Black Friday

I have never been out shopping in the madness known as Black Friday, that is until this year. Yes, I know its not correct, but the curiosity finally got the best of me. I yearn to experience as much of life as I possibly can ( within some moral and legal limits mind you ) so I felt this was something that I was just missing out on. I know its traditionally a 'girl' thing as well but I just wanted to find out what its all about. I don't take Christmas shopping too seriously most of the time because my wife is easy to buy for :

1. Vera Bradley
2. Bling Bling
3. Estee Lauder
4. Nothing with a cord
5. Nothing that requires work
6. Anything Mac/Apple/ I-phone related.

Those are the rules and she is happy. ( Happy wife/happy life. (psssst, that's BS by the way)) Gracie isn't too hard to buy for either because these days she sees commercials and she has friends who have stuff she doesn't , so just listen to the " I want ....................." and there ya go. This year and last year have been pretty financially troubled so that's my whole list to buy for. This year my wife wont be getting anything from her list because the $ just isn't there. Gracie gets 3 things for Christmas, we do this to help tie Jesus into the season for her. Having said all this, shopping should be reasonably affordable and the list is short, so I decided this year was the year to venture into the mayhem and foolishness.

I did go about this in a rather male-brain sort of way however. I planned ahead in a logical manner, mapped out my movements, planned my purchases, etc. I checked out adds, and went online to find the items I was searching for. I even went so far as to call one of the stores, find out what time they opened and verified that they did indeed have the item I was interested in and that they had several of them. I was rather pleased with myself at this point, but ( and you who've been out on Black Friday are already laughing at me) this effort was pointless and the effort that I needed to engage in went undone.

Lesson one, actually go to the store to verify not only the existence of the item, but more importantly the exact location of the item. Why you ask? Well, I called and talked to Neil at Gamestop to make sure they had a PINK refurbished DS Lite for Gracie, and the accessories and games to go with it. Neil told me that he had 8 to choose from, plenty of games and accessories and they opened at 6 but there was no need to be there that early for this item. Well my silly ignorant self listened to Neil. More on that in a minute.

So, Black Friday morning 5 AM. I arise, gird my loins and prepare myself for the butt whoopin' I am about to receive. I proudly observe that I am up early and the entire neighborhood is dark. I later realize that is because the other Black Friday shoppers have left long ago, and the rest of the normal people are still snug in their beds with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. I put on my Kevlar under britches, grab a can of mace and put 911 on my speed dial, now I am ready to head to Walmart. I figure I can hit Walmart at 5:45 and still be at Gamestop by 6:30. ( stop laughing, I only wanted one thing from Walmart, it wasn't like I was going to walk around and look at stuff and Gamestop is in the same area so how long could it take?)

As I arrive at the scene of the conflict I am surprised that I cannot even park with 1/2 mile or better of Walmart.

Lesson two: If I had really needed to go to Walmart I would need a driver to circle around, drop me off and then initiate a holding pattern like a bank robber. Once leaving I could phone the get away driver to come past and I could run out into the fray and dive in the backseat without the car ever actually stopping.

I decided that my rotund,bald, flat footed and yet sexy frame of a man didn't really need to go into Walmart after all. If I did it would through my schedule off by hours and I still had places I needed to go. So I went on over to Gamestop since it hadn't opened yet. Oh, wait a minute, Neil said they open at 6, its only 5:45 and they are crowded out the door. How can this be? Did Neil lie to me? No, Neil didn't lie, they had to open early because of the crowd, didn't want anybody getting hurt. I manage to worm, (yes worm, walk isn't possible in this sea of humanity) into the store. I make my first observation, if somebody yells fire, we are all gonna die trying to squeeze back out of here. My second observation is that I cant actually shop in here (see Lesson one) because I cant move around and find what I need. This is a problem, I don't know what games I need to get, where the accessories are, or where the DS itself is.

Now its time to rely on the Christmas kindness of other more experienced shoppers. I have learned that "find the moms" is always a good shopping rule, the more kids the moms have, the more likely they are to be able to help, but sometimes the more kids they have, the less willing they are to help. I spot a mom with 2 daughters, I figure she is in the safe zone, enough kids to know how to help, not so many she is going to poke me in the eye for getting in her zip code. She is pressed up against the wall sorting through the game selection and her two daughters (age 8 and 12) are sitting on the floor going through the lower racks. I say something helpless and ignorant sounding and much to my glorious happiness they take pity on me, the poor lost dad who should have had enough sense to stay home. As I beam inside that my minor deception has worked (I really am not that helpless and ignorant, that's my story and I'm sticking to it) the nice lady informs me that the DS are behind the counter, and asks how old my child is and what gender or what genre of games. I said she is 6 and likes littlest pet shops. Each child setting in the floor then sticks up a hand with a game in it, one Littlest Pet Shop adventure and one Princess something or other, one more and I am done. Mom hands me the third seconds later, and I am off to get in line.

