treatment changes lives


now two months removed from my last post, maybe i wasn't as ready to hop back on the blogging train as i thought i was in april.

maybe i had other things going on.

maybe.

"treatment changes lives."

those were the words of the oncologist i consulted with after my two surgeries. the surgeries and succeeding scans had determined that, as last confirmed on april 30, i was without active cancer in my body.

and so, we were left with two options. to treat, or not to treat? that was the question.

on one hand, there was the chance that my most recent resection had "cured" me. as these things go, it was the same school of thought that led my urologist to encourage me to "celebrate" after the removal of my right kidney in july of 2009. because the entire tumor was removed and contained inside the now gone kidney, the odds were in my favor of the cancer never returning.

what are odds, really? in my case, the "odds" were mainly a catalyst for mismanaged expectations, making the news of my cancer returning even that much harder to swallow. i digress.

i was told that, had i been 65 instead of 35, the recommended follow-up would be to just keep an eye on things and react if something else popped up.

alas, i am, in fact, 35, which complicated matters. we now had evidence that my cancer was willing to come back. given that information, two oncologists recommended treatment, just as my urologist suggested would be the plan of action way back in february. in our minds, if things fell in my favor, we were planning on treatment. it was never really a question. when things ended up falling in my favor, we were ready to roll.

so, what did that mean? what comes next?

two ideas and one medicine were proposed considering my history. one oncologist suggested a six month treatment plan. the doctor at uab, who i will be doing my follow-up with from this point forward, recommended a full year. i would take a chemo pill each night for four weeks, then break for two weeks, for a total of nine cycles. yikes.

"treatment changes lives."

so, has treatment changed our lives? i don't know. not substantially. not yet.

monday night, i took my 28th (of 252) pill and finished my first cycle. my experienced side effects are as follows, in order of appearance:

"morning sickness" - this is the closest equivalent that i've heard to describe the overall nausea i feel every day. my medicine isn't making me actively sick. in waves, though, it makes me feel like i want to be sick. every day. kind of shitty.

general fatigue - this one hit pretty early on as well. i'm used to leaving work and being eager to start my afternoon/evening routines, including running, my rocky training montage or just hanging out with the girls. now, after i've made it through my day, if i sit down on the couch, i don't want to get up. on certain days, i have felt like i can't. this, too, is kind of shitty.

change in taste - i've been eating for 35 years now. over that time, my brain understands and recognizes what certain foods should taste like. pizza, hamburgers, ranch dressing. now, imagine, all those things, pizza, hamburgers, ranch dressing, etc. tasting like a watered down, metallic version of themselves, kind of like a wet spoon. this phenomenon, to continue a theme, has been pretty shitty.

sore/general sensitivity on my hands - i've rubbed places on my hands before during my exercise routines, but those places heal or callous and haven't been long-standing problems. in the last two weeks, those places have become super-fucking sensitive, to the point where it hurts to even pull my pants up. not, shitty, shitty, but frustrating.

gum pain - i've wondered if i didn't poke myself with a chip or something a couple weeks back and the medicine just isn't letting my body heal in the way i am used to it healing. it's not like i'm wolverine or anything, but i've cut myself up with chips before and it hasn't altered how i've had to chew my food or, at worst, made me not want to eat anything harder than jello. tag team this development with the change in taste thing, and now i hate the idea of eating. fairly shitty.

sensitivity on the bottom of my feet - no sores, no obvious bruising. just places that have started to hurt bad enough that i am overcompensating and limping around. no biggy. still shitty.

misc. - some lower back pain, some knee pain, the corners of my lips cracking open, the inside of my right nostril being one big scab because it's just that dry. attractive, right?

that's the list. taken one at a time, nothing here is life-changing, per se. pile all of this shitty on top on each other, though, i have felt inconvenienced.

here's the rub. i get it, man. i know things could be worse. my cancer could have spread. i could still have it. i could be hooked up to an iv getting pounded with a toxic drug that had little chance of working.

i am an expert only of my own experience, though. and, to this point, i hadn't experienced much of the above, and the above has kind of sucked.

i am hopeful that the next two weeks will provide some relief. beyond that, i am hopeful that the medicine and what it's doing to my body will be worth it in the long run. that, if there are silly little cells in my body that would like, one day, to mutate into cancer, they are re-educated or just fried to hell. either way i am good with.

here's to writing about something other than cancer soon, like there being a pool in the backyard of our new house or something.

"the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"


i was having a conversation with my step-brother several weeks ago, and we were waxing spiritual.

i was awaiting my first surgical procedure, the mediastinoscopy. as you may recall, the purpose of that procedure was two-fold. a) to go in and remove, if possible, the spots in my high lung area that glowed on my p.e.t. scan of january 31st. b) once removed, test those spots to see if they were related to what we would ultimately learn to be a recurrence in the area where my right kidney once was found.

my first piece of good news, post jan. 31, was discovering those spots in my chest were benign.

at the time of my lunch with ken, though, i had no way of knowing that. i was still processing the idea of, not only my cancer being back, but this time it having spread to a different part of my body.

what did that mean for me?

could i beat it?

was it beatable?

how long would i have 'til i died?

what does it mean if i do?

do i believe in god?

surely, i do, right?

if i do, is he gonna come and get me after the cancer takes me away?

surely, he will, right?

so, ken was in town and we got together for lunch. before we met, i told him i'd been wishing to talk with people smarter than me, people who believed in god like i want to think i believe in god and ask them how i find a comfortable place after being faced again with my mortality.

so, we talked. it was a good conversation and, in it, he shared some of his feelings on faith that i had never really heard him articulate before. it was nice.

listen, man. i get it. i get i am never going to be 100 percent comfortable with the idea of what comes next. i do wish i could be closer than i am right now. at this very moment. at this moment moving forward.

which brings us to the next series of discussions i'll be facilitating for six weeks or so at the church.

something ken said to me the day of our lunch has stuck in my craw. we got on the subject of pastors and he shared an observation on them that i couldn't agree with any more. in general, he opined, "pastors have it pretty great. they are glorified salespersons that don't have to deliver on their pitch in this lifetime."

now, to some of us, the remark could be taken as an unfair criticism, which let me be quick to say is not how it was intended. most pastors take their calling seriously. my current pastor speaks of the responsibility he feels towards his congregation often.

to me, though, the comment strikes me as a completely valid talking point. and, as such, i feel like we do pastors and their sermons a disservice if we don't find avenues to talk about them amongst our friends and and our family and others who shared the experience with us. if we do not, if we choose not to invest in the message outside of sunday morning worship, they are no different than a sham-wow commercial, a distraction during our respective weeks that marks and passes time. no more. no less.

beginning this sunday evening, april 15th, humc will again offer an opportunity to (over-) analyze what we hear from the pulpit earlier that morning.

during that time, we'll talk about what we've heard, why we've heard it and, why, if at all, we should apply the context of the message to our week to follow. hopefully, we'll come away with not only a greater appreciation of the work that was put in to deliver it, but also a better understanding of how a very invisible god may or may not be working in our lives.

having had cancer would surely be a lot easier if i could convince myself that my eternity was secure. up until now, i haven't been able to make it to that point, and, really, it scares the ever-living shit out of me.

i hope, though, that opportunities like limbo and like the sermon post-mortems and like the every now and again conversations at lunchtime at o'charley's can provide some security. for me. and for those around me during those happenstances.

i hope that you might be interested in joining us over the next several sunday nights at 6:30.

if not, we'll miss you and we'll wish you were there, because, really, why wouldn't you be?

i hate cancer and what it continues to do to me. for real.

but i do love god.

surely, i do, right?

a picture of health


the blog's never been dark for two months.

then again, i've never had recurrent cancer, so, really, whatareyougonnado?

i am almost ashamed of my last post, having celebrated a preliminary "clean bill of health", only to have been notified several days later than something inside of me was actually not clean at all.

having given it some serious thought over the last couple of months, i tend to agree with a friend's assessment of the situation when she said to me, "wow. i would want to give that radiologist a hug." her sentiment struck me as odd the first time i heard it, but she was right. to my doctor's trained eye, he didn't see anything upon immediate review of my scan that showed cause for concern. when he passed the images along, though, to the people in his office that are paid to find things he may have missed, they didn't miss. they saw "a change". they saw something was different.

the idea of what might have happened had another year passed and we had not addressed the situation now is haunting. haunting in the same manner that it is now haunting to read my post from january 24th. on january 24th, i thought things were just fine. they just weren't.

since january 24th, i've now had two more surgeries.

the first was a procedure called a mediastinoscopy. you see, it wasn't just that i found out i had recurrent cancer. it was that i found out that, this time around, it may have moved away from the original tumor. fuck. me. i will forever wear a scar (not pictured above) at the bottom of my neck at which point the cardio-thoracic surgeon entered into my body to pull stuff out of my lung area to check and see if it was, in fact, cancer. thankfully, it was not.

