Okay, so today is my 30th birthday.  Three decades following my birth, I sit here, still at the starting line of a new life as I remarried just 43 days ago.  In the last decade alone I got my first “real” job when I was hired by Electronic Payment Exchange in New Castle, Delaware as a Web Developer; I moved into a place that was truly “my own,” at first sharing it only with my first wife and then our daughter, as well — had my first kid, obviously, so that’s another item on this list; I moved more than an afternoon’s drive away from my brother for the first time in my life on June 9th, 2007 when I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina; I became separated from and subsequently divorced my first wife; saw my daughter off to her first day of (pre)school; met, courted, pined for, fell deeply in love with, temporarily “lost” and then totally and wholly found, engaged and married Christina; and here I am today…

…Saying a final and fond “farewell” to InvertedMind, a site I created and have maintained with waxing and waning readership over the last 10 years.

Why?  Well, for one thing, just count the posts over the last three years.  Also, I created a persona, not very different at all from the person I am in “real life,” as if the site hasn’t been a large part of my “real life” all along.  Over the last 10 years, I have grown and changed as a person, hopefully mostly for the better, while InvertedMind has stayed the same.  It’s stale and does not accurately reflect “me” anymore.

But not all is lost.  You all know I am outstandingly opinionated, often times to my own detriment.  But I need to get my thoughts out someplace, so there has to be an outlet.  While I am not yet prepared to give specifics, I can say that there is most definitely a replacement for InvertedMind.  It’s just that I am opting for a new, fresh start.  And that is precisely the reason I am creating Caffeine and Hot Sauce!, a new blog that will have the freedom to grow and change with me, because it’s not going to serve as a sort of “alter ego,” but rather simply an outlet for my thoughts and opinions.  Its topics will be varied, from my faith in Christ our Savior to the Steelers to NASCAR to politics to the completely outrageous in life and in my mind.

Thirty is not an end, although I am closing the final paragraph on a chapter of my life that has spanned 33 percent of it thus far.  Instead, it’s a very new and very exciting beginning to many chapters in my life.  See you there.

I know I haven’t written in three months. I have a wedding to plan, and I have been considering “reinventing” InvertedMind anyway.

But that’s not where I planned to go with this post. Today, I am posting as a warning.

Christ is coming back. Soon.Okay, I’m not going to be one of those nutcases who claims to know the exact date Jesus will descend from the heavens to conquer Satan and set up His new kingdom. We aren\t supposed to know, so we won’t know. But if you have paid attention to the world around you, it would be obvious that we are descending into the sort of oblivion John — and a bunch of prophets — described in the Bible.

What got me thinking long and hard was a little Android application that alerts me every time there is an earthquake in the world. In the last five days there have been nearly 1,000 quakes. I don’t know how close that is to normal. But I am fascinated by the end-times prophecies — enraptured by the rapture, you could say. Based on the recent tectonic activity, its obvious that the Earth, she’s a-singin’. And she’s joining an ever-growing chorus that, in a subtle way, is singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty — who was, is, and is to come.”

If you haven’t been on your knees before the Lord already, I suggest you do it now. Christ is coming back on a day and at a time we will never foreknow. And you don’t want Jesus to catch you with your faith down.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

InvertedMind once referred to quarterback-then-former-quarterback-now-quarterback Michael Vick as an “a**hole” for his forray into being…well…a moral-less, heartless, scumbaggyish butthead who hated dogs and may very well have regularly thrown kittens against brick walls for some sort of perverted kicks and giggles*.

It’s hard to forgive someone for some sort of heinous crime, be it against yourself, a friend, or even just against humanity.  In this case, Vick gave the entire world population a black eye by showing that, even though we’ve come a long way from stone tools and living in caves, we can still be barbaric.  It’s especially difficult when we are, in no way, close to the individual; love is something that is formed and nourished through intimacy, not through news clips and sports highlights.  When there is no positive emotion in that space between you and another subject, negative emotion is likely to fill the void.

