"The Struggle Is Real"

--some millennial in my class one time

I was talking to one of my kids recently and I told them that every single thing that I have that is worth something to me came with great struggle.  To wit..

My job.  

I worked very hard in Ramona Franklin's psychology class when I was at LBW!  Psychology was like a foreign language to me, having never taken a class in it in high school.  Taking a year off from school because I was completely without motivation was hard.  My time at Troy was a struggle.  My first job, at Andalusia Middle School, was very hard.  It was probably harder for my students, and I am sorry you had me when I was wet behind the ears as a teacher--I didn't know much.  Going to graduate school was hard.  One summer I took 18 graduate level hours in 5 weeks.  Getting this job at LBW took a lot of work!  And wow, was it worth it!  

My kids.  

Every single person reading this who has children knows how hard it is to raise kids.  From diapers to terrible 2s to adolescence to seeing them leave the nest (which will happen for me soon with Grant)....it's all very, very difficult.  Thrown in a divorce, and it is only compounded.  But when I get to play music with my kids, or take them camping, or laugh at movies, or give them gifts at Christmas, all the struggle seems to evaporate right before my eyes.  

My house.

Mortgages.  'Nuff said.

My music.

I have no idea how much time I've spent practicing the trumpet.  Or how many lessons I've taught.  Or how many lectures I've given.  Or how many tests I've graded.  Some days, I leave the classroom feeling like I didn't make one bit of difference.  What's it all even for?? But then a kid says "thanks for helping me be a better player."  And that outweighs all the stress of being a professional teacher/musician.  

My constant awesomeness. 

Now that, is a struggle!  It's exhausting.  I don't know how Superman did it.  I'm just kidding!

The truth is there is no great thing without some struggle.  Some pain.  Some loss.  Some cost.  And while the cost may NOT be paid BY ME, there is always a cost.  I think it's important for us to remember that.  To be mindful of the cost of things.  Not the price, but the cost.  

The price is how much money you had to give up for something.  The cost is all the other stuff you had to forfeit in order to buy it.  

I hear things like "it didn't cost anything."  Maybe not money.  But it probably cost time.  And is there a more valuable commodity than time??  If there is, tell me what it is.  I'll wait.

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Ok, I got tired of waiting.

We don't appreciate things we don't struggle for.  We all know it.  Ask anyone who's done Couch-to-5K how much they appreciate what they've done for themselves.  Or someone who learned to play an instrument.  Or someone who learned to walk again after an injury.  Or someone who learned to go on with life when all seemed pointless.  They all struggled, and they all got results.  

In the film A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks' character is talking to the girls and he says this immortal line:  "It's supposed to be hard.  If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it.  The 'hard' is what makes it great."  (Anyone involved with Southwind knows exactly why it choked me up a bit just to type that.)

On my desk sits a framed quote which says "Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it.  The struggles are coming.  They're probably always here, actually.  How we respond to them determines everything.  

Have a great day!!

"Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store..."

--Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

When I was 8 years old, my grandmother died.  She died in October if I remember right, and for Christmas that year, my Aunt Laura flew us up to her home in New York for Christmas.  How in the world my mother took three small kids through the Atlanta airport is beyond me.  

My Aunt Laura lived in Pound Ridge, New York at the time.  Around the corner lived Fred Gwynne, who played Herman Munster.  It was a nice neighborhood!  Her house was perched on a hill overlooking a picturesque creek running through the woods.  It was straight out of a Hallmark gift card. I'd never seen so much snow in my life.  I can still remember my mom waking me up to come to the window to look at deer in the back yard.  I also remember feeling like her house was gigantic--much bigger than the 1200 square feet I grew up in.  Tall ceilings.  Fireplaces.  The opulence made an impression on me.  Maybe too much of one, but anyway...

For several years after that, Laura would send us Christmas ornaments each year.  They were always one of a kind and each year of my childhood, when we put up the tree, we always talked about what year we got each ornament.  Just typing that last sentence brings back a LOT of Christmas memories.  

Of all the ornaments I ever got, my favorite was this one.

