Weakness at the Taco Bell

I saw you today. I do not know who you are. I do not know your name, but I saw you. In the movie "Avatar" the natives would say to each other "I see you". This carried with it far more than what is happening optically. It conveyed a sense of really seeing somebody- seeing their essence, acknowlidging that they had a deep understanding and acceptance of who the other person was. 

So, I saw you today. The first thing I heard was your voice. I was reading, eating my chalupa (say it with me, it's fun- chalupa!) when the simple sound of your voice caught my attention. I was reading a book, as I usually am at lunch, and your voice tore me away from what I was reading and quite deeply engrossed in. The sound of your voice told me that there was something unique about you. 

The term "handicapped" or "special" have most likely been thrown at you all your life. When I saw you, I knew right away that you weren't normal, as most of us would define normal. Do you know you touched my heart? As to why I cannot say. Your weakness, what you are lacking, is plain to everyone who lays eyes on you. You cannot hide from it, can you? 

Instantly I wondered what it must be like to be you. How often have you heard insulting remarks? How often have children, in their ignorance stare or point? Is it daily that you are mocked or made fun of? For surely much of the human race ridicules that which is different or doesn't understand. 

What must it be like to live encased in a body like that? Broadcasting weakness and your difference everywhere you go? I also couldn't help but wonder if you are even aware when others talk or stare at you. 

A couple of thoughts emerged in my mind.

She reflects the very image of God. 

Could there be anything greater than bringing joy to someone like that? Someone who lives a life that I will never be even slightly able to comprehend? 

Before I know it tears are fillling my eyes and I am feeling very silly. Who cries at a Taco Bell? Because they saw a handicapped person? Well, maybe if they had some really hot sauce, but I could not claim that excuse. 

The idea of seeing joy on a face like that suddenly touched me very deeply. 

I did not look long, for doing so is rude. I glanced towards them every once in awhile as she ate her lunch with her mother(?) or caregiver. 

Jesus loved such as these. He lived in a world where those who were "sinners" or disabled were shoved out of society, pushed to the margins, as it were. He found them. He touched them when no one would. He lifted their downcast eyes until they met his. What did they see in his eyes? A sparkle of humor mixed with compassion and love? Acceptance? Can you even begin to imagine what it would be blind your entire life and the first thing you see is Jesus? For some reason, he was attracted to weakness like a moth to a flame. But instead of being destroyed by the flame- like a moth is- he fixed it. The flame of your weakness never scares him away. He has come to heal it. That is why he wants to draw near to you. The flame of your weakness is never greater than his ability to heal it. 

But what of a one such as this? Would Jesus have loved her? Undoubtedly. Would he have healed her? Maybe she doesn't need to be healed. Maybe she was sent here to heal something in us. 

I looked up again and saw her passing by on her way out. Our eyes met. She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling, and she said "hi!". I smiled back- probably as genuine of a smile as I have ever smiled- and she walked out the door. 

Owning the darkness we already possess

by David Tiesma on Wednesday, March 21, 2012 at 10:43pm ·

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There is that which is in us that we despise. We all have it. Something about us that we wish wasn't there. A trait. A quirk. A "glitch" in our personality. If you were given the ability to alter or just plain remove something about your self, what would it be? Perhaps you struggle with anger. You have promised so many times that you wouldn't lash out again. There are patched holes in your walls at home, objects have been broken by you throwing them or destroying them in your briefly uncontrollable rage. 

Or you gossip. You know it's wrong. You cover it up with platitudes. Your make excuses to yourself and to others when you are accused. You are just sharing vital information. Everyone else was talking and you didn't want to seem aloof by not joining in. You tell yourself that everyone needs to vent, and that is all you were doing. But you know better. You are well aware of when you have crossed that line. Something inside you twists when you do. 

Maybe you have an addiction. You aren't an addict of course, no way. You know of other addicts and they are waaaay worse than you are. The old cliche is that addicts always say they can quit anytime they want, but for you, it's true. Or you desperately need others to believe that about you. Because you really don't believe it of yourself. When others do bring it up, you just tell them that you are a passionate person, you just like to have fun and you aren't really hurting anybody. But in your most quiet moments, you are terrified of what you are becoming and how far you might sink into that which holds you. 

Whatever your darkness is, you know very well what it is. And you despise it. 

Have you even railed against God regarding this? Have you begged and pleaded and bargained with him to change you? To take it away forever? How many times have you promised your loved ones that you would never, never do IT again? 