But, as a Christian, it’s my duty toward God and my fellow humans to forgive.  As much as we all tend to believe that a person cannot change, that is proven, time and time again, to be an falsehood based solely on ignorance and short memories.  More often than not, because of the good in all of us through the grace of God, a person does learn from his or her mistakes, and grows into a better steward for the Lord because of it.

Is Vick a Christian?  I don’t know; but that should never be a basis of my forgiveness.  The Bible clearly states that, if I harbor animosity toward other, I cannot possibly draw close to Christ.

So, on that basis, InvertedMind has forgiven Mike Vick of his transgressions.  And, no, this is not some holier-than-thou post where I make you look bad for still holding his past against him.  Rather, it’s to call out groups like PETA (already a horribly misguided group that puts animals above human beings when Genesis clearly states that God gave us animals for numerous uses, including for food).  There are marches scheduled tonight as Vick takes to the field for the first time since his arrest, protesting his involvement in the game, and in life in general.

I, for one, applaud Vick for at least trying to look as if he has changed; and until proven guilty again, he remains innocent in my eyes.  I wish him the best of luck, and I hope beyond hope that he has, truly, changed not just in his actions, but in his heart’s desires.

* – This is pure speculation; InvertedMind has no way of knowing what the walls were made of.

It’s hard, as a parent, to avoid doing too much for my child.  For one thing, I hate watching her struggle.  It’s difficult to not step in and “right the ship” whe she can’t complete what she has set out to do, no matter how big or small the task.

It’s also tough for me as a perfectionist.  I’ve tried over the years to back away from a tendency to “tuck in the corners” of other people’s beds (speaking metaphorically, of course; I hate making beds).  I’ve forced myself into accepting the reality that life consists entirely of things that aren’t quite up to the highest standards.

I sat in church Sunday listening to a guest speaker named Johnny Evans speaking about encouragement, and he started down a path I thought I could complete before he did.  As he spoke of watching his daughter struggle running a race, I felt as if he was going to say that he ran out on the track, scooper her up in his arms and ran the end of the race with her in his arms.  That’s not where he went, though, and I’m glad to hear it.

How the story ended is unimportant to what I’m going to eventually get to in this post.  What stood out to me wasn’t that his young daughter was in a race, or that she was falling way behind everyone else, or that her partner in the race ultimately became an encouragement to her by jogging next to her and speaking words of encouragement to build her up for a relatively strong finish.  What stood out was the realization I came to: we, as parents, should never, ever attempt to finish the “race” for our children.  We are the trainers.  We prepare them for the journey, but a good parent knows when his or her role stops, and the child’s role starts.

If we weren’t all forced to learn how to do things on our own, we’d all still be getting fed by our parents.  We’d have a bunch of six-foot-tall, post-pubescent adults being carried around on our parents’ hips.  Instead, our parents equipped us for the future, but let us live through the highs and lows on our own.

So we tie bibs around our kids’ necks.  We show them how division works.  We give them a helmet, knee pads and a push down the street.  But the line between good parenting and coddling exists at the point where we hand them the spoon for the first time, or tell them to do their homework, or let go of the bike seat.

The fall will hurt, and we can’t absorb the pain for them.  But, once they learn to balance the bike, they can ride on their own.

Back to the race, and the metaphor that jumped out in my head: as parents, we run the first leg of the relay, not the last.  We do not take the baton and try to make up ground; we give it our all to give them a good lead, and let God take them to the finish line.

I’m impatient.  I wait for little, and even then I do it grudgingly.  I’ve tried to overcome it, especially over the last year and a half.  It’s hard to not be patient and still be a good parent to a young child, so I’ve had to learn to separate my time as Dad from my time as Mike.  I’ve done a good job, I’d say. but I have still have far to go.  Outside of being a parent, though, I’ve repeatedly failed in all attempts to develop some semblance of patience.

As I left work Monday, I sat in line behind someone waiting to pull out of the parking garage who was undoubtedly related to Job.  This person waited not for a large enough opening in traffic, but for a chasm.  As cars crept past, I kept thinking to myself how many times I could have pulled out.  Finally this person pulled away, and it was my turn.

