conversations with kathy
(part three)


Kathy: CWG, book 1, pg 13: "God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with as you will. In this sense, your will for you is God's will for you. You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter. This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do."

I wish I could quote about three paragraphs here, because I know how this can be taken out of context, but we'll just go with it- maybe it will be more provocative :)

While some people may read this and tearfully respond, "God doesn't care about me," this whole idea of literal FREE WILL helped me figure out what to do with my life. Christianity is big on the WILL OF GOD. It's our responsibility to memorize it (according to the bible) or discern it (with the help of the Holy Spirit) and then bring ourselves to heel. But the idea that God has a plan for us- well, for some that might be comforting, but for me, it was terrifying.

WHAT is God's will for me? WHAT am I supposed to be doing with my life? See, if there's something I'm supposed to do, then there's a whole lot that I'm not supposed to do. I've been paralyzed by the fear of doing the wrong thing, making the wrong decision, choosing the wrong career...etc.

But what if there isn't a wrong answer? What if God is perfectly happy with me making choices that reflect who I am, rather than who someone else thinks I should be? What if I can't screw up? Think about how many things you might try if you weren't fearful of doing the WRONG thing? What if you knew that when you made a less than stellar choice, you could simply change your mind, choose again, and face no punishment (other than natural consequences)?

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kevin: i am glad you chose this topic, because it's one i've been dwelling on a lot, too, since reading the book several months back. our whole life landscape in the community of faith that is huffman united methodist church (we'll keep it local right now, since we are both part of that community) is constructed around these dated ideas of what we should and shouldn't do.


one of the reasons that i've been so sensitive to how people are perceiving limbo is that our group was borne out of the idea that church was doing it "wrong". now, to your point and this post's thread, "wrong" would be relative, so we'll go with limbo was borne out of the idea that (our) church was borderline irrelevant. due to the fact that i made the decision that we'd meet during the sunday school hour, the church has understood us to be nothing more than a sunday school, for better or worse, one that is "looking to be involved" and one that should probably be interested in luncheons that might be attractive to other "young adults" that are looking for a place to "plug in". limbo is seen as "filling a need" because we are all under 40 and weren't doing much within the church, corporate, before limbo got off the ground. while all of those things serve a noble and honest sentiment, they still miss the point. i am losing my point.


i think what i am trying to say is that we are salmon swimming upstream, fighting against the antiquated current of what "should be", a structure that was forged and laid hundreds upon hundreds of years ago. it is a structure that relies primarily on the idea that god will "punish" us if we don't figure out what it is that he wants us to do and appropriate our thoughts and measures according to how many generations before me have interpreted who god is through their reading of the scripture.


now, this begs the question, who am i to swim upstream? who i am i to question the proven theory and thesis that is christianity. if i didn't believe in "the story", i wouldn't be worried about my church and it's relevancy and limbo and/or vacation bible school or the halloween carnival or any of the other "ministries" that i have developed a passion for over my 33 year plus years. or, would i?


but back to your thought. or the book's thought. or god's thought. gosh, wouldn't that just be something? that all this time, the nature of our choices and the lives that we led would, at worst, lengthen the period of time between now and when it WILL BE that we meet "our maker". that the choices we make or don't make according to our communities of faith weren't necessarily wrong, but off-path. the nature of reward vs. consequence being thrown completely on its head. it's a lovely thought. it's a thought that my 33-plus years of living in the shadow of eternal separation from god being a reality is not totally comfortable with and totally in love with at the same time...

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The sunk-cost fallacy. That's what popped into my head. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's the argument that "money, time, or energy already invested justifies the investment of yet more time, energy, or money." In other words, if we've been doing religion a certain way for hundreds of years, then we should continue to do it that way because to change the way we do it would in essence be saying we've been doing it wrong all along. We don't want to have wasted all this time...so let's justify what we've been doing by continuing to do it :)

This is the problem with the "God said it, I believe it, that settles it!" crowd. Maybe if we believed that God was still talking, still evolving, then we'd still be listening and evolving too. Maybe we wouldn't be afraid to ask ourselves if God still wants us to be doing religion the way we have been...or if He ever wanted us to do it in the first place. Personally, I thought Jesus was preaching the message that religious law was trumped by personal freedom in God. Maybe I've misunderstood. Wouldn't be the first time. However, I've become cynical enough to believe that Churches have become bureaucracies whose sole purpose is to sustain their own existence. We need to bring people to Christ (church) so that they (or our church) can be saved.