Promises like those are usually made by those with more noticeable "darkness". But do not kid yourselves. Darkness is darkness. We all have the propensity to do evil. Or to put it in religious terms, "sin". Although we really don't like that word very much, do we? 

Please hear me out. The waters are going to get a little rough here. You might not like what I am going to say in the next few paragraphs, but I will bring it back around and I believe there is a very powerful truth at the end of this. 

The easy thing to do is to call this darkness sin. If that is the case, we religious folk sure have the answer for you! Depending on the flavor of Christianity you like, we have a prepackaged solution for you. 

Go to confession-pray more-read the Bible more-have more faith-get delivered-pray against it-fast-go to the altar and have one of the pastors (preferably the most well known one) lay hands on you and pray-meditate-have more solitude-memorize certain verses- and the list could go on and on. 

I am not criticizing any of those things. I have experienced many of them and have been helped by them. But what happens when they don't change you? you know of what I speak. Or many of you do. You still struggle with THAT. Maybe nobody knows. Maybe everybody knows. (welcome to my world, by the way) Maybe you have it under control, for now, but you still feel it trying to rear it's ugly head sometimes and you are so scared that it will again assert it's control over your life. And you can't have that, can you?

What if you aren't supposed to get rid of it? Don't get me wrong. I am not talking about the action that stems from the "darkness". But what if at the core, what you see as darkness isn't really darkness at all? 

In fact, what if God put it there in the first place? What if it was intentionally supposed to be a gift? 

Let's establish some parameters that might help as we dive into what I am trying to say.

Sin is always bad. 

God never tempts us to sin. 

He never causes us to sin. 

We are not what we do, but we have to accept what we do and deal with the consequences. 

As some of you might know from some of my earlier writings, I define who you really are as your "essence". I believe that God thought of who you really  are. He came up with the idea for "you" long before you were ever even conceived. you were meant to exist. Your essence is different that anyone elses. It also reflects an extremely unique reflection of God. In fact, God chose every one of us to reveal a different facet of who He is. Your true self was God's idea all along. 

The implications of that are stunning. God thought it was vital that existed. He wanted to share something about himself to the rest of the world solely through you. You are needed. You are vital. Inside of you exists a part of the Creator of the universe, for we know we were made in his image. 

When God started the human race, He gave part of Himself to animate the first man. Breath. Spirit. Essence. Essence brought dust to life. And that breath is still in each one of us. How crazy is it to think that every breath that you are breathing right now started when God breathed into Adam?? And when the breath stops, your essence leaves your shell of dust. 

You are not an accident. You were supposed to exist. Just like you really  are. Not the way you are now. But you are not that far from what you are supposed to be! Something horribly tragic has happened to all of us. The grand experiment seems to have failed. God decides each one of us should exist, he gives us a part of HIM, and sets us on our merry ways. 

There are a lot of moving parts here, so let me try and identify them. First, it is vital that we understand that God IS love. That means more than the fact the he does love, or gives love, part of his make-up is love. Read 1st Corinthians chapter 13 for a the best definition of what love really is. One of the key points of love is that it can't be forced. An individual HAS to be able to choose for love to be valid. Love can't be forced. 

I have heard others ask why God has allowed sin at all. Why didn't He just make everything good? Because we had to be allowed to choose. There is a being that would love to force us all to love and obey him and that being is as far from God as you can possibly be. So, when you wish for a universe without choice, you should be happy that you aren't given what you are asking for. 

Love demands choice, which leads us to the slippery topic of free will. We get to choose who and what we will love, or whether we will love at all. We get to choose how we behave. It can feel like we have been set adrift in this universe.You might be saying that maybe we were started by this being, or god, or whatever, but he sure doesn't seem to care much anymore. There is far too much evil to believe that God is really good. Even if you don't believe this you have heard this. The answer to all this is not simple, and I believe this touches on the answer, but the intent of this essay is not to explore that in depth. 

Let's go back to this concept of essence. There are over 3 billion people in the world right now. I just counted them all. Seriously, can you imagine how many billion have ever existed? And they all had/have this essence, this piece of God? One of the incredible things about God is that He is not diminished when He gives Himself away. I think it actually increases Him. Now I believe that the essence that you have in you desperately wants to go back to it's source. It wants to go back home. To be in the presence from which it emanated. Forever. And this is God's intent as well. 

Can you even imagine what this is like? You can if you are a parent. A little piece of yourself walking around. A part of you. Of course God invented families. He started the whole process, didn't he? 