I waited as two or three more cars drove past, and then pulled out quickly — only to be stopped immediately by a traffic light that was already yellow.  I growled audibly at my luck — Captain Waitforit cleared the light — as I pressed the brakes firmly, and the top page of a stack of papers Her Cuteness received in Sunday School the day before slid off the passenger seat, landing in an orientation that made it incredibly simple for me to read its message, in huge, block lettering.

“God helps me to be patient.”

I should be in bed, but I’ve had this running through my head this evening.

Rewind to last Wednesday: I was about to head out to dinner for my neighbor’s birthday.  I get in the car — I had just been driving it all of three minutes before — turn the key, and all I get is a repeated electric “click.”

Uh-oh.

I figured the starter got killed.  It had been pouring rain earlier, so I thought I had, in some freak incident, managed to short it out and fry it.  A few helpful neighbors tried to jump it, but I knew it wouldn’t work.  A friend even offered to use her AAA membership to get me a free tow (she was going to dinner with me, so technically she was in the car and we were completely within the rules).  Eventually I had it towed at my own expense since my insurance covers it.

It turns out it was just some corrosion on one of the electical connections to the starter.  $95 for labor and $65 for a tow, and I was good to go.

Fast forward to Monday night.  I left my briefcase in my car over the weekend.  I’ve had a habit of doing that, and I usually lock the car up even though i live in a ridiculously safe neighborhood.  I had gotten into the car late in the evening, and apparently failed to lock it up.

This morning, I opened my driver’s side door to find the glove box and the dashboard storage wide open.  And the briefcase?  Gone.  No big deal, it’s a $20 Wal-Mart special.  What stung was the fact that my Zune and my Sansa were both in it.  For those counting, that’s $250 worth of electronics on top of $160 for car repairs.

I could have been upset.  At first I was, but I knew it was my own fault.  But as I steamed my way to work after filing a police report, I started to gain some perspective on the situation.  I have a home.  My car runs.  I don’t live paycheck to paycheck.  I’ve got an awesome job and the best friends in the world, hands down.  And, above all else, I have a child who is my entire world.  She’s safe and I’m safe.  When it all comes down to it, nothing that actually matters has changed; God doesn’t care about my electronic toys.

It got me thinking deeper, though.  I came to a realization tonight, which ultimately is the reason I’m not already off dreaming about something random.

Think about this for a while: if I wake up tomorrow, I’ve been given the gift of another day filled with untold adventures and lessons from God.  If I don’t wake up in the morning, I finally get to meet my Savior face to face.

Bottom line: if every day is a gift from God, then there is no such thing as a bad day.

Answer me this: how do you read that statement?

Do you see it saying, "any level of effort is good enough, as long as you are trying," or does it say, "doing nothing is not acceptable?"

To me, these two are mutual exclusive when it comes to living as a Christian.  While God understands we are fallible and we will sin, screw up, let him down, and generally not live our lives as we should, the simple fact of the matter is that everything we do should be done to glorify God.  Simply being a good person — i.e., "any level of effort, as long as you try" — will not find you favor with God.  First Corinthians 13:3 says, "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."  In other words, if we do not love God, and do not love our brethren as He loves us, all the good deeds we can do mean absolutely nothing.  Our deeds need to reflect God, but also need to be done directly, actively and clearly glorify Him.

It's not complicated.  All you need to ask is whether you are doing your deeds for God's gain, or for your own.  For, when you die, your deeds for yourself may be remembered on Earth, but are forgotten in the eyes of Heaven.  And if you've spent your life doing seemingly good deeds — giving to charities, working to eradicate disease or developing new technologies to improve the quality of life — and your intentions were never to extend God's reach into the community, your deeds are no better than the evilest of evil — and, therefore, are unacceptable.

The line is a fine one: it's not what you do, it's what is in your heart.  If you have a prideful heart that strives to bring glory to yourself, you will not find the tiniest shred of peace in the eternity you've dealt yourself.  But if you have a humble heart, that of a servant in a life where God is the master, your eternity will be one of peace and unimaginable joy.

It's not what you have done for man, but what you have done for God, that counts.  Because, by doing good deeds for man, you show that man can be compassionate.  By doing good things for God, and letting your deeds for God shine with the glory of the Father, you show that God is Love.

