Choices...

Choices…

What I do when I hurt.

I have noticed an uneasy amount of “fluff” entries lately on my blog.

Yes, they are all mine, but none really shares my heart.

That is because I am not sure what is going on in my heart right now.


The Christmas season is upon us and I am numb.

I have gone to the Christmas parties, been moved by Christmas concerts and worship, but my heart appears to be numb to the whole Christmas thing right now.

I have listened to Christmas carols till I am blue in the face and feel quite “unable” to “get” into the “Christmas Spirit”

It may be that I am unable to get to “Christ” right now.

I do not know if this is some kind of emotional depression, or mental grieving.

I cannot seem to care about anything right now.

Just going through life is big enough.

I do know that my heart is vacillating between weeping and stone and I do not know why.

Well…I do in part.

I have come to realize through a very courageous and honest lady at my church:

walkingagain

That I am not properly grieving a few things in my life.

Mentally, Spiritually, and Emotionally

It is like a ton of garbage on my back, and my heart is breaking, melting, and solidifying into stone all at the same time.

I am numb.

I know all the theological arguments; I know what I should be doing, but seem to lack the capacity to do so.

It is like the wind has gone out of sails, and my ship has ceased to move. Without the wind I am unable to steer as the currents of life wash me in some unknown direction.

I see people with their trees up, doing things with their holidays, spending time with family, and as Christmas gets closer, I find myself more and more depressed.

It will be the first Christmas without my wife.

Remembering the loss of my friend Lisa.

I am not sure if I have completely grieved the first.

I know I have not grieved the last.


The angry injustice that binds my heart,

To let the dead fly free,

To know that I may return to them,

But they may not to me.


God this hurts, but again it doesn’t. What is wrong with me?

Why do I live my life in such extreme valleys and mountains?

Why no consistency in my life.

I see others who appear to be so constant in their spirituality.

I appear to be on some kind of roller coaster ride…

I have been up and down more times than the dollar.

Screwup-Repentence-Restoration-Screwup-Repentence-Restoration

Please let me off the merry go round please.

Just for a few rounds at least.

Seems every time I deal with something, God brings another to deal with right after.

Enough already! Give me a break.

God…I know you want my faith.

I know you want me refined.

But the material you are refining is vaporizing.

It is tired, it is beaten, it is done.


Did you know that with extreme pressure and heat that a lump of coal becomes a diamond?

Or that with extreme heat, gold can be purified, separating the impurities to the surface to be skimmed off leaving pure gold?

I used to work in a nickel smelter.

The rock from underground is crushed, superheated, melted with electrodes in a furnace that uses more power than most cities per day, and is liquefied into molten lava.

As the liquid is further heated, silica sand and quartz is added to bind with the impurities.

Nickel does not bind to silica sand and quartz.

Iron and everything else does.

The silica and quartz is lighter than the nickel and floats to the surface.

Continued heating and skimming off the silica and quartz with the impurities leaves mostly nickel content at the bottom.

But it is not finished there.

It is poured out into huge brick lined ladles hoisted by 60-ton cranes and poured into things called converters.

See the nickel at this stage still has sulfur in it, which naturally occurs in nickel deposits, but does not all float to the surface like other impurities.

Weird thing is this impurity purifies the nickel further.

As air is introduced into the lava, it reacts with the sulfur causing the sulfur to burn autogenously, that is to say, you do not have to add more heat to the lava, the sulfur mixing with the air causes the lava to heat up as you add more air to it.

The temperature of the lava is determined by the air, so the more air you add, the hotter it gets.

To refine nickel, you blast as much air into the lava as possible.

The nickel lava gets so hot that if it were not for the bricks inside the converter, the nickel lava would flow right through the steel, like water through a mesh, even though it is two full feet thick.

I have seen a furnace breached by lava. It flows like water and is deadly.

After the sulfur is expended and more silica and quartz is added for the final skim, the nickel is still only 98% pure.

The nickel is then poured out again into the 60-ton ladles and poured into the anode line ladle.

The nickel is then poured into anodes, flat sheets of nickel rock, 3 feet by 4 feet long.

These anodes then go over to the refinery where they are placed in acid and the nickel is drawn out of the anodes by electrical charge onto host plates where pure nickel accumulates.

These pure nickel plates are then removed and cleaned of acid and then are sent out.

All this to say, that my heart literally feels like it is in this process…

The pain of crushing, heating, melting, skimming, re-heating, re-skimming, poured out, re-heated, re-skimmed, re-heated, re-skimmed, poured out, charged, molecularized, and plated…

Sometimes I, as a nickel atom just want to say STOP!

Let me off this thing.

Get me the heck outta dodge.

Sianara, Arieve derchi, Hostalaweigo, Hostamanaro Moochachos, Bon Voyage, Happy Trails, Nice Knowing ya!…

I probably did not spell the exotic goodbyes of the above properly but you get the picture…

Seems that God is not content to leave us where we are.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing.

Good thing: Get closer to God, know Him better, build relationship with Him, Faith Trust….

Bad thing: Owch. Did I mention owch? Yeah. Pain. Brokenness, Heart smashed to bits, melted into liquid, refined…

It is interesting as I read this again, that air (interestingly pnuema is the greek word for Spirit where we get the word pneumatic or needing air) is both needed in the sails to make them fly and is needed in the refining process to make nickel…things that make you ago hmmm…

But this is the way God created it…whoever says Christianity is a crutch, is easy, and the opiate of the masses…should have their head examined.

They obviously ain’t been there.

A crutch isn’t supposed to be knocked out from underneath ya every few minutes to see if you will stand on your own two feet, if this is easy, then I ain’t doing something right, and if this is the opiate of the masses…let me get stoned rather than deal with this (I would love to be oblivious to life)

For obvious reasons, getting stoned is not really dealing with life, it is just a metaphor, but knowing the truth can be a burdensome thing.

You have to live it. You have to choose it.

In the movie The Matrix, the main character is given a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill. One would open him up to the truth, one would leave him in la-la land where he already was.

The central character of the film, Neo, is presented to us in the opening part of the film as a loner who is searching for a mysterious character called Morpheus (named after the Greek god of dreams and sleep).

Neo is also trying to discover the answer to the question "What is the Matrix?"

Morpheus contacts Neo just as the machines (posing as sinister 'agents') are trying to keep Neo from finding out any more. When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers Neo two pills.

The red pill will answer the question "what is the Matrix?" (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before.

As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

The film as a whole and especially the choosing scene is deeply compelling, why is the choice between what you believe you know and an unknown 'real' truth so fascinating? How could a choice possibly be made? On the one hand is everyone you love and everything that you have built you life upon, on the other hand the promise of truth.

The question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these circumstances.

The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth pursuing.

The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit, of things we believe we know.

The blue pill symbolises commuting to work every day, or brushing your teeth.

The red pill is an unknown.

We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it.

The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to answer the question, you have to gamble your whole life and world on a reality you have never even experienced yet.

However, in order to investigate which course of action to take we need to investigate why the choice is faced. Why should we even have to decide whether to pursue truth?

One answer in short, may be inquisitiveness.

Many people throughout human existence have questioned and enquired.

Most of them have not been scientists or doctors or philosophers, but simply ordinary people asking 'what if?' or 'why?'

Asking these questions ultimately leads us to a choice.

Do you continue to ask and investigate, or do you stop and never ask again? This in essence, is the question posed to Neo in the film.

Unfortunately, once you have experienced truth there is no going back to the lie.

Some days I wish that God was not the only path. But He is.

Some days, I wish I did not have to go through this all. But I do.

Some days I just wish I would of taken the blue pill…

Blessings -Moose