After the hurricane

DISCLAIMER:  I'm not a psychiatrist.  I'm not a mental health expert.  I'm just one blogger with experiences and opinions.  YMMV.  And honestly, this is just a ramble.

How do you tell the difference between clinically depressed and just stressed to one's breaking point?

I don't know.

I think that a lot of what I thought was my depression could more accurately be called poor handling of very stressful situations.

I don't handle failure well.  And a lot of the problems of my personal "great tribulation" were self-inflicted.  A wiser man would've avoided them.

Not only have I made it through hell (or the closest I've ever been to it), but the hell in my mind has decreased to a mostly-manageable regret and self-loathing about the poor choices made in my 20s.  I finally have hope about the future (a combination of trust in a good God who has been there for me, and a reasonable measurement of where I am right now)

So although I've peeked into the abyss...there are people with a different set of problems, whether chemical, biological, financial, relational...God only knows.

I thought that things couldn't get better, only worse.  And from my worst moment...things did get worse before they got better.

But they did get better.

MMXVI

Welcome to 2016.

(scratch cliches)

(scratch snark)

New year, new chance to make the same changes I've known I've needed to make for a while.

New year, starting mostly better than where I was on 1-1-15.  But...there's so much I could be doing better.

Ah, the resolutions...
"Blog every weekday" - HA!
"Keep up on house & lawn maintenance" - slight improvement
"Work on my character" - sigh.  No improvement.  Surviving hell does not make a man a better man.  Neither do near-death experiences.
"Do something especially nice for my wife every week."  A nice idea, and I did one thing nice so far...long way to go on that.
"Get down to 200#"  HA!
"Walk a mile a day"  HA!  Except for when I was working last year 1.5 miles from home, and sometimes it was just easier to let my wife take the car and have me foot it to work.
"Reconnect with my faith."  Well, a little.  Not where I should be.
"Decide political goals by end of year."...what?

Yeah.  These were my goals as posted on my xanga on 1/3/2012.  And, if anyone cares, I'm up to 240# now.

Some things don't change, and it really sucks.  I want to be a better man, but I've shown myself unwilling to put in the disciplines necessary to become that better man.

Sigh.

Steven 100

So this marks my 100th blog on this board. No idea how many hundred blogs are left on xanga. Looking over the categories I founded this blog on, I've said a lot. Sometimes just the same thing over and over again.

In regards to depression, which I thought I might be blogging more about when I started, or maybe I knew I wouldn't because such a subject is so sensitive, I was depressed, stressed, lonely, and isolated both geographically and in other ways. Now I'm just, as I've been for years, lonely.

My family posts have been mostly about my father and grandfather. Two of the great influences on my life, both deceased, both missed. I don't blog much about my family at home, or my mom's family, or my in-laws, for various reasons, the same reasons I didn't blog about them much when I was blogging more often.

Genius? (Insert painful half-laugh here ) I said to myself, "I have reached greatness, and am smarter than all before me in Leavenworth.  I have understood great wisdom and knowledge."  And I set to now wisdom, madness, and folly.  What a waste of time.  For in much wisdom is grief, and the know-it-all ends up lonely.
    Ecclesiastes 1:16-18, paraphrased.  And even now, I suppose I am most aware of what I don't know, the flaws in my own argument and point of view. Between that and the niche nature of what I know what I mean expert in, to say. And it hurts so bad.

I once was more into politics. Heck, I once was an elected official. But that was then and this is now. And yes, for reasons other than most of my friends, I feel the media is failing us. As stated before, I feel our 24 hour news cycle and ratings hunt lead us to an unhealthy overemphasis of a few cases rather than the larger problems that affect us.

It's quite different blogging about KC sports when they're all winning. Sporting won the cup in '13, a different cup in '15. Royals won two pennants and a world series in the last two years. And, finally, the Chiefs won a playoff game! So the woe-is-us is rather over.

Haven't blogged about technology much, mainly because modern technology (defined as WiFi and modern tablets)  is - at this point - a luxury that I've had to cut. And sometimes I miss it, and sometimes I don't.

Truth.  Quid est veritas. Most of the posts were me trying to sort out various prophetic claims, religious points of view, and other Christian drama. And, when a genius tries to look at both sides of an interpretation argument...I just get headaches.

More blogs coming. There's a lot of Saturdays left in 2016.

The year closes...

My year...52 Saturdays. .

I once said "my life is a testimony to the truth that God is good, and that the best is yet to come." I once again believe and am persuaded of that.

This year has seen one job change, one move, one layoff.

I survived two of the greater self-inflicted adversities of my life, sadder but wiser, and blessed to have learned my painful lessons so cheaply.

(This time between jobs is merely a lesser adversity.)

