Homeless in Obama's America...new series. New book

Hi folks,
I'm writing a new book right now and I thought I would begin posting snippets of it here as I write.
The working title of this book is "A Dad Never Quits. How I Survived Being Homeless in Obama's America"
This is a sort of stream of consciousness section I wrote the other night. It moved me to tears. Please share if you feel like it, and please, send me your feedback.

When you’re homeless, you feel like you’re on the outside looking in. Like there is an invisible wall between yourself and “normal” folks. It feels like it’s a slow-moving nightmare and you can’t tell which part is the dream and which is reality. You want to wake up, but you’re already awake.

     It feels like you’re watching the normal folks with their normal life, a life that you used to have as well, and you start forgetting what all that felt like. What it was like to have a kitchen, and a stove, and a bed…and an address. You try to forget about your dogs and your cat and your garden. You overhear bits of conversations about mundane home ownership and you wish you could be doing those things that the normal people complain about. You wish you still had a lawn to cut. You wish you had a driveway to seal, or an electric bill to complain about. You’d give anything for a nosy neighbor.

     When you’re homeless, you don’t wake up on Monday mornings and have the Monday morning blues and make jokes with your coworkers about how “It’s Monday again…” Because when you’re homeless, every day feels like Monday. Every day greets you with the blues. Every day finds you one day further removed from humanity. One more day since your last meaningful conversation. One more day since you had clean sheets and a warm bed. One more day has passed since you had a cup of coffee in your kitchen, in your mug, from your coffee maker.

     When you’re homeless, you can’t run home for lunch, or grill out, or hang your laundry out to dry. You can’t take a warm shower at the end of a hard day’s work, because you don’t have a shower, and you can’t find any work. When you’re homeless, you can’t stay indoors on a cold, rainy November Saturday and get caught up on some reading and have a nice fire in the fireplace and make some soup and watch the cold rain as it falls. When you’re homeless, you try to stay dry and warm and out of sight if you can.

     When you’re homeless there are no pictures on your walls, because you have no walls. So you carry them in your wallet, and in your heart. They come alive at night, these pictures. They haunt you. Pictures of your little girl and the rope swing you had in the oak tree out back and how she laughed and wanted you to push her for hours. Pictures of how your beloved dog Bonnie would come over to you on the sofa and lay her chin on your leg and let out a soft little sigh and look at you plaintively until you scratched her head. Pictures of your daughter and the time you filled the Jacuzzi tub with Mr. Bubble and she was lost in the suds and laughing up a storm and having the most fun you’d ever seen. Pictures of when it was that you had a life.

     Other times, it’s like being on the inside looking out. You swear everyone knows. Everyone sees. You hide your bedroll in the trunk of your car but maybe they saw it when you were getting your school books. You circle the church where you hide your car at night to get a few hours of sleep. You circle it like a hawk, hunting for his prey, waiting until you don’t see any headlights coming in either direction and then you race in before someone sees you. Your heart races and pounds and you swear that this time, they saw your tail lights and they’ve called the cops. You hurry up and back into the overgrowth until you are hidden from view. They can’t see you but you swear they can. You wait, being as quiet as a mouse, barely breathing. Ten minutes go by. Then twenty. Sitting still like this means the fatigue starts to catch up to you but you fight it. After enough time passes, you let out your breath and realize that nobody saw you. You pulled it off one more time. You get changed into your sweatpants and sweatshirt and zipper into two sleeping bags and try not to let yourself admit how cold it really is. The cold has gotten into your bones by now and you never feel quite warm. Your body is warm enough with all the layers, but you’re still breathing frigid air and you wake up shivering.

     You feel like every pair of eyes in the world is dialed in on you when you’re homeless. Do they know? Surely they know. Everyone knows. You walk with your head down, and your eyes lowered. Because even if nobody else around you knows, you know. And that’s bad enough. You stop looking into store front windows because you can’t bear seeing your own reflection. You hide your shame when you see your daughter, because after all…you’re still her daddy. But you feel like a caged animal. Like the little people inside a snow-globe, never moving, never showing any reaction whenever some outside force shakes their world and stirs up the snow. Their smile painted on. Their faces plastic and emotionless. That’s you now. Feeling less and less because feeling anything at all only reminds you of who you used to be and who you are now.

     When you’re homeless, you don’t tuck your kids in at night. You lay there in your sleeping bags and cry because you miss them. On the coldest nights, the tears freeze to your cheeks and they cut you like diamonds when you wipe them away. You remember your little girl’s bedtime prayers and you swear you can still hear her voice as she says them… “God bless Bonnie and Cooper and our cat Jackie. God bless Daddy…”

God bless Daddy. God? God who? You question Him. Sometimes you curse at Him because it feels like He’s just left you here. Sometimes you cry out to Him for mercy and beg Him for hope. You pray to Him. You pray to him for your daughter. “Please, God,” you beg, “Please give me a place to live again. My daughter needs me and I need her.” Then you think about her life and the pain she feels. “Please God,” you continue, “Please protect her like I would if I was there right now.” And the tears resume, and the sobs, and the memories, and the questions, and the doubts.

