“Lord, let me keep Your Word as close to me as I keep my cell phone.”

I wrote those words on my Facebook page on February 13, 2016.

Three years ago.

Facebook, being the loving and caring datamining entity that it is, reminded me of it this morning when I awoke.

It got me thinking…

I wake up, and I look at my phone.

I check my email, my Facebook, my texts, the weather, etc.

Then I unplug my phone, roll out of bed, and begin preparing for my day.

All the while, my Bible sits on my bedside table. Ignored.

It’s right there, sitting next to my phone!

And it stays there…

While my phone, so treasured by me, travels around the house with me, captures my attention with tiny bings, blinks, and buzzes, and becomes more an extension of me than my own arms.

I venture outside, start my car, and lovingly place my phone in its car cradle.

A cradle! The thing is so precious to me that I treat it like a newborn baby!

I go about my day, and my phone is ever at my side.

When I work, when I play, when I nothing and nothing and nothing, my phone is always faithful to be there and meet my needs.

When I am lonely, I can look directly into the completely honest lives of other people on the internet.

When I am hungry I can order food trough any number of gracious and caring apps.

When my enemies surround me I can lay waste to them with scathing yelp! reviews.

My phone is always there for me.

And when I forget an appointment, or fail to remember a friend’s birthday, my phone is there to remind me.

It is faithful, even when I am not.

I love my phone.

And then I return home and sit on the couch to watch tv or read a book, and my phone is right there. Keeping me company.

Sometimes it’s such good company that I don’t even watch my show, let alone read that silly book.

Why would I, when I have my wonderful, wonderful phone?

It’s everything I need.

It brings me security.

It makes me feel safe.

It causes me to be relaxed no matter where I am.

Even when things start to feel dark and desperate around me, I can always turn on my phone to distract me or use the flashlight to guide my steps.

When I am unskilled, I can watch YouTube tutorials.

When I am foolish, I can access Wikipedia.

My phone gives me everything I need for life.

Then I retire to my room.

I go through my pre-bed routine (with my phone always close by, just in case).

Then I snuggle under the covers, and open my phone one last time, as I plug it in, bid the world goodnight, and place it gently on my nightstand.

Nice and close to me.

On my nightstand.

Next to my Bible…

Yikes…

This is, of course, an exaggeration. But only somewhat. There’s still a fair amount of truth in the day presented above.

After three years; after thirty-six months; after 156 weeks; after 1,095 days, do I keep God’s Word any closer?

Is it as close to me as my cell phone?

“Well, I have a Bible app on my cell phone, so I’d say Yes.”

No, that’s not what I mean.

I mean do I hold onto the truth of the Word of God as tightly as I hold my cell phone when I’m… well, doing everything?

I think if I’m honest with myself, I would have to say No. No, I do not.

Because every morning I walk out of my home and I have my cell phone.

And my Bible is still on the nightstand.

So, I guess I need to be brutally honest with myself, and truly ask the question: Lord, am I keeping Your Word as close to me as I keep my cell phone?

The snooze-bar is the worst.

That doesn’t stop me though.

But, for real, it’s terrible.

Literally, every morning, I wake up startled (against my own will, I might add), hit the snooze, doze for two to seven minutes, startle awake once more (abducted again from my happy place), hit the snooze again, yada yada yada…

I do this daily, like it’s actually a good idea.

Why do I do this to myself? It’s like the exact opposite of delayed gratification.

What’s delayed gratification, you ask? *pulls blackboard out of back pocket*

The Encyclopedia Britannica says delayed gratification is “the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future.”

In other words, it’s not eating McNuggets now because if you wait you get have filet mignon later.

The snooze-bar is not delayed gratification. It is delayed regretification.

Think about it. You hit the button thinking, “I’ll get a few more minutes of sleep and feel better this way.”

And that has never been true.

