[books i've been reading]

Justification & Regeneration

by Charles Leiter

Leiter's treatise of sorts on the Christian doctrines of justification and regeneration have become standard reading within Reformed circles, and it's easy to see the reason why: Leiter lays out these biblical doctrines in an easy-to-understand manner, bringing clarity to difficult texts and supporting his arguments with exegetical prowess. Although I'm not Reformed (though, to be honest, sometimes I wish I were!), I found this book to be enlightening, encouraging, and convicting. Perhaps the most interesting facet of this book is his take on Romans 6-8, particularly Romans 7. Whereas most Christian interpreters (Reformed or otherwise) see Romans 7 as Paul's existentialist plight as a Christian torn between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit, Leiter advocates the position (with which I agree) that Paul isn't writing about his own emotional angst but about what life is like outside Christ. 

~ the Problem & the Solution ~

~ Regeneration ~

~ Sanctification ~

~ regeneration: a summary ~

a morning at the cemetery

The snapshots above are from Friday's excursion to Spring Grove Cemetery. It was my first time, and I was blown away by the beauty: gorgeous mausoleums, ornate monuments, flowering trees, and so much wildlife I almost got a chub. Zoey hasn't been able to stop talking about the geese and the turtles; on Saturday she went to a birthday party, and I was all she could talk about. "Guy" this and "Guy" that. She told everyone how I take her to the woods, how I chase her around the house, how she rides on my back while I pretend to be a horse, how I make silly faces and weird noises as she squeals in laughter, how I capture animals and let her touch them. Ashley and I plan on taking her and Chloe to all sorts of parks and nature preserves this summer; all winter they've spent their days watching Nickelodeon and playing games on their tablets, and it's about time they get outside and play like real kids.

This morning before work I returned to Spring Grove Cemetery for a "Prayer Walk," just walking the paths, sitting along the ponds with turtles and geese to keep me company, and meditating on passages of scripture from the much-unappreciated Book of Titus. During my wanderings I snapped some decent pictures of spring in full bloom:

As I was lost in pondering prayer, the lyrics of a song from the radio kept getting stuck in my head. This past week has been difficult, as I've been wrestling with everything that happened nearly a year ago, and there are times when I feel so low, discouraged, defeated, and hopeless. It often feels like this dark shadow will never pass. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth, bite your tongue (a lesson I've still yet to learn), and keep trucking along. The song that kept popping into my head is Tenth Avenue North's You Are More. 

there's a girl in the corner with tear stains on her eyes

from the places she's wandered and the shame she can't hide

she says, "How did I get here? I'm not who I once was.

And I'm crippled by the fear that I've fallen too far to love."

but don't you know who you are, what's been done for you?

you are more than the choices that you've made,

you are more than the sum of your past mistakes,

you are more than the problems you create,

you've been remade

well she tries to believe it, that she's been given new life

but she can't shake the feeling that it's not true tonight

she knows all the answers and she's rehearsed all the lines

and so she'll try to do better, but then she's too weak to try

you are more than the choices that you've made,

you are more than the sum of your past mistakes,

you are more than the problems you create,

you've been remade

'cause this is not about what you've done,

but what's been done for you

this is not about where you've been,

but where your brokenness brings you to

this is not about what you feel,

but what he felt to forgive you,

and what he felt to make you loved

"blessed be Your name"

This song has been my jam as of late.

Blessed be Your name in the land that is plentiful

Where your streams of abundance flow

Blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name when I'm found in the desert place

Though I walk through the wilderness

Blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name when the sun's shining down on me

When the world's all as it should be

Blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering

Though there's pain in the offering

Blessed be Your name.

Every blessing you pour out I'll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say:

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

You give and take away.

You give and take away.

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be Your name.

#caesarscreek, et. al.

Ashley and I went hiking at Caesar's Creek last week, and during our explorations we had lots of hard talks about difficult things. Our conversation turned to how I've been doing with my struggles in the wake of everything with the Wisconsinite. I told her how I feel almost ashamed for still wrestling with things; I've been through heartache before, but never anything on par with what she brought me. She told me that it's understandable for me to still be working through things, since I invested so much of my heart and life in the relationship. If she were able to cut me out of her life and just keep trucking along, and I'm still trying to deal with the mess, it just goes to show the great disparity between my level of commitment and her own, between the meaning in my words and the lack of meaning in hers. Ashley's amazing, not least because she wants to be my support and encouragement through this challenging time. I think that says a lot about her; most women wouldn't be too keen on hearing their boyfriends talk about such things. But Ashley, she isn't like most women.