Anyway- maybe that's a little off topic. Or maybe it's just the applying of these ideas at a corporate level, which is where you were going with it, I think. But can we change the way we perceive choice at the corporate level without changing how we see choice at the personal level?

A quick caveat- You've just read this book. I read it over 8 years ago for the first time. The first time I talked about these ideas with another person, I was trembling all over. The very foundation of my Christian belief was shaking apart, and it manifested physically in my body. I couldn't control the trembling- even my voice was shaking. Eight years later, these ideas no longer thrill and scare me at the same time. As I said when I gave you the book, the ideas took root in me, quietly and firmly, OVER TIME...and there they have remained. I trust my soul to discard false ideas. Funny that the ideas that have been discarded are Christianity's most fundamental beliefs.

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regarding your caveat, it's obvious we found this book at very different points in our respective spiritual journeys, which i think is one of the reasons that having a back and forth about the ideas contained within the book are fun and invigorating. what i found while reading the book was not something scary or something that shook my foundation, rather ideas that characterized a god that i've always wanted to believe in but one that is continually reinforced in my "christian" experiences doesn't exist.


advancing the thought of churches having evolved into entities where survival is priority number one, well, you already know that i agree with you here. let's take a quick look at the northeast alabama united methodist conference for a second. god bless our beloved pastor, but it is now no secret that he is under immense political (read this word intentionally) pressure from his district superintendent and bishop to increase humc's connectional giving. so much pressure in fact, that if we do not change our giving habits, harris legitimately feels that a likely consequence will be his appointment being moved away from us. simply put, what kind of retarded logic and broken system would make such threats??? before i continue, let me reinforce what should already be obvious. i believe in the theory of the united methodist connectional system. in theory. i have colored my own person, literally, with how strongly i believe in it if done correctly. having said that, our system no longer is working in theory. in practice, it has been perverted. in practice, is the bishop truly concerned the the spiritual wellness of his congregations as shown through their connectional tithes, or he is concerned that our not giving makes his budget on the conference level more likely to be out of whack? there may be some of the former in there somewhere, but political threats such as the ones that have been levied against our pastor and congregation argue much more strongly for the latter. as much as i love harris, will humc stop being a church if he is removed and someone lower on the totem pole that the bishop feels we "deserve" is sent to us? of course not. we'll continue to fall back towards our "final stand" becoming more instinctual and more survival-prone and eventually we will dwindle away. but who does our dwindling away actually hurt? what harm will be done? in truth, not much. inventories will be taken. new ministries will arise. a new daycare in the heart of our community will open to service the needs of those we might leave behind. the conference budget will be adjusted to account for our absence. and that will be that.


in the first several meetings i took part in while serving as lay leader, i continually tried to ask the question, "who are we?" is humc a building or an idea? currently, i would say that we are a building. a building with old plumbing and old ideas and a congregation that is in love with our building and the way we've sustained ourselves for close to 140 years. shouldn't we be an idea, though? before the richards moved, as part of my rhetorical question i would say out loud that, while i loved my church, i would be okay if i worshipped around the richards' pool every sunday morning if it meant our church finally found a way to be an idea not handcuffed to a building.


this longwinded example speaks to choices our collective community makes out of fear of "the consequences". what if we could remove that from the equation...

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One of the quotes I'd wanted to include above I'll add here, paraphrased: God is like a parent who sends his children into the back yard to play. He doesn't care WHAT we play- we could play hide and seek or capture the flag or kickball- it's up to us because he's put us in a safe place and he gives us the freedom to experience what we want. We may get hurt accidentally, or hurt someone in anger intentionally- and God, like a parent, would be quick to soothe and/or correct, but the next day, the children get to go out and play again.

Somehow we've gotten the idea that God wants us to play kickball (or church). And that's all we've played. And it's not fun anymore- we're bored, we don't know why we're still playing, and hardly any of our friends want to come over anymore.

