Marriage today is struggling. Divorces, adultery, misconceptions, etc are plaguing not only the marriage itself but products of those marriages (my generation and the next). My hope in this poem is to highlight the most frequent and problematic issues marriages face today while also pointing to Jesus as the ultimate healer, redeemer, and restorer of every marriage. Whether single or married, my intention would be that this poem would allow you to look more deeply to Jesus to either better your current marriage, or prepare for your future marriage.

Poem inspiration: http://realmarriagetour.com/

Book that inspired the poem: http://amzn.to/zdxCFv

Jeff’s INFO:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jeffersonbethkepage
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/jeffuhsonbethke
website: http://www.jeffbethke.com

Did you know that:

1. Google has a lit of Webmaster Tools that will help you get your site indexed correctly?
2. You can register your site manually with most major search engines.
3. Social Networking does work wonders – Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo, etc.
4. Using other sites to embed links for your site and keywords is very powerful.
5. Register your site with online services and directories like Linkedin and Yelp.
6. Once your site is setup correctly it still takes time for your site to move up in Google.
7. Updating your site with a blog is a good way to keep your rankings current and to increase your embedded key words.
8. Google actually has an adwords certification program to help you understand how to setup your adwords correctly.
9. Don’t just focus on 1 or 2 search engines. You may overlook valuable customers who don’t use Google and Yahoo.
10. You can use keyword phrasing in your pictures to increase keywords on your site.
11. Google Analytics are awesome, but so is Woopra: http://www.woopra.com/ Something I learned in accounting – you can only manage what you can measure.

These are just a few tips that will help get your site linked higher. When http://www.reiblaw.com, an attorney who specializes in family and divorce law in Denton, Texas asked me to look at his site I was so surprised at how little his site was setup correctly. Then another client, http://www.aaronstreeandfence.com asked me to setup his website and then later asked me to improve the SEO ranking. I told him that it takes about 10 hours to do the basic setup for a site SEO and then it is best to keep maintaining your site’s SEO by posting blogs, adding specials on Facebook and Twitter and embedding links.

Hopefully you find this information helpful and feel free to share your own tips and let me know if you are interested in link sharing: info at eddie renz dot com

I don’t mind the children being there early or late for that matter. I only have to get to see them for a couple of hours a week and it’s those last or first few minutes that can be quite enlightening. For instance, one of my only black students once said to me, “My parents are at the black church this morning, Morse St. Baptist, so they may be running late, you know how black churches are.” He said, holding up his hand and then saying, “No offense.” I wasn’t sure why I would be offended except that maybe my brown skin color is often deemed “questionable”. When I had hair that was mostly straight and black, I was rarely confused as an African American, but over the years my hair has deserted me, like so many of my friends, and the ones I have left I hold onto dearly, never realizing how much I cared until they were gone. Now that I’m larger and bald, I’m often mistaken as African American, but I can assure, offense for the misinterpretation of my race, is never taken.

This morning one of my particularly challenging students was standing next to me. This is a rarity as normally he is kicking balls as hard as he can at the ceiling or walls. I think his sole purpose there is to see if he can maim himself or another student but make it look like an accident. He loves to find a rolling chair and then push it as fast as he can toward the stairs and then jump in it. I think God has sent an angel to stop the chair right before it hurtles down the stairs with the student in it – but sometimes I secretly wish it would happen just so I could say, “I told you so.” But he never falls and I don’t get my wish.

And speaking of “I told you so’s”… I love them. It makes us feel superior and there is nothing like being right that makes me feel more superior than someone else. Then there’s that feeling that they received the punishment that they deserved because they hadn’t listened to you. So maybe you lost a hand, big deal, how you feel at that moment doesn’t matter, your pain is inconsequential what matters is, “I told you so.”

We smile at ourselves because we had foreseen the danger like a prophet or a psychic with a crystal ball. We pat ourselves on the back with pride and we gloat as we share the story with our friends, “Did you see Sally? Yeah, I kept telling her to stay away from the poison ivy, but she just wouldn’t listen. Now she’s practically disfigured by it, but I told her so.” We say, tisking our tongue and shaking our head with false sympathy.

