Nay, we are but men. Rock!

This is more of a post to make myself feel better.  Even though it is old, I hope you can get a couple laughs out of it, learning how to NOT fight.

I am happy–immensely happy, but at the same time, tragically, deeply anguished.  The perpetuation of my emotional dichotomy stems from the fact that my wife and I just found out that we were going to have another child.  That, in and of iteself, is mostly the source of my unbound joy; however, we also found out that we are not going to be the ones to raise our little one–that honor, in all its joy, belongs to Jesus.

You see, our little one was brought home from this world earlier than I ever could have imagined; I never would have thought that I could feel a part of me so barren, but so alive.  Not alive and blossoming with vivacity; rather, alive in the sense you get when you have a sudden, deep injury.  That part of me is rubbed so raw, bleeding, but feels so alive because of it.

I mourn the loss of my child, but how awesome would it be to be raised by God Himself? I mean, my dad was great, but he kinda pales in comparison.  Let’s see….a wooden house….or golden streets?  Which would you rather see every day? : )

Though it pains me that I will never be able to hold this baby, snuggle it in bed, sing it to sleep, and watch it grow, laugh, learn, and love, I do feel grateful knowing that my child is in the best of hands, and will be waiting there for me, welcoming me into the arms of the Father, who has raised my baby in His glorious perfection.

I am dying inside–but I rejoice in the Lord and all He has provided.

–Aaron

Since moving from WV to OR there have been some pretty significant changes to my lifestyle.  The most significant change is probably with the friends I have here.  The friends we have here are much more natural than anyone else I have ever hung out with and they are claiming my wife.  Now in WV when someone was referred to as natural what it really translated into was stinky.  This is definitely not the case here.  Our friends are not stinky they merely have a commitment to living with green and sustainable practices.  This is great but it has an effect on my life that is getting to be a bit much.  We now make our own cream cheese, bread, and shampoo.  We are in a free range organic egg co-op.  My wife wants us to spend $9 on raw milk.  We recycle or compost everything.  We use cloth diapers which I have to carry dirty bath water from the bathtub to the washing machine in order to wash.  All of that to say I try and do my part. The problem comes when I find myself in a restaurant with our friends I never want to order first because I don’t want to order the wrong carbon footprint meal but I hate ordering last because then I feel like I need to follow suit and order the steamed salmon, water chestnut, and leek tartar.

Don’t get me wrong, I am truly committed to creational stewardship and all that jazz but too much of a good thing apparently leaves me hungry.  I want to be able to get a McRib, that’s right suckers I said McRib, and not have to eat it in my son’s closet in fear of being discovered.  I want to be able to walk down the street with my head held high while letting the grease from my Oregon Burrito lovingly caresses my chin.  I want to be able to eat a steak without someone who claims to be my friend asking me if I know how much methane a cow produces in its lifetime and why am I not eating tofu.

I say enough is enough.  It is football season and I refuse to mask my love of cheese product and sausage.  I am going to fly my greasy pizza flag high.  I don’t want to go back to my old ways but I do want the occasional guilt-free chili dog.  Who’s with me?

I know my last post was a little off the beaten path for this blog so I decided to offer a little ditty that is more in line with what I normally put out there.  Last night I was giving my sons a bath.  II like doing bath time because they are to the point where they actually play together instead of just occupying the same general space.  This time of year is probably the busiest season I have and put on top of that all of my family issues I have very little energy.  So the boys were playing and I was staring off into space and focusing on absolutely nothing.  Then from off in the distance I hear my oldest son screaming, “Ahhhh!!!!! Ahhhh!!!!! Noo!!! Phineas no!!!!!”  I came out of my trance and looked over to the bathtub where I saw my youngest son pulling with a double-fisted vigor that said, “Now who’s in charge chump” on my oldest son’s penis.  My youngest was having the time of his life and laughing hysterically while my oldest was, needless to say, not.  He was flailing around like an uncoordinated stork doing the Macarena at top speed.  

I was stuck somewhere between complete levity due to the poetic justice of the situation and pure revulsion at how far a three-year-old’s penis can stretch.  I opted to take the humanitarian approach and release my oldest from the Hungarian penis torture that was my youngest son’s fists.  I really do think they love each other.

My life tends to follow a certain pattern.  I will have one or two major life questions that are at the forefront of my mind.  I will spend anywhere from three months to a year diving into whatever question is before me and then I will have a down period where I won’t really think of anything of more depth than the Broncos or comparing and contrasting all of the Die Hard movies.  

The issue that I have been wrestling with lately is where is God in the midst of suffering?  I have been thinking about this ever since I read a novel called The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.  All throughout my life I have heard people talk about God’s will in regards to pain and brokenness.  I would hear one person say to someone who has lost a loved one, “It’s OK they are in a better place now.  Sometimes it is hard to know the why but it was his will.”  It’s true that the person who has died might be in a better place and it is hard to know the will of God but to say that God caused so-in-so to die because it was part of his will is not entirely accurate.  I have an extremely hard time thinking that the God of love, grace, mercy, redemption, and life causes death and heartache.  I think we cause all of the crap that is in the world and God works with it.  I think to say that God causes death is to rob him of his redemptive power.  I serve the God who defeated death, not brought it about.  I believe God can take the s**t in our lives and redeem it.  He takes what was never intended and brings it into himself, where it finds love.  When someone talks about the silver lining I hear God’s hand at work.  When someone verbalizes some joy that has come out of great suffering I hear a God that refuses to abandon us. 