Metaphors are just popping into my head like crazy- I'll try not to bore you.

You have to be willing to part with old, rarely worn, outdated clothes before you'll have room in your closet for new ones.

Nature's forest fires clear acres and acres of old wood so that a forest can be reborn.

You get the picture.

Why are we so afraid to let go of things that are no longer inspiring? I won't say they're no longer working, because for some people they work. But what we lack is inspiration. What makes you excited about God?

I'll be bold and say that I don't think God gives a flip about church. God cares about people joyfully experiencing their God-given potential, and let's face it, a majority of the time religion is stifling rather than inspiring.

God, IMO, doesn't care about church. We can do Sunday morning worship or Saturday afternoon football parties or Wednesday night supper clubs- out of those three, where do find yourself truly connecting with people?

We're free to do a new thing- why is that so hard to believe?

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well, i can only speak to my experience of course, but it is so hard to believe because it sounds too good to be true. at least, personally, it does.

church-wise, like i've said, i am and have been asking the same question? it shouldn't be this hard. it isn't this hard. we make it this hard.

we serve platitudes like "seek god's will" and "guide me, holy spirit" and "change the world" to each other without spelling out what any of those things actually mean. when i hear someone offer the advice that we just should "seek god's will", i cringe, because the implication is that i or we or our church isn't doing just that. it implies that the giver of the platitude has things completely figured out in their life and is hiding the magic answer from the rest of us. it rings hollow. just as it feels the practice of church as we currently know it and do it rings hollow for many, many people close to me.

does that mean we are right and the rest of the "christian" world is wrong? no, of course it doesn't. but, if even one part of god's collective genuinely feels a twinge to move in a direction opposite of the norm, it does a disservice to god's collective to not hear the differing opinion with the same weight as anyone else's.

if we are made in god's image and he has given us free choice that is associated with free will, we are doing shamefully little with that gift if we continue to constrain ourselves to someone else's right and wrong.

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Let's try (Ha!) to come full circle here. We've focused a lot on Christianity and the church experience in particular here, but that's only one example of how a belief in GOD'S WILL (as being somehow "out there" and separate from ours) can create staleness in life. Fear of doing the wrong thing, or the fear of failing to figure out God's will, paralyzes us from moving forward in TRUE FAITH. Faith to me is not about believing in things that can't be proven- Faith (to me) is believing that all is right in God's world and that what's happening cannot be outside of God's plan. How is it phrased in the book? "If you're looking for God, you're in luck! God is so big, you can't miss."

I'm going to make a prediction- which I will probably not be around to see-

I think that within the next century the church institution will die out and be replaced by small group communities. We are trying to inject life into a terminal patient. I understand why we're doing it- because we haven't figured out the alternative yet. But God has given us the ability to figure it out- and he's given us permission as well. Now, we just have to give ourselves permission.

hannah and caroline and me
(part thirty-six)


vacation.

friday, sarah and i drove to a chalet in pigeon forge. the first night, we had driven close to five hours to partake in two activities we very well could have found on chalkville mountain road. dinner at cracker barrel then a movie. the theater we saw inception in was hilariously outdated. it felt like the lobby of the old center point cinema six back before center point was the dollar movie destination. the theater's capacity was 85 compared with the 310 or so of the biggest trussville auditoriums. four of those 85 seats were out of order. we weren't sure why. they were covered in plastic, so any number of things could have happened. in my mind, i went with quadruple homicide. the movie experience, itself, wasn't that bad. the picture was fine. the sound was loud enough. the story was fantastic. that we drove five hours to find ourselves fifteen years back in time, well, we just found it funny.

saturday, we found more adventure. we spent a couple hours in a truly epic titanic exhibit that didn't celebrate the tragedy as much as it did the stories of those onboard. it was really well done and i can totally see a september 11th "attraction" 50 or 75 years down the road that will be equally tasteful and a fitting reminder that it's never about what happened as much as it is finding meaning in what happened. after titanic, which was preceded by our first of two trips to smoky mountain brewery, we headed to gatlinburg proper. i forgot how much the strip felt like one big carnival. all the storefronts have the same charm as the booths of any traveling fair. the attractions look second class from the outside, but, if you pay money for one of them, chances are you'll find yourself having a first class time. we ate at hard rock and then went to walgreen's. that's right, walgreen's. we redboxed a movie and bought yahtzee to take back to the cabin because i had been craving the game for a couple weeks. there is a walgreen's and two redboxes on chalkville mountain road.