I told Ashley that I feel out of joint, a shadow of who I used to be.

I feel like the rope snapped, and this time I just let go.

I feel absent purpose, adrift and abandoned.

There's no passion in my soul, just a deadness in the limbs. 

Things just don't feel "right." Everything feels a little bit off.

"Sometimes I feel like a mermaid in a glass bottle stranded in the Sahara. I wanna pop the cork and crawl out into the sands and scurry with the baby crabs into the ocean, where I belong." That's one hell of a weird way to say "I want things to feel right again." But they probably won't feel right for a while, at least until I'm able to move beyond my love for the Wisconsinite into whatever God has for me. 

I won't lie: I still love her, or at least a part of me does. 

I keep waiting for the day I don't love her anymore. 

I yearn for that day, pray for that day, fight for that day. 

But what if my love for her doesn't ever go away? 

What if all I can do is wait for the day when that love doesn't bring me such pain? 

Not a day goes by absent the pain of what happened. Not a day passes when that hurt and defeat doesn't hang over me like a dark cloud. Things such as joy, peace, and confidence have become crumbling memories. I've never loved anyone the way I loved her, and the fact that the love hasn't withered makes me feel broken as a person and guilty as a boyfriend. Ashley deserves better than me, better than what I'm capable of offering her. 

There are times when the hurt and pain becomes so overwhelming that I just want to run, and run, and keep running, to never stop. Hurt people hurt people, and my biggest fear is causing Ashley the same kind of torment that Mandy caused me. All I can do is keep taking it day-by-day, as I've been doing for the past year, and hope that something changes, that God grants me healing. I grit my teeth and move forward in obedience to Him as I wrestle with questions absent answers. Why would God bring the two of us together, why would He seemingly answer my prayer, only to take it away and expose me to the worst sort of pain I've ever felt? If that's not torment enough, why does He refuse to free me from the burden of loving her? If I'm not meant to be with her, why doesn't He take the pain away, knowing all the problems it creates? I wish I could scrub my hands, my past, and my heart of her. I wish the two of us had never met. How can someone who brought such joy deliver so much pain?

There are too many questions and no answers. Sometimes I lie awake at night consumed by memories and thoughts, questions that go nowhere. I pray into an impermeable silence, begging the Spirit to fill the void in my heart. I want to turn my back on her the way she turned her back on me, but the love she had for me (if you can even call it that) is a pale comparison to the burning, fierce, loyal, patient, and determined love I had for her. I'm terrified that I'll never be able to love again, that I'll be forced to choose between life alone or life with someone I don't love. That fear is genuine, and I pray that it won't be so. I want to work through these issues and come to some sort of clarity not only for myself but also for Ashley. She deserves love more than any woman I've known, and I feel so shitty because my heart isn't yet able to give her that sort of love. I want to be freed from my love for the Wisconsinite so that I can love Ashley with the same sort of love. If Ashley is an answer to my prayers, I want to love her the same way I loved Mandy. But part of me feels that the sort of love I had for Mandy isn't the norm, and every love I experience after her will be but a shadow compared to what we shared. Only time will tell.

In other news...

the (re)reformation

keep it classy, San Diego

The bad news is that ever since Ashley and I got together, I haven't stuck to my whole "reformation". The good news is that I haven't gained any weight (at least not a significant amount of weight). I'm still hopping about around 165 pounds (that there was a rabbit reference). Ashley and I have been trying to support one another in our own "lifestyle changes," but this is generally what happens: one of us confides a temptation, perhaps to go grab some Penn Station or Chipotle, in the hope that the other can support the one in fighting said temptation. What happens, almost invariably, is that we both end up at Penn Station or Chipotle. My hope is that doing a "check-in" once every 4-6 weeks will assist me in meeting my goals. So here's the first "check-in" since September of last year, and I'm weighing in at 165 pounds. Hopefully I'll be around 160 by the end of May!

