Hot Spots

They're the annoying memories from the past. The worst are the "hot spots" the ones that get me angry all over again. Why is that?

The Bible indirectly tells us that our anger can lead to sin (Psalm 4:4), and I think it's even worse when it comes through from the past.

Just like acid reflux, I have a problem with "anger reflux." I get annoyed or irritated or frustrated by things that happened to me in the past. I'm sure that part of this is because I'm human. I have the same problems that everybody else who puts up with anger has.

I call "anger reflux" a "hot spot." Have you ever thought about an argument that happened a long time ago, or have you ever been offended a long time ago? When you remember it again, does it still get you angry? That's what I call a "hot spot." It's when I get angry all over again.

I can't let that control my (inverted) life, because then my anger gets the best of me, and worse things could happen (Genesis 4:6-7). In the passage I just linked, Cain is angry because God does not accept his sacrifice. God warns Cain about this anger.

It's already bad enough, detrimental enough to me, to do bad things when I am angry. It's even worse to let a memory get me angry as a "hot spot."

The inverted life is a forgiving life. That means that I have to forgive others when they offend me. But I have come to learn that "forgiving" is not just a one-time action that gets finished as soon as it starts, "forgiving" is an ongoing decision requiring time and prayer.

Yes, when I first forgive a person, it counts for now and forever with God. But if I dredge up the memory of that incident, I must point out to myself that I already forgave that incident! It must be as forgiven now as it was when it first happened, no matter how long ago it happened, and no matter how many times it got repeated.

Matthew 18:21-35 tells us what Jesus has to say about forgiving sins, and how it has to be "from [my] heart."

Eventually the hot spots cool off, but I have found that reminding myself that something is already forgiven cools it off a lot faster.

Shatter...

There are times when my anger gets the better of me. It has been a problem from the "get go" and stopped only once, during a period last year when my whole idea of the meaning of life got flipped upside-down. There are times when I, in my anger, sin. Sometimes I vent, rather than take control, and that can have an impact not only on myself, but on those around me.

I am reminded that nobody is perfect, least of all me.

The inverted life is not about shortcomings, but about how God can turn shortcomings into success stories. It seems that I still can recognize God's will in my life, but I just have trouble acting on it.

So, perhaps I can escape from the ruin I've allowed things to become.

If it ever comes up on the FineTune playlist (this is not a shameless plug) built into this blog, listen carefully to the lyrics of Third Day's song: Cry Out to Jesus... It's been stuck in my head all day. I'm like the one who "can't break the addictions and chains."

I need as much to cry out to Jesus as anybody else.

When the inverted life shatters under the pressure from the world, who else is there to help?

It's Like Not Even Being There...

I might as well not show up for my own life if I'm going to ignore it. I spend a lot of time losing sleep over the very things that used to seem so unimportant to me in the past. These things should not be so important to me, but I get distracted and lead a worried life.

I claim that I am a correspondance course teacher for a few students who email me the answers to their World Bible School lessons. I am supposed to reply fairly quickly, but I had been so busy worrying and avoiding the things that mattered, that I might as well leave the student wondering if I even exist. But that would not be a good thing.

We all go through times when we're not entirely focused on life. But life still goes on. Dirty laundry piles up, grass grows, and paint peels. Children grow, people live, and people die. Jesus did not want us to get distracted and get sucked into our own worries and our own little thoughts in our own little world.

One of the things that I liked about last fall was that my worries were different. I was worried a great deal about Louisiana and the ongoing reconstruction efforts. I was concerned about whether I was supposed to be there, and I spent a lot of time thinking about other people as a result. Granted, I had a lot of things in my life to handle and be concerned with, and those things required my attention just like anything else. It was okay to deal with these things and continue to move along in life. The thing that concerned me a couple of weeks ago was the way that distracted period swallowed up all of my attention and left me feeling hollow.

When I was concerned about others, I think I had things right in my life. I believe that Jesus wants us to be concerned about others. He tells us to "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow" (Matthew 6: 33-34). If we are busy in the present, paying attention to what God places before us, and if we pay attention to the blessings He sends our way, from awareness about our world to awareness about His presence in our hearts, I think the other things tend to fall into place.

It's been a long time since I put that notion back in the forefront of my mind. It's been a long time since I put my attention and my focus back on the Kingdom of God. I remember what it felt like--it felt like being free.

Now I just want to get back to that again. It might not be easy to get the ball rolling, but I believe it will be worth it.

