dim7chord » Journal

February 25th, 2:33am

dim7chord — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:41:26 +0000

To even type the words “I’m so frustrated” doesn’t seem to how I feel any justice. My whole life right now, is totally and completely a grind, and seemingly at a standstill. There are parts of me that just want to die and other parts that want to physically harm myself and everyone that comes in my path. My self righteousness is off the charts right now. All I want is to live up to the standards that I have for myself, and I can’t. So I feel this chaotic discord in me and I have no outlet for it. All I want is to refine and use the gifts God has given me to build the Kingdom of God, but I feel like I have no idea how to actually make those things happen. I constantly feel like I have SO much to do. I literally feel pounds of pressure on me that I can’t take off. I want so badly to do great work, I want so badly to make music that connects with people, I want so badly to create beautiful design, but I feel like I fail at it frequently. I literally feel like a failure in everything that I have ever really given my life to. I want so badly to find someone to spend my life with, and that seems like a pointless toil. My whole life vocationally has been a constant learning process with no off ramp. I don’t even feel like I’m going in circles, I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. The financial thing isn’t a big deal right now, it would be nice to have more money, but I’m learning to live on less and be more content with what I have. But idk what to do with my life right now. I want so badly to help with LWA, do some web design, get a job, move forward, but nothing is moving right now at all—and it ALL FALLS ON ME. I feel pressure barreling down on me to the point of exhaustion. I would give anything for a woman who really loved me and could support me even in the slightest way right now. Borrowing someone else’s faith right now would be like water in the desert. The only thing I can figure to do is to keep going, keep moving forward. I see so many people doing fucking nothing with their lives and I want no fucking part of it. It sickens me to see people waste away their fucking miserable lives away by playing Call of Duty and watching basketball games while the world desperately needs people to work to change and move forward. I’m tired, absolutely exhausted. I am crushed by the work that needs to be done, and I need co-laborers who are willing to pickup the slack. Overall though, I realize that I have to learn to do my work by surrendering to what God wants most for me. I really don’t know how to do it, I try and rest, I really do, but I’m still so tired and scatterbrained. All I want is progress. I want go get things done. I want songs to be written, loops created, videos shot, pictures taken, websites made and a pretty bow on all of it. Incremental progress is the most difficult thing in the world for me. I want it all now. I have that shirt, “I want it all, I want it now…heaven on earth.” And it’s true. God forgive me where I step out of what he’s calling me to do. God give me rest please. God raise up people (around me possibly but) all over the world who are willing to work and labor and sweat for your namesake. God forgive me when I’m trying to live up to my standards and not to yours. God grant me a girl who will help me through all of this shit. Even through my pain and weight, your kindness, mercy and grace abound.

Growing Symmetrically

dim7chord — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:28:38 +0000

t’s funny how we grow and develop, it’s really not linearly at all. I think we would like to imagine that we develop (or God develops) ourselves one task or character flaw at a time, but that doesn’t seem to be the way things happen for me at all. When I’m doing well with my lusts, I’m prideful and arrogant, when I’m humble and I realize God is all I need, I turn into an idolatrous workaholic set out to prove that I deserve God’s love. I heard a sermon on time that pointed out a couple of very interesting things about the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5)—first off, one thing that jumps off the page even if you went to public school is the singular use of the word fruit, and then listing several virtues that come from the spirit’s work in your life. It’s like Paul got a D in creative writing or something. Well, we all know that can’t be the case because Paul was basically a genius and of the highest intellectual stock, so he must be doing something there. It isn’t the ‘fruits’ of the spirit because they don’t grow individually independent in our lives—they grow symmetrically. Now this phrase was new to me, I had always assumed that the spirit would help me have a little joy here and there, keep my heart at peace from time to time, make me more loving, gentle, etc—but not grow them all at once. The reason why is each of the fruit are connected to the other ones (I happen to believe that they might even be hierarchal, but that’s a different idea). You can’t be more joyful, without becoming more peaceful or more gentle. There’s no way that your going to be more loving without being more patient, and someone is going to have to explain to me how you are going to develop more self control without becoming more faithful. I say all this to make me realize that I’m growing at a sad rate at all of these, and I need to remember to surrender to the spirit and allow his work to take root in all of these areas. This has been a tough year, no one would dispute that, but if I don’t take responsibility for what is going to happen in 2010, then I will let all of the suffering of 2009 be for nothing. I have to learn to finish. I’m way too scatterbrained at times. I have to learn to treat my time and organize my time the same way that I organize my computer, and to that level of precision. I have to learn to focus better and more clearly, recognize when I’m tired and need to rest, and when I’m just procrastinating. “Growing old aint for sissies” — Estil Siefert, my wonderful grandpa said that. Well, I’m not there yet, but I will be before I know it, and I need to learn all of this stuff before it gets too late. It’s hard, it’s full of suffering, and it sure aint for sissies.