Don't get me wrong, we're not too concerned about it. Neither one of us aspires to look like a model, and neither one of us will. Truth be told, I don't find skinny girls attractive, and my one condition, if I can call it that, is that Ashley stays away from a flat stomach. Thankfully she's got a little pouch after birthing two giant babies (and, yes, Chloe and Zoey were HUGE when they popped out of her womb), and that will never disappear (as an aside, I call her my "beautiful marsupial"). My distaste for twig girls, and my love for a little amount of blubber, is captured by Kate Davis' 1940s-era cover of Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass:

a cosmic post

Zoey has been running around saying she's going to kick everyone off the moon. In honor of her vibrant imagination, here is a cosmic post focused on our orbiting heavenly body!

#cabinfever

If I ever make a ton of money, I'm going to buy a patch of land in the mountains and build a rugged cabin absent electricity. There I will escape the trials of this life and immerse myself in the peaceful beauties of creation. Here's what it's going to look like (a man can dream can't he?!).

If the cabin never comes to fruition, this little stone-and-thatch hut would work, too:

the Hobbit Hole: 2015

from the birthplace of The Butcher

shameless selfies at the river engorged

Zoey hasn’t been able to stop talking about “the woods” and “the fishies” and “the snakes” and “the fucks” (don’t worry: she means frogs) since our exploratory excursion at Keehner Park on Monday. She shrieked in joy when we told her we were going to a different woods, and she could hardly sit still as we made our way to the riverfront park in New Richmond. Last week’s torrential rains have swollen the river, and the park was closed since the roads have been washed out. I decided we mustn’t waste a trip, so we continued east until we came to Point Pleasant, the birthplace of THE Ulysses S. Grant (a.k.a. “The Butcher”). We toured the town, explored the flooded rest stop flanking his homestead, and tried to tour the museum but the curator was “out on lunch.” I even stopped and picked up some backwoods because if you’re going to be lurking about around Grant’s homestead, it does not do to do so without a cigar clenched between your teeth. Despite the overcast skies and dreariness of the river’s flooding, I was able to capture a couple decent pictures of our excursion:

After church this coming Sunday, we’re taking the girls to Spring Grove Cemetery after church. Hot Sauce Waugh frequents it often, posting pictures on Instagram. I’ve never been, but his finesse at capturing great shots make me think it’s worth a little exploration. Ashley suggested we check out Shawnee Lookout Friday morning while Chloe’s in school. Really, I think she wants to find some arrowheads; she’s been talking about them non-stop lately. Maybe it’s because she watched Pocahontas? Pocahontas, ironically, is an Algonquian nickname that means “the little hellion,” and we’ve outsourced the name to none other than the devilish beast below:

*an anniversary*

Happy Titanic Day!

April 14-15, 1912

One fast ship. One sly iceberg. Over 1500 souls lost.

Our hearts will go on.

[books i've been reading]

Craig Gross' little book seeks to demolish the idea that the Christian life is all about doing big things for God. He focuses on the ordinary and showing, through stories and scripture, how God sees the ordinary as sacred. It is in our ordinary, humdrum lives that God is at work. He writes a lot about what it means to serve others, showcasing how service isn't just about doing "big" things like being involved in soup kitchens, working in orphanages, or things of that matter. Service is something to be worked out in the ordinary, as well: serving our families, our friends, our co-workers, and our enemies. Here are a few quotes from the book (and a link to even more "potent quotables"):

"[There] are times and situations that call for something big and extraordinary. But those times are few. And we can't become so enamored with those times that we turn them into the be-all, end-all of our lives. If we try to live for the extraordinary, gigantic moments, we're putting our focus on the completely wrong things. Instead we must learn to treasure the ordinary in our lives. The day-in, day-out interactions we have with those around us. We must put our emphasis on developing the right hearts--hearts that are completely submitted and surrendered to Jesus--and then keeping our hearts focused solely on Him." (26)

"What if you're called to the Nine-to-Five Window? What if your missions opportunity is lying at your doorstep, at the office, at the stores you frequent, or in your own home? What if we need to rethink the notion of doing something big for God's kingdom? What if we're attaching the label of big to something that He finds unimportant or unimpressive? What if the ordinary, small things of life are what you're called for? How would you live your life then? Would you wither away in quest desperation, always looking for the next big thing, or would you step fully into whatever role God has called you to?" (52)