Inevitably, you get kidnapped out of dream land, wrestle yourself free from your abductors, and try, try, TRY to get back to the sweet bliss of slumber.

But it’s not the same.

It’s a false sleep. It’s not restful. Sometimes it’s downright stressful!

It’s gonna ring again, any moment now. It’s gonna go off. Any second now…

You lie there, half awake, taking mental bets on when the alarm is gonna blare again.

Sometimes you even try to count down when you think it’s getting close. Seven, six, five, four, three, tw—*BEHH BEHH BEHH* *groan*

Now you’re waking up tired, grumpy, and wrong!

Worse still, you haven’t just been woken up once—you’ve been woken up like half a dozen times.

That’s a good start to the day…

No wonder there’s so few morning people!

But, hitting that snooze-bar really is kind of like a mild insanity, isn’t it?

Instead of waking up now and getting it over with, I think I’ll just lie here in dread for as long as humanly possible.

I’ve heard some people have morning routines.

I don’t.

And no, I’m not bragging.

I would love a routine. (I had a semblance of one in college)

But you see, your life has to be predictable in order to have a routine.

My life tends to be… (How you say…) Not predictable.

I get my teeth brushed, and I shower, and I take care of all the typical necessities, but it doesn’t happen all at the same time every day, and it often doesn’t even happen in the same order.

It just… happens.

Such is the life of an unemployed artist.

It’s kind of like one, long, endless snooze-bar slap.

Sitting, waiting for life to happen to you. Waiting for somebody to actually like what you create. Sitting, waiting, in dread…

Okay, so it’s not quite that bad.

But still, hitting the snooze every morning is a terrible idea.

Just wake up.

You hear that, America?

Get woke.

Just the once…

Instead of several times each morning…

(I don’t know. Just do what you want.)

Isn’t anxiety weird?

It’s like your brain suddenly decides, “whoa, look at the time! I was supposed to be freaking out over nothing like ten minutes ago! Better get crackin!”

Next thing you know you’ve got that sorta heavy feeling on your shoulders, that slight tightness in your chest, and then as soon as you notice those things it’s like somebody turned the treadmill up to 10 on the hamster wheel in your brain. (poor little guy)

I won’t talk about how it feels anymore, because sometimes even just thinking about being anxious can make me anxious. (can I get an amen?)

But it is weird how it often starts. There can be nothing, absolutely nothing… and then BOOM! Freak out! (c’est chic) I turn into a nervous wreck, scared of things and absolutely terrified of people.

That’s probably where I struggle with it most—in relation to people, to my friends.

Social anxiety.

Hold up there, Mattycakes. (yes, I call myself that sometimes. Shut up.) Aren’t friends supposed to bring you love, and joy, and happiness?

Absolutely! And they do!

Mostly.

But there are times when human-ing is hard… let alone person-ing!

It’s not that I have bad friends that make me nervous. It’s the exact opposite!

I have incredible friends! The best anyone could ask for! And I have a ton!

And that’s a big part of why I freak out.

Why would so many amazing people want me in their lives? I mean, they know me.

(Frankly, it’s not hard to get to know me. If you have met me more than twice, you pretty much know what I’m about.)

Hence my constant social anxiety. Everybody in my life pretty much knows me.

They may not know every dark struggle I’ve ever faced, but they know the heart of the man in front of them. They know my oddities and strangenesses. They know how awkward I am.

Heck, they know better than I do, because they’re the ones telling me I’m being awkward!

But, why does it make me so nervous to have such loving, caring friends?

Maybe it’s because I didn’t have many friends growing up. Maybe it’s because I’m a people-pleaser. Maybe it’s because I don’t trust God enough.

Maybe it’s all of those things.

It’s true, I didn’t have a ton of friends when I was young. There were always a few scattered here and there (you know who you are; and thank you for your love and friendship to a weird little kid). But during my really socially informative years—middle school and high school—I really didn’t have anyone with whom I could learn what “having friends” was like. (does that make sense?)

