Category: I’m Just Sayin

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Do You Miss Lost?

This was a question proposed on a friends status update recently and this was my response…

I miss the idea of LOST. But like a bad break-up, it ended poorly. I wish that they had made sense of those sideways flashes and a myriad of other things that never added up. They tried to wrap it all up with a tidy purgatory ending, but I would have preferred them to go back to their own lives at the exact moment that they were about to get on the plane and then they could have made different choices with their lives… or end them with an actual plane crash.

Through the whole season I couldn’t understand why Hurley didn’t lose some weight and there were a number of other loopholes that I may elaborate on later. All in all, I wish that it had a more satisfying ending.

What are your thoughts?

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I'm Just Sayin

The Best of 2010

Here are the top 10 things that happened to me in 2010, the order isn’t really important…

1. Best Job – I got on staff at Denton Bible Church
2. Best Big Thing – I sold my house.
3. Best New Friends – I found the 3 amigos, a.k.a. The Hangar Interns.
4. Best DBSM Event – Mudfest… need I say more?
5. Best Movie – “Red”
6. Most Requested Song – Lady Gaga – Bad Romance
7. Best TV Show – Modern Family
8. Best Meal – Umeko Sushi in Plano
9. Best Youtube – Bed Intruder Remix
10. Best of the Best… I met a great girl.

What happened to you in 2010 that you have labeled “The Best”?

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I'm Just Sayin

New Year. New Resolutions.

35 years on this planet and I’ve never kept any of my resolutions, but they sure are fun to make.

This year, I thought I’d make up some grand ones and try to keep them.

  1. Get married or at least get engaged.
  2. Get out of debt completely – that’s only about 30,000 if you include my car…
  3. Get down to 2% body fat. Why not? Jet Li did it.
  4. Publish a book. I wrote one 5 years ago, why not try to get it published now?
  5. Learn to play the guitar. So I can serenade my new fiance
  6. Travel More
  7. Read the Bible, in it’s entirety, twice
  8. Stop spending so much time on Facebook
  9. Pray more for people and worry less about myself
  10. Be a better listener

Alright… after putting those on paper, I kind of hope they all come true…

Happy New Year and may all your dreams and wishes come true…

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I'm Just Sayin Love Memoirs

A Hard Candy Christmas

This has possibly been the best and worst year of my life. I turned 35 a few days ago and I’ve never been fatter. I sold my house after having to beg from my friends for money and while I work for myself, few people ever pay me on time.

But I’m not complaining. The best part about being somewhat self-employed is setting your own hours and being your own boss. The problem is, I’ve never been good at telling people what to do, much less myself and so how I’ve managed to pay bills on time and continue a comfortable standard of living has been beyond me.

I guess I am quite blessed. God, despite my incessant sinfulness, has for some reason continued to shower me with favor. I will be on the verge of being homeless and then suddenly I have so much money that I’m giving it away.

But this year has to have been by far the loneliest. When I was in Plano, not living near my friends and family, then feeling alone was to be expected. But now I am surrounded by people that love me, just doors away, but they can’t be with me continually and if they could I probably wouldn’t want that. Instead, I selfishly wish that they could be around to entertain at my beckon call and then vamoose when I’ve had my fill.

Being alone is like being hungry, no matter how much you stuff yourself, you will one day be hungry again.

So yesterday was Christmas Eve and I think it is the first time I’ve ever spent it in solitude. I picked up some barbecue and feasted in front of the television watching reruns of 30 Rock and channel surfing. To lift my spirits I download “Hard Candy Christmas” from Dolly Parton and listened to it on repeat while texting friends and living vicariously through Facebook.

The worst part is that although I don’t want to be alone, I don’t exactly want to be with people either. Being with people means I have to be happy and talking and making polite conversation. If I went to a Christmas Eve Candlelight service I’d be forced to put on some ill-fitting jeans that cut off my circulation from the waist down and stretch a plaid shirt over my large frame like saran wrap over the remains of a turkey.

Once inside the church I’d sing Christmas carols and hope that we could stand all night knowing that sitting down would might snap me in two or pinch me in half – either way, I do not like the idea of being separated from my legs or private parts for that matter and it always frightens me when I see someone in a wheelchair without the aforementioned anatomy.

Standing alongside my family I feel the eyes of my friends staring at me. I imagine them thinking, “Why is Eddie still single?” their lips moving and singing, but no real thought given to the words being sung.  “If he’d lose some weight he could find a nice girl.” Then they look with pride at their own brood as if by somehow having found love and having a handful of kids somehow made them… whole.

When the singing is all done and the food is all eaten and the gifts are unwrapped, I come back home to my apartment, sit in front of my television, pick up my MacBook and start working to drown out the fact that my life is at times, frighteningly pathetic.

I’d like to stop a moment and say that I’m not wallowing in self-pity or despair, just rather making a quick summation of my life. While I get to work with students and do ministry, I have no one to really share my success or joy. My life is not truly challenging because I don’t have someone that sees me for who I really am and then pushes me beyond what I am capable. For the first time in my life I know why God created Eve. While God himself was enough for Adam, he understood that as humans we have a need for someone who is on our own level that further clarifies who God truly is, then he took that one step further with children.

Hey, maybe I’ll dye my hair
Maybe I’ll move somewhere
Maybe I’ll get a car
Maybe I’ll drive so far
They’ll all lose track
Me, I’ll bounce right back

Maybe I’ll sleep real late
Maybe I’ll lose some weight
Maybe I’ll clear my junk
Maybe I’ll just get drunk on apple wine
Me, I’ll be just

Fine and Dandy
Lord it’s like a hard candy Christmas
I’m barely getting through tomorrow
But still I won’t let
Sorrow bring me way down…

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I'm Just Sayin

Being “Somebody” Doesn’t Matter That Much at All…

Growing up multiracial I have become accustomed to feeling like “the help”.  I’m not sure if it was society or my own personal feelings of insecurity and inadequacy that was enhanced by harsh reality – but whatever it was, I grew up feeling like a little bit like a “less than”.

Over the years I would work my way up from housekeeper and janitor to a lucrative position at a company that appreciated diversity. Finally, I was adequate, a whole, instead of a fraction of what I should be. I sat in a small cubicle on a gray aisle surrounded by warm people in a cold building. I was hardly happy, but at least I was somebody.

Then in 2009 I got laid off and suddenly I felt like I was being deported. Not just from my quasi-cozy existence, but from my life that I had earned through hours of classroom training, toilet scrubbing, bus driving and ditch-digging. Like cattle being led to the slaughter, myself and other co-workers were pushed into small rooms where we were systematically severed and discarded like unwanted babies or leftovers from Chili’s.

At first it was a brutal shock to my senses. Although most of my life I had not felt fully complete, at least for a time I had felt like I was part of something and that one day it would add up to so much more – but what I didn’t realize it that it wasn’t completing me, it was actually minimalizing my existence and slowly subtracting everything that made me, ME.

It took several months for me to realize that being laid off from work was the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me realize that I was living a life that didn’t suit me so I could feel like someone that I wasn’t.  As I pulled away from a world that had become home, I realized that I must have felt a similar sensation as that of someone that had been imprisoned for years and while suddenly given freedom they were afraid to step out back into society.

The unfamiliar is scary at first, it’s risky, there is no security blanket, but without that blanket you come to realize that those things that once made you feel so secure were nothing more than a cheap straw house that could be easily blown over by a big bad wolf.

And now as I look back at my life with a fat salary and co-workers who had become my family, I realized that I much prefer spending time with my actual family. I like the freedom that comes from doing exactly what I love to do and while I may not be able to eat at expensive restaurants, eating bologna with good friends can be just as nice.

Having a job, having money, and having things are sometimes nothing more than petty status symbols that we try to accumulate to make us feel like we are somebody. At least for me they were. I like to compare my salary to my friends, drop a dollar figure here and there to impress someone, but what I was really trying to do was feel good about myself.

Now I sometimes don’t have enough money to pay my car payment on time and I no longer own a house, but my life is infinitely more abundant that it was when I had more money and a full-time job. I’m rich with friends and I get to do things that I love to do with people that I care about and caring less about things and what people think of me has made me realize that being somebody doesn’t matter that much at all.

What is more, I know that I’m complete in Christ… and knowing that I’m somebody to him is really all that matters.