     When you’re homeless, you don’t get your daughter once a week and every other weekend. You get McDonald’s for an hour every few days after school. You try hiding the truth from her, but she’s smart. She finds out and then you feel even worse because you know her, and now she is worrying herself sick about you every night. When you’re homeless, you are still someone’s father, but you sure don’t feel very fatherly.

     When you’re homeless, you think of the old days and the happy times and those memories are triggered by the strangest things. I was walking through the mall one hot summer afternoon, just trying to stay out of the heat. I walked past the “Build-a-Bear Workshop” store and I stopped outside and watched the little kids. There was a girl there who reminded me of my own daughter a few years before. She was finishing up her bear and doing the little routine where they tell the kids to jump up and down and turn around. I remembered all the trips we made together to this place. Back when I had a job and a home and she had a bedroom where she kept all these prized little stuffed friends. It felt like it was a million years ago. It felt like I was watching it all from some cloak of invisibility. The little girl clutched her new beloved friend as mine had done. I turned away in tears. I raced to the bathroom before the sobs embarrassed me in the mall. When you’re homeless, every little thing reminds you that you used to have a home, and your daughter used to spend weekends with you, and you used to be someone.

     When you’re homeless, you reach a point where you want to quit. In that moment, you’d better have a reason to keep fighting. You’d better have something or someone you love more than you love yourself because believe me, when you want to give up, when you want to craw inside a bottle and die or jump from a bridge, or just fall asleep in the dead of winter and let your body freeze…there had better be a face you see when you close your eyes that keeps you going. Because when you’re homeless, just you…isn’t nearly enough.

My response to "Liberty United..."

NOTE: I am a Liberty University alumnus. I am also an LU employee. My job does not involve contact with President Jerry Falwell Jr. in any way. In 2 1/2 years here I have spoken to President Falwell once, and that was concerning a personal matter. I did not discuss this with him before writing. I wrote this in my home, at 4 AM this morning, on my personal computer and not on the job at LU. I do not represent the school officially or unofficially. I do not (knowingly) represent any other employees, alumni, staff or faculty at Liberty. I am strictly writing this as ONE LU alumnus and as a man who has experienced the very very bad of the last eight years.

I wrote this in response to Dustin Wahl and Tyler Mcnally and their petition against Donald Trump. They began the petition and the subsequent media blitz using their status as a Liberty student as it's basis. They claims to speak for "most" LU students on campus. I do not believe their opinion is in the majority but that is not the point. I took umbrage to their comments. There is a place for dissent and debate and social media should not be the first forum you use, but the last. If you do so, you should not try for embarrassment as your goal. Going out of your way to attempt to embarrass someone with whom you disagree is not the way you comport yourself in the grown up world. 

I also write this as a man of 53 years. A man who has tasted the bitter disappointment of these last 8 years in huge gulps. I write this to counter their statements and, perhaps, to educate them, because I believe their youth and inexperience has rendered them idyllically blinded. These thoughts are mine alone and I discussed them with no one as I wrote. 

     Boys,

     I thought I’d write this letter to you. I don’t know if you’ll read it, you’re very busy with your new-found fifteen minutes of fame. Enjoy it, it’s fleeting.

But I had some things I wanted to say to you and this is probably the only forum I’ll have to do so. I would love to tell you that I applaud your taking a stand. I did in the beginning, not because I agreed with you at all, but because I admire conviction in anyone…until I see through it. Then I read that bloated manifesto of yours. I’ll give you some advice from a writer: learn not to be in love with the sound of your own words. When you think yourself amazing for a sentence you just wrote, you tend to start writing more of them and each one is less amazing than the last. You soon descend into pontification.

     You lost me with your snark. There are times for that. I’m from Philadelphia, believe me I know sarcasm and attitude better than anyone. But there are also times when your dissent must be delivered with respect. You went after your university’s president. You didn’t do it in a respectful fashion, you did it with attitude. You didn’t simply make a statement that you disagree with Jerry and you want it known that other LU students do as well. Your seemingly endless letter sounds, from the very beginning, like you know better than he and you want everyone else to know that. You sound like someone who thinks they speaks for the Christian world. You come off as someone who thinks they have the only opinion that matters. You’re too young to know about respect yet, but this might be your baptism.