And I’m definitely a people-pleaser. I like to make people happy. But I also let my fear of people’s opinion of me control me. I’ve always felt like I had to earn the friendship I receive. The flip side is equally true: I always feel like if I mess up in any way then I will lose that friendship I feel I fought so hard to win.

These are both big issues, which I can make eleventy-five times bigger in my head.

But probably the biggest issue is that I don’t trust God rightly.

If I were trusting in God before people, then I wouldn’t be afraid that people were going to abandon me or not love me.

If I were trusting in God before myself, then I wouldn’t be afraid that I could screw everything up and bring my glass castle of carefully constructed relationships shattering down around me.

If I were trusting in God, the true God, the God of the Bible, I would stop being concerned about my anxiety and my own life, and start being concerned about the lives of others.

I would serve. I would love. I would sacrifice. I would be so less concerned with me, if only I were trusting rightly in God.

But how do I do that? Do I just pretend my anxiety doesn’t exist and start magically trusting in Him?

How is that even possible, to just trust?

Why do you trust a seatbelt? Why do you trust a bridge? Why do you trust the rope on a swing?

Because it proves itself. It makes a promise, and it delivers.

So does God.

But how many times has God not given me what I want? He doesn’t deliver!

Sure He does. You don’t ask the bridge to perform spinal surgery, and you don’t count on the rope swing to do your taxes. Number one, THEY CAN’T. Number two, you don’t expect them to in the first place, because they never promised those things.

Maybe that’s an absurd example. But it’s true!

Likewise, God never promised to make your life perfect. He never promised He would make you immune to anxiety and strain.

God commands us to trust in Him, because He is powerful and strong enough to help us through suffering and anxiety; not over it, not around it, not under it, but through it.

King David says, “you make me lie down in green pastures, you lead me beside quite waters…even in the valley of the shadow of death…you are with me.”

Why was David lying in the pasture? God put him there. Why was he walking beside still waters? God put him there. What in the world was he doing in the valley of the shadow of death? (*DUN Dun duunnn*)

God put him there.

Same is true of these moments that bring me anxiety.

God has put me in them. But, more than that…

God is with me in them. And even more still…

God is for me in them.

These are the truths that I need to call to mind when I am anxious. No matter what is causing the anxiety.

God put me here, He is with me, and He is for me.

And I am for Him.

Are you..?

I’ve noticed something about tacos.

Tacos seem to be different things to different people.

That sounds weird.

But it’s true.

To some, tacos are these crunchy, little, yellow pockets of meat, cheese, and lettuce. (Some may add sour cream.)

To some, tacos are strange things, filled with fried pork, cheeseburger ingredients, or marshmallow fluff. *Gags*

To the morally discerning, however, a taco is a lightly-fried corn tortilla, filled with meat and salsa. It usually has onions and cilantro as well. And don’t forget the citrus!

No cheese. No cheeseburger. No fluff. Just deliciously marinated meat, kissed with a nice dollop of real salsa. Not that Old El Paso nonsense either (keep that at your Super Bowl party, where it belongs), but real salsa.

How do I know this? Because Mexico told me.

Now, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for so-called “designer tacos,” or even for those fast-food fart bombs you get at Taco Bell. But let’s be clear about what a real taco is. A real taco always makes you think Latino, not Burger King, not Mediterranean, not K-pop.

But don’t think that means there isn’t tons of variety in the realm of Tacodom. There’re so many delicious varieties of tacos!

You got tacos al pastor and de adobada, cabeza (“head tacos”), barbacoa, carnitas, pescado and camarones, and lengua (which is beef tongue, and is delicious). (also, Spanglish grammar is not an exact science, so please forgive mi.)

In fact, it has been said that “unless a taqueria offers tacos de lengua, it is not a real taqueria.”(1)

Now listen, if you’re a fan of fusion cuisine, that’s alright.

