Allergies

     Do you ever have that cereal box, you know, you push the bag down and fold the flaps together and let go and it pops open? So you push in the sides of the box, fold it again and poof, it pops open again. I'm sitting at the table with a box of Kleenex. I'm done eating and there's this growing pile of used tissue next to me. I dry my eyes, blow my nose a couple times, then rest my head in my hands. Like that box of cereal I feel defeated. Not by life. Not work or laundry or another rainy day. Nope. I'm defeated by something invisible. Some seasonal something that reaches out from places unknown and turns me into a blubbering mess of tissue and sneezing.

     C.S. Lewis said if you don't feel like doing something do it anyways and after doing it a bit you'll start feeling it. If you dont feel like worship just sing anyways. If you dont feel happy start smiling anyways. He says after a bit your actions will influence your mood. Well allergies use this principle in reverse. I feel just fine but my eyes wont stop tearing up. It doesnt take long and i feel like going to a quiet private space and bawling my head off. Let it all out. But there's nothing to let out. My allergies are lying to me.

     I have a customer job waiting in the shop. Breakfast still needs to be put away. The cereal box just sits there taunting me. Tissue pile still growing. There's plenty of stuff that needs to be done. Here I am still paralyzed by these invisible hooligans, well that and typing this out on my phone. Gotta go. Gotta get moving. Ugh. Just ugh.

A work in progress

     I'm polishing a pair of bike rims. They are for a bike that will be sold to fund a car project. I have to take them apart and put back together one spoke at a time. You'd think that might be the hard part but it's definitely the polishing. Basically polishing is sanding with a really fine substance until the surface being polished is a smooth as can be. Any imperfection will ruin the finish. Bike rims are already flat so piece if cake, right? These gave a grained finish, kinda like the grooves on a record but much smaller. And they take forever.

     I'm so close to being done. Each little imperfection takes so long to remove so I stand there patiently going back and forth and back and forth. My first thought today was, are you using this to prepare me for something God? If so, I don't want it. Anything that is this hard and takes this long, anything that I hate doing and I want to quit over and over, anything that you'd use this to prepare me for would be infinitely harder than what I'm doing now. Um, no thanks.

     The last person to live at our house was, I was gonna say Taniesha, but I guess it was D. If you've been to our house you know it is on the small side. We've had someone live in the shop for a while. Chris's parents for a year and a half,  half in camper, and half parked in front of tv. My dad lived in trailer out back for too long. T at least had a room. We've had people crash on the couch for various amounts of time. I hated it. Every single time was miserable. This is my space, my place, my sanctuary. My tv. One shared bathroom. I've hated every single time my space was invaded, but I've continued to offer it up. We have said no a few times. But yet most times we have sacrificed our comfort for others. God always builds on the things in our lives so what will come next?

     I'm still polishing. Back and forth, back and forth, will this little bugger ever polish out so I can go to the next? Then I realize this rim is me and God is the one looking at the imperfection wondering, how long will you hold on to this Jethro? I'd really like to move onto bigger and better things with you but you just won't let go.

     When we were in the youth group there was this girl M. She was about 13 or so when we met. I don't know how or why but somehow God connects people in an unexplainable way. Chris and I are connected to her. She may not feel that toward us and that's ok but she will always have a special place in our hearts. Shes all grown up now, husband and kids i think, but if the phone rang and she was on the other end we would not hesitate to be there for her. That's got to be the Father heart of God. It certainly isn't me.

     45 years now God has been polishing on me and I'm guessing I look about like the rusty trucks in my back yard. I see the potential though. I look at each of those trucks and I see something special.

Just kinda thinking about why I'm such a jerk sometimes.

     The other day my wife made an off hand remark that my love language is personal time. Now I've not read the five love languages, I know, I know, I should,  but when she said that it was a chord that began to resound in me.

     There have been times in the past, I know especially this past year, where I have not treated my friends well. One of my struggles has been working on friends' cars. Now I don't mind doing this and I need the money. The problem has been that I really want people to come over and hang out. So things might go kinda like this. Jim brings his car over and we talk for an hour then he leaves and over the next couple of days I work on the car. He picks it up and we josh for a few minutes and he leaves. Great experience. Some time later Jim calls cuz his car is broke again. I want to spend an hour or two bs'ing but Jim just wants to know when he can drop it off. I've wanted to spend time with Jim since the last time six weeks ago but life is busy and we don't make the time. So I offer to work on it. He drops it off, I say a total of about two words, Chris takes the keys while I stare at the ground or go back inside. I fix it, text the total when done and manage to be elsewhere when Jim comes to get it. Now I feel like I'm Jim's mechanic whore and he probably feels I just want him for his money.