Here we all are. Little experiments, if you will. Carbon based creatures that are somehow distinct on this little planet floating in this big huge mysterious universe. We are this crazy mixture of passion, free will, desire, mistakes, intelligence, decisions and experiences. And at the core of it all we have this essence longing to reconnect with our Creator. 

Some call it their drive. Or their gift. I believe that many have just mislabeled what their essence is. Especially if they have chosen not to believe in God. But it is undeniably there. Remember the last time you were doing something that you absolutely love to do? Do you remember the last time you were fully alive? Do you remember how that felt? That is you living out of your essence. You doing what you werecreated to do. 

Now don't despair. Many of you haven't felt that very strongly. At least not in any way that you could be as bold to say you were fully alive. But you have felt the stirrings of it. In fact, if you are feeling a little down about not having had this experience, that is your longing for something more. And that means it is there. 

You can only truly be who you are in God. For he thought of you. Of course this would be true! You will be the happiest and experience the purest joy when you are living out of your essence. And that is only through a vibrant relationship with the one who thought you should exist in the first place. But when you deviate from who you were really meant to be, you will feel less alive (in the long run). That is why God will thwart it. He wants us to stay away from anything that doesn't bring life. And only HE brings life. He loves to much to let us live in lies but also loves us enough to choose. Again, to really be love there must be choice. This leads me to my next point and this is a big one. 

We have an enemy. And he despises you. The main reason why is that he knows what you bear inside of you. To loosely quote Aragorn from The fellowship of the Ring from the Lord of the Rings trilogy "Are you frightened? Not nearly enough. I know what it is that hunts you." (yes, I know, I am a nerd) In that epic series, the heroes are hunted for what they possess. Something that is powerful, something the enemy wants to use for his own destructive purposes. 

Your enemy, Satan, Beelzebub, the devil, I don't care what you call him, but he loathes our Creator. he wants to destroy him but does not have near the power to do so. When he sees us however... 

When he looks at you he sees, yup, your essence. That piece of you that comes from God, that expresses God. And THAT he will try to destroy. Here's a piece of good news. He can't destroy that either. And now the bad news. You have a choice to disbelieve all of this. You can prevent your essence from what it desires most- to be re-united with it's source. 

As I said before, we are all a bundle of choices and energy and passion and desire. Our enemy knows this. In order to lead us away from that which gives us life, he seeks to trick us. Hence the aforementioned choice I spoke of. He presents that which looks like life in order to catch our eye. But don't be fooled, his ways always ultimately lead to death. He has been observing humanity from the beginning. Despising us. Looking to hurt God by getting us to choose death. This hurts God in two ways. He aches to watch us suffer and we can be eternally separated from Him. 

What pain! Anyone who has ever had a child or a loved one turn against them knows a little of this suffering. This helps explain why the story of the prodigal son is probably the most famous story Jesus ever told. There are few things more touching than being reunited with one who has spurned you. Ernest Hemingway told a story about a young man named Paco who had become estranged from his father. In order to reconcile with his son, the father put an ad in the paper PACO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA. This story takes place in Madrid where Paco was a common name at the time. 800 young men showed up. Yes, a story, but it rings close to the truth, does it not? 

God begs us to choose Him. Our enemy seeks to destroy the God he sees in us, but first he seeks to use the power we have in us. Yes, that's right. You are so much more powerful than you ever imagined. If only we could see what we are capable of. If we would fully trust and align ourselves with God. We would be unstoppable. Who or what could stand against us? But our enemy is crafty. He knows and exploits our love for rest, ease and pleasure. This is crazy to me, but the love of those things isn't sin. 

In fact, God PROMISES some of those very things! He invented pleasure! The problem with all this is that God promises these things in His own way and in his own timing. We chafe against anything that says we can't have what we want, when we want, how we want it. Right? What has happened is that the enemy has hijacked our desires. He offers us immediate gratification, which ultimately ends in death. A life of misery and loneliness. An emptiness that can't, or won't be filled. Because we are trying to fill a round hole with a square peg. 

You dont' have to look very hard to discover we live in a messed up world. And the enemy starts in on us early, trying to get us to contribute to the brokenness of our world. he starts by telling us lies. Lies that we start to believe. Lies that lead us away from who we really are. But he is not stupid. He custom fits the lies. They don't usually lead us in the opposite direction of our essence. More of a slightly parallel course that slowly deviates away. After all, who would willingly choose death from the beginning. No, it usually takes a few years of believing the lies to want to give in and think death is the only viable alternative. 