Full Circle

It's amazing how things come all the way back to where they started. Having new experiences with old friends counts in my book. Last week, I got a chance to spend time with some of the people I volunteered with last year. As a group, we headed back to Louisiana for another trip. The group hung drywall, laid tile, painted, tore down siding and put up plywood. I got to see progress at a place where I had helped in April. What had been slab concrete, brick, and studs in April now has drywall, painting, flooring, and almost all the fixtures installed. It was an amazing thing to see the difference. That was going "full circle" in a good way.

Life sometimes goes full circle in a bad way. Just last week, Dad had an accident with a deer on the highway. The car still runs, but the cost of repairing the damage would be more than the cost of obtaining a used car. Over ten years ago, somebody else in the family had an accident with a deer, and that car had to be replaced.

For a while, I wondered why God would let things like this happen, but I'm not about to give up believing. I have seen more than enough to convince me, and more than enough to convict me. The full circle that life sometimes takes may be a way for God to communicate with us. Maybe He wants to say "Here's the problem you had a while ago. Can you do a better job this time?" It might also be a way to say "Get up and get going. I never promised that you would be safe."

It's got me thinking again, about where I belong. If I hadn't been going "full circle" on the trip to Louisiana, I would have been in the car with Dad. Would I have been able to make a difference? Possibly. But since I wasn't there, that difference is impossible for me to make. In fact, even my body weight could've made a difference. For all I know, I could have made the accident even worse.

So we come full circle mentally: Do I belong in Ohio? Could my time and energy be better spent in Louisiana, or in some other place where help is needed? The question has remained in the back of my mind for a long time, and seeing things in life circle round again makes the question come back also.

Invert...

If you read the Servants Unite blog, you probably don't need to re-read anything there. But for those who might not have been introduced, here's a really good, and very thought provoking post: What Keeps Us From Missions? It is a long post, but I believe it is well worth the reading. I believe it well enough to leave you with no other thought of my own for the evening, except this:

I have felt and experienced a lot of what the author was thinking in the post, but I have never seen it so well-worded.

Fairy Chess

One of the toughest struggles in life can be to take criticism. I don't mean to say "hey everybody, criticize me now," but if I have the right attitude, I'm supposed to be open to improvement. After all, the inverted life can't be lived alone, and the inverted life can't be lived without access to important information. If both these things are true, then something has to give.

Again, I'm not asking to be bombarded (though if you want to put a comment on this thing, I won't get in your way) with criticism. I'm not openly inviting it. Instead, I am trying to focus my mind on my activities and to ask: "if it comes to criticism, what will this activity get?" Even things that might get a lot of criticism may still be worth doing.

It is important to us that our voices are heard in areas like customer feedback. We all want to voice our opinions in politics, and we vote accordingly. All these are forms of criticism. Ideally, it would all be constructive, but in real life, criticism ranges from a fifty-fifty split, to being mostly negative. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Remaining open to criticism will not be easy, but I believe it helped me quell impulses I once had no control over. It added one extra inhibition--if I ask how others might view an action, it adjusts how I myself see the same action.

I remember noticing the change in the middle of July 2006 at work. The computer wasn't working quite the way it should. I was about to react, when a question crossed the back of my mind: "Am I really as angry as I think I am?" The reaction I made was much smaller, and far less of an outburst, and that buildup of frustration vented without it showing to others.

That was only part of it. People at work who remembered all the curses and bad words I used to say--especially when computers broke down and destroyed my work--stopped seeing me the same way. In August or September last year, when I was hearing criticism, I asked a co-worker: "can you remember how many bad words I've said since last month?" The expression on his face changed. He admitted that he hadn't heard the usual string of phrases from me when the computers messed up my work.

I leave you with a verse: "Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2 Timothy 2:22).

Isolated Pawn

The question I have is whether I have the right attitude. It is not an easy attitude to have: being gentle, being humble, being patient, bearing with others with love, and making every effort to keep peace. These are things that Ephesians 4:1-6 tells us are part of the life I should be living.

When I am angry, I know I am not gentle. I am not patient when I get distracted, or when the computer databases I work with break down. I am certainly unbearable to be around if I am angry--and that means I can be downright unloving and even belligerent.

Acknowledging these faults is a far cry from actually taking steps to rehabilitate. Really, though, I think they all come from being impatient. On my latest trip to Louisiana, I had the chance to become angry because of my impatience--but I didn't. Instead, I kept on working. In attempting to set up a new blog about the most recent trip, I had another chance to become angry because of my impatience (Blogger kept having errors). Again, I didn't. Instead, I restructured my blog to take advantage of the new post label feature.

