Storytelling

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dad from day one: Baby Jack the Boy Scout at DeSoto State Park (Nature Vs. Nurture)

Week 15.

Now that the weather is getting nicer, we the parents are very excited about taking advantage of the dozens of trails near us at DeSoto State Park.  That means Baby Jack gets to go hiking with us.  Fortunately, he actually enjoys hiking, even if he’s asleep for most of the time.

I should point out these aren’t simply 20 minutes walks I’m referring to.  I’m talking 3 and a half mile hikes- not just easy, flat trails.  When he is awake during his hikes, he loves to look up at the blue sky, which matches his eyes. Conveniently, we haven’t had to change his diapers during these journeys.  But of course, we feed and change him right before we embark into the forest, to make things easier for Jack and for us.

I don’t know if it’s normal for a 3 month old to enjoy hiking.  But I guess now it’s normal to him.  I help create his reality like that.  It’s a classic case of “nature vs. nurture”.  I am nurturing him to appreciate nature.  And he’s buying it.

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dad from day one: When Jack Smiles

Week 14.

The first thing I do during each of Jack’s playtimes is to carry him into the bathroom and let him see the two of us in the mirror.  He looks down at the counter, then up at himself, then he looks up to my face.  When he sees me, he smiles.  Granted, he must have the memory of a goldfish right now because then he ultimately repeats this process about four or five times before getting bored and wanting me to carry him to a different room for new scenery.

It’s a fun game for me- to try to get my 3 month old son to smile.  Sometimes I get him to smile without even trying to.  Recently he needed a nap really bad.  I knew this, but he did not.  I had him wrapped up in a blanket and was carrying him around, trying to get him to stop crying and fall asleep.

I took a break by sitting him sort of upright in the papasan chair facing me while I sat on the stool for the papasan.  In a thoughtless attempt to ease him to sleep, I began singing the Christmas song “Silver Bells”, but Robert Goulet style.  He stopped crying and started smiling at me.  Then a few minutes later, he was asleep. Needless to say, I’ve sang a lot of songs Robert Goulet style since then.  If it works, it works.

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Currently Uber Popular Status Update Phrases: “Dear [Inanimate Object, Abstract Idea, or Business]”, Followed by a Hypothetical Question

Dear facebook status, how did I survive before you came along?

 

Nobody likes a whiner, right?  Well, now thanks to this uber popular status update method, you can complain while sounding “cute” and funny.  This formula can also be used to say you like something- but in a more creative way.  Just address a subject that will never actually see your status update or even have the ability to respond, then ask a question that either has no real answer or an implied answer. Here are a few examples:

“Dear Starbucks, what would I ever do with you?”

“Dear teenager in the car in front of me who is texting, when will you realize what you are doing is going to get you in an accident? Ugh!”

“Dear Friday, why were you late this week?”

It’s really that simple.  In fact, this format of a status update is so popular that there’s a good chance that at any given moment of the day, you will not be able to read your entire status update page without seeing it used at least once, in some form.  Now, get to work.  Use the formula and you too can appear to be creative, funny, and “cute”.  (Also works well on Twitter.)

“Dear [Inanimate Object, Abstract Idea, or Business]”, Followed by a Hypothetical Question

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My 500th Post: A Road is a Place (AKA “Kayak to Japan Then Jet Ski to China, Via Google Maps”)

Some of the best advice you can get from anyone is to kayak to Hawaii, then Japan, and finally, jet ski to China.

I have found that for the most part, if you live in America and use Google Maps, it will only help you for traveling within the U.S.  But evidently one of the workers for Google Maps got bored on a slow Wednesday afternoon and “planted some Easter eggs” for fun people like you and me.  No matter where you are leaving from, if you type in “China” as the destination, you will be instructed to kayak from the coast of Washington state to Hawaii, drive a car to the other side of the state, then kayak to Japan, drive a care to the to other side of Japan, then jet ski to China.  I’ll save you the trouble.  Here’s a link to Google Maps to try it out.

During the summer before 7th grade (1993) on church bus ride back from Six Flags Over Georgia, I heard a song on the cassette tape playing through the stereo speakers by Steven Curtis Chapman called  No Better Place.  The main part of the chorus says, “There’s no better place on Earth than the road that leads to Heaven.”  That’s when I realized that a road is actually a place itself- not just a means to get to other places.  I had never thought about it before.  A road is a location, despite its abstract shape and the fact it overlaps countless other places- other cities, other states, even other countries.

