Honestly

I titled this post before beginning to write - to keep myself on track. Because I tend to wander from thought to thought without much continuity save what's in my own mind. And unless you're clairvoyant (which I have a sneaky suspicion that you're not), than you'll never know what's going on. I called it 'Honesty' because that's something I often lack in myself. And here's the reason: the truth is, I'm afraid of you because I don't like me. Now, my thinking goes like this: if I don't like me, who the hell else is going to like me? I'm closer to me than anyone alive, so if I hate the things that I know about me, why should other people like me if they knew? I think we're all sort of like that, and God knows us all. "But," I say to myself, "God knows me better than I do, so why should he like me?"

You know, I used to worry about capitalizing that 'H' in 'He', sometimes because I thought it was better or more spiritual to do so, sometimes because I thought people might think me more spiritual to do so or not do so. I worry a lot about what people think of me. As I write this, I sit here and go, "What's so-and-so, who's my friend for now, going to think when they read this? What would my mom and dad say? What would my pastor, who's a pretty cool guy, say if he new my doubt and failures?" But he'd probably look at me with love in his eyes and talk to me about something else entirely like going to have lunch sometime. Doesn't make it any easier to be honest with folks. I love and hate honesty at the same time. It's the hardest thing to practice, especially with myself, but it feels so good once it's done, like a sneeze.

I don't want anyone to know how hard I am on my wife. But I am. I think it's because I'm so scared of losing part of myself and my freedom to the will of someone else. In my mind, I could think the same way about God, but I don't, because I feel like his will is gonna take me amazing places and I'll be able to be free. I think of songs like Family Man by Andrew Peterson, and I say to myself that having and making a family should be the biggest adventure of all. But that sounds like something I heard in a movie, and it probably is. I don't feel adventurous when Kat calls me and says, "I miss you, when are you coming home?" I could be out with friends, and I feel like I'm going to go sit with someone who will drain me because she wants to be with me, but I'm leaving me with my friends at the restaurant. It's difficult. And then we have days when it's like the world stopped so we could have fun together. We can laugh about everything and forget that there are ever any problems, and in the back of my mind, I'm usually scared that it will end very soon. This all tells me things about myself that I don't like, or at least, that I feel like I'm not supposed to like. Things like, I'm rebellious. I feel like I've always been rebellious, from the moment I was born. I was born by C-section after the fourth try at natural birth. I was late (I've always been late). I don't like going to church because I feel like I can't talk to anybody and say words like 'shit' and talk about the fact that I still have a hard time staying away from porn and billboards with scantily clad women on them make me uncomfortable, not to mention women in general (because I'm a geek). The only woman that I'm comfortable around is Kat, but perhaps that's my problem. I get comfortable and take things for granted - well, take people for granted. There's another thing I don't like. I take folks for granted, and it's usually the people closest to me. Don't bother giving advice by the way, cause you don't have the packaged answer for that. Hey, that brings me to another point. I'm bitter, and I think it's wrong. I'm bitter against people like Joel Osteen and Bruce Wilkinson for deceiving folks, but I deceive folks every day about Christ by my lack of honesty about myself. I'm bitter toward people like Beth Moore and Steven Curtis Chapman because they're popular, and I think they've sold out or said feel good things to get that way. But I want to be popular too. I want people to engage me and be interested and interesting. I suppose I should just be up front. I want people to like me. I can't stand it when I think someone's upset at me for whatever reason. And I hate not resolving the issue right then and not getting all the loose ends tied up.

I suppose I could go on all night about my sins, but nothing will fix itself without God's touch. I'm not asking you to pray, but if you want to, I have no objection. I'm not really any worse off than any other time you hear from me. I simply need to be honest. I've fooled you. I pulled the wool over your eyes about me and I'm sorry. So for now we've corrected a few things I think. Again, I'm not looking for advice in particular, but comments are certainly welcome.