Chapter One – Rocky and Kim

I was walking to work one morning, it was about 5:45AM and the sun was probably making its east coast rounds, still a couple hours away from peaking out over the Oklahoma horizon.  I was walking in a neighborhood to avoid traffic and while walking under a streetlight I saw the words “ROCKY+KIM 4 EVER” carved in the concrete.  The concrete was old and cracked, but the message was still clear and bold.

It made me wonder what happened to Rocky and Kim over the years.  Was the “4 ever” still “4 ever”?  Were Rocky and Kim still Rocky and Kim?  I don’t think I have ever vandalized anything more than carving my name into a park bench one time, but I can remember scribbling “M.R. loves R.R.” with a heart around it on school binders and desks during a certain time in my life. I’m sure the word forever was mixed around in there on occasion as well.  Well, forever lasted only a couple months, and R.R. is now R.A. After R.R. and I broke up shortly after school started that year, I scribbled her name out and added the next girl as we started dating.  I think that was T.F.

Rocky and Kim carved in the ground made me think about the relationships I had been in throughout my life.  I had been in some good ones, but mostly some pretty bad ones.  But each one kind of had this moment in the beginning, or even towards the end, where everything was really perfect.  So perfect that I would consider vandalizing by etching our name into a fresh, wet slab of concrete to forever prove our love.  I assume that a young Rocky saw this concrete slab while walking home from school one day and decide to take a nearby stick and claim his undying love for Kim.  He could have gone with “Rocky was here” and could have marked the date, he could have gone with a handprint, or he could have gone with any slew of curse words, but instead he chose love.  And not just any kind of love, this my friends, is a “4 ever” kind of love, a kind of love that can only be grasped by reading it for years to come on the medium of concrete.

But other than it making me think of my own relationships and all of the warm fuzzys I had felt over the years, it made me wonder what had become of Rocky and Kim?  Is Rocky still out vandalizing freshly paved streets declaring his love for Kim? Is his love still Kim?  Has he moved on? Has she moved on?  Just what had happened with Rocky and Kim?

For some reason, deep down, my gut says that Rocky and Kim are no more.  Love is a tricky thing because it exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.  It’s weird that you can feel so strongly about something one day, and days, weeks, or years later forget it ever even happened.  Childhood romances, summer flings, and the ones that got away are slewed around in our distant memories and the things that we once thought were forever died somewhere in between then and now.  Was it all in vain? Was the love written of on the concrete not real love? Or had Rocky and Kim simply just stopped loving each other

I hate to drop the bomb here but love sucks.  We use metaphors and similes for relationships because they are the only things that can describe them.  We write songs and poetry because they can take us to a place that spoken words simply cannot in regards to love.  Good feelings or bad.  Relationships are gut wrenching and risky and are filed with joy and heartache.  I have been in a lot of relationships in my life, and up to this point none of them have worked out.  I can remember my first girlfriends, and first kisses, but a lot of my relationships are just a blur of happy times and crying into my pillow.  I remember the first time I got dumped, and the first girl I told, “I love you” to.   I am not to proud really of all the relationships I have been in, I am kind of that guy who bounces from relationship to relationship, always in love and always putting everything into the relationship.  Then, when the relationship predictably goes up in flames, I am a complete mess because I was banking on this relationship to be the one.  I have always wondered why I am the way that I am with girls and relationships, but not that long ago I realized what was happening.

The relationship between God and myself is very much like the dysfunction of my own relationships.

The musician Ryan Adams has a song called Love is Hell, and I can’t really disagree with him.  Even in my relationship with God, it has been anything but heavenly.  Just as relationships and love are risky for us, I am slowly beginning to realize that love is risky for God too.  I began wondering if a lot of the emotions I had felt over years after being dumped weren’t unlike the feelings God would get when we decide to dump Him.  Love isn’t just flowers and candy, and love isn’t just graffiti on the street.  Love is a mutual and beautiful and stupid thing that hurts and feels good.  When love is good, love is good for both of the lovers involved, but when love is bad, it’s bad for all involved and the same is true with our relationship with God.

