Not even shoes.

I wake up after a night of absolute MAYHEM. Vancouver came alive last night and i'm not sure if I will ever get to experience anything like it. It was as if the greatest thing had happened and they all wanted to celebrate it together. But it was just a hockey match. Just a game. Just another season.

It's as if people are so desperate for something to be in unity about. Something to hold on to and cherish together. Something they can be passionate about and get lost in. And they choose a game of all things?
I saw last night, a street full of drunk/stoned joyful people. It was breathtaking, mindblowing and mostly awesome. One memory however, sticks out. Leaving the 7/11 store there was a poor person opening/closing the door. He was just trying to do something to get some more money, most likely for food or for alcohol or prostitution. There was this moment where I looked back and saw his face. He had nothing to be excited about. He could not join in the celebration. While he lived and breathed the same life that everyone else did, he was not at all interested in some game. He had no home. The next meal was probably going to be leftovers or a bottle of vodka. How can we celebrate a game, when there are those of us who are so poor and so lost? I fear that we have missed something huge, something foundational about the Kingdom of God when it does not break our hearts and insist that we take action when we see this disparity. Its almost as if we have hardened our hearts to the things that we don't think we can change, or have no desire to change. We have to really. How on earth could we not be convicted to act? We have told ourselves a lie. Or bought into someone else's.

Yet this is not even the worst part of things. Im writing a little blog about this little thing that I have seen, thats talked about by countless people before me and will be talked about by countless people after me because WORDS will be my greatest measure of impact on this situation. What a joke. It's as if we see death on the streets and respond:

"Have no fear, I will speak of your situation with all the articulation and eloquence that I can!"

How terribly disappointing that would be. Better for me to have said nothing at all and remained naive or ignorant than to have seen and responded in such a manner. Instead I should take action. Meaningful action. Make change. Be the change. However, I wont. I know I wont. And that, is the saddest thing of all.

It comes from my heart. I have compassion, but not enough. I have love, but not the strength to support it. I wonder how much Jesus weeps to know that. To know that a voice, sometimes so eager to sing praise TRUELY knows very little of it. I'm ashamed. Yet i refuse to get to this point in my thinking and lie to myself or to anyone else by pretending I will do something about it, or that I don't need to do something due to some logical loophole of a lie I concoct. I may be a coward but at least I will have the courage to admit that my reality is far from the man I wish to be.

It takes a lot out of me. And I do it far far far more than I think anyone realizes. I am frequently vulnerable and armor-less with many of my friends, it's the life that I have chosen but it is not an easy one, especially when I want so desperately to be that White Knight riding in to save those he loves.

I live in a constant state of disappointment in the man that I am. I do my very best to be less of me and more of God, but it seems whenever I get close some insecurity will take hold and I will fail once again. How can you have hope in yourself when every time you go to stand up, you fall?

I have built a life that is half rock and half sand, and because I lack the courage to live honestly in either, I live in a house of great diversity. The child in me looks on in disgust at the failure to live up to my own expectations and perceptions of my future-self. I have been sold into a lie that superhero's exist and that I am one. The adult in me looks on feeling much much older than I am. Full of tears and thoughts of regret, with a deep fear of the childs accusing stare and demands. Demands based on an absolute lie. Expectations that could never in a million years be fulfilled because it is at the START and not the END of the day, that I am empty and broken. A shell of the man that God created me to be. I have built a heart in sand. In things, titles, achievements and most heartbreakingly of all in other people. My heart so strongly desires and needs such simple things from certain people in my life. However, when the needs, minor though they may be, are not met then the house crumbles. The heart breaks.

I need to die to myself to life in Christ alone. BUT I must also die to these lies. I cannot go on with these false bridges of life, these shaky foundations that were required by some weak and lonely kid in school because I have been failed more often than not. Foundations requiring the smallest of things will one day fail because they require another human being to not fail me. And that is one thing I can be most certain of. That regardless of my every great intention or well thought out idea I will be failed. Even by those who I love with everything I can.

My heart is in grief. How can I ever talk about helping others. How can I even CONSIDER helping others, when I myself am just as lost and broken as anyone else. You can be surrounded by any number of things and still feel just as desperately lost as someone on the street who has nothing. Death does not have any consideration for social order. It simply comes and takes and takes and takes from us until we have nothing more remaining. It is a lie to believe there is a greater need on the other side of town. A lie that cripples us into inaction. The truth is there is need everywhere. Even in the strongest of men or the powerful of woman, there is need. There is pained and broken hearts even in those surrounded by a glow of life, death has its hold on them too. Why walk a mile to fight Death when it is at my doorstep?

BUT o how I am not lost in woe or sadness. I do not feel self-pity. I am blessed beyond my understanding. I am loved in a way I don't even barely understand yet. And that most disgusting horrific word that i loathe and detest, HOPE. It is for me too. Hope for a better today. Hope for the grace of the father to set me free and bring healing to a broken and tortured heart. Hope for better foundations. Hope. I can only end with Hope, because the unmistakeable failure that I am, has nothing else.

Praise be to the Lord my God.