Nothing Like Family

dim7chord — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:32:41 +0000

This time of year can be a rocky time for a variety of different reasons, one of which is the fact that you will most likely be spending time with your family. Spending time with family comes with a whole laundry list of really great parts, but also a whole other list of challenges and nails-on-chalkboard-like annoyances that are inevitably going to arise. As I analyzed my family and our interactions, I realized somethings that I think are profound. Namely one thing, families are groups of people that aren’t put together by any sort of common ground other than the proximity of where you were conceived and born. The irony to me is that the people you spend your most intimate holiday times with are often people that actually don’t know you (once you hit adulthood at least) as well as they probably think that they do. I always wondered what it was like for DJs or guys in relatively successful indie band’s Christmas and Thanksgivings were like. Do they have to explain who Death Cab For Cutie is to their Aunt Loraine? Does Diplo have to explain who M.I.A. is to his grandma? Whenever you get people of that age gap and proximity gap together there are going to be some awkwardness and a little lack of understanding by both parties. That’s why I’m so thankful there is football on after the Thanksgiving dinner so that I don’t have to sit and talk with some random cousin’s best friend about some band she loves—”isn’t there a Lions game on?” All this said, these people do really care about you, can they for the most part, mean well. Humoring them and giving them a picture of your life is not only nice and caring, but also really helpful and great for them as well. I think most of my aunts and uncles and cousins feel disconnected from me because they don’t understand my day-to-day at all. “You do computers and what?” Is always the sentiment that I get from people. I posted on my facebook (which I knew my family could see) a few months ago a realization that came to me—I realized, “I’m family with my friends, and friends with my family.” I said this actually to show the sad state of affairs, but to my shock, most of my family that is on facebook, liked the comment. Clearly they had missed the point totally, which still to this day baffles me. I had several other friends who liked that comment and I know that most of their stories align with mine. In the modern world that we live in, especially when it is easier than ever to be connected with people miles and miles away, our relationships with our families are weaker, and our relationships with our friends have picked up the slack. It’s no wonder why all my NYC friends talk about “being a framily” that have to be, because if you aren’t connected to people, in a place like New York, your dead in the water. It’s basic survival. I want both though, connection to family and friends, but honestly the people who shape you the most in your adult life are the people who you spend the most time with. The people who you laugh with and have inside jokes with and stay up late and go to movie premiers with and go to church with and eat countless meals with at Subway and go on missions trips with and start a NPO with and help change a little part of the world with. Those people who are up front when you get married and are dancing at the reception. Those people need to be the most important people in the world to me, tied with those people who raised me, all of them. Your family is like an old shoe, it always fits right, and you can always keep coming back to it. I’m trying to learn not to forget my family because they will be in the pews at the church when I’m getting married, and eating the cake while my friends are dancing—and they are just as important to how I’ve got here and where I’m going to end up.