I was with this girl for nearly three years that finally came to an end one summer. As you could imagine, it was pretty devastating.  My mother woke me up the morning after the girl and I had broken up to tell me that someone had dropped of a garbage bag full of stuff by my car.  It was my stuff.   T-shirts, pictures of happier times, mix tapes, and random gifts that she had acquired after three years of a relationship.  My heart sank; well actually I think it may have stopped, because I realized that the person didn’t love me anymore. It was a punch to the guts.  I don’t know why God would allow us to get this feeling in or guts, and part of me hopes you know what I mean, but part of me wishes no one would ever have to have that feeling.  But somewhere in our DNA or nerves systems or something, the feeling of love lost in forever engraved in our being.

I wonder how many times I’ve made God feel this way, showing up on His doorstep and plopping a bunch of garbage and memories of happier times and walking away.  The truth is, I have a lot of memories with God, I’ve spent a good chunk of my life claiming to be a Christian and so I love God and I really have no idea where I’d be in my life without Him, but I am a really terrible lover.  I’ve been in and out of relationships with girls my entire life, and I have recently come to the realization that this off and on thing is a mirror for my off and on thing with God.  I’m not saying that I don’t want to be with God for the rest of my life, I’ just saying that something else inside of me is pushing me towards distractions and other lovers.  I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I have broken up with girls for wanting to be with another girl.  I am the same way with God.  Thankfully, I’ve never cheated on a girl, but I have cheated on God.  I’ve been dumped for being a bad boyfriend, luckily God has never dumped me but He has had every right to.  I am a terrible lover of Jesus.

But I lover I am.

Do you ever wonder if God has ever wanted to take back His promise that he made after He flooded the world?  After He sent the rainbow to say that He won’t get all cranky and flood it again?  Do you ever think if He wants to start clean again because of the way we treat Him? Like maybe, God wants a break? My instinct says no, but he did it once, why not again?  How much worse could things have been then than they are right now?  I think God could have broken up with us a long time ago but for some reason, despite our shortcomings and player-like ways, God still is faithful.  God should dump us every time we reach for the forbidden fruit, the ones from the tree in the middle of the garden, the ones from the tree in the center of our everyday lives.  God should dump us every time we sin or anytime He is not at the center, yet He doesn’t.  For some strange reason, one I suppose I will never understand, God is a fantastic lover to us but we are the ones who break up with Him.  God is the one carving “God + Mitchell 4 ever” out on the concrete of our driveways.  He is the one writing us love notes and leaving them on our windshield wipers in the middle of the night.  He is the one who gives us everything we need, and even some of what we just want.  Yet we leave Him.  We do not return the favors and we do not return the romance.

A few years ago, I had a favorite pair of shoes.  My black low top Converse “Chucks”.  They were a gift from an ex-girlfriend, but that is not why they were my favorite.  They were my favorite because they were old, smelly, and broken-in. No matter how much cleaner you use on your sneakers, nothing beats a pair of old broken-in shoes that you can do anything in.  These shoes had been to work with me, been there to see some of my favorite bands in concert, and been involved in many of my all time favorite memories.  Their appearance backs up the track record; multiple holes in the fabric, discoloration, broken shoelaces, places where rubber has melted, and need not I mention the smell.

A few years ago, I had a favorite pair of shoes.  Then one day I couldn’t find them anymore.  Gone.  Vanished.  My first thought was the Libyan terrorists, but regardless, they were nowhere to be found.  I asked around to my friends, hoping that I had left them in someone’s car or in one of their houses.  Nothing.  I searched every nook and cranny of my house and dorm room.  Nothing.  My favorite shoes were gone forever.

One day, I was feeling adventurous and decided to do some cleaning.  There was a room in my house that used to be my brother’s room but once he moved to college quickly became the “everything else” room. Old clothes, an attempt at making a homemade “Love sac”, old magazines and books, and other useless junk had literally taken over the room.  For some reason I was in this room looking for some old t-shirts or something when I stumbled upon a suitcase that I thought was empty.  When I picked it up to throw it across the room I felt that there was something in it and so I unzipped it to find three things:  a hand painted V-neck shirt I had made (clean), a pair of matching socks (clean), and my favorite pair of shoes (dirty).  Not only did I no longer have to do laundry that day, but I had also found my shoes.  I had forgot they ever existed. So immediately, I put on the socks and shoes and sat down and just starred at my long lost friends.  They fit perfectly, preserved through time in the suitcase, undisturbed for nearly two years.  As I starred at my shoes, reminiscing about all the good times we had through the years, I was thinking about something very scary.