the second procedure happened a week ago thursday. this surgery was called a hand-assisted, partial nephrectomy. the idea? one, to remove a mass that my doctor had been monitoring attached to my lone, remaining left kidney. two, to remove the recurrent mass in the renal area left void after my right kidney was removed in 2009.

the battle scars from that surgery are pictured above. it looks like i lost a gun fight but still lived to tell about it. in reality, i hope time allows these scars to tell a story of a fight that i ended up winning, one that began again in earnest around the 1st of february.

as i've told many of my friends, the most difficult part of the last two months is feeling like i've had to press the reset button on my race to health. i am no longer two and a half years removed from having cancer in my body. i am now only less than two weeks out. the follow-up scans will come sooner and more frequently again.

the scab has again been removed from my "complexities of paralyzing anxiety" wound.

i am now faced with a follow up program of some form of chemotherapy (loyal readers will remember that i always felt like i got off light the first go-round by not having to perform this step...not this time.).

normal, again, for me, has changed.

that being said, i still need normal to include this place. i've missed it. so many other things have happened that deserve to be remembered and commented on here. i've just been scared to come back.

what if i say something else that will prove to be premature or naive or laughable given the context of the present catching up with what i thought was the past and what little i know of the future?

in the end, i suppose it doesn't matter. if this gift to my girls is to be, in any way, authentic, they have to live with me through the bad times as well as the good. we had a nice couple years stretch worth of good.

good news has followed the surgeries of the last two months.

hopefully, more will be to come.

on january 24th, i had convinced myself that i was the picture of health. running 25 miles a week. doing my rocky training montage at home on the days i didn't run. healthier than ever (for me) eating habits. perfect bmi.

cancer, it seemed, had other ideas.

now, the picture i see in the mirror is a little more scary and tells an altogether different story.

but the fact remains that the final chapter is not written. my prayer is it won't be, still, for a long, long time.

i've missed you. and you. and you. and "you".

welcome back.

mixed emotions

i've had lou reed's "perfect day" stuck in my head all day...

...more specifically, the scene in trainspotting that it plays over. the scene sees our hero, mark renton, looking for "one fucking hit" and finding it in the desolate apartment of his dealer. the hit, predictably, brings more bad than good and mark's catatonic, eventual trip to the emergency room is soundtracked to the soothing sounds of the monotone reed. as the audience easily soaks in the irony of the lyrics, we are left to wonder if reed's alleged ode to heroin is meant to frame the druggie's experience as a baby step toward enlightenment and away from his addiction or quite verily what our protagonist was searching for. 

the angle of today's post has shifted a little in the wake of yesterday's storms. while not nearly as extensive or widespread and the fatalities far fewer, the tornado that ripped through tarrant/center point/clay/trussville hit closer to my literal and proverbial home than did the tragic and horrifying storms of last april. the sheer number of fatalities from 8 months ago is still terrifying, but the fact of my matter was that i knew very few, if any, of those that were directly impacted by the storm. the same could not be said yesterday morning. the vast majority of my friends either had some degree of damage on their property or were less than a stone's throw from where the tornado touched down. facebook, over 36 hours later, is still haunting to pull up. what new picture or video will bring us in closer touch with how quickly things and life can be taken away and crumbled into perspective and life lessons?

in turn, my family and i were one of the many "lucky ones", having only lost power for half an hour and cable for half a day, far smaller inconveniences compared to those whose houses are now shells of their former selves if they are even standing at all. i imagine the damage sustained by fellow church members, alone, could keep our congregation busy for weeks. stretch that out to include immediate families and friends, it could be months. 

before yesterday morning, i thought of today's post being one loathsome in self-pity. for months now, i've kept most of my fears to myself, because, surely, every one around me has got to be sick of my baby-ass whining about having had cancer. but the fears remained. after my scan last january, i let myself not worry about peeing blood for two or three months. around the beginning of summer, i started again talking myself into the idea of something growing inside me. by fall, i was sure of it. by today, you couldn't have convinced me otherwise. 

i said all the right things. 

"i don't have any reason to think anything is wrong." 

"i don't believe they'll find anything new or problematic." 

"why would they? they always told me mine was the best kind of cancer if you had to have it." (really, how ridiculous does that sound, even it turns out to be statistically accurate???)

"i am going to be just fine. of course i am." 

i said all the right things even if i didn't believe any of it. 

and so i've been imagining myself in my own version of the trainspotting overdose scene. was mark renton kevin o'kelley looking for that one last hit yet another scan (really, i've wished i could have one every day for the last six months) as a baby step towards my own personal enlightenment or was i secretly hoping that something would turn up so i could prove everyone that offered me comfort wrong or so all of my worrying wouldn't have been for naught. 

honestly, i don't know. 

i'd like to tell you without a shadow of a doubt that my worries were the manifestation of the figurative devil on one shoulder whispering nightmarish somethings into my ear easily shoo-ed away by the angel on the other side constantly reminding me how wonderful my life is. 

some days it was that simple. some days, it's not. 

and then the tornado ripped through my community, ripping me away from myself and my fears long enough to make my own self-pity look self-pathetic. 

i didn't write before my scan, because writing about me seemed pointless. 

i chose to write after, because good news is easier to digest than the complexities of paralyzing anxiety. 

i write today because today is a huge day for me, my unofficial new year's day. 

i am pained today because 2012 is already a year to forget for many that will be picking up the literal pieces of their homes for days, weeks, and months. 

cancer and her collateral damage is, was, and will always be a motherfucker. 

so, too, is life itself. here one minute, gone the next. a collection of things that can surely be swept away while we are sleeping.

i saw inside my body today. i saw a healthy kidney and other organs. i saw that i don't have to worry about peeing blood tonight, tomorrow, or the next many days. that's a nice thing. 

i saw the heart of my community yesterday and today, too. humans, untouched by the storm, caring for humans punched by it. 

tomorrow i move on with my body and my home intact and ready to roll. 

i pray for the motivation to help those that aren't so sure tonight because tornadoes are, were, and will always be motherfuckers. 

the final scene of trainspotting sees mark renton stealing from his friends one final time, walking towards the cameras with a wickedly narcissistic grin breaking across his face like a sunrise...

"...the truth is that i am bad person. but that's gonna change - i'm going to change....now i am cleaning up and i'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. i'm looking forward to it already. i'm gonna be just like you. the job, the family, the fucking big television. the washing machine, the car, the compact disc, the electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suit, diy, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die."

i've got a lot of mark renton in me. fatalist. masochist. narcissist. every man. no man. 

i hope i've got a lot of kevin o'kelley in me, too, whatever that ends up meaning to my girls, my community, and the world around me. 

perspective is, was, and always will be a motherfucker. 

i've had a proper dose of it the last couple of days. 

i've also realized reasons to celebrate random catchings of breaks. 

happy new year. 

this is the sound of settling


so, i am two weeks into 2012, one week out from having my yearly scan, and i am nowhere near adjusted to what it means or doesn't mean to not be lay leader at the church anymore. as i wrote a couple weeks ago in my resolutions look-back, there was a great deal of fluidity, with regards to my effort that is, that came with the position anyway. after we get past the scan, we'll evaluate my view of that experience more fully.

there are a couple things happening right now at the church, though, that i am pretty excited about.

wait. what?

first things first.

i didn't have a great opportunity or the right amount of time to analyze here at HACAJAM the cancellation of wednesday night dinners this spring. to reopen that can of worms, given where we arrived as of tomorrow, would be counterproductive, but a short visit back will offer some context. according to our budget, wednesday nights had been bleeding money for a few years. our food costs were through the roof. our attendance, both for the dinner itself and the programming that followed, was in decline. knowing that our cook, ms. ellen, was retiring from the church in may of 2011, the church used the opportunity to effort in taking a qualitative look at what our congregation thought of the current wednesday night structure.

do you come?

why do you come?

do you like it when you come?

why don't you come?

would you come again?

what can we change to entice you to come?

how much would we have to pay you?

these and other questions were asked and the response was fairly tepid. the consensus seemed to be that there was a small minority that were going to be agitated if wednesday nights as we knew them went away. out of "financial concerns", there would be an even smaller minority that were going to be agitated if they didn't. and the majority of the church didn't seem to care all that much.

and so, programming decided we would move towards a discussion group model. dinners within those groups choosing to meet on wednesday would be handled by the groups, themselves. otherwise. no dinner. no corporate fellowship opportunity. the church would do that for 6-12 weeks. we'd see how it went.

from everything i heard (i did not participate in the first wave of options), those that participated in the discussion groups enjoyed their experience.

but, still, something seemed to be missing.

a facebook thread happened that may or may not have played any role in the eventual return of wednesday night dinners. other conversations happened. a (paid) volunteer emerged. an idea was pitched. accepted. more discussion groups were planned and arranged outside and around the renewal of something our church had done for a long time.