sunday was nice and relaxing. we found the best french onion soup either of us had ever had. we stuffed our face and then went back to the cabin to watch precious. it was a severely depressing look into the poverty stricken world of a 16 year old, overweight, still in middle school girl. she delivered the second of two children fathered by her father during the movie. we saw that the first was born with down's syndrome. the second one is healthy. the mom is abusive. precious finds out towards the end of the movie that she is hiv positive. it was a real pick me up. well-done, but a downer for sure. after the movie, we went back out to find ice cream, mini-golf and beer and wings to close out our weekend, three of four we could've found on chalkville mountain road.

we drove five hours home to birmingham yesterday and ate lunch on chalkville mountain road at waffle house. we weren't very far into the trip when i started pining for the girls. perhaps it was precious, perhaps it was being away from them for the longest time in a while. perhaps it was other things. whatever it was, i missed them. badly. it was a good thing to get away for a while, even if we could have saved a whole lot of money by staying at the comfort inn down the road. in the long run, though, i think we both agreed that our next trip would include the girls, not finding a way to leave them behind.

we picked them up early for them from daycare and we all got back home a little before three yesterday afternoon. i exercised and the girls napped or lounged around on the couches. we had a nice family dinner around the kitchen table and, after, the girls started yelling at each other and i ended up spanking hannah for some serious not-following-directions.

yep. we were back. not that spankings happen every night. or dinner around the table. but we were back together. back pushing each other's buttons. back sharing space, sometimes comfortably, sometimes reluctantly. back being upset and making up later with hugs and time on the couch. back laughing at each other and with each other. back being family.

going on vacation was nice.

it's good to be back.

one year ago today


today, i celebrate a different kind of anniversary.

where were you on july 23, 2009?

me? at this time one year ago, i was probably in a room after having my right kidney removed from my body by dr. brian k. wade. turns out that kidney had been housing a malignant mass for who knows how long. also turns out that i ended up being one of the "lucky ones". i was lucky, in that, for whatever reason, those perverted cells that made up that mass had not yet decided to go exploring in the rest of my body. the friday after the surgery, dr. wade came into my room and told me it was "completely contained" and also told me to "celebrate".

a year later, i don't know if i've let myself celebrate. for the first six weeks, post-surgery, it was all about the physical recovery. getting back into shape after having been cut into was a new, long and painful process i had never done before. after three weeks, i went back to work. after six, i started lifting and exercising again. looking back, the surgery and the physical recovery was the easy part.

then came the demons. after i started getting back into my normal life-ly routines, i started worrying. i've always been good at worrying, but now i felt like i really had something to worry about. after all, i just had freaking cancer removed from me. surely the doctors had missed some of those perverted cells moving somewhere, right? in my mind, i was convinced that the answer to that question was "yes".

i was dizzy all the time. i started seeing floaters. so, in the first six months leading up to my first follow up ct, i went to the eye doctor and had my eyes checked for tumors there. no tumors. just floaters. i also went into my primary care doctor's office, cried like a baby and allowed them to schedule a "peace of mind" scan on my head so that we could rule out a brain tumor. no tumors. just anxiety. i went to therapy three times for the anxiety. learned the "is it possible? yes. probable? no." mantra.

six months passed. i went back to see dr. wade, again knowing full well that my first follow-up scan was going to show something bad. it didn't. neither did the chest x-ray. by this time, i had been prescribed and started taking lexapro to help fight off the demons. it helped. time helped. all the clean scans helped. the no tumors in my eyes report helped. and i started acting like the crappy human being that i am again.

i plugged back into church. we got limbo off the ground. my store became a point of pride again. things started feeling..."normal". two weeks ago today, i went back for my year-out visit. the scan looked good again. they saw something in one of my lungs. but then, they didn't. i had a chest scan. clean there too.

is it time to celebrate?

maybe it is. i still worry. this week, i started the process of weaning myself off the lexapro. can't take that shit forever. we'll see how good i've got at coping with the demons on my own.