One of the saddest things is to see somebody who thinks the lies are who they really are. What are your lies? I used to teach a class that dealt with discovering who you really are and how God feels about you and how you feel about yourself. In one of the sessions, we talked about names. The class was invited to come up and write on a blackboard all the names they had been given that they hated, and sometimes even started to identify with. It was very emotional to watch what happened. It started slowly. I put a few of my own on the board.

Lazy

Stupid

Worthless

There is always the brave first person who decides to be gut level honest. That gives others permission to be honest as well. After about 5-6 minutes the board is pretty full. The words are ugly, painful.

Slut. Ass. Fat slob. Idiot. Stupid.

And so many, many more.

You have some of your own, don't you? What could you add to the list? What are the voices you have heard and believed?

this is not who you are

Read that again.

this is not who you are

This is not what God thought of when he came with the idea of YOU.

But for so long you have believed that it is. You are afraid that you are really a creature of darkness. You believe that you will never fulfill your potential. You will always fail.

No. 

I don't care what you have done wrong. it is not who you are. That darkness I talked about in the beginning of this very lengthy essay? That is something valid inside of you that has been hijacked by the enemy to bring you to death and to try to get you to damage other people. That which has been hijacked is NOT bad, it is NOT sin. It has been given by God to bring you and others joy. 

Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. 

Bring it back to the one who gave it to you in the first place. Trace that consistent, persistent, sometimes overwhelming sin back to the source. From what does it stem? What was the original gift that got warped? Talk to those who know you and that you can trust with a conversation like this with. It might not be an easy talk. But it will be oh so sweet in the end. 

For it will help lead you to who you really are. And that is life like you have never known it. 

You will be able to discover who you really are! And not be ashamed of that. 

I hope you find it. 

And I hope this helps you answer that question of so much importance:

Who are you? 

Foolish dreams

All right, I admit it. This isn't easy for me. But then again, admitting weakness never is. Even though I have seemed to made it a bit of a habit recently by airing certain things through my writing here on Facebook. But sometimes the truth shines its harsh glare in places we would rather keep it from. 

Many of you won't blame me. In fact many of you have done the same. I am sure of it. But last night I simply could not resist. The temptation was powerful and overwhelming. I was caught up in the enthralling combination of hopes, dreams and maybe a little bit of good old-fashioned greed. Yes. It's true. 

If you would have happened to wander into the Jenison Speedway about 9:40 last night, you would have seen my buying...ok, here it goes...don't hate me now...and don't judge. I did indeed buy a lottery ticket last night. 

It feels so good to get that out there. It didn't feel so good to realize this morning that I seem to have no talent at buying lottery tickets. I do feel the need to clarify a bit. I have bought a few scratch and sniff tickets in the past. Oh wait, you aren't supposed to sniff them? That explains why they always smelled so disappointing. That's really not that bad of an idea. They should make losing tickets scented, you know, to ease the pain of failure. 

Dang it! I just threw away $2, but at least I have the fresh smell of strawberries to ease my pain. 

I have very infrequently bought instant win tickets. Once I won $20 and decided to call it quits so that I could claim that I didn't lose money buying tickets. There is a certain joy in "beating the system", and by George, I did it. (Who is George by the way and why do we say that? Oh. You don't. Well la de freakin' la to you) 

Face it though, instant wins are like the marijuana of the lottery game. MegaMillions is the heroin. And I have stayed away, until last night. But last night daddy needed a hit! I mean, seriously. The prize was 359 million dollars. That's MILLION with a capital M and a lot of illions. And I wanted to win. 

I heard it on the radio earlier in the day. Yeah, I know. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning while being attacked by a bear while being shown compassion from a Republican than winning the lottery. I resisted the temptation on the way home. I was strong. But then...

How many spirals into the abyss have started with the words, "but then"? There I was, innocently playing Words with Friends, and it hit me like an epiphany, the cut off time for the sale of tickets was at 10:45. It was 9:15. Was I really going to do this? 

Some of you may not understand my struggle. For one, my father is not a fan of the lottery. What would he say? Could I hide it from him? But I felt I had to say why I was going out so late. So I kind of told my mother sotto voce that I was leaving. She smiled and suggested I buy one for the whole family. 

Get your won ticket woman!!

No, I didn't say that, but I was tempted to. You see the corruptive power of gambling???

I spoke softly, cause even though my father was in the same room, he couldn't hear me while he was watching one of the many crime shows he enjoys watching. This is also something I do not understand. The man will only watch shows involving somebody solving a violent murder or searching to buy a new house. If they ever made a show about a realtor who solves murders, he might die of happiness. Or, he would never talk to any of us again. In which case, WE would die of happiness. Just kidding!!! I love my dad. Mostly. 