I was having trouble coming up with a good topic for the first weekly installment of The Journey.  Then, I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with one of my favorite people, and as I passed along some advice on life, I thought about something my mom once said to me: you can't be happy with anything else until you're happy with you.

The problem most of us face isn't the desire to be happy.  Few people, aside from the unlucky minority who have just totally given up, could ever honestly say that they don't want to be happy.  The hard part is finding out how.  And, the longer you search in vain, the harder it becomes to find the path to your happiness.

Having been through years of depression, and having found my way out of it by no means other than my own overwhelming desire to laugh until I cried again — to live this life, rather than just move from one work day to the next — I feel like I'm at least remotely qualified to say this.

We all think, because of this world we live in today where everything is available instantly, that there is some magical way to find happiness.  Maybe there is, but don't count on it.  The big-ticket item probably isn't going to give you an ounce of long-term happiness.  A vacation, a new house, a new car, having a child…they may bring you happiness now, but they aren't going to fix you.  You're treating the symptom rather than the disease..

Okay, so I haven't mentioned God up to this point, and The Journey is all about my spiritual journey.  So here goes.  God's timing almost always means one thing: the big fix is going to take a long, long time.  God wants us to find happiness in Him, but he also wants us to learn from what valleys we walk through.  Chances are good that he's not going to put a Big, Red Button™ in front of us.  Instead, we're going to have to take baby steps.  He'll reveal a piece of the puzzle here, and another one there, and at the same time he'll make us look back at all the pieces we've already put together to remember where we are.  In the end, it's just foolishness to expect the home run from God when we need to find a way to make a major change in ourselves — in this case, being content with who we are.

Which brings this whole thing around, full circle.  When we're looking for instant happiness, that's something we can buy.  But the moment — the glory — is fleeting.  It's the lessons learned through struggle that will stick with us and continue to bring us happiness for the rest of our lives.  And, to stick with the analogy, no one remembers the home run forever.  They just happen way too often to be worth remembering.  But, when you're down by one run in the bottom of the ninth, you have a runner on third, and the pitcher is stepping up to the plate, everyone will remember the little tap down the first-base line that gave just enough time for the runner to make it home.

Much in the same way, keep this in mind when it comes to learning how to be happy with who you are: legends aren't made with dime-a-dozen home runs.  Your best choice isn't always swinging for the upper deck.  Sometimes you've got to bunt.

There's a certain sense of vulnerability late at night that you can't help but feel when you are the lone adult in the house.  Unless you are asleep, you are infinitely more aware of yourself and everything around you.  The silence augments the slightest bump in the darkness, and lightning can wake you — abruptly — from the deepest slumber.

About 25 minutes ago, a ridiculously severe thunderstorm passed directly over Raleigh, specifically targeting the eastern side of the suburbs outside the beltline.  In other words, the very heart of the storm passed directly over my house.  I was just about completely out cold when the first flash woke me.  The storm was probably still a good five miles northwest, and I thought little of it.  I closed my eyes…

Flash.                      Rumble.

Flash.                 Rumble.

Flash.        Ruuuuuuuuumble.

FLASH-BOOM.

A booming crack of thunder roared up so quickly after the flash that the two were impossible to separate.  While far from the worst thunder I've ever heard (that title is reserved for the mid-summer thunderstorms over the plains of Texas that literally can shake the concrete slab most of the houses there rest upon), it was enough to make me instinctively reach my hands to my ears.  There was no rumble, just a sharp crack, the very sound of which seemed to actually be visible for just that fleeting moment in the flash on which it was borne.

It's not the thunder itself that scared me.  I've grown up fascinated, nearly obsessed, with severe weather.  Tornadoes intrigue me like nothing else in the universe.   No, it wasn't the thunder, or the lightning, or the storm as a whole.  It was, in that instant, being suddenly and minutely aware of the world just outside my house: tall trees, wide-open skies, and the hill upon which my home resides, making it the tallest structure on the street.  Every possible threat of nature to me, my home and — above all else — my daughter was revealed to me in stark contrast as the thunder roared outside.