Lost The Plot

dim7chord — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:58:08 +0000

As it stands right now, I’m a hundred in the whole with my bank account and that stress is beneficial in some ways, but also deeply concerning. I have a lot of blame in the matter, I have not made great decisions that have put me in this situation, but I also have been busting my ass to do good things in this world. Things that I really believe that God wants and commands us all to do. The flip side of this that makes me furious is I also see a ton of people who don’t do a damn thing to help anyone and serve themselves and sit on their asses playing Modern Warfare until they fall asleep at the TV, but have a cushy 9 to 5 that allows the to live easily and not really have to worry about too much. That level of security and comfort is very difficult for me because I really don’t value that at all, because I don’t think that God promises anything like it at all. I also don’t want to live in an ever-changing, volatile, and emotionally draining world of never being able to be ahead with resources or finances. There is this really odd balance that I really don’t understand how to find right now, and it’s maddening. Every time that I get in this situation, I find myself wanting to just say fuck it and live totally for myself, go be a designer at some lame company and churn out terrible designs and make a fucking killing doing it. I could do that, I know I could. And I know internally, I would be bankrupt. But right now, I’m fucking financially bankrupt and I don’t know how to get out of this. I don’t know how to balance this at all. It’s just crazy. This is the time right now that I really think about what Scott did and it really makes it ridiculously difficult to forgive. I vividly remember the feeling of wanting nothing more than to take a baseball bat to his fucking ugly ass blue BMW. I feel that urge right now and it’s really deep, but I also remember my feeling of wanting to send him a letter telling him that everything is forgiven, because I think that’s what Christians are supposed to do. My anger is off the charts. I’m angry at my bullshit former boss for taking $7K from me, I’m angry at my lack of focus in getting the work done so I can move one, I’m angry because I mentally start all these things and I get distracted and overwhelm myself so I can’t finish, I’m angry at this fucking girl who (probably) unintentionally led me on, and I’m angry that all this stuff matters so much to me. Fuck Modern Warfare. I hate that game. That game made $310 million in a weekend and millions of guys sit on their asses playing a fucking game instead of actually accomplishing something with there time. Louis CK had a great line about Girls Gone Wild, he said, “I tried to watch GGW, and it wasn’t sexy it was sad. I lost my erection, I just wanted to yell at the screen and say, ‘wipe the oil off your tits and hit the books—were in the middle of 2 wars and a fucking recession!” That’s kinda how I feel about the lack of fire in people who apparently don’t have anything better to do with their time. Now, before I run off in utter pride, I should say, I am also the king of doing a lot, but not really getting things done—and that has to change. I’m learning how to focus a whole hell of a lot better though, and I’m not going to let red numbers in my bank account stop me from doing what I think is the most important thing for so many people who have just lost the plot for what God is doing in this world. Time to “sack up” as my friend Steven says. It’s time to remember that right now.

Commitment vs. Surrender

dim7chord — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:16:20 +0000

One of the most difficult realizations of my life in the past several months has been the concept of committing verses surrendering in regards to God and His purposes. I don’t think most people see the two as widely different, but I have learned that the implications are miles apart. I heard a wonderful talk by Randy Garriss who quoted a foreign friend of his who essentially said, “you Americans need to know you are the only ones who use the word ‘commit’ when it comes to Christ. everyone else uses the word surrender.” And Randy went on to explain how our individualist culture, even in the church, leads us to belief in Christ = our commitment to Christ, which is totally backwards. It’s easy to understand why this would be so popular. If I commit myself to Christ, I have rights. I am in the driver’s seat with our relationship—and more importantly I think there is a limit to how much God can ask of me. But if you truly surrender and lay everything at the feet of Christ, there is no limit to what he can do or ask of you—and that is scary. This delineation of terms right now might be the most important distinction I need to make in my life. I don’t think that I need more knowledge, and I don’t really think that I really need to apply that knowledge that I have attained better or more holy, I think I need to see everything, my whole life, all of my stuff, my family, my friends, my talents, my skills as not mine. That is when I will truly be trusting in God and His purposes. I have had this trust problem for sometime now and I didn’t understand why I didn’t feel like I really trusted Christ, and now I think that it’s clear that I have lots of areas that I’m not surrendered in, and when that changes, I think that vision, peace, joy and trust will not be far behind.