"[There] is a part of the gospel that we tend to get so wrong, when we believe we have to do something to earn God's acceptance, to stay in His good graces. That yeah, He accepted us when we were sinners, but now that we've come to know Jesus as our Lord, we have to get our act together or we'll upset God and really have to work hard to... what? Get back on His good side? Make Him like us again? Do we think Jesus only loved us when we were sinners because we didn't know any better, but now that we've been saved, we're off the hook? We have to hold up some end of the bargain? Jesus will never stop loving you. Jesus will always accept you. Does He care about the way you live your life? Absolutely. Does the way you live your life have any impact on His acceptance of you? Absolutely not." (102)

Go Small: Potent Quotables

#keehnerpark

Ashley, the girls, and I took advantage of yesterday's eighty-degree weather and went tramping around the creek at Keehner Park. It looked wildly different than last time Chloe and I went exploring: the snow has melted, the trees are blooming, and the creek's running high from all the rains last week. Chloe followed my lead and waded through the creek, looking for fish and snakes. We tried catching crawdads but failed. Chloe wanted to climb some "cliffs" (steep embankments), and Zoey was jealous and tried climbing, too. She succeeded, with Ashley spotting her. The girl loves to climb; she's a monkey. On down the creek a ways we came to what I call "the watering hole": the creek gets to be about five feet deep, perfect for swimming. Chloe refused to go in at first, fearful of the water; but once I led the way, she was all about it. We swam for a while and Ashley took some videos. We tried scaling a wall of mud and ended up getting coated like hippos at the peak of summer. We washed off in the water (flashbacks of Crank's Creek!), and I won't lie: I felt rather exfoliated. A storm rolled through as we were drying off, the wind blowing the leaves off the trees and the rain coming down in hammering sheets. By the time we got back to the car, we were soaked and shivering but happy.

I can't begin to express how excited I am that spring is warming up. Ashley and I have avowed that this summer we will explore all the nature preserves around Cincinnati. It's good for the girls to be torn away from their TV shows and tablets and technological trimmings to just immerse in nature and to see that you don't need to be in front of a screen to have a good time. I'm a man and I like to sweat and get dirty, and if things with Ashley keep going well, I'm intent on helping to raise two women who appreciate the outdoors as much as we do. "Thank you for being so amazing with my girls," Ashley said; "Their own father refused to even take them to the Zoo. All he ever did was watch TV and neglect them. It's good to know that men like you are still around!" Encouraging words, indeed.

[sunday meditations]

Prayer has become difficult for me. This time last year I considered myself a “man of prayer”: I spent more time praying each day than I’d done for years. Much of my prayer revolved around my relationship with the Wisconsinite, my future move up to Wisconsin, and our upcoming marriage. I coated us and our relationship in prayer, and I believed with every ounce of my heart that she was an answer to prayer and that God had been working in my life to bring us together. It was a wonderful story, and I was blown away at God’s providence and favor towards me. On June 16 that all fell apart. I felt betrayed not only by her but by God; abandoned not only by her but by Him. I blamed God for what happened, since He could’ve prevented it. I begged Him to answer WHY He did it, why He took her away from me, why He saw fit to thrust my dreams in front of my face, dangling them like a fisherman with a lure, and then snatching them away the moment I came to embrace a comfortable trust. It’s easy in times like those to blame God; it’s no small leap to begin perceiving God as some sort of capricious, malevolent deity who has far more in common with the pagan gods of old than with the Jewish carpenter who sacrificed his life to redeem the cosmos. 

Only within the past couple weeks have I come to believe that what happened doesn’t lie on God’s shoulders but on hers; she, not God, is the one who chose the outcome. She’s the one who kicked me to the curb in a ten-minute phone call and then cut me out of her life; God is the one who stuck by my side. These revelations (if you can call them that) have brought a measure of peace: I didn’t lose her because God never intended us to be married in the first place. I have to believe there’s a rhyme and reason to all that happened, but the specifics may not come out until later, perhaps even until I cross from one side of the Curtain to another. In the avenue of prayer, the words of Timothy Keller have been encouraging. He makes two points about prayer, and I add a third:

(1) God answers the prayers we would pray if we knew the full story. I have to trust that God knows what He is doing. If marrying Mandy would’ve been the best for me, then that’s what would’ve happened. Amanda has pointed out time and again that my idea of what marriage with her would’ve been like is based more on fantasy than reality. I cultivated the Fantasy over a period of five years so that by the time we were actually together and planning marriage, I bought into the Fantasy more than I accepted Reality. God knows what's best for me. He's for me, not against me. He wants to see me prosper. He doesn't delight in seeing me suffer, and He doesn't work in my life to thwart my hopes and dreams. 

