August 12, 2011

Holy Moses and all the Twelve Apostles!

Has something ever happened that just turned you into a complete paranoid within seconds?

I find myself in that position right now.

While I have a daily supply of paranoia that I save for spiders attacking me, snakes randomly appearing on television programs I had previously enjoyed and the occasional, random late night car in the driveway when no one is home but me.

But sometimes, someone says something that just gives you the heebie jeebies and makes you question yourself with extreme prejudice.

Today, that has occurred.

Most of the time, I don't give a single thought to what people do when I'm not around. I don't suffer any delusions that animation happens only when I show up. Frankly, people are more than likely more animated OUT of my presence. It's that 'wet blanket' effect that I sometimes exude.

I also am well aware that people I know actually HAVE a life that doesn't involve me and doesn't require worshipful thoughts of me when I'm nowhere around.

Frankly, that would be a little creepy anyway to think that someone is all gooey and weepy-eyed when I'm not around. That's just gross.

But now, I have been warped. As if my mind wasn't already bent enough!!

I don't care what other people do when I'm not around. At least I used to not care... now I'm not so sure.

Maybe I DO care!

Maybe I DO WORRY!

No, wait, maybe I don't.

Maybe I'm happier not giving a molecule of thought towards what other people do when I'm not around. It's more than likely a break for the other people I know for me to NOT be in their presence anyway.

And maybe I'm just fine with the idea that other people can fully enjoy the company of one another without my permission or gaze to detract them from their fun.

I think I'm fine and happy.

I was earlier...

Am I now?

See, that's the real crummy part of being paranoid. Now everything is suspect.

DANG IT!!! I wasn't this screwed up this morning during breakfast!!! WHAT HAPPENED!!

Holy Moses and all the Twelve Apostles, this is just not right!!

Why did all of this pseudo controversy have to erupt?? I think I need to lie down.

Will people speak ill of me if I do?

Do I care what whisperings might circulate if I nap?

Funny, I didn't care about that yesterday. Of course, I didn't take a nap yesterday either.

Is it possible to be paranoid of YOURSELF?


August 11, 2011

You and Tequila

Sitting here. I've been reading about all kinds of things this morning from education to recipes to the state of the nation and hedgehogs. Sure, it's a varied menu of material, but boredom does that to you. While reading along, I was listening to Kenny Chesney while I did some of the reading.

'You and Tequila'

♪♫When it comes to you
Oh, the damage I could do
It's always your favorite sins
That do you in ♫♪



That particular turn of phrase caught my attention last night and again this morning. "It's always your favorite sins that do you in". Something to ponder for sure. We ALL have our weaknesses. No rational person wants their personal ills to be on display, yet when it comes to the lifestyles of other people, the carnal side of us tends to think their favorite sins are so much worse than our own.

Tabloid media and the Internet and its 24 hour presence reassures us that whatever our favorite sins, there is ALWAYS someone else much worse. They display their version of the truth in living color, or at least as near it as they can manage from a running person holding a camera trying to take a photograph of just another sinner from a distance.

Isn't that the reality? We see EVERY ONE'S sins from a distance, sometimes including our own.

Who wants to own up to who they are when they think no one is looking? Who wants to walk into the room and have a group gathered around a pile of sins and then have them all watch you carefully to see which ones you pick up and shoulder as your personal load in life?

That would be humiliating, right? To know that everyone around you knew your struggles and failings and personal suffering that is sometimes too hard to bear? The harsh light of judgment falls heavily when the sins that another suffers aren't your own.

After all, they must somehow be WORSE, right? The answer to that is 'no', not worse, just different.

We all choose to bow down to the mortal failings that are our eternal struggle in this life. It is eternity that is in the balance. If we do become, as the lyrics elsewhere in the song suggest, "Hell bent on getting high", through the application of that pet sin, then we suffer, we struggle and sometimes we fall.

