Chapter 2: Scaling Back
Imagine a father looking down at his son?
“This is my special child and from this womb, I created him. I was involved in the creation of this masterpiece. This boy, this boy, he shares a big part of me.”
In my mind, a father and son relationship is something incredible. It is a desire that is extremely special pressed on my heart and that something I really look forward to sharing in the happiness alongside my most beautiful wife.
Growing up I was so incredibly cute! I know, I need to be more humble.
Why don’t we make this a little more interesting? Imagine this young little boy is your very own. Can you picture him for me? What color are his eyes? What color is his hair? What is his smile and demeanor like? You shared in the creation of him. How is it that you want him to grow? How is it that you want him to love? What are some of the important aspects of life that are crucial to his growth? How do you lead him to grow and love just as you love your wife? Answer these questions.
His eyes are big, wide and bright. Combined with his smile, this now lights up your world. His voice and laughter always reaching up to you saying, “Daddy, I love you.”
If you were to look at photographs of me as a young boy, a picture telling a thousand words; imagine an innocent, sweet, tender, loving, and kind personality that I believe God has blessed this world with. I treat everyone as I would treat myself. You too, who are reading this, are just as important to God as me!
I would look forward to attending church every weekend with my mom, brother, grandpa, and grandma. I have very fond memories of that church and very fond memories of family inside that church. What a beautiful place and setting to welcome the love of God’s presence between us; worship and glorification that he outright deserves from us. The walls inside the church are made of huge beams of oak wood, stained and thoroughly lit up; pillared to form a stable like shape. Even from a traditional standard, my entire extended and immediate family was practically wedded and raised in that church. The hallway working to its alter is long and deep. Every step forward, like a bride walking towards her husband, builds the excitement leading up to the tabernacle at the foot of the cross. Sometimes, for me, even when taking communion, as psalms play in the background, I feel that same special belonging to where I belong the most. Looking up to the lyrics on the screen and just feeling God’s love lavish my heart. That’s my biggest desire for you, whoever is reading this is to feel Gods love.
On special occasions, like Easter, they would decorate this church with white Gerber flowers, orchards, roses, and huge bright white banners overhead down its isles. Each step as you are walking forward down its isles brings the sense of preparation for what seemed to be an arrival; this is a big event. Each banner sharing life and resurrection from His glorious Word.
I would sit in the church pews beside my brother and mom just staring up at the lights while listening to the priest as he prays and reads passages from the bible.
I grew up being extremely close to my older brother, so we spent the majority of our days outside playing together. We were always looking out for each other and as my father had raised my brother to always take care of me; he did a pretty good job. We were boys who didn’t really spend our days indoor watching TV; most of our time was spent outside in the real world getting our hands dirty. You name it; ball hockey, man hunt, soccer, baseball, rollerblading, bike riding, scooters, and the list goes on and on; the list of activities and adventures together were endless. He was my best friend. The foundation of love was set president by my Dad whom taught us to take care of each other.
As I matured, I shared a particular interest in music and I knew deep down I had a passion and loved to sing. One day, I saddled up the courage and asked to be a part of the church choir where I would sing with the other girls on the team.
Did I have any crush on any one them? You can bet I did! Though, that wasn’t the reason why I was there. I was there because of the true desire to sing. In fact, music, poetry, writing and singing is still a big part of my lifestyle today.
When I scroll back and look at that inner child; I was a true child of God. I still kept that inner child with me, everywhere I go. I often like to look back at that thought all the time; my childhood.
It slowed down considerably when the close relationship between God and I came to a halt, prior to the separation of my parents. Everything happens for a reason. I am confident that God had his own way of working these things out for the best.
I had no control. At the young age of 10 years old, I wasn’t able to drive myself to church to strengthen my faith and my mother had moved us to another part of the city so walking to church wasn’t an option anymore. As time passed, my relationship fell off with God slipped away and I could see it slowly drifting apart also with my dad.