I'm not sure why it was my favorite.  I've only ice-skated once, and I held onto the wall as I went around the rink in Eastdale Mall at a blistering pace of .06 mph.  Maybe it's because I wished I could ice skate.  Or maybe it's because it represented the fantasy world that we all have in our heads--the world of make-believe...the world of what we wish we had but don't.  Wait...that's crazy... it's just a piece of wood!  Right??

Christmas, to me, has always been about wonder.  The wonder in a child's eyes as he sits on his grandparents' couch thumbing through the Wish Book from JCP or Sears.  The wonder of a parent as she waits eagerly for her son to get home from Fort Drum.  The wonder of believers who still to this day marvel at the idea that perfection would leave Heaven and come down to this dump of a place called Earth.

And every time I open the box of Christmas ornaments, I am one year older, and the sense of wonder that I feel is somewhat different than last year, but yet the same.  I wonder at my kids' wonder.  I watch them stare at the presents under the tree, eagerly awaiting the tearing open of the wrapping paper.  It's truly awesome to give.

And yet, at the same exact time, Christmas has always been slightly tinged with a smidge of sadness. It's a time in which people really struggle.  With loneliness.  With anxiety.  With sadness.  With missing a family member.  With debt.   Divorce never seems so real as it does on a holiday.  The first Christmas after losing a loved one is always the hardest one.  And God forbid that we lose someone ON a holiday...but it does happen.

So...there's wonder and amazement...and there's sadness.  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...right??

It's all about focus and perspective, really.  I have learned through hardship that God can reveal amazing things in life even through the darkest darkness.  I just have to look for the good, and once I find it, stare at it!!!

This week, there will be a Christmas parade.  It will be filled with wonder, and it will be an awesome celebration of community and Christmas.  But that's 88 hours away! What about the space between now and then?  There's wonder in all that space, too!!  The smile of a student who is having a good day.  One person giving another person the parking space.  Cookies in the faculty lounge.  Walking into the Dixon Center, and being greeted by two co-workers who tell you how they are already building storage shelves in your equipment truck.  The trash you sweep up that reminds you of family being at your house.  Trying out for a play and having a blast.  Andalusia going to the semifinals. A brief conversation with a kid you don't even know about how awesome bicycles and motorcycles are.  Your son making a great score on test he thought he'd bomb. The jokes your kid tells on the way to school.  It's all WONDER.  All of it.

We spend a lot of time and energy waiting for the next "thing" to occur or the next "time" to arrive, and wow, what do we miss in the present, and if you add that to the commercialism that Christmas is wrapped up in, well, we're just a stone's throw away from the Klonopin!! That's no way to live.  We need to re-focus.  We need to remember why Christmas is and what Christmas is.  And what it's not. We need to go back to square one and start over.  Hey, I'm all about capitalism...it drives our economy, after all, and as a state employee I benefit directly from all the tax dollars...but how's about some balance, K??


So, maybe Dr. Seuss was right...maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.  Maybe it's something more.  Merry Christmas, people!  I'm thankful for you all.

"Just breathe."

--Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam

I first knew Pearl Jam's music by way of Josh and Ben Bates and John Ossenfort.  Thank you, guys, for introducing me to this monumental band.  

A few weeks ago, I was standing on the sideline of Andalusia's football field waiting for the game to start.  I was talking to a friend of mine who had recently judged a band contest and he was a little bummed because he felt like he had made the wrong call on a Best-In-Class award.  I thought about how many times I've judged and later felt like I made the wrong call.  He continued talking about how it had bothered him for the whole week after, and while I appreciated how much he wished he'd made the "right" call, I motioned up at the moon, and said "well...there's the moon, right where it's supposed to be...so I guess the world went right on like it was supposed to."   He laughed and understood the point I was trying to make...at least I hope he did.  

We get so wrapped up in the RIGHT NOW, and by "we" I mean me....

