It rains! It pours!

Yesterday I went to a small group with Lindsay in an effort to start becoming a little bit more fine tuned in my Walk (I'm not feeling deeply philosophical, so I won't elaborate on that whole thing right now). As I was leaving our Pastor's house, I snapped the axle housing right off of my wheelchair and essentially had to wheel to the car as if I was riding on a rolling hammock. Today I made the phone call and set up an appointment with the company that I ordered my chair through. And naturally, after having NOTHING to do with that company since October when I ordered some new upholstery, etc., I get a letter from that VERY COMPANY that I apparently still owe them 900-and-some-odd-dollars.

I don't soapbox very often about political stuff for several reasons. The biggest one is that I truly do not feel that ANY of the political figureheads represent me in any way shape or form. Or, to go another step further, I truly don't believe they CARE. And that's fine, I mean... whatever. But the ONE thing that I've been keeping my eye on is this whole debacle about healthcare. I don't subscribe to the idea that President Obama is proposing for many reasons and I have a feeling that it would completely end up hurting the disabled in their ability to get the healthcare that is needed. If private insurance can take up to a year (trust me, it does) to "okay" a wheelchair being paid for.., I can't even imagine what governmental red tape would do to that circumstance....

The thing that really gets me is the billing... and how it just keeps coming and coming and coming. With my amputation surgery now almost three months behind me, I'm still having bills trickle in here and there. I mean, at what point does it stop? I had one for $3.81, after insurance, for something along the lines of having someone look at an x-ray and confirm "yep, you have an infection in the bone." Not that the other nurses had ALREADY confirmed it by sight, without the aid of an x-ray. But the kicker for me was that we somehow missed that bill and I was sent a notice that they would turn me into collections if I didn't pay up. For a whopping four bucks. I also, somewhere, have a bill that I need to pay in the next couple of days for a doctor who literally did NOTHING in the ER. My surgeon's office decided, via a phone call from someone, to admit me and begin IV meds and some clown came in in a huff that no one contacted him first. He didn't nothing to my knowledge, and I have to pay him $400 some dollars.

Socialized medicine is not the answer... but I tell you, I'm more and more open to the idea of insurance (and medical professionals/institutions/supply providers) accountability....

I know the pieces fit.

For some reason I was inspired to look up an old song that my dorm roommate in college played endlessly over and over. Likewise, for some reason I felt inspired to write a blog in what has been ages. Maybe it's the start of a New Year... our our youngest dog, Cheli's, constant whining that's keeping me up and doing SOMETHING.

Please consider these following lyrics from Blues Traveler's "Look Around" and see if you don't find some meaning in them as you look forward to this past year and the new one in front of us.

I know I do.


"If you want peace then live alone
If you wanna hide then find a stage
Each a brief but perfect home
To accommodate your rage
And sometimes
In the midst of all my crimes
I feel lost
Or have I lost enough?

Remaining friends
Remind me as they say
It's up to you
The things you throw away
And still you're gonna have to go and find it
You'll have to dig beneath the ground
You'll have to unearth every ugly stone
That's kept you on your own
And simply put them down

You're gonna have to look around"

...

The longer I live in this world, the less passionate that I become about it. It is kind of ironic that one can become more Spiritual in one sense while losing "spirit" in the other. I'm not sure that all of this is a good thing.

...slipstream...

Is loneliness an affliction or a constant companion... one who will never leave your side even when the going gets good. How often does it seem that an individual can pull themselves into the heart of a pulsating throb of people and feel like the they are all alone on the world? I know that I have felt like that; I've felt like that often. As a child I hated feeling that way... feeling that my disability gave me no other choice but to scramble over the dirt and rocks of the morbidly dividing trench that my differences created for me just so I could partially wedge myself into the social stratosphere (and how ironic, a social circle that I now care less for?). How strange that I'd take loneliness by the hand like a fretful lover... one I needed near me but was ashamed to become passionate with. How ironic that in a time that I should have felt that four years of my life had become nothing but a split second of divinity, I carried the hallelujahs of an emotional scar that ran deeper and wider than any that I had experienced in an anesthetized stupor of hope for a better "tomorrow."