My dad was raised Christian Reformed, and there are some things that stick to you more than super glue. One of those things is that "good" Christians do NOT play the lottery. Apparently it means you are not trusting God or that Satan printed the tickets or something of that nature. See, I took it just the opposite. I thought that maybe the urging I was feeling last night was possibly, could be, maybe in some small way was God, urging me to buy a ticket. 

Upon entering the store, I realized that I didn't really know how this worked. Now I have seen other people buy lottery tickets, and upon doing so prayed for the salvation of their immortal souls and then paid for my 32oz Mountain Dew. Ummm. Sugary goodness. But I digress. 

When you walk into the store to buy a lottery ticket for the first time, you should act confident, unafraid. And then wait for all the people in the store to check out first. Like I did.

Who knows? One of them might have been one of those good Christians who resisted temptation and they would have been praying for my soul."Look sir, I see you praying for my  soul, but there is really no need. I don't normally do this. If I win, I promise I'll tithe on it."

As the store emptied out I strolled up (confidently) to the young lady behind the counter. I made the little gun thing with my finger and pretended like I was shooting her while I made that little clicking noise with my tongue and said "How you doin'?" (that's lottery player behavior for those of you who don't know) Maybe that's why she pulled out the pepper spray... Not really. 

I was briefly concerned that they didn't sell that kind of lottery ticket there. So while glancing nervously over my shoulder, to make sure Jesus hadn't walked in while I was sinning, I asked her if they sold "those MegaMillion things" here. She confirmed that they did. And she pointed to a stand holding the forbidden pieces of paper for all the different kinds of self pick tickets. I approached it slowly, wary of it's evil powers. I picked up a piece of paper that said "MegaMillions" on it. 

There were lots of sections and lots and lots of numbers. I felt overwhelmed and confused. I looked around for help. The teenager had retreated behind the counter, stocking cartons of cigarettes. More sin! I was surrounded by iniquity. But undaunted, I pressed on.  I looked for somebody to help me, and thankfully there was another lottery player approaching the stand of promising sin. I would have known he was a lottery player even if I hadn't seen him walk up to the stand because he was bald and had tattoos. 

He explained to me what I had to do. It seemed  easy enough. So I sat and scribbled in the numbers I wanted like I was doing an ACT test. But if I passed THIS test I was going to be rich enough to buy the store! And tithe. I shunned the easy pick option. No computer was going to determine my fiscal windfall. That was in MY hands. Having finished filling out my ticket, I waived a few more people through first and presented my ticket. She ran it through the machine and asked me to pay. I pulled out my debit card and swiped it. 

"Uh, sir, we can only accept cash for lottery tickets."

"Huh?"

"Sorry."

I had $2 in my wallet. I was kind of hoping my fellow sinner would offer to pay the remainder, but alas he was not a giving delinquent. This forced the teenager to cancel the transaction and punch in my two tickets by hand. Thus prolonging the experience while the lottery professional had to wait. 

Finally, I had my 2 tickets, my paper pick em sheet and drove home. You may judge me, but that is a lot of money! I was very surprised to find I had a hard time getting to sleep. I had resolved not to check my numbers until the morning, thinking that somehow this would improve my chance of winning the coveted prize. I could envision the press conference where some guy handed me the check. Or maybe I would want to stay anonymous. Nah.

But wait! What if one of the numbers I picked but didn't pay for won???? I should have just pulled the cash from the in store ATM and bought all five!!! I was going to possibly throw $360 million away cause I didn't want to pay the $3.50 fee for using another banks ATM? I love being dutch sometimes. I calmed myself by realizing that if it was meant to be it was meant to be. But if one of my non-paid for numbers won, maybe they would have a record of it or maybe I could cut a deal with the store...

Alas. I woke up and eagerly checked my numbers. My losing numbers. Stupid. C'mon, I knew I wasn't going to win anyway. But if I did, I would have had enough to make all my Facebook friends millionairess!! Hmm. I have over 700 friends. Nope. I guess not. I would have had enough to make my favorite Facebook friends millionairess!! And to tithe of course. 

Oh yeah, I got the $2 from an instant win ticket I cashed in that same night...

What a stupid system, the lottery. A waste of time. I have no chance of winning. Wait, you say the jackpot is now 500 million dollars? In that case, see you at the Speedway.

