Happy 50th

Last night I realized that I only have one day left before I leave to go back to Cincinnati for my mom's 50th birthday. The problem is that for months I have been planning on making a picture slide show for her as a suprise, and I hadn't even started it yet. So, I decided to gather up all the photo albums I stole from home and head over the Young Life office to start putting it together. It took hours just to go through all the pics, not to mention putting them in order to music.

As I was sitting there last night at 2am, I started to get really sad. For the last couple months I have been doing a lot better dealing with the divorce of my parents. I have gone through so many emotions. The screaming and crying and wanting to just run through a wall. The hate, the anger, and the deep sadness of loss. But lately, I have been better able to accept reality. And then last night somehow I started to get lost in the sadness all over again. It rushed over me like wave. I felt like I was standing on the edge of the grand canyon of memories and I just wanted to dive in head first, but to do so would have been the end of me.

As I looked at so many pictures of my parents when they were young, and all the hundreds of stories, and vacations, and good times, and life shared, it was hard to believe that it could really be over. And that is the strange part about the past to me. I often struggle with the idea of past. How can it feel so real and be so completely over at the same time? How can I taste, smell, and even feel things from the past, yet they are always beyond my grasp?

I loved the family that I grew up in. I loved the laughter. I loved making fruit cakes with my dad at christmas. I loved going for walks together in the metro parks. I loved all the funny voices that my mom would make. I loved something that is gone. And now, I need to learn to love something new.

So, I'm trying to make this picture movie celebrating my mom's life, and in the process not use any pictures of my dad. How am I supposed to remove my dad from 30 years of my mom's life? It's like trying to rewrite history. In many ways I guess that's what divorce is. Trying to rewrite history, like trying to detach yourself from your own life. I can't think of anything that sounds too much more painful. It makes me think of Jesus's commands for us. How often do we see them as restrictive and cumbersome. But over and over again Jesus gives them to us out of love. He made our hearts and knows what hurts them the most. Yet again and again we all turn aside thinking our way will be better. Look how far it has got us.

BILLY THE CAT

It's kind of funny to me that I am writing my fist blog ever about my cat Billy. Billy is a pretty cool cat. I got him about three years ago. I wanted the fluffiest cat in the world, and that's pretty much what I got. But what I didn't know at the time, is that I also got the smartest and craziest cat in the world. Billy can actally open doors on his own. When I lived in an apartment, he LOVED being outside so he would just sit on our poarch (we lived on the third floor). One day we couldn't find Billy. We looked EVERYWHERE, until I found him down on the ground below. Just sitting there as if nothing had happened. Well, now that we live in a house, Billy always wants to go outside. Billy is a cat that likes to live free and do what he wants. He can open the front door and goes out on his own. How many cats can do that????

I actually see a lot of myself in Billy. Maybe that's why I am so intrigued by him. I know that Billy loves me because at times he'll come up next to me purring and purring. And other times I will want to hold and pet Billy and he just runs away. I think that is how I am with people. Sometimes I really open up with people and show them how much I love them and how much they mean to me. Other times I feel so closed off from everyone and everything, like I am in my own world, and I am just running away. Even more, at times I feel this is the way I am with God. I scare myself. Sometimes it just feels so uncomfortable to be down here on earth all wrapped in skin struggling to understand this life, God, and why I'm even here. I wonder if Billy ever thinks that??

I feel like in some way or another we are all struggling for freedom. I mean wasn't America founded by a bunch of people who more than anything wanted freedom. People now and throughout history have gone to such great lengths to achieve this freedom. And what does that mean. To be free: to be free from worry? To be free from self doubt? To be free from sin? To be free from what the world says we should be? To be free to love? To be free to hate? To be free from the constraints of our culture and society? To be free to be the creations we were intended to be? "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Galatians 5:1 Is there any freedom apart from Christ?

So, yesterday I came home from work and unknowingly left my cell phone sitting in the back yard. By the time I realized I had left it there, it was about 10:00pm. I am came outside and picked it up and it was all wet from dew. So I wiped it off on my pants. Then I opened it up, and it was wet on the inside, which I thought was strange, but I just wiped off the inside. Then all of a sudden I realized by smell, that my phone wasn't wet from dew, but because Billy had peed on it. I find this pretty funny, and also somewhat annoying. But, I think that if I were Billy I would also want to pee on my cell phone. I continue to struggle with all these electronic gadgets that are supposed to be bringing us all this increased freedom, when really it seems to me as if we are becoming their slaves.

I want to be free. I'm not sure if on this side of heaven I'll ever totally experience freedom, but I can dream. Until then I will continue to appreciate my cat Billy and how I see freedom expressed in him.