THE HAND OF FATE?

Shortly after I got out of the Army in the spring of ’95 I ran across a book in Borders, across from Water Tower Place in my hometown of Chicago. It was called “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams.”

It shifted my entire perspective. After years of feeling as if I was a under the whims of a force outside of myself, for better or worse, I began to feel as if I could really affect my own life through spiritual means. I read the book repeatedly and began to work the suggestions and philosophies that it espoused into my day-to-day existence.

By the beginning of the new millennium my life had been completely transformed. The major part of the transformation, or at least the most obvious part, was that I found myself a father and husband. This was a strange new land for me and left little time or energy for the self-examination and spiritual practices that had marked my life in the previous few years. As a result, I feel that a lot of the spiritual growth that I had been experiencing and that, ironically, I feel led to me where I was, came largely to a halt or was substantially slowed.

Now, ten years later, I find myself sometimes feeling almost as lost as I felt back in 1995, fresh from the military and still trying to cope with the deaths of my parents, particularly my mother. Their passing had meant the death of my previous life, not entirely a bad thing, but it had left me roaming aimlessly in a frightening, virtually unknown world.

In 2000, with the birth of my first child and the advent of my first (and only) marriage I found myself, in an unknown (and sometimes frightening) reality.

I think the first part of my life, the part that ended when my mom died in January 1990, could be classified as the Completely Irresponsible Period, or CIP. Because my siblings, three sisters and my brother, were 12 – 24 years older than me and were all out of the house by the time I started kindergarten, I was, for all practical purposes raised as an only child. In addition to that, my parents were pretty much old enough to be my grandparents and, I think, had been worn down raising their other children. The strict parents that they describe that raised them don’t sound at all like the parents that raised me.

After dad and mom passed in ’88 and ’90, respectively, I found myself truly on my own for the first time in my life. I was twenty-seven years old. I had spent most of my teens and all of my adult life thus far waiting to be rich and famous behind my musical exploits and it wasn’t happening. I had no idea what to do and little idea how to provide for myself – so I joined the U.S. Army.

Through the grace of God I managed to blunder my way through and escape with an honorable discharge, despite being the black, 90’s version of Beetle Bailey. I came back to Chicago with only marginally more life skills than I had when I left. Shortly thereafter I discovered the aforementioned tome and many other “new age” books and began to feel that I had a measure of control over my life, as it were.

In my humble opinion, those few years after 1995 – in particular the summer of ’96, during which I became like Grasshopper from Kung Fu, selling most of my possessions and spending my days taking walks, reading and meditating – led to the period which began in December of 1999, when I got a place with the woman who, within a year, would become my wife.

So the period from January 1990, after my mom passed, to December 1999, when Rachelle and I moved in together, can be thought of as the Wilderness Years. Those years were split cleanly down the middle – the first five when I was wandering aimlessly in the forest of my own confusion and misery, still mourning the deaths of my parents and my former life, and the last five when I began to find my way out.

By January of 2000 I had embarked on the third period of my life – the Mostly Responsible Period, or MRP, also known as the Comparatively Responsible Period. I had gone from a grown man who had little idea how to care for himself, to a grown man who had to help care for an entire family!

It has not been easy.

However, I think that it was the route that I was meant to take.

I look at life as a street with intersections. You can make turns at any given time. But I think that there is a general direction that you are supposed to be going in. Sometimes you get lost and find yourself in places that you don’t recognize at all, or you find yourself in the same old messed up neighborhoods that you’ve been through too many times. At other times you find yourself in an unfamiliar area, but with the near certainty that you are heading in the right direction. It’s a combination of what some would call fate or preordination, but with the free will to go where you want.

For instance, I had no intention of being in a serious relationship with my wife when I first met her and neither did she with me. When I recognized that things were getting serious… quickly… I tried to stop it. But I believe that the direction that we were heading involved more of the hand of fate than usual – much more. I tried, but it would have taken a powerful effort, an effort that, at its heart, didn’t feel right, to resist the preordination at work with Rachelle and me.

Today, I feel that I am about to embark on yet another phase. Right now it is mostly just a feeling. It could be just wishful thinking, but I don’t think so. I have been in another kind of wilderness for the past ten years and I feel that the forest is clearing and I am about to feel truly comfortable and free of fear and discomfort for the first time in many years.

We shall see.

TIME TO PUT MY FAITH WHERE MY MOUTH IS

For the last few weeks I have been posting little nuggets about faith on my Facebook page because I really have been appreciating the work of my God in my life. Additionally, I recently posted a blog here about the power of belief and expectations, talking about how we should “expect blessings.”

Well, now my faith is being put to the test.

My wife doesn’t like me putting our business in the street (to put it mildly) and I have learned that I can’t be as open with my business as I used to be when I was a single man, because it’s not just my business anymore. So it should suffice to say that we are facing some serious challenges.

As I put it on a Facebook posting, “It’s time to put my faith where my mouth is.”

It’s not easy.

I believe that we are conditioned to expect the worse in any given situation. People like to call it, “being realistic.” Well, what defines what “realistic” is? Realistically, isn’t it just as possible for something good to happen as something bad? And, if it isn’t probable, is it at all possible? My understanding is that, with God, all things are possible and I have witnessed many improbable things happen in my life.