No, I serve a God of redemption and a God that will always bring us close even through the worst circumstances not a puppeteer that forces death and brokenness onto his creation for his own amusement or to accomplish a greater good.  The greatest good was defeating death and mending brokenness.  My uncle committed suicide yesterday.  I am not sure where the redemption is going to come from but it will come.  I am waiting with my God for the silver lining.

The Olympics are many things to many people; the hard work, the blood, sweat, and tears—all of that cliche stuff.

Also, this?

Looks like they wanted to keep lots of people from going home with more than a medal. If they didn’t, I imagine they would have to open up the ‘gold’ express lane at the clinic.

I guess the Olympics is all about love. Hah!

So, the Redeem Team has been redeemed. That’s a very good thing. I heard some chatter about who might be on the team in London, and that got me thinking who I think might be there as a new olympian, and who might be returning to the team.

Can you imagine Greg Oden joining Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh on the inside? How about a little Andrew Bynum there, too? What about some Lopez brothers, or maybe a little Love (Kevin, of course)? Talk about some big guys that will just pound you around inside. That just makes me a little giddy.  Take that Gasol brothers!

Here I am sitting in my house three days before I was scheduled to be home from my backpacking trip.  I checked the calendar before I left and sure enough it said August.  I checked the map and sure enough I was heading to central Oregon.  Then why in the name of everything that is holy did the weather act like something out of a Charlton Heston movie?  When we got to the trailhead it was sunny and about 104 degrees, typical for the geography and time of year.  That night the wind moved in, 30-35 mph gusts.  The next night the lightning moved in to go along with my friend Mr. Wind.  The night after that Rain Jr decided to show up to the party.  And last night Rain Jr’s father Papa Downpour decided to dance on the face of my shelter with his friend Cyclone Jim.  I mean there were torrential downpours and wind gusts upwards of 45 mph or more.  Last night was probably the most miserable night I have ever spent in the wilderness.  I was laying in my rain-soaked down sleeping bag looking up at the bottom of the tarp and just waiting for it to give way and fly off into the night leaving us even more unprotected.  Somehow our knots held and the shelter construction held pretty well through the night; I only had to get out and tie down the tarps two or three times throughout the night.  And did I forget to mention I FORGOT MY RAIN GEAR!!!!!!!!!  This was my fourth time taking college students into the wilderness for a week and never before had I ever encountered even a drop of rain.  Last night sucked.

Other than the weather that was more unpredictable than Cher on her wedding night the trip was pretty good.  The students I had were great and rose to almost any occasion  with high spirits.  They worked together and surpassed my expectations.  They were encouraging and supportive of one another.  They never questioned my decisions.  In short they were pretty awesome.  But the weather blew.  While on the trip I had to keep my tongue and watch what I said in order to set the right kind of example.  I needed to keep morale at a high level.  Now I could care less.  I want to vent.  I want to complain.  I think I am done.  Thank you for listening, or would it be reading?

What man does not like a quality sound system?  Everyone loves their 5.1, 7.1, and 10.2 as much as the next guy (i guess they even have 22.2 working models now), and especially love the hardware they entail.  The smell of the new wafers inside the glossy black (hopefully black–do any real men buy any other color?) housing…..aaah…   I love the sound of crisp tweeters, deep mids, and rumbling subs, seeing the bright little LEDs blinking back at me, waiting for my discretionary selection (Billy Ray Cyrus, of course).

Ah, the glory of gold-plated cables & terminals and multi-unit remotes!

Anyway, I don’t know how many of you have had systems in your cars (I once had an 800-watt system in my car, that was worth more than my car–ohhh I love you Kicker) and have enjoyed the mobility of premium sound, but I have a news flash for you.  Your tricked-out cars are obsolete.  I have, for you, (I know you are drooling at the thought) the NEXT generation of mobile audio.  You can thank me later.

Here it is

Oh, and Billy Ray Cyrus was totally a joke.  You did get that, right?  Remember, this is a Man blog.

It was really David Hasselhof

Tomorrow morning at 7:00am I will be leaving with roughly 10 college students for a week-long backpacking trip in the Sisters Wilderness Area in central Oregon.  I look forward to this trip every year and this time around is no exception.  There are no real wildfire threats this year and I have been lunging like there is no tomorrow.  It is time to see if the lunges are really going to pay off.  There are many last minute preparations left for me to do, not the least of which being to give myself a haircut and hope that the week allows it to grow in a little before rejoining society.  

I have a large and slightly misshapen cranium and when my hair is shaved I look like a fuzzy albino potato.  My wife is already on a camping trip with my sons so I can’t ask her to do it and if I leave my hair the length it is now I am pretty sure my brain will jump out of my ear in search for a cooler environment.  So off I go.  Wish me luck and maybe I will post pictures when I get back.