I Am Not Job!

Job 1:8 "And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that fearth God, and shuns evil?"

Anyone who has ever felt the fire of trial and the desert of waiting for an answer from the Heavens tends to gravitate toward the books of Psamls and Job. We try to identify our situations with those of David and Job. But, I must confess...as much as I try to convince myself that I am "Job-like", I am not Job. I am no where close. Any pain that I might feel is nothing compaired to the pain of literally loosing everything I own, as Job did. I feed my selfish nature with the thoughts that my situation holds a flame to that which Job went through.

More than this, the Lord tells us in this passage that we are not Job. Read that verse again, and look at the words that the Lord uses to describe Job. Perfect (or blameless) and upright. There is only one other man that is described with these words... Jesus. I am no where close to being the man that Job was. My nature lends itself to the bad situations I can find myself in, but Job's did not. He gave sacrifices on his sons behalf, just in case they had sinned... I barely stay awake long enough at night to tell the Lord "sorry" for my selfishness.

In the Lord's eyes, our pain is real... but temporal. No matter what our names are, he longs for our trust. It is true that he allows pain and tragedy to enter our lives in hopes that it will bring us closer to him. And that sounds cruel for those who haven't experienced His love; but for those of us who have tasted hints of this love... we see the beauty in the hurt. At the end of Job's trial he is humbled by the whirlwind of God's speach, then he is restored and blessed two fold. This is not a promise for the rest of us. However, it does give me hope. I know that the Lord is preparing a place where pain has no foot hold. I like the sound of that... the aching will stop one day. 

Being There

I have an amazing mother. After my parents divorced, my mother raised three boys on her own. These weren’t regular kids. I used to break every glass bottle I came across, Nathan taught me everything I knew about acting like a Tasmanian devil, and Stan grew very angry trying to keep up with his younger brothers. My mom used to work three jobs in a day, bake cakes for extra cash, and still somehow had some time for us kids.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my mother recently. Being the baby boy, my mother and I had the closest friendship out of us boys. Mom and I would have long conversations about everything. She taught me how to make objects out of clouds. I would sit in the front seat of the van and shout, “I see a horse! Look it’s a pirate ship! That one is a dragon breathing fire on the horse and pirate ship!” My mom always saw whatever I said was in the clouds. When Nathan and I found an artistic stroke with oil paints, mom bought us every color paint there was, and we pieced together a set of paintbrushes.

Looking back now, on those years growing up, I am surprised at all the memories I have of my single mother “being there”. I remember going to all of Nathan’s basketball games. I remember going out of town, traveling to Sea World, I remember her teaching me to cook. She was there more than most single parents are, and I have no clue how she did it. I remember the bags under her eyes after she came home late from a 15-hour day at her jobs, but I remember the pancakes on Saturday morning. I remember her short fuse at points, but I also remember the hug the next morning when I woke up. My brothers and I agree. Our mom gave us the best possible childhood she could. We had a backyard with a trampoline, a basketball hoop, we always had cable TV, we had a Nintendo the year in came out, and we have great memories of her “being there”.

The years have been hard for our family. After all the long hard years of her raising her boys, she finds out she had Multiple Sclerosis in the mid- 90’s. MS has put her in a wheelchair, and forced her to learn to write with her left hand. Physically my mom is a shell of the women that took me to my first professional basketball game. But, her heart is as big as it has ever been. My mom has watched all three of her boys grow and marry. She has three grandkids and a divorcee baby boy. She struggles with her physical body. There is anger under the surface when she can’t physically do what she once could. There is hurt when she can’t “be there” for her boys or for their kids.
My mother is so beautiful. The years have robbed her of walking, but the Lord has given her strength to live when most would have given up. I love my mom more than I realize. I have her nose, I have her thick hair, and her pail skin. But more than anything, I have her love no matter how much I screw up. I will never forget the phone call when I told her that I was getting divorced. The mom inside her started to cry and was at a loss for words. The women that went through the fire of a divorce got angry and tried to “get me through it”. But the mother in her won that fight, and we cried together. I could feel her love on the back of my head (it felt like one of her hugs, when she reaches up from her chair and pulls me close with her hand on my head). I love my mom. I love her for “being there”.

Happy Birthday To Me!

So, it is officially my birthday. I am now 24 years old. It has been a long journey since my last birthday. I sometime feel like I am 40 years old. My back hurts when I wake, and my heart weighs more than it should.

But I am as thankful as I can ever remember being in my life. I am so thankful for my family, and the support that they have shown me (even when they haven't agreed with my actions). I have a wonderful mother who has done more for me than I will ever know. I have three brothers that bless me more than I could ever tell them. And I have some good friends that do everything they can to make this boy feel as good about himself as possible.

There is a lot that I could blab on and on about, but I won't. I am glad that this past year in my life is over, but I am thankful for the things that the Lord has shown me. I have a smile on my face, because there is hope for me! Thank you Lord for being who you are... even if I don't fully understand all that you are. I am glad to be me! Thank you, to all those that have helped me get to this birthday! You are blessing to an undeserved kid!

"Touch'em All Kirby, Touch'em All"

I have been contemplating blogging about this for a long time now. On May 7th, Kirby Puckett passed away from a stoke. He was 45.

In 1990, I became a baseball fan. I was at the age when boys truly start to understand the rules of the game. While I enjoyed the season that year; the following year I became a Minnesota Twins fan. That season I remember watching the Twins play the White Sox a million times, and I saw them beat the stuffing out of the Royal's every time they stepped on the field.
I have never been very athletic, and height has never been associated with my name. So imagine my surprise to find out short fat kids can play baseball too. I watch Kirby Puckett knock the cover off almost every ball pitched to him, and jump over the wall in center field to make a catch. He was shorted than the rest of the players, and he wasn't the skinniest guy on the field. I was inspired. In my mind I had a chance to make it to the "big game". That year I watched the Twins win the World Series and Kirby had a great series. From that season on I have been a Twins fan, and Kirby was my hero.