So back to the student, we’ll call him Billy, was just standing next to me when another student said, “Hey, you guys are twins!” It was an obvious joke since Billy has the physical make up of slightly cooked spaghetti. He’s all arms and legs and when he moves he appears to be about to fall over at any moment – like Gumby, but thinner.

Billy looked up at me, his face contorting with terror as he stared at my head. “I am not that… FAT!” The word jutted out of his mouth less like an insult and more a statement of fact – however, it still stung like an insult as I was expecting the word: tall, bald, brown, big – I was not expecting FAT in all caps with an exclamation attached.

I’ve become accustomed to being called names. I don’t even mind the occasional insult to keep me humble, but the three students nearby made audible gasps of shock and dismay. “WHAT! Oh my word.” It was clear that even at 11 years old they knew it was impolite if not down-right rude to call someone fat. I would say that in America, despite that fact that the majority of us are over-weight, fat is quite possibly one of the most cruel insults, more hurtful than say being called retarded or ugly, neither of which is not a consequence of gluttony and ugly is really a matter personal opinion.

Billy’s parents pulled up and waved, I stuck my hand up and waved back as if I were on a parade float. Their was no real emotion in my hand because for a moment I was still on “pause”. That’s what happens sometimes when you are insulted. Your brain doesn’t know how to react, especially when you are at church, surrounded by others and in reality, the statement was true – I am indeed fat. Not rotund or obese. There will not be a need for a crane to lift me into my casket when I die, but yes, I am indeed FAT. I guess the only insulting part of his statement was the exclamation mark on the end of FAT! and since he is only 11 and being home-schooled, I’ll assume that his parents haven’t yet taught him manners or grammar yet and let it slide.

Wow, 23 years ago at the age of 10 I was already writing about food! As I read through the story it was obvious that I didn’t have any real creative writing style, but, the story had a beginning, a body, and a conclusion and the grammar was awesome for a 10 year old.

I remember growing up I was always writing poetry, some of it inflammatory, but mostly it was simple rhymes and short stories.

Why didn’t anyone ever tell me back then that I should be a writer when I grow up?

There are a few things in life that come easily to me, the most natural thing I do is dance. It is something I do well without any thought or practice. For me “dancing by ear” is similar to the way people play music by ear. You don’t understand how you do it, you just do.

Later in life I realized I was pretty decent at spatial concepts and understanding balance in design. I’m no artist, but I can sense when something is right.

I think that in our culture we often direct our children down a path that seems to fit something that is accepted by society as great: Doctors, Lawyers, Fireman. We ask “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Instead of asking, “What do you LIKE to do the most?”

Perhaps if we asked the latter question we would better be able to direct our children down a path that they will not only excel in, but they will also find satisfying.

I think our society and culture is wasteful. We spend hours of time and thousands of dollars forcing students to take years of math and science. Instead we should probably have our students get a general grasp of the math and science they need to relate to all parts of society as a whole, however, I have never needed to use Algebra and I’m not sure the 4 years of my life spent in Algebra classes was time well spent. What if instead I was thrust into a creative writing class, dance, art? What if once we got to high school we spent those 4 years finding out what we excelled in and then by the time we got to college we could really intensify those areas of study and then we would be awesome at our careers.Instead we force high school students to endure 2 more years of information that we should have already learned in the previous 12 years of our education and then, once we’ve spent thousands of dollars learning these “basics” we finally get to the meaty subject of what we are going to be doing for the rest of our lives and we spend just 2 years on that. It doesn’t make sense.

Now here I am at 33 years of age and I just now fully understand the areas that I am good at and I’ve spent years and thousands of dollars acquiring skills in an area that I only sort of enjoy and I will never seriously excel in without a lot of work and effort.

So my choice is to either throw away the investment that I have made in my education, or to live a life doing something that I only partly enjoy doing.

I, personally, should have been a writer, or a dancer, or possibly an interior designer. What should you have been?