yada, yada, yada. wednesday night dinner, version "we take reservations now and only prepare for a specific number", begins tomorrow night.

for me, i am extremely excited. i hope i am not excited merely because i am comfortable with something "that we've always done", and i am not sure what led to the setting of the time at 5:00, making it super difficult for any working members of the church to get there. i am not sure if i want to know. right now, i just don't care. given the time obstacle, the fact that 59 reservations were made anyway announces loud and clear that there is a need being filled by the mid-week dinner at church opportunity. there being several different discussion group options after dinner is a plus, too. here's hoping the facilitators in those groups will be open to new folks showing up a week late if there are, indeed, folks looking for an after dinner conversation. and here's hoping that tomorrow night is the beginning of something new and fun and exciting that our church can build from and not feel obligated to.

that's possible, you know? we just have to think about it.

to the second thing at humc that i am loving right now.

wait? "loving"???

the best kept secret at our church is happening on sunday nights at 6:30. do you know what it is? chances are you don't, since there were only 8 of us there last week.

for the first time that i can remember, we have a sermon post-mortem discussion group!

oh, how i have longed for something to excite me about worship.

don't get me wrong. it's not worship. not yet (although we are still trying to work on that issue).

what is the primary take-away from your sunday morning worship experience? sure, you may have really enjoyed the communion service one week. or you may have really enjoyed the choir's anthem or the hymn selection on another. or maybe some crazy person wowed you with justin bieber and popcorn during children's moment and you couldn't help but be happy for the rest of the afternoon. chances are, though, that the thing you look forward to and remember the most is the morning's message. at humc, for what feels like hundreds of years now, the message is what has fueled the service. two liturgical readings bookend the choir's weekly showpiece, the pastor gets up, and goes to feeding his "sheep". either you take away something from the sermon or you don't, but the sermon is the show. everything else is pregame.

for years, as is the case with you i am sure, many of my sunday after-church lunches will involve my family and friends' take on the sermon. did it move me? annoy me? did he/she sweat too much? read too much? use his/her serious voice too much? tell too many jokes? try to be too cute too much? knock it out of the park? did i even pay attention? something else?

as far as i can remember, we've never had a discussion group built around exploring what was said versus how it was said versus what we heard versus what does it all mean? and now that we have it, i have zero idea why we haven't had ten of these groups happening for years! the group that gathered sunday was a wonderful cross-section of what our church currently offers. several different age groups and social groups and life-experiences were represented, all bringing their own unique take-away from how they received the morning's message to the table.

the beautiful part for me was that it removed most of what has come to annoy me with our worship service in general, the execution, and asked me to place more emphasis on what i process and look forward to talking about later on in the day with a group that i am certain will have different takes than me.

for one sunday night, i had fun at church, and it had nothing to do with limbo or the weeds, which, to be honest, i wasn't sure was going to happen again.

for one night, i looked forward to coming back the next week to see if the experience was a fluke or something that i could actively begin recruiting people towards.

for one night, not only did i leave with a figurative smile on my face, but i also left looking forward to coming back on wednesday, to have dinner with friends and family and my church and to go to yet another discussion group worth my time.  

what is going on around here?

i don't know, man. but i like it. i like being excited about something huffman is offering. something that isn't a once a year, stand-alone event. i like being super-pissed when i hear about people visiting and choosing to join other churches because i know that we could and should offer something every bit as relevant as they can.

if. we. so. choose.

so, why don't we choose?

for one night, i did.

to many more.

the only national championship preview that matters
(to me)


this is the day.

44 days following the beat-down of their outclassed, out-talented, and out-coached bitter rivals, the university of alabama plays for its second national title in three years.

i am ready.

i could bore you with a data/stats/analytics driven breakdown of what happened on november 5th versus what i think will happen tonight, but every name-that-sports-website has paid someone(s) to do that already. what's funny about that is you won't find a much bigger fan of data/stats/analytics than me. but, in this case, in how i feel things are going to shake down and shake out tonight, i don't really think it matters.

why?

it's all psychological. nick saban, in a recent interview, called out espn's tom rinaldi on the shaky notion that it's more difficult to beat a team twice in one season. in college football, there isn't enough quantifiable data to show any sort of realistic trends that would support the idea. think about it for a second. how many college football rematches in years past can you think of right now? one? two? three at the most? how did those turn out? do you think it matters how those rematches played out versus who is going to win the game tonight in even the teensiest, weensiest little bit? i don't.

the idea that it's more difficult to defeat another football team twice in one season is ridiculous, because the idea, in and of itself, is a media driven narrative. now, i will honor the thought that college athletes watch television. i will also honor and respect the thought that college-aged anyones can and are swayed by what they see on television, what people say about them, and what they hear they can and can't do. but, do i believe that even if the college athlete at lsu totally buys into the narrative and is totally anxious at his team's chances of beating alabama means any one thing once the game kicks off? i do not.

in football, there are three factors that i believe play the most realizable determinants in a football game. talent. coaching. execution.

who has the most talent? 

it's all in the eye of the beholder. if you are judging talent based on how many football players playing in tonight's game will play at the next level next year, espn's todd mcshay gives alabama the slight edge at 12-10. i think that's a fair assessment, and considering how the close the prediction is, i am willing to cede talent level in tonight's game as a push.

who has the better coaching?

again, which statistic would you like to rip to prove your case? nick saban has 2 national titles to les miles' one. les miles has beaten nick saban coached teams 3 times to two losses. neither group of coaches could defeat the other in regulation as recently as two months ago. although alabama fans would never admit it out loud, i am willing to say to you, today, that les miles has method to his mad hatted-ness and knows what he is doing, coaching-wise. if he does not, he has surrounded himself with a staff and coordinators that do. i am calling this a push, too.

who will execute more efficiently?

the question that will solve the riddle of this game. each team has a plan, their plan. each team, i suppose, firmly believes that if they execute their plan more effectively than their opponent, they will emerge the victor. those beliefs can be founded and supported by the respective successes of each team over the course of the 2011-12 college football season. they cannot, however, be supported by the outcome on november 5th, which, in my humble opinion, is where things get interesting.

i said as much in this post written on dec. 6.  to my eyes, alabama won the run of play on november 5th. what do i mean by run of play? it's something that i've talked about a lot, but something that i think still gets lost in translation because the majority in this country irrationally hates and does not watch soccer. their reasons being that the game is "boring".  ignorance is as ignorance does. winning you over on soccer can be another post for another day. while run of play is a fairly subjective term, the feeling of which team in any given contest is better is the most personal and objective of feelings. if i am the judge and the jury, which team does my gut tell me is the better team whilst watching any athletic competition? most often, the teams that win the run of play win also on the scoreboard. their style, technique, efficiency and execution supports their bid for goals/points/run in a more honest way than their opponent. the end result, the majority of the time, will fall in line with your gut telling you, "yep. they were the better team."

but not all the time.

november 5th in tuscaloosa was one of those rare exceptions to the rule. alabama ran the ball more effectively. alabama passed the ball more effectively. alabama defended the run more effectively. alabama defended the pass more effectively. for 53-57 minutes of the game, lsu, this team that is on the precipice of being crowned as one of the top five teams in the history of college football, was beaten. soundly. and i think they knew it. the most damning piece of evidence being the frustration of their heisman trophy finalist that led to the clothesline of dre kirkpatrick. teams winning the run of play do not react in frustration. teams that can feel they are not the better team do.

what i believe we will see play out tonight is more of the same. i believe alabama will have the best player on the football field in trent richardson. i believe alabama's defense, given 44 days to prepare for an offense they completely stifled two months ago, will contain lsu more effectively than lsu will contain trent richardson. i believe the want for revenge is a stronger motivator than is the want for recognition. and i believe that alabama's achilles heel in the first match-up, their quarterback, will be less terrible tonight than he was on november 5th. and make no mistake, aj was far less than average.

what i hope to see is alabama win by two touchdowns and turning the story the media is writing of this greatest team ever into a punchline. whether or not will happen remains to be seen.

if alabama wins, i do not care if it plays out the way i have seen it here.

if alabama loses, i will come back in a few days and try and analyze how wrong i was.

either way, i will entertain myself.

roll tide.

death and taxes


i can't remember how i old i was when i became aware that death was, you know, a thing. that happened. like, to everybody. like, whether we liked it or not.

i can't remember how old i was when i became aware that death was a thing, but i know for a fact that it wasn't when i was eight years-old. in the past six months, hannah has been dealt developmentally inappropriate emotional blows as she has now lost both of great grandfathers on her mommy's side.

now, whether this means she is worried about it happening to her or not, it scares me for her. she's an anxious, anxious, little girl anyway. if you are a follower of this blog or have been in the last couple of years, you know that she gets her anxiety quite honestly. not just from her daddy that worries constantly about everything, but her mommy is pretty good at worrying, too. she's just better at not crying at the end of wall-e and letting everyone in the house, children included, that in that moment at the end of wall-e she's he's scared of dying.

hannah worries and worries and worries about everything. the henson's house was broken into last year. now she worries about our house being broken into constantly.

