i am jack's complete lack of surprise...

so the couch crashing adventure continues.....
only a few days left till i move to simi valley to start my first full time job, and nervousness has changed over to excitement. slowly but surely i am trading self doubt in to God-based confidence, and i think i owe it to a couple of things.
first, God has put me in the presence of so many encouraging people this week, i really feel like i have a whole team pulling for me, and i'm def not going at it alone. God is def working through my friends, and even acquaintances that are encouraging me. man, i hope i can stay this focused on letting God have control.
secondly, i started reading this book, Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge. i'm not even halfway through and this book is already having a major impact on me. this book is putting into words a lot of feelings that have been building up in me, that i just couldn't really put into formal sentences. the basic idea of this book is recapturing our manhood, and being men the way men were supposed to be. i love it. this book isn't talking about being macho in the sense of 'i drive a truck, ride a harley, down beers with the best of em and have twenty tattoos'. wild at heart deals more with the way we have been tamed as men, we've become lions in the zoo. we've become too feminine. as kids we dream of hitting the game winning homerun, saving the world (or mine and dantheman's backyards) from countless bad guys, doing barrel rolls to avoid enemy migs.... you get the picture. but what do we end up doing? we end up working behind desks, in clothes we don't like, looking for anything to be a sense of adventure. this book is like a christian version of fight club, office space and braveheart combined. i really think we have emasculated men so much in our culture, that we really are lost. not only that, but the standards for men have become so low, it's almost sickening. all we really are called to be anymore is 'a good guy'. what happened to provider? rescuer? trailblazer? fixer? builder? hunter? dangerous? that's right, christian men need to be dangerous. God used men in the old testament to slay thousands that stood in his way. Jesus hung out with dockworkers and turned over tables of those with corrupt authority. Jesus was dangerous. He didn't die because He was simply 'a nice guy', He died because He posed a threat to the status quo. that's how i want to be remembered. i don't want people to simply expect me to be 'a nice guy', that should be without question. i want people to say 'you never know what d.j. is going to do next, but i'm going to watch because it's going to be big'.
i recognize that on some level our dreams do have to meet reality. i was never meant to play professional baseball. fine. that doesn't mean i can't be a crazy youth minister that pushes his kids to the brink in the name of love. that doesn't mean i can't be passionate about my friends or love interests. in fact, i am doing the people i know a bigger disservice by not reaching in and pulling out my heart to lead me. my dad did this as long as i can remember. after i was born he stopped some of the crazy macho stuff, but he always had, and still does, have that twinkle in his eye of self satisfaction. he busted his butt for our family. he has fought a brain tumor for over twenty years so he could see my sister graduate. he wanted to see me become a man, and he fought for it. he knew his life could be cut short and he wanted to take care of mi madre. he did. mom is going to be taken care of for the rest of her life. this doesn't mean that dad didn't work an office job, or get locked into that 'dilbert' sense of humor that i really can't stand. this just means that my dad would never fall prey to buying something because it was 'metrosexual'. he would not allow us to devote our lives to anything less worthy than God, country, or family. dad bought power tools because HE was going to work on the house. (and a lot of the times i was going to be his sidekick) i love his tools. some are uneccessary, but none of them could be taken back to the store because they all have battle scars. does this mean he was insensitive? not in the least. i remember many saturday mornings were spent working on yards for an elderly lady from church that lived nearby. i hated going there because she always called me by the wrong name and her house was old and smelly, but i see why dad made me do it. he was tough, she wasn't, and he was going to go beyond just being a 'nice guy'. dad was a knight in shining armor to her. i'm just sad it took me so long to learn what he was teaching me.
i'm sitting here with the tv off, because there was just a commercial for 'queer eye for the straight guy'. it's one of my least favorite shows, and now i know why. why should i be pushed into a feminine way of living? so what if my room is messy and my shower curtain doesn't match my towels. i'm so sick and tired of being told that i need to be more feminine.
lastly, i don't think women out there really dreamed about a guy that would 'fix a great powerpoint presentation' when they were little girls. nope, they dream about the knight in shining armor, the guy who fights for them, and then lives happily ever after, not 'in front of the tv ever after). if i'm wrong, oh well. i think i owe it to topgun girl, and whoever else may come along to sweep them off thier feet. show them adventure, fight for them, make them feel beautiful, and like a woman. not like an equal, not like a buddy, but like a woman being cared for by a man. imagine that, a man that would stay around to be a father to his kids. a man that would not take out his aggression on his wife, a man who would do the dishes to take a burden off her back. sounds old school i know, but maybe that's what we're really looking for these days. maybe that's why fight club, office space and braveheart and movies like that do so well.
well, i've got a bbq to go to and a bonfire to hang out at. after that, it's more of this book.
one love, one heart.