I also believe in the power of prayer, which I believe is just letting your God know what it is you want. You may not get it; you can imagine what the world would be like if everyone did, but oftentimes you do. And if you don’t get what it is that you want it’s all about trusting that God knows what’s best.

I wrote a song, many, many years ago that had a verse that said, “What you might think a downfall might be a blessing in disguise.” Though it’s hard for me to remember being possessed of that kind of wisdom back in those youthful, often stupid days, I think that I was on to something there. It does no good to have a tantrum, whining because things aren’t going the way that you want them to. It’s better to accept what is and keep your eyes open for the next blessing.

So, I step into this breach, this realm of the unknown, with as much faith as I can muster. I strive to not give in to the lifelong habit of fearing the worse. Instead I will expect the best and accept what transpires, even if it isn’t what I think is “the best.”

As a fella at my job told me earlier tonight, “It’s easy to make your mouth say things, or to make your body do things. “ The trick is getting your heart to believe.

EXPECT BLESSINGS

I am a great believer in blessings.

My signature on my text messages reads, “Expect Blessings,” and I do. I expect them. I look out for them. I lean on them, because those signs, both large and small, represent God’s acknowledgement to me. It keeps me sane. It enables me to keep on keeping on. It is a voice saying, “Don’t fear. You are not alone. I know that you sometimes feel unable to do the things that are expected of you, and sometimes you are (unable). But I’m not. Nothing is beyond my powers to make happen. So relax and trust.”

Some people don’t expect blessings. They don’t look for them and, oftentimes, they are unhappy; sometimes profoundly so.

Expecting and keeping a spiritual eye out for blessings is not a talent that you are necessarily born with. In my experience, it is something you have to work at.

It requires taking stock of your life, past and present, and identifying your blessings. Reflect on the times when all seemed lost but you made it through the storm. Think of the many problems that you could have, that many people live with, but that you have been spared.

Most folks spend an inordinate amount of time doing just the opposite. They are constantly looking at what is wrong, while virtually ignoring everything that is right.

I remember, years ago, when I was in the Army, I knew a guy who I called Angry Man. Angry Man was almost always, if not angry, at least irritated about something. He seemed to always be complaining about things that were happening or things that he expected to happen. Whenever things didn’t go his way he was whining about the sheer injustice of it all. It was a bit irritating and I did my best to steer clear of him whenever possible.

Unfortunately, we were about the same age, which was older than the average soldier at our rank, so he seemed to value me as a kind of special friend. Anyway, one find day I was relaxing in my room in the barracks, door open and music playing as many of us did on the weekend, when Angry Man found his way in. He was kind of intoxicated. Not completely blotto, but he had imbibed enough libation to make him even more loquacious than usual.

He started in on his usual rant about how “f’d-up” this was, and how this person pisses him off, how this didn’t go right, how everything sucked, and how unhappy he was. I had probably had a few brewskies myself, and was probably in less of a mood to be diplomatic than usual.

After listening to him bitch and moan for a few minutes, I said, “Did it ever occur to you that you are not happy because you spend all of your time thinking about how f’d up things are? Maybe if you change your focus you wouldn’t be so damn unhappy all of the time!”

You would think that I had uttered the most profound thing that he ever heard. I swear he had tears in his eyes. He thanked me profusely for the incredible wisdom that I’d just imparted unto him and headed back to his room to meditate on the world that I had just opened up for him.

Life not usually being like the movies, he didn’t show up for formation the next morning a completely changed person and I don’t know if he turned his life around after that day. But, I brought up that encounter to illustrate the simple truth that so many of us miss, including me. Because, even after that simple, salient truth has occurred to you, it is hard to break the old habit of looking at that glass and seeing something that is missing half of what you would like it to have instead of being halfway to where it could be and halfway past where it might unfortunately be.

I’ve heard it said that it is easier for most of us to look at what is wrong rather than what is right. Is it? That viewpoint certainly doesn’t make life easier. Sometimes, when my wife, Rachelle, and I have been through a very dark place and come out on the other side I remark that the journey could have been much easier had we just stopped worrying and trusted that everything was going to be alright.

It is also said that God doesn’t give us anymore than we can handle. A quick look at suicide statistics could refute that saying, but I would argue that sometimes people just give up. They decide that they can’t handle anymore. It isn’t that they couldn’t go on if they tried. They just make a decision to fold their cards and quit. It probably seems easiest at the time.

But you never know what tomorrow might bring. Expect Blessings.

STAY TUNED

I haven’t blogged in a long time. A very long time.

Why not?

Haven’t felt like it.

Haven’t been motivated.

Haven’t had anything move me enough to write about.

The things that I have felt strongly about have been too personal to write about.

I’ve been too stressed out to write.

All of these reasons are valid, particularly the last one. But that last one is exactly why I should write. I started writing in my teens in order to get things off of my chest, or my mind, before I lost my mind. I found that it was very effectively therapeutic and it almost certainly made those traditionally difficult years a little less traumatic that they might have been otherwise.

So, here I am, a grown man, and I’ve given up the comforting habit of journaling and given up the thrill of sharing my thoughts with others. Meanwhile, I could probably use this release more than I ever have.

So… I am going to start venting and ranting publicly again. Who knows? It may even provide me more than just therapy and a cheap thrill. We’ll see.

Stay tuned.