today, a full year removed from my surgery, sarah and i are heading to gatlinburg. it'll be my first trip there since late 1999 when i took a few youth there to see gay-ass josh mcdowell and the columbine crosses (that part was actually kind of moving) at some youth praise-all-things-that-came-from-jesus-which-is-everything gathering.

today, we are going to travel somewhere without children for more than one night for the first time since 2002. it is going to be weird. we hope it's relaxing. and fun.

it's been a helluva year. here's to many, many, many more (without cancer).

false alarm


so, tuesday morning, i got the "official" phone call that i had been waiting on.

yes, it's true. last friday morning at 8:10 i had my year-out follow-up scan. and the initial reading of that scan by dr. wade could not have been any more positive. i went through the ct machine four separate times. once, without the iodine contrast, two times with the iv hooked up and the dye flowing through my veins and one final time with the iv unhooked for good measure. i got my clothes on and sarah and i waited patiently for the man that took out my right kidney to come in and make us hip to what the scan revealed. he came in the and the first thing he said to me was, "happy anniversary". he had his very pleasant smile on his face and it was obvious that he wasn't worried in the least that the images were going to show anything other than the expected. he asked sarah and me if we'd like to come over with him to the computer and check things out. i asked him, respectfully, if i could wait until he could give me a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". he grinned and said, "of course". so, i turned to the side and he pulled up the images. sarah watched the screen and i watched her face as he went through his checklist.

"spleen looks good."

"bladder looks good."

"stomach looks good."

"left kidney looks good."

and so on. he went through and looked at everything, and everything looked as it should on someone that's had one of their kidneys removed. and so i breathed a sigh of relief. time to celebrate, right?

well...

flash ahead to tuesday morning. i am mid-workout and my phone rings. i recognize the number. it's dr. wade's office. i pick up the phone and it's the ct technician that i started last friday morning with. her voice is kind of high and a little scratchy. she also has a little valley girl southern twang. this phone call, ideally, will be to tell me that the official radiologist report is in and confirms what dr. wade saw, which is nothing out of the ordinary. it will also tell me that the result of the chest x-ray.

"kevin, i just wanted to tell you that the radiologist looked at your ct images, and every thing there looked great,..."

"woohoo!", i said to myself and her at the same time.

she continues, "but..."

but. but? but, what? my forehead began to sweat.

"but, something showed up on your chest x-ray."

holy.

shit.

my stomach turned. i wanted to sit down but my legs wouldn't move. i stood there, destroyed. almost a full 365 days worth of panic and anxiety turned away came flooding back at me. i had already been told a year ago that if the type of cancer i had were to move, the most likely place it would go would be to my lungs, hence the chest x-ray that has accompanied all of my follow-ups.

"but, something showed up on your chest x-ray."

she then continued with what i should have heard as good news. "they don't know, exactly, what it is. it is very small, about two millimeters long. it could be a smudge or possibly a shadow. the part of your lung that they are looking at was actually captured on friday's ct. i took those images to the radiologist that read your chest x-ray and, as i was looking over his shoulder, he said he couldn't see anything."

"he is not worried."

"i am not worried."

"dr. wade is not concerned. if dr. wade was concerned, he would have called you, himself."

all good things. in that moment, though, i coudn't hear them. rather, i couldn't process them as good things. i could only fear the worst. i could only imagine this being "the other shoe". i was right. everyone else was wrong. my cancer was not all gone. in fact, it had moved to my lungs.

thankfully, it had not.

after coming down from my panic, we rescheduled a follow-up chest scan from thursday to wednesday of last week around lunchtime. i only had to wait about 24 hours after the phone call to hear and then process what everyone else was already certain of. that i was fine.

the same technician called me wednesday afternoon with the final piece of this follow-up's puzzle. the chest scan looked "completely normal". they suspected the mark on the chest x-ray was a "motion artifact".

