I've got a plan. The good news is: So does God and His is better.

(So I should be studying for a final, but I've got some stuff thats been sitting on my heart and mind for a few weeks and I need to get it out so I can really concentrate. So here it goes.)

( P.S. I'm going to be real, honest and open during this post. So brace yourself.)

Three years ago this past January I moved to Auburn, Alabama to go to school (to be closer to my girlfriend). You see, three years ago I had a plan. It was a great plan. It was the perfect plan. I was going to go to school, finish up in about two and a half years, get a job somewhere close to the Birmingham area, marry my girlfriend and work while she went to med-school. Good plan right? It makes sense, right? It made sense to me and I was ok with it. Life= planned. Problems= solved. I'm coasting for the next few years. Boom.

Problem #1: I was 20 years old. 20. 2.0. You want to know how many 20 year olds on this planet can plan their life and have it turn out the way that they want it to? About 3. And by 3 I really mean 0. There isn't a 20 year old on this rock that we call home that knows exactly how they are going to get to where they want to be. Now, I know plenty of 20 year olds who have spent enough time with to God to know what it is that they want to do or what they are called to. I firmly believe that God will pull you towards something when you spend enough time with Him. But no one, especially a 20 year old, knows what is going to happen between discovering what they are called to do and when they are finally given the opportunity to do that.

Problem #2: I wasn't walking with God like we are called to do. At this time, I was a steady member at First Mattress Springs of Lee Road 952. Most Sundays I slept in. On days that I did grace a church with my presence I went to one of the larger churches in Auburn that we affectionately called Six Flags over Jesus due to its massive parking lot. What appealed to me about this church? Not the worship. Not the welcoming church family that I met. Not the heart wrenching messages that were given. No. What appealed to me about this church was the stair case. You see this place had a stair case on the outside that went straight to the balcony of the sanctuary. I could go up the stairs, nod to the person handing out bulletins, ease into a seat, and then after the message was over be out in the time it took for me to get to the car. Total cost? One and a half smiles and and an occasional "good mornin'." No conversation required. No intimacy with anyone. No accountability. And I could tell mom that I had gone to church when I talked to her during the week. I don't remember a single sermon that I heard there.

Problem #3: (This problem was directly related to Problem #2.) What I wanted was not what God had intended for me to have. If I had been walking with Him like we are called to do. I would have known this. I would have recognized that things were not good. I would have seen that what I had was complacency and comfort. Two things that aren't part of a walk with Christ.

So with all of this going on, God did what He does best. And wrecked my world. I'm talking about an all out demolition of everything that I held on to in my life began to slip away in May of 2008. Steady girlfriend of 2+ years? Gone. Home, where I am most comfortable? Not this summer, you're working in East Texas with 900 other people that you don't know. My closest friends, who can help me through anything? They're back home. So hear I am, adrift in the middle of an ocean with no way for me to get my bearings. What I didn't know was that the ocean I was floating in was Grace, and God had a plan.

I spent that summer at Pine Cove Christian camps and not only was I able to survive. I came out of the other side of this situation closer to God than I had ever been before. Distractions? Gone, I don't have a girlfriend so all I can concentrate on is me. Comfortable? Nope I'm in East Texas so I'm far away from home sleeping on a mattress that is .34” thick and is on the floor. AND I'm spiritually broken. Friends who have always been there? They are still there. In the mean time I've added about 40 new people who are not only walking with God, but aren't close enough friends with me to want to avoid calling me out. So I’m being held accountable like never before. It was amazing and as I look back I see God working in my life, molding me into what I am today.

