Love Your Neighbor's Wi-Fi As Your Own…

We’re poor, and by that I mean, we have enough money to live comfortably, just not enough to afford the necessities (22 inch rims, in-ground pools, LCD TV’s, cocaine…).

Therefore, we don’t have internet at home. Or at least, not internet that we pay for. As some of you may be aware, in this brave new world, the internet is everywhere (sorta like the Holy Spirit).

And one of our neighbors was savvy enough to get a high speed wi-fi connection, just not enough to put a password on it.

Of course, there are a few gimmicks, we only get reception in one corner of the house, and it’s spotty. Sometimes you can leave it in the exact spot where you know the signal is, and get no connection.

I’m coming to view this (Holy) ghost internet like Manna. If it was available all the time, I’d take it for granted, and wouldn’t appreciate those times when it works. Internet access isn’t really something you can store up for tomorrow, but when it comes and goes for no discernable reason you start to think there is one right routine that will make it work…

for example:

…I’ll be in the zone, ready to post some update, standing with my head cocked at a perfect 45 degree angle, one leg raised in the air, wiggling my left big toe like some Pilates guru…

When I remember the prophets of Baal. And I realize, this isn’t Manna, it’s just another idol I’m willing to sacrifice more to than Jesus. I’ve literally spent as much as an hour repositioning the laptop, changing where I sit…trying to get that digital fire to descend and light up my altar.

If it was this hard to read my Bible, I’d definitely be a Pilates guru.

Part Five: Real Love

That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love.
- Emily Dickinson

Marriage is a lot like going to see a band you really, really love for the first time.

You have their records, you’ve read about them, seen the airbrushed photos in Rolling Stone. You have all the lyrics memorized, you feel like you have a deep personal connection with the lead singer - who has written this poetry that holds a special meaning only you understand. You know deep down that despite their faults they’ve really just been misunderstood by a small-minded public who can’t possibly appreciate their brilliance. They aren’t the greatest band ever, (that’s the Beatles...duh) but they are close to second greatest…maybe even closer than Radiohead.

The band takes the stage…they look a little different then you imagined, not as trendily dressed as those pictures in Rolling Stone, they don’t seem as excited as you are…they seem, and this is almost unthinkable, bored.

After playing through a few songs where the singer forgets a couple words and hits a few wrong notes you begin to realize…your band, your favorite band...

…is awful. They don’t play your favorite songs, they screw up the ones you like. You spend the rest of the performance wondering what you were thinking all this time, being enamored with these…amateurs.

The show ends…

You leave having lost the ability to enjoy anything, driving home in silent defeat.

I expected Lacey to be the solution to my problems, the reliever of my headaches, the band-aid on scraped knees. I expected her to want to do everything I wanted to do, to be more clever than me, to enjoy my company when I felt like spending time with her and to leave me alone when I was busy obsessively playing the guitar, a video game, or watching a movie.

Of course by now you’re wondering…what on earth did Lacey see in me?

The answer is…we were both like that fan before the show. Except whenever we were together we were also the band…without any of the wrinkles, dressed in our photo-shoot best and ready to massage each other’s egos with a live performance worthy of being recorded by BBC.

The wool that is pulled over every newlywed’s eyes may not be as thick as the wool that was over our eyes (the wool over our eyes must have been woven out of bricks and the darkness of outer space).

I would like to take a moment to cut off anyone thinking some idiotic thought like “you obviously weren’t right for each other”.

Nobody is “right” for each other. We are all selfish egomaniacs devoted to the pursuit of our own desires at the expense of anything or anyone.

There are no two people that magically fit together; we’re all a bunch of bolt A’s trying to fit into slot B (yes…there is a kinky metaphor there, pervert).

The point is that my problems with Lacey and Lacey’s much more serious problems with me are not unique because of our youth or circumstances.

A good cliché to destroy would be “Wait for the one who is right for you” after all, aren’t divorces the result of married couple’s unmet expectations?

Praise God there was a third party involved in our married life…without the instruction and conviction of the Spirit I don’t know that I would have ever seen the depth of my depravity.

As it is the only reason Lacey hasn’t stabbed me to death with a kitchen knife is because every time I’ve neglected nurturing her or worse, shredded her with harsh, biting words…I’ve immediately realized how much I deserved instant painful death, and been destroyed by the guilt over how rampantly self-serving I am.

To this day I have to fight against my selfish impulses when she is in need. But you know what? The more times I put down the guitar when she asks for something, the easier it gets.

By God’s grace, there will come a day when I no longer need to be asked, I'll just know.

Part Four: Old+New+Borrowed+Blue

“Nowadays it’s hip not to get married,
I’m not invested in being hip.”
- John Lennon

So, seeing as how we loved each other (I won’t discuss how little we knew about real love…yet), Lacey was pregnant, and we were all good Protestants (although I guess the Catholic solution would be the same), we decided to get married.

This is where I have to take a moment to say that my mother-in-law, Angela, has a reputation of being very controlling and manipulative.And the reason she has this reputation is because, well, she is. Let me also say (before she reaches across the ether of cyberspace to pimp-slap me) that God made her that way for exactly the next few months before our wedding. I doubt there was another person who could have put together the wedding that she did in the time that she did (everyone who helped her, don’t feel snubbed, this is written by the groom, the most clueless of individuals about the details of wedding preparation) .

Needless to say the ceremony and reception have been called by several people I invited “the best wedding I’ve ever been to.” Now I don’t know what sort of wedding Lacey fantasized about having, or what wedding I would have wanted, but given that we had no time to waste over what we wanted, what we got was a better wedding than we could ever ask for, one we certainly didn’t deserve. The location was great, the music spot-on, the food delicious and the weather perfect.

I will never be able to repay any of the debts I acquired in regards to what so many people did for me and Lacey in those early months.

Editor’s note: Thanks to Ben & Ashley’s wedding invitation for this chapter’s quote.

Feeling pretty good right now...

This is one of those narcissistic posts where I tell you something simply because I'm thinking it. I'm going to share a quote from an email I got from a friend of mine...he's somewhat perturbed by my new found passion for Jesus.

"You come off as a suburban bro who has grown a set of testaments to better commune with his wealthy Zondervan-bound patrons."

Let me just say, that whatever people have said about me possessing some sort of writing ability, the sum-total of ability I've demonstrated pales in comparison to the cohesive brilliance of this statement.

I love the phrase "grew a set of testaments" If I'm in ministry, I'll use that one until the day I die.

Seriously, all you semi-believing Christians who want to hide your faith to look cool. Grow a pair and start living for Jesus.

Part Three: The Sound of Inevitability

“Are we not made for one another,
like notes of music,
though dissimilar?”
- Percy Shelley

After getting over the hurdle of telling my parents the truth, everything else kind of fell into place. Now I don’t want everyone to think that the reason for that is because I did the right thing. I didn’t do the right thing. Considering the circumstances I really just did the only thing I could have done for my survival. Even telling my parents the truth was an act of selfishness.

No, the reason that everything sense that day has been relative smooth sailing (I do mean to this day, though there have been road bumps) was because I was not in the driver’s seat. I have been going with the flow and up to that point I had been at war with everything.

My family, my friends, my body, my mind, everything was being engaged in combat of one form or another in order to be subjugated to my will. I dyed my hair, I wore clothes that didn’t fit (still do, it is something of a preference, besides being unavoidable. When your body is paper thin without being over six feet tall, you don’t fit anything except women’s juniors and boys 12-14). I espoused a slew of half-baked ideas in order to fit my faux-Christian attitude. But all that changed the day I told my parents the truth before they asked me to.

If you want to know about the particular elements of the miraculous that showed in the logistics and details of the next few months you should talk to my mother-in-law, who did a lot of the planning that brought some sort of possibility for a future out of the mess that everyone around her was making. I’ll get to more of my mother-in-law as a superhero later but for now let’s get back to some sort of coherent narrative.

I should probably start talking about how me and Lacey were sleeping together wasn’t just a physical thing. For a lot of people our age, it is purely physical. But we were two losers who, though we wouldn’t have put it that way, felt a little less disorganized and directionless when we were together. I don’t know what sort of moral fortitude or religious upbringing can withstand the force of passion that rose when we were together and was intensified by the loneliness we felt when we were apart. My relationship with Lacey was the only positive thing in my life (the lack of other positive relationships was my own fault, but that doesn’t change the fact that the only person I valued at that time was Lacey). And no moral fortitude had risen out of my religious upbringing.

All of this to say that though the circumstances of our wedding were shotgun in nature, for the two of us, the fact that we were in a situation where everyone was in favor of us getting married didn’t seem like a bad thing.