     On a personal level, I want to tell you my view of this. Things you probably don’t know yet. You live on this beautiful campus and your education is paid for, either by your parents or scholarships and grants or a combination of all of those. You swipe a card to eat your meals, likely never considering what that food actually costs. You swipe your card again to get into your dorm where you have WiFi, Cable TV access, and the amenities of apartment life. You can work out, swim, walk the trails, do whatever it is college kids do and probably never consider what the real-world value of those things might be. I don’t know how much or how little your folks are helping you, but since I work here I do know that you wouldn’t be here if the bill wasn’t being paid somehow. I say God bless. Good for you. But this campus isn’t the real world. Let me tell you something about the real world.

     I am an alumnus of Liberty. I also work here. I was here when there were no student loans to speak of. I worked 40 hours a week at the Advance Auto Parts store when it was in Hill’s Plaza, just to pay my tuition. I got no help from home. None. I made it through one year like that and couldn’t afford to return. I finally graduated 28 years after I started. A lot happened in those years. A lot of things that shape my decision to vote for Trump, and to write this to you explaining why. I’ll give you some examples.

     In 2008, when the economy collapsed, I lost everything. I lost my job when my company pulled all it’s branches from Tennessee, where I lived. I lost my career, when that industry continued to crash until it practically ceased to exist. I was 45, had two years of college and ten years of success and achievement in an industry that was now gone. Ultimately, I lost my home because I had no job. I had no prospects. 
I also have a daughter. She was ten when this happened. She lived with her mom primarily (we divorced years before) and so at least she had a home. But her life was becoming a hell. Her mom’s husband was growing more violent by the day and he attacked my daughter with mental cruelty that was increasingly becoming physical. I could not find work and yet, because of my daughter’s situation, I could not leave Nashville to move someplace where I might get a job. I was the only barrier between her and the monster she had to live with. So I chose to stay. Choosing to stay meant sleeping in my car, hidden behind a church. I don’t know if you’ve ever slept in a car before, but I did it for almost 6 years.

I put out over 350 resumes. I did odd jobs. I washed windows. I built a chicken coop for someone once, just for food and gas. I showered in the county rec center and often times the only food I had was from the sample stations at Sam’s club or the grocery store. I wanted to quit a million times. Sometimes I wanted to die. But I had a daughter I loved, who loved me, and I had to keep going. I have no family who could help and to be honest…I didn’t want help. I wanted a job. I wanted to come back on my own.

     Three times during this nightmare of mine I was offered the chance to return to the mortgage industry. I never wanted to do that since it had bitten me so hard and taken so much. But as time went on I realized I needed to do something and since I had been very good at that before, I decided to do it again. Three times I was offered, and three times the hope that I had from a job offer was crushed by the policies of Barack Obama and the Democrats, and the Republicans who failed to stop them. Let me tell you about the first time.

     In August of 2013, I had an interview with a mortgage company in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville. It was a Friday. The branch manager was actually excited to have me consider working for him. He knew my reputation in the business and actually said it was an honor for him to welcome me aboard. I left there that afternoon with hope for the first time in years. I had to fill out some paperwork online, and then we would start my certification process. Within a few weeks I would be active in the business again.

     I called my daughter to tell her the news. This was a mistake, in hindsight, but I had no idea what was to happen next. I wanted her to have hope too. That next Monday, I picked her up and we went to Franklin High School and walked through it. She had been attending a school near her mom’s house and was miserable. We talked about our plans. She was going to move in with me as soon as I got a place and she would go to Franklin High. I saw her smile for the first time in years. (By this time she was 15).

That Thursday, the second phase of Obamacare was enacted. The next day –one week from receiving the job offer- I got an email rescinding the offer. The reason: the cost of implementing Obamacare, coupled with the mandatory base salary they now had to pay (the mortgage industry had always been a 100% commission job) made it impossible for them to add any new employees. They withdrew the offer and wished me well. I had to tell my daughter that our plans were cancelled. I had to break her already fractured heart. I had to condemn her to remaining in that house for another year before I could finally get her out.

     I am fairly certain you have never suffered a loss like this. I am certain you have not felt the crushing weight of failure and loss and shame and embarrassment that enduring this sort of thing brings. If not for the failed policies of the current administration, I would have been back to work, my daughter living in a safer place, my life rebuilding sooner than it has. It’s not just my detest of Obama and the Democrats that demands I write this. Nor is it any need to defend my school or it’s president. Jerry is a smarter man than I am, and quite capable of defending himself should that be necessary. This is personal for me. I felt the pain. I am one of those stories you hear about on conservative talk radio and likely ignore. My daughter –who is on this campus right now, one of your fellow student- has lived this nightmare too.

