You have no idea how rough last week was!
You have no idea how relieved I am I survived last week.
Poor brother Timothy was calling multiple times a night just to be sure I had not killed myself.
People do not do what I was led to do last week - I decoded my own personality and was to learn the very secret of Kris.
Kris, as God created him, stripped of all and seen solely by me - as created.
No it was not pretty.
It was annoying to finally know.
It requires action on my part.
It requires one of my friends to take quite a responsibility in my life, for me to succeed.
But, where ever the remainder of the year leads, the usefulness of Thoughts From The Little Apple is over.
The sole purpose of blogs 1 through 7, was to help me through the struggle which began in August 2005 to arrive exactly at where I did last Thursday - almost 9 years later. To resolve within myself the dichotomy between my reformation discipleship and where the American theological schools have led the church down the sewer of disbelief. Talk about my bizarre life. And, along the way, I discovered the real me and explanations for far more than anyone reading this wants to know.
And so from blog 7, I resign my pen. The task is done. The future lay ahead....
I will keep Thoughts from the Little Apple up, i think some of my best writings are in there, albeit, the least popular or read of my postings!
But, this is the final post for this Blog. I have no where else to go except a different direction and that would not be supported by the volume of posts here.
The further adventures of mine will be carried on here:
After The Apple
Not sure of the approach or what I will go into there - yet - at least for the rest of this year, but next year I hope to blow you away ...
To my faithful readers, thank you. Your encouragement and prayers are all that have gotten me to where I suddenly find myself.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Musical Saturday Morning
I am posting this on April 29th.
Life has not quite gone as I had ever planned or foreseen.
I never could have understood what happened to me on December 29, 2012.
I never could have understood where it would lead.
I never could have understood the changes it would cause in my life.
After a night of prayer, I now know that it is time for Kris to just fade away.
I now know what is going on.
I understand what God is doing.
I sort of did before, but there was no confirmation.
Now, it all makes sense.
No, not an easy road to walk.
And they will point fingers and hiss.
But, they will never understand.
My purpose is far more humble than they can ever know.
And in that loss I am blessed ...
Life has not quite gone as I had ever planned or foreseen.
I never could have understood what happened to me on December 29, 2012.
I never could have understood where it would lead.
I never could have understood the changes it would cause in my life.
After a night of prayer, I now know that it is time for Kris to just fade away.
I now know what is going on.
I understand what God is doing.
I sort of did before, but there was no confirmation.
Now, it all makes sense.
No, not an easy road to walk.
And they will point fingers and hiss.
But, they will never understand.
My purpose is far more humble than they can ever know.
And in that loss I am blessed ...
Friday, May 9, 2014
Object of Derision
I have a strong interest in understanding what went wrong in my life between 2008 and 2012 inclusively, so I have someone whom excels in human communications I retain as a consultant. We have discussed life, the universe and everything else; so today we discussed my DNA problem.
Oh he was good, very, very good. But only to prove to himself that I really am as described. Once he was satisfied that I was not an illusion or demented, we continued our discussion at looking at my history and my honest desire to know what happened.
Net result? I am incapable of understanding because I lack the very basis by which I would be able to understand. And, yeah, I have to agree - using his examples and my inability to answer the questions. Kris has met his match ... personal history and how to change it or at least guarantee it will never happen again. There is no resolution.
Sigh ...
Some of his side conversations were questions which I could not correlate to any point of reference. Again, something Kris can not not understand but apparently has made me an object of comic derision amongst my friends and acquaintances. I have to admit I had wondered about that one because I can see affect, it had to have a cause - but I never could have understood.
And so I end a very interesting week. It began with my Pastor's quotation from the Talmud, passed through a personal trashing you would not believe and ended with Kris suddenly understanding life, the universe and everything ...
On the one hand I can see how the wall I hide behind has been more of a problem than a protective device. What was supposed to protect me and make me likable, seems to have backfired. Instead, no one can reach me, because I am not there ...
Conversely, is the me that exists today, whom only one person wants to know and not deride me for. And I have no real problem with that but the new me is still forming, weekly I am learning more and growing in ways I do not understand at this time. It all seems so complicated sometimes! And yet, the only internal peace I have actually experienced.