So many times, we take the issue that's right in front of us, and with the help of stress, anxiety, panic, Satan, maybe Congress, or the news media, we make that issue out to be the equivalent of the Titanic sinking or Pompeii being covered by volcanic ash or the 18th championship.  To be fair and honest, there are times when this is true.  Cancer sucks.  Death sucks.  Divorce sucks.  But most of the time,  the things that I stress over won't even matter in a few hours...let alone tomorrow, or next month, or in eternity.  

But OH MY GOD do I/we ever stress over them in the "right now!"  

When the stressors come, and they come every day, in every size, shape, color, religious affiliation, and political alignment, how in the world are we supposed to deal with them???  It seems like the media is a barrage of negativity.  I supposed I could turn the TV off, but then I wouldn't get to hear about Megan Kelly and Donald Trump.  Darn.  I guess I could shut down social media.  Laughable at best--I know myself well.  What are we to do....???

I believe it was that neurotic, brilliant, although CRS fish, Dory,  who said "just keep swimming."  God, I hate that fish...LOL. But I love that movie. And that message.  We have to just keep swimming.  Or as Eddie Vedder said it, "just breathe."  Just. Breathe.  Did it ever occur to you that you are not required to respond to every single stimulation that comes your way?? I mean, it's not in the Constitution of being human. But I certainly react to them as if I must react to them right this very minute.  I simply cannot stand to have a notification on my phone that I have an unread email or text.  I. Must. Get. To. That. Thing. This. Very. Minute.  My God, that is exhausting.  Just breathe, Johnny.

I'm overstimulated to the point that I can barely do this.  I go at a breakneck pace most of the time, and it's my own fault.  The demands I feel for giving an instant answer or a response are at a boiling point and I doubt I'm alone in this.

In the movie Lean On Me, the school principal Joe "Crazy Joe" Clark is jailed at one point, and a school board member is trying to convince him to apologize about something I can't recall right now, and he tells Joe "you have to!"  Joe's response is absolutely epic:  "I ain't gotta do anything but stay black, and die."  Priceless.  Truly priceless.  All the "things" on my to do list...they're just things I THINK I have to do, and sometimes I wonder if I don't make lists just so I can say I crossed things off my list?!?!  So, who's really neurotic? Dory? Or Johnny??

Y'all have a good Thanksgiving.  Thanks for reading.  God Bless!

  

"I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight."

Remember this?  I do.  Somehow.  The title of my blog is pretty accurate: I am random.  My brain is random...why in the world I bolted awake one night recently thinking about 1994 is beyond me but I did. 

When this catalog arrived at 308 Perry Street, I was still living at home.  I was taking the year off from school and I spent Monday-Thursday working at Food World from 8 a.m. til 2:00 p.m.  My brother Thomas was in basic training at Fort Benning, GA (E-2/58, Sand Hill), on his way to becoming an infantryman in the US Army.  My sister Jeremie was a junior in high school.  

At that time, I had absolutely no direction in life.  Zero.  I remember being jealous of my friends who were at Auburn while I was "stuck" at home.  In those days, I had only a vague, cloudy vision of what I wanted in life, and to be totally transparent with you, what I wanted was really short-sighted and dismal...I just wanted to get by.  There's a whole back story as to why that is and maybe, one day, I'll put that down on paper.  

In December, 1994, my mother had a heart attack.  I was camping on some land that John Ossenfort's family owned.  To be specific, I was sleeping beside a pond that is now surrounded by beautiful homes in a subdivision near the end of Lindsey Bridge Road.  With me were Josh and Ben Bates and John Ossenfort. Around 11 pm, we see headlights, and at that time, there was NOTHING in that area but trees.  Bill Ossenfort pulls up to the campsite, gets out of the car and says "Johnny, you need to go to the hospital.  Your sister called and she was crying and your mother is headed to the hospital in an ambulance."  Jeremie was 17 at the time.  I can still feel the guilt of having been away from the house when it happened.  Mom wound up in Dothan under the care of a great cardiologist, had a great recovery, and enjoys her grandchildren....

My wish that Christmas was for mom to recover.  Mom's wish was for Thomas's plane to land safely at Birmingham--his airline had 2 crashes in the weeks leading up to his flight.  Can't really say what Jeremie's wish was, but I suppose it was something along the lines of her mom getting well also.