     I am a Christian. My degree is in Biblical studies and this spring I hope to begin seminary here. I have weighed this scripturally. And I have called upon the wisdom of having actually experienced some of what has happened these last, nightmarish, 8 years. Something you simply do not have the benefit of doing. 
I wish Trump were less rough around the edges and more squeaky clean. But to be honest, smooth and squeaky clean is what helped create the policies that held me in my car for 6 years. Smooth and squeaky clean best describes all those Republicans who  fell in line behind Obama.  Six years, boys,. think about that. Think about six years of your life being lost to inescapable shame and embarrassment and hopelessness. I am certain you cannot understand that or grasp the impact. That’s why I wrote this today. Because you need to. You need to understand what has really happened out here in America. You need to understand why, at this moment in American history, we need a blunt instrument and not a scalpel. The time for a scalpel is later. Right now we need a sledgehammer. I worked construction for the better part of 20 years. I’ve used sledgehammers. They aren’t precise. They are heavy and loud and ugly and they make a mess. But when you have to demolish something to get it out of the way, there is nothing else that will do.

     This is why I am still voting for Trump. Because I have already lived a Clintonian nightmare. I have no desire to go back to sleep and have another one. I literally fear that will happen.  I am voting for him because I have experiences you know nothing about. Because I literally dread the thoughts of Hillary as president. And with good reason.

One day, when you have had life experiences and doubtless suffered losses of your own, you’ll understand this. Today, you simply do not. Perhaps after reading this, you will.

Why I will support Trump to the end...(How homelessness tells me who to vote for)

I want to say this because it's been on my mind all day.

I am supporting Trump this election. Trump was not my first choice -that would have been Cruz- but Trump is the nominee and as I've watched the race unfold, maybe the only one who had the ugly roughness that it takes to FINALLY confront the Clinton's. Hillary Clinton is as purely evil a human as exists in this world. That she would sell out this nation for money and then demand to be it's next president is proof enough. That she provided cover for her sexual predator husband and did so with ruthless, callous cruelty is further proof. Her soul is as dark as a soul can be.

Only a man who is gruff, unbending, slightly arrogant, and used to the viciousness of the boardroom and the construction site can have the thick skin needed to absorb the impact of the attacks she launches. Only a man who is used to mean people, used to being both unpopular and popular at once, used to having to be a bully because sometimes in the business world that's the only thing that works...only that man can stand up to her, look her in the face and say the things we all know to be true and wish we had the chance to say. That man happens to be Donald Trump. I wish it were different, but this isn't 1980 anymore.This isn't Reagan against Carter. Looking back I feel like Ted Cruz would never have fired off the "You'd be in jail" comment. He never would have invited four of Bill's many victims to sit there in plain sight. He would have tried to out- think her. The truth is, she isn't as smart as she lets on and out- thinking her isn't how you beat her. Because this society has fallen so far that most of them don't even CARE what she has done or the implications of her vile despicable self-servance. They hear in soundbites. They think in Tweets. Trump takes shots and gets the truth out there in ways that a kinder, more intellectual society would not tolerate, but the current society understands and gravitates toward. I wish this were not so, but it is.

Now the why...

I support Trump because from May 8, 2008 until May 17, 2014, with the exception of about 6 months when a friend let me stay in her house while she was away and it was for sale, I was homeless. I slept in my car and showered in the rec center. You all know this story so I won't return to it.

But I will try to tell you how it felt. Writing the new book has put me back in touch with some emotions from that time that I thought I had buried forever.

I don't know if you will ever know what it is like to drive around almost all night looking for a place to hide your car so you can just sleep for a few hours without the cops finding you. How tiring it is. How drained you feel the next day. How going without sleep will break you until you just sit in your car and cry. I did this. I know.

I don't know if you know what it is to wake up on cold mornings with frost inside your car because the overnight temps dropped into the teens and your breath froze to the windshield. Or how it feels to be so cold you can't stop shaking but you can't start your car and get heat because someone would find you. I have been there.

I can't explain the loneliness. The miserable, bitter, hard, isolating loneliness that crushes you and makes you angry and weary and afraid of people after a while. Those six years where the loneliest of my entire life. 

I don't know if you know what it feels like to have your young child call you begging you to come and get her out of the house and all you can do is pick her up for a few hours but you have to take her back to the abuse and violence of her mom's house, because you don't have a place for her. I do. I can't tell you how it made me weep.

I have awoken to ice on my face where my tears froze to my cheeks. I have wandered aimlessly around a Sam's club for hours just to stay in the A/C in blistering Nashville summers. 

And I have felt the shame and screaming failure of putting out literally hundreds of resumes and not getting any calls. Because I was in my forties, and unemployed and the economy just kept getting worse and worse. I can't express how it feels to have finally gotten a job offer and to feel hopeful and to literally cry for joy because your nightmare seemed to at last be over. Only to get that email a week later that rescinded the job offer because of the excessive costs of the newly implemented Obama care. I had that happen to me three times.

