Close But No Cigar (Part II)

I was just coming off of a very successful tour and the first real one of our band's still very young career. I was feeling bright and airy about the future. I didn't take that mouse falling as any bad sign. After all God has never really spoken to me in that fashion. It's always been in a much more subtle fashion so I didn't think much of it. However, I ended up only playing one more show with that band. Haymaker straight to my unclenched jaw. Life, which only months prior was so loving to me, just sent me to the mat unconscious.  It's not worth getting into why I'm no longer in the band since we're all still very good friends; so why dig up an event that none of us likes to think about? But by mid-February I was no longer doing something I loved and something I had so much of my heart and dreams invested in. Right before it really ramped up. Right before we flew to Europe for a tour. Close but no cigar. This life event sent me into my first real bout with depression. I thought I had experienced it before but now but, because of this instance, I now know I have and I never want to go back there. It didn't help that it was winter and it didn't help that I didn't have a job. Many days I would get out of bed just to go to the living room, curl back up in a blanket and just watch Netflix until it got dark and then just went back to bed.

The Year of Close But No Cigar raged on with a lot of things in my life. I eventually got a job working construction for a few months and then a job as a barista at a bakery. They paid the bills and weren't awful, but they weren't anything exciting really. I turned 24 years old in April, officially in my mid-20s and what did I have to show for it. At that point I was single, poor, and working a part time job. If you know me any kind of well you know my real only definition of "success" in my life would be to have a family, a wife and kids, and be able to provide for them. It may seem like a life-given, and a basic and attainable thing but that's what I want. My love life has always been very up and down and has only resulted in one real relationship in my adulthood. 2014 was no different. I went on dates, I talked to girls and I thought I was close to something a few times. I guess just close but no cigar.

Then I got an offer from my friends in The Color Morale to go on Warped Tour with them to sell merch. I jumped at the opportunity because I love touring so much no matter what job I have while out on the road. I love Warped Tour and this summer was a shining light in an otherwise dark year. But even this light was fairly dim. As much as I loved the tour and the summer, everyday was riddled with what could of been. Mainly because on the tour was the band I used to play in. I was on Warped again but not in the fashion I thought I would be. At the Cincinnati date I joined them on stage and performed a song called "Dead." Realistically the oldest song we had as a band. I realize now that this was a turning point in my year. As I write this I'm struck with how symbolic the title of the song is. Dead were the the things I did the year before. Not a despicable death but finally laying them to rest. I wasn't immediately cured of all poor feelings because, as most deaths, there is a mourning period. And if you really loved something it will always be with you surfacing every so often. But my negative feelings and sadness were beginning to lift. Life may have knocked me down but I was starting to pick myself up off the mat.

While I was out for the summer the lease on my place back home ran out and Jesse and my dad moved us out of our place and put all of my things into a storage unit. For the next four months I lived on peoples couches and out of my car. I can't thank God enough for putting people into my life that would let me do this. I am very blessed. However, over this four month period that felt like an eternity, I was constantly looking for places to live. No matter what house I found, though, things kept falling through. Whether it was more expensive than I thought, whether it was in a worse neighborhood than I thought, whether it was smaller than I thought, or even whether if one of my potential roommates had to bail, something kept getting in the way of moving into a new place.

This was not my first time living by the grace of my friends so I was very aware that I could learn a lot from this season in my life. Once I got beyond the bitterness of yet another roadblock in me achieving anything desirable in this mess of a year things started looking up. I made it my goal to get my mind to a place that wasn't hinging on the circumstances in my life. It's funny how my life the past three years has centered around revelations surrounding this verse:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths." - Proverbs 3: 5-6

I was reading a portion of Donald Miller's book, "Father Fiction," the other day. He goes into the loving nature of God our father. With the analogy of our earthly fathers relating to their children. Just because a child wants something does not mean it is good for him. Just because I asked my dad for a plate of chocolate chip cookies doesn't mean he had to give them to me. And if I disobeyed and reached up myself he would more than likely slap my hand away. Not because he's mean or doesn't love me but because he knows if I eat a whole batch of chocolate chip cookies I would soon be ralphing it all up from a sugar overkill. And if I was able to sneak one behind his back and he found out then I was for sure headed for time out. This whole year was full of me asking God for things, and wondering why he kept teasing me with these things and taking them away from me. When I really look back he wasn't teasing. He tried to remove these things in my life that were not good for me and I still pursued them and was able to get close to them myself. Until ultimately, when my hand got close to the cookies, he would slap my hand back.