I have hope in a good God who has good things for me, and makes all things work together for good.
I am relearning faith...learning to trust God while desperately wanting to get my theology right, neither casting the Almighty as my personal genie nor "a God who didn't care / That lived away out there"
I love and know I am loved. As I heard on the radio dozens of times growing up...
You are loved with an everlasting love. That is what the Bible says, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

By His arm, by His Word, by the friends He has put into my life...I am persuaded that God cares for me.

Happy new year, friends.

Maranatha

tl;dr Tired of emphasis on end times, tired of trying to sort wheat from chaff re end times, and I think I'm overreacting.

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I concede that my view of the end times and current events is probably different than many of my fellow church members. And honestly, I may be the only one in this church who feels as I do.

God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. (Baptist Statement of Faith 2000)

This I believe. Have plenty of Scripture to back this up, and I'm rather convinced that at least with this much I am in full agreement with most of the body of Christ.

Like I say, we agree on the last page, not too sure whether we agree on the last chapter. The myriad of signs and symbols in Daniel and Revelation, from the 70 weeks, to the whore of Babylon, to the mark of the beast, to whether there is a separate rapture, to whether the book of Revelation prophesies a one world gov't, to the timing and nature of the Tribulation... These are things that I believe Christians can disagree on without saying that they've denied the faith.

But as I hear the prevailing talking heads discussing current events, prophecies which they believe are yet to be fulfilled, and how it fits into the end times... There are times I disagree.

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In regards to the emphasis and the interpretation of end times and current events... I don't understand exactly why I get so bent out of shape about it.

Maybe it's pride. I think I'm right, I think they're wrong, and if they're right, that means I was wrong, I'm not the smartest, and I need to rethink my eschatology.

But I'm also worried about (in my estimation) continued cases of Christian prophet wanna be's making bold statements that don't come to pass and bringing unnecessary reproach on the church and the name of Christ. I knew you've heard of apocalyptic cults and their overreaction to the preacher's interpretation.

But if they're right...then it proves that I have neither the state of mind nor the openness of spirit to properly interpret Scripture, prophecy, and current events.

It's not a fear of their version of "Left Behind". It's a fear that I've got no clue.

Thoughts about Americans and guns

This one isn't the neatest, but I just have a lot of thoughts about this subject. I can't do the research that I would like to do to isolate the variable solve the equation to solve the world's problems with my mad mathematics skills. But I'm just tired of Facebook messaging relatives in the same state as a mass shooting.  (Over a hundred miles away, need to brush up on my geography)
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I am bothered by not only the phenomenon of mass shootings, but the fact that in regards to violence, mass shootings are a minority of the crime, a minority of the victims, and yet these idiots who have obtained there 15 minutes of fame by shedding much blood in a short time, have skewed the conversation about violence in our country.
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In general, the NRA voters treat the multitude of privately owned guns as a vaccine against tyranny and crime. But although we are willing to entertain conspiracy theory and bad statistics about physical vaccines (MMR HPV etc), the NRA voters consider the gun sacrosanct, and arm to be pushing against Perhaps my friend is right, In Guns We Trust.

If guns are the vaccine against tyranny, I feel it be appropriate to question whether the vaccine is doing any good, the way you hear innumerable complaints about government over reach. And I think it is fair to ask whether the near universal availability of guns in our country is fueling an increase in crime or a decrease in crime. Start with the statistics of more guns than people in this country, include the decrease in the crime rate in the last 20 years, and go draft Nate Silver and his stat heads.

Our nation is an outlier when you compare the per capita income and the homicide rate. Countries that are as rich as us have lower homicide rates...
Is it the poor parts of our country, is it the disintegration of families and morals, is it the...
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Or, the other question, to what extent does the near universal access to firearms increase the success rate of suicide?

Pedestal / letter to a role model

Damn you.
I thought you had it all together. I envied you. I wanted to be you. Even though we weren't in the same generation, I wanted to be like you when I grew up. You had it all, respect, family, the toys, the position in the church, you were a rockstar.
And you let it go. You traded it in. And everyone knows why. Some people saw it coming. I  didn't. I couldn't even imagine you doing anything like that. Not only because I thought that you were a better man than me, but because of the children.

 I had you on a pedestal. Even after the other disappointments.

You let me down. That's not important. You had responsibilities and turned your back on them. People counted on you, some more than others.

What have we learned today? That even the mighty fall, even the mighty are tempted, and if better men than me succumb, then I must be vigilant.

No man is an island, and your absence leaves some positions empty. Some can be filled. Some can't.

In the name of God repent! Come back. Humble yourself, humble yourself, listen to your elders.

This is what I would say to composite of people, certain people who I can picture in my mind, who I respected from a distance, who really disappointed me, and in their actions caused great harm to their family.

I wasn't close enough to be their Nathan.

...

Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain...