A really crazy movie I was watching gave me the idea for this post. I’m not brave enough to try to explain the movie and if I did you would be just as twisted as I am, and when they put me in a padded cell I would have quite a bit of company. The movie was basically about one man’s creation of cyborgs to destroy the world. The theme of this movie, at least to me, focused on the Love most of us parents have for our offspring. The dad in this movie didn’t know he had children, the mom died before she had a chance to give birth, she never told him she was pregnant. To complicate matters more the man who raised the kids was the dad’s and their grandfather’s sworn enemy.
Dad met his daughter first, only because she was trying to protect him, just as he was getting use to the fact she was his child, she dropped the bomb on him telling him she had a twin brother, who wasn’t taking to the concept that he had another father, the young man and his sister were raised to kill their father, but only the girl knew the truth. The dad once he accepted them as his, showed them much Love as his children, he explained to them that no matter what happened in their lives he would always Love them, when that scene finished, it bought to mind my own kids.
To give a small glimpse of my past, I grew up never knowing or seeing my biological father, I remember, before I had kids, getting on my knees and praying, that if I ever had kids, I would never leave them. In retrospect, My biological father did me a favor, because of my not knowing him, it gave me the courage to make a commitment to my yet unborn offspring. I was given the opportunity to keep that promise. Thru a simple twist of fate, I got to raise 5 of those kids by myself, the 5 youngest. When I understood that the responsibility of raising the children was mine and mine alone, I was unemployed, and I was a alcoholic, and the first thing I thought of was, imagine me being solely responsible for raising my kids who ranged in age from 11 mos – 8 yrs, with my daughter being the oldest. Needless to say, I had to get my act together. I quit drinking, and I got a nice paying job, the kids are grown, three of them are college grads, all of them seem to be handling their business, and doing pretty good from what I can tell.
Now that the kids are grown they don’t seem to have any appreciation for dad, nor do they have much time for the old boy, but that’s alright, they deserve to live their own lives, and that’s something I understand. You know!!! kids don’t seem to realize what their parents go thru to care and Love them, sometimes I don’t think they really care. In my case, my children don’t think much about me as their dad, I’ve even had them try and tell me how I should live my life, it doesn’t matter, I explained to them, I’m not concerned about what you-all think about me, or how you feel, you will never change the Love I have for you as my kids.
” AGAPE LOVE “
Have a somewhat happy but strange experience to share.
My friend and I hadn’t seen or talked to each other for little over a year. I had been thinking about her very heavily, and I couldn’t get her off of my mind, one day my doorbell rang, almost instantly I knew it was she at the door.
I buzzed her in, just as I opened the door, she jumped into my arms and said ” I missed you ” well, I happened to be feeling the same words she spoke, we hugged each other tightly, as I realized we were both happy to see each other. We needed to be in each others presence.
We laughed, joked with each other like always, and just enjoyed each others company, we both seemed to forget what was troubling us, it was like being in our own world. Suddenly she said ” you know I’m never going to leave you-we’re never going to be out of each others life, no matter what happens “.
As she spoke these words, something inside me was telling me that she expressed the truth, I just knew she meant what she had said, haven’t figured out how I knew, I could feel it. Without verbally speaking out our feelings, we could always tell when one of us needed the other, we somehow, magically developed this spiritual bond between us, where words no longer seemed necessary.We had each others back.
Now, that she’s no longer her in the physical sense, I can feel her presence, she is a part of my conscience. One night I lay in bed, having a terrible time falling asleep, suddenly I felt her arms wrap around me, I sleep very soundly and peaceful, a sleep I hadn’t achieved in a long time.
Now I am understanding the seriousness of her words- ” we’ll always be a part of each others lives “. There will be those who may say this is just my imagination, SO BE IT, for me, it’s a promise kept by a true friend.
I sometimes wonder how many people have asked or been asked this question, and what were the response’s given either to them or from them. I have heard asked, asked myself, and have been asked this particular question almost all my life.
THE QUESTION IS
WHY DOES GOD LET BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE
Since I do believe in GOD, my answer, given later, will be based on that belief, for those who don’t believe, the question still does have relevance, without such belief, ” Why do bad things seem to happen to good people “.
This question at times seemed to nag at me, and I began to objectively seek an answer. One day while being lazy and doing my best not to think of anything, an answer came to me. I could hear this calm, clear voice within me say, GOD is not responsible for for those unfortunate circumstances, the situations that have occurred, were a matter of someones choice. Take for an example, most of us have known of someone this example would apply to; Here we go!! A person going shopping after volunteering at a homeless shelter. They are involved in a horrific traffic accident in which they are a fatality or seriously injured. After the investigation, it is determined alcohol was responsible.
Two choices were made, one; the victim choose to drive up that particular street at that particular time. Second choice; the other driver also made a choice to drive up the same street at the same time. My question is; can someone explain to me how GOD would have been involved in either of the individuals making their
When I was in my early teens, up until maybe in my late 40′s, I thought I knew what love was, I DIDN’T KNOW NOTHING. I was unaware that love comes in many different forms, and like life, many different beliefs. The first time I remember falling in love was around 12 years old, I recall that every time the lady of my affection was around me, I would, for lack of a better term, just fall to pieces, I couldn’t talk, think, and at times it seemed I could barely breathe when I was in her presence. I thought I was in love, WRONG!!! I was in lust, just didn’t realize there was a difference, it was also the time I began to understand the power that women had over me.
