paging verbal kint
the best trick the devil ever pulled;
convinced the world he didn't exist - link 80


it's been too long since i've been able to write. too many things are going through my head at the moment. some sports. some serious. some not. too much. maybe i can get it out now. more likely is that this will come out a jumbled mess.

my life is about to change. again. what i thought was going to be a year-long experiment/venture/challenge/leap of faith has transformed into eight months. eight short months of unrealized expectations, disappointments, struggles and closure versus the excitement of meeting difficult expectations, finding the lessons is disappointments, working through the struggles and new beginnings. at this point, today, it feels like the former four have won the battle, although i am confident time will allow me to see otherwise.

silvers linings abound, though. in one very short month, i will see my wife and daughter every day again. i have learned in my eight months how i took them for granted, and i wonder how that knowledge will translate to the next chapter of our lives. i will get to see my friends again, much more than i did for eight months. i will start a new job. another job in retail (who knew?). i do love people. maybe retail will be the way to go for me. time will tell. a new softball season is on the horizon. it will take me 10 minutes to get to the field. not 105. that's good. i will get to have ribs with andy and kiker again. soon. i want ribs. lots of ribs. and we have to get 'nana pudding. even if we are full.

i have decisions to make as it relates to my god. for the first time in over six years, i will not be on a church staff. what does that mean? how do i plug in? where do i plug in? back to huffman? do they want me? do i want them? it's my church, right? but i don't want to rock the boat. if i go back, it can't be like it was. time will tell.

my cake decorator at cold stone is the wife of a freewill baptist church pastor. incredibly nice lady. we were talking about teenagers the other day and she was waxing theological. she was telling me, in so many words, that their church would not allow their youth to fellowship with groups that were not like-minded in the way their church viewed the bible, the faith, the like. she started talking about how there were so many "bad kids" in this world, in huntsville. how their youth group, her children included, would benefit from being around the "bad ones" as little as possible. i felt sorry for her. i didn't have the heart or the time to disagree with her. she believed with every ounce of her what she was saying. she wasn't being malicious. she was just wrong. the devil resides in all of us. in huntville freewill baptist churches. in huffman united methodist churches. in every denomination's churches. we are all verbal kint's. limping around. hiding from the world. disguising who we really are.

not until we come to Church broken. open. real. honest. not until then can we make a difference again. not until then will we do anything other than tread water, occasionally picking up two, four, ten, four hundred other verbal kint's along the way that are treading water as well.

i am coming home broken. frustrated. excited. anxious. broken, but in the best way. what will it mean? will it make a difference? time will tell.

it will be scary. then again, most things are.

turning the page. on to chapter whatever.