What I wasn't prepared for was having to face life after I got back from camp. All of a sudden I had distractions. I had to go to class. I had to decide whether I wanted to spend time in the word. I had to deal with living in the same city as my ex-girlfriend and trying to figure out what our relationship was now. Turns out that if you aren't really good friends before you get into a relationship that is too intimate, it’s real hard to be friends after that relationship ends. So by the end of that semester I am ready to move home. I'm done. I've got a hole that I don't know how to fill. I'm hurting and don't know why. I'm trying to fill this hole with anything and everything: pornography, lifting weights, TV, food, etc. I'm looking for anything but Jesus to fill this up. So when December rolls around, I'm in dire straights. Thankfully God is faithful beyond what I can see or know. A few weeks before I'm headed home for Christmas break, I meet up with some guys about a group called BYX, Brothers Under Christ, which I heard about in Texas. Turns out that they just started a chapter at Auburn and are looking for members. God is faithful. I knew what I needed; I just needed a nudge in the right direction. Looking back at how and why I got to Auburn, I see now that I'm about to be in the middle of what God called me to do here. (Turns out God's plan was about more than me being close to a girl)

Flash forward a few years to just couple of weeks ago and through BYX I've made a solid group of friends who all love Jesus and hold me accountable. I've found a church that is amazing and I'm involved in. I'm walking closer to God than I ever have before in my life. I've met a beautiful and amazing girl who loves Jesus more than she loves me and we are in a relationship. Oh! and I have a plan. ( You would think I knew better by now. But I am a human. And a male. So it takes repetition for things to really sink in.) I'm going to do my student teaching in the spring, be home by May, start farming with some friends, hunt a job and in a few years be ready to build my own home and get married... I've really got to stop laying out my life in my head. Can you guess what happens? If you guessed everything works out like Ryan planned, you'd be wrong. In steps God again and messes up my plans. So here is what my thought process looked like a few weeks ago as I sat in my room and wondered why this had happened again.

But I was different this time. I did things right. I prayed about this relationship like I've never prayed about anything. I told her I loved her and I meant it. Not like most boys who just say it so that they can sleep with a girl. I meant it. I was completely focused on her <-- right about here is where God began to speak truth to my soul. It went something like this.

Me: ...I was completely focused on her.

God: wait, What?

Me: I was focused on her.

God: Why?

Me: Because she was everything that I wanted. She was smart and funny and pretty and she likes me for me and she loves you. She comforted me. She completed part of me that has been hurting and I didn't even know it was there. She made me want only her. She made me want to completely cleanse myself from all this sexual crap I've been dealing with since my last relationship. No more thinking about other girls, no more pornography. Just her. I wanted to be clean for her. She is everything that I wanted. Everything that I have prayed for. And you took her away.

God: Alright Wade (He calls me Wade) just stop. I'm going to lay this out for you in bullet points so it will be easier for you to grasp.

1. She was never and never will be "yours" to lose. She is mine, and she always will be. Just like the woman that I will eventually put in your life to be you wife will be mine. I will simply be trusting you to steward and guide her to know ME better on this earth.

2. She was everything that you wanted. Not everything that you needed. You don’t know what you need. I do. And what you need in this part of your life is healing and Me.

3. She didn’t complete you. She won’t complete you. And she can’t complete you. No woman will. Only I can do that.

4. You were focused only on her. You are supposed to be focused only on me.

5. All this sexual crap you are dealing with? I’ve been trying to get your attention about for about three years. I had to get drastic to pull you out of it. You should want to be clean because you are mine. Not because of a girl. No matter how wonderful I have made her. This was just the best way to get your attention.

6. She may be the one. But that is for me to reveal to you when I decide. Until then I’m the one you should focus your affection on. You made her an Idol, and that isn’t ok.

7. I love you for you. Let me be your comfort.

Me: … Oh… I hadn’t thought of it like that.

God: I know. That’s why I’m here.

Me: Thank you.

God: You are welcome. I love you son and I just want what is best for you.