It took 6 years to find a job. I have no furniture. I have a mattress on the floor of my bedroom. I have a kitchen table that someone gave me that is so warped that your plate will slide off it. And yet I am so thankful. I struggle each week, even with the side jobs, to get ahead. But I have a job I really love and I work for and with some of the best people I have ever known. I survived it. I am on my feet. But honestly...I live every single day in fear. Every day I worry about the economy, this society, this wonderful country of mine. I fear not having enough savings or enough stockpiled food. I worry about returning to homelessness. Because I don't ever want to go there again. I don't know if I could handle it emotionally a second time around. I get a knot in my stomach whenever I think about how I have no savings yet, or play the "what-if" game. What if I get hurt? What if there is a layoff? 

Hillary Clinton will destroy this nation. There will be a smoldering ruin when she is done. Her policies have never worked anywhere in the world at any time and yet she wants to go back to them. I fear that a Hillary presidency will put me back in that car, homeless, broken. Trump has employed people. He has paid payroll. Whatever else he might be, he personally has amassed wealth and doesn't wish to lose it. The same can be said for Clinton but the difference is Trump did actual work for his, and Trump wants others to be rich too. Clinton wants to rule the poor. I can't go for that. Just put us back to work, just protect us from terrorism and an illegal invasion. We'll handle the rest. I live in dread of ever living that nightmare again. Hillary Clinton would guarantee that.

So I support Trump.

I Moved My Daughter Into Her Dorm Today... A single dad reflects on divorce and how fast kids grow up.

I moved my daughter into her dorm this weekend.

It feels like she went straight from the maternity room to her dorm room without pausing. Like there wasn't 18 years in there.

Being divorced only made it worse. Whatever time I might have had with her was reduced by about 75 percent.

I was there for the big things...Recitals, graduations, art shows, and talent shows. I've never missed a birthday or a holiday with her. I spoke to her every day that I wasn't with her.

But there were little things that were stolen from me. It wasn't me who took off her training wheels when the time came. It wasn't me who pulled her first loose tooth. I had to share her first day of school with the monster her mother married...and is now divorcing. I would call her and he would always make it a point to talk loudly in the background, just so I could hear him and he would let me know that my daughter was in HIS house. He would bait me and hope that I'd lose control and go after him. I have the habit of writing her a letter that I include in every birthday card. It usually recaps the years that have passed and talks about the future. The one I wrote her on her ninth birthday, Jeff (Holly's second husband) decided to "edit" and deface. I wanted to kill him. Somehow I managed not to.

Her mom played along. She liked the feeling of rubbing salt in my wounds.

But I stayed and I fought for whatever time I could get and squeezed in a little more by having lunch with her at school or picking her up and taking her to her mom’s just so I could have the time in the car.

Still...I missed about 75 percent of her bedtime prayers. I missed her singing in her room every night. I didn't catch nearly enough lightning bugs or bake nearly enough cookies or color nearly enough funny pictures. I wish I could be Santa just one more time and she would believe it...like when she was little.

The house I bought in Franklin TN had a Jacuzzi tub. I never used it but she liked it when she was little. One time I put a giant scoop of "Mr. Bubble" in it and she was literally lost in the suds. She had a blast. That's how it was for the first ten years. Once a week and every other weekend we had an adventure of some sort. We had fun and we laughed and we could forget that our little family was broken.

But I see her now and I see the adult version of what was a happy little girl. She trusts no one. She has a chip on her shoulder about men, because she saw how her mom's new husband treated her, and she didn't have a chance to see me treating someone well because I remained single. She has a love for Jesus but a distrust for church because she saw me be essentially abandoned while my life had exploded. Not until I found a different church did she see people caring, as a body of believers, and it jaded her. She knows how individuals helped and cared, but she loved church as much as I do and she felt the disappointment.

She feels like she skipped childhood after age 10. She feels like she was rushed into adulthood because her home life demanded it. I have to agree. Her mom's house wasn't a safe haven, and after 2008, I had no house at all.

She's in the dorm now. She has two roommates and a floor full of young women of varying ages and backgrounds. I am excited for her. I am praying daily that her room mates and RA's and her floor sisters are all exactly who God has picked out to help heal the wounds my little girl carries.

I shudder to think of what might invade that heart if she was in a state school right now. I'm thankful that, while Liberty is growing academically and physically at a tremendous rate, our president, Jerry Falwell has managed to keep our school Christ centered. I'm thankful God brought it about that I can work there and she can go there because the two are financially inseparable right now.

But this hole in me is huge and today it's palpable. 18 years is a blink even if you aren't divorced, or homeless, or both. It's a blink to healthy families where things go well.