The Goose

As you read this story, I really would like you to consider how I was raised. I grew up in a very religious/spiritual home. I had never been goosed before. So, the first time it happened, it was not a pleasant experience. I, of course, made it even worse, but more on that later. 

When I was a wee lad, my parents used to make me attend the Christian Reformed Church at the end of the road. I do not remember much of this. The memories I do have are less than stellar. It may have been a fine church. But that is not the way I remember it. At all. To put it succinctly, and briefly, it was mind numbingly boring. Many of you who attend church now have probably had a much different experience. For those of you who rarely, or never attend church, things have changed a lot over the last few years. 

Many different churches have really tried to update their styles, with varying degrees of success and acceptance by their respective congregations. Now we have electric guitars and drums. Pastors show movie clips and talk about pop culture. Things have come a long, long way. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that I am getting kind of old. Back in the day, church was a completely different animal. To stay on this metaphor a minute longer, current churches might be something like a cheetah. The church I attended as a small boy was more like a tortoise. A dying tortoise. With a bad rash. (is that too harsh?)

I recall, quite vividly, what Sunday mornings used to be like. When I was about 7 or 8, I was usually the first one up. I would open my eyes, and somewhere in the recesses of my pre-pubescent brain I would try and recall what day it was. Oh dear. Sunday. I was old enough now to have a basic understanding of how time worked and what it entailed to get our family up and ready to go. If it got to be too late, we wouldn't be able to make it. 

There must have been some time where I was expecting the weekly dose of torture and somehow, miraculously, it didn't happen. My parents overslept! This was winning the kids lottery! Yeah, I know you might want to judge the miniature version of me, but you weren't there! The pews were made of granite. The guy who spoke talked for about 45 hours. Nobody looked like they wanted to be there. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, my parents said we needed to go EVERY week. And to make matters worse, after service they didn't want to leave right away. They actually stood around and talked to the other inmates. Cause seriously, it was like a prison break after the service was done. I think I actually once saw a man push over an elderly lady so he could get into the parking lot to light his cigarette. People often looked like they just got done serving time. And they had been sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment. 

Again, I know this sounds harsh, but this was my perception as a 7 year old. Ok, yes, to be honest, sometimes I have felt that way as an adult... I am not really ADD, but sometimes I do get bored easily. And is there anything worse than a boring church?

I submit that there is not.

For instance, if you get bored reading this, you will stop. Nobody will know or care. If you don't like a movie you walk out. You shut off a bad TV show. You get it. But if you walk out of church? You instantly get that look. Especially if you live in a smaller town. 

"Look Dale, there is that Dave guy walking out again. Let's pray for his pagan soul and let's remember to never associate with him again." Well, that's how I interpret that look. 

On most Sunday mornings I used to lay in bed and hope as hard as I knew how that my parents wouldn't wake up. Not permanently, mind you, just a temporary extreme sleepiness. They had to oversleep quite severely because the church was about 3.2 minutes away. And that was by horse and carriage. This is why I encouraged them to drink heavily on Saturday nights. "Goodnight mom and dad. Can I get you anything before I go to bed? A hug? A vodka slushy? Near lethal doses of codeine?"

This presented a troubling dilemma for a young boy. There isn't much you can do to control your life at this age. All I could do was hope that they overslept. I wanted to pray, but, well, that seemed counter-intuitive. How do you phrase that???? "Uh, Dear God, could you please make my parents sleep so we don't have to go to your house? Never mind. Please don't send me to hell. Or church." You see from what my dilemma stemmed. 

Then everything changed. It was the 70's and there was something happening across the nation known as the "Jesus Movement" or the charismatic movement. It was sweeping the nation and my parents were pulled into the whirlpool. It started with my mom being "baptized in the Holy Spirit". Then my dad did as well. They decided they were going to start being "serious" about God. This worried me. The people at the church we attended were the most serious looking people I had ever seen. What did MORE serious look like? 

We abruptly switched churches. We went from a Christian Reformed church to a Charismatic church. Yup. Night and day. You couldn't go to a further extreme. One Sunday we were in boringville and the next week we were in charismatic chaos. After the first service at our new church I was behaving very strangely and my parents rushed me to the hospital. My condition? Severe spiritual whiplash. But seriously. One week we are sitting in wooden pews. The most emotion that was showed was when the service ended (as I have stated). In this new church? People danced.

DANCED.

IN CHURCH. And nobody smacked them. Or looked weird at them. Heck, they looked at you weird if you DIDN'T dance! 