I am not so sure that my communication helper is going to be meeting the new me ... I might not be able to take the assassination he would attempt to perform.
But we will continue our talks ... from a human communications aspect I want him to explain some parts of First John. It might help me in my new life.
So, I contacted my friends, those whom used to know me the best, last night. I wanted honestly, brutal truth and I was ready for it. Or so I thought.
Apparently, had I of just disappeared last January, I would not have been very missed.
"I have an annoying rosy viewpoint that is not appreciated"
"I am schizoid"
"I need professional help"
"I am delusional" etc, ad nauseum
Yeah, not exactly endearing terms were used. Dutchman, as usual, was not available for comment on anything other than the house he is buying.
Timothy offered that whatever I do with my future that I should be like the guy in, "A Beautiful Mind", have a keeper to help me distinguish reality from delusion.
Interestingly, he offered his observation that as far as he could figure out, something had changed tremendously inside of me two years ago and i ought to get rid of it because no one understands it.
Yeah, so across the spectrum of my past life ... the best I could do it seems, to compensate for the breakage inside of me, was to become a cosmic comic joke amongst those I trusted for so many decades. All of this I saw last week, as Saturdays post will show, it just had to be so damn prophetic ....
Oh he was good, very, very good. But only to prove to himself that I really am as described. Once he was satisfied that I was not an illusion or demented, we continued our discussion at looking at my history and my honest desire to know what happened.
Net result? I am incapable of understanding because I lack the very basis by which I would be able to understand. And, yeah, I have to agree - using his examples and my inability to answer the questions. Kris has met his match ... personal history and how to change it or at least guarantee it will never happen again. There is no resolution.
Sigh ...
Some of his side conversations were questions which I could not correlate to any point of reference. Again, something Kris can not not understand but apparently has made me an object of comic derision amongst my friends and acquaintances. I have to admit I had wondered about that one because I can see affect, it had to have a cause - but I never could have understood.
And so I end a very interesting week. It began with my Pastor's quotation from the Talmud, passed through a personal trashing you would not believe and ended with Kris suddenly understanding life, the universe and everything ...
On the one hand I can see how the wall I hide behind has been more of a problem than a protective device. What was supposed to protect me and make me likable, seems to have backfired. Instead, no one can reach me, because I am not there ...
Conversely, is the me that exists today, whom only one person wants to know and not deride me for. And I have no real problem with that but the new me is still forming, weekly I am learning more and growing in ways I do not understand at this time. It all seems so complicated sometimes! And yet, the only internal peace I have actually experienced.
I am not so sure that my communication helper is going to be meeting the new me ... I might not be able to take the assassination he would attempt to perform.
But we will continue our talks ... from a human communications aspect I want him to explain some parts of First John. It might help me in my new life.
So, I contacted my friends, those whom used to know me the best, last night. I wanted honestly, brutal truth and I was ready for it. Or so I thought.
Apparently, had I of just disappeared last January, I would not have been very missed.
"I have an annoying rosy viewpoint that is not appreciated"
"I am schizoid"
"I need professional help"
"I am delusional" etc, ad nauseum
Yeah, not exactly endearing terms were used. Dutchman, as usual, was not available for comment on anything other than the house he is buying.
Timothy offered that whatever I do with my future that I should be like the guy in, "A Beautiful Mind", have a keeper to help me distinguish reality from delusion.
Interestingly, he offered his observation that as far as he could figure out, something had changed tremendously inside of me two years ago and i ought to get rid of it because no one understands it.
Yeah, so across the spectrum of my past life ... the best I could do it seems, to compensate for the breakage inside of me, was to become a cosmic comic joke amongst those I trusted for so many decades. All of this I saw last week, as Saturdays post will show, it just had to be so damn prophetic ....
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Sharing Hope
When I planned this short series last weekend, I never could have envisioned where this study was taking me nor the changes it would bring about in my own life. And I am not even sure what to share or what not to share. It is like having an epiphany that suddenly makes seven years of your life suddenly make sense. That would be in both a good and bad sense, as well as, learning a few things about myself that points to a future I had not anticipated being true about me.
Interestingly, my pastor has been thinking along the same lines as I and so between us I have some interesting notes on Philemon.