We are born as gardens filled with a variety of seeds that spring up and grow throughout our lives. Seeds of doubt mixed in with envy, greed, lust, deceit, cruelty, anger, selfishness spring up weeds that desperately try to choke out the flowers of love, joy, peace, kindness, self-discipline, and faithfulness.

When we are born it is our parents job to landscape our lives like a skilled gardener.  Hours should be spent weeding out the bad and nourishing the good. In a garden that isn’t cared for beauty struggles to survive.

I think in life we often feel that we can just sit back sometimes and coast. We like to keep things low maintenance and instead of getting our hands dirty and digging into the root of the problem, we just clip it back or pay someone else to take care of the problem for us. In my own life I’m working on weeding out some bad habits and planting some good ones. I’m digging deep to unearth some deeply rooted weeds that have threatened to not only choke out the good things in my life, but to destroy me entirely. It has only been by the grace of God that I am the man that I am. If left to my own devices I feel that I not only have the imagination, but also the resources, to successfully destroy everything that I have worked hard for in my life.

As I’ve gotten older one of the things that I have come to realize about “Hot Button” issues is that they are complicated and both sides normally have very valid points.

Healthcare
Abortion
Religion
Politics
Same-Sex Marriage
Evolution v. Creation

These are just a few topics that come to mind when I think of people being extremely touchy. Why do we feel touchy? Because we feel threatened. When you give one person a certain freedom we may feel, whether it is a realistic fear or not, that we are going to be giving up something that we hold dear.

If I say yes to free healthcare for those in need, what is it going to cost me? If I say that abortion is okay, then where will humans draw the line on playing God? If we say yes to Same-Sex Marriage will that erode traditional family values?  If I say I accept my neighbors religion and that religion happens to believe in human sacrifce where does that leave me?

Some items are more black and white than others. There is a such thing as moral absolutes, most people just don’t want to use the Bible as a guide for moral absolutes. But if you don’t use the Bible, where do you get get your moral compass? Where do you find truth?

In the end we each must have to come to our own conclusions about what is right and wrong in life and we each individually will have to deal with the consequences of our actions and those choices. When interacting with people who don’t have similar beliefs as yours it is important to be respectful. Don’t name call, patronize, condescend or insult. Instead, seek to understand why they believe their believes and be prepared to intelligently back up your own.

Her blond hair and milk colored complexion paired with her rich red lips remind me of Gwen Stefani or one of those blond girls in a comic strip.

I should be delighted that some girl is throwing herself at me, but I am perplexed because this person, where did she come from and why all of the sudden is she here? At this skating rink?

It’s not a sex dream, I rarely have those even though in Psychology 101 we were told that most of our dreams were sexual, what? I don’t think so. I dream mostly of food and chocoloate chip cookies and working at the nursing home and Ultimate Frisbee.

The few times I have had sex dreams I always wake up before the sex. Does that happen to you? To everyone? It’s like one of those dreams where you have won the lotto or suddenly your wildest dream is coming true but before it fully comes to fruition you wake up.

But lately, my dreams are different. My day dreams are different too. I’m scanning girls all the time wondering if they could be the future Mrs. because the last futue Mrs. hopeful was not interested in the least and she let me know by ingoring my attempts at starting up a super-delicious romance that would have started with her and I and a plate of Thai and we would be laughing and eating Pad Thai and our lips would touch as we slurped on a really long and fat rice noodle and it would be like a scene from Lady and the Tramp and then later we would have a batch of puppies.

For real though, lately, something is up. I think being self-employed has left me with too much time to be alone and the time that I used to spend alone on the weekends was “ME” time but now that is all I have, “Me” time and too much of that and so yeah, I’d love to have a woman in my life that I could take to breadwinners and to watch Grey’s Anatomy with. I’d sit with her on the couch and massage her feet and listen to her talk endlessly about her day and what she wanted to eat for dinner and how her mom is stressing her out. I’d listen and I’d be grateful that my time was no longer all mine.

So yeah, something is up, perhaps I am finally growing up… it’s doubtful, but maybe.