This is where things got a little separated and difficult for the two of us; God and I. I was being enticed and exposed to things that would develop more and more sin in my life such as smoking, marijuana, gangs, violence, and sex. Inevitably, being far from God, I was becoming blind and these sins were consuming me. They were taking away my innocence and the time that I should have been spending with him. They were stealing the joy and plans God had set for me. Still, I would attend mass on special occasions like Easter or Christmas and this went on for a century.
Looking at that level of faith, I was so in the lack of my faith that I can look back at that person today and understand I was not a true Christian. You may be wondering what I would consider a definition of a true Christian. Well, I am still growing in this aspect of my life but I believe it is one whom has a daily relationship with God and chooses to walk obediently in accordance with his Ten Commandments and Word; every day and not just on Saturdays or Sundays.
I have always loved God so deeply in my heart. Making it to heaven with him has always been of the utmost importance to me. Growing up in my teen years, I lost the connection because I did not put him at the core and central focus of my life. It is wonderful to know that as a child, I understood the importance to respect the rules and commandments that God has outlined for us to follow. I have to thank my parents, my school teachers, my loved ones, and of course God for planting those desires in my heart. It was a breaking point in my youth days that I lost track of where I stood with Him and that is because I let my own disobedience take president in my life.
I laid before him, head down, knees bent, sore and a sinner.
Let’s recap those Ten Commandments for the sake of the importance of this chapter, shall we?
Exodus 20 King James Version (KJV)
20 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12 Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
13 Thou shalt not kill.
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.
18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces that ye sin not.
21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
22 And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.
23 Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold.
24 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.
25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.
26 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon
In our everyday lives, having a healthy balance and structured lifestyle is really important. It keeps us balanced as human beings and it comes with and by choice. I believe there is a point in our lives when we learn to understand and process these things after all the mistakes we may have made in our past that we can choose to move into tomorrow with a different attitude, behavior and character. We can put wine into new bottles. Growing as a Christian is a process in itself too.
Today, I still struggle with finding the complete balance.
We are not perfect. We are not made to be perfect, but we can certainly, step up, step out, go the opposite direction and give more to God every single day. We can choose to live for God.
Let’s look at our lifestyles together. What are the most important aspects of your everyday life? Ask yourself that question? What are the things that you part-take in on a daily basis today? How can we change it to implement more of God?
I have broken it down for you.
For most and I think we can all agree on the following topics as important aspects of life.
Which person are you? Cross off the ones you don’t do.
Human A Human B
Faith Talents
Love Love
Family Family
Friendship Friendship
Work Work
Talent(s) Faith
How many of you can look at those topics above and say you spend 16.6% of your day on each of them? You may ask me, why 16.6%?
Well…mathematically speaking, if I were to divide one day by 6 parts, I would get 16.6% equal parts for each.
This is all so technical!
Now that the mathematics is out of the way, we can put Einstein on the bookshelf and move onto as to why it is important to try to balance them all.
In no way am I even perfect at this so please don’t feel guilty or ashamed about it. Let just be real and just simply look at the topics and try to reflect on how we can improve or change to balance our lifestyle moving forward.
Do we all like credit cards? I imagine the raising of hands to this question.
If one of the following topics listed above is in a debit zone, we lose out on the others. If one is in the credit zone, we miss out on the others. The important thing we can learn is to do our best to balance.
All of these aspects serve a greater purpose to maximize our potential in life. It is really good and important for us to always scale back and look at these from a different perspective. It is important to understand that we must try to balance them as much as possible. However, I still believe giving God the most out of the six topics because when we depend on him to flow through the intricacies of our life, he helps balance the rest.
This is similar to the story of talents from the bible. What we have access to, but, we don’t use, we lose. It is no different towards the aspect of faith, love, family, friendship, work, and talents. We can take one of these aspects and multiply them by two, three, four, and so on. Do you understand? Now, don’t worry. I am not interested in condemning you; thanks to God we all have an opportunity to reconcile and ask for forgiveness and choose to walk obediently. He is a God who welcomes us with open arms, but he does desire us to desire him back.
Okay, enough theory; let’s head on into my teen years.