She Gave More

dim7chord — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:31:23 +0000

Rob Bell said something that never truly dawned on me (it should have years ago), when Jesus tells the story of the widow’s mite, he said, “She gave more.” I heard that and couple of days later I woke up thinking about that statement and it went right through me. I knew cognitively what Jesus was saying there, the widow gave out of her poverty and she gave with a more pure heart towards what God was doing and the wealthy man gave out of his affluence and clear lack of true charity, but in actual kingdom terms, on this earth and in the world to come, that woman gave more. Now whatever that money actually went to we will never know, we will never know if it went to buy gold for the temple or food for widows like her, but what is clear is that besides all of the “give out of your wealth with a pure heart stuff”—that’s the stuff I always heard until now, Jesus finds someone who gets weak enough and strips off enough for Him to really take notice of her. It’s like when God tells Gideon that he’s got too many men, or when Paul keeps claiming that Christ’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. I have thought about that verse many times over the past year and all the shit that’s happened, and I’ve been utterly frustrated by it. What do you mean your strength is perfect in my weakness? Intuitively it should be God’s strength is made perfect in my ability to put myself together and do all the things I think that he thinks I should be. That is truly probably the most trying part of my walk right now. Actually realizing how to see myself like Christ sees me, practically, like while I’m sitting at my desk working my ass off because of a whole lot of reasons I’m probably not even man enough to really admit to anyone. Vanity & self righteousness are more deadly than anyone ever gives them credit for. Back to the widow. I have always known that I should tithe and or give to what God is doing because it really does shape me into the person that I know God wants me to be, but I thought about it often as not only a percentage based thing (which is a good thing), but also a I don’t know also a numbers things. I don’t think that I ever really though, “oh, I’m not really giving enough to the Lord.” or that I thought my giving was insignificant. Actually when I was better at giving (and saving mind you), I especially realized that giving was WAY more for me than for God. It is always to get my heart right. Generosity always breads joy. But what I realized when I woke up thinking about the widow’s mite was literally…less is more. When you give when you have less, it’s literally more gain and benefit to you in this world and the next. Now, believing that and doing that are just plain hard, but it’s true. I am given basically $800 a month by God to use towards stewarding them in my life towards building the kingdom of God in this life and the next. When I give some of that meager amount away, it’s a big deal to God. And I don’t know if I ever really realized how big a deal it was. If people really saw everything they had as a stewardship or a loan from God, the way we view stuff would dramatically change. I know it would for me. I really hope that I can get to the place where I have some very nice things that I use all the time (cameras & computers, etc), but also some very subpar things (cars & housing, etc) that could be a whole lot nicer, but me (and hopefully my wife) have chosen to downgrade and invest in people, organizations and in churches that make this world the way that it should be. That’s the world and sphere of influence I want to spend my time and money living in.

