Depression's dragon

     I have a pretty charmed life yet there is a monster that I cannot tame. Everybody is healthy and whole in our home. Our bills are paid, we have food, I just got some cool parts for some bike projects, and a stream of small car projects to make some extra money. But still the monster looms. My wife and I are having amazing sex (yep, went there), I have done some of my coolest home projects to date, got the most recent Bloodgood album in my car and it rocks, but the monster has beat down the door and is making itself at home. I have read my Bible, I have talked with my savior, I know the truth, I know the lies, all my defenses, my best offenses, it has cut thru like butter. Like blackberry vines on steroids depression has reared it's ugly head, has set a place at my table is eating my ice cream with chocolate sauce and sprinkles and left me with peas. I hate peas!

     I slept a couple of hours today so I'm up late eating ice cream and playing video games. I think this is depression protocol. Just finished listening to Clay Crosse's He Walked a Mile. I always want to help others but I'm not so good at helping myself. The other day the kids were gone and I was back at home all by myself. I just couldn't move. I called out silently to God, ya gotta help me, I can't help myself, help. About 5 minutes later I started to get a load of wash going. Then I moved on to something else and something else, eventually getting two projects done also. Without God's help I likely would have sat at the kitchen table for hours until Emma needed picked up. God gives me other 'suggestions' of ways to help myself but most of the time I'm just unwilling to move. Unable often, but sometimes simply unwilling. Unwilling to help myself.

     I'm getting tired now so I think I'll head to bed. I'm not in my best space now. There's a lot of things I can't do right now but I can write this. If I wait until I am in my best space this will never get written. So I write it now. Someone may need to see this. If you wait until you are in your best space, all put together so to speak, someone may miss out on what God has for them from you. A young woman stopped by yesterday for me to look at her car and I talked her ear off. Maybe, just maybe, something I said was something she needed to hear. Maybe, the gift was mine just having someone to talk to. Maybe both. I may never know. Anyways, I'm going to bed. Thank you for reading this.

Jealousy and growth

     I had been so jealous of a friend of mine for so many years. I'm not sure how specific I want to get as then everybody will know who it is. Well, there's two people really. My old roommate Tim was probably the first. Everything he touched turned to gold. Everybody liked him. He was better at basketball than me. As we went thru the automotive tech program it was apparent he was more skilled than I. He never even got a job as a tech but took on a piece of his dad's construction business. He was gifted there as well. Then there's Tim. Super talented artist. Can also play about any instrument he touches as well as sing. I was so jealous of these guys.

     Maybe I just started slow. I have done many amazing projects. Built cool trucks. I can fabricate all sorts of cool stuff out of metal. I've built many Rad things out of wood also. Built a loft in the shop, rewired much of the house and shop, and so much more. I have more projects spinning in my head at any given time than I can ever get to. And I would bet that I make some other people jealous.

     So God has given me so many talents but it has taken me a lot of life to begin to grasp them. And these are just the MacGyver gifts. These aren't even the spiritual gifts. Those are the ones I really look forward to unfolding in the future.

     So I'm not writing this to say how awesome I think I am but I wasted a lot of time looking at how awesome others were and thinking I had little to nothing to offer. I just couldn't see it. There may have been not much to see. It seems like my life has been a slow build. Looking back there is a small thing here and another aways later. But those were very far apart although they built on each other, and a lot of failure. Now I build and do new things all the time that are the product of all those years of preparation.

     At one point almost ten years ago God put this guy in my life who was a few years older than I and had a lot of experience building hot rods and restoring cars. I had won this old Truck on Ebay for $50 down in Eugene. Each day I'd go to work with this guy who cuts things up and builds cool cars and since I had only spent $50 on this truck it was no loss if I ruined it. So every night I would work on the truck and every day I'd tell Mike what I did and he'd give me encouragement and offer creative suggestions. This was really the springboard for me becoming the mechanical madman I am today.

     There is also a spiritual journey that has taken place. Much, much growth has happened there in the last 5 or 6 years but I don't know where that is going yet so we'll leave that for another time.

     Pastors always talk about the "takeaway." We'll I don't know what that is so you'll have to figure it out for yourself. I'm just telling my story.

A different addiction experience

     I don't know if this will have a theme or not I just wanted to write. The other day I grabbed an empty beer bottle to move it to the recycle bin. When I grabbed that bottle with my whole hand around the neck time stopped. *a note before going any further. I don't drink. I never have. Not even a drop cept for a sip of pink champagne left from my first wedding. Nothing. No desire. But as I held that bottle, as that bottle held me, I became a different me. Although there were no specifics I could sense a destroyed me, a destroyed family. I could feel myself sitting in a chair tipping back a bottle, my grip on that bottle very specific. I stood there holding that bottle, we were holding each other really, and time stood still. It should have been a simple task that lasted a few seconds at most. I don't know how long it lasted but I was in awe of the power it held on me. I've had some comparable experiences with cigarettes and I can't explain either. I wrote about this probably a couple of years ago. I don't understand but I do know that for me to drink or smoke would be a slippery slope. One that I need to stay far away from.

Contemplating life's highway

     Sometimes life just drones on and on, like a highway in the desert going mile after mile after mile. Other times though are like those TV commercials "life comes at you fast." Today I dropped off 3 kids at three different schools then stopped at Safeway for a Coke and donut. I know, I know, the breakfast of champions. Sitting in the parking lot I contemplated what to do next.

     Goodwill opens at 9 so I could wait ten minutes and go there. Or I could go to the little store over there where one of the managers is a friend. A competitor is opening a new store in a small town nearby and I think she should apply for store manager. Maybe I should go to my grandma's house, I have a couple ideas for things she could do with her spare time that I think would really bless her and others. I had two or three more ideas that escape me right now.

     I had close to 3 hours before heading back to school to make the first pickup. So long story short, I could reach out to others and maybe have an impact in somebody's life or remain isolated. As I drove home from Goodwill I was feeling kinda lonely and when I feel like that I tend to isolate and that's exactly what I did. Went home and got to work. Not a bad thing. Some part of me was worried about rejection from the people I would have tried to connect with. I couldn't overcome the idea of loneliness being topped with that rejection.

     Anyways, I was just struck with the idea of how many different directions life can take at any place. Maybe I do better next time.