I now spend the next 35 minutes in line with nose jammed into the bouffant in front of me while trying to spot the accessories out the side of my eye because peripheral vision is all I had, not being able to move and all. I do wish she had used a little less hairspray, it was pokin me in the eye and making me want to sneeze. If I had sneezed, I think she may have turned and beat me to death with her purse, but I wasn't going to find out. Remember the scene from Finding Nemo when Dori gets into the net with the Tuna and tells them all to just keep swimming? Yeah, that's the line at Gamestop, I was a tuna. I finally get to the front of the line and ask him about the 8 PINK DS refurbs, he tells me he has two left and I check them out and pick and pay. Doing my best Sweetness impersonation I stiff arm a teen and do a spin move on a mom and plow through the line to reach the door. Touchdown, I am outside, and can breath again.

I then head to Children's Place to buy some clothes for Gracie. Not a chance of seeing any dads in there, trust me. I am headed into enemy territory, the moms only zone, buying clothes for a little girl. I do enjoy the oddity of it all though, and I do pretty well picking clothes for Gracie. I just have enough sense to get help, both finding things and making sure they work together. On Black Friday I got almost $200 worth of stuff for $50, I was happy. Nothing too extraordinary happened after this point, but the deals were worth the effort, so I will do it again.

Next year I am thinking of either a seeing eye dog to help me get better parking, ( that might not work, blind people don't drive much so I don't know that anybody will buy that one), or maybe renting a wheel chair and asking someone in the store to be my shopping assistant, that might work.

"Til the break of day"

I have been in a transitional period for some time now. I have not always been aware of it on a conscious level, but that doesn't make it any less real. I want to start this post by once again talking about Jacob and the wrestling match he engaged in. I have posted a few times about this subject in the past, you can review my thoughts here if you wish. ( to my Facebook friends, sometimes the links don't transfer, so if this link didn't then you will need to go to my actual blog to see the other post.)

Okay, this is going to be one of those whiny, raw, theologically disturbed ( not to mention mentally challenged) posts, just so you have been warned.

Jacob wrestled with a man, or so it starts. In life we wrestle with things, things we don't always understand but in so we battle. We often give our battles names or representations that we are familiar with, like Jacob labeling his conflict with 'man'. Jacob wrestles in the night, or more accurately, in the darkness. As the battle moves on Jacob slowly begins to understand it is not a man at all that he is wrestling (resisting), but now he calls it the Angel of the Lord. In the end Jacob gives up his resistance and in so doing realized that he was battling against God himself. As he gives in, the Morning Sun is rising. Jacob has battled "Til the break of day". Jacob is given a new name, he is a new being. He has succumbed to God's will.

What this text doesn't say is that after you, we, I have wrestled though the night and now you, we, I walk in the Light with Christ as our Saviour, we shouldn't have any more battles should we? The text doesn't warn us (at this point) that there are more battles yet ahead of us. Just when you thought it was going to get easier, in reality it is going to get much more difficult.

You see, before daybreak, the demons didn't worry about you much, you were no threat, you were theirs. God was working on you to bring you to Him. Now that we have entered the light, the demons are working on you all the time, deceiving you, misleading you, etc. However, the Holy Spirit is now convicting you as well, and just to add a little more to it, man shuns you as well. So much for easier......

I don't know about you, but I could have used a little warning that the demons are smarter than me. I don't know why I am surprised by this, but I guess maybe I am not as smart as I thought I was. I thought my main battle would be against man, and honestly, I couldn't care less. I read the scripture that warned me that man would ridicule me for my faith, that I would be hated because of Him and all that. Well, I feel like most people don't like me much anyway, so if they have a new reason not to like me, not much difference there. I was willing and I thought able to take on persecution by man. I was willing and able to wrestle the man. Well, like Jacob, I am slowly getting the point that once again its not man I am resisting. Seemed to me that this battle only was supposed to happen once, but I am learning that this is not the case.