What captured me more than his ability on the diamond, was his heart off the field. Kirby was constantly being named "Man of the Year" by the league for his work in the community. He was always in the hospitals visiting kids with cancer, or starting his own foundation for underprivileged kids. His smile was as famous as the great catches he made. He was a great player, and a better person.

Kirby's career was cut short by an eye condition, and he became...Well, to be honest, fat. He gained a lot of weight, and it showed as he gave his Hall of Fame speech when he was inducted in 2001. Shortly after his induction, he and his wife divorced. Sports Illustrated ran a big story on Kirby after he assaulted a lady in a restraunt. The story told of Kirby's affair with a women that lasted during his marriage and it also told of his "true" feelings about the charitable work. He hated it. He hated spending time with the kids. Kirby never commented about the article, but he no longer helped in the Twins front office. And, he was no longer the face of the organization. I was in college when I read this article. It broke my heart. The image that I held of him was broken.
I remained a Twins fan, but I stopped talking about how great of a guy Kirby was. When I watched ESPN break the story of his death, I was little busted up. I always knew that any person that is put on a petalstool will let you down, but when he died I felt bad for the way I totally dismissed him as a person because of a magazine article. No matter how he felt about the charitable work he did, he still did the work. He still did mountains of good for the kids in his community. He never went to the media to complain about "the organization" or his team mates. He played for the Twins his whole career, even when it was becoming popular to play the free agent market. The kids that he visited still found hope even if he felt the inconvenience of his time.

I am a fan of Kirby Puckett. He was a great player, and did more good for the people he came in contact with than I have attempted to do. I am still a Twins fan, even though I have never stepped foot in Minnesota. Hero's can let us down in the ways Jesus never will... but I don't know if Jesus ever played baseball (please understand the humor of tat statement, do no take that seriously). I am thankful for the life of Kirby Puckett. He meant a lot to me as a kid who knew he would never reach the majors, but still loved the game. I played sports because I saw it was okay to be on the field even if I wasn't most athletic. He made it easy to watch a full nine inning of ball.
Thanks Kirby.

My Brother Became My Brother

My oldest brother, Stan, lost his job over a month ago. He was building planes for a living. It was the job that he dreamed of having when he graduated from college. But, the bottom fell out and the world slapped him in the face, again. This new free time that has been given to him has offered him lots of time to think, and time to be with his young daughter. My brother has not led a charmed life by any measure.
When he was young he was constantly sick, and he even slipped into a comma for a small period. Later in his childhood, he watched my parents go trough a painful divorce. His father faded from his life, and he was forced helped my mother raise his two younger brothers. He didn’t have much time to deal with his emotions for himself. Instead for learning how to be himself, he had to help his brothers grow up. Stan went through his high school days very angry and confused about what his life meant. I watched Stan at his high school graduation come face to face with the man that he hadn’t called dad in a long time. Our father had made the trip to Texas from Florida, with his “new” family, to watch his oldest son graduate. There was a lot that both felt they needed to say to each other, but none of the words where said that night.
As Stan continued to live his life with a chip on his shoulder, he went through different jobs and different girlfriends. Life never made total sense to him. He could never understand why his life had unfolded the way had. After making the move to go to school in Waco, his long time girlfriend left him. He was left with nothing left to do except study, work, and try to forget the overwhelming feeling of rejection that life had been giving him for about 20 years.
Stan met the girl that eventually became his wife. Life didn’t become any easier when they learned that they had a baby on the way. His wife had a history of loosing a child during a pregnancy, so they braced themselves for a long nine months of uncertainty. They didn’t make it nine months, and Skylar Freeman was born a couple months premature. Over the next couple of months, Stan watched as his daughter fought for her life. Fast forward, a couple of years and Skylar has the biggest blue eyes and the goofiest grin found in the state of Texas. In this past year, Stan came face to face once again with the man that he had grown to hate. The three Freeman brothers drove to the home of their father. Making that drive, Nathan and I had no idea what would happen. When we arrived at the house, I prayed for Stan. I asked the Lord to move in the heart for these two men. And he did. There was laughter and tears of healing between a father and his oldest son. When we drove away, I heard Stan use the word “dad”.
All of these events lead to the defining moment in Stan’s life last weekend. Because he was out of work and had a world of time on his hands, my mother ushered Stan to a Christian retreat. I have spent hours and hours talking with Stan about the Lord. I have listened to Stan question the hurt in his life, and ask hard questions about the nature of our Creator.
Last night I called Stan to see how his weekend went. I listened as my brother talked to me about how the Holy Spirit moved in his heart. He spoke of humility and thankfulness. Over the weekend, my brother received the free Salvation that Jesus created on the cross. My brother became my brother in Christ. Now time can’t stop our relationship. I don’t know a lot about Heaven. Nevertheless, I believe we will know our family and friends when we get there. I am thankful for the Lord not giving up on Stan. I am hopeful that the life Stan will lead will be filled with great moments of following the Lords Will for him as a father and husband. I hope he is able to watch Skylar grow up, follow Christ, and chase her dreams.
I will say it again, because it fills me with joy, STANLEY FOWLER FREEMAN JR IS A BORN AGAIN FOLLOWER OF THE RISEN JESUS CHRIST! Thank you Lord!