Be Of Service
Help Let People Out of Their Boxes
Be Sacrificial
"He who saves one life, saves the world"
And in one sentence, he tripped a wire in my mind that began to unravel a mystery to me, about me. But, I will wait on that one until another time ...
Interestingly, my pastor has been thinking along the same lines as I and so between us I have some interesting notes on Philemon.
Be Of Service
- Our culture, we have plagued the world with, has nothing but excuses to be of service to anyone!
- Share the Gospel with others
- Be a true friend
- Assist others in their daily lives
- Learn to see God's hand and share this with others
- Challenge others to do as you are doing
- Love God
- Love the person God puts in front of you
- Realize that NO need is too great
- Everything matters
- In front of you, on your path is where you will find your ministry
Help Let People Out of Their Boxes
- Understand what the real needs are
- Be who they need
- Like Paul, willingly be a prisoner for Jesus
- Do not judge them for their past
- Remind them that they are not that person any longer
- Yes, sin has consequences, but we do not have to live there
Be Sacrificial
- Jesus sees our sin
- He choose to sacrifice for us
- We see the sin of those around us
- We must choose to sacrifice for them
"He who saves one life, saves the world"
And in one sentence, he tripped a wire in my mind that began to unravel a mystery to me, about me. But, I will wait on that one until another time ...
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Fleeces, Faith and Hope
I have thought a great deal on the topic of hope this year.
I entered this year knowing I had no hope, life as far as I was aware was over for me and cursed with a bum leg would never be able to take that walk to Argentina to even escape myself much less this environment. But, even dying on the road in Oregon is far better than the continued abuse I am taking (especially if I count in being completely ignored as even a human being!).
No hope, as I said ...
Except, for the hope that God fills me with - that I will be avenged, I will be justified, I will be used by Him, for His purposes. And no, I do not understand the connection between His purpose and what all goes on around me. It is one of those wait and see kind of things. I do know my solution to all, but I have to be assured of His solution, if His perfection is to be attained.
Then my friend lost their hope. Life had turned on them. It was over. And I understood all too well. And I have thought months on this, the question of hope, faith and miracle quietly clicking away behind my regular stream of thought ...
I have to turn the clock back to 1974 and the birth of my first understanding of hope and faith. I was reading in Judges 6 and 7, about Gideon and how he pared down his army from 32,000 to only 300 - to stand against the Midianites. Of course, like any thinking man, he turned to God and set a "fleece" before the Lord to confirm that what God told him was true, real, and not a bad pizza the night before. Judges 6:36 begins the tale of the fleece.
Gideon set two fleeces and both were miraculously answered.
And I thought on this. I tried it, fleeces worked. I shared this my College Study group and they were amazed someone had done this! (I mean really, do people just read the Bible and not think, "Hmmm, I ought to try that ..." ?)
Dutchman and Swede were having a bitter fight over Sister Becka. Each wanted her for themselves, and I only incurred both their wrath's because I told them she was not a piece of meat up for ownership! Yeah even as a teen I was a feminist supporter, it was how I was raised in European schools and by my ancient great-uncle ... So, one Sunday, Swede is driving from Tacoma, where I went to school, to church up in Kent. He gets to telling me that he can hardly wait to get to church because he had laid a fleece that Becka was to be his unless Dutchman wore an orange shirt, green pants and a green dotted tie to Sunday School!
I burst out laughing.
I had to explain to him that Dutchman did not own any clothing like that at all! So, the fleece never could occur. Swede commented that he believed in miracles and God could make it happen. So, I had to ask him if he thought that God allows for free will or not? Of course He does and that was what was wrong with this fleece, it made no allowance for Dutchman to be anything other than a robot before God, in order for Swede to have an answer to his fleece.
Swede slammed on the brakes and ordered me out of his car. I was still about six miles from the church and would now miss Sunday School. Swede stomped on the gas and was gone in a haze of blue smoke.
So, I am walking along the freeway to reach the next exit and a car immediately pulls up and stops behind me - it was one of the women in the college group! She gave me a ride all the time howling at the story I told her. We even passed the slow moving Swede! And I learned an important lesson from her that morning:
Fleeces do not allow for faith in our walk before the Lord, they allow for superstition ...