How can our pain be less than the other people around us who are likewise on their knees crying out for relief from the individually crafted hell that we tend to create for ourselves through our stupid, prideful, anguished and sinful choices?

The only difference I can see is that some choose visible sins and others don't. Doesn't make one "better" than another... it's just a different kind of pain. We drown out our pain in all kinds of ways. I won't list them, frankly a list makes me feel depressed because so many of them apply to me. That stings and I'm not a fan of pain.

Often, we hear people prescribe the 'Band-aid treatment' of just ripping off the bandage and doing so quickly. Trying to break free from sin is kinda like that. You can't partially remove just a segment of the sin by peeling back a corner. That only increases the power of Satan to continue to torment you to come back in all the way. It's like keeping a different kind of booze in the house and hoping you won't turn to it when you 'need' some of your favorite drink.

I remember once talking to a man who told me that the only way to get rid of a sin completely was to throw it out and every reminder of it so that you could start with a clean slate. That included everything from physical reminders of the sin, to circumstances, people and thought patterns that renewed the desire to continue that sin.

That's a hard sell for all of us. We don't want to think our good times have to come to an end that way. We want to wean ourselves from it as if we had the control to do so. But we lack that control.


More lyrics illustrate the point magnificently:

♫♪♫ 'Cause you and Tequila make me crazy
Run like poison in my blood
One more night could kill me, baby
One is one too many, one more is never enough

Thirty days and thirty nights
Been putting up a real good fight
And there were times I thought you'd win

It's so easy to forget
The bitter taste the morning left
Swore I wouldn't go back there again ♪♫♪


Our ability to swear to something and mean it with every fiber of our beings only lasts as long as our true intention to depart from the places and reminders of sin. If you still live in Sodom and Gomorrah, is it possible to stay clean from the influence? It's a lot like the old saw about a drunk who owns a bar. The irony of attempting to stay away from the booze yourself while selling the poison to another doesn't escape me.


Sometimes relationships with people are just as toxic. There are people who spread the kind of poison that booze does. It leaves a mark in your soul as well as in your physical yearning for more even when you know that what you are doing is killing you off a little bit at a time.

We never know the point at which we reach the "one more night" that will kill us, either physically and/or spiritually. It's like a child playing with fire hoping to never get burned. So far, every person I have ever met has a scar or a story about getting burned despite whatever best intentions or rationalizations that had gone on before.


I keep reminding myself that our entire lives are counted in the journey to "become"... not just the life we are living at this mortal moment. That's a pretty good thing, considering that we all fall down from time to time in our efforts to shake off the chains that bind us fast to the very things that hurt us the most.

It's a comforting thought to know that we have time to separate ourselves from our 'favorite sins' just so long as we keep trying. And it's a scary thought to think that the moment we give up on ourselves and stop trying might be the one moment that we lose it all.

Never give up the fight. The battles are always won in the 11th hour and we are always aided by our Savior in that very moment when our strength flags and we cry out to Him for the rescue to happen. He comes in and binds up our wounds and helps us to overcome, so long as we never stop trying.

'Favorite sins' may very well make me crazy, but I know that Jesus Christ can bring both hope and sanity into my personal struggles. He's already promised victory, I just have to be willing to give away a temporary thrill for something that can last for this lifetime and all eternity.






August 8, 2011

Crack the whip or smack the knuckles

When I was a kid, I had this one piano teacher who employed a ruler when a wrong note sounded.

Play a "C" instead of a "B-flat" and CRACK! the knuckles got a smart rap with the ruler.

It was meant to be a firm reminder. It reminded me alright. I learned to memorize my music and avoid doing something that gave me bruised knuckles.

When training horses, people use a quirt or a whip to make a cracking noise to remind them that whatever action is being performed isn't up to standard.

I'm beginning to wonder if those same tools might not be effective in Washington, D.C.

I can't speak for everyone else because I am NOT everyone else, but around THIS house, we don't spend more than Hubby makes. We can't afford to do so. When the checkbook says 'NO', it means 'NO!!!!'. That doesn't hold true for D.C., who apparently work like Blondie from the Blondie and Dagwood cartoon where she thinks she isn't bankrupt because she still has checks.