After a few months the senior pastor tragically dies while mowing his lawn. They didn't replace him. Nope. But we still had church. We had the dance/rock and roll/ raise your hands in the air like you just don't care time- and then we had a time of "sharing". This meant that anybody could come up and speak about whatever God "laid on their hearts". It was a very interesting experience. Honestly, the services were even longer, but I was rarely bored. After awhile, we switched churches- to one that was a bit more stable.

We started going there when I was 13. I didn't switch until I was 33. And that was to leave to become a pastor myself. We went to church 3 times a week. Sometimes more. This is how I grew up. I didn't want to drink, smoke or listen to rock music. Cause those were baaaaad. But I did like the ladies. I just didn't have a clue about them. 

I soon made some friends in the youth group, and in the Sunday morning classes I attended for my age group. My best friend, Jim, wanted to attend church camp during the upcoming summer. I didn't know much about church camp, but he assured me it was a lot of fun, and best of all, there were sure to be some choice females there. That was enough for me. He had my buy in. 

You have to understand a little bit about Jim. He was a cool kid. I very much wasn't. He liked to party. I first thought he just really liked celebrating other people's birthday's, which I thought made him a very nice guy. Those were not the parties he happened to be speaking about. He explained what he meant. I pretended I was worldly enough to understand. I didn't. But for some reason the two of us really hit it off. 

I'm not bragging, but I have been told by more than one woman that I have a very nice looking rear end. I consider it to be one of my finer features, if you must know. Ok, perhaps ONE of these ladies said something about me being a "fine ass" but I get to interpret that the way I want to. 

To finally get to the point of this story, I am standing there at camp, trying to absorb the strange little world church camp is. There are hundreds of other kids my age milling around. And Jim, that worldly wise kid, was right. There were girls there. Lots of them. And there were some real foxes. (hey, that's what we called them then) 

And then it happened. 

I was standing there very innocently when I felt a very unexpected and surprisingly strong pain emanating from the area of my finely shaped touche. 

I was instantly  enraged! Who would do such a thing! Why this unprovoked attack on my innocent buttocks?!? I looked around wildly, trying to identify the guilty party. 

My eyes landed on a group of girls. One of them was looking back at me with a coquettish smile on her lips. 

Her.

She was the guilty party!

She pinched me! 

So I did what any good, church-raised 14 year old would do. I made her aware of my displeasure with her by yelling "YOU FINK!" in a volume that, upon retrospect, was done at a very embarrassing and inappropriate volume. 

I sometimes still can't believe I ever got married. 

One final note. If you happen to be a very attractive female, around 35-44, and you happen to look upon my above average behind and feel the compulsion to pinch it, I might allow it.

And I won't even call you a name.

Probably. 

Josie

Josie

by David Tiesma on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 11:12pm ·

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Despair. Failure. Shame. Weakness, 

These were the things I lived with. It was as if these feelings had set up permanant residence in my head and heart. At times they would line up, as if they were taking turns, and make their presence known. Too often they would all show up at once, not content to wait to torment me. 

See, this is what happens when you have to resign from a church. This is how you feel. Did I mention worthless? Yeah, might as well throw that one in there as well.

In September of 2002, I stood before, oh, I don't know, about 800 people and told them all why I was resigning. I wasn't "called by God" to go elsewhere. I didn't steal money. I didn't hurt anyone, well, at least not physically. To rectify that last statement, I did hurt a lot of people. I let a lot of people down.

I was a children's pastor at a large church in Des Moines, IA. Yup. I lived in Iowa for a handful of years back in the early to mid 2000's. When many people hear of Iowa, they think of one thing- corn. Right? Oh wait, maybe 2 things, corn and boredom. I will not argue this point with those who hold this opinion. Iowa is kind of boring. The best way to put it is this: Iowa is a great place to live but you wouldn't want to visit there. For those of you who would agree with that sentiment, even though you have never visited there, you would highly offend Iowans everywhere. You would, at least, if they cared what you thought. And trust me, they don't.

Your average Iowan is an interesting breed. I found them to painfully blunt and honest. In the south, people are often unflinchingly polite. They might say something bad about somebody, but they will always couch it with "bless his heart" or something inane like that. This is not how Iowans roll. They will state their opinion as they see it. And if you protest or wince a little, they will proclaim: "Well it's true!". Ah yes. The healing balm of stark truth.

Des Moines, Iowa is where I found myself moving in January of 2001. Moving my wife and 4 kids 500+ miles from Grand Rapids, Mi to the frozen tundra of the Iowan plains. Grand Rapids, where we only say mean things about you when you aren't around. Much more civilized.