But perhaps that's our greatest fear and most humbling element. A smart man once said "when this fleeting limelight fades and we're alone again, who's Name will your heart speak?" My question is how will He respond... and who will be there to muffle the sound?

The last Monday musings for 2008.

Scatter-brained thoughts this morning. Thinking about a lot of things lately. Grateful for old friends and the ties that time bind tightly though the distance may be far. I am very thankful for the opportunity to get to know Julie better and I'm very happy to see that THEY are very happy. She's awesome in so many ways and made me feel like an old friend of HERS, too, just because I visiting them this weekend. I would have liked to left the Sommet Center with a Wings victory, but what can you do. Brian and I did our part to be obnoxious Wings fans. Long drive there and back but really didn't seem all that bad. I prefer the mountains of NC and TN to those of WV and VA.... not as long or something. Less steep, maybe? Currently listening to The Prayer Chain's "Sky High" and musing that one man's praise music may not be another man's praise music. Church-led praise music set to a slideshow often does nothing for me, but this song and several of Stavesacre's will cut to the bone and pierce my heart each time I listen to them. "You've seen the water drop from behind my fisted eyes, now hear the cries of the Salton spies, sing about rolling sky highs." Poetry. How many times has the Lord nailed me to the core and reduced me to pure emotion, making me emotionally wobbly yet cleaned pure (if only for a moment). Often, I AM that guy with the water dropping from behind fisted eyes and I need to embrace the power that that humility can bring forth. God has brought a lot of change in my heart this past year and I look forward to see where it's headed when the calendar page flicks off the final time this week....

A Warm Place

Been listening to this song a lot today. Over and over. Man, it still drives a nail of emotion straight into my heart, almost a decade and a half after I had first heard it. Never seen this "official" video before; the only visual representation that I was previously familiar with was the amazing video montage (Trent worked "A Warm Place" and "Hurt" into one amazing song) when I saw NIN back in December of 1994. I can still remember images from off the gigantic screen, this far removed.

It blows me away how music remains (for me at least) an amazing rendition of the fabled "time machine." I can listen to this song and be taken back to my shabby first apartment in college, putting this song on repeat and wondering what the heck I was doing with my life and why my hopes and dreams of what my college experience were inexplicably different for how they turned out. I've often wondered if the music that is being made these days that teens and folks in their early twenties will affect them the way "my music" does to me. I'm not always convinced that being taken back is a good thing... but I suppose anything that makes you feel emotion is good in it's own right...

"Now that I've totally enraged you, can I sell you some religion?"

I just don't get it.

You ring the doorbell once and I don't get it... you should be able to hear my two hysterical dogs going crazy at the door. AFTER you hear me scream from the back of the house "NOT INTERESTED!!!" (mainly because I'm in the middle of changing out of my work clothes and just don't feel like answering the door), you have the audacity to ring my bell a SECOND TIME. (Insert dogs going even more hysterical here)

Then, to blow my mind, you ring it a THIRD time. By now, I'm practically foaming at the mouth... begging for your sake that you're a long-lost northernly friend who's popped south of the Mason-Dixie for a visit or a Federal Agent from the FCC about the flurry of telemarketing calls that I can NOT STOP NO MATTER WHAT I DO!!! But you're not.

SO, to completely blow me out of the water as I try to manage two rabidly barking and curious dogs while opening a heavy front door AND doing all this in a wheelchair (not usually one to throw the gimp factor into anything, but I think this one actually applies) you have the audacity to greet me with a condescending smirk and valueless "HELLO!!!!" (think Jerry Seinfeld) and DARE to try to sell me some crackpot religious gimmick? (Sorry man, your manner of dress and that bright and cheery pamphlet gave it away by a mile and I am most definitely resolute in my Faith enough... if not in my church attendance... to go toe to toe with you in a debate of all things spiritual; trust me, my Dad's a minister).

Yeah. I'm a jerk. I know. Been told that my whole life. But yes... I still will dramatically bellow "WE'RE NOT IN-TER-ESTED" if you come back tomorrow.