"i am sorry you had to worry, but these things happen all the time."

not to me.

but to me, it happened.

what my reaction to the smudge on my chest x-ray tells me is a little cloudy. it had already been established that i have not rid myself completely of anxiety. i am still quite certain that, spiritually, i am not ready to pass from this place.

i thought, though, that i had worked on and succeeded in controlling my fears over the last six months. i thought that the sum of time and lexapro had given me an advantage over the irrational demons that lay in wait for my most vulnerable moments to present themselves.

maybe i haven't. maybe, in a sense, i don't want to. i don't know.

what i do know is that tuesday morning's false alarm will be remembered with just as much clarity as any piece of news i received last summer and in january, because it is every bit as much a part of this process of healing as the rest.

as i begin to wean myself off of the medication this week, surely i am better equipped than i used to be. to deal with those demons, that is.

we shall see.

now comes the hard part


it's been a year a one half since i took on the responsibility of being the lay leader of humc. there have been good times and so-so times concerning my being in that position during those eighteen months.

let's look at the positive. the atmosphere of the church is as healthy as it's been in years. that, probably, has nothing to do with me and more to do with the change from a dictator to a humble servant in the senior pastor's office. but, it has happened. with less drama to focus on, the church has been able to take somewhat sincere evaluations of ourself and look forward into our future with a cautiously optimistic attitude. harris has commissioned and asked me to lead a long-range planning committee. we have met three times this year, all ending with a very positive feeling of accomplishment. it's interesting, how a room full of honest people should be able to talk about their church and not get all bent out of shape and yet, the blissful feeling we've left with after our meetings has come across as quite novel. while that's a sad statement on the past, it's a good omen for the future. i've missed only one meeting in the 18 months that asked for my participation. the close to 100 percent attendance has allowed me to drive my heartfelt points and emotions home consistently without venom. if you hardly make a meeting and come to it with a point to drive home, it's going to be hard to take that person seriously. your motives and your agenda will be questioned. and your credibility will take a hit. i haven't always swung a big stick with my words, but i feel like my presence has been solid and stabilizing. then again, i could be giving myself too much credit to that end. what else? limbo is now 19 weeks old. it seems fairly certain that the group is here to stay. while limbo doesn't directly relate to my position as lay leader, i think it's a safe bet that we wouldn't be doing it i weren't as plugged in as i am. i may be forgetting things...

let's look at the negative. first off, not a lot has changed. that's not to say things are changing, and that is good. but 18 months into my "term", the church still doesn't have a unifying mission and we are still operating by, mostly, doing "what we've always done". as i've mentioned many times, there is immense worth in the ministry that is happening at humc, but that worth is not building a bridge to our future yet. it is renovating the bridge to our past. my (and harris') first run with the lay leadership committee was pretty weak. we gave ourselves too little time to find capable members to run our already overstretched and undermanned committees. we gave ourselves too little time to accurately inventory and restructure our current system. finally, we did "what we've always done" and asked people to sign up for positions that were not adequately spelled out, setting them up to fail. i hope that we can better our efforts this year. in spite of our efforts to look at huffman for what we truly are, it is my opinion that huffman still thinks too highly of our current standing in our community. yes, it's great that we are still here. yes, it's great the impact that the church is having on the families of our daycare children. the overwhelming feel, though, still permeates that the community "out there" is a goal to be achieved, heathens to save from being "lost", poor that need to be nourished with "the word" rather than they are just humans like us. humans that aren't official members of our club. as expected, my leadership style has been questioned. how dare i speak from my heart? how dare i not speak like a politician and not advocate for the congregation even when it still feels, to me, that the current pull of our congregation is in the wrong direction. how dare i be so "young" and so full of cuss words? how dare i this? how dare i that? listen, this part bothers me least. lord knows, i knew going in that there were 14 representative members of the church that didn't want me to be lay leader. i didn't want to change their minds. i just want to change our church. and change is happening...

i think.