Fast-forward 24 years....I haven't seen a JCP Wish Book in a long time but I still have wishes.  If I designed the Wish Book, it might look like this.

Page 33.  My dad would still be alive and kicking.  And he'd love to spend time watching his grandchildren grow up.  He'd probably still be in contact with Stephen Tuttle and Greg Wicke and we'd probably travel to see them. 

Page 99.  Autism would be something that isn't stigmatized.  You would be able to order a "no longer seeing posts on facebook about kids who are different being mistreated or shunned."  And it would have free delivery.

Page 115.  Divorce would never occur. 

Page 257.  Parents wouldn't age and their health wouldn't decline.  

Page 301.  On this page, I'd find that Grey Sharpe didn't die our junior year.  He'd be in the Army to this day, probably running the place.

Page 373.   A full page of second chances.

Page 405.  People would truly know their value.

Page 467.   All the answers to all the questions that my children have but I don’t seem to be able to answer.

Page 502.   The cure for cancer.

Page 503.   A government that actually works for solutions to our country‘s problems as opposed to hurling insults at each other across the aisle.

Page 599.   Forgiveness truly applied.

Page 607.  Hope where none seems possible.

Page 665.   An endless supply of amazing music.

Page 725.   That one present that I always hoped for but never got.

Page 773.   Knowing that my children will be successful parents and grandparents one day.

Page 811.   A  Bell  206 Jet Ranger and enough money to own/operate it. (Hey, I like helicopters! LOL)

 I hope you get what you wish for.

Nothing gold can stay.

--Robert Frost

Yesterday afternoon, the weather was perfect for riding a motorcycle, so that's what I spent some time doing.  As I headed down Stanley Avenue, I thought I'd swing by Andalusia Memorial Cemetery...crazy, I know, but sometimes I go there and talk to my dad.  Yes, I know he's not really there.  No, I don't care.  Anyway, when I got there, I found this.  

I was quite stunned to find that my dad's foot marker was pretty much grown over....quite stunned.  Before I go any further, let me saw I am in NO WAY about to bash whoever keeps up the cemetery.  Not at all!!  There are lots of markers out there!!  And I am also in NO WAY writing this out of self-pity or sadness or woe-is-me.  But the fact of the matter is that the condition in which I found my dad's marker was a perfect reminder....a reminder that LIFE IS FLEETING.  

My brother, who is a lot smarter than me--we're talking exponentially!--says the reason it seems like time passes faster as we age is that the older we get, the smaller percentage a portion of time becomes relative to how much time we've lived.  Sounds like some physics equation to me, but I know this:  it's midterm week at LBW and we just started the semester yesterday!  It's also homecoming week in Andalusia and the class of 1999 is having their 20th reunion....and they were seniors the first year I was the assistant band director at AHS.  That was just last year, right???  

As I rode off from the cemetery, I passed headstones of people I grew up knowing and I thought about my own existence.  (Doesn't everyone do this on Sunday afternoons??) I drove across Stanley and wound up on South Cotton Street, and then found myself on Carlton Street.  My best friend growing up, Kevin Harp, grew up in the house at 623 Carlton.  Lord, we rode bikes all over Andalusia.  Now the bike has a motor on it!  My mind was all over the place. Middle school.  Band.  Trying to pass chemistry.  Middle school crushes...mmm, she was pretty.  LOL.  Then, I thought about the friend I've known the longest--Mark Craig.  I drove past his parents' house on Snowden Drive.  605, I believe.  Mark's daddy died recently.  Too soon.  I remember him playing basketball with us in Mark's front yard.  If you played against Vernell Craig, you had better brought your "A" game!  You influenced me greatly, sir.  

The longer I rode, the more I thought about how fleeting is, and how I hate to see it wasted.  We can make more money.  We can make more people.  We can make more houses.  We can make more clothes.  We can make more cars.  We can make more everything....EXCEPT TIME.  

