposes a parent's weakness.  "Look, a butterfly." As she picks her cup up, distracting either herself, or dad, neither of us really know.  "Sweetheart." Dad is calmer now. "We have to get dressed, we don't want to be naked do we?" Yes, rhetorical questioning because, duh, right?  Wrong.  "Daddy, I want milk." She asks, and my first thought is, where is that milk? Only to come right back to, hey, wait a minut...

Summer has officially sprang on us as scheduled. Yet, like a surprise visit from an aunt you haven't heard from in a while, the conditions have been lingering for a while now. Long forgotten are the days in which we were complaining of, "the long winter" we had and now at times we crave a few frigid nights. Times when the conditions were miserably cold we could enjoy the indoors without a sun and overgrown weeds reminding us of our need to face the sweltering conditions.  "Hello you beautiful sunshine." "Oh, and hey humidity." "Oh, hey bugs."  "Whats up electric bill."  Despite the first-world problems and minimal to actually complain about, fall is right around the corner. Yes, fall, probably the longest, most-recognized season of the year. I mean, autumn feels at times to start in August, for football kicks off, and goes until December. What a demanding season he is.  Think about it. It just turned summer,...

The need of a body to displace what is already being digested, or what has been mostly digested, happens at a speed incomprehensible to man. We can never fully measure the time from when one feels a, “sickness” coming on, to the point of discharge from the body. We can assume that this is relatively quick, for if this happened over a lengthy period time, we would always be in a convenient place when the body chose to get rid of its material. A child’s system is small, small in stature, supposedly small in quantities, but quicker, more efficient than us adults. As we get older we tend to slow in our abilities. Not just reflexes or ability to obtain knowledge, but in how efficient the system runs overall. When a child’s speed is utilized to discharge matter from its fragile being, there is no preparation, for the wave will come and the aftermath is felt by all. As the warm material submersed in a stringy, snot-like goo was expelled onto the side of my face, dripping down my shirt o...

"Well, he needs to do what is asked of him." "He needs to start talking about these things." "He needs to see his situation for what it is." "He cannot just sit there doing nothing." What is it that HE is trying to do? See, as humans we have this ability to communicate with one another, an ability that we take a little too far from time to time. Yes, we have lived a life of experience altering what we see as right and wrong, efficient or not, but it is not the life someone else lived, therefore doing what they need to do for them. I presented on people understanding context recently, for there I refer to the back story being a significant indicator of why or how people did whatever they did. Now however, I want to look at how people interact and try to alter, interfere, change for the better even, the lives of other. Whether you are a parent, a friend, a spouse, a family member, a complete stranger that simply notices the same poor be...

This might be the worst, most despicable time of the week. We are just enough in, yet not far enough to see the weekend. For it is the " weekend," that seems to be the ultimate goal to the week, hope a Saturday or Sunday provides, more potential, more freedom; those 48 hours, a sunnier, warmer time. If Monday is cold, Tuesday is luke-warm at best. A bathwater feel as the time lingers on. The day exhausted, yet there is more left, the gas tank has to remain mostly full for there is so much journey ahead.   I try to be mindful and appreciative of all times, for none has to be better than another, however there is this undeniable connection with the weekend that a person appreciates and looks forward to, only to start all over again the next week. Man wants freedom, we want the availability to make our own decisions, outside of the confounds of this desk, this window, these people, this schedule, yet if I had all the time in the world, work would be my escape. I see the...

A bit of sarcasm rings from the wall of Face as I read comment after comment indicating relevance. I am the most guilty, for I do not even produce organic material. Instead, I regurgitate partially digested pieces of information I have gathered from everything from C.S. Lewis, to the Bible, all the way to the new 2 Chains song. I am a fellow of many hats for I had learned to adapt early on in life. My authentic self now, a softer, milder, less-demanding version, for I no longer rely on your attention to complete me, combats the inauthentic or prideful self, daily, hourly in fact. Self-Promotion is not my strong point, however when a book is published and there were a lot of people involved in it's development, I owe it not only to me and the numerous hours of work and sacrifice, but to the researchers who contributed their time in both phone and email responses, a spouse and daughter whom received a more tired version of their man, the publisher who found the work and decided t...

A slip of the phone, a smack on the ground, a prayer sent out, I hope it isn't broken. "Gosh Dangit!" Said without thought, a learned replacement and months of practice to prevent the ears of a 2-year-old from experiencing further, more harsh reactions. "Goshdangit" She repeats me, reinforcing my efforts. In these moments, I cannot help but be a little proud of myself for my child's response, or at the least, her recognition of mine. I slip into nostalgia of past days when a curse word flew off my tongue like specks of dust swirling about as an untouched piece of furniture is moved. The words, for they were fun to say, the F***, the S***s, others almost embarrassing to admit to, all dangling in a toolbox of "sentence enhancers," awaiting my use. That was then, before a child, before hearing myself through the ears of another for the excessive quantity was juvenile. I now WANT to use goofy words to curse a random dropping of a phone or hitti...