I hadn’t grasped the depth that I had been wounded from my previous relationships. I had no idea that I had been seeking my comfort elsewhere. I didn't know that I struggled with letting God love me, so in turn I struggled with letting some one else love me. That because of this, I felt like I had to do something to make me lovable. That the reason I kept going back to pornography for so long even though I hated it and the reason that I have elevated women in my life to a point of idolatry was because I was seeking God. For so long I had let satan tell me that the reason I was like this was just because I was wired that way. That’s just the way a guy is. That this was what life was about. John Eldredge asked the question in Wild at Heart that rang like a bell in my soul. “… if this (pornography, women, Whatever you are putting in front of and above God) is the water that you are truly thirsty for, then why do you remain thirsty after you’ve had a drink? It’s the wrong well.” It turns out that I am not wired that way. I was before Christ. But now I’m a new creation. I have a new name and a new heart. I have been made for and called to holiness that is an intimate relationship with God the father through His son Jesus, and in that everything that I desire can be fulfilled. I began to realize that God loves me for me and doesn't want me to be anything other than what he has created me to be.

So now that I’ve spent some time walking you through the more depressing parts of my life, here are some good things that have come out of this. First among these is that Ash and I were really good friends before we started dating and we are still really good friends. Next is that I am continually growing closer to God in my walk, and have made a lot of progress over the last few weeks. And last is that I have done exactly what satan doesn’t want any of us to do which is to recognize our wounds for what they are, to open them up and to give them to Jesus to be healed. I don’t know how long it is going to take for this part of me to be healed, but I know that its not my job to heal it and Christ doesn’t expect me to do it on my own. Some other good news is that because I was involved in a Christian organization and in a really good church, I had people to turn to. I wasn’t walking this maze of emotion alone.

I feel like I’ve walked you through a lot, and kind of rambled through most of it in a round about way, but I said I was going to try and be honest with this so you get what you get. Who knew that me moving to Auburn was going to be God’s way of exposing my wounds and showing me that He loves me in a way that I can’t even really begin to grasp yet? 20 year old me, sure didn’t know that, he had it all planned out. And 23 year old me wasn’t expecting it either. It’s a good thing that God’s plans are better than mine.

I know this was a lot and I hope it made sense, so if you have some issues with anything I’ve said, you just want clarification, you just want to talk, or you are in a similar situation and you want me to pray for you, feel free to email me: rmw0008@auburn.edu

See you when I see you,

Ryan

Farther Along

Farther Along we'll know all about it

Farther Along we'll understand why

Cheer-up my brother, live in the sunshine

We'll understand it all by and by

I don't know where I was the first time I heard those words, but I can take two pretty good guesses and probably be right. I was either in a Methodist Church in Somerville, Alabama on Center Springs Road, you know the one. You turn off Highway 67 at THE Caution Light, take all 14 feet of Main Street (Go past The Baptist Church) to THE 4-Way Stop, turn Right onto Center Springs Road and its on your left. Brick Building, sign out front where if you took the time and were careful enough you could scrape the paint off the bottom and get pastor's names all the way back to about 1913 because this sign does its job and why fix something that ain't broke? Inside you have 25 wooden pews (For the younger generation reading this or those of you who have never had the uncomfortable pleasure of sitting through a 14 hour revival meeting, these are benches with a "cushion" in them that come in a wide variety of colors as long as it is red and were comfortable for about .32 seconds of sitting on), choir loft, a pulpit, altar, and that board on the wall with the slide in numbers that tell you what Sunday School Attendance was last week (no one seems to ever notice that the number hasn't been changed since 1979). Now if you change the directions a little (mainly turning right out of my drive way and driving 4 miles instead of turning left out of my drive way and driving 5 miles), make the church building white, and add a sign out front with slide in letters you have the other location at which I could have heard this song for the first time.

I don't remember learning this song either. Being from the Rural North Alabama I sometimes feel like I have the first, second and last verses of 2/3 of the United Methodist Hymnal programmed into my DNA. I just know certain songs. If you were to ask me the title of many of these songs, I probably couldn't tell you. You play the opening bars on a slightly out of tune Sears and Roebuck upright piano and I've got you covered on the low part. Unlike having to guess on where I was the first time that I heard that song, I can tell you exactly who the first person I heard sing it was. She stands about 5'3", blonde hair, a face that is quick to laugh and has a Soprano voice that any self-respecting seraphim would be jealous of. Her name? Mom. I can guarantee you that the first voice I heard sing this song was her, I was probably in her arms when I heard it the first time. Heck I was probably in the womb.

