In Repair

Tonight is one of those rare nights where I find myself alone, with no one to talk to, and a lot on my mind. One thing is the heart, not the physical heart but the emotional, spiritual one. We give so much of it away, I know I have, piece by piece it’s getting dismantled every day. Those pieces are never given back they’re tossed aside, they’re crushed, beaten and bruised. So that when you get them back, they never really fit back in perfectly. For the lucky ones, they don’t have to give much of themselves before they learn that it’s dangerous. But for some of us, we give virtually all of our hearts away. We get them back but we’re never the same again. We become jaded, and afraid to trust people. Some would say this is a good thing, but I for one am not a believer in the phrase, “No pain, no gain”. At least when it comes to this. Pain does build who you are but it damages you as it does. You don’t look different, or act different, at least around those who don’t know you well. But deep down inside you’re always worried about who’s gonna hurt who next, how am I going to be disappointed today? I always wonder if when I find someone will there be anything left to give them? Or will they have to pick up the pieces and put me back together? I know we shouldn’t meet people expecting them to hurt us but the harsh reality is that sooner or later they will. Sooner or later something will happen and we will get hurt. That’s life, and for some of us if we’re lucky we’ll make it through relatively unscathed. But for the majority of us we’ll come out looking like we’ve been in a meat grinder! Sometimes I wonder if it’s all really worth it? All this fighting and tearing parts of ourselves off. I recently had a moment I like to call a nirvana moment. Driving back from ihop after eating brunch with my dad and sister and her family. I had coffee and music on and just cruising on the highway. All seemed right with the universe and I wish I could have stayed on that road forever, or at least till I hit the ocean.  But I wasn’t able to, reality came crashing down and I had to come back home. I envy those people sometimes who have no cares, who aren’t burdened down by all this anxiety and pain and just plain frustration with their lives. I would LOVE to be a surf-bum and spend my days on the beach.  But life can’t be like that. We have to live in reality and not fairytales and fantasies. Life is like that, its not happy go-lucky, romantic fall in love. The guy doesn’t always get the girl, people don’t magically get better, people don’t always end up happy. They get hurt and bruised and chewed up in proverbial meat grinders. They have pain, pain that comes from deep inside their hearts and affects everything they do. It makes them take the safe road, and not take chances because in their minds, it’s only going to lead to more pain. But at the same time they’re worried that they by taking the safe road and not taking chances their missing out on something, something that could be great. So they’re stuck in the middle, like deer in the headlights, frozen to the floor not being able to move. All the while their personal demons are saying to them that they can’t accomplish anything and that they won’t be happy and won’t find the right person, and that they’re not good enough. It just takes someone to tell them that it’ll all be ok and things could happen, things could be better. I'm sorry I don't have anything profound to say tonight. But for right now? In this moment, profound has escaped me.

Relationships, one of the most fundamental things in human culture and society. But in the context of dating it becomes one of the hardest things…..ever. We humans are built for relationships and marriage and finding love. That desire is in us from day 1. But finding the right person is hard. Some would say impossible. Relationships and dating is just so tricky. People by nature, even if they insist they aren’t, are complicated. We have many facets and finding someone who’s facets fit ours, whether the same or different facets isn’t easy. In my opinion there are 5 basic cornerstones of relationships in dating. 1. Trust, if you can’t trust them it all fails, you can’t tell them anything or be assured they won’t cheat or anything. 2. Communication, talking is huge you’ve got to work through the problems and bad times and you’ve got to talk. 3. Compromise, you HAVE to be willing to give of yourself and change and do things you don’t like. Not compromising only leads to friction. 4 Chemistry, cause lets face it, ya gotta get along. And 5. Last but not least God. He has to be there to make it healthy and right.  I know people who’ve been hurt, crushed, destroyed. They’re in a million pieces and they don’t believe that in love or trust or anything, and I don’t blame them. They have no reason to. But without love our world and lives would be lost. The world would be a horrible place to live. It exists, love that is. It HAS to. That head over heels, shoot the moon, I’ve got your back, I would die for you, LOVE. And all too often we get hurt a lot looking for it, we get lost and we find something close to it, and we settle. Saying it’s the best we’re gonna get. But you can’t give up and settle. Sure it can work but all too often it doesn’t. We think because we settled its going to be easy. But its not, its harder. Our culture is so used to things being easy that we don’t understand commitment. Which is what relationships are fundamentally about. From both sides. It takes 2 to compromise and commit. Bottom-line relationships aren’t easy, EVER. They’re hard and they should be. This way the good ones mean something. The one thing that makes it easy is hope. Hope is beginning, the mother of all relationships. Without it life means nothing. Don’t ever lose it. Believe in miracles and in 1 in a millions and wishing on shooting stars. Is it cheesy and dumb? NO. Hope is the spark that starts every great thing. When you’re down and out, and down for the count. Your face is bruised; your eyes are swollen shut. You’re bloody and beaten and you think there’s nothing left, there’s hope, you’ve got to believe it. That deep down you can win, you will win. You won’t let this beat you. You’ve got to get back up and keep fighting for what you need, for what you deserve. Even if you lose you will have learned something and will eventually win. You’ll find the perfect person, the IT person. The one who you’ll look at and no matter what say “wow”. You’ll love them because you choose to. Because you know their faults and short comings. But they’ll mean little in comparison to all the good things. Because that’s what love is, a choice.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “blinded by love”? It seems cliché and just dumb. But you know from my experience it’s true, we’re blinded by our feelings. We walk around everyday with blinders on. They’ve been put on by our experiences, and expectations and stereotypes. We really tend to see what we want to see, our what our mind sees. If you don’t believe me get a couple people in the room and Google the rabbit, duck illusion and see what people see first. It’ll be different every time. We all have blinders on and so we see things from different points of view. But do you ever wonder if you’re missing out because of the blinders? Do you ever think that I could be missing out on something amazing because I’m concentrating on this one thing? But how often do we throw caution to the wind, and go for that thing that we think could be better. Not very often. When we were kids we were taught that you can do anything you want, you can be anything, president, astronaut, policeman. Whatever. But when you grow up they say no, you can’t be this or that. So you put blinders on saying oh well they said no so I can’t. Because of this we take the safe road so many times. We do what is easy and safe and you know it works you get rewarded, you end up happy…..sometimes. But you know what taking that risk could get you something bigger, better, amazing. You don’t wanna grow up, get old and look back saying, man I wish I had done this or that! Things could have been so much better. But you didn’t, why? Because you were scared. Because you couldn’t see past the dark. Don’t sit there dwelling on what you’ve lost or what you could have had. Get up, shake off the dust and go take a chance. The most unproductive thing you can do in your entire life is sit there and feel sorry for yourself, sit there and say if this or if that. Just because one door has closed doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ones out there. You just need to stop standing in front of that one door, you need to turn around and see the ones that are opening in front of you. The 2^nd most unproductive thing you can do is lash out at someone, or something. It’s not gonna help you! It’s gonna make things worse because you’re constantly thinking about that person or thing. Sure they may feel a little pain, but in the long run its gonna hurt you more. Keep moving forward. The only reason to look back is not to wish on what could have been but to learn from the mistakes of the past. 