Now that you know the things I was enticed to growing up, let’s just say that there was a big fall out on my relationship with God as a young teen. I am not going to go on telling you all the bad things I did that I felt guilty about because that wouldn’t be healthy or productive for my spirit but rather I would like to give you a spitting image of how I perceived myself at that time.
This was me in my teen years after my fall out with God. I was angry at the world. I felt like I was alienated and neglected. My fun consisted of me collecting the best of music on my computer, downloading them on CD’s and then taking my Tiburon out for a spin to blast them at the world. This type of music, although not realized was filled with so much pride, anger and in turn, where I ended up in the surroundings of my life, is where I reaped the consequence of my actions. Deceived by the enemy with a big chip on my shoulder.
Music has a lot of impact on us whether we realize it or not. Subliminal messages to capture the heart. I can select many songs which do this to us on popular radio or I can share many different types of movies / TV series that have the same effect. Take some time, reflect on this and you can decide for yourself. What is important to realize is the question, “Is this helping me grow as a person or is it taking away from my life?” I will let you decide for yourself.
Friends at the time would come over on the weekends for what we would call “House of Fun” which was composed of idiocy, stupidity, drugs, cigarettes and plain outright foolishness. I went through high school with no girlfriend and the friends that were close to me were a bad influence leading me down a rabbit hill of problems. I was never really part of any group/classification within high school; like in Hollywood movies, sometimes you get the jocks, the druggies, the ‘nerds’ and the ‘misc.’ I really fitted the miscellaneous category as I tried to be nice to all persons. I never really attended a lot of high school house parties as I was never really invited. I even went to prom alone. I grew up keeping my mouth shut for most of the time. I chose not to speak even when I felt like speaking. I still do. Was I being shy? Was I being smart? What could I have improved? Did I honor God in my decisions? Did I hold back what God had for this world in me? Did I feel belittled or did I belittle myself? These are all big questions for one to ask themselves.
To scan a QR Code, point your camera on your Andrioid, Tablet or Iphone at the QR Code.
It is life,
And I find it,
While looking in your eyes,
Scaling back, the years of life,
That have passed,
At last, finding myself,
Lost and at what
Cost, what have I done,
To get to this point,
Today, tomorrow
God how can I change
To fight the darkness
With your light,
Become a new,
Become a new
Kind of kind, of guy,
Sometimes they feed lies,
And sometimes we question
And we don’t know why,
Know how to change,
To let the one who hurt us,
And then let them get away,
Shameless, blameless,
And to love the one,
That hurt us in the worst kind of ways
To put you first, to bless those,
Who curse,
And even worse,
Through all pain and struggle,
It’s probably double,
And if it hurt me,
I can guess, it probably hurt you too,
I am sorry for the things we put
You and your son through,
Please make us new,
Keep the bad enemies away,
Armies of angels,
Gods angels, charge and fight,
Keep us protected,
Every day and in every way,
Don’t live your life
In strife,
Or in pride,
And please don’t hide,
Don’t lie, don’t steal,
Don’t kill, be honest,
Don’t be the bad guy,
Love your wife,
And your neighbour,
Keep God first,
There is only one true God,
Jesus Christ,
Listen to what he says,
It’s major,
Keep from Idols,
And watch your eyes,
Remember to worship,
To praise,
Thank God every single day,
Honour your mother,
Father,
Love your brother,
Sister,
Keep faithful,
Don’t cheat,
Avoid adultery,
And fornicate,
Don’t steal, but wait,
Let God bless you in other ways,
Don’t bear false witness against,
A neighbour,
Let love be your eyes,
Hands, fingers, and lips,
And let it be,
A soft and sweet heavenly kiss,
Balancing life,
In many ways,
Through faith,
Through love,
Through family,
Through Friendship,
Work and play,
Talents that God has blessed you,
To give today,
Don’t let them go to waste,
Don’t be quiet
If you got something to share,
Then share,
And If you care, then care,
Because when you do,
You’ll find God,
Everywhere.