faith

Today in church, my dad said something extremely simple, but probably more profound than anything I have ever heard him preach about. He was commenting on faith, and how faith is used even when you are making a cake.

When you make a cake, you put all these ingredients together, and you just have enough confidence in the chemistry of all those things working together that once you pull it out of the oven, it's not just going to be a bunch of flour, milk, sugar, and eggs mixed together, but it will actually be a cake.

Even still, there are some people (accomplished cooks and fabulous culinary artists) who can simply throw stuff together without even measuring it. Ironically, I tend to be one of those people. Now, I'm not saying that I am an incredible cook or anything, but I never measure anything. I always "eyeball" it. I figure, if I attempt my best, and use some common sense, this thing is gonna work out. I don't even have a measuring cup in my kitchen now. I also don't like following recipes. I just throw whatever in that I think is going to make the food taste good and turn out right. Truthfully, I've never had anything turn out a disaster either.

So, does that mean that I have exceptional faith? I dunno. As I was listening to my dad, I thought for a moment that it did mean that I do have really awesome faith. As I think about it now, there are a lot of things that have happened that I just kind of expected to happen. I didn't worry about them a lot. Strangely enough, they were big things... like once in a lifetime things. Not everyday things that could pretty much be considered small stuff.

When it comes to small stuff, I tend to fret a lot. I dunno why. Serisouly, now that I am thinking about it, it is really backwards how I operate like that. The big deals in life, I just go on thinking of as, "it's going to/not going to happen." The little things... I sweat them... a lot.

A wise man once said, "Don't sweat the small stuff." Another smart individual said, "Everything's small stuff." I dunno why I can't subscribe to that school of thought. The small stuff is the stuff that spazzes me out. I need to chill out on that stuff... you know, let things be... let them happen... "lose control."

Sadly, I have tired from losing control in '06 already. It was really only good for about 2 weeks. Last Monday evening, I kinda regained control in so many ways. I guess it was when I left the happy place I was talking about just 20 minutes before it all came to a screeching halt. I'm just about over all of it, I guess... but this is just another situation where my faith is weak. I ALWAYS have a bunch of issues with this crap... It's like I still have faith, but it's like... I dunno. I can't explain it. The only thing that ever seems to put into words how I really feel about my situation is a line from "Missing the War" by Ben Folds Five:

...still thinks he might
he knows he won't...

It always gives me goosebumps when I hear those lyrics or even think about those words... How the hell can they be the 8 most perfect words that describe me and my life... and they come from a completely irrelevant song, and a person who I am sure has no clue what is going on in my life or mind...

Anyway... faith. Marinate on that for a little while. And this is about as deep as I will get in here... Usually, this type of stuff goes in the secret blog. Consider yourself lucky...