Anxious thoughts befuddled,
Huddled beneath layers of cruff.
Stuff that is loved and hated
Created by love fogotten,
Rotten in apathy and suppression,
Aggression, foul, lust.
Must I live forever,
Wherever, wandering without thought
Caught in muck and mire.
Aspire to the world
Curled in activity,
Brevity of faith shown
Sewn in body and soul.
Coal the color of sin.
Win, oh Lord, my heart,
Part the dark abyss,
Kiss the mess,
Confess the death
Breath of life
Strife removed,
Moved beyond words
Towards light and hope.

-JTH
12-13-08

CallWave

Well, my time as an employee at CallWave has come to an end (yes for a seond time, but this time it is for good), so I figured it was time to sit back and tally up what I accomplished (and went through) at CallWave.

Vital Statistics
Years as an employee: 2
Years as an intern: 1
Number of different bosses during employment: 4
Number of layoffs survived: 2
Number of times laid off: 1
Number of times hired back after being laid off: 1
Number of desk changes: 6
Positions: Database Intern, Database Developer
Programming Languages learned: SQL, Python, ActionScript

Responsibilities
I was responsible at CallWave for the daily upkeep and maintenance of the companies database servers. When things went wrong, I would diagnose and troubleshoot the issue, fixing the problem once it was uncovered. Along with these responsibilities, I helped design a new database schema for one of the company's new products, seeing the schema through development to the product's launch.

Along with these responsibilities, my job also included both client and server side programming in Python and ActionScript. The server side code involved programming an API for unified communications over a SOAP interface. The client side programming involved connecting to this SOAP interface to persist user information. My other client side programming responsibilities had me coding user interface components according to a visual specification.

Synopsis
In the end, CallWave provided me with pretty much the ideal start to my career in computer science. The experience I gained in database programming and maintenance will provide, I think, a great advantage in my career as I move forward. That, along with the skills gained in working with groups of developers and programming to specifications should help me have a successful programming career. The end of my time was bitter-sweet, but the experience, overall, was great.

Hope

It is hard to have hope in America today. Everything we see around us screams out "eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die." Store up for yourselves all the best new toys to insulate yourself from the coming peril. Surely your plasma tv will save you!

Today's culture is meant to seduce people. Marketers try to seduce you into buying their product by playing flashy commercials on tv and conjuring up hype about their products. I admit that I am, sometimes very willingly, seduced into purchasing things that I don't really need. This seduction travels beyond products, though, into lifestyles as well. It is quite easy to be seduced into a lifestyle of pursuing pleasure and wealth. Lifestyles that promote the self instead of the other. Like a wildfire consuming all that is truly good and satisfying in life.

I believe that we can have hope in America, though. In fact, there is a Juniper tree (Juniperus chinensis) in Arizona that gives me hope. Yes, I know it sounds strange, but before you just write me off, hear me out. This tree is quite unique and I'm sure would have a fantastic story to tell if it could talk in more than swishing leaves and creaking branches. Upon first glance through the charred hole in the middle of its trunk, you would swear that the tree had photosynthesized its last light particle. I mean, the hole is so big I could walk through it! On second consideration of this conifer, however, you would hopefully see the bright green growth sprouting from its top boughs! The tree is very much alive despite having been ravaged by some long-ago fire, carrying with it the scars of its trial.

If you are like me, you find yourself in a proverbial fire-fight right now. A worldly wildfire has been ravaging my life, trying to burn away all traces of my faith. I have been seeking after worldly things for the past year, seeking out my own pleasure and wealth instead of serving others and promoting their well-being. Through this selfishness I ended up almost losing a good friend because I was too prideful to seek reconciliation with him.

Have hope, friends. All of the trials, the fires, the years of growth, the joy, pain, sorrow, love, hate, truth, and lies that we experience in life make us who we are. They can bring us into a deeper, more mature relationship with Jesus, or they can cause us to fall away from faith. Take courage from the prophet Jeremiah:

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the Lord, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."
-Jeremiah 29:13-14

Lord, revive and renew us. Show us your grace and love once more. May they be beacons of light for us.

This is how I feel right now.

"I Remember Well"

Fernando Ortega
BEGINNINGS

Love & Hate

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
while we all sup sorrow with the poor
there's a song that will linger forever in our ears
oh, hard times come again no more

While we seek mirth and beauty
and music light and gay
there are frail ones fainting at the door
though their voices are silent
their pleading looks will say
oh, hard times come again no more
- Hard Times by Eastmountainsouth

As I was driving to Starbucks one beautiful, sunny morning before work, I was struck by the beauty of this place we call Santa Barbara. The road that I was on carried me East, dead into the rising sun, bathing me in the brightest yellow light imaginable. To the right, the ocean loomed, gracefully cloaked in a garment of mist, hardly visible between slender palm trees along the coastline. To the left was yet another sight to behold. The mist that covered the ocean also decided to nestle itself gently between the toes of the mountains off to my left, radiating a soft yellow and pink reflection of the glorious morning.