At what point did I give up the search for my favorite shoes?  When did I decide that they were gone forever?  Even scarier, when came the day that I forgot they even existed?

Luckily for me I quickly became occupied with making new memories with my shoes.  Concerts and road trips have since filled in the gaps of time that the suitcase had taken away. The funny thing is, I have no idea why they were in the suitcase, and I haven’t been on vacation in years and have had no reason to use that suitcase. Now it is as if those two years never happened.

I wonder if God ever gives up looking for us when we break up with Him and leave Him standing on the front porch with a bag of our old stuff.

If my life story teaches me anything, it is that I am a complete screw up, and will keep screwing up and breaking up with God until the day I die.  If my story teaches me anything, it is that I spend more time running from God and trying to hide my crap from Him rather than just manning up and giving it to Him.  If it teaches me anything, it is that I am a lost pair of old shoes, with many miles of wear and tear, but with many miles left.

I think it is human nature to get lost from time to time.  We are human, therefore, not perfect.  So we will split from God every once in a while and we will get lost in the process.  Sometimes the longer we stay away from God the more we think He might be angry with us when we come back to Him.  I’ve broken up with God many times in my life, thinking I could go find a better lover somewhere else, but always returning a little better off than when I left Him.  There is, however, I difference between being lost and hiding.  If we think we can do better on our own or that there is something better for us out there we will get lost, but Ii we feel that God is angry with us, we will go and hide.  In fact, the first thing Adam did in the garden after eating the fruit God told him not to, was going into hiding.  By eating the fruit, Adam was essentially breaking up with God for the very first time.  They had walked in the garden together and shared many things, but eating the fruit was Adam’s way of turning his back and thinking that there was something else better out there.  The tendencies of Adam have been passed down through from generation to generation all the way up until right now.  I am a lot like Adam, and so are you.  When things get hard and I fail I go run and hide and my tail tucked between my legs.  When confrontation comes I avoid it, especially confrontation with God.

But God is graceful, and He has yet to leave us no matter how many times we have left Him.

Jesus told a story about a son who goes to his dad, gets his inheritance, and then blows it in the city, only to come home broke and ashamed.  The father does a beautiful thing once the boy comes back in by accepting the son back in and by throwing a party for him, almost as if the whole thing never happened.

I have a hard time worshipping a God who would never let us come back and love Him again.  He made us imperfect so why would he expect perfection?  But I can get behind a God who says, “You were lost but now found - broken, now complete - and I will love you forever and there is nothing you can do about that.”  God’s promise may not carved in our driveway in wet cement, but it is carved all throughout creation, a creation that screams of His grace.

A couple of weeks after noticing the Rocky and Kim 4 ever carving, I met a new friend, Lauren, who come to find out, lived at the house it was carved in front of.  You’ll meet Lauren later.

rexbarrett:

merlin:

1. They write.

Fun Fact of the Day

I told my friend last night that I think I might be going crazy.  I have developed a routine, and I think it’s driving me insane.