Strange and Unprepared

dim7chord — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:40:19 +0000

I am not happy. At the deepest core of my being, I am not happy. I’m totally unsatisfied and I’m totally aware of how much I lack and how much I screw things up. I have whole “relationship with God” thing that is supposed to cure it, but it doesn’t and the reason why is because I have it all out of wack. I’m totally imbalanced to the way Jesus really wants me to operate and I don’t know how to fix it. My idolatry of choice are two-fold as I can see it (we’ll just leave out the good ole’ idols of comfort and materialism). The two that are the DEEPEST, most driving parts of me are my desire to be successful, not even really in the eyes of the world, more in my own eyes, and my desired to be loved or maybe just liked and admired more than anything. I realized two things today, 1, I have never been successful at anything that I’ve really put my energies towards. Not in the ways that I really deeply wanted and strived for, and secondly, I desire to be admired and loved because of that admiration means more to me than I am really even able to say honestly. I heard the Copeland song “Strange and Unprepared” today and it is the perfect soundtrack for how I feel. Aaron singing, “I never stop feeling strange/cause you never know if you really change/you can never tell if your center stage/is thin as glass and never meant a thing” is so haunting to me. I really feel like I’m dying. Not like I’m going to kill myself at all, but I feel like I’m dying inside. I felt like as I took a drive today that someone was going to spin out, hit me and kill me. I don’t know why, but I just really did. And I wasn’t scared or anything, I was at this weird peace, but at the same time totally insecure and unsure about everything thing in my life. I am 28 and I feel like I’m further behind right now than at any other time in my life, maybe outside of 6 months ago when the shit really hit the fan. Every key part of my life just seems to be at a stalemate and growing at the rate that isn’t even measurable. I don’t know how to feel. I don’t feel like I know how to change. And the saddest part is I feel like right now if I got the things that I really wanted I would either screw them up or they would end up masking the deepest issues of my life and stunt my growth if there really is any growth happening. The sad part to me is that I have been given INFINITELY more than literally 99% of everyone in this world. If you lined up 100 people from across the globe and added their resources and gifts I would be in the top 1 percentile, not out of talent, I don’t think, but more from a work ethic that honestly comes from my insecurities and from just sheer gifts of God. I have no idea how to reconcile any of that because for the life of me, I can’t make anything really work. And I don’t know if I will ever be successful at any of this that I’m working at. A campus minister friend of mine told me in college that God never asks us to be successful, only faithful, but honestly, I just don’t really believe that anymore. He’s probably right, but I feel like I have to be successful or no one is really going to love me. And when people love me not for what I do or can do for them, it’s utterly confusing to me. The second part of that is I think I realized that I need/want people’s admiration so badly that I will work my fingers to the bone to show them I am worthy of it. I really thing that it goes back to high school or god, before that. When I was a loner kid just trying to relate to people, I think I developed this desire to be liked that I masked under a facade of introversion. I used to sit all the time alone and I think that I convinced myself that I didn’t care, but I think I really did. The hard part is being this self aware of my condition and my problems doesn’t necessarily bring change. And I seem to live in this really strange world of not being self destructive enough to distract my pain and problems away, but also not spiritual mature enough to deal with them and bring them to Jesus and to mature past them. So I sit and wait in this middle ground of waiting and wanting. I have no idea what to do.

Perfectionism

dim7chord — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:25:13 +0000

Why am I so tied to what musket and others think about me, and way less concerned with how God truly sees me. I’m more like a 13 year old bulimic girl than I would like to admit, and that’s just sad. Why is trying to be me so difficult? Why is it so hard to feel confident? Why is it so hard to feel like anything is actually good enough. I know I’m so far from perfect that at times it feels like I should just quit and just leave behind all of the progress that I already have achieved with God’s help and provision. I have been given so much and I need to learn to remember it. I have infinitly so much more than 99% of people and if I don’t recognize that then I’m doing myself and God a disservice. If Jesus really does love me the way that I know he does, that should change so much about the way that I see myself, but it rarely actually does. The solution is a dying of myself and my pride and my need for control and an imparting of God’s values when it comes to work, sex, the way I see myself and the way that I’m perceived by others. Until I start getting that stuff straight, I’m really gonna have some serious trouble. It’s really hard to let people see the real and complete me when I’m not ready to deal with it myself. I’m working on that though. I really am. I love gettin older cause I get more comfortable in my own skin. I’ve got to keep pushing hard because as I do that, I see more fully who God really wants me to be, and that is what I want at my deepest core. Someday I’ll get there