No clue!!  I realize that is supposed to be a funny 'blonde moment', but the nation isn't laughing at the "blonde D.C." anymore. We ARE broke. Michael Moore and Hollyweird can't change that by spouting off useless rhetoric. We have bankrolled programs, nations and aid that are miring us further and further into debt we cannot hope to pay off even if we take every dime on the planet.

It's time for some painful adjustments by everyone concerned, not just the "flyover part of the country". The middle class is being taxed out of existence and there are not enough "rich people" to pay the bills for even one year even if we tax them at 100%. The math just doesn't add up. Here is a WONDERFUL illustration to prove the point:

EAT THE RICH VIDEO

It's time we got some severe looking and severe acting piano teachers and "schoolmarms" who will employ that ruler or quirt to emphasize lessons that should have been learned in elementary school 'rithmatic.

Attempt some pass through pork? *SMACK* "We don't have the money for that, young man!!! Try again on those figures!"


Try to slip in a boondoggle? *WHAP* "We can't pay for that unsustainable program, young lady!! Better rework that checkbook balance!"


We could have a debt clock installed on each desk and podium in the building. Each hallway would have drop down signs showing the ever changing numbers of the debt piling up faster and faster as they in D.C. keep forgetting how to add and subtract.

Each day should begin with a prayer for guidance and the willingness of heart to not only receive the guidance but follow it in righteousness. Then the Pledge of Allegiance - no one who claims to represent our nation should be allowed to take one of the offices of this country and refuse to say the pledge as a badge of honor in their service to our country. No one. No matter how 'bright' they may claim to be, if you do not have an undying love for our nation, our freedoms, our liberty and the God who has granted us our bounteous blessings, it should disqualify you from service. And I don't care if that isn't politically correct.

I am sick of people telling everyone that God has no place in our nation. The reason we are in the mess we are in - politically, financially, and morally - is because we have told God "thanks, but no thanks, we don't need you". Then we have the national hubris to wonder why things once golden are turning quickly to crap.

When we have opened the meetings, the first thing that should happen is a roll call, just like in school. NO CREDIT FOR ATTENDANCE or PAYCHECK will be issued for those who are not there. PERIOD. You were not elected to play hookey.

Then, a sobering reminder of the nation's debt and financial obligations should be read each day along with the amount of interest that is being paid by current and future generations to guarantee that which is unsustainable and impractical.

This is the point where the severe folks with the rulers and quirts or whips come into play. Anytime someone brings forth another expensive bill, there should be some raps with the rulers.

Displays on a front screen showing Income and Expenses should ALWAYS be current just like in a check book balance where we show in real time just where the daily money is going and how much of a deposit due to tax revenue and other forms of actual income is going into the account.

No fuzzy math based upon projected income will be allowed.

Everything must be done based upon that days' forward balance and take into account every single penny which is owed to our creditors with the prime responsibility being that of paying off our indebtedness. That will mean unpleasant cuts in things that people have come to erroneously believe are "rights". Boo hoo.

In medical terms, when gangrene has set in, is it better to do some cuts and trim back the affliction and save the body or wait until the disease is so far spread that we lose the patient entirely?

We ARE at that point, people!!

It's time to realize that whatever we thought was in the checkbook simply isn't there. Time to learn to do more to take care of ourselves instead of hoping "the government" will do it for us.

Time to do more with much, much less.

And past time to learn to say "NO" and mean it even thought lots of people will be angry. Their anger is no reason to continue to spend ourselves into bankruptcy and financial bondage, yet that is what we are doing.

Crack the whip! The horses are trying to run in the wrong direction and they are destroying the entire wagon in the process... if we stop them now, repairs may yet be made to salvage both the wagon and its contents.

Otherwise, everything will go over the cliff and neither horses nor riders can be saved.