For me it was even faster than that. She is my only immediate family. She is the chance I got to right the wrongs from my own childhood, and be a better parent than I had. She is my second chance at seeing dreams come true. She reminds me of my grandmother when she sings. She is loving, tender, gentle, fiery, stubborn, and very broken.

And today she lives in a dorm on Liberty Mountain. And I'm sitting here wondering how it happened so quickly, and wondering if I did it right enough. We talked this weekend about the past and the future. Where I succeeded and where I failed. She told me that no matter what...she always knew I loved her. Because I told her and because I showed her.

I hope and pray that is enough.

Colin Kaepernick...a line-by-line assessment of his ridiculous statement

Note:I have a dear dear friend who lost both legs at the hip in Vietnam. Before going to war, he had been a standout high school football player. He would probably love nothing more than to dance with his wife, run with his grandchildren...and stand for the National Anthem.

Colin Kaepernick came out with an insulting statement about how he refuses to stand for the National Anthem. I thought I'd dissect it line by line. Here goes.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," 

When one says "A COUNTRY that oppresses black people and people of color" you are saying that this is an official action, sanctioned by the government. "The COUNTRY is oppressing you" means that it's the policy of the nation. Sorry Colonoscopy...that isn't true. In FACT, good people of ALL colors died to make sure those laws were changed so that this was NOT true. You know who fought those against changing those laws the hardest??? Democrats
When you say "The Country" you include ME and all other fellow Americans. Including the millions who bought your stupid jersey after you turned in one good year...and then fell into the abyss of sub-par play. You include the owner who gave you 90 MILLION dollars after one good season...have you offered to return any of that money? When you say "The Country" you include the NFL...the league in which you play, where the majority of players are black. How's THAT oppressive? And can you NEVER use the term "people of color" again??? I have a color too, jackass and mine is as important as yours.

Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game.

"To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way."

No...what's selfish is for you to ignore the men and women who died for that anthem so you could bilk the NFL in the safety of a football stadium, you thankless fraud! There are men who will NEVER, EVER be able to stand for that anthem again, because they stood when it mattered. Think about that the next time you jog off the field after going three-and-out again, on your two healthy legs.

"There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

WHERE??? Where are the bodies

 in the street and the people getting away with murder? Michael Brown? BZZZZZ false narrative! Hands weren't up...he wasn't running away. He was charging an officer he had tried to kill.

Treyvon Martin? George Zimmerman is a jerk, but Treyvon tried to beat him to death and met his end.
Freddie Gray? Nobody tried harder to convict those cops than that race baiting prosecutor..and yet she went 0 for 6.
Philandro Castille? Turns out he reached for his gun
Alton Sterling? He reached for his gun too and he was a convicted pedophile and he'd already done time for possessing a firearm when prohibited!
Nobody is "dying in the streets" while cops notch their gunbelts, you miserable little turd. And maybe you just have a law enforcement problem after that whole "being in the hotel room while a girl got raped" thing. Was it your money or your skin color that got you off the hook with that? Or were you actually innocent...like those cops turned out to be.
You want to protest, fine. Protest in some way that doesn't disrespect the very anthem that makes your entire dream life possible. But at least have the decency to quote facts and not race-baiting blither.
Rant over...Chip can have him. I hope the 49ers go 0-16

My America...

I grew up in the America where you saluted the flag EVERY time you saw it.

Where little leaguers paraded into their stadium on Opening Day and then took off their ballcaps -without being told- and stood rigid as fence posts while the National Anthem played.

Where being on a government assistance program was embarrassing and if you found yourself there...you busted your butt to get off as fast as you could.

Where you went to church on Sunday, and so did the local business owners...because they didn't have to open on Sunday to stay afloat.

Where whether or not you were a Catholic, you respected the local Priest if you saw him. Same for the local minister or Rabbi.

Where voting was taken seriously, and talked about passionately, but it never ended friendships, mostly because, while the Dems and the Repubs differed on the means, they agreed on the ends back then. Now...it's a battle between a communist takeover and a group who lost it's vision, it's connection with it's people, and it's soul.

Where a cop was respected, admired, and typically someone from the neighborhood.

Where sports were what we PLAYED far more than what we watched.

Where professional athletes sold us cars and sneakers...not tried to influence our votes or our social positions. (Except on the matter of race...which was important enough to need those voices)

Where a man who worked hard was respected, and saw the fruit of his labor after years of toil, and his neighbors didn't want the government taxing it all away from him because they were envious. They saw him as an example of what hard work could achieve.

Where little boys dreamed of being astronauts or jet pilots or star athletes or doctors or engineers or police / fireman. Or building a business that bore your name and served your community. Not DJ's making millions for creating a drum loop.