"why didn't you lock the door, daddy."

"do robbers come at night?"

"do robbers come when you're at home?"

"do robbers come when you're in your car?"

she worries about being blown away in tornadoes. part of our nightly routine, every night, includes her asking me, "is it supposed to storm tonight?"

we constantly see her staring into space contemplating what we can only assume is the meaning of the universe. she'll snap out of the zone and ask a pointed question.

"do you believe in hell, daddy?"

no, baby, i don't.

"do you believe in seton?"

who's seton, baby?

"seton, you know."

do you mean satan?

"yeah, satan."

now, whether the god/heaven/hell questions have anything to do with her great grandfathers, i don't really know.

what i do know is her asking about heaven and hell freaks me out. the only thing existential i gave any thought to in second grade, from what i remember, was how my existence would be a whole lot less fun if i didn't play with my g.i. joe's some more.

in third grade, i memorized the books of the bible.

in fourth grade, shit, i don't remember anything from the fourth grade. can anyone tell me who my fourth grade teacher was at going? there is a reward in it for you if you can.

in fifth grade, i thought about girls. a fucking lot. girls and dodgeball. and football. and baseball. and more girls. and that girl i kissed behind the dumpster at our apartments. and g.i. joes. and nerf basketball.

not death.

we were at chili's last night talking about the arrangements for sarah's grandfather. hannah was working on her coloring page, and i think sarah and i, both, were operating under the delusion that hannah wasn't paying attention to us. of course, she was.

"did granddaddy die."

fuck.

i pulled her close to me and told her that we were waiting for a good time to tell her. she laid her head on the table and got sad, her little brain processing the news at the same time she was being annoyed at us that we had been holding something from her.

i made sure to tell her that she could ask us anything that she wanted. the worst thing she could do, i told her, was hold it all in.

for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, we talked about the events that led to lamar's passing. she took it all in.  she didn't get terribly upset. after we told her that she could certainly attend the viewing and funeral if she wanted to, we changed the subject.

she and sarah are in georgia tonight. sarah told me that she didn't avoid the presented body. what goes through and eight year-old's mind when she sees an empty vehicle that was very much alive just three short weeks ago and now lays frozen in time forever in front of her.

god only knows.

there is a part of me that hopes this is a memory that doesn't stick in her craw. something that five or ten years from now she recalls as clearly as i do fourth grade.

being aware that death is, you know, a thing doesn't seem fair for her to worry about.

not yet.

if this is added to her list of nightmares, i beg that i am more patient with this one than i am with the robbers or the storms or the things that go bump in the night ones. with those, i am now impatient. i forcefully implore her to recognize how ridiculous the notion of me not taking care of her truly is, and i tell her to go back to sleep...or else. this method is every bit as effective, of course, as it is someone telling me that "everything is going to be alright." when i am violently shaking in fear in the floor of my bathroom in the middle of one of my deathdreams.

what will i do if and when she wakes me up in the middle of the night and her question has nothing to do with the weather but is something along the lines of, "am i going to die, daddy?"

i have no clue. maybe i'll just offer her some ice cream at 2 a.m. and hope it induces nightmares i feel more qualified to speak on.

jesus.

you're a brave girl, hannah. i love you.

"moving forward and letting go"


that was going to be the theme for 2011. at least, so i said way back in january. i am not really sure how that all worked out, but, maybe by the end of this post, i'll have a better idea.

was i everything i wanted to be this year? was i the best father i could be? was i the best lay leader? was i the best boss? probably "no" on all counts, but maybe i'll give myself an "a" for effort. maybe you won't.

let the grading of the resolutions begin. for full context and an all expenses paid trip back to HACAJAM, circa january, click here.

1) don't die - done, unless something really crazy happens in the next three hours. happenstances in and around our family have me less interested in joking about death tonight, so i won't. i am thankful that i am alive. i am thankful that i have my family and friends around me. i am sad for my wife and her family that is dealing with something incredibly hard and painful and fucking horrible right now. lamar wade, a gentle soul that was never anything but nice to me. we talked about church, religion, his children, his children's children and my children over many thanksgiving and easter lunches. my life is more wise and more grounded for the very few opportunities i had to be around him. godspeed into what is waiting for you, lamar. we'll see you soon.

...

don't die? check. thank god. i am still not ready to leave this place. not for a long time i hope.

2) see fewer doctors - check. "moving forward and letting go". every time i go to the bathroom, i still wonder if i'll pee blood again. every time something on the left side of my back tweaks or twinges, i wonder if it's alerting me to something dreadfully wrong. this year, though, in contrast to 2010, i didn't go see a specialist every time something scared me. i swallowed the fear, looked at myself in the figurative mirror, and told kevin michael o'kelley to get busy living. some days, it worked better than others. some days, it didn't really work. but i did see fewer doctors. i saw my urologist once way back in january. i saw my primary care doctor twice. dermatologist once. that's it. well, that's it unless you count my two very recent visits to my new chiropractor. that has less to do with fear than it does with my hope to be able to continue running for a long, long time. two for two.

3) don't get fat - back in february at the first visit with my pcp, i weighed in at either 188 or 191. i couldn't really tell, but it didn't really matter. either number would be the heaviest i had ever been and that number accompanied with the doctor's nurse saying, "it looks like you had some extra cake over the holidays", was all it took. i got in the car, called sarah and told her that the nurse called me fat, and i vowed things would change. my running had started. i then decided that i would no longer eat, too. well, i ate, but i drastically changed my habits. i swore off of fast food. i ate one to two very small meals a day. and i ran. and ran. and ran. and ran. the weight dropped off. i saw results, so i kept not eating. and running. by the time i went back to the doctor, i had dropped thirty pounds and was as lean and in shape as i had ever been in my life. it wasn't the healthiest diet or way to go i don't guess, but i've found a good place now. aside from the aches and pains associated with the running, i feel great. i raised my good cholesterol and lowered my bad. don't get fat? i guess i was kind of fat at the beginning of 2011. tonight? not so much.

4) run - yeah, i did that. what started in the dead of winter as a random ass idea grew into something quite serious. i couldn't run a mile without stopping for the first month. now, i can run six miles and have something left in the tank. what a crazy, crazy transformation. i am very proud of myself with this one, maybe more proud than most resolutions i've documented on this blog. a lot of people claim to run. not many people are runners. i am runner now. son. of a. bitch.

5) find kiker and andy again - hmm...mixed results on this one. i got to see both this year. kiker and i will play softball i would guess until our bodies no longer let us do that together. i was able to help andy out through a tough spot and we worked together for a couple months. there was more to this resolution when i made it than those things, though. what i missed in january and what i miss now is feeling close and connected to my two closest guy friends in ways that don't only involve softball or facebook. when we get together, the chemistry that we've always had makes it easier to feel like it hasn't been months since we last saw each other. but still, months continue to pass without us seeing each other, and i haven't been able to fix it. i still want to, but this is my first miss. here's to better results next year.

6) buy some freaking music - fail. fail. FAIL. i bought some music, but when i made this resolution, i meant buy music like i used to buy music. one or two records a month. find new artists. turn andy or amy onto those new artists. rinse. repeat. i just didn't. i bought several that i really liked. kanye and jay-z. the wonder years. childish gambino. but i don't think i bought more than ten all year. and that's just sad. it's also a miss.

7) see julio play in a football game - wrought out of the pain of losing julio to the pros, in january, most mock drafts had julio headed to st. louis, cleveland, or cincinatti. all i wanted was to think that once we knew what team he'd play for, we could schedule one road trip to tennessee or atlanta if he came through one of those cities and see him play pro ball during his rookie season. the rest, of course, is already documented. draft night came. the falcons traded up. they picked julio. we got season tickets that night. julio missed two games we attended and parts of two others due to injury, but this one, we covered. see julio play in a football game? after tomorrow, we'll have seen six.

8) help move limbo into its next phase - "the goal is for limbo to stay fresh and exciting and kinetic in a way that will motivate our established base to include even more of our friends and family as we move towards a productive calendar year." 

i don't know if i am the best judge for this one. then again, of course i am. it's hard because i don't know if this one was a success. if we measured our success on the attendance of our christmas party, then limbo is healthy and relevant and vital to more people this year than it was last year. i am worried that our routine on sundays and throughout the rest of the year may be becoming stale. stale is probably the wrong word. predictable, maybe? not exciting? i don't know. i still very much look forward to limbo every week. i get more, spiritually, out of those conversations than i do with any other part of my week. i just would like to think limbo would move along fine without me, even if i don't really want to move along without it. i am not sure if we are there yet. but i do think we are close. i am rating this one a push. 