Several things were revealed to me that morning as I quickly swerved to get the car back on the road, remembering once again that I wasn't just an observer of nature at that point in time. First, I realized how bogged down in life I was and am. Dr. Iba shared a story with me while at Westmont( I wish I could find it online, but couldn't ) that portrayed God as an anxious lover who would intentionally and unceasingly show love to his lover even when she didn't even notice his gestures. Every morning, before his love awoke, he would paint for her a picture of astounding beautry. When she woke, groggy and hungry, she walked right past that beautiful masterpiece, not giving it a second thought or a backwards glance. That is exactly the metaphor that describes what I do to God daily. Every morning, before I wake, God has planned out and painted a gorgeous morning. Just for me. With pink and yellow hues enough to make a heart burst with joy. Yet what do I do? I sleep. Or I grumble about how I have to be up at "this ungodly hour." But oh, how Godly it truly is when you just take one second, just one second from your morning routine to look out the window and see the amazing light show, or hear birds twittering playfully in the trees. Let them drown out the noise of traffic, the little voice in your head that tells you what all you have to do today, the grogginess of your pre-coffee head. Listen, look, be still.

The next thing I realized, is how ungrateful I can be at times. Or not even that I'm ungrateful, just that I haven't taken stock of all the things that I love about life or where I live. As I was reflecting on the beauty of the morning, I started writing down some of the things I love about this place. After you read them, close your eyes and imagine... I hope you get just a taste of the pleasure that these things bring me.

The early morning sun pinkening the rolling fog that settles between the roots of the mountains.

The late afternoon sun warming the cemetery lawn.

People who throw tennis balls for their smiling dogs at the beach.

Seeing the sun set over the ocean.

Strolling on the beach ( made even better with company - you know who you are ).

Ivy that spreads its leafy fingers over the buildings in Paseo Nuevo.

Families that hike together.

Dolphins playing in the waves.

Breakfast and journalling/reading at Summerland Beach Cafe.

Palm trees lining the boardwalk on Cabrillo.

The pounding beat of the drum circle on Saturday Evening.

The roar of the creek that rushes under my apartment balcony when it rains.

The smell of orange blossoms at the top of Westmont's formal gardens on a summer evening just at sunset.

My thinking spot on Cold Springs Trail.

The tree on the cliffs overlooking Hendry's beach.

The quiet of the monastery on Gibraltar Rd.

The many flavors of roses in bloom by the Mission.

Lastly, that morning made me wonder why I am so quick (at times) to see beauty in nature, in objects, in experience, in physical appearance and yet I am so slow to see beauty or to value people for the simple fact that they are God's children. Isn't that much more valuable to God than our ooh's and ahh's at physical manifestations of beauty? I feel that God would rather have us value, have us see beauty in just one person than wake up every day of our lives and wonder at the majesty of the sunrise. Why can't I see the beauty in a life that has been destroyed by addictive substances? Isn't there inherent beauty just in the fact that a person is created in the image of God? Why does it matter that people are well coiffed? What is wrong with smelling of urine or having a crooked nose or a giant beard or wearing grandma's christmas sweater? Huh? WHAT? I hate that I look only at the surface of a person so often, make snap judgments and assumptions because of what I see instead of taking the time to see beauty in ashes.

I end with an excerpt from Psalm 139. While you may think this is overused (shoot, I do sometimes), it is such a good reminder of our origins, of just how much God values us. From the president to your pastor to your friendly neighborhood drug dealer.

"For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them - they are more than the sand; I come to the end - I am still with you"

God knows each of us through and through. He formed us, intricately wove us together. He formed YOU, intricately wove YOU together! YOU are still with HIM!

lying on the floor

Please read at your own risk. I've laid parts of my soul bare this time around.

Nothing's fine I'm torn

I'm all out of faith
This is how I feel
I'm cold and I am shamed
Lying naked on the floor
Illusion never changed
Into something real
I'm wide awake
And I can see
The perfect sky is torn
[I'm] a little late
I'm already torn
-Natalie Imbruglia, "Torn"

Have ever been knocked on your ass by sin? I mean truly knocked on your ass. Not a more-or-less standard “I feel guilty about doing this” kind of feeling, but the feeling that you have truly and intentionally spat in the face of your creator; your father. The one that loves you wholeheartedly despite countless failings and betrayals.