Part Two: I Get By With A Little Help From My Friend

“As God said to Job, Checkmate.”
-Stephen Colbert

In what could only be the act of a sovereign God forcing his will on my rebellious heart, it occurred to me to confess everything to my parents. I know this was God’s idea, because if I actually confessed this would be the first time I ever confessed anything preemptively. In the past, confession was something that was usually dragged out of me, and never brought me any peace. Which, considering that the whole point of confessing something is to reveal something hidden, it’s pretty obvious why I never benefited from those past “confessions”. I obviously never really confessed in the true sense.

I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit. The period between my knowledge of Lacey’s pregnancy and the night I told my parents what was going on was about three days. In that time I was going through a whirlwind of emotions. Rage against my stupidity and arrogance, self-loathing, frustration, fear (the expression abject terror would be more accurate), misery…

Let me pause to make a side note, I am an extremely self-centered person, I had not one thought for how Lacey was coping with the situation, or what she was going through. I think I remember being a little jealous that her parents already knew, but I was definitely not concerned – in that moment – for her.

…Back to me and my temporary insanity (although calling it temporary might be giving me too much credit). I was suicidal for most of the waking hours of those few days. I could feel the weight of the future rushing toward me (remember Indiana Jones and the rolling ball?) and the more I put off telling my parents the truth the more depressed I got. I guess that was a good thing, because if I stayed the same, I probably could have remained in darkness indefinitely (if 9 months is indefinite).

The bottom line is that by Wednesday I just couldn’t take it anymore, I was either going to go with my current choice of self-termination (I was favoring something dramatic, like Elliot Smith without all the mess) or tell my parents the truth. Seeing as how you’re reading my account of the events, I guess I can’t milk what choice I made for much suspense but you can’t blame for trying right?

It took me a while to get it out, but my parents are patient people, and they could tell something was up. Have you ever tried to tell someone something and your whole body just shut down? I was moving my mouth and words wouldn’t come out. I could barely think, I would start to say something and all the wind would just be sucked from my body. I started to turn red; I’d take a breath and try again. I was soaked with sweat and tears; the anxiety alone was exhausting. Looking back I think that was the moment of my exorcism, and the first real moment of honesty.

After I finally said it, and my parents responded with the love and grace I should have anticipated but never expected, I understood the power of facing the truth and began to take my first steps toward the bright future that would be born out of that darkness. I actually came to understand a lot of things over those three days.

I realized that I had the capacity for great evil, and that none of my potential for good was my own. That was not one of the biggest and deepest moments of relief I ever felt. I wouldn’t learn until much later that it should have been.

Think about it, if I had to depend on myself for the inclination to do good, what good was the guy who knocked up his girlfriend and spent three days contemplating murder, suicide, and cowardice ever going to do? But seeing as how I had somebody to push me in the right direction, and He had just came through for me in ways I couldn’t have ever anticipated, I was inclined to put the ball in his hands, for the first time in my life.

I learned how to identify with sinners that week, probably because for the first time, I acknowledged that I was one.

It would be a pretty cute story if that were the end of it, but just because I had confessed, been forgiven, and was on the road to redemption, didn’t mean there were no consequences…

Part One: Homicidal Tendencies

“If my thought-dreams could be seen,

They’d probably put my head in a guillotine.”

-Bob Dylan

I dropped the phone, or hung it up and then dropped it…it doesn’t really matter now and it definitely didn’t matter then. I had just gotten “the news” I guess the news is in the back of every sexually active guy’s mind, but I had actually gotten it.

I should have been expecting it; after all, if I had taken a moment to consider the past, there was history to give me reason to be concerned. But if there’s one thing that has proven itself over and over in my life, it’s that there is no limit to the lengths I can go to deceive, especially self-deceive.

My immediate response was to consider how I could continue my deception, and there is only one way to keep something like that secret and it was on my mind almost immediately. Calling it temptation would be to distort and caricaturize the fact that I had only one option to continue living a lie and I would not have hesitated to pursue it without consequence, if that were a possibility. That option was quickly removed from me and I would be lying to say it was my moral fortitude winning a victory over my selfish and evil desire for secrecy.

With abortion no longer a choice, my fevered brain scrambled to come up with some sort of solution and as a creative being, the solutions were mostly bizarre. Moving all my stuff out of my parents house and finding somewhere to stay until it all “blew over,” don’t ask me how it was going to blow over. Eloping to somewhere far away, kidnapping my girlfriend, dropping everything and moving as far away as possible. All the time the gracious forces were in action outside of my head and heart and they were slowly working things out for the best. But I was oblivious to everything but the thoughts in my own head.