(2) God knows what it’s like to have a prayer go unanswered. One of the most ironic stories in the gospels is that of Jesus in Gethsemane: looking ahead at the cross, Jesus asks God if there were another way to secure redemption. He feared the pain and he feared the cross. He asked God to spare him of all that, and God said No. The pain I’ve felt in the face of unanswered prayer is bit a microcosm of the pain Jesus felt when God told him No. God can relate to my pain and understand it; not only can Jesus relate to temptation, but he can relate to the agony we feel in our own versions of Gethsemane.

(3) Sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers because He has plans that go beyond us. One of the most endemic plagues in western Christianity is that of solipsism: a big word that basically means we think the world—and God!—revolves around us. Even in our faith we’re narcissistic: the original sin in the Garden was putting ourselves in the place of God, and even in redemption we need a renewing of the mind to see that we aren’t at the center of God’s plans. We orbit around God, not the other way around. Sometimes we ask for good and honorable things and God doesn’t answer our prayer the way we want; it isn’t because He’s mad or upset or out to upset our parties. Rather, His greatest aim for us isn’t our own happiness and contentment but our conformity to Him, because that’s what’s best for us. We are His children, and He seeks to use us in this world to advance His kingdom as He sees fit. As Paul says, “We are His workmanship, to do good works.” That often fleshes itself out in God taking us where we don’t want to go but where, rather, He intends to use us. Although I wrestle with the lie that God took Mandy from me because I wasn’t good enough, because I’d blown it one last time and missed out on everything God had for me, the reality is that I’m not at the center of things, and perhaps God wants to use me in ways that don’t line up with life with her. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but one that must be swallowed nonetheless.

Months ago I wrote down a quote in the little black journal I carry around. It’s a paraphrase of something I heard off Christian radio, and it’s brought me a lot of encouragement: “What you release, you risk; and God will replace that which was released with something different and better. God will write a different story than the one you supposed, but a story that glorifies Him and is better for you.” It’s a struggle to believe that at times, but it’s a wrestling well worth the effort.

update[z]

I took an online typing test.

I scored 530 CPM and 105 WPM.

That puts me in the top .3 percentile.

(And that’s only using three fingers!)

Now THAT is a marketable skill. At least I have one!

Okay, here are some updates (with a Z):

Ashley. Things with Ashley have been going well. It’s a good sign when you spend so much time with someone without getting sick of them. Don’t get me wrong: I do need my alone time to rejuvenate. My quiet evenings in the Hobbit Hole give me a certain strength only introverts can understand. Ashley is middle-of-the-road when it comes to her personality, half introvert and half extrovert. It makes a good balance: two extroverts in a relationship tend to turn the relationship into a competition, and Ashley and I make a pretty good team of supporting and encouraging one another while respecting our differences. Yes, I’m still dealing with the fall-out in the wake of the Wisconsinite, and there are times late at night when I’m immersed in passionate, gut-wrenching prayers for emotional healing. Healing isn’t coming quickly, but it’s coming nonetheless. Redemption takes time, and it’s often mind-numbingly difficult. My hope and prayer is that I will come to love Ashley the way I loved Mandy. I’ve never known a hotter and more fierce love. Ashley is so damned deserving of that sort of love, and I know I’m damned lucky to have her. She has all the qualities of an Excellent Woman. She’s patient, compassionate, supportive, and understanding. She doesn’t buck against my leadership but embraces it. She’s passionate about God and living a life that honors Him. And she is beautiful. She is, in essence, the sum of all my prayers. My hope is that she is God’s answer to my prayer, and I believe that if that’s the case, I will, in time, come to love her the way I loved Mandy. I’m trying not to be overwhelmed by my issues, taking everything in stride and living day-by-day. We’ve been together about six months; the love I had for Mandy was cultivated over a five-year period. It’s ridiculous for me to expect to love Ashley in six months the way I loved Mandy after five years. 