     I have tried to figure out why I do this. My wife's comment about needing personal time added another piece to the puzzle. A piece I'd already found is Aspergers. I need consistency. I need regular routine. Things need to fit in regular boxes. When someone is there and then they're not, like when summer break starts or ends, it takes weeks to adjust. Sometimes much longer. When someone is in my life sporadically it's hard to know how to manage that. How much do I invest? If i invest deeply and then they are not around what do i do with that? Maybe i refuse to invest but then i see them regularly. Am i a total jerk now? To some of you this might seem silly. If you don't get it I don't blame you. I often don't get it either. I don't simply want to be a jerk all the time. I've kinda given in to that as my default setting. Remember when the Terminator would be injured? We would see him working through a list of options to restore power. Often this is me. I look through all the options and often I just choose quit. Leave. Hide in the car. Take a nap. It's like if I'm gonna fail I might as well just quit now. It takes a lot of effort to try so if failure is likely I should just abort now. I guess I'm kinda just avoiding pain. I've learned to live with being a jerk. Sometimes it hurts more but that's just the way it has to be.

     I don't know how to end this. There is no solution yet, no Jesus fixed it, hallelujah! so far. My wife tries her best to help. To smooth things sometimes, to let me escape other times. Anyway, if I've treated you poorly and your reading this it is not an excuse. You deserve better. I'm sorry. I got talking to her about it and she said, you should write about this so here it is. I hope you get something out of this. Maybe you feel really screwed up and now not feeling quite so alone. Maybe you simply have a clue now why Jethro is so difficult sometimes. It's about bedtime now and I'm down to 10% battery so thanks for reading, bye.

Daydreaming in full color

     I sit here slumped in my kitchen chair letting my mind run free. The last bit of milk in my bowl colorfully sprinkled by cinnamon and the invisible bits of sugar, all that remains of cinnamon toasters. My trusty steed of caramelized, carbonated, blackened sugar water is only a third drunk. A good start to the day, indeed. My little Emma is home watching cartoons. Last night her little body violently excorcised every thing she has eaten in her four years I think. It was a remarkable show. And me, I do what I do every day of my life, I dream.

     Do I list all the things I dream of that I can't afford? There's the obvious roof needing repair. And the Disney World vacation Chris and the kids have been dreaming of. Not out of reach forever, but for now. But that's not what occupies my thoughts this beautifully cold and sunny morning. No, it is a desire to succeed with car projects. To make money at what I love. To be able to build these hot rods and custom toys and for that to support my family. Not fully but in some portion.

     I had a daydream a couple days ago. I dreamt that the 3 older kids would grow up and move on and we would begin to adopt other kids. A grand idea indeed. I've thought about how much adoption costs. About how we've not adopted Emma even due to cost. About how we would need a larger house, with a good roof. About how easy it is to say go, but how much greater the obligation is than seems. About how forever forever is. I've even thought about telling my wife about this. Catastrophic the consequences could be. She might just say go. Let's do it! That would just be the worst best, best worst thing possible.

     The way I remember it (the super incredible amazing awesome woman I call wife may have differing memories), chris's mom had wanted to have 16 kids. They had 2, which left the number 14 to us. We went to a friend's house for fellowship one night and a woman prophesied to me that we would have 14 kids. Now I don't take this for gospel. Like Mary though, who treasured all these things in her heart according to Luke's gospel, I keep this bit of prophecy in a special place in my heart.

     Of course, you gotta know I didn't plan on blathering on about all this adoption nonsense when I picked up my phone and started typing. Yes, nonsense. It has to be nonsense right? I simply was dwelling on the facts. Like how I have two project trucks needing to go together and get sold yet I don't have the capital to put either one together. History tells me, my history, that money procured to do just this will somehow go other places and trucks will not sell for what they should and I never seem to be able to work it all out.

     So now that I've exhausted an entire hour of life writing this I guess it's time to get back to laundry. Maybe even do some work. Got a Coke and dirty bowl waiting. See ya.

One Last Hit

     I wrote this as a song lyric after an acquaintance died but it hasn't seen music so here it is.

One Last Hit

He killed himself
    Just one more hit for old times sake
No pain no more
    Crossed the line he's not comin' back
One wife six kids
    His last hit forever they bleed

Where were the men?
     Pillars of faith holdin' us together
We're down a man
    Did we not do our job?
How could we know?
     Holy Spirit, did you try to tell us?

     We've got to stand, fight for you, fight for me
    All together now, what does that even mean?
     His life forfeit, flesh to dirt too soon too soon
     We broke his family, it is our fault, is it not?

