NEVER. HAVING. CHILDREN.

and on behalf of bloggingpaul and bloggingpaul'swife...

anyone have three extra tickets...?

addendum: for your listening pleasure.

i love derek webb.

i think i'll be pre-ordering mockingbird. anyone want to offer a donation of the dvd? or a sticker for my ailing bible...

i really, really like his stuff. she must and shall go free and i see things upside down are simply phenomenal. theological, creative, challenging. not fluffy and happy; not depressing, either. often, tongue-in-cheek with a point.

i like it.

i am my beloved's and my beloved's mine
so you bring all your history and i'll bring the bread and wine
and we'll have us a party where all the drinks are on me
then as surely as the rising sun you will be set free

- "lover," she must and shall go free

just keep selling truth in candy bars
on billboards and backs of cars
truth without context, my favorite of all my crimes

- "ballad in plain red," i see things upside down

so, i'm sitting here thinking about prayer requests.

and i'm wondering. what is it about the universally requisite Small Group Prayer Request Time that seems to get us all hyper-focused on -- and this is going to sound SO wrong, but just keep reading -- other people? i'm not saying there's anything wrong with praying for your cousin's sister-in-law's babysitter's mom's car troubles. but. i find it curious when no personal prayer requests are offered. now, i understand that a request on behalf of certain situations involving one's husband is sort of like a request for oneself... but... not really. what about YOU? surely there are things rolling around inside of you, inside all of us that we can accept prayer for...

are we too afraid? not willing to be so vulnerable with one another? i'll be the first to admit that it's far easier to bring up someone else's troubles instead of my own. perhaps we don't believe our own requests are important enough. or we want to let everyone believe that everything is just fine. or we don't want people to feel sorry for us. or we believe that we don't deserve prayer. hell, i don't know. maybe we really are all compassionate humble creatures focused on everyone else's needs, and i'm just a cynical oaf.

i put myself out there a couple of weeks ago and shared my thoughts and struggles with my group as a prayer request. in a room full of married and/or engaged women, no less, which of course did nothing to ease my insecurities. at the time it seemed odd [not to mention frightfully intimate] to offer... so abstract, so open-ended, so ridiculously vulnerable. in hindsight, it now seems odd that it would seem odd. if not there, then where else? in what other situations could it possibly be more appropriate? but now i'm feeling a little gun-shy. a silly little well, i put myself out there, now how about you guys? game in my head. stupid. but there it is.

at any rate, i'm certainly not implying anything about this particular group. it's merely one in a long line of groups where i've pondered the same. does anyone else share similar thoughts? or am i just a dirty heathen that doesn't care about the needs of others during prayer request time?

posted this as a comment on jared's blog last month. a little ctrl+v magic and it's been hanging out as an unpublished placeholder entry here at unleashed ever since. finally posting it now because i'm bored with my own entries -- it's like opening the fridge every five minutes, expecting that something might have materialized out of thin air -- and i'm exhausted and sleepy and can't muster up anything original right now.

+++ 

a couple of years ago i was in a place where i had to choose to walk away from everything and everyone i had poured my life into for two years. it was an agonizing and earth crumbling decision for me. aside from one single solitary friend, i was utterly alone in this town.

in an amazing display of ambivalence, i both blamed and trusted God, alternately and intensely. my faith was shaken. i was devastated that things had turned out this way. but for all my prayers and anger and confusion and despair... at the end of the day, i knew that somehow, some way, God would get me through. [...] the thought of turning away was never an option. it was my dark night of the soul... something i would not wish upon my worst enemy. but both because of and in spite of it all, my faith deepened in a way i cannot explain. it had nothing to do with reading, studying, learning, etc., because God knows i wasn't doing much of that. i may not know where all the minor prophets are and i may not have verses memorized and i may not know exegesis from a hole in the ground: but i know what it is like to have absolutely nothing to fall back on but faith. and the knowledge that i have done that, and survived, will affect my soul until i am removed from this life.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

+++ 

so we just had a little breakfast soiree at work this morning. pancakes, egg casseroles, bacon, cinnamon rolls, blueberry bread... mmmmm... so yummy and such a good idea at first glance...

but as my co-worker pointed out, we always forget how it ends.

i want to nap and explode simultaneously. ugggggh...

addendum: it's amazing what a half-hour nap on your lunch hour can do.

it's hard to figure out where to go from here. write a nice little denouement? continue the discussion? post something completely different? i don't know for sure. but i will start out by saying thank you. thank you for commenting, emailing, phoning, discussing, or even just reading [creepy lurkers!]. thank you for sharing your own vulnerabilities, your pasts, your presents. thank you for encouraging me as brothers and sisters. and perhaps most importantly: thank you for recognizing the intimate ruthlessness of my disclosure, for accepting the rawness of my post and comments, for being willing to help me fumble through this tired old maze.

i don't like being wrong. but maybe this time... i'll be okay with that.