Walk of Joy. I have yet to secure a ministry job, despite countless applications and phone interviews. I’ve received more rejections than an aspiring novelist. I’m trying not to let it get me down: if vocational ministry is what God desires of me, He’ll bring me to that place in His time. I just have to trust Him, and I have to believe that if vocational ministry isn’t what He has for me, it doesn’t reflect poorly on me. In the meantime I’m still trucking along at Walk of Joy, and thankful for the job, not only because I have a source of income, not only because I am a positive influence on these guys’ lives, but also because it gives me lots of free time on-shift to write. Lately I’ve felt that I’ve been wasting my life, but there have been encouraging notes to dispel such feelings: both Ben and Jason’s parents have expressed their undying gratitude for the influence I’ve had on their sons, and my boss has seen fit to reward me with extra opportunities. This summer I’ll be involved in the Special Olympics, and this autumn I’ll be a point man for Cup of Joy, a nonprofit coffee shop staffed by individuals with Developmental Disabilities. My experience in the coffee shop world will come in handy, and I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be interesting to see if my skills at pouring hearts, rosettas, and tulips have survived their eight-month hiatus since Tazza Mia closed their doors. 

School. I’ve been getting back into the swing of preparing for my Master’s. Because of my impoverished status, most of it will be paid for by the government, which is optimal. All I’m waiting on at this point is my alma mater to send my transcripts. They screwed it up last time (they cashed the $25 check for same-day delivery but never sent the actual transcripts) and received an ear-full from me. Hopefully this time they won’t make the same mistake. My aim is to become a Social Studies teacher for Eighth Grade students, teaching everything from Columbus’ “discovery” of the New World to the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. It should only take me about a year and a half to finish the program and begin teaching. 

*confessions*

Here's a confession: I miss the experience of knowing God, of hearing His voice, of resting sure and confident in His love. I miss the passion, the purpose, the diligence, the clarity, the peace, and the joy. Reflecting on "the days of my youth" (cue Led Zeppelin), I'm forced to ask where that passion, purpose, and clarity went. I like to blame academia: it's a well-known fact that the more years you spend in a religious institution, the less apt you are to be religious. Perhaps that's simply what happens when you mix business with pleasure? But if I'm honest, while the effects of 4-5 years in a religious institution have had an effect on the way I approach scripture, worship, and even prayer, the true grit of the matter is that much of my faith's degredation stems not from academics but from my own selfishness. Somewhere along the line I put my own wants, desires, and dreams ahead of my faith so that I sought to shape God into a beast that would cater to my every whim and flight-of-fancy. Contemplating the disconnect between The Faith That Was and the Faith That Is breeds a lot of emotion: there's regret, guilt, and a sense of lost-ness. There's need for a lot of repentance in a lot of different areas, and there's an even bigger need to appropriate for myself the grace God so lavishly gives to us time and time again. As the song goes, "You've been forgiven more times than there are drops in the ocean." 

There are false ways to go about reclaiming the experience of a vibrant, Spirit-filled* life: upping church attendance, listening to hosts of sermons (and taking diligent notes!), reading spiritual books, even studying the Bible. These aren't bad things, not at all; but these are the sorts of things that flourish when they're practiced in the right manner. These aren't stepping stones to the life I miss, the life I crave; they're tools and not the life itself, and by using tools I'm seeking to manufacture the life I want to have anew. I'm excellent at the utilization of these tools but a failure when it comes to utilizing them well. I've been approaching my walk with God in the same way that I approach dieting: it's all about discipline, doing the right things and saying No to the wrong things. It's flawless for dieting, but it's fruitless when it comes to relationships; and the life I crave isn't about the externalities. It's about risky abandonment to God, about a viable and flourishing trust, about an unswerving commitment to a heartfelt vocation. The life I miss is a life marked by being loved and growing in that love so that I radiate that love outwards. It's a life based on relationship with God. 

