Archive - Whining RSS Feed

Cycle

November 18, 2008 in Conviction, Let's Be Honest, Random, Whining 2

In physics a “cycle” can mean…

…a complete alteration in which a phenomenon attains a maximum and minimum value, returning to a final value equal to the original one.

I get stuck in cycles.  Maybe we all do.

For the past, oh, three or four years I get stuck in a yearly cycle.  It typically runs from September to September and this year is proving to be no exception, only it feels like I can’t seem to move past the first phase of the cycle.

The good news is that I’m aware of it.  The bad news is I don’t know what to do about it.  Or maybe I do know what to do about it but just won’t do it.  I’m not sure which is worse at this point since they both end in the same result.

At any rate, there are certain traits to this cycle that feel a bit different.  I certainly think it is a phenomenon right now that is resulting in a maximum value of “Chris Kinsley” and a minimum value of him as well.  In theory that would result in a “me” at the end that is equal to the value of who I was at the beginning, hence the circular nature of a cycle, this one included.

If it does, then I’m no better than I was before.  No different.  The same.

Who wants to be that?

Maybe you do, but I’ve always struggled with self-loathing and consider personal growth (be it spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical) to be greatly valued (for an example, notice my considerable girth).

So, I want to be different, ever changing, improving, growing.

Cycles are my enemy.

So, why not let go of the cycle(s)?

In many ways my job (for at least a few years anyway) has been cyclical.  Sure, there were certain aspects of it that would change or be new, but not the major stuff.  I could program camp in my sleep if I wanted to.

But now that’s not my responsibility anymore.  Yet I kinda want it to be.

I’ve been through the cycle before.  It’s a cycle, after all, and not just any cycle, but a repetitive one.  I know it.  Well.  I know there is an end to it.  I know things will turn out okay, if not good or great.  It’s safe, the cycle is.  It’s steady.  In many ways it’s comfortable.

But it sucks.  And it’s bad.  And it’s wrong.

Cycles have to be broken.  And normally a slight course correction doesn’t do the trick.  It’s too easy to wander back in to your old ruts.

What is often required is a major catalyst for change.  Something that stands in almost direct opposition to where you were going.  It’s a force acting upon you to cause a different outcome.  It’s combustible and dangerous and scary and strange and wonderful and exciting and invigorating and transforming.

Reading back over this I think it’s important to note that I was using my job as something that has been (in many ways) cyclical to my life.  My job has changed.  Therefore, it’s not cyclical anymore, unless it’s just the beginning of a new cycle.  Though, I’d have to tell you I don’t see that being the case.  I say that’s important to note because I know people I work with or that know people I work with sometimes stumble upon this blog and I don’t want you all thinking that I’m writing about the job.  ‘Cause I’m not.

I’m also not being purposefully vague.  I hate when people do that, like they want you to ask them about it or wonder what unspeakable challenges they could be facing or chalk-up their lack of interpersonal skills to some charming aloofness.

This is just an instance where this post is mostly for me.  So I can say some things for myself.  Having any of you read it, that might, is just a good gauge for how seriously I mean it.  I have to really wrestle with writing things on here because they might be read.  And who am I kidding?  I hope they are read.  So, you provide an odd accountability for me, in a way.

All this to say… I’m stuck in a cycle.  I don’t like it.  I need and want a change.  I’m actively and purposefully looking for it.

I hope I find it.

Or that it even just happens.

I hope I don’t miss it.

Or mess it up.

And I hope that in the end the rewards outweigh the risks.

They usually do, but even if they don’t this time, maybe simply having the cycle broken is reward enough.

Know what I mean?

What the…

March 26, 2008 in Family, For Real, God, Health, Let's Be Honest, Life, Whining 1

Right now I’m supposed to be preparing for a meeting about the theme for Student Life Camp 2009. That’s weird because I feel stuck in the mire of Student Life Camp 2008. Regardless, my mind is elsewhere.

I know that there are people who check out this blog and loathe long posts. If you’re one of those, sorry. However, if you are one of those people then you might not know what exactly this is referring to anyway since you probably didn’t read any of “The Philippine Chronicles.”

In one of those posts (Volume 3) I wrote about how I was struggling with the fact that I was in the Philippines while Liza was back here dealing with the culmination of our journey in infertility. Well, I misspoke (or miswrote as it were), that wasn’t the culmination. Yesterday was the culmination when Liza went for the pregnancy test. I’ll save you the suspense and go ahead and tell you that it was negative.