As I said earlier, this post isn't intended to be depressing.  Quite the opposite.  You and I have an opportunity!  A gift!!   It's called TODAY!!!  And until out time's up, we get a new TODAY every day.  Use it! Call a friend.  Cook.  Practice your instrument.  Study.  Plant a tree.  Read a book.  Do that task at work that you've/I've been putting off.  Watch the sunset.  Look at the stars.  Or just rest.  But use your time wisely...for it is going to pass no matter what you do.  

Have a good day.  Do something with it. 

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

--Jesus

There's an old tale of two monks who were walking down a road.  As they walked they came upon a woman attempting to cross a muddy puddle of water.  As monks, they were bound not only to never talk to, but also never to touch a woman.  As they approached the woman, the younger of the monks began to study the older monk to see what he would do.  The woman needed their help.  They had their vow.  A conundrum, for sure.  Without hesitance, the older monk picked the woman up and carried her over the puddle of water, to the complete dismay of the younger monk.  They then went on their way.  After some time, the younger monk could no longer hold his tongue.  He asked the older monk "why did you help that woman across the puddle?  You are well-aware of the vow we took when we entered the monastery!"  The older monk simply replied "I put that woman down over an hour ago....why are you still carrying her?"  

Burdens.  Boy they suck.  Sometimes, I see runners using ankle weights when they train so that they can run faster when they aren't wearing them.  Sure would be nice if we could just take off our burdens like that....

Burdens are heavy.  And they come in all varieties.  Physical. Emotional. Psychological.  Spiritual.  Familial.  Personal.  When we're younger we would probably think that the physical ones are the heaviest, but as we grow up, we quickly realize that we'd much rather have to carry actual weights around with us than we would have to carry around all the baggage that life entails...

Amazingly enough, some of the burdens that I carry are self-imposed.  I suspect some of yours are, too.  WHY??? What kind of self-hating, deprecating, tortuous fanatic would do this himself?  That's easy to answer.  It's called shame and guilt.  You probably know those two....

In Purcell's opera, Dido and Aeneas, Dido sings these words just before she kills herself: "when I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast.  Remember me, but forget my fate."  The irony is that she had done nothing wrong.  Aeneas left her, under the spell of a witch.  Yet, she felt guilty.  I can only shake my head.  She took a burden to her grave that wasn't hers to bear.  Imagine the anguish.  

Maverick blamed himself for Goose's death, when it clearly wasn't his fault.  One of the best scenes in that movie shows him holding Goose's dogtags in his hand, consumed with guilt...all over something he wasn't responsible for... a perfect picture of what so many of us do to ourselves.  

Dido and Maverick were both in the same situation.  And it didn't really matter to their hearts whether they should be carrying the guilt or not....their hearts felt it, and the heart always overrides the brain.  Logic won't do here.  The heart is where all of life flows from.  

I think the heaviest burden of all to carry is being unwilling to forgive.  Forgiveness, according to a close friend of mine, is a supernatural occurrence.  The more I think about that, the more I am inclined to agree.  If I were to make a list of all the things that have been "done to me," it would really take an act of God to make me forgive all that.....but what about all that I have done to others??? Don't I want to be forgiven?? Sure I do.  And the wrong done to me is no worse than the wrong I've done to others.

And at the top of this mountain of being unforgiving is the unwillingness to forgive myself.  Good God what an impossible thing to do sometimes.  I think this is the case because in our minds, carrying around the resentment or anger that comes from not forgiving gives us some kind of psychological/spiritual/emotional crutch to lean on.  To put it another way, we like being the victim.  Ironically, forgiveness is not for the person who wronged us...it's for us.  Chances are pretty good that the offender doesn't even know of the offense, so, really, we are just destroying ourselves from the inside.  How tragic!

While having nails driven through his wrists and feet, and having had a spear rammed into his lateral obliques, and having been scourged, and having had a crown of thorns shoved down on his head, and even on top of this, having been rejected by the nation that produced his lineage, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."  I'm not sure I know of a more powerful, and awe-inspiring statement.  If I'm to be like Him, I must be like him.  I must think like Him.  I must act out what I know about Him.  The forgiveness that I extend directly relates to how much I can forgive myself--either positively or negatively.  I must decrease and He must increase.