Reclaiming that life isn't about upping church attendance, listening to more sermons than most, or studying the scriptures diligently day-in and day-out. It's about cultivating the relationship I already possess. Prayer, scripture-reading, church attendance: these aren't tools by which we manufacture a religious experience but windows through which we come to know God better. Jesus says that knowing God is life itself, and my experience, though feeling antique and rusted at this time in my life, speaks to the reality of that conviction: to surrender oneself to Christ is to be free to be oneself, and to be overwhelmed by Christ so that "it is no longer I who live but Christ in me" is to find our God-given place in the cosmos and flourish in that God-ordained role. We are created with God as our life-source; outside of Him, we are consigned to leading futile, dreadful lives that are marked by suffering and intermittent bursts of genuine happiness and contentment. The lives we live outside of the hope and power and freedom of the gospel--lives of "quiet desperation," according to Thoreau--find their antidote only by plugging into the power source of life itself. All this to say that the life I miss and crave isn't about the things I did but about the relationship that was cultivated. The way back home (if I can say it like that) entails learning to see myself as I am in Christ and losing myself once again in the very source of peace, joy, and quiet strength. It isn't about doing this or doing that, but simply sitting down in the quiet, opening my mouth, and talking--and being transformed by the conversation.

*Because "Spirit-filled" conjures up images of Pentecostals handling snakes while sputtering gibberish, I believe it pertinent to establish what I mean by a "Spirit-filled" life. It's simply, really: a life animated, guided, and enthralled by the Spirit; a life where the Spirit does such a "Spring Cleaning" year after year that we become different people altogether. Spirit-filled people aren't marked by esoteric chants or outbursts of charisma; Spirit-filled people are marked by love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. There's a reason, after all, that such things are called "the fruit of the Spirit."

#thefirst20

As promised, here are the first twenty pages of Part One in my current project. Note this is the first rough draft, so forgive any grammatical, stylistic, or flow errors. I'll be revisiting all of this on down the road when the book is nearing completion.

The Procyon Strain: Book Two Excerpt

on writing (IV)

This evening I finished Part One (of Seven) in The Procyon Strain: Book Two. The book is running at just under 100 pages at the moment, and at this rate will come in around 450 pages. I've shortened the prologue, eliminating a lot of original material in order to launch the reader into the main story at a quicker pace. As the sequel to The Procyon Strain: Book One, Book 2 picks up where the first book left off: on the verge of the national (and global) zombie outbreak. Whereas Book One is predominantly character-driven, with bits of actions peppered into the narrative here-and-there, Book Two is predominantly story-driven and chocked full of action. It's a different breed of writing than its predecessor, but that's what I'm wanting: I would like each book in the series to be significantly different than all the others so that each is unique and memorable in its own right. 

Book Two encompasses the first three days of the zombie apocalypse. According to a handful of scientists and mathematicians, a zombie plague in the look and feel of Romero could demolish society's infrastructure within 72 hours; with that in the background, Book 2 follows the main character through those 72 hours, beginning with an outbreak in downtown Cincinnati and climaxing with the nation's infrastructure collapsing. The book itself is slated to be divided into seven "parts" (think of them as "Acts" or long-ass chapters). The entirety of Part One takes place downtown, between Fountain Square and Liberty Avenue, and it contains a lot of what zombie fanatics like: mayhem and pandemonium. The first twenty pages of Part One will be posted on here tomorrow; you can read it, you can skip it, you can love it, you can hate it. It doesn't matter to me. I write to have fun, not to make money; if that weren't the case, I would be the epitome of failure. A disclaimer is always a good thing to have to soften the blow to your pride.

[Easter Sunday]

I am guilty, ashamed of what I've done, what I've become.

These hands are dirty. I dare not lift them up the Holy One.

You plead my cause. You right my wrongs.

You break my chains. You overcome.

You gave Your life to give me mine.

You say that I am free. How can it be?

I've been hiding, afraid I've let you down.

Inside I doubt that You still love me.

But in Your eyes there's only grace now.

Though I fall, You can make me new.

From this death I will rise with You.

Oh the grace reaching out to me!

How can it be? How can it be?

#downwiththesickness

The stomach flu sucks. I’ve got a pretty decent immune system (I attribute it to eating dirt and drinking dirty stream water as a kid), and I only get really sick about once a year. Maybe that’s why debilitating sicknesses feel so life-threatening. Sunday night (when it all went down), I remember being bent over the grass in Blake’s front yard, spewing my guts out, and then collapsing in the grass and just lying there shaking and staring up into the clouds. 