Where journalism was respected and if you read it in the paper it was true. Unvarnished, unbiased, TRUE.

Where a soldier was awe inspiring.

Where a tattoo on a man told a story that sometimes brought him tears when he told it.

Where kids knew that communism and socialism were evil.

Where being an American meant a swelling pride -even with our mistakes- and being American was the focal point of our being here at all. It was what brought our parents and grandparents here and they never let us forget how good America had been to us.

When Fireworks on Independence Day were recognized as what they are...symbols of the battle we fought to become America.

Going to the polls this fall will be two entire generations who have no idea what any of this even means. THAT is why we have the candidates we have.

In that America, a Hillary Clinton would be in jail, and an example of what you tell your kids happens to you when you have no moral compass. And Trump would be an admired business man who's shortcomings made him unelectable.

I comfort myself by looking at this and realizing that a man or woman can learn to act Presidentially, but when someone is entirely bereft of character and integrity and has done the unspeakable, they are truly a lost cause.

But I hope we get serious about taking control of our heritage and getting back to that America. Liberals always say "It wasn't YOUR America!" I assume it's those who either never lived in the above mentioned era, or who had beliefs that opposed that sort of greatness.

Please, Don't Come Quickly, Lord Jesus

*I literally wrote this about an hour before the barbaric events in Dallas last night, not knowing what was about to occur. 

Sometimes, when we’ve had a day or a three-day period in this country like we just had, I write. I write in the hopes that people read my words, because I love to communicate and I love expressing my thoughts. I hope for feedback and dialogue, because then I know someone has been reading, and thinking about what I wrote.

But today, I’m writing for a different reason. I’m writing different words. I’m probably going against the grain a little, compared to my evangelical friends.

This week we’ve watched as a ruthless, evil, soulless woman calculated her way to committing treason and, not only got off scot-free, but flipped the bird to the entire collective nation. Hillary Clinton knew the fix was in all along. After watching the debacle in the house today, I believe FBI director Comey was in on it from the start.

Justice was kicked in the crotch on national TV, and Hillary was doing the kicking.

Obama is complicit, Lynch is complicit, Bill Clinton is complicit. Who knows who else?

 Then, in a 24 hour period, two black men were killed by police officers. In the Baton Rouge case, the man resisted arrest, and did it forcefully. He also had a gun. In the Minneapolis case, it seems like the man did everything he was asked to do. Still, both men are dead. I can no more believe that there is a conspiracy among cops to execute black men, than I can believe that all black men are arrest-resisting gangsters, who meet their fate as they deserve. There is fault on both sides…plenty enough to go around.

If I zoom in to the picture I get lost in the divide and the anger. So I choose to zoom out. Out beyond the partial video that everyone wants to use to go ahead and have a trial right now. Past the declaration of evil cops or evil black men. Out far enough that I can see this nation from border to border. The whole picture. All of us.

Pardon me for saying it this way…but what in hell has happened to us?

While MY government…that’s right, it’s MINE and it’s YOUR’S, was playing a con game more intricate than the one Newman and Redford pulled off in “The Sting,” racial tensions got ratchetted up to nuclear level. Conveniently just before the major political conventions. Two men are dead and the three cops involved were instantaneously judged and found guilty and the mob wants blood.

What happened to this country of ours? In my lifetime we passed the Civil Rights Act. We saw the elimination of Jim Crow laws, the breaking of color barriers, and, more importantly, the breaking down of the walls of perception that kept us separated far more than any laws ever did. We were making progress, we were getting past that time in our history. In the last eight years we’ve see all that precious ground given up and then some. We are more divided, more angry, more separated than we ever have been in my 52 years. Why?

The easy thing is to correlate this regression with the election of Obama. The man is a racial divider and there is no other way to say it. No denying it. He divides us by race, class, income, gender, sexual preference and especially by religion. I don’t even think he does it because he is a racist necessarily. I believe he does it because he knows that when we are this divided, we cannot stand together, and he and his cronies can get away with what they have been getting away with for eight years now. Division, demolition, destruction. If you think he cares any more about black America than he does white America, you are in denial. He hates America…all of it. He despises capitalism and American values. He simply plays us against each other in order to keep us too busy fighting to see what he’s up to.

But I can’t lay this at Obama’s feet. Not entirely. Not even predominantly, as much as I want to. Obama is simply the symptom of the problem. The evidence that we are sick as a nation. He’s the fever, not the infection. The infection is deeper and more deadly.

What’s really wrong with us is clearly stated in Psalm 9:17 “The wicked will go down to the grave. This is the fate of all the nations who ignore God.” (Emphasis mine)

We are descending into Hell, because this is what happens to ANY nation who ignore God. America was founded by Christian men on Christian principals. That did not make us a “Christian nation,” at least not a Theocracy. But it made us a Christian society. And any time a society is made up of predominantly Christian folk, who are living their Faith, God will add His blessing to it. You cannot look at our history and argue against this.

