If -- By Rudyard Kipling

If—
By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about; don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can trust your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Life as a Husband, Dad, Systems Analyst, and Responsible Adult.

It's December of 2013, and I feel content. Our company is selling software, and that means we are doing something right. I will have a busy couple of months coming up, traveling and implementing large-scale software projects.

my window on the world for 9 hours a day

I am getting along well with my wife and daughters. I feel a little distant from my son, but he knows I love him and am proud of him. 

Finances are tight right now. We bought a house in the summer and our expenses rose by about $600 per month. We have a little yard for the dog, and Christmas lights around the front porch. My wife has started going back to church, and I go with her sometimes. God has really blessed our family, mostly with spiritual blessings in Christ, and also with material blessings. I have a car that runs, by the grace of God, with 175,000 miles and some needed service. My wife has a good car too, and recently got the oil changed. We are truly blessed to have jobs, cars, a house, enough to eat, and clothes to wear.

A lot of my free time is spent in addiction recovery-related activities. We are doing a financial program to work toward getting out of debt and living more prosperously. By the grace of God, I have been sober from drugs and alcohol for 23 years. I am free from porn and sexual acting out for 11 months. Also, maintaining a 60-lb weight loss since Halloween of 2011. This is achieved by not eating flour and sugar, weighing and measuring my meals, and meetings, Bible study, prayer, and meditation. 

I have started doing an exercise plan called Power of 10. It involves any kind of resistance training, 10 seconds in and 10 seconds out. So a pushup is a full 10 seconds up, and a full 10 seconds down. I can do about 4.5 of these pushups until muscle failure. I do this about once a week, with a few other exercises. It helps me feel better about myself. I also take vitamins in the morning, and stretch to overcome stiffness from my multiple car wrecks since moving to Oregon.

I miss my friends, but I feel like we are getting ready to connect with more people, and I am excited about that.

That's all I have for now. It feels good to write, so I may be back sooner than later.

Here's one: What did the little dog say to the people walking by? Bow wow wow wow wow!

Why Christians are not perfect

This was deleted off of Helium.com (some Christian probably thought it was inappropriate), but I put it here so you can read it if you want to. This essay was written 9/1/2007 - John K

I am afraid of being asked to leave my church. I lie, sometimes I slander other people, and I'm selfish and fearful. All qualities that can lead to mistrust and misunderstanding in relationships. Whenever the pastor reads a scripture about the wolves among the sheep, the false prophets, or the idolaters or adulterers, I think he might be talking about me. The other day, our pastor talked to me about something I had said about him, and I admitted what I said and apologized, but I felt like that was a "strike" against me. The pastor forgave me, and I believe him, but the feeling sticks.

What Paul tells me is that (Romans 5:20) "The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, (21) so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

So without knowledge of my sin, I'm just another ignorant sinner. But when I become conscious of my shortcomings through my own guilty conscience, I give God an opportunity to save me and make me more righteous than I could ever muster on my own. This makes me humble, and so I go and apologize to the person I lied to, the one I slandered, the one I ignored or cheated out of time or affections.

But the answer is that Christians are just like everyone else. The difference is not in us, it is in Christ. He transforms us by something special that happens, something spiritual about believing in his death and resurrection. It's the kingdom of heaven, expressed in our own bodies, our own minds, and the way we become transparent with one another as we walk together with other believers in true community.

I am not perfect, by any means, but I have been made righteous by grace. Jesus has redeemed my drug and alcohol abuse, my sexual sin, and my financial failure. He is transforming me by the renewing of my mind through therapy and Bible study. And he is using me, both in those transparent moments with other Christians, and in the workaday world where everyone (including me) is watching and waiting for me to fuck up. So they can prove that Christians are not perfect.

I'm the first to admit it.