Below is the email Liza sent out to some friends about her feelings and reaction to his crappy news:

Unfortunately, our first round of IUI did not work for us. We appreciate each of you covering us in your prayers. Right now, I find peace knowing that I serve an ALL KNOWING God who has our journey to parenthood laid out before us and continues to prepare our hearts and minds for His plan. Honestly though, that is about the only thing getting me through the ache I feel inside.
There are a lot of questions, decisions, and unknowns for what happens next. My doctor really wants us to try at least one more time. Honestly, Chris and I just don’t know if we can go through the financial, emotional, and physically strain of it all again. We wonder if this is even God’s plan or if we should begin another route. We want to be good stewards of financial resources He has provided us and are beginning to question what to do next. I also am unsure of how much longer my body can wait before a hysterectomy will need to happen. I am hoping my doctor will let me wait until next summer, but we also don’t want to take anymore risks with my health than we have to. When? How? What? Where? Why? -all questions I am processing through. All questions I am trusting my Savior to continue to reveal in His timing.
For now, we will enjoy a month of not thinking about this, not having to make decisions! I will enjoy no doctor’s appointments and no shots. I will rest and find peace in my Comforter! I appreciate you continuing to pray through this with us. Chris and I are really open to how God chooses to put a family together for us. So, all I know to do is to continue to faithfully seek after Him with all that I am, looking to Him to fulfill desires He has placed in my heart to be a mom and recently instilled in Chris to be a dad! That excites me!
Thank you again for letting us share each step of this journey with you-the good, the bad, and the ugly. We feel so blessed to have a community that takes time to pray over us. We feel your prayers so much and are grateful for each one of you.
All my love,
Liza Kinsley

Let me first say that my wife is absolutely amazing. A lot of husbands take time on their blogs to express this sentiment about their own wives. This statement is the only example of relative truth. If I say my wife is the most amazing person in the world, and Bush or Aaron or Taylor or whoever says that their wife is the most amazing person in the world, we are all correct. Don’t fight me on this. Just accept it and move on.

Liza’s strength, grace, and depth never ceases to challenge me. I don’t let her know that enough. I don’t live up to it enough. But I’m not going to whine about that here.

Liza refers to my “recently instilled” desire to be a dad. Let me say that I have always wanted to be a dad. I just wasn’t in a hurry for it, and my timing for when it might be right certainly wasn’t lining up with Liza’s. However, her health and some other life circumstances (Roger, maybe you’re right, maybe it was the addition of Alfie in my life) changed my planned timing. I don’t know what the exact moment was, but since then I have been fully engaged in this journey.

Now is this journey over?

Certainly the journey for Liza and I to become parents is not. Even if it doesn’t work out this way, we know that there are other avenues. Even before we got married Liza and I had both been open with each other about our wanting to adopt. Even if we have children on our own, we know that God has a child (or children) elsewhere in the world for whom He wants us to be their parents.

But should we move on from trying to have one “naturally?”

And that brings me to something else. Nothing about this process has been “natural.” There’s a lot of drugs, a lot of shots, a lot of pills, cups, catheters, machines, ice, chemicals, etc., etc., etc. Excuse the frank language but there wasn’t even sex involved. So, I find myself asking, “is this what we’re supposed to be doing?” We know that there are procedures involved in infertility treatment that aren’t for us. For reasons that are both practical and ethical, we just don’t want to go there. But where is the line? Where is the point beyond which we have taken matters into our own hands (and those of our doctors and bank) and left God out of the equation except to ask that He bless our human efforts?

I don’t know. There’s not an easy answer to that.

We’ve spent a lot of money on this, thousands of dollars. Some of it has been our’s. Some of it has been other’s. Some of it is pretend money on a little plastic card for which we are now paying ridiculously exorbitant amount of interest. Are we being good financial stewards? And that’s just one issue. I don’t think that the money has been wasted. If nothing else it will hopefully give us an answer to the “what if” question that we could have potentially been asking for the rest of our lives. But it’s an expensive answer.

Our doctor and the nurses at our infertility program have seemed to assume for us that the first attempt wouldn’t work anyway. We’ve tried to ignore that and think positively. But they kept letting us know that Liza was on the lowest level of dosage and that we would up it the next time around. That is extremely frustrating for me. I know I’m not a doctor. I’m sure they had to see how Liza’s body would react to things, but why not jump forward to the second attempt or something and skip the first? Why not at least fake for us that we would have a chance?

This whole thing has not been a good experience for me for a number of reasons. The program seems cold and impersonal. There are millions of children in the world for whom we could be caring for a few. Like in ICU’s and at funeral homes, it has become increasingly evident that people just don’t know what to say to you in this situation. So, you’re left having to realize that they all mean well when what you really want to do is yell at them about how you’ve been praying and crying and screaming as much as Hannah did in the Bible but that still doesn’t mean that God is going to miraculously give you a child. Maybe that story is more for the purpose of telling us how Samuel the prophet and last judge came into the world than it does that God grants infertile women children if they pray hard enough.

Sorry. I’m not talking about you.

So, now what?

I don’t know. We’ll see. And we’ll let you know as soon as we do. So, don’t feel pressure to ask. I’ll bring it up if I want to talk about it.

In the meantime, thanks. Sincerely, thank you.

Whiney McWhinerson

March 7, 2008 in Conviction, Life, Whining 0

So, I’ve been transferring over some of my old posts from Xanga. Right? Well, in doing so I’ve been reading back through all of them, and I have had a disturbing moment of self-realization.