Yeah, made more than just a little sense. I could see how even I had become a little superstitious across the year and I had a girlfriend to prove it. She made no sense in my life, but I asked God for ten - four leaf clovers to confirm that her advances on me were of Him, and I did find them, but I had no real peace. Yeah, I kept the girlfriend just in case. And like most women, they find out what a nerd I really am and poof!, they are gone.
Of course, Dutchman wore his usual brown tweed suit, as he ALWAYS did to church. Swede jumped up and bolted from the room! I never told anyone why other than the lady whom gave me a ride.
Yeah, occasionally I still use a fleece, small ones when I am struggling and I can not depend upon my mind to interpret what is going on around me. More on that later.
So, just shy of forty years ago, I walked away from fleeces and trying to observe faith - that whole faith unto faith leading. Where you start out with just the faith you have at conversion and God gives you a little more to meet the issue at hand and your faith grows. God continues to feed your faith until one day, hopefully, you know that you will be able to move mountains! Yeah, well that is sort of the goal I guess - the hope in what can not be seen or can be logically known.
Hope? How hard to understand! Faith, without no emotion, I could slightly get. God promises a bunch of stuff. I used fleeces as my crutch to know what was of Him or in the plans for me - until I hit the Becka fight and a verse about there being "a wicked and vile generation which seeks after signs". Oh, the self condemnation over that one!
And I struggled with hope. I had no hope, other than my only hope is in Jesus to cover my sin from God's eyes, I honestly today believe that hope is not even possible without emotion. I could hope for a bunch of things but logically I knew that statistically they were impossibilities.
Then today, it dawned on me, faith and hope are interconnected! I can Hope for say something unattainable and if it is in God's Will, it will come to pass and I have to be able to stay the course in Faith! God's will, will be accomplished with or without my faith - it is His will not mine. But, if I knew, if I had reason to suspect, then I would need hope and faith to make it to the goal - to His prize, whatever it might be.
So, this is just an introduction to the idea. Tomorrow the entire idea of helping others to have hope ...
I entered this year knowing I had no hope, life as far as I was aware was over for me and cursed with a bum leg would never be able to take that walk to Argentina to even escape myself much less this environment. But, even dying on the road in Oregon is far better than the continued abuse I am taking (especially if I count in being completely ignored as even a human being!).
No hope, as I said ...
Except, for the hope that God fills me with - that I will be avenged, I will be justified, I will be used by Him, for His purposes. And no, I do not understand the connection between His purpose and what all goes on around me. It is one of those wait and see kind of things. I do know my solution to all, but I have to be assured of His solution, if His perfection is to be attained.
Then my friend lost their hope. Life had turned on them. It was over. And I understood all too well. And I have thought months on this, the question of hope, faith and miracle quietly clicking away behind my regular stream of thought ...
I have to turn the clock back to 1974 and the birth of my first understanding of hope and faith. I was reading in Judges 6 and 7, about Gideon and how he pared down his army from 32,000 to only 300 - to stand against the Midianites. Of course, like any thinking man, he turned to God and set a "fleece" before the Lord to confirm that what God told him was true, real, and not a bad pizza the night before. Judges 6:36 begins the tale of the fleece.
Gideon set two fleeces and both were miraculously answered.
And I thought on this. I tried it, fleeces worked. I shared this my College Study group and they were amazed someone had done this! (I mean really, do people just read the Bible and not think, "Hmmm, I ought to try that ..." ?)
Dutchman and Swede were having a bitter fight over Sister Becka. Each wanted her for themselves, and I only incurred both their wrath's because I told them she was not a piece of meat up for ownership! Yeah even as a teen I was a feminist supporter, it was how I was raised in European schools and by my ancient great-uncle ... So, one Sunday, Swede is driving from Tacoma, where I went to school, to church up in Kent. He gets to telling me that he can hardly wait to get to church because he had laid a fleece that Becka was to be his unless Dutchman wore an orange shirt, green pants and a green dotted tie to Sunday School!
I burst out laughing.
I had to explain to him that Dutchman did not own any clothing like that at all! So, the fleece never could occur. Swede commented that he believed in miracles and God could make it happen. So, I had to ask him if he thought that God allows for free will or not? Of course He does and that was what was wrong with this fleece, it made no allowance for Dutchman to be anything other than a robot before God, in order for Swede to have an answer to his fleece.