9) don't be a lame duck lay leader - fail. fail. FAIL. i knew entering 2011 that i would have no interest in continuing in the role of lay leader past my third year. what i didn't see until it was too late was that i didn't have a whole lot of interest in continuing in the role. period. at least, not every part of the role. i enjoyed being a voice in the room of conversations that looked ahead into the future of humc. i didn't enjoy feeling hamstrung by the same cycle of reluctance to change that we faced in the beginning of 2009. by the time the second half of this year rolled around, i didn't think i was the right person for the job. i didn't hear anyone tell me otherwise, and so, i am moving on. early on during next month, i'll take a closer look at the job we did in the last three years, but if my goal was to not be a lame duck lay leader in 2011, it was a goal i did not achieve. i truly appreciate the opportunity that was given to me by 19 voters in the fall of 2008. i will continue to be a voice for change and rethinking church here and around the campus. i will be honored to continue to serve on sprc. third miss of the year. 

10) get a dog - funny that i ended this year's list with "get a dog". i think this one had more to do with the hope that we moved into a bigger house. and that was before we added a third baby girl to our already crowded abode. i did like the thought of having a man's best friend again. now? not so much. not that i don't like the idea of our girls having a dog to pal around with in our future back yard. first, though, we've got to get that new back yard. fourth miss. 

so, the final tally? five for. four against. one undecided. not bad. not great. all in all, i'll take it. 

2011 will go down, ultimately, as the year we found june. and that is a wonderful thing. 

"moving forward and letting go". 

i am not sure that any one thing is more complimentary of that idea than introducing a new human being to this world. the operative word feels to be "moving". i am not past my fears. and i am not complacent enough to be one of those people that says life moves by too fast. i am somewhere in between. learning to be a father of three. a better husband. a better friend. a better boss. 

moving forward. letting go. 

just keep swimming. 

girl, you'll be a woman soon


i haven't written about hannah, specifically, in ages.

it's not that she's any less special than she was in the early years of this blog. it's not that she's become boring. it's not that she hasn't done anything worth writing about. to be honest, for a while now, she just been the least volatile of the on-goings in the world of the o'kelleys. for that, truly, she probably deserves some sort of medal.

since hannah started the second grade back in august, though, times, they are a changin'. the age that she and her classmates currently occupy is a weird-ass age. 7-8 year-olds are still incredibly impressionable. any time she comes home from school, church, or the henson's house, or time with amy and katie, she's picked up some new mannerism or tone or inflection that i know she didn't pick up from me or her mommy. sometimes, the newness is cute and becoming. most of the time, it's kind of cringe-worthy, mainly because you can tell most of the act is a mimic. a subconscious and innocent mimic, but behaviors she's witnessed and is trying on for size. whether it's snapping her neck, rolling her eyes, drawing out her syllables, or constantly exclaiming that something is "amazing", there's a part of me that wants to shake her and say, "hannah, you are better than this."

i don't shake her. she isn't better than "this", because "this" is relative. we are all sponges. no matter the age. hell, if i read a killer column by bill simmons or bethlehem shoals or tommy craggs or will leitch or whomever in the world of sports, there's a great chance, intended or not, that i'll rip some element of their style off the next time i sit down to write about sports, myself.

my eight year-old is no different. it's just the imitation is ratcheted up to the 100th degree. hannah hasn't had a chance to develop a niche or personality or creation of her own just yet. i suppose you could play the "there is nothing new under the sun" card and argue that all of us are nothing more than snapshots and memories and left-behinds of those in our circle of influence that have come before us. as a cynic's cynics, i get that take. i just don't buy it now that i am a father of three.

as hannah and caroline have grown from infancy to toddlerhood to the level of kid that hannah is at now, each step of the way, a parent can witness someone truly and genuinely unique in their eyes, the way they watch the world, the way they smile, the kindness that is born in them and into all of their early interactions, among hundreds of other things that are just...them.

then the world takes over. their parents and their parents' friends and their family and their daycare teachers and their sunday school teachers and their friends and their friends' families start to socialize and condition all the snowflake right out of them. the older they get, the more their looks remind you of the people they spend the most time around, the people they look up to, the people they see on television, the people they begin to think are cool versus those that aren't.

"hannah, why are you making that face?"

"what face?"

"that face. that face that i saw half your class making when i went with you to desoto caverns. that face.

"oh, i don't know. i guess i like that face."

"stop making that face, please."

"no, daddy. nothing is wrong with that face."

"hannah, that face is a mean face. it makes people think you don't like them."

"no, it doesn't, daddy. it's just a face. don't get so uptight."

"uptight. what the fu..? do you even know what uptight means?"

"sure, daddy, uptight means...uptight. you know what uptight means."

"i do know what uptight means, hannah. i need you to stop making that face just because your friend makes that face."

"fine, fine, daddy. i won't make that face."

...

"hannah! you just made the face again."

hannah makes all kinds of faces. she's a fucking smartass all the time, likely because i or the kids in her class or the older kids she hangs around with are smartasses all the time. i can't really fault her for it. she gets it honestly.

"ugh, daddy! leave me alone."

how many times will i hear that over the next ten years? 100? 1000? more than that?

it's not that she's a woman yet. it's just that i see now she's going to be.

we kidded around with each other christmas day about how old she felt. she put on this koala hat that she's wearing right now. the looks she made felt older. the things that were coming out of her mouth felt older. the way she took control of us going to get chinese take-out after her birthday party felt like i was being bossed around by the older sister that i never had.

it's something that i'll be tracking closely in 2012. there will be more hannah specific posts. and caroline specific posts. and june specific posts. as i get out and away from the church a little bit, i hope that i'll have more time to document them instead of the bullshit around them.

when i look back on my childhood, i have more vivid memories from my third grade year than any other in elementary school. i feel like this is going to be a big year for her. for all of us.

as we make intentional efforts to move out and up into a bigger house early next year, it may mean hannah changing schools and putting all of her learned behaviors to a test she hasn't really studied for. if that ends up being the case, i hope that i'll have my finger on her pulse in some ways i may have missed over the last 12 to 24 to 36 months.

happy birthday, first baby girl. here's to the next 8 years.

don't hate me.

turn a (catch)phrase


SCRIPTURE RIP ALERT: "and when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that i'll be there." matthew 18:20, the message

about a month ago, i riffed on worship as seen through my own eyes just having witnessed the facebook thread that would never end dealing with the same subject matter. i won't rehash the entire conversation here, but just so you don't have to waste your time clicking on the above link, the short version goes like this. i wondered out loud to my facebook nation, "why didn't i miss worship?", even though i had been out and away from the sanctuary for a number of consecutive weeks. people answered the question for me. people told me they missed me. people got a little offended that i had let myself miss as many weeks as i had. people also got offended at the implication that there wasn't a whole lot there to miss. people defended worship. people defended their own methods of worship. and people finally let the conversation die without us ever coming up with an answer to the original question, "why don't i miss worship?"

not that i was really looking for an answer. i was just looking for a conversation.

the fact of the matter is i already knew the answer. i didn't miss worship because i didn't look forward to it in the first place. i haven't in a long while. that's not to say that i don't look forward to seeing the people of huffman or being in a place that calls to mind memories laid before me by the ghost of christmas past. that's not to say that i don't enjoy seeing my daughters sing in front of their church. that's not to say that i don't enjoy how much caroline looks forward to seeing ms. charlotte and ms. kay and ms. jane. i do enjoy all of those things. it's just that most of them, if not all, don't really have anything to do with how i worship.

saturday night at "christmas in limbo", i worshiped.

what's interesting about that particular evening and most every gathering of limbo is our "worship" order is always quite "traditional", at least for us. there was/is food. there was/is fellowship. on saturday night, there was also catchphrase.

that's it. that's the list.

no message. no offering (unless you count the food). no message boomed or spoken softly (or joked around/about then boomed and/or spoken softly) at the congregation from a pulpit that is designed with visibility/superiority/expertise (your choice) in mind.