I say all of that to say that it is these hymns that I go back to when I seek comfort. The safety and comfort that they bring to me is something that much of the modern worship songs don't give me. Don't get me wrong I love Crowder, Tomlin, Fee, Agnew, Redman, Hall, Stanfill, Gungor and all of the talented artists that are in the main stream of Christian Music today. I praise when I hear alot of their songs, but they aren't where I go when I need comfort. Basically they are missing one thing. Home. So when all hell breaks loose and everything that I thought I had a handle on seems to disappear, I go home. If not physically, at least in my heart and in my mind I'm back in a church that is too hot in the summer time because all of the older people cover the air vents with hymnals to block the air blowing on them (they know all of the songs anyway), a church that is too hot in the winter time because the only setting that seems to exist on the heater's thermostat is "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo", a church where almost all the men and some of the women step outside between Sunday School and Church to smoke Winston cigarettes and chew Redman out of the green pouch, where a pair of new Liberty overalls and a starched white shirt is acceptable Sunday morning attire, where there is that one old man who has Werther's original hard candy in his pocket for all the kids (His name is J.V. but I get to call him Grandpa), where the kids' only thought in the summer time is getting outside so they can play in the creek, and where I first heard about the love of God and His mercy.

This is where I went in my heart and my mind this past weekend. You see, five days ago I had everything figured out. I had a plan. Then something happened late Friday night (thats a post in and of itself) and suddenly things weren't working out like I had planned. So what did I do? I went home. When I woke up Saturday morning my Pandora went to the "Traditional Country Hymns" station and I opened my bible and journal and I let God take me home for a little while. Because while those hymns take me home, God's Word is what brings me Home. His voice and His promises are what will heal me. The music just reminds me of a simpler time and place and gets my heart ready to hear His voice.

Looking back now, I see God's hand at work in what happened. I have peace about it. I have assurance that this is part of His plan and that everything is going to work out. I don't like it, yet. I'm not particularly happy, yet. I'm still hurting from what happened, but this pain is nothing compared to what it could have been if God hadn't intervened. It is nothing compared to what Christ experienced on our behalf. It will subside. In the mean time, I'm going to walk a little closer to Jesus and lean on His everlasting arms until I understand it all by and by.

See you when I see you,

RW

An Explanation, A Subtitle, A Goal and Some Background

An Explanation:

A few years ago David Crowder had a devotional book called Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi. I'm sure that the book is phenomenal since most everything that Crowder does is fantastic, but the only thing that seemed to really sink in my mind was the flow of the title and the meaning that it had behind it. The desire that Mr. Crowder had put into words about wanting to find God and praise Him in everything stuck with me and has never seemed to leave me to this day. So flash forward some months after I had absorbed this title and I am standing up to leave church when I realize that I am wearing a nice pair of khaki pants, a nice button down shirt and a tie. Which may not be that big surprise to many of you, but as it was winter-time I was about to put on my Carharrt jacket to go venture into the frozen tundra that is Northern Alabama from about the second week of December until about the 17th of February. Now many of you may not know what a Carharrt jacket is so I'll take a second to explain. Carharrt is a company that makes quality work wear; jackets, pants, overalls, etc. They make really good apparel and every good Southern boy tends to own at least one of their jackets. Now to get the right image in your mind, these jackets tend to go everywhere. I wear mine everywhere from class on campus to the deer field and everywhere in between. They can stand up to anything less than an F4 tornado or a pack of rabid wolverines and the more you wash them, the better they get. I say all that to lead up to this. Here I am dressed fairly nice by most standards, about to put on this jacket that has frayed cuffs, some blue paint splashes, a scratch down one side from where I had to track that deer through the briar patch and smells like a combination of hay, grease, sweet feed, cedar tree sap, and wood smoke. As I realized what I was wearing, I laughed to myself and thought "If David Crowder finds God in sunsets and sushi then I'll find him in a Carharrt jacket and khaki pants." The name stuck in my head and has now manifested itself as the title of this blog, so now you know where the name came from.