I get off from work and drive home.  I get home and I take a shower.  I dry off and get dressed.  I walk over to my desk and turn on my computer.  I sit at my desk and stare at it.  I open the program I write on.  I stare at the blank page.  I get up from my desk, grab my coffee mug from the day before, and go to the kitchen.  I make myself a hot tea, which is currently an Earl Grey Green if you cared, and I walk back into my room.  I set the tea mug down and sit myself down and stare at the screen.  I check my notebook for any ideas that popped into my head in the previous days.  I type up a general thought, maybe a few sentences.  I stare at it.  I check the temperature of my tea.  It’s still too hot.  I finish up some text conversations, maybe check my email.  Check the tea one more time and it is good to go.  And it is as if the tea gives me the magical power to write.  It’s as if the tea says, “Okay, its business time.”  And I just write.  Ideas flow and words come out of my fingertips.  It is really quite magical and I honestly have no idea where it comes form.  Well, actually, I think I do, but I have no reason to believe that the words were meant for me.  Like maybe God is broadcasting some really cool thoughts over an old CB radio and I just happened to pick it up on my Fisher Price walkie-talkie.  I take another sip of tea.  Staring at the screen is no longer an option; it’s a distant memory.  I type away, disregarding spelling and grammar for the time being, and I just flow.  Sometimes I say what I want, other times I don’t.  But the reality of it is that I do this everyday.  I have found the point on earth where God and I share the same station.  Most of the time I think God broadcasts as talk radio, He just kind of talks and expects people to listen and respond inwardly, or maybe they will call in as prayers go up to heaven.  But if you catch Him on a good day, when the tea is blended just right and the noise of the world seems to die down just a notch, He broadcasts music.  Symphonies of rock and roll, oldies and jazz.  But no country, I don’t think God likes country music.  I sit at my desk and type up the thought God is talking about, or how the music that day makes me feel.  For an hour or two I disconnect from the world and connect creatively with my Creator until my tea goes cold. I think I am going insane.

But I think it saved my life.

I don’t know why I am typing this up today, or why I am sharing it with everyone.  I guess its just one of those things that I just need to get out there.  I want to say something not so that people will say “Oh yea go for it” but rather so that people will know about it and so I can be held responsible for it.

I decided to write a book.

And regardless if any publisher ever picks it up, or even yet someone decides to buy it is at this point irrelevant to me.  I’m tired of taking naps in the afternoon and writing when I feel like it or get an idea.  I want to write because I have to write.  My friend Lanie told me to “do the things you have to do to make ends meet, but then you need to do the things you need to do to survive.”  And for me, to survive is to write and to create.

I don’t know what the next few months of my life are going to look like, I just know I covered one of the walls in my room with paper and I filled it up in just a matter of days with ideas for the book.  I know that the next few months will involve a lot of sitting at this desk and drinking a lot of tea, and typing a lot of words that will probably mean nothing to most, but will mean everything to me.  I’m tired of almost doing things, and tired of sitting around watching other people live a good story.  So I decided to change my story a little bit by doing what I think God has called me to do all along.  I thought I knew at one point, and it turns out I don’t think I was right.  But that crazy story has led me into this one, a new one, and hopefully a better one.  I’m not writing this to get your attention, maybe I’m writing it to ask for prayers and forgiveness, and a little motivation.  Because the truth is I’m scared as hell.  Sitting behind a computer with a blank screen is driving me towards insanity, but the occasional pick up of God through the static is what keeps me going.  So my hope is that someday you’ll be invited to find your own station with God, and that some day you’ll read about the transmissions that I have picked up recently.

I probably won’t be posting much on here for a while, I’m saving up the good stuff you know, but just know that I am writing everyday in hopes you’ll read it one day.

And in case you care the idea for the book so far is this:  it’s called “Definitive Blurs:  The One that Got Away and The One That Came Back.”  The book, at this point, mostly revolves around relationship metaphors.  I realized a while back that I’ve been in a bunch of crappy relationships and that those relationships are often a mirror to my relationship with Jesus.  It’s about intimacy and redemption; it’s about the story of Adam in the garden and the story of the prodigal son returning.  Should be pretty fun.

I love you, and thanks for all the kind words over the years that I have been writing, I didn’t realize this many people read my stuff, so I love you for that.  So I might never sell any books, but I know my mother will probably buy enough to put me on the best sellers list, but in the last page of his book, “The War of Art” Steven Pressfield says this:

“Do it or don’t do it.

It may help to think of it this way.  If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself.  You hurt your children.  You hurt me.  You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor.  It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.  Don’t cheat us of your contribution.  Give us what you’ve got.”

So Definitive Blurs will be my contribution to the song of creation, to the commentary on this whole shi-bang-a-bang.

I love you a million times over.

Written on the middle of my wall is this quote from Robert McKee:

“Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.”