What will we do?
Will we wake up now?
Get in your face?
Be willing to fight?
To lose my sleep?
To cry and weep?
What will we do?
What will I do?
What will I do?
What will I do?

The Coke Bottle

     This is a lonely little Coke bottle. His worth is 10 cents. Back In the olden days you'd buy one of these, pay an extra dime for the core charge, and after drinking, return it empty and get your dime back. I know we still do that but what was different back then was instead of crushing it, the bottler would wash it, refill, and sell the same bottle again. Full of Coke of course. 

     I made a flower display this last year, almost a year ago actually, with 21 Coke bottles in a wood crate. Each bottle had one rose. Each rose signified one year of marriage. And each of those bottles is worth 10 cents.

     You see, the worth of the bottle never changes no matter what is in it. Whether Coke or dirt or marbles or diamonds. Clean or dirty it doesn't matter.

     We are like that bottle. This I believe is the single hardest thing for man or woman to 'get'. God has placed a value upon us. Not a nickel or dime, but a measure without measure. A value of infinite value. Maybe that's why we can't grasp it. Before I breathed my first breath I had God's greatest worth. When I had done nothing to get it I already had it. When I have done every thing to lose it I still have it.

     That's the thing. The value isn't determined by me. God decided He wanted me so He made me. From that first moment the value was already decided. The payment was already known, the cost of His Son.

     We are not far from the 2000 year anniversary of that payment. So when I raced my car down 25th street by the airport at 90mph my value stayed the same. When I stole, when I cheated, when I watched on my screen as women defiled themselves for my pleasure, my value did not change. When I pay my tithes and help another, or shout rude suggestions thru my windshield, or whatever it is that I do, there is nothing, not a single thing I can do that will change the intrinsic value I have in Christ. 

     This is not a license to steal. It is for my freedom. It is the proverbial 10,000 steps away from God but 1 step back. I know what I did wrong and I feel so bad about it. I know I'm not worthy back in God's graces but I am. I always am. No matter what I've done I'm always welcome. Every time God says let's begin again. Or, do you remember where we had got to before, son? Let's continue on from there. God is so great! God is so merciful! His only motivation toward us, toward me, is always love. 

God is still working miracles, even for us, the Matsons

     We took our Tiki-wagon on an impromptu trip from Salem to Crater Lake yesterday. We call it the Tiki Mobile because there is a mean looking tiki with his surf board painted on the hood. Not our choice but it came with the car and certainly attracts lots of attention. It was fairly hot yesterday and as we climbed the mountain the temp gauge reminded me the radiator is fairly well plugged and kinda hot headed. I had forgotten. We don't drive it much, only when all six of us are riding together, which seems to be increasingly rare. Then, leaving C.L. the Trans started acting up. Making noise in first gear, not shifting up some times, and not shifting down to first at stops were the most obvious. I knew there was no chance of it getting us the 230 miles from our hotel home. None. This morning we packed up car, moved it back from curb to check fluids, then did something we have never done. We held hands in the car and prayed. Prayed for protection and safety and please, please, please, hold our car together until we get home. No need for paragraph breaks in this story, right? So off we went. Got gas, drinks for everyone, quart of oil for car, and hit the road. It was never right.  Noisy in first and second, didn't want to shift to third, but once on Highway all was beautiful, like nothing was wrong at all. 3-1/2 hours freeway to our off ramp. No stops needed. 1/2 home someone had to potty. We hit up Ronald, let the kids play, and some people searched for poke stuff. Second half of journey was more of same. Hit our off ramp in Salem and made it to about two miles from home when car just stopped pushing forward. Pulled over and left car running for minute or two, hit the gas and it started moving. Little old lady in a walker might have gone faster but we were moving. Repeated this three or four times til we hit our driveway. We had probably gotten an hour into the ride when I just knew we would make it home and car would still move on its own. After the car quit moving though, I had serious doubts. This is an absolute miracle. No ifs ands or buts. Years ago I sat on a broken school bus on the highway's shoulder going home from a youth group beach trip not a mile from the other bus we broke on the way to the beach. My buddy (the youth pastor), gathered most of the 35 kids and staff in a circle to pray, and not kidding, I sat in the bus scoffing under my breath, what can God possibly do in this situation. Within minutes a 95 or so passenger bus pulled up with only 35 people on board and offered us a lift. That was the defining moment in my life to understanding that God is, well, still God. So now my car sits at home needing a radiator and Trans or Trans work and life keeps on spinning. Another time God stepped out and did something too obvious. Not a silent whisper, but two large hands clapped together and a ha!, see that? God says. See what I just did there? I love you in the quiet and I love you in the big loud audacious way that only I can.