“The Battlefields are proving grounds for a man. If he has nothing to fight for, he dies for nothing, and has nothing to live for. His life is a barren wasteland. Woe is he.”

Seventy years ago, if a man was called to fight and go to war, all it took was the drop of a hat and there he was. Vietnam saw draft dodgers and draft card burnings. That generation of men never learned what it meant to fight. The ones that did, returned disillusioned that their acts were detested by the general public who was advocating for peace, love and all that happy-high-hippie-crap. Truth-be-told, I wanted to enlist. I was instead steered away by my doting mother and encouraged to go the “traditional and safe” route by going to college after high school.

It wasn’t until I realized my identity as a warrior type years later that I realized why the Marines was so appealing. These days, warrior types have a negative stigma attached to them as being too aggressive, violent, meat-heads, rash, simpletons, etc.

My battlefield is the classroom. It is full of challenges that must be overcome. My mind is the weapon as well as the pen. My attitude is aggressive and unbending. Rest comes later. Completion of my mission objectives takes center stage.

When I pray, I am fighting relentlessly.

“The Battlefields are proving grounds for a man. If he has nothing to fight for, he dies for nothing, and has nothing to live for. His life is a barren wasteland. Woe is he.”

In some weird way, I consider a racecar driver to be somewhat of a warrior. no, not nascar. I’m talking about rally driving on dirt road courses over mud, dirt, ice, snow, and everything in between. It’s one way that I can explain my need and desire to drive fast and to always over-take others on the roads. Risk/reward. High risk = high reward. zoom zoom!

My war will last my whole life, and I will fight many battles between now and the end. I will give a valiant effort. I will tire, but not relent. I know my mission, goals, tasks, and objectives. I know why I’m fighting, who I’m fighting for, and what I want from my victories.

I will not relent. I have too much to live for. The stakes are too high. Mediocrity is my enemy.

Most of it, we forget, but there are a few things that stick with us for better or worse. Most of the time, it’s the negative things that we tend to remember the most, because it is much easier due to our human nature to shame, condemn, criticize, belittle, humiliate, slander, and hurt others. It makes us feel bigger when we can bring someone else down. I’m not condoning this in any way, but being aware of our depraved state is the first step to repenting (simply defined as: turning away from). It’s these mean-spirited things that we remember, because it is often what is constantly repeated to us over and over by unlikely sources. Friends, family, peers, teachers.

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Bull-$###!

Words are some of the most hurtful weapons that people have to hurl at one another. Break my arm and it hurts, but, my body will heal. Words, enter your ear and into your thoughts affecting your emotions, thus if reinforced often enough will begin to shape your perception and outlook on life and will ultimately shape your responses to your circumstances.

I recall several instances where a timely word was spoken to me and it changed the way that I saw and responded to my situation and circumstances. More recently, I recall an instance where a musician spoke a word to me and it just was on point! This guy didn’t even know me, but it was spot on.

Never underestimate the weight of a word spoken from the heart. It may carry more weight than you think it does.

Proverbs 12:25
“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs it down, but a good word makes it glad.”

That was my most recent twitter post tonight. I really hope I can embrace that for myself as I challenge others to heed my own words, I must struggle to heed my own wisdom. It’s no easy endeavor.

It’s a challenge for me to be hopeful. Day after day, healing comes; slowly but surely it comes. What has been heavy on me feels like a lot, but it’s only a couple of what feels like ‘heavy items’. Not having a steady job stinks. Not having steady income stinks. Not having money means I couldn’t do summer school like I would have liked to. Oh well.

yeah, oh well. That’s my response. I can devote time to the things that are meaningful to me. I get to practice trombone. I need to stop sleeping so late everyday so I can workout in the mornings and feel better overall. I get to spend a decent amount of hours in the House of Prayer each week. I’ve been to two Dodger games in the past week. I need to come out of my cave more often, but that means spending money on gas and food and drinks…. I’m digressing. I have time to read for pleasure!!! I have LOTS of time to write. Now, if I can force myself to fall asleep before 2am each night, I’ll be golden!

Day after day, You are faithful
Day after day, You are the same
Day after day, You never let me go
Day after day, and I’m still here.
I have nothing to worry about.

I will write ONE song this summer.

When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!

and I wait…

Fathers are men, and men are FAR from perfect. This day is a day where I think about the kind of Father that I’d like to be to my future children, someday.

That someday today, feels like a long way off, but by the time it happens, hopefully I will not be caught off-guard with my hands at my sides.

I’ve found my love for trombone and for jazz, again. I’ve never felt like this before, not since my studies in Heidelberg. Something is seriously at work in me, and I truly give thanks to God for awakening this within me. I want to let it grow! I want to light the world on fire with trombone!

I’m excited for tour, in which I depart in one and a half hours. I’m excited for what God has in store. I’m excited for the relationships that I cultivate. That second part excites me, since I’m a commuter, extended opportunities to bond are few and far between for me, so this is pretty exciting. Granted, I did this last year, I know that this year will be nothing short of God ordained.

Just finished writing my Mother’s day card. nothin’ but respect! They go way beyond the call of duty. Appreciate. Respect.