As adults, these are the monsters in our closets.  It's the fear of a home invasion, or a fire, or a flood, or any other disaster beyond our control that can strike without warning and do devastating damage.  It's our role as protectors that often leaves us feeling entirely and utterly defenseless in the knowledge that we can only control our own bodies, and nothing more.  All the promises we make to ourselves and our families — that we'll never let anything happen to them, that they are safe with us, that there's nothing to be afraid of — are entirely fantastical.  While saying those things may be comforting not just to those at whom we direct them, but also to ourselves, there's a moment each time you stare into the face of danger that you realize one of two things: either God is in control of your life, or no one is.  No matter how much we try to buy into the illusion of control, the complete lack of it becomes obvious to each of us in the presence of a mortal threat.

For me, God is in control.  No matter how reluctant I am most of the time to admit that fact, it is infinitely more satisfying to know that I don't have to cover my eyes with the fantasy that I have to be the grand protector of all.

What this is driving toward is simple: the same crack of thunder than made my heart skip one beat before pounding out a hundred more than it should have also woke Kaylee, scaring her to death.  As frightening as the known threats can be as an adult, it is undoubtedly the fear of the unknown threat as a child that is the worst thrill known to man.  In a span of time equal to the instant I became aware of the dangers outside my door, I forgot them, at least momentarily.  I was down the stairs and had her in my arms in a period of time that seemed so tightly compressed that it was almost as if I was transported instantly from beneath my own covers to her bedside. 

I am not my daughter's protector; God is.  But, to her, I am the physical manifestation of His loving hands.  I am the one she looks for at every moment of uneasiness, and it is my grasp that calms her again.  As the one she perceives as her protector, the urgency of "being there" brings what feels to me like an out-of-body experience.  When her fever spiked in November to over 105 degrees, I wrote here the next day that I stepped out of myself, out of "dad mode," and instantly separated myself from the emotion of the situation.  It was purely instinctive, knowing that I was going to be of best use to her if I was able to think as the rational protector rather than the emotional parent.  Again, tonight, I stepped outside myself momentarily and snatched her from the grasp of her own fears.

But then, as we sank into the couch, I became dad again.  I became a frightened, vulnerable man holding a frightened, vulnerable child.  In that moment, I felt for the first time in more than half my life the frightened longing for my own parents, who long ago calmed my fears just as I calmed those of my child.  And I came to the realization that my mother and father undoubtedly must have felt the same longings, the same fears, and the same incomprehensible feeling of being so infinitesimally small in a world filled with so many enormous dangers.  In that moment, I finally and truly felt like I had grown into an adult, but at the same time I became a child again.

Because, as I sat there comforting my daughter as she drifted back to sleep, my daughter laid there comforting me. 

Just as I did at Christmas, I want to take this time to remind you all exactly what it is we're celebrating.  Amid your colored eggs, your baskets full of candy and even your array of gifts, remember this day was set aside to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his subsequent ascension to Heaven (which, of course, happened weeks later).  The Easter Bunny may have visited your house, but have you let God in too?

We teach our kids about the Easter Bunny.  He has nothing — nothing — to do with the meaning of the holiday aside from the fact that the Christian holiday of Easter was a "mash-up" of the Christian celebration of the resurrection and the pagan ritual of fertility each spring — celebrating a goddes called "Eastre" or "Oestre" depending on your preferred spelling.  It was done that way by the church because potential pagan converts were willing to give up their gods, but not too thrilled about kissing their celebrations good-bye. 

People who celebrate fertility with orgies, and who don't like to stop partying.  Wow, sounds like college.  But I digress.

The point is that most kids who aren't Muslim or Buddhist can likely identify the mainstream view of Easter.  Fewer, probably, can identify the real meaning of the holiday — even in Christian families.  So I challenge you to sit with your children today, no matter their age, and explain to them why we are celebrating today.  Explain to them that the candy and toys and colored eggs are nice, but this would still be the most important day of the Christian calendar even without them.  Today is bigger than Christmas, people: on Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus; on Easter we celebrate his ultimate conquering of sin and death, so we can each have the chance to accept his love for us and, ultimately, join him in Heaven when we, too, rise above death.