Swede slammed on the brakes and ordered me out of his car. I was still about six miles from the church and would now miss Sunday School. Swede stomped on the gas and was gone in a haze of blue smoke.
So, I am walking along the freeway to reach the next exit and a car immediately pulls up and stops behind me - it was one of the women in the college group! She gave me a ride all the time howling at the story I told her. We even passed the slow moving Swede! And I learned an important lesson from her that morning:
Fleeces do not allow for faith in our walk before the Lord, they allow for superstition ...
Yeah, made more than just a little sense. I could see how even I had become a little superstitious across the year and I had a girlfriend to prove it. She made no sense in my life, but I asked God for ten - four leaf clovers to confirm that her advances on me were of Him, and I did find them, but I had no real peace. Yeah, I kept the girlfriend just in case. And like most women, they find out what a nerd I really am and poof!, they are gone.
Of course, Dutchman wore his usual brown tweed suit, as he ALWAYS did to church. Swede jumped up and bolted from the room! I never told anyone why other than the lady whom gave me a ride.
Yeah, occasionally I still use a fleece, small ones when I am struggling and I can not depend upon my mind to interpret what is going on around me. More on that later.
So, just shy of forty years ago, I walked away from fleeces and trying to observe faith - that whole faith unto faith leading. Where you start out with just the faith you have at conversion and God gives you a little more to meet the issue at hand and your faith grows. God continues to feed your faith until one day, hopefully, you know that you will be able to move mountains! Yeah, well that is sort of the goal I guess - the hope in what can not be seen or can be logically known.
Hope? How hard to understand! Faith, without no emotion, I could slightly get. God promises a bunch of stuff. I used fleeces as my crutch to know what was of Him or in the plans for me - until I hit the Becka fight and a verse about there being "a wicked and vile generation which seeks after signs". Oh, the self condemnation over that one!
And I struggled with hope. I had no hope, other than my only hope is in Jesus to cover my sin from God's eyes, I honestly today believe that hope is not even possible without emotion. I could hope for a bunch of things but logically I knew that statistically they were impossibilities.
Then today, it dawned on me, faith and hope are interconnected! I can Hope for say something unattainable and if it is in God's Will, it will come to pass and I have to be able to stay the course in Faith! God's will, will be accomplished with or without my faith - it is His will not mine. But, if I knew, if I had reason to suspect, then I would need hope and faith to make it to the goal - to His prize, whatever it might be.
So, this is just an introduction to the idea. Tomorrow the entire idea of helping others to have hope ...
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Smart Ass
Okay, I have always been the first to admit that I am a smart ass. Usually this feature raises its ugly head at exactly the wrong moment and always before the wrong audience.
Take for instance when Gaelic Girl returned from her latest outing. Uncharacteristically, she decided to tell me about going to an outlet mall because one of the women in the group wanted to buy some bamboo underwear ...
Me: Bamboo?
GG: Yeah.
Me: Real bamboo?
GG: Well it is not like it is made out of unprocessed wood.
Me: Well, God help her if she goes to the zoo and the panda bears all escape ....
I was howling with laughter all alone over that one ...
I still think that was hilarious!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had to call Comcast for a device replacement activation. And into automatic computer voice hell I descended, where the term "No" means to do what ever the machine darn well wants to do!
So, I am shouting "NO, NO, NO, NO!", into the phone and computer is doing whatever it wants and Gaelic Girl explodes because I am being abusive to a computer!
Really?
Abusive to a computer?
Abusive is when I broke a fist on an IBM 360 master console because the POC design engineer from IBM was not there for me to pummel! And Hutterite, or not, he was going to die in that moment ...
Four hours later GG calls to ask if I am finished being abusive to the Comcast computer.
I told her that Comcast needed a real automation system and she needed to get a life.
I had a contract back in the 1980's with the US Navy creating a voice activated system which did work, so yeah it is possible and inexcusable that with advances in technology, a system this bad was created!
I am still smiling from the look on that pissed off face as well ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you may know, if you are a regular reader, I have a shattered foot and an ankle broken in two places. Problem is, it is the result of a degenerative bone disease caused by my klutziness and a problem with blood sugar levels.