Sacrifice to me has always meant relinquishing control or yielding something I feel entitled to over to another. It’s a sacrifice to put the welfare of others before yourself. It’s a sacrifice to spend your hard earned money on someone else. It’s a sacrifice to provide for another. It’s a sacrifice to spend excessive amounts of time to a cause or another person. It’s a sacrifice to give our efforts and energies to something beyond ourselves.

When the seas of life get rough, we do what the disciples did when they were crossing the sea, we panic ad go nuts in dismay amidst the struggles and surrounding chaos. We rely on our own efforts and energies and what we can do physically in the natural to help ourselves (exercising self-preservation). I’m not saying we should abandon all hope of a rescue or deliverance, but shouldn’t our first strategy for self-preservation be to go beyond ourselves and ask Jesus to help us? Ultimately, that’s what happened. Jesus calmed the storm and then rebuked the disciples for their lack of faith.

It’s difficult to not wish that certain parts of our lives weren’t just a little bit easier to get through. But we’re not just supposed to get through it, we’re supposed to be triumphant over these circumstances and situations and struggles.

An easy victory is meaningless, just like beating a 5 year old in basketball if you have even as little as a two year age advantage.

Choosing to praise God amidst troubles, struggles, and less-than-ideal circumstances is a great sacrifice. It’s a humbling thing, really. I don’t have anywhere close to half the answers, but need to rely on God to deliver me and to speak to me as to how I should go about this. Make no mistake, God can do anything, but if we are adamant about sitting on our hands, waiting for God to make everything disappear, we’ve got another thing coming. He’s God, the Alpha and Omega, the great I AM, not a magician/illusionist. If God says something to us by way of a strategy for our deliverance, WE MUST ACT! Sitting on our hands will get us no where fast. God delivered the Jewish people out of Egypt, but they had to actually leave on their own efforts. They did not suddenly get teleported out of there.

“Beam me up, Scotty!”

*whooo0000o0oooSssssshhhhhh*

nope, not gonna happen like that, sorry.

Praise is sacrifice. Praise exalts God and lifts His name and brings glory and attention to Him. He is a jealous God. The creator of the universe demands our praises and exaltations unto Him. To magnify our problems bigger than our God is a sin and folly on our parts. There is nothing to great for our God; no circumstance, no problem, no sin, nothing. Lifting our problems to a higher place than where Christ sits is actually idolatry, even though this idol manifested in the form of problem/struggle/etc is a pain in our side.

Oddly enough, it’s been really hard to worship in this season. Circumstances can seem so big and looming. It’s just what we do, we retreat away from the source. It’s part of our sin nature that is prideful and says that we can figure it out for ourselves. Or, it is the part of us that would just rather stew in our present circumstances and believe that this is our lot in life, that there is nothing beyond this.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. There is hope. It’s Passover season approaching Good Friday and Easter. Find hope and be restored.

With that said, this is my struggled to be transparent in my writing while still wanting to be edifying and an encouragement to those who find their way here.

Have you ever marveled at the phenomenon that is inspiration? It can come as suddenly as a spring rain. It happened to me recently and has brought renewal to my spirit. Every once in a while I find myself re-reading something and it affects me in a brand new way, or I watch/listen to something and it has that same power. We get in these ruts as we walk down our paths in life, with our pursuits on our minds, in our hands and on our beating hearts. It only takes one voice to encourage us to keep going or to back down. It’s in these ruts where we tend to forget why we do what we do, whether that’s create beautiful art, music, or just have a passion and zeal for life. It is from this place that we realign ourselves with our vision and acquaint ourselves with those encouraging voices once again, whether it’s God, a teacher, an author, or an article that we’ve once read. We have to revisit and reconnect with that which originally inspired us.

I need to reconnect with my First Love. I am not satisfied with my prayer life. Circumstances may discourage me but in the end, God wants my time and attention, not just my acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is a cheap way of giving your attention to God. An agnostic can acknowledge God, but as ones who want to spend time in the presence of God and minister to the throne, acknowledgement is insufficient. It’s barely enough to keep you alive and certainly not enough to keep one thriving.

Musically, I’ve been trying to find my voice on trombone, among other things. I watched a video that I found a long time ago from a clinic that Bill Watrous did some years ago, and was renewed. The things he said were much more profound and were much more digestible than they were when I first watched it. Even listening to other great jazz musicians has been really good. I can hear things much better than I thought I could.

I suppose you could say that until now, JOY was lacking in my life. It’s not a feeling, but a state of being. Humility and gratitude are part of joy, but, the obvious one childlike joy and wonderment has eluded me. But as I say this, joy is not something to be pursued (happiness), but joy is a state of being. I find it odd that others can see this on me, but I can’t see it in me because I certainly don’t feel like I’m walking daily in this joy.

All in all, I’m grateful for the life I’m permitted to live. While, at times it is less than ideal, it is shaping me moment by moment and day by day to be who I need to be.

tempered steel goes through refinement and purification.