what concerns me more than anything is the current feel within the church for limbo. and partly, that is my fault. it was me that thought it would be the best idea to start us during the normal "what we've always done" sunday school hour. maybe i don't want to make others feel bad when they obviously don't have a feel for what we are trying to do within that room. of course, i am sensitive and protective of the perception, because i want it to develop naturally. hearing that we "want to be involved" shouldn't be a curse, but a blessing. being involved doing "what we've always done", though, well, that holds no interest to me. you see, we are 19 weeks old. 19!!! we are consistent. i feel like we are excited to be with each other every sunday. but we are not ready to be defined. we are 19 weeks old. 19 hours, plus some, that means we have spent together as a unit. sometimes, we have to work. sometimes, we have life that takes us on vacation or to the lake. sometimes, we just need to sleep in. what we can't be is what you want us to be, not because we are actively trying to be rebellious but because, in many of our opinions, what you want us to be is misguided and in poor form. we are 19 hours old. 19 weeks old. it is not the church's fault that you are not copied on our correspondence. it is intentional. it is not coincidence that no outside pressure has come from those that are. they understand. this is a long way of saying, please back off and let limbo grow for a little while. if we are wasting your space this time next year, you can ask us to move.

wow. that was a tangent.

so, why the self-evaluation and limbo defense today? i guess, in so many words, because things still kind of feel off. and i am honestly wondering if our church would be better served if someone else served our current system in my current position. i am not saying this in a threatening manner whatsoever. it's not like the o'kelleys are going anywhere. well, these o'kelleys aren't. we are much too stubborn for that. if we are trying to grow doing "what we've always done", i don't know that i am the man for the job.

it's just something i am thinking about. and, in this era of social(-ized) media, you might as well hear me thinking...

since it concerns you.

hello, panic. it's been a while.


dateline - eastern urology, july 9 @ 8:10 cst.

there are days in the last sixth months that i think i have started to own the idea that i had cancer. had cancer. past tense. that, on july 23rd of 2009, a malignant, physiological anomaly was removed from my body along with my right kidney. there are days, more of them in the last six months than the previous six, where my state of mind is one of control. whether that control comes due to a function of time removed from last july, lexapro, or a combination of both maintains no real consequence. on those days where i am in control of my mind, i can think an irrational thought, compartmentalize that thought and file it away under "you shall not pass!!!", and i am a functioning member of society. loving, father of two. decent to crappy husband. par to above average director of a locally owned and operated franchise. getting worse by the game softball player. getting better by the day friend. a still-wasting-tens-of-peoples time blogger. a proud member of limbo. an emeritus weed. and so on. not only do i function, but i, believe it or not, can enjoy life. the girls make me laugh. the girls make me yell. the braves bring me joy. bobby cox makes me question his worth as a human being. i love going to work. a customer reminds me that loving going to work is a privilege, not a right. i am happy. i rap along with eminem and then sing along soulfully with the gaslight anthem. in the last six months, i have had many more of these days.

and then there are days like yesterday...

i know my anxiety is racing more than usual because i set my year-out follow up scan last week. i know it. intellectually, i get it. i just can't do anything about it. yesterday, it was all i could do to hold it together.

and nobody knew. that's an improvement.

around lunchtime, i found out that a 32 year-old coworker from the homewood psp prematurely lost her life saturday to causes yet known. before that news, i was already on edge. after, it was a ramped up version of that on-edge story. my senses turned themselves to hyper-aware. i felt dizzy all afternoon 'til i came home and was able to sit down. pains and/or tweaks in my neck, back and lower abdominals that i've been talking away for weeks now all came back at once. her circumstances had nothing to do with my medical history. but her tragedy and my sadness towards it, though, sent me spiraling into deathdreams i had not experienced since before christmas.

to compare or try to tie together my fate with that of meredith would be beyond ridiculous and selfish to a blasphemous fault, and, please believe me, i am not trying to do so. not one bit.

what i saw and heard in my co-worker's passing was an unsolicited reminder of my mortality, and my instinctual reflexes, bent, perverted and re-conditioned through my experience with cancer last summer betrayed me.

i wanted to cry for meredith, but i was too scared too. i wanted to call her employees and tell them i was sorry, but i couldn't shake myself out of the office. i wanted to call the store director at pelham and meredith's old boss to share with him my condolences, but i could only manage a text.

days like yesterday, for me, are fewer now and farther between. what massive work on my state of mind i'd like to believe i've made was deconstructed right before my eyes by horrible news.

i now worry for friday's results with little thought for rationale. i worry for them and see them through selfish and tragedy tinted lenses.

fuck you, cancer and fuck you, circumstances that tore meredith away from her family, her friends, her co-workers and loved ones.

rest in peace, meredith. and godspeed.