That's where Chess comes in. Something that kept me patient in Louisiana (on all my trips) was the presence of other volunteers. Something that kept me patient at the computer last weekend was the fact that the errors only forced me to begin something that I had already thought about doing anyway. I was not alone in Louisiana, and I was not uninformed at home.

An isolated pawn happens when a single pawn is left without any pawns of the same color nearby. Isolated pawns become weaknesses as the game of Chess progresses.

Isolated people become weak also. The inverted life requires non-isolation. To keep the faith, a person needs friends, associates, and fellow believers (Hebrews 10:25). The inverted life also needs wisdom and knowledge that is accessible on call (Psalm 119:11). A lack of both of these things puts me in a very weak position, just like a pawn without anything protecting it. The social side of faith is essential because each one of my "fellow believers" has knowledge, wisdom, and experience that always seems to come just in time, right when I need it the most.

This is one of the reasons why I said in my last post that the inverted life "sometimes takes outside help."

...Be of Sin The Double Cure

The inverted life is not one where you can simply and easily purge all worldly influences in one fell swoop. A few months ago, I lost track of that fact. I fell away from God in anger, sin, and fear, and forgot that trusting him means more than what I thought it did.

For five months after my second trip, some of my worst habits seemed to vanish, and I thought I was free from their influences. But then I had a relapse of my illness.

The inverted life is not about being perfect before you come to God. It's also not about cleaning up your life before God can put your talents to use in the Kingdom.

I have had that problem, thinking I had to clean up my life before I could offer it fully to God. Jesus says: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matthew 9:12-13) So, at the end of those five months of freedom I slipped back into all my bad habits. Then I became bitter at myself. What had I done wrong? Another question might have gone through my mind at that time also: what had God done wrong?

I have to admit that I am still sick. I don't have to revel in this, or boast in it, or wallow in it. But I have to admit that I'm still stuck with a spiritual disease that could've been terminal: sin. And then I have to go back to the spiritual "doctor" to get it diagnosed.

The injured and the sick need a doctor, but after the diagnosis comes the cure. That's where I had a problem: many cures require extensive therapy. In America, our worst disorders include cancer, obesity, arthritis, hypertension, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and other disorders that can be treated early and even prevented. If left unchecked, the progression of some of these can be debilitating, or worse--terminal. The blame should not fall on the doctor if the patient refuses treatment. So I cannot blame God for what went wrong.

Many treatment plans require a change in lifestyle, not just simple pill-popping. As in medical cases, spiritual lifestyle changes require discipline (Hebrews 12:4-11).

Returning home from last week's trip to Louisiana, I was reminded of this by John McGuire. Maybe there will be some posts from that trip soon. I'll have to get my thoughts collected first.

As for my treatment regimen, this isn't something that a single post on a blog will cure. It takes more than that, and it sometimes takes outside help. Would anybody like to join me?

P.S. The Inverted Life now has music. The tracks range from the inspirational to the conventional. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Gefilte Fish

Never had it before. For that matter, I've never known a time when I've had egg matzo before. Some of the people where I work are Jewish, so they brought some of these things in and I thought, I'd like to have a try.

Interesting.

Easter Eggs

I'm sure today that all kind of eggs are getting hidden for Easter, whether they are hard-boiled, or chocolate, or candy filled, I'm sure there are children all over the place getting ready to hide or find those eggs. "Easter eggs" are also those nifty hidden features included in computer programs, usually in games.

But there are "easter eggs," or little nifty things that sometimes pop out at me from the Bible. One "easter egg" that blew my mind a while back is this: 1st Corinthians 11:23-26

I think this is what blew my mind: Jesus gives thanks for the bread. That bread is a symbol of his body, his life, and the fact that he is about to sacrifice both by being crucified.

Maybe my interpretation is imprecise, but in the New International Version, there is this "easter egg." When this was read aloud during Sunday morning worship a few months ago, I realized that as Jesus gave thanks for the bread, he was giving thanks for something else.

Jesus was giving thanks for the chance God had given him--the chance to come to Earth, to be "pierced for our transgressions," and to be "crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5). Because of this we are saved.

But how many of us could be like Jesus, and give thanks for the opportunity to lose something precious to us? How many of us could be like Jesus, and even give thanks for the opportunity to lose our lives?

Today, we celebrate the fact that Jesus did not simply lay down his life, he took it up again. We celebrate that our Savior could die and come back to life again (John 10:17-18)

Happy Easter!

The Emotional Minefield...

Tread carefully... Have you ever been in a conversation and felt it was heading somewhere? Have you ever wanted it to head somewhere else?