A Subtitle:

I couldn't fit the entire title that I wanted in the space provided, so really it should say Finding God in a Carharrt Jacket and Khaki Pants: A Southern Boy's Life and His Walk of Faith.

A Goal:

My main goal of this blog is pretty simple: to be honest. Other than that it is to share some of my experiences/musings about my walk with Christ, church in the South, life in the South, and whatever else I can think of. I realize that eventually I will forget some things that have happened in my life and I want to get them down so I can go back and look at them later. I also realize that at some point someone that isn't from God's Country of the Southern United States might be reading because some weird Google search dumped them here and they were so enthralled by my writing skills that they decided to start reading from the beginning, so I'll do my best to explain things that are typically a Southern tradition/oddity including but not limited to the following: bluegrass music, noodling for catfish, bowfishing, banana pudding, pecan pie, Sweet Tea, hog jowl in black eyed peas and turnip greens, moonshine, cornbread, dinner on the ground, decoration sunday, homecoming (both at church and the football game), the Iron Bowl, dressing up like you are going to church when you go to your college football game on Saturday, snake handlin' churches, dirt roads, and the ever favorite past time of many people around here- Shooting or blowing blowing up things that aught not to be shot or blown up.

Some Background:

I was born in a city called Decatur located in North Alabama. A few days after that I would be moved by my parents Lloyd and Anita to their house where I would spend the next 19 years growing and maturing into the fine specimen of a true Southern man that I am before heading off to college at Auburn University. I basically lived life in three places growing up. My parents house and land outside of Somerville, my Grandfather's dairy farm 1.5 miles down the road and church. Growing up on a dairy farm is something that I treasure. Where else does a child have to opportunity to spend time around large animals, get paid a quarter for every pigeon that he shoots at the silo with his BB gun, learn to drive a 1 ton flat bed truck with 4 on the floor at 10, and eat his grandmother's fried chicken 3 times a week? At my parents house, I spent time with my older brother romping around playing cowboys and indians and generally being boys on the 30 or so acres we have. I learned to fish, shoot squirrels, skin deer, lay shingles, run a shovel like a champ, and handle large animals all within about 3 miles of country road. If you didn't grow up like me, I'm sorry. It was fantastic and I want to make sure that my kids get the same thing.

As far as my parents are concerned our relationship is a little odd compared to most people my age. We're friends. I've always gotten along well with my parents and genuinely enjoy being around them most of the time. They have been married for 36 years and raised us as best as they knew how, which turned my brother and I into two very quality southern men. In my humble and unbiased opinion.

I grew up in church and always knew who Jesus was, but when I was 12 I acknowledged the fact that I was a sinner and accepted that Christ was my savior. It wasn't until I was about 15 that I really began to understand that recognizing Christ as my Savior and making him my Lord were two different things. So this began a journey through high school of hot and cold faith in between trying to figure out girls (Still working on that) and living life. After graduation I was able to grow in my faith more as I was given more responsibility at the church I was attending, but still lacked the realness of what a life totally dependent on Him was. After I moved to Auburn to go to school in 2008, God wrecked my world and everything in it. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. 3 years later here I am, still in Auburn, and closer to God than I have ever been. All I really want to do is be back in North Alabama, teaching History and life to high school students, and farming a little on the side. But I know that I have a few more months here on The Plains and some things that God needs me to work out before I am done here. In the mean time, I've always wanted to write a book and since I doubt I'll ever make the time to do that I figured I would start a blog that no one will really read or take seriously. I hope that you, the reader, don't take this too seriously. I know I won't. I just want to put some of my story down on digital paper, and get some of my thoughts out of my brain. If you have read this far, let me say thanks and that my later posts will be a little more interesting (I hope).

See you when I see you,

RW