But we have run as far from that place as possible now. When our Secretary of State not only lies, but plans her lies, and then escapes even a hint of consequence because she was assisted from the top down…we have abandoned God.

When men and women and children and gunned down in the streets…sometimes justly, many times not…we have ignored God. When babies are slaughtered by the millions and people who defend them are mocked and threatened, we have ignored God. When little girls and boys in this country, are sold as sex toys, we have ignored God. When right is wrong, and wrong is right…we have ignored God.

There are those who say “America needs to repent.” But how can a society repent when they no longer even realize they have sinned? The only people in this country who need to repent right now are Christians. Those who name the Name. We have failed. We have broken our promises. We have forsaken our first love. Romans tells us “How will they hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:14) and yet what are our preachers preaching? “Love” in the form of a fraudulent gospel that requires no change, no surrender, and no sacrifice? “Come as you are and it’s okay if you stay that way?” A “salvation” experience at the cross that is no longer a life-changing, head-on-collision, but a mere scratch in the mall parking lot.

We don’t preach repentance for salvation. We preach: “Find your path.” We don’t hear “Judgement begins in the house of God” and check to make sure our house is in order. We stand for absolutely nothing anymore. Including the belief in Hell. If you want men and women who will stop running in gangs and start listening to cops and therefore not getting shot...change their hearts! If you want compassionate, caring, slow-on-the-trigger cops who command respect AND trust...change their hearts! 

That, more than anything, is why we are here now. The urgency of the Gospel is gone. Vanished. A victim of populist preaching and limp-wristed praise and worship songs that fool me into thinking God is my bud. God is Tom Sawyer to my Huck Finn. Jesus is my cosmic homeboy who just wants to party with me and “do life” with me. I want to puke!

We don’t preach with passion. We don’t speak about the sins that ruin this country: divorce, pornography, hatred, lying, and alcoholism. We have absolutely NO idea what God’s holiness is and what it looks like and what it demands of us.

No changes in our hearts, no communities affected by revivals, no sense of awe at His presence. Only this weak, unholy view of a Holy God. God; my hipster pal who plays guitar with me in the park. No pillar of fire. No burning bush. The great, unnamed nothing.

I can’t change politics. I can’t enlighten 340 million people about voting issues.

But I can share the gospel. In the end…it’s neither Trump nor Clinton who will end corruption in government and stop people from resisting arrest and cops from going too far and using deadly force. It isn’t more money or programs or a Democrat or a Republican who will finally get us to move beyond tolerating each other to really loving each other.

It’s Jesus.

Not Joel Osteen’s Jesus, or Perry Noble’s Jesus, or Steven Furtick’s Jesus or any of the other imposters and flock stars who are in this because it made them famous.

It’s the Jesus of Paul. The Jesus of Gethsemane. The Jesus of Billy Graham and Tozer and Ravenhill and Falwell and my old pastor Paul Walters, and my friend Dave Lewis. It’s the Jesus who shook me at 14 years old when I heard Keith Green’s “No Compromise” record for the first time and knew I could never be the same.

It’s the Jesus who says “Come see this cross. Come to this Rock, this cornerstone. If you fall on this rock you will be broken…and changed…but if this rock falls on you, you will be crushed and destroyed!” (Matthew 21:44)

I’m done with politics as a solution. I will still vote, still discuss it, still think and reason and decide. But I will not look to politics for solutions to the heart problem that is ripping this nation, and this world apart.

I see my Christian friends writing “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.” Today. I cannot say that. Not yet.

I say, “Please don’t come yet, Lord Jesus.”

Why?

Because the sooner He comes and takes His children home, the more people will be left behind, and their fate sealed. If you think we’ve done a good enough job spreading the real gospel (by The Gospel I mean repent and believe so you will be saved) that you’re okay with Jesus’ coming back right now, good on you. But I am not. I want to roll my sleeves up, spit in Satan’s eye and spend my days preaching the gospel. Seeing lives radically changed, not altered a little through osmosis. I want to wage war in prayer. I want to declare the inner cities off limits to Satan. I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with my black brothers and sisters in Christ and DO something, not just pose for pictures, laugh awkwardly at how different we are, and then go on as if nothing can ever happen. I want to use words like “Born Again” and “Saved” and “Transformed” again. I want to see altars in churches full on Sundays with weeping, broken, CHANGED people…of all colors.

I want to spend what I have to gain what I cannot buy.

Then…I can say “Come Lord Jesus”

I’m restless and sad and broken tonight. I am begging God to use me, starting now. The only hope we have is in the Gospel.

God send laborers. Starting with me.