Let us have a metaphor, I love metaphors. We have all heard, (most of us anyway) how once Jesus is in our lives as our Redeemer, He will walk with us and guide us through all things. We simply need to focus on Him to find our way. We have heard the poem called footprints in the sand. of how He walks with us. We also have been told He will guide us if we focus on Him, take the narrow path, not the wide path with the big gate. I feel like Jesus sometimes leaves my side and runs out in front me. Once He gets aways out in front of my path He gets down on His hands and knees and waits. When I come up on Him, one of two things happens, I either am focused on Him and stop in front of Him, or I don't see Him and trip right over Him planting my face in the sand. Of course, being a kind soul, He will AGAIN pick me up and dust me off. I know He only does this to alter my path back towards the narrow road, but geez I wish He would just send me a postcard with new Mapquest directions instead of knocking me over. Hmm, let me think about that for a minute. Maybe that is the problem, yep I thought about it, that's that problem.

The post card came in the mail, but I just tossed it aside with the bills I cant pay and didn't read it. That is one thing that has been missing for the last 2 years or so. I have to get back into reading the mail God sends me. ( for the slower folks, I need a daily dose of His Word which I have been too lax on for too long.) I opened my bible this week and have begun to read Mathew all over again. Its not that I don't know the story, its that God cant speak to me if I don't listen. He hates not being listened too as much as I do, ironic isn't it. Speaking of irony, the first two nights I tried to read I started reading in bed. Both nights I had to quit reading to change the sheets because one of our dogs decided to pee right in the middle of the bed. Damn demons will stoop to anything to keep me from figuring out what is going wrong. Well, take note, I didn't give up reading, and will not give it up this time no matter how much you pee in my bed !!

Have I gleaned anything new in the first 12 chapters of Mathew?

Yes............

Things like wolves wearing sheep's clothing, and know a tree by the fruit it produces. I can look back on my life and know that I have been a wolf, a sheep, and a wolf dressed as a sheep even. I can identify these things by the fruit. I can also now see some bad fruit, or lack of fruit, in some others. I wont go into that however, I am too busy trying to pull this plank out of my eye to worry about the dust in theirs.

One of the things that has happened lately is that we have left our church and have begun to attend a new one. This new church, LCC, is a church with an interesting twist. They are not concerned with or built around 'membership'. They don't care if you ever become a member or not. (sound strange?) They pray regularly that the Lord will send them people who have a need for something, something that LCC can provide for them. Sometimes people show up just for one sermon, something they needed to hear was spoken, and while they are happy to receive the word they needed, they go back to there own church, or whatever, the next week. Sometimes people need to meet someone, or need to have someone pray with them, or whatever the need might be, LCC strives to meet the need that God sent someone to receive. This is an interestingly new take on things as far as my ignorant self is concerned. We left our former church on a mission to find someplace that we could serve in either youth, children, or some kind of adoption ministry. After finding out that our pastor is adopted, and there are several other adoption situations around the church, maybe this was the place. But now I am not so sure I have this correct. Maybe I have again become confused about what I am supposed to do for others when its really what God is using others to do in me.

Again, from reading Mathew lately I can feel the axe and fork in my life. I am starting to see things differently, I am starting to see people differently, I am starting to see myself differently. Let me just tell you, I don't like it much.

One thing scripture tells me over and over again is that I need to put Him first. In Mathew Jesus says He didn't come to be a peacemaker, but to put mother against daughter. He is telling us that He MUST come first. (die to self, die to self) We are to keep our focus on Him, and He will guide us. ( die to self, die to self ). We are supposed to try and mirror His life and pick up our cross and follow Him. ( die to self, die to self ).

Does anybody else find this extremely difficult to do? If I give up all of me, who am I? If every last little thing that is me dies, haven't I died too? If I need to give up the things that make me who I am, then why am I me, and why am I here? Any answers, any?

I guess its time to shake things up again, change is good and healthy. (Right? uh, right.)

I try to do the things I am supposed to. I invite the righteous into my home because they are righteous, I take care of the widows and orphans, I listen and learn and help the little children, but again and again I am reminded, this is not enough, die to self and put Him first.... So as I sit here trying not to worry about tomorrow because today has enough trouble of its own, and thinking about the lilies and the sparrows, I have but one request.

Like Niecy Nash would say it:

Somebody pray for me::::::