"when two or three twenty-six are gathered together because of me, you can be sure i'll be there."

less than five points into our first of three (the third being a classic) games, someone uttered "fuck." in frustration, quickly alerting those new to the "fold" that this wasn't your grandfather's catchphrase. this was more than a game. it was going to be an experience. a journey. a path to enlightenment.

just like always.

the more thought i have given to the idea of corporate worship over the last several weeks, the more convinced i am of the one thing any corporate worship gathering should be. an experience. if the service, on the whole, does not leave you feeling like you've been witness to something that you couldn't have gotten anywhere else, what's the point?

how we read "experience" is every bit as personal and unique as how we might feel "experience". to each and every one of us, those that choose to collect in a house of faith, we will enter that house with certain expectations and we will leave that house with those expectations exceeded, met, or left wanting.

when i have entered humc's sanctuary for the last however many years, i haven't been left wanting. i expect exactly what tends to be produced. the normal order of worship. a different collection of hymns each week. a new-ish anthem. a message. a benediction. a communion once every four weeks. i don't expect to be wowed. i don't expect miracles. i expect a gathering that feels like we are going through the motions more often than not, and those expectations are not often disappointed. not that there is anything wrong with that. as was noted in the november 15th post, for some, there is something very right with that.

so, what was it about saturday's game of catchphrase that was different then?

well, it's hard to put an exact finger on it, but i'll try.


as proven by the early exclamation of "fuck.", their was an immediate air of honesty in the room. novel, right? by saying that one dirty word, it was announced to the circle of humans playing that you could feel free to be yourself. you didn't have to dress up. you didn't have to put away your blue language that you may or may not use in every other walk of life. you didn't have to pretend to be something you were not. you just had to...be. whatever that meant for each and every person in the room was as different as you and i, but it also defined a certain solidarity that couldn't have been identified through a praise chorus or a scripture reading.

there was something else going on outside of the genuine airing of grievances, though. it was more than that. it was also that those in the room had gathered not out of obligation but out of intentionality. anyone that has been to a live sporting event to root on the home team knows the feeling that i am talking about. chances are you will have never met that guy in front of you with the retro jersey on before the game, nor the woman behind you with her face painted, nor that dude beside you that is way too big to have only paid for one seat. if the home team does something extraordinary, though, you are bound, almost by an understood contract, to go apeshit with them by sharing in high-fives and bear hugs that last just a beat too long. the same could be said for the limbo gathering. even split into two different teams, our reason for gathering together that night was similar. there was something about that group or someone in that group that we wanted to be around. every one of us shared that same concern.

did we take time out from the game for a group prayer? a devotional? to whisper our innermost thoughts into a confessional camera in the butler's pantry? no, we didn't, but we are totally doing the confessional camera next year.

no, we didn't do any of that, but we showed up in one place together saturday night because almost 100 weeks ago, a small group was established with one of founding tenets being "church can't really suck this hard, right?" (in so many words)

now, do i believe that limbo is the most special-ist place on earth and we can't begin to hope to find that atmosphere in other places within a community of faith? no, of course not. as a matter of fact, a degree of it will also be present at the weeds gathering tomorrow night. common threads? honesty? a belief that a gathering of "church folk" doesn't have to be all "churched" up, and a want to be there. i don't think it's a coincidence that tomorrow, a meeting away from the church grounds, will likely be one of the highlights of the weeds' year.

so, what does saturday night and all of this mean to your current perspective on worship?

it's a good question. i think it means that all is not lost for the general idea of corporate worship. but i also think it means that it is beyond time to reexamine what worship really is, why we do it, and what we want to get out of it moving into the next generation of huffman united methodist church. it doesn't mean confrontation must happen. it only means honesty does.

in this story, tradition is not the bad guy. tradition has brought us here and asked us to evolve. if we do not, tradition will be our legacy and our future will be written by the next congregation that buys our campus.

that seems like a sad way to go out.

limbo is not the answer for everyone, i am sure of it, but i'd like to believe it and groups like it could provide a blueprint, or a talking point at the very least, for a new way of doing "church".

in the meantime, thank You for saturday night.

amen.

confessions of an alabama football "fan"


let's get this out of the way first.

before you think it or feel compelled to throw the term at me as a pejorative, i am beating you to the punch. as i have mentioned here and in other posts here on HACAJAM, i am fairweather fan. in every sense of the word, i am fairweather. even with the teams that i love and live and die with the most (alabama football, atlanta braves, atlanta falcons, alabama basketball...in that order), if they suck and don't show much potential for improvement, dude, i am off that boat.

it's not that i'll only root for a winner. i love a good underdog story, and, shoot, nothing stirs my drink in a more bonds-ian way than when one of my teams is being given points. no, it's not that i'll only root for a winner, but i will only root for a team that is intentional about wanting to win. and by "win" i mean compete for the highest of titles in their respective leagues/conferences. for example, vanderbilt may say that they want to win, but they don't really mean "win" by my definition. the lack or resources afforded to vanderbilt football do not set their bar of accomplishment at "sec champs". to "win" at vanderbilt means to hopefully beat tennessee once every ten years and maybe go .500 in-conference. unless you are a vanderbilt alum or a masochist, i haven't the slightest clue how someone could be interested in that program.

the same can be said for many, many professional teams as well. in major league baseball, in spite of how much i love my friend, philip gibson, his pirates will never actually compete for a world series title, not when three other teams in THEIR OWN DIVISION are willing to outspend them. the same goes for the astros, a's, royals and a handful more of other teams. through no fault of their own, the championship bar in baseball has been determined by the "have's". exceptions to the rule like the a's of ten years ago or the rays of the last three years only prove the rule. they are cinderellas only because the stars are or were aligned in just the right way for them to compete, talent-wise, with the "have's" over the course of a 162 game season. their deficiencies are then ultimately exposed in a best of 5 or 7 game series, the nation nods in approval of those mighty "mights" and their achievements, and then we move on to celebrate a world series champion with a 85-200 million dollar payroll.

(see also: 2/3 of the nba, 85-90 percent of "big-time" college football)

for me, myself, and i, these odds against winning it all would be too great for me to waste my time with.

for me, the value of my sports fandom can be measured in these ways:

1) can my team potentially and legitimately win their league/conference this year or in the next three seasons?

2) if not this year, is there work happening in recruiting, free agency, or a farm system that leads me to believe the "three year plan" is potentially and legitimately realistic?

3) is there a superstar that i can own and attach my man-fan-wagon to in a way that will interest me and engage me on the field and off even if my team of rooting interest is struggling to find consistent success?

that's it. that's pretty much the list. for me to be a card carrying member of any team during any given season, only one of these three criteria must be met.

i'm still relatively young. i have a little disposable income. pay free agent lebron james to come to miami? i'll be a heats fan and buy a t-shirt. sign ichiro to an otherwise irrelevant seattle franchise ten years ago??? i'll buy the bobblehead and look along interested from birmingham, al. draft alabama wunderkind wide receiver, julio jones, to play only two hours away from me? i'll convince my wife and friends that we should get falcons season tickets.

there are many, many more examples of such impulse in my sporting fandom i am sure, if i sat down and thought about it long and hard enough.

...

and then, of course, there are exceptions to my own rules.

as much as i love my alabama football team, as much as i love knowing about them and following them and talking about them, this year has been a struggle for me, even though they easily cover all three of my fairweather fan qualifiers.

i call it my julio jones hangover.

way back during his junior year in high school, julio hooked me in as being interesting. as a junior at foley high, he was already considered the best wide receiver prospect the state of alabama had ever produced and he was already considered a university of alabama lean. over many a dreamland lunch, andy, kiker and i swooned at the idea of bama having a dominating presence at wide receiver. through its rich tradition and history, it's the one thing (outside of the heisman) the school had really lacked. not that alabama has ever been considered a passing school, but, then again, maybe they could be.

yada, yada, yada, julio came. as i documented for over three years, his impact was almost immeasurably positive. alabama did not become a passing school, but julio's skill-set opened running lanes for mark ingram and trent richardson in a way that eventually proved the school to be heisman worthy. julio left last year as the most accomplished wideout in the history of the school, won a national title, and was drafted sixth by the falcons in the 2011 nfl draft.

when julio left the capstone, though, it left a julio-sized hole in my heart. it left me scrambling for a supernova of a super freshman to hitch my man-fan-wagon to. if i couldn't find that freshmen, the season, no matter how highly thought of the team as a whole would be, would feel less exciting. and so, i attached my love to dee hart, a rich man's version of lsu's former waterbug, trindon holliday. i attached my love to dee and then...??? shit. dee tore up his knee before fall practice even officially started.

dammit.

i kind of went into an alabama football daze after hart went down. i loved trent, of course. and hightower. and my little terrorhawk, mark barron. but i didn't love them like that, you know? not like julio. not like i wanted to love dee.

and so the season started.

one of the crappy things about following alabama football in the new, golden age of saban ball is that once the season begins, there are really only four-five games on the twelve game schedule that alabama can legitimately lose. alabama has become so efficient, such a juggernaut, that a loss to someone outside of lsu or arkansas would have required a state of emergency being declared. their sheer depth of talent and skill and resources and coaching render most opponents moot before the game even begins. and while that process proves entirely fascinating during the offseason and can make the football team a 365 day a year show worth watching, once the games kick off, the result is hardly in question. it's one thing i have found completely fresh and wonderful about the falcons this year. in the nfl, the falcons can absolutely and potentially lose every game they start (as can the packers for that matter, which makes what they are doing so special). you can live and die with the product on the field. the same can't be said for alabama football. you can tell yourself that auburn or tennessee or penn state or florida had a chance to win, but some honesty and forethought might tell you otherwise. i digress.

and so the season started.