I am (or at least have been) a pretty major whiner.

I don’t want this to continue to be the case. I have a great life. It’s just ridiculous for me to be like that.

Or is it?

You see, I read a number of blogs by people my age and if I were to label the common thread running through all of them I’d have to say that word would be “whining.” We’re so discontent with whatever our current situation is that we can’t shut up about it. We make all these vague, melodramatic statements about how things could be better or at least different but then how they’re not and then what we might do about it and then how we won’t actually do anything about it and then we whine some more that we never did anything at all.  I’m sure if we were to look for some research there’s probably some out there about how cynical and disenfranchised Gen X is and why we behave in this manner.  But that shouldn’t necessarily excuse it.

Sounds absurd, right? Well, if it doesn’t, I think it should.

After all, Paul writes in Philippians 4:12-13: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (emphasis mine).

Shouldn’t I trust that God knows what He’s doing, that if He’s really leading me in life, if the Holy Spirit is fulfilling His role, if what Jesus said is true, that if I’m obedient, then I’m right where I’m supposed to be?

Who am I to whine about it when I don’t like it for some reason?

Am I even whining about whining right now?

I know it will be a never-ending quest for me to try to overcome it, but feel free to call me out whenever it comes up, if you want.  So long as I can do the same to you.

Hmmmm?

Late Nite Ramblings

September 20, 2005 in Family, Whining, xanga 5

It’s 3:40 am.  I’m awake, obviously, and writing.  I doubt I sleep tonight so I should be really exciting at work tomorrow, or today or whatever.  There’s a number of reasons I’m awake.  One being, I’m forcing myself to write and am actually getting something done.  So, I’ll continue.  Another reason, is that I can’t shake some thoughts tonight that were keeping me up anyway.  So, since I’m tired, delirious, and a little pissy this could be one of the most honest and revealing posts to date.

I have a brother.  Craig is his name.  Craig is married to a great girl named Lori.  During high school and his early post hight school days, Craig lived a life of wreckless abandon to say the least.  Never, do I think, did he lose sight of God.  Perhaps he just ignored Him a bit.  At any rate, while Craig and Lori were dating they went to the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola and were baptized by the Holy Spirit.  Regardless of how you want to try to explain it, something miraculous happened in the life of my brother.  It was the most amazing and sudden life-change I have ever personally witnessed.

When this happened, I was not the most supportive of people.  Don’t get me wrong.  I thought it was great and it certainly was an answer to prayer, many prayers by many people.  However, at the time I was extremely egotistical about my theological training and my own faith journey (some might argue that I still am, but trust me it was worse then).  I wanted Craig to better explain what had happened to him, or to at least let me better explain it for him.  It led to a fight.  We blew up.  We never had the closest of relationships before, but suffice it to say, this didn’t help.  Shades of the prodigal’s older brother, I know.  I’m not proud.

However, Craig’s spiritual transformation jump-started a revival in my own family in which I have witnesses spiritual growth and maturity happen in the lives of so many I have known so long that in one way or another go back to Craig and this experience.  One of the fruitions of this being that my parents and sister now live in South Africa and Craig and Lori have moved to Vancouver.  All are involved in ministry on a global scale.  I write silly little sketches for middle class suburban white kids.

All of this has had impact on my own spiritual journey as well.  In the past few years I have seen some of the deepest, darkest valleys I’ve ever gone through as well as some of the most majestic peaks.  My own relationship with the Holy Spirit and thus Jesus and the Father has grown immensely.  I’ve experienced things I’ve only barely hinted at  with even my closest friends.

But now I find Craig has taken a place in my family that I used to fill.  He is the super spiritual leader of a young man.  He helped plant a church in Jackson and co-pastored it before moving to Vancouver (He’s 23, by the way).  He has seen miracles I’ve only read about in the Bible.  He is now being given a preaching and teaching ministry that will span the globe.  He’s being ordained next weekend.  He’s outlining his first book to be published.

He’s freaking stealing my dreams.  Not only stealing but fulfilling them.  He’s living parts of the life that I have wanted.  Is it selfish for me to think that?  Prideful?  Sinful?  Evil?  Yes.  But I can’t deny it.  I can only confess it.  I get angry and jealous.  I struggle with it, knowing it’s wrong.  I pray that my heart might be healed.  I tell God I trust Him and that I will follow Him wherever regardless of glory or success.  I ask Him to teach me and show me things like He has Craig.  I wait.  I work.  I study.  I listen. 

I’m a poser.  A fake.  A phony.  I got nothing.  If I showed you guys things I feel right now, you wouldn’t be able to look.  What’s wrong?  What did I do wrong?  What am I doing wrong?  I know those are the wrong questions.  But I’ve asked everything else already.  So, what am I left with?  Huh?

I can’t even think of a good way to end this post.  I’ll probably edit and delete it later anyway.  Who cares?