I was sort of taken aback at this point. Imagine me in a kitchen, single me who is looking at this gorgeous girl who has the most perfect husband, (seriously, he is almost as cool as wolverine) and she is wiping down a countertop with her petite hand and she is lamenting the fact that her friends are pressuring her to have kids.

I looked in my red glass and wondered if someone had slipped me a mickey or a double shot of rohipnol. For some reason I thought there were only two worlds that humans live in, Single and Married. Yes, I know there is a divorced category but that don’t count because they did, at one time, fall into one of these two categories. However, there is a third category that seems to be almost as cruel as the single category and that is the “Married with Children” category.

Single people aren’t complete at all.

Married people are only partially complete.

Married with Children equals completedness.

I have to admit though, I felt a little bit better knowing that even after your married you still deal with peer pressure on some level. It made me not feel so alone in my singleness, like really, it doesn’t matter what stage you are at in life, you are always going to feel pressure from society to be better or more than what you currently are. I mean give it a rest already, just let people be.

Lately I’m all “So What” all the time. I sit on my couch and as much as I know my life is pretty awesome as far as single guys lives I have to wonder – what next? So I get married, have some kids, grandkids, etc and then I die?

I remember when I was younger and at church they would talk about the rapture happening. The Lord’s imminent return was constantly a topic of discussion pretty much my entire childhood. I was fixated on it so much so that there were times I would hope that it wouldn’t happen because next week I was going to get to go to Six Flags or get my driver’s license or perhaps a girl I liked might like me back.

That seems like a lifetime ago and now I sit around praying for God to come already. I feel like sometimes I am going through the perfunctory motions of life – making money, paying bills, eating, sleeping – only to kill time, to have something to do before the end, which is really the beginning.

Last week as I was driving to Waco to do some IT work at the nursing home I couldn’t help but feel like my life is wasted. I’ve felt this for quite some time now and I don’t know how to change it. Perhaps this is where people get when they go into missions or they quit their jobs to do something amazing with their lives – like work at an AIDS hospice.

But even those things would only bring a marginal amount of joy compared to knowing what is in store for me when I leave this planet. I think sometimes it would be better not to know. Like maybe if growing up all I was ever told was that by believing in Christ kept me from going to hell and then right at the last minute – SURPRISE! – you’re going to the most awesome place, a place beyond all human comprehension. But instead I am like that kid who is told 6 months beforehand that he is going to get to go to Disney World and that 6 months seems like an eternity.

Maybe the entire purpose of this life is only to make us really appreciate heaven, these trials, these struggles, this inanity of life, perhaps without it we would just take heaven for granted.

And all of this just takes me back to my original point – if you don’t believe in God then what in the world get’s you out of bed in the morning? What motivates you? What keeps you from saying – So What?

Instead, I’m going back to pushing the only thing that people want from me… ME. Or, maybe people don’t want to hear about me, but I sure like writing about me and so that counts for something. 

Lately I’ve been going through a mild depression and by mild I mean eating out 3 times a day until I can barely move, gaining weight and not caring about it and spending inordinate amounts of time alone and on Facebook. 

I think Facebook and Twitter have become the new World of Warcraft. Armies of people who think they are hip and cool by keeping up with all the latest status updates and witticisms from all of their 20 friends, sitting by their computer hacking out tweets on twitter all the while ordering Papa John’s pizza online and getting fatter by the moment. I know because I am describing MYSELF. 

I am becoming a tub of lard and spending more time in front of this dang computer than Michael Jackson looking in the mirror. sha – mon. 

Part of the reason I have become glued to my computer is because my job requires it, but I’ve noticed lately that my manic behavior leads me to do three things: tweet, eat, and spend. Sometimes all at the same time. I look at my BlackBerry for new messages at least 200 times a day. Even during a movie I have to fight the urge not to check and see if I have received a tweet or a txt message or an email. These little morsels of communication have replaced real interaction with friends more and more and allow me to stay someone connected all the while remaining safely disconnected from the reality that I am becoming a fat slob.