Putting anything into practice requires patience and diligent effort.  Brother Lawrence said he often had to just simply say "God, I'm doing it again..."  Maybe over time, the habit of forgiveness will take root.  Maybe I can quit beating myself up for every little thing...maybe.  Just maybe.

God put that burden down long ago...why am I still carrying it???

Finding Strength in the Face of Adversity

"Yea, though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

--Psalm 23

This morning, I read on Facebook that someone missed the America of September 12.  I was hooked immediately and had to read more.  The post spoke of what America was like on this day 17 years ago....the day AFTER the most tragic day this country has seen in my lifetime.  On 9/11 we were shocked to the core and our lives changed forever.  On 9/12 we didn't care if each other was black or white, male or female, young or old, Christian or Jewish or Buddhist....we were all AMERICANS, and we were united like I've never seen in my 45 years.  Flags flew everywhere.  Pride swelled.  There were parades.  George Bush launched a military offensive that was no doubt hell on earth for those on the receiving end.  And in the face of adversity, America found strength to go on.  

Hurricane Florence is a few hundred miles off the east coast.  It's probably going to destroy a lot of stuff.  Homes.  Cars.  Boats.  Lives.  We saw it here in Andalusia with Hurricane Opal in 1995.  We've seen it along the Gulf Coast in general with names like Katrina, Ivan, Frederick, and Camille.    I remember seeing the high water mark from Ivan once at Waterville water park in Gulf Shores and just marveling to think there could be water, that deep, as far as you could see in all directions!  But we rebuilt and America found the strength to go on.  

On Monday, I took my mother to a neurosurgeon.  She was potentially looking at a fourth surgery on her back/neck.  The surgeon was honest enough with her to tell her that while he could fix her problem, the "fix" might cause other problems.  When I talked to her last night, she said, referring to her pain management plan, "well, if surgery will just make it worse, I will just have to tough it out."  Mind. Blown.  Back pain SUCKS, and my mom will find strength to go on.  

A friend of mine was recently telling me about how he is dealing with some health issues and they sounded quite serious.  At one point he said "there is a difference between fact and truth.  The fact is that I'm in pain.  The truth is that God's still in control and that overrides everything."  I could only shake my head in awe of such trust.  

What is it that makes us carry on in the face of adversity?  

That's not rhetorical...I actually want to know.  I want to know so I can bottle it and store it in my pantry...and get it when needed and pour it on my cornflakes!  Hurricanes.  Attacks.  Pain.  Suffering.  They come and they come and they come...and we continue to get up and go after it again and again, and that amazes me!  

The human spirit is absolutely, completely amazing.  I don't understand it completely, but it has made mankind do some remarkable things.  Things like going to the moon.  Things like climbing Everest.  Things like winning WW2.  Things as "simple" as deciding to just endure the pain of an aging back...

Just exactly what is it that makes that ant think has move a rubber tree plant?!?  (You may not know that song...if not, just keep reading...lol)

I think there is, in all of us, an overwhelming sense of the eternal.  We know we are meant for more.  And I think that's what drives us...the idea that there is something worth the effort.  Beethoven believed he'd conquer his deafness, even if it didn't happen until Heaven.  That's stout!  I used to believe I'd never conquer KSW's chemistry class, but somehow made it out.  

In the most recent Rocky film, Rocky Balboa tells his son that what makes a great fighter is his willingness to continue to get up EVERY time life knocks him down.  I like to tell me son that what really matters isn't so much the screw-up, but what you do next after you screw up.  

It is our response to adversity that defines us.  

Among mortal authors, I think Anne Frank tops the charts.  She said "despite everything, I still think people are good at heart."  Really, Anne???  Really????? Even the Nazis who were trying to destroy your entire culture???? Yep.  Really.  She believed that.  There are no words.  Just awe.  

I hope you rise to meet your challenge.  Doesn't matter whether it's going off to war...or going off to copy tests in another building in a rainstorm...persevere! 

As Todd Beamer said just moments before becoming immortal..."Let's roll!"