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Learning To watch T.V.

I am learning to watch T.V.

A couple years ago I bought a 42 inch LCD 1080p T.V....off brand on sale. I'm not sure whether this makes me sound cool or lame. Techies think I'm lame because my T.V. is a couple years old, environmentalists and monastics think this makes me sounds shallow and materialistic. Well, in my own vain defense...it is the first T.V. I bought as an adult, plus all the Techies probably have better blogs to be on and the monastics are busy at Vespers so I should be good.

T.V. is now almost a daily part of my life and it may be a sign of one of the greatest things I've learned in the last couple years.

I know I'm getting a little older when watching infomercials has me thinking, “That's kind of cool!..” and somewhere in the back of my head is a small voice telling me to call before I loose the special bonus pack with a Yoshi blade that can cut through a boot. I love cutting boots. My dad has had numerous exercise machines in our house over time that now mostly serve as towel racks. These were purchased by similar voices in similar heads. I watched one today about a pet grooming item that pulls hair from your pet that's loose or hanging there...it might cut hair too. I don't even own a pet, but part of me was like “Wow 10 bucks! I should get one...I'll groom someone else's dog for that price.”

I don't know why, but random crap like that seems to make life flair sometimes. It's like a rocket in our brains, even if it's just for a few seconds, the flame ignites and you need to have a spray foam to fill the creases in your gutters. I think the things about T.V. is I have started to see the flairs in T.V. I have started to see the little things on T.V. that smack of God in some far off distant part of my brain.

I don't think I really need those things, and I haven't ordered any yet, but I suppose the really good thing that is signified by learning to watch T.V. is that I am letting go. I am not so cold and rational, meticulous about every decision. I am not in control of my destiny so much as I once thought. It is just one of many signs I am learning to not think so much about myself, what is right, what is perfect. I have become so relaxed that I am quit proficient at loosing my keys, phone, and wallet, setting them down without thinking and spending hours looking for them, thinking through all the possible hiding places.

That hasn't always been the case. In the past I think I was to caught up in my daily pursuit of the unattainable, the apprehension of the perfection I thought I should be called to.

Let me put it this way, for years I would wake up and plan my day in my head, I would go over it time and again, letting it shift around like a sweet liquid on my tongue, trying to decide if it was ready for consumption, trying to taste each ounce making sure it made just the right concoction, hoping that this swallow, would be as perfect, taste as perfect as I thought it should, taste as perfect as I've been told it was to taste if you make it just right!

Each day was to be a perfection, and each moment a trial to taste perfection in process. I felt I needed to spend time reading, praying both with people and alone, volunteering for something, leading something, being perfect...as my Heavenly Father is perfect. Somehow through this, I thought I was to feel Jesus and them somehow love Him because of it. Our actions combined with His will to create Jesus bread, and this was the food that was to fulfill us eternally....or so I thought.

Before, life always felt like baking, the constant process of making; the step by step process of achievement. For the last few years watching T.V. has felt more like cheating...like stopping to eat the cookie dough before you bake it...counter productive.

T.V. was a guilty pleasure that was more burdensome than relieving. I'd get tired or bored or Sunday afternoon football would come on I would find myself there on the couch stabbing dirty looks at the ceiling. I'd keep wondering if God was going to strike me with a lightning bolt or just send a booming audible voice to tell me “I'm not mad I'm just disappointed.”

In case you are one of the few in my life who doesn't know, I am writing a memoir. And one of the really cool things about writing a memoir is you end up taking all the key moments of your life and lining them up and seeing the kind of story your life is telling. In the last year and half as I have spent hours upon hours, weekends upon weekends, doing just that. I have started to see God as a person who is taking me somewhere and not a stagnant idea. He is not any of the people that I've felt I've failed along the way. He is not the person that made me feel inadequate or foolish along the way. He is more personal and more present. It really has been a birth for me, or Him, or something like that. Since God has become a person, more personal I should say, I've started to not have my shields pointed at Heaven. Obedience is a tricky thing when it's not done out of love. Somehow through trusting Jesus to be present in all things I can trust Him to let me watch T.V.

When He says things, I am trying to learn that He means them. When He says He is with me, surely until the end of the age, I can believe Him. When His word says that we can know that “God works for the good of those who love Him, who've been called according to his purpose” I can believe and trust that He actually is working for my good.

But I suppose the main difference that is wrapped up with all the rest is I care. I love Jesus. I want to please Him, and not because I have to so He'll like me. I'm doing it because He fuels me,Hhe starts my heart to spark, I am believing better things. He is helping me believe them. I suppose He has always wanted me to believe better things, but He has never forced my hand or my will. He was and always has been presently waiting for me.

I have learned to relax. I've started doing all the things I thought I wasn't supposed to, TV, movies, facebook, etc, the stuff that isn't spiritual and rots your brain! But the weird part is, all the things I used to not want to do, reading my bible, journaling, praying, and dreaming,...I've been doing those things as well. I do not feel like I ought to be doing something more honorable, it just feels like whatever I'm doing, I just want Him, Jesus, there with me; to walk with me, to comfort me, and hold me accountable. And so far, He's been willing.

Thanks for Reading -
- Jordan

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