I enjoy eating so-called “Korean tacos.” They are delicious. But let’s not make the mistake of thinking that they’re real tacos, okay?

To compare a traditional taco with a fusion taco is like comparing a snickers bar with a fish stick. Being the same shape doesn’t make them the same thing.

If you disagree with me, just think about the ChocoTaco ice cream bar. Remember that old thing? Basically, just an ice cream drumstick molded into the shape of a taco.

But it wasn’t a taco. It was ice cream.

Just like a cheeseburger taco isn’t a taco, it’s a cheeseburger (with a really sad bun.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we need to alter our expectations of the world. (Not to get too deeply philosophical here, but…)

Could it be that we too easily allow our expectations of this world to be informed by our surface desires and inclinations, and fail to take our minds captive for the sake of properly perceiving the things around us? Surely, with a right view, detached from one’s self and unmotivated by inner greed and selfish desires, we can see the ails and ills of this world in a manner that allows us to do something about them, and affect change on a culture-wide basis! Surely, we can change the world!

With tacos.

…Yup.

1. (Maria Herrera-Sobek (16 July 2012). Celebrating Latino Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Cultural Traditions [3 volumes].)

So, what does a guy with way too much time on his hands and a penchant for words do?

He writes a blog, of course! (duh!)

That’s right! He sits down at his trusty typewriter, carefully inspects the ribbon, tests the return (just for the *ding*), and rolls in the paper.

“So”…

What a fantastic beginning, he thinks to himself. That one little word—two tiny letters—so small, so perfect: so.

“So, what does a guy with wayt…”

DANGIT!!! *indistinct shouting* *violent tearing of paper* *muffled sound of a bell* *children with mouths agape* *angry parents leading said children away* *911 calls placed*

Anybody who has ever tried writing something on a typewriter knows the anguished sounds of a typewriter typo. #thestruggleisreal

No, I don’t use (or really even own) a typewriter. My grandmother had one that I played with when I was little, but that was twenty years ago.

Nowadays I’ve traded my Remington in for a Lenovo. (I am also just realizing that that sounds like a back-alley, gun-for-laptop exchange. Don’t worry, I’m not out there giving firearms to any old Nerd Herder that offers me a deal on hardware.)

You see, the computer is the hero of the modern writer (professional or not). No, it’s not the spell-check or the grammar corrections that we appreciate (writers often hate those).

We love that one little key; that beautiful, slightly elongated button, which makes our lives so. much. easier.

Backspace.

O, how the poets of old would have envied us if they only had a clue how much easier writing would someday become!

It actually boggles my mind when I consider the possible historical implications.

(NERD ALERT!!)

How many more poems would Wordsworth have written / How many more plays from the Bard’s fabled pen / How many lessons from Plato and friends / if only dear Backspace were handy back then?

(FYI, I used backspace about 17 times during the composition of that.)

But for real! Imagine the writings we may have missed out on! Can’t you just imagine those things that never existed? (Can’t you..?)

I’m aware that being a writer may sound romantic to some, but I’m here to tell you, it isn’t.

Being a writer can be a pain, it can be excruciating, it can feel like a vaguely masochistic undertaking. Sometimes we hate it. Sometimes we let it rule our lives and make us into something nasty; something spiteful to others; something fueled by coffee and cat posters.

“So, stop and do something else,” some helpful person offers.

Not on your life…

I love writing. I don’t always love who I am when I write, I rarely love the things that I write, and I often hate the entire creative process (if one can even be found), but I love writing.

That doesn’t make sense?

Maybe not to you. But to me (and other crazies) it is very true.

So very true.

And sometimes too true…

But where else can one more efficiently impose his ideas upon the unsuspecting minds of the general public? Isn’t that the whole point of blogging? Of course it is!

So, what does a guy with way too much time on his hands and a penchant for words do?

He writes a blog, of course! (duh!)

…Now what?

“We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings. … Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.”
—John Updike