Who are you? Who am I? Who are we? Everyday people wake up asking, wondering who they are. They’re not comfortable in their own skin. They don’t like themselves. I’m too fat, I’m too skinny, I’m not strong enough, I’m not blonde, brunette, or redhead. I have some physical deform. We have entire magazines and industries dedicated solely to changing how you look. Now I’m not gonna say that girls shouldn’t wear make-up, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about major physical adjustments. We’re not satisfied with who we are, and most of the time what we’re not happy with is fine just the way it is. Its all in our head, we’re not happy with what we see cause we’re not happy with what’s on the inside. I know the tired old cliché that its what’s on the inside that counts, and you know what? Its true…just read that again…it’s what’s on the inside that counts.  We’re told everyday by the media that we’re not good enough.  But we are, there’s one person who knows that we’re perfect just the way we are. God. He loves us just as we are. People need to realize that personality is what counts in the end. It would be horrible to live your life with someone who is attractive but is completely mean or rude or what have you. But someone who may not be quite attractive. Someone who cares, who’s kind, nice. That’s a better life. In God’s eyes we’re perfect, not just because He made us but also because if we accept Jesus he doesn’t see us. He sees Jesus, He sees Jesus because we are in Jesus, and Jesus is perfect. We don’t have to keep dredging up old sins and confessing them because God doesn’t see that, He sees Jesus. I recently heard a story about a woman in South America who claimed that she was seeing visions of God. People would flock to hear her tell her stories. A local priest, who was skeptical and wanted the woman to stop talking this nonsense, went to go visit her. He asked if she did indeed have a vision of God. She replied yes she had. He asked her the next time she talks with God would she ask him a question. She agreed and the priest told her to ask God what had he confessed that day. He went back to his church and after a couple days he began hearing that the woman had had another vision. He went back to visit her and asked her if she had asked God the question. She said yes she had, and when the priest asked her what God’s answer was she replied, He said I don’t remember…. God didn’t remember what the priest had confessed that morning. God doesn’t remember what our sins are because as soon as we ask for forgiveness they’re gone! Poof! No more! They don’t exist. They have been erased from the space-time continuum. Even if we keep committing the sin, when we ask for forgiveness God erases it. But we need to keep working on not committing that sin. We need to keep moving on, keep moving forward. Because we’re not who we were. I’m not the same person I was 10 seconds ago, I’m different now, constantly changing and growing. We should be growing in Jesus, becoming who we are in Him, reverting to His original blueprints of us. Because those are perfect.

I think the first thing I should do is explain the name of this blog.....In repair. Basically what it means is we are constantly in repair. Life is fluid. It's constantly in motion, we're changing, evolving. But this fluid and its changing doesn't come without scars. Scars are expected when we're growing, changing everyday. Thus we are constantly repairing these scars. Thats what this is about being in repair and what I'm learning from it, my outlooks, observations, and insights.