Today I was knocked on my ass by sin. Probably the second or third time in as many months that I have truly felt like my soul has been pummeled by a blood-thirsty 350 pound line backer. And my soul is the punter. While I hate this raw feeling, the feeling of my broken soul being laid bare before a perfect God, it has gotten me thinking and wondering. It has made me think about the person I’ve become; the things that I ascribe value to, the ways that I treat people. I feel that if my Junior High self came up to me today and saw what I’ve made of my life this year, he would be truly saddened. Saddened at my lack of faith, saddened that I act like I am the most important person in my life, saddened that I value my own pleasure and comfort over following the God that I claim to follow and serve. I feel that I have truly become the man that has built his house on the sand of society. The sand of pleasure and comfort instead of the bedrock of Jesus. It’s a great house, by the way, with a slanted roof and beautiful bay windows looking out over the sun setting in the West. But now that there is a storm in my life, the foundation is sinking. Sinking. Sinking. What good are bay windows and a bougainvillea when there is no solid foundation? I feel that my well spring of faith has been drying up for a long time and if something doesn’t change soon, may dry up forever. No one ever told me that life would just get harder in a way that I believed them. That eventually there wouldn’t be an easy-access, committed community of people to hold me up in the midst of a broken, spiritually war-torn world. That the loss of innocence sucks.

I sometimes feel like the character Cipher in The Matrix when he asks, “why, oh why didn’t I choose the blue pill?” When I was confronted with the choice to obey God or to turn away and seek my own ways, why the hell didn’t I choose to obey God? I never believed that seeking my own ways, my own pleasure would actually lead to very real consequences and that sinning once makes it that much harder to choose God the next time. Sure, I ascribed lip-service to it, but my actions lately have proven it to be that and only that. Lip-service. I honestly could not tell you to this day what caused me to commit the first in this latest sickening series of sins. Sometimes satan really knows what he is doing. He knows just the time and place when you are going to be most vulnerable and, if you are not sly as a serpent, he’ll convince you to eat of the forbidden fruit with not but a polished, softly whispered lie. Once you’ve taken that first bite, there is no easy way of going back. Why the hell didn’t I just TRUST God that HE KNEW WHAT WAS BEST FOR ME??? Why the hell didn’t I believe Him when he said that following Him is better than living for myself????

I feel like I am clinging to the sides of an abyss. I have fallen so deep into the abyss that there is but a pin-prick of light above that marks the existence of an exit. It feels that there is little hope of making it to the top and a great chance of falling forever downwards. But as long as there is any light at all, there is hope. There is hope of rescue, of a familiar voice calling out not to give up, not to let go. Just as it would take an immense amount of effort to climb out of a bottomless pit, so is it difficult to come back to a place of feeling right with God. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that God will forgive us when we come before him and confess and ask his forgiveness, in that sense it is not difficult to be forgiven. I am more talking about the human aspects of feeling right with God. Of stepping off the wide road of the world that leads to death and despair and stepping onto the narrow road that leads to life. The road that demands that you put others before yourself, the road that demands obedience, the road that demands love. The road that, if truly followed, keeps you moving beyond the sins of your past into a relationship with God where you will no longer desire the pleasures of sin. Moving toward a place where you are able to feel and recognize the full love of your Father Creator and where you love Him right back.

I don’t know why I keep my sins buried in my soul’s backyard, rotting away and infecting heart and soul. Well, that is kind of a lie. I know why I do it, I just don’t understand why it seems like such a good idea at the time and so ridiculously sh**ty now. When did I stop trusting my friends top help me through hard times? Yeah, sin sometimes feels amazingly shameful, but when did I stop believing that confession is good for the soul? Maybe it just feels too close to home. Like my friends are just too close to the situation. I want to be seen as this strong pillar that can’t be touched. Idiot. Only God is a strong pillar. A capstone. And me? I’m just cold and shamed, lying naked on the floor.

I am Judas. I have seen and believed the words of Jesus, followed him down many paths before yet when it comes down to it, I choose to follow my own ways.

I'm a little late. I'm already torn. But Lord, I want to be brought back and healed.

The next 15 minutes could change your life

Sorry about the length of the post, but a lot on my mind ;)

"When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse?"
-Coldplay "Fix You"

It is funny how life can take a sudden turn in the blink of an eye. One minute you're sitting in your car driving down the freeway, the next you're lying on your back blinking in the bright sterile light of a hospital room. Or you're riding your donkey through the desert near Damascus, murderously pursuing Christians and the next thing you know you've been blinded by a bright light and have the responsibility of being a leader to the very people you have sought so hard to eradicate.