From my own experiences, I began to realize that I loved possessively, I loved for sex, I loved jealously, I have loved for envy, I’ve loved for beauty, and of course, I’ve loved for money, just to name a few of the forms that love takes. Although these different forms of love were enjoyable ( some weren’t ) when they happened, something still seemed to be missing, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out, I just couldn’t get this love thing right.
One day I was taking a religious course, it was there I learned of a Love called ” Agape Love “. The word Agape means; unselfish, unconditional Love, this is the type of love I believe the Creator has for us, his creations. When I first heard of such a love, I didn’t think much about it’s concept at the time, but somehow it stuck with me, unknowingly. A few years later, I happened to be sitting in church, and the teaching for the day was ” Agape Love ” after that service, the term ” AGAPE LOVE “ seemed to come up in conversations more often, one of my brothers took a liking to the expression and used it in reference often. I began to think to myself, wonder what it would feel like to love others that way, and what would it take to give such a love. Well, I understand a little better that expression ” watch what you ask for ( or wonder about, in my case ), you just might get it “. Didn’t have to wait much longer to start my lesson. Back in 1996, a most gorgeous creature walked into my life, and from the moment we were introduced, my lesson in ” Agape Love ” began, there was one minor curve I had to negotiate first.
I HAD TO LEARN TO LOVE MYSELF
Hopefully there are some who have taken the time to read all of my posts, or kept up with all of my posts on a consistent basis. I have written a few posts on my being homeless, this is an follow-up to those posts.
At this time I am still considering myself to be homeless, I have some place to rest my head, but it’s still not mine, and until I acquire a place to live for myself, I am living, more or less, on borrowed time. When I first became homeless, I knew I had to do something to correct my situation. I drew up a plan to help me gain some focus, I understood from the word go, that I am the only one who could make my plan work, and I must find a way to make it work, even with all the variables that have the possibility of hindering or stopping me from working on my plans, I would be my biggest obstacle, plainly put, no matter what happens, short of dying, I’m the only one who really has the power to stop me from being successful. realizing this, I am going for it. Once I sat down and figured out what I needed to do, I also figured out the steps to get myself there.
Here’s a example of what I came up with; Since I do have a small income to work with, my first step was to figure out a way to pay all of my living expense ( the most important ones ) ahead for the next three months. One of my sons let me stay in his apartment while he is in school, with the agreement I pay the rent. I started working on the expense’s first, I have already taken care two of the first items on my expense list, they are paid up until the middle of May, while I am working on the rest, the money I would have spent on those two items, I will use to pay the next item on my list, once I reach my goal of having all of my necessary expense’s paid up until the end of June, all of step one ( my expense’s ) will be taken care of by the middle of March or the end of April. Once step one of my plan is accomplished, I will have about two months of no expense’s, so I will then start to work on step two, which is to complete work on my car so I will have decent transportation.
In order to make this work out the way it was planned, I have made whatever sacrifices I deemed necessary to allow me to finish step one. The whole time I am working on my plan, I am also seeking other forms of income, and preparing myself for any upcoming challenges. I have made up my mind about one thing, if it ain’t part of the plan, or helping me with the plan.
When I was younger, and as I grew ( matured ) I didn’t put much effort into ever developing a plan to live my life, I just went with the flow of things, all that I dreamed of doing, I got a chance to do, the results came out just as suspected. The problem I was having, was no focus, going thru the different scenarios to accomplish my goals could have been played a lot better than I played them.
Not having a plan made my life somewhat difficult, kind of like swimming upstream against very strong currents. Although the results weren’t bad, I realized they could have been much much better. To give an example: let’s take music. I really love music, I learned to play an assortment of musical instruments, and I could or at least I used to be able to sing very well. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, one of my uncle’s was a jazz musician, he took his time and taught me to play Tenor, Bass and Alto Sax, he later added lessons on playing a flute. I was around 9 or 10 when a cousin of mine who played for the church choir, taught me to play the Piano & Organ, when I was about 14 or 15 I had joined a Drum & Bugle Corp, where I learned to play the French Horn, a Contra Bass Horn, the Coronet, and added to that I also learned to play the Drums- Snare, Tenor and Bass. As you can see , in my youth I learned to play quite a few instruments, and along with being able to sing, I got pretty good.
All this musical talent and knowledge, and I did nothing with it. I didn’t have any direction, no focus, I only learned because it seemed interesting at the time. Well I found out, that without any direction, without any type of plan, my talent and knowledge were wasted, and since I never took the opportunity to practice and keep up with my talents, I blew it. The knowledge and talent are now useless to me this is /was a complete waste of time for those who sacrificed their time and talent to teach me. One saying I know from experience is right, is ” A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE ” foolish me.
LOOK, LISTEN, LEARN AND FOR GOODNESS SAKE HAVE A PLAN !!!!