alabama blows through their first 8 opponents. they average just over 39 points. the average margin of victory is just over 32. the closest any one opponent gets is 16. they use the pre-julio alabama formula for success in all eight games. run the ball. run the ball some more. play action here. one deep throw a game there. overwhelm the other team with a suffocating defense. impose will. win game. rinse. repeat. to some alabama fans, this was immensely exciting. this was the product of all of the recruiting and the money and the saban and the history and the tradition and the best of the best that alabama football has to offer a player or a fan manifested as unstoppable force/indestructible object.

to me, i'll be honest. it was boring. what i wanted was more creativity in the offense. take some chances. fling it around a little. be more aesthetically pleasing. wear a black jersey. just do something, anything, a little different from what every alabama fan knows and loves.

i caught flak for saying as much on facebook, pining for the excitement that came with being a fan of an auburn team that's just barely good enough to beat utah state, because at least the utah state game made you feel something. wishing i could somehow claim oregon and their flavor of the week uniforms and their zippity-fast athletes flying all over the place. long tenured bama fans scolded, "go, dammit. go be an auburn fan!" "are you kidding? you should LOVE this type of smash mouth football!" "this. is. alabama football, you heathen!" "sounds fairweather to me." can i say for just a minute how fucking retarded the few fairweather comments i got on facebook and off were. truthfully, weren't my comments the opposite of fairweather??? you can't really get any higher up on the mountain than alabama football right now. fairweather would mean i had left the mountain during times of trial and now wanted back on. that wasn't the case at all. i kind of wanted off the mountain in these times of utmost prosperity. anyway, maybe there are other definitions of fairweather out there that i don't know about. i digress again.

i caught flak for calling alabama football, in-season, boring, but, again, i just wanted to feel something, anything.

and then i did. lsu came into alabama having already played a game that they could have lost versus "my" oregon ducks. they didn't lose. they destroyed them. they had played a game versus the eventual big east champ, west virginia. they didn't lose. they beat them worse than they did oregon. they embarrassed florida, same as alabama and kicked the crap out of auburn. they came to tuscaloosa with an edge, with a number one ranking, and with the only real shot of blemishing alabama's season.

and fuck it all. they won. in overtime. in one of the most dramatic football games i've ever watched. both defenses brought their "a" game. alabama's offense showed sparks of trent, a dash of creativity, and several more scoring opportunities than did lsu. but they couldn't convert enough of those opportunities. they let lsu hang around. regulation ended in a tie. aj mccarron showed his nerves during overtime. and lsu escaped tuscaloosa with a win and started driving down this now ridiculous road of being considered an all-time great collegiate team.

i was heartbroken, but, looking back, i think i was a little happy. if nothing else, even though it was sadness i felt, at least i felt something, anything.

and thus the switch turned back on. the julio jones hangover ended, and my alabama football fandom was back. i fumed at their shitty play versus miss. st. i refused to watch a meaningless game against a lower tier opponent in georgia southern. i digested the undressing of their arch rivals in auburn and genuinely hoped that some of my auburn friends felt some of the same pain i had allowed myself to feel last year during the greatest iron bowl meltdown/comeback ever. i rooted for their misery and hoped it felt bad, if only for a couple of hours 'til we all came back to our senses and realized it was "just a game". after all, it's not schools we root against. it's our friends and family that don't see things the way we do that we hope are hurting. (kinda screwed up, really.)

i felt something during the auburn game most especially because of dominoes having fallen and stars having aligned back in the favor of "my" alabama football team. if they beat auburn, they would have their second chance at lsu.

they did. and they do.

it's funny to me. as much as this year's team has accomplished, i am already waiting for next year. i want to see dee hart and tell him that i love him and that i wish him well. i want him to light the sec on fire in the same way lamichael james has done so with the pac 10 12 the last three years.

in the meantime, though, my switch as been flipped. my fairweather flag is waving proudly behind me. i am 34 days away from alabama playing for and possibly winning their second national championship in three years. it's going to be incredible. it's going to be insane. i will yell. and scream. and cuss. and eat. and it will be wonderful, because alabama is going to win the scoreboard this time, not just the game.

let's be honest. we are all fairweather fans of some thing, some place, or some one, whether we choose to admit it or not. and there is no shame in admitting it.

just admit it.

i'm the pot. you are the kettle.

roll tide.    

a longform-ish take on the facebook worship thread


maybe sarah is right.

maybe i am just done with worship.

that was one of her takes on the terrific facebook thread that happened yesterday between humc current and ex-members on my status that read: "can't remember the last time i was in a sanctuary on sunday morning. june, work, and the falcons are the main reasons. i am not sure i've had such a stretch in the last 10 plus years. it feels weird, but does weird mean "i miss it" or just that i am out of my routine?"

facebook (and any social media) can be a nasty beast. all it takes is one outlier to take offense or throw a personal barb into the mix and the whole conversation goes to hell. fortunately, yesterday, that didn't happen.

i think some contributors took offense in a reasonable and healthy way. and i think others were defensive of their church or ex-church in a reasonable and healthy way. some did both. it was fantastic!

in my opinion, it is threads like yesterday that is what facebook does best. gather friends and family and acquaintances from around your church, city, state, country or globe and let them all talk to each other about something that may have been a spur of the moment idea or a long-festering pet peeve. for me, yesterday's original comment probably fell in the latter category.

i can be more direct here, because i was afraid if i were to be too blunt yesterday, it wouldn't have started a conversation as easily as it merely may have hurt feelings. hurting feelings was never my intention (i'm pretty sure i can claim that i have NEVER intended to hurt feelings on facebook, even though if i have, i will own it 100 percent and say that i am sorry.). rather than risk hurting feelings, i wanted to talk it out. thanks to those that participated and thanks to those that may have followed the conversation here.

over the last several weeks, i haven't missed worship.

to be clear, that's not to say that i haven't missed the people of huffman. i have. that's not to say that i haven't missed hanging out afterwards with whatever familiar faces are present to shoot the breeze and/or catch up. i have. that's not to say that i haven't missed lee garden or neighborhood or o'charley's or ruby tuesday or wherever we head after service to lunch. i have.

it's just that i haven't missed the worship service. and to be honest, i haven't looked forward to it in a long, long time.

i don't believe this is an indictment on the body of christ. i don't believe this is an indictment on our current set of worship leaders. i don't believe that my blase' attitude toward worship is an indictment on anything other than myself. me. ME. kevin michael o'kelley.

humc has had the same worship service for as long as i can remember. for many, the routine and tradition of the elements that we recite and repeat week after week are cherished and held dear. for me, the repetition of it all has grown tiresome. predictable. boring at times.

don't get me wrong. there are exceptions, of course. if hannah is participating in something, i'm all over it. occasionally we'll sing a hymn i love. during those, you'll catch me singing loud and singing proud. if every sunday was vbs sunday, it would make my year. then again, if every sunday was vbs sunday, there would be some in our (and every) congregation that would withhold their tithe as ransom to make it stop.

unfortunately for me (just me, ME, kevin michael o'kelley!!!), that's kind of the list.

outside of those exceptions, there isn't really a part of our worship service that i can't get somewhere else in a more fulfilling way.

people that know me know that i am a big "journey" guy. i am about the road we take, the path we forge, the foundation we lay as we question and attempt to understand "that which is greater than ourselves." insomuch as what we can accomplish in the span of an hour or so in humc's sanctuary, the directive has to be much more narrow. we are a christian community of faith. that is a fact. i am not trying to push back against what has been established. i understand the establishment. i understand our structure. i pledge to support it in many, many ways. it's just not, how do i say this..., fun. to me. ME. kevin michael o'kelley.

maybe fun's the wrong word. engaging? relevant? creative? interesting? fluid? dynamic? flexible?

yeah, yeah. all of those.

in our worship service, the journey has found its destination. that destination is jesus. the theme then concerns how can we be more like jesus. or how do our worship leaders and message-deliverers best see fit to interpret our role in the great commission. it's been settled. tradition-ed. established. and that is fine for many of our members. i just don't know if it's fine with me. ME. kevin michael o'kelley.

here is where my personality causes tension in others i presume. and i only presume it due to the defensive way i or some of the things i have opined have been received over the last however many years. i respect brother harris. i respected reverend denson. reverend lee. reverend owen. reverend rutland. all of them. i do. or did. but, in my opinion (me. ME. kevin michael o'kelley), they are only men. just like me. just like you. hearing "the word proclaimed" makes me cringe. i find myself wishing every statement delivered from the pulpit be issued underneath neon lights that loudly qualify "THIS IS ONLY WHAT I THINK. I ACTUALLY HAVE ZERO IDEA HOW ACCURATE ANY OF MY DIRECTION IS."

but it's not. that's not how our (and most) christian worship services are structured. our pastors are our appointed "experts", called by god to deliver direction and advice on christian living to his/her fold. the rest of the service, in theory, reinforces the message in different but the same ways every week. se-cond verse, same as the first. i'm henry the viiith i am, henry the viiith i am, i am...