Wherever You Go, There You Are

dim7chord — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:08:29 +0000

There’s and old saying that goes, “whereever you go, there you are.” it’s kinda a self-reflective statement that hopefully makes you look in the mirror and realize that if you run from your problems or refuse to deal with the issue at hand, you can’t out run them and simply move to another place, cause your problems have a way of following you, namely because often times they are inside of you. Our problems, our sin and our lack of being like God can’t be changed simply with an address change or by moving things around in our life, they have to be dealt with at the deepest parts of our being. We have to be healed at our core or the scars will simply cover up and callus us to the good that God has for our lives. I really hope that I will continually self examine my life and the parts of it to try and find my blind spots and manage around where I am weak. Also, hopefully I can find loving people that I live with who will stretch me, love me, push me, and inspire me to be more than I am, and also cover up where I am weak. That’s what the body of Christ is supposed to look like, but sadly rarely truly does. When you can look in the mirror and know who you are naked and revealed and see all the pain and self-inflicted marks that scar you there is a peace in accepting who you are and recognizing God’s ability to heal and change us at our core. Only through His great power though is there healing and restoration from ourselves, our sin and the sin other people have hurlled on us. Wholeness and peace is available if we just choose to work at it.

My StrengthsFinder 2.0 Top 5 Strengths

dim7chord — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:51:05 +0000

Gallup Press publishes a book and online test called StrengthsFinder 2.0 that is basically an overall test to find out your strengths as a person. Inside of the book they detail some of the aspects of your strength and ways that you can take next steps. I cannot recommend this anymore highly. Everyone should take this test and others like it. It gives you an insight into yourself that sadly few of us really have. Here are some links: StrengthsFinder 2.0 Website StrengthsFinder 2.0 Book on Amazon

Here are my strengths and a small description on how I feel about them:

Strategic

“Being strategic allows you to sort through the clutter and find the best route.” (page 165)

Sort of ironically, this is my biggest strength, but the description doesn’t really connect with how I look at things. I think that’s because the word that I use instead of “strategic” is “systematizing.” I love systematizing. It’s like breathing for me. I don’t know how to not do it. I am not the cleanest person in the world, but I am highly organized. Clutter annoys me because it’s just so highly inefficient. I hate inefficiency, especially on computers. I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to share a computer with anyone because of how organized I have to be. If I’m not organized, things start to get really frustrating, and I don’t handle things well. Order is King.

Learner

“You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence.” (page 133)

This strength did not surprise me at all. I remember when I had a professor in college, a very odd Catholic woman who loved me for some reason. She asked me about my grades and was shocked when I told her that I wasn’t a 4.0 student. That shocked me. Then she said one of the best things ever said to me, “Oh your a learner, the grades don’t matter then.” That statement instantly relieved me of all my guilt for not performing on tests as well as I could have or getting the grades that maybe I should have. It is very true that we live in a results oriented world right now, where you can get all of the answers right, but miss the education. That is never my aim at all.

For the past several years, maybe 10 years, I have been very into learning the technical side of things, the actual nuts and bolts of the way things work. Music, websites, The Bible, etc, now I’m much more into learning about people and their experiences. I am convinced now that success hinges on the people who are in our lives.

Connectedness

“You are considerate, caring, and accepting. Certain of the unity of humankind, you are a bridge builder for people of different cultures.” (page 73)

I like this one because I think it really reflects a major aspect of that Jesus came to bring to people in general, and I’m glad that it’s inside of me. I really do think that we are much more connected than we realize, obviously I believe that through Christ he is reconciling all things back unto Him. We are called to be connected to each other, not only because we need each other, but because it’s good for us all. We learn from others, we learn to forgive and show grace to others, and we learn how to love like God loves us when we are connected with people who are like us and those who are very different. We have to learn to be sensitive to others and their particular situation, but also confidant in the unique way that God made us.

Developer

“You see the potential in others. Very often, in fact, potential is all you see… When you interact with other, your goal is to help them experience success.” (page 89) I think this is true for people, but it’s also very true to me with organizations, or just about anything. The freaking kitchen needs developing about half of the time. This is an inherit discontentment about things in leaders that causes them to see the potential in things and people. I feel that very strongly.

Realtor

“You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship.” (page 145)

Again, it’s like this book has been following me around for the past 10 years and learning my every move. Especially in the past several years, it has been becoming increasingly easy for me to reveal my heart to people and have real intimacy with those that are around me. I love people and I love being real with them. Real recognize real and the only way that you’ll really have legitimate relationships with anyone is to be honest and authentic.