I thought this would be my dream job. My career. Being a pastor was what I was supposed to do. Actually, calling it a career would actually disqualify you from many churches. It was more than that. It was a calling. A "destiny" if you are prone to be melodramatic (and I am).  Just a few weeks after we got all moved in (on the coldest day in the history of the world) I stood before these fine Iowans and was introduced as their brand spankin' new children's pastor. I was excited. They were welcoming. We were excited to be there. 

It lasted about a year and a half. 

The image is burned into my mind. I am standing at the front of the church. I am telling the congregation of my own, very personal weakness. To take on some of an Iowans bluntness, I was addicted to porn. Just to clarify, since I know this is what enters some people's minds, it was only adult stuff. Others of you don't really understand why that would be much of a problem. Trust me though, when you are a pastor, the good Christian people don't think it is a good idea if you are viewing such things in your office. And rightly so. 

The people sit in kind of a stunned silence. I have finished telling them of my sins. My father in law is half carrying my wife down the aisle. She is weeping. It is an intense moment, as you might imagine. She stands beside me. Someone in the congregation yells out: "We love you!". Tears form in my eyes. The rest I don't remember. We actually had to do that TWICE, cause they had 2 morning services...

In a crazy move, we decided to stay at the church. It was hard. But they were the only people in Iowa we knew. They were honest, as only Iowans can be, but they were also kind. And somehow, God started to reconstruct me and my marriage. 

The first few months were full of pain, hope and humility. I kept having dreams that I was out in public but I only had my underwear on. It would be in many differnet places, but I always ended up almost naked. And it was my fault because for some reason I forgot to get dressed. Wonder what that represented? You don't need Frued to figure that one out. 

It was only a couple of months after I resigned that I got a call from Josie's parents. Josie was one of the kids under my ministry. She was an absolute doll. She stole my heart the first time I saw her. When I met her she must have been about 5. She had long brown hair and big blue eyes. Using today's vernacular, Josie was "special". 

Josie wasn't supposed to live. She was born with part of her brain missing. After she did live, the doctors told her parents that if she did live much longer, she would live in a comatose state. They were wrong, so very wrong. Don't get me wrong, when you met her, it didn't take long to realize she wasnt "normal".  She didn't walk very well. She could only talk in a few words at a time. 

Josie seemed to take a liking to me. When she saw me at church, she would often run up to me and give me a hug. I don't really care who I would have been talking to at the time, it could have been the president, or even the pope (although I'm not sure what he would have been doing in a pentecostal church- cut me some slack, I am just trying to think of important people) I would have stopped the conversation to talk to Josie. She would come up to me and want to show or tell me something. "Shoes! shoes!" she said once, pointing to her feet. Apparently she had just gotten new shoes and she wanted to show them off. I knelt down, got at her level and looked down at her new shoes. 

"Oh, wow!" I exclaimed, "they are very pretty!" 

I could see a spark of happiness and pride in her eyes and she toddled away. This was a typical Josie interaction, but I really enjoyed them. One of the few things I did enjoy as a pastor.

I was suprised to get the call from her parents. They explained to me that Josie had had some minor surgery. She was fine, but they wanted to know if I would come and visit her. They knew why I had resigned, but it didn't seem to discourage them from contacting me.

I wasn't even sure if was allowed to. I was under the church's restoration plan and I checked with them before I blew my nose. I checked, got the ok, and we set up a time for my wife and I to visit. 

We had a good time at their house. Josie seemed happy to see me. She showed me her room andIi think I read her a story. My wife and I stayed for about 45 minutes, chit chatted with her parents a little bit, and then we said our goodbye's. It was a quiet ride on the way home (as many of our car rides were at that time). The visit partly reminded me of all that I had lost. It reminded me of the people I had hurt with my weakness and sin. 

And as I often did during that time, I silently started talking with God.

No, I didn't hear Him speak audibly to me, but I do believe He responded to me. This is kind of how the conversation went. 

Thanks God, I'm glad I got to do that. Thanks for using me again.

You're welcome.

What it is about Josie? Why does she capture my heart like that? You know I would run through a wall for her. If I ever saw anyone tease her I would want to tear them apart. Why does she effect me like that?

Because David, she is weak. But unlike most people she can't hide her weakness. It is on full display for all to see. You are drwn to her weakness and you love her all the more for it. You feel drawn to protect her and love her.  

I see.  That makes sense. 

...pause...

Oh my son, don't you see?

David,

when I look at you...

I feel the same way...