that structure. that construct. those routines. they are not relevant to me. ME. kevin michael o'kelley.

but herein lies the crux. i could argue (i won't today) that it is not just kevin michael o'kelley that feels this way. our numbers, while not the most credible indicator or spiritual health, continue to drop, drop, drop. we are losing members faster than we are gaining new.

is this because one lonely, little man has, on occasion, been critical of his church and her leaders and that one lonely, little man's "bad" attitude has infected his church like a virus that we can't recover from?

or is there something more to it?

is something...missing.

truth be told, those "left behind", like myself, are probably not the ones to ask. as evidenced on the facebook thread yesterday, the "left behind" are now dug deep into our foxhole. we aren't coming out. we are going to see this through to the end, even if the end doesn't paint itself as very attractive, painless, or completely within our control.

no, i wish we could talk, in an honest and cooperative way, to those that are no longer there. to all of those that were there in the pews celebrating the tradition of huffman on our 140th birthday and then weren't there the next week. it would be a fascinating picture into what might have been, wouldn't it, if we would have been able to talk to them before they left, answering their personal and unique questions of "how do you justify leaving your church home that you pledged to support with your prayers, presence, your gifts and your service? what is missing?" before it was too late?

it's too late to do that now. but it speaks to what i've been struggling with for years now.

if the worship service is the driving force of your congregation (make no mistake, in most churches, it is), and i am not attracted to the service, itself, what then?

it was rightly pointed out yesterday that, as humans, we condone and support our friends and family getting out and away from hurtful personal relationships. we support our loved ones when their current job has run its course and they look for a fresh start.

consider walking away from a church home, though? baby, we attack!

"you just aren't trying hard enough!"

"where is your loyalty, man?"

"remember that time you got up in front of the congregation and said 'i will' to all those questions? well, what's wrong with you??? do it! you pledged you would!"

"oh, they were just looking for a way out anyway. forget them."

nice, right? we can be pretty awesome at being "christian" sometimes.

and so, then, what now for me? ME? kevin michael o'kelley?

i don't know, dude. i am one of the ones in the foxhole. as long as i get my limbo fix and find my way around my friends every now and again, i'll be fine. at the same time, i am still not jazzed about the next time i'll be in the sanctuary for worship.

like i said, i think that's an indictment only on me. ME. kevin michael o'kelley.

i think.

hannah and caroline and june and me
(part one)
((the story of june's name))


have you ever seen the movie from dusk 'til dawn? if you haven't, there's a good chance your life is better for it. it's pretty crappy. crappy, but fun. the imdb synopsis is as follows: "two criminals and their hostages unknowingly seek refuge in an establishment populated by vampires, with chaotic results (naturally)." directed by robert rodriguez, the only reason this terrible movie gets made is that quentin tarantino wanted it to be made. on the heels of pulp fiction, quentin could make whatever he wanted to. in 1996, when this movie hit, there was no such thing as twilight or vampire diaries or true blood or my babysitter's a vampire. vampire movies were still b class, but quentin wanted to make it with his buddy, rodriguez, so it got made.

i remember watching the movie, starring george clooney (then of er fame), and being mildly entertained. clooney was still skating by on his good looks and still doing that er thing where he would look at a woman and then shyly look down with a grin. this was his go-to move. he does this, like, ten times in from dusk 'til dawn, which seems like a pretty feminine response to fighting off vampires. it was pretty silly, but, at the same time, in the movie he also was (pretend) inked with a massively awesome tattoo. his character's name was seth gecko. at some point during the movie, i fell in love with george clooney, his lovely eyes, his tic where he looked down shyly with the grin, his pretend tattoo, and his character's name, seth.

i was in my first post-high school serious relationship at the time. we were nowhere close to thinking about children, but i decided then and there, were i to have a boy, his name would be seth. seth gecko michael o'kelley.

fast forward to 2003. i've now married sarah. sarah is pregnant with child. we find out the child is a girl. sarah's female name equivalent of seth is hannah. hannah marie. our first child would be hannah marie o'kelley.

fast forward to 2007. i am still married to sarah. sarah is pregnant with child. we find out the child is a girl. the name, caroline, occurs to sarah, more than likely during one of her trips to or from tuscaloosa. caroline's middle name would be a sarah's side of the family name, lilla. our second child would be caroline lilla o'kelley.

fast forward to 2011. i am still married to sarah. sarah is pregnant with child. this was going to be my seth. sarah said for weeks "this one feels different". as much i had romanticized and fantasized over the idea of having a boy for fifteen years, i was stoked. because of my reconnection with my brother brian (patrick o'kelley), my boy name had evolved. our third child would be called seth patrick o'kelley.

that is, until we find out our third child would be a girl.

much to my surprise, sarah was pretty taken aback and (a little) disappointed in the revelation, herself. i had not given much thought or time to that concept, because i was too wrapped up in what i wanted. that being said, it took a while before we gave any serious thoughts to naming our now third girl.

when we got down to it, these are the names that came up most often:

eva (sarah)
scarlett (sarah)
sloane (me)
beatrix (me)
bree (me, it's the female version of brian)
amelia
many, many others

my names above never really made it past the cut line. i, on the other hand, immediately cut eva (and the many, many others i suppose). scarlett, i didn't shoot down immediately. i didn't dislike it at all, and scarlett was the leader in our clubhouse for many, many weeks.

dateline: sunday morning worship about a month or so before june arrived. for different reasons, i started to feel conflicted about scarlett. again, i didn't have anything against the name, but it just didn't feel connected to me. it didn't feel like mine, as selfish as that probably sounds.

so, we re-opened the negotiations and sarah throws out the name amelia. she doesn't like her middle name, elizabeth, attached to amelia, so she proposed june as amelia's middle name.

i like it.

for a couple weeks, amelia june joins scarlett elizabeth on the leaderboard.

i couldn't get june out of my head, and the reasons for that are plenty. every time i thought of june, i naturally thought of june hearin which, in turn, made me think of gerry hearin.

gerry deserves his own blog and will get it one day, so i won't wax poetic about him for long here, but i will say this. having given it serious thought, gerry is one of three adult men in my life that i have ever held in high enough regard to consider them a mentor or a role model. while on staff with gerry, i learned to love him and soak up everything that i could from him in my limited time around him (he was only part time). gerry had my back and was willing to give advice whenever i needed it. he was a champion and defender of huffman united methodist church and it was through him and his wisdom that i channeled my own passion as an adult for the church that saw me through part of my childhood. gerry was everything that i thought a pastor should be. kind, eloquent, smart, sincere, and honest. the time i spent with him and around him during that period of my life was absolutely and totally beyond value. his positive influence and his engaging spirit towards me and every one of his congregations, i am sure, are what i want to be for my family and for my friends. i miss gerry.

his wife, june, is no less beautiful. every bit as supportive of me and sarah and my ministry while i was on staff, june, to me, felt and continues to feel like huffman united methodist church's matriarch. a passionate supporter and cheerleader, always involved in every outreach, ever willing to share a smile and a hug with a long time member or first time visitor, she's our spoonful of sugar. our silent defender. my friend, donald, has said many times that if june ever asked him to crack some skulls, he wouldn't even think twice before responding with force. she's our mary poppins and our batman all rolled into one. most importantly, when i think of god, i don't picture "jesus laughing" or zeus or some faceless, abstract entity. i think of june hearin, her patient and grace-filled smile that always suggests (to me) she knows what's happening behind the curtain.

i couldn't get june out of my head. and so, i asked sarah what she thought of us dropping amelia and going with june. we'd reattach elizabeth as the middle name. it sounded perfect.

and maybe it was.

it took a little time for sarah to completely adjust. she would finally say that she had been leaning scarlett for a long time, and she needed some space to let the idea of going in another direction sink in.

the clock was working against us, though. fast forward to a week before june arrives and i am sending sarah emails asking her if we can nail down a name. i don't care what the name is (of course, i really did), but i didn't want us to show up not knowing.

sarah decided that we'd play it this way. we would wait 'til the baby was born. if she looked like caroline, we'd go with scarlett. if she looked like hannah, we would go with june.

fast forward to october 18th. the baby, baby, baby girl was born. she favored caroline.

so, scarlett, right?

well, not so fast. after june was born, she asked me what i thought.

"you know what i think."

shortly after, june opens her eyes, her dark blue eyes.

"we can call her june."

"yeah?"

"yeah."

and so it was. three weeks old today, june feels like the only name we should've considered even if it wasn't. she looks like a june. she feels like a june. she is.

june.

at some point when she's older, she'll read this post or hear from her mommy and daddy of the legacy that her name carries. we'll help her fully understand all of the incredible images merely saying her name brings to life inside of both her daddy and her mommy.

welcome to the world, princess june elizabeth.

and welcome to the blog.