Those punches I thought I was taking this year were just his guiding hand slapping me back into place. And some of these dark times I went through was me just being put into time out. I always forget this and have to relearn it when I come back to these adversities, but sometimes God needs to cut off some of the branches from your tree of life because they are detrimental to your well being. It will hurt, it can be seemingly catastrophic but it is to remove the things infecting you.

I have a really great job now that I never thought I would be doing and could never do if I was still touring. That's not to say I'll never go on the road again because who really knows but I'm stable now. I live in a nice place with two of my very good friends and I'm comfortable now. I'm happy again. It's been a long year and a dark one a that. I learned a lot about myself and how strong I can be. I can never thank God or my friends and family enough for helping me through this past year and putting up with me. I'm not ready to throw a return punch yet but I'm not laying on the mat anymore.

"Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." - 1 Thessalonians 5: 18

Thank you and God bless.

Close But No Cigar (Part I)

I learned how to take a punch considerably early in my life. And, in a weird way, for that I am thankful. Not because I knew that I could fight or defend myself; if I never have to take or throw a punch ever again I'll be eternally grateful. But more so for the fact that it taught me that pain, for the most part, is temporary. And it taught me that something that could be so loving could, in an instant, knock you down. This past year has been one haymaker of a punch after another. Thankfully not in the literal form, however that, more than likely, would be an easier occurrence to deal with.

One of my best friends, Jesse, has this tradition for New Year's. It's not anything he can control, and it's not something he does, but it's an overwhelming feeling that washes over him. Every year, either on New Year's Eve or the week leading up to it he gets some sort of sign of a name or title for the year to come. You could say it's more of a theme of how the year will be laid out. In the past he had a year named, "The Year of Flight." Subsequently, that year he flew all over the country, traveling a lot in order to visit a ton of family and friends he hadn't seen in quite some time. Another year the year was named "The year of Unexpected Surprises." This year his whole life changed when he got offered an amazing job 2,000 miles away from home. So knowing this about him, and how the years almost always played out the way he would prophesy, I decided I would open myself up to a name for the upcoming year. Now these years are not always good obviously, because who's life is actually like that? So almost half and half Jesse has had both optimistic and ominous year monickers. For instance, "The Year of Sickness and Loneliness," was a year in which he battled many illnesses, physical and mental, all while being miles and miles away from anyone he grew up with or was intimately close to.

With that knowledge in hand I still sought after a banner to live under for the next year. Usually these names come to you as signs, in our case, passed down from God. I know some of you reading this might not believe in a God or a christian God or whatnot, but just pretend its the universe passing down these signs, or however you choose to interpret these supernatural occurrences. But it's after long periods of prayer with God in which you are talking with him about the last year of your life and discussing the impending uncertainty of the year lying before you. I prayed to God earnestly. I tried to be optimistic and turn His influence of the new year's title to something good for me. I had a very intense prayer session the night before New Year's Eve in an attempt to open up my eyes to whatever signs were going to come my way. My friend received his sign for the year of flight after he was driving and praying for the name of the new year and witnessed a hawk fly across the front of his car and almost hit his windshield and new that was his sign. I left the next morning after my night of prayer to run some errands before the festivities of the day got underway. And, I kid you not, right when I turned onto the main street near the house me and Jesse shared I saw this hawk swoop down over my car. It flew across the street hovering not much higher than the vehicles on the street and turned and headed the same direction as my car. It flew inches off the grass of the front lawns of the houses lining the road. It was keeping right in time with me and, as responsibly as I could while driving, I just watched him intently. Then all of the sudden if reached down and snagged a mouse right out of the grass and began to fly off with it.

At this point I was considerably pleased with what this meant for my year. God had used the same sign he used with my friend but this time in an even more forceful manner. The band I was in was beginning to take off and we had tours already scheduled all over the world for 2014. I knew God was showing me that my year was going to be full of flying all over the place and grabbing life by its meat and not letting go. Then, in the split second that my human brain could process all this, in the middle of all my elation, the hawk dropped the mouse. It must've not had a firm grip on it and it just fell right from it's claws. My heart sank a little. However, life was looking good, and there was still a hawk flying with my car, a sign that made for a positive looking year. I just felt sad for the hawk and said to myself, "Close but no cigar." Man if I just knew I was naming my year.

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Part II of this blog will be coming later tonight.

Thank you and God bless.