If I choose to sleep in, I am choosing to not start my day earlier and put off simple tasks for later, when I will most likely be tired and less willing or happy to be doing them. If I choose to practice for a few solid hours straight, I am saying that my practicing for that chunk of time is more important or of a higher priority than anything else I could be doing. If I choose instead of going out on a Saturday night to stay home and pray, it means I value impacting the spiritual atmosphere more than I do about having a good time. If I choose to date a particular girl for a length of time, I am saying ‘no’ to those countless others (however few or many there may be).

Jesus, the son of God, the one who lived in absolute purity, chose submission to His Heavenly Father (God), and to die a death of defilement so that we might have a chance to be redeemed. He took on sin and death and emerged victorious.

He made a choice. He could have said no. He could have rebelled.

John Wooden changed the lives of those who knew him profoundly.

Did I ever meet Coach Wooden in person? nope. Shoot, I don’t even play basketball anymore. I haven’t played basketball in a few years. I don’t even take an avid interest in the NBA anymore. NCAA basketball is what excites me.

So who was Coach Wooden to me in my life and how did he enter my life?

Coach wrote a book, Wooden: A LIfetime of Observations On and Off the Court. I was presented this book as a gift from my dad that I was to share with my brother. I’m not sure he ever read it, but I won’t say that he didn’t, since I don’t really know. This book was given to me at a time in my life where basketball was the center of my happiness. LIfe was all about watching NBA games, and playing HORSE, and playing pickup games with friends on the blacktops.

I had never heard of John Wooden before that book came into my possession, but I was itching to read it, since it dealt with basketball. But my dad wrote something on the inside cover to the tune of, this book is more than just about basketball. As a basketball-crazed-seventh grader, some of coaches ideas and teachings resounded and were easily absorbed and digested, while others were still far too lofty for my immature mind to handle. No worries. I didn’t just read that book once. In fact, this was the first book that I owned that I actually “marked up”. I was writing little things in the margins and highlighting stuff. Most people do this in college with their own textbooks and more commonly with Bibles. In seventh grade, I sure as heck wasn’t reading the Bible, let alone marking up a book. It would be almost five years before I would find myself reading the Bible. Coach’s book made a profound impact on me.

Coach’s teachings helped me understand the world and the people in it and how I was supposed to behave in it. I loved the section in the back of the book dedicated to Coach’s favorite maxims to live by. These are his famous one-liners that everyone (and myself) love to quote over and over again.

Not making the freshman basketball team was great for me. It showed me that I had absolutely no business on a basketball court playing for my school. From that moment on, Coach’s book ceased to be about basketball, but about character development and leadership.

High school marching band started. I was fit and in shape and band wasn’t physically taxing on me, at least not as bad as it was for others. I was also very prideful and high strung. Pair this problem with obvious talent, and its a classic recipe for disaster. My section leader, Bill Luo took me aside one day after like, the third day of school, and said, “Hey, you and I both know already that you’re the only one good enough who can be section leader next year. You have an attitude problem and it needs to be fixed, FAST.” I’d like to tell you that this is a grotesque exaggeration of my interpretation of what he said, but no. That was exactly what he said. And because I had already begun my Wooden digest, I was able to accept that truth without offense and knew that changing my character that drastically wasn’t going to happen over night. It changed enough for me to land the new leadership title, but striving for more patience was always something I knew was a weak spot. In hindsight, patience is the ability to extend a given amount of grace to an individual in a given situation revolving around a particular set of circumstances.

Coach’s teachings are straight up Biblical. No, he doesn’t recite scripture, but this book that I’ve read now at least eight times is the reason I love reading the book of Proverbs out of my Bible so much. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if that was Coach’s favorite book in the Bible either.

Coach’s book helped me get through a lot of unfavorable experiences in high school as well, both academically and personally. He really was first a teacher before a basketball coach. Basketball was never the end all, but the chosen vehicle to deliver his wisdom and teachings.

Don’t even get me started on the pyramid. That’s a whole other writing in itself.

You’re with Nellie again, Coach. You’re reunited with your beloved.

Wednesday, the group went to Schwetzingen to visit the Schlossgarten. Andrea was leading us around the gardens and Vivian and Adam were in tow… literally. Most of us spent time taking turns carrying them around the garden grounds. Adam spent most of his time sitting on my shoulders. Every time he wanted back on, he’d yell my name and then yell, “SHOULDERS”. haha. Towards the end, he got really quiet and he actually fell asleep sitting on my shoulders! Adorable. He’s a handful, but a child at rest is relief. Some of us stayed behind after and had dinner at a restaurant with Tim, Andrea, Vivian, and Adam. Schnitzel was amazing! White asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. Sehr gut!

Thursday, I finished buying gifts for people. I finished packing my bags. Finishing the paper on the plane since I’ll have nothing else to do anyway and not much of it left to do. The final banquet at the Schloss was lots of fun. Great food, lots of laughs and some good heartfelt sentiments were shared. It was a great final conclusion to an awesome semester.

Did all this really happen? Was this even real? It sure didn’t feel like it was real life at all. I feel like I was on a [busy] holiday semester and now I’m faced with returning to real life. I just finished living three straight months of my life in Germany. And now I’m going back to what was routinely familiar.

Heidelberg, I vow to return one day, and not alone.