I feared someone would have to call 9-1-1. 

It just felt so scary. 

I never did care for vomiting. 

This is how it went down: I started feeling nauseous when Ashley and I got back to her place from picking up the girls in Lexington. I attributed it to a combination of too much fiber and too little food; subsequent trips to the toilet, sitting there and squeezing and clutching onto the sink counter with white-knuckled fingers, assured this attribution. I felt fine driving to Blake’s for the season finale of The Walking Dead, but video games made me feel sick to my stomach. The onset of diarrhea, coupled with involuntary spasms and spewing fiber bars all over Blake’s lawn, led me to the conclusion that I was, indeed, sick (and not just suffering from too much fiber, though I don’t that helped). I knew I couldn’t make it home without having to pull over on the side of the road, so I sped to Ashley’s. By the time I pulled into the driveway, I looked pale as a ghost, couldn’t stop shaking, could hardly walk, and felt pain all over. She knew what I was thinking, could read it in my eyes, and she said, “Anth, you’re fine, you’re just sick. You’re not dying.” I couldn’t keep warm all night long, and I couldn’t stay hydrated, either. Monday is remembered as a mere blur: lots of sleep, Ashley telling me to eat crackers and shoving Sprite down my gullet, and then Amanda showing up somewhere in the mix and thrusting a banana down my throat. “He won’t resist if you get him when he’s asleep,” she said. I felt a little bit stronger Tuesday, but two slices of pizza from a restaurant in Kentucky soured my stomach. I felt sick much of the day Wednesday, and Thursday morning I recommenced vomiting. Most of Thursday was spent passed out in bed, the hours passing in a dream-like state. The end of the sickness didn’t come until Saturday morning: a one-hour poop in the dead of night that literally raised the water in the porcelain bowl by about 2-3 inches. Seriously, it was FILLED. UP. I sat there at 3 AM thinking, “It’s so amazing how much I’m releasing, I’m not even mad it’s keeping me up!” I was bummed that I left my book in the main room; this wasn’t the sort of poop you could waddle away from in safety. 

{pictures}

front porch reptile lessons!

Amanda entertains the girls as I slumber

thug-life: nature

April Fool's Day

I'm writing this from Mom & Dad's house.
They're in New York City for the week, and I'm dog-sitting.
I'm looking forward to adventures in the park, Netflix, and lots of reading.
Oh: and I want to get a decent amount of writing done, too.

Adventures in the park are dependent on the weather. March started rather hopeful, with warm temperatures in the fifties and sixties. We're on the cusp of spring, and I couldn't be happier: after this winter's gauntlet of snow- and ice-storms, I'm ready for the trees to come into bloom and the grass to green. March has merely been a temptress, as the cold weather has returned. Ashley and I had a camping trip for Red River Gorge planned for last week, but the cold weather put a nix on that. I'm hoping Ohio will wise up and get its ass in gear. With sixty degree temperatures today, maybe such wishful thinking isn't the equivalent of a shot out of the dark.

The end of the month wraps up my journey through a variety of materials on the Great War: histories, memoirs, novels, atlases, pictorial guides, I devoured it all. Next up on my tramping through history is World War Two, but I'm taking a break from nonfiction and indulging my appetite for adventure, mystery, and suspense through the written word. My "Reading Queue" for April includes works of fiction by Stephen King, Michael Crichton, and Justin Cronin (and maybe a few oddballs here-and-there). Oh, and of course I'm still plodding through N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God.

In other news, did you know one of Obama's Secret Service agents is a shape-shifting Reptilian alien? Most people don't know this, but the United States Government is conniving with Reptilian aliens, giving them sanction in vast underground cities scattered throughout the western states. We give them shelter (their planet went face-down a long time ago), and they return the favor by giving us technology. We garnished their attention with the nuclear bomb, which told them we had become an advanced species. Unfortunately, the United States government is merely a pawn for these aliens, a chess piece in their game for global (and cosmic) domination. Obama's socialist leaning is a tool to create a One World Government, which will open the door for the Reptilians to take over without mass destruction of the planet. This little video below is but one piece of the conspiracy: because of Obama's role in the long-term plans of the Reptilian race, they're intent on protecting him, even to the point of putting a few Reptilian staffers on his Secret Service detail!