I remember spending a week with this feeling hanging over me, that something would happen later in the week, and that that "something" was going to be bad. So I did what I could to keep from bringing that "something" down on myself. I could feel a sort of tension in the air, like a coiled spring waiting to unleash, or to be more accurate, like a fully charged thundercloud about to let loose the first lightning bolt. I knew I was walking in an emotional minefield, and I wanted to get out...

Have you ever seen a person just "blow up?" Suddenly, that little thing that you said turns into a shouting match. Be it a discussion of politics at the office, or the mention of a past hurt among family members, or something totally unpredictable, you find yourself at the center of a massive explosion of emotion. It's the emotional minefield...

Minefields do not simply "happen." They are created when the army on one side of a war wants to deny the other army access to roads, to buildings, even to land itself. The most vicious mines aren't targeted at soldiers, they're called "antipersonnel mines" because they're targeted at people in general. Mines have killed or wounded thousands of innocent people. The worst part of minefields is that usually they are concealed, and you never know you're in one until the first mine goes off.

Every one of us has "triggers," as psychologists call them. They're the things that get under our skin, the things that are hot-buttons for debate, the things that we cannot shut up and tolerate! We should realize them, but sometimes they just "pop up" like an annoying window in the middle of our screens. Almost instinctively, we respond, and we say things that we often look back on with deep regret.

This minefield is nothing new, in fact it's been around since before land mines even existed (James 3)! Blow for blow, the author describes the tongue of humans, and how difficult it is to tame: "Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be." (James 3:10)

I wish I could say I have the answer, but most of the time, I do not. In fact, there are times when even I stumble on somebody else's minefield and... BOOM! There are times when I let people walk into my minefield as well. Unknowingly, they step somewhere that they shouldn't and... KABLOOIE!

The Bible gives us a good suggestion: perhaps we ought to learn to "sow in peace" (James 3:18) instead of laying mines. Perhaps, if we could sow enough seeds of peace, strengthen enough friendships, we could protect each other from the evil that lies buried in ourselves. If we follow this truth, perhaps we might one day unbury that evil and defuse it.

For more information about physical minefields, see the Wikipedia article on land mines.

Implode!

I know a sin trigger when I see it! That seems like such an insignificant thing, but it means more to me. By identifying it in myself, I might have a chance at resisting.

Anger.

But wait, isn't that one fairly obvious? After all, we are told "in your anger, do not sin" (Psalm 4:4 and Ephesians 4:26). Fairly obvious, but the inner workings of this are different now. I used to sin out of an immediate reaction resulting from anger.

Now I sin when it builds up inside of me, when I keep it contained, and when I am repeatedly provoked before I get a chance to blow off all the steam. It amounts to saying "please hold on the line until you get the O.M.C.!" All you have to do is continually push until something snaps back at you.

So this isn't just a single trigger, it's a double. There's one that is immediate, and there is another that is prolonged. Knowing that fact may help me, when people carelessly tread into areas that they do not realize are emotionally charged. Stay tuned for the emotional minefield, that's a can of worms for another post to tackle.

Interesting Chris

After a series of attempts to get the layouts and templates to do exactly what I wanted them to do, I've discovered that they will not. For the most part, however, the Inverted Life family of blogs is fully operational again.

I am quite satisfied with the elements and their appearance, well enough now to know that I need to leave "well enough" alone. Life is full of little frustrations that can balloon out of control unless we realize that they are happening.

The inverted life is about giving up control of everything in life. Okay, so God isn't going to micromanage us and decide whether we have bologna sandwiches one day and salami sandwiches the next--but He provides us with the meat, the bread, and the choice of which to use. He also provides us with the chance to thank Him for what He provides.

Last night, I got about 2 hours of sleep because I was trying to micromanage the layouts of each blog. That's not good for me, and I know that I've gotten more frustrated today because of it. However, I am thankful that I have access to blog software, and that I have a chance to spread the word online.

Because of that, while there are many little things I might nag about, I will say that the layout changes are finished, and give up that desire for control to God.

Grand Stream

Having been offered the chance to switch to the new version of Blogger, I will adjust the settings within these blogs. I am doing this because I've found out that eventually, all Blogger blogs will be required to operate in the new version. I figure that I might as well get used to the new system.

At this point in time, if this causes a disruption in service, I will not be blogging very often for a while anyway. I have thoughts and journal entries to condense, and will begin posting at the Third Trip blog as soon as possible after I've finished getting situated.

Let's see where this leads, shall we?