B-e A-g-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e

Last night, after thanking God for our blessings, I asked Son #2 what one word he would use to describe our family.

Son #2: Aggressive.

Me: Huh? Aggressive?

Son #2: Yeah, dad always cross checks me.

Me: Wow, I wasn't expecting that.

Son #2: After that it would be "funny." Well, at least daddy and I are funny. You can be sometimes, too, but not really.

Son #1's response was "playful." I didn't have the heart to know if I was included in that or not.

Channeling Jack

In church last Sunday, a girlfriend who has been going to our particular church with me for almost two years got a little teary-eyed and said, “Never in a million years would I have ever seen myself here.”

I was thinking the same thing this morning when I turned off my radio and was praying in solitude on my way to work. Who woudda thunk that lil’ ole me would ever be on such a spiritual path? But, then again, if God truly made us, then what could be more natural? Yet, if it’s so natural, why do I repeatedly reject it? For the past 10+ years, it’s a constant process of faltering and course-correcting.

In my mind, I was likening it to taking a bulimic to Peter Luger. Although a big hunk of protein-rich steak might be good for the body, a bulimic, after years of self-destructive behavior, may naturally reject it. I know that’s a kind of disgusting analogy but, for me, it works. I was off course for so long that my brain cannot handle the quantum leap. So I shift my internal baseline closer and closer to God in tiny increments.

One morning last week, as I was journaling my little heart out, I kept asking God all sorts of questions – and I was pissed at Him at times. Are you really there? If so, why couldn’t my dad give up drinking when I was a kid? If you’re so powerful and all knowing, why can’t you help others who I love to quit drinking? And on and on. I finally asked, “Are you really the Truth?” and my brain responded with a line from A Few Good Men: “You can’t handle the Truth!”

Thank you, Jack Nicholson, for that moment of Zen.