Yeah, boring as spit.
So, I told the last person if they wanted the long story or the short story. The selected short, so I told them about how I tripped on some stairs while rescuing a box full of kittens in a smoke filled house. They got to laughing so hard that I have to think up another story.
I never could lie very well!
Of course if you have a better story please share!
Take for instance when Gaelic Girl returned from her latest outing. Uncharacteristically, she decided to tell me about going to an outlet mall because one of the women in the group wanted to buy some bamboo underwear ...
Me: Bamboo?
GG: Yeah.
Me: Real bamboo?
GG: Well it is not like it is made out of unprocessed wood.
Me: Well, God help her if she goes to the zoo and the panda bears all escape ....
I was howling with laughter all alone over that one ...
I still think that was hilarious!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had to call Comcast for a device replacement activation. And into automatic computer voice hell I descended, where the term "No" means to do what ever the machine darn well wants to do!
So, I am shouting "NO, NO, NO, NO!", into the phone and computer is doing whatever it wants and Gaelic Girl explodes because I am being abusive to a computer!
Really?
Abusive to a computer?
Abusive is when I broke a fist on an IBM 360 master console because the POC design engineer from IBM was not there for me to pummel! And Hutterite, or not, he was going to die in that moment ...
Four hours later GG calls to ask if I am finished being abusive to the Comcast computer.
I told her that Comcast needed a real automation system and she needed to get a life.
I had a contract back in the 1980's with the US Navy creating a voice activated system which did work, so yeah it is possible and inexcusable that with advances in technology, a system this bad was created!
I am still smiling from the look on that pissed off face as well ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you may know, if you are a regular reader, I have a shattered foot and an ankle broken in two places. Problem is, it is the result of a degenerative bone disease caused by my klutziness and a problem with blood sugar levels.
Yeah, boring as spit.
So, I told the last person if they wanted the long story or the short story. The selected short, so I told them about how I tripped on some stairs while rescuing a box full of kittens in a smoke filled house. They got to laughing so hard that I have to think up another story.
I never could lie very well!
Of course if you have a better story please share!
Monday, May 5, 2014
Prayer Request
At my last employer, there was a guy, a real political suck up whom had advanced to senior vice president and was only months older than me. One day he left his office, told his secretary he was going home and not feeling well. This I could hear over the partition of my little "office" area. Then the splat as he hit the floor. He was dead before he even hit the floor according to the medics - massive brain aneurism.
I had a terrible call on Thursday from one of my oldest friends. I was chatting with the husband on FaceBook, when the wife called me up on my phone and so I two conversations going. I thought it funny at the time. However, for as light as his train of thought was, hers was very troubling. Then their son hops onto chat with me as well. Which was odd, this never happens with any of them and me!
I was to learn that my first god-daughter, has developed a brain aneurism - which is leaking. It is bad enough she lost her job due to the frequency of blacking out episodes. And she is refusing any surgery. So much prayer needed.
She was a very successful model - with all the pain and misery which goes with that.
She just turned 37 on Thursday. So as part of her birthday wishes on FaceBook, I also sent her message with my current phone numbers in case she wanted to talk. But, she still has not called.
She has always known what is right and what is wrong, she just chooses wrong every time. And, I would like to see her pull her life back together before it is too late. With this artery leaking, it is probably not going to be much longer until, like Alan, it ruptures and is all over.
And that will be a very sad day ...
:(
I had a terrible call on Thursday from one of my oldest friends. I was chatting with the husband on FaceBook, when the wife called me up on my phone and so I two conversations going. I thought it funny at the time. However, for as light as his train of thought was, hers was very troubling. Then their son hops onto chat with me as well. Which was odd, this never happens with any of them and me!
She was a very successful model - with all the pain and misery which goes with that.
She just turned 37 on Thursday. So as part of her birthday wishes on FaceBook, I also sent her message with my current phone numbers in case she wanted to talk. But, she still has not called.
She has always known what is right and what is wrong, she just chooses wrong every time. And, I would like to see her pull her life back together before it is too late. With this artery leaking, it is probably not going to be much longer until, like Alan, it ruptures and is all over.
And that will be a very sad day ...
:(
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