As the title proclaims, this is indeed my 500th post. That’s a lot of material from my brain. I spend an average of at least one hour on each one (I’ve spent up to 5 hours on a few of them), and considering that that my average post is 666 words long (strange but true), that adds up to an estimated bare minimum of 21 whole days of writing and 333,000 words used to do it.  I would actually predict that in reality I’ve used at least 500,000 words and 30 whole days simply in writing the content of Scenic Route Snapshots.

Sometimes I go back to the earliest posts back in 2009 and dress them up with better pictures and titles.  Interestingly, these older writings of mine are not only less physically attractive and appealing, but their content alone shows me that I’ve grown up not only as a writer but also a person.  This website, my main hobby, is like a metaphorical road of my life.  It shows me the similarities and differences of me now, compared and contrasted to me then.

 

A road is a place.  By looking down it we can see where we’ve come from and we’re were headed.  If we should find the road we are on is not leading to where we need to be, there are always intersections.  And u-turns.

Content as of February 21, 2011

500 Posts
5 Pages
8 Categories
6,277 Tags

Discussion and Viewership as of February 21, 2011

992 Comments
218,967 views all-time
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Seeing Your Life Flash Before Your Eyes in a God-Nudged Leap of Faith (Like Being in a Near Death Experience)

I will begin with an excerpt from the final scene of the movie American Beauty, narrated by the protagonist “Lester Burnham”- played by Kevin Spacey:

“I’d always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time. For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout Camp, watching falling stars. And yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our street. Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper… It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry, you will someday.“

I would venture to say that every living person is familiar with the idea of your own life flashing before your eyes right before you die- whether you actually die or it’s just a near death experience.  Interestingly, it’s not career titles or material possessions that are included in these flashes. Seeing your life flash before your eyes is a great way to be reminded of what’s truly important to you: People and the important events of our lives that involve them. “Loved ones”, as we tend to call these important family members, friends, and mentors- though sometimes that term is used more often after they have passed on.

Knowing that the living people who I am closest to are the most important and influential thing in my life, they became the inspiration for my leap of faith.  My wife and I decided that bringing our son into this world meant we should move to my hometown to be surrounded by family.  Honestly, it wasn’t that difficult for me to abandon the financial security we had back in Nashville.  Because again, it’s wasn’t financial security that showed up when I allowed my life to flash before my eyes.  On many levels it may seem foolish that we left steady jobs in a very unsteady job market, but we believed that God would honor our trust in Him to provide for us, knowing we deliberately chose family over financial security.

Though I’m not in a near death experience right now, in this God-nudged leap of faith, time is standing still as I see a constant slideshow of what I have lived through as well as what I hope to see once I land.  I struggle daily not to play the “what if?” game, regarding my past.  But at this point, it’s not about the decisions that led me to this difficult place.  It’s what God can do with this situation and how He can be seen by others because of it.  Not to mention, I know that this event will either enhance my faith through discipline and patience, or it will cause me to foolishly put faith in men who may or may not provide a job for me.

Fortunately, it’s not people who provide jobs anyway.  It’s not them who help me provide for my family.  It is completely God.  That’s something I have begun reminding myself daily.  And in the process, I have been directed to one of God’s Hebrew names: Jehovah Jireh.  It means “The Lord will provide”.  I have been getting in the habit of praying to Jehovah Jireh, as His name specifically declares His providence.

I am not hopeless.  I will personally admit that as a man who is designed to care for his family, not having a job though I am fully capable and qualified, is quickly taking away my dignity.  But really, is dignity what I am after?  No.  Seeking after God and only trusting in him, not men or corporations or even myself, is a humiliating process.  The word “humiliating” has such a negative connotation to it.  But being humbled is important.  Pride is to be damned, literally.  It only gets in the way.

So damn my pride to hell.  Damn my dignity too.  So what if every time a new door closes a new one opens, only to be shut just like the others.  More than once now my wife and I have seen the perfect jobs dangled right in front of us in job interviews, being one of two final candidates for the position.  But ultimately, the blessing of a job goes to the other person- a person who statistically predicting, would not jump at the chance to glorify God in the way we will once they get a job.  Or a sudden hiring freeze appears.  Something has always caused to the door to shut, so far.

I don’t even know anymore whether these “almost got the job” situations are a result of spiritual warfare in some lesser modern day story of Job or whether it is God Himself allowing these interceptions to increase our faith in Him.  As I watch our $10,000 in savings that we moved here with dwindle to less than half that now, I wonder if taking this leap of faith with $75,000 would have made any difference.  Because then we would have $65,000 more confidence in ourselves.

It’s not money we need- it’s jobs.  And men can’t provide those- only God can. Whatever the lesson is to be learned here, we will learn it.  God will provide. It’s His name, after all.  Jehovah Jireh, I believe it!

Proverbs 16:18
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 29:23
A man’s pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor.

Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.