"When you try your best but you don't succeed"
The sudden turn in my life was not nearly as dramatic as these examples, but happened just as quickly and was just as surprising. I was sitting at my desk one minute, reading an email and thinking of what work needed to be accomplished in the remaining hours of the day. Fifteen minutes later, I was unemployed. From database developer working with a team of developers with the sky as the limit to unemployed in 15 short minutes. There was no, "you have until the end of the week." Nope, I was ushered into a conference room with about 15 other colleagues and told that my time had come. They ushered each of us out one by one to the guillotine in the "storage room" and swiftly ended our employment. Shocking? You betcha! It is the kind of thing you never think about until it actually happens to you.

"When you get what you want but not what you need"
Yet I'm not all that disappointed by the sudden change in employment status. True, it was shocking, but I wasn't laid off because I did bad work or some other act to earn disrepute. No, the company just had to do some cutting back and it was my name that showed up in their magic 8 ball when they asked "who should we lay off?" It was a great job that came at a great time for me, a solid software development job right out of college. A job that I wanted and went straight into. I'm not sure it is what I needed, though. I mean, sure, it provided a great income and something to do day in and day out, but at the end of it all, when I flicked out the lights at night, I was more often than not frustrated by what was in my life. Like I was a hamster in a wheel spinning round and round, not knowing why I keep running or what difference all my running was making. A job that I wanted and took mainly because I didn't know what else I would do. A job that was so filled with the implications of a query plan that there was no room for thoughts of the Lord, thoughts and actions that matter in the lives of others. Maybe what I needed after college was a job that didn't pay a lot of money. A job that left me pennyless at the end of the day, but with a roof over my head and people that I had loved and affected. Maybe instead of just settling for a job that used my acquired skills I should have searched more, asked more questions of God, of my friends.

"When you feel so tired but you can't sleep"
So that brings up whole other slew of questions. (My mind is great at thinking up tons of questions, but not so good at answering them :-/) All of a sudden the world is my oyster again. I just have to find the pearl hidden inside the guts. Listen to God's voice to hear what he wants me to do. There's the obvious: find another software developer position in Santa Barbara. I mean, they're all over the place, for goodness sake. Down to the less obvious and more scary: Ditch software and do something else, something crazy and totally out there to liven me up again. And yet, I'm not frightened or worried in this time. It is trying, for sure. Do I have the faith to hold onto God's word when he says he will never leave me or forsake me? Do I truly believe that He knows what he is doing in my life? If he tells me to leave the software industry, the cushy life of a Santa Barbara resident and pursue a different life elsewhere, will I have the courage to do it? "Josh, do you trust me?" Will I be able to see through the many influences dangling in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey, trying to drive me around in circles? My first inclination, as a former roommate pointed out to me, is to do something totally out of the ordinary when I feel unsettled. Go for out of the ordinary. Which isn't always a bad thing, but definitely something to be wary of. "Josh, do you trust me?"

"Stuck in reverse?"
And that is the question that plagues my mind right now. Am I stuck in reverse? Have I been proverbially driving the wrong way for the past seven months all the while thinking "If I just go a little bit further, life will be on track"?

Ha, it doesn't end there, there is more to the song! :D

"Lights will guide you home,
And ignite your bones,
And I will try to fix you"

"Lights will guide you home"
A promise of God. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He knows and has a plan (or multiple plans, who knows?) for each of us. And when we get going down the wrong path, God will still do great things through us, the more to his glory since we won't be able to claim any of it. And somehow he'll guide us home. Back to where he wants us to be. To a place that uses all of our selves for his glory. I don't know what form that is going to take in my life yet. Maybe the change that lies before me is just a small part in a grander scheme or maybe this change is the great U-turn itself. Maybe I've been going down the road the whole time and just haven't felt the blessing of it! I just pray that God reveals something to me. It's also possible that whatever decision I make in the coming weeks is God's will for me. Have you ever thought that maybe God just presents us with a choice sometimes and says, "This choice is my gift to you. I know things haven't felt right in your life lately, so I'm offering something different. Before you I have set a fork in the road. Either road will do and I will work through you in great ways no matter which path you choose. Neither is the wrong one." I don't have any solid evidence of this, but I've felt like this has been true multiple times in my life.

"And ignite your bones"
Hopefully the path that is finally trod is one that will stir something up inside me. Something that lights me up and awakens some kind of passionate fire in me about what I am doing. And if it doesn't, that I will have the diligence to see it through until God ushers me elsewhere.

"And I will try to fix you"
God will always fix you, not try, but WILL fix you. Will fix me.

Put my gears back into drive, Lord.