Category Archives: Pit Fat

Really Bad Metaphors (part 2)

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This is part two in my multifaceted series of really really bad metaphors making absolutely no valuable point whatsoever. So without further adieu…a really poor illustration for life:

When me and my sisters were little my grandma always instructed us to not let the dog lick us. Dogs have dirty mouths of course. She did, however, have one alternative–one way in which dog licking was always aceptable–one way in which she actually encouraged dog licking to happen. “You can let the dog lick your ear as much as you want.” This wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t a tricky way to keep the kids from receiving dog licks. No, she was serious. And so were we. I spent much of my childhood trying to get a dog to lick my ear.

Don’t we all want to have our ear licked by a dog? Imagine in this illustration that you are me, that your ear represents your heart, the dog represents your father, and the tongue represents his love…No, wait, you’re me, the ear is your fear, the dog is God, and the tongue is the BIble…No, that’s not it…hmm…

Just like trying to get my childhood ear licked by my grandma’s dog so too we often spend much of our life trying to get our ears licked by dogs…no, that’s not right either…

Turns out there’s no metaphor or illustration here…turns out my grandma was just a bit crazy and my sisters and I looked just a bit awkward.

Really Bad Metaphors (hopefully a four part series)

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I’m thinking it’d be fun to write random posts that are plain and simply really really bad metaphors making absolutely no valuable point whatsoever. Turns out it’s a bit harder than I first thought! So without further adieu…a really poor illustration for life:

I’ve put on about 40 pounds since this whole cancer thing started. Most of it is water weight due to taking steroids. Some of it is actual fat due to inactivity. Regardless I found that it came quite in handy while snorkeling. Turns out I can’t sink. No, seriously, I was so buoyant that as hard as I would try I couldn’t possibly swim three feet below the water. So there I floated for about two hours looking at sea creatures of all kinds. I could barely walk in the water due to the manner in which my legs work/don’t work (we liked to say that I looked like a toddler pretending to be a clown) but boy could I snorkel!

Buoyancy.

Sometimes all we want in life is a little buoyancy. Often times we feel as though we’re walking through life like a toddler pretending to be a clown–stagering and stammering as we swear everyone around us is watching and smirking. Maybe we stammer because we got cancer in our spine that made our legs not work…or maybe we stammer because we drank too much the night before. Regardless, we look awkward, like Jack Sparrow on a tilt a whirl or child who’s dad spun him too fast on the merry go round. If only we could float. If only we could fly. If only we could soar high above the water that causes us to fall. If only.

The answer is simple: drugs. Not drugs in a literal sense, but metaphorically. We all need to be drugged out in life so that we can gain a little weight and thus become more buoyant so we can float above our problems and view the wildlife below. So drink the Koolaid, pick your drug of choice…and may I suggest the drug of love? It’s a pretty good one and I hear it causes havoc on the waistline.

Signing Off…for a time

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Goodbye my friends, I’ll be leaving you for a week. I hope you survive without me…or more honestly I hope you’re around when I get back. Yes, that’s right, my wife and I are headed to Hawaii for a week! Thanks to Jess’ family we are being flown to Oahu for a full week of kid-free sun, sand, and relaxation. It couldn’t have come at a better time and we couldn’t be more excited.

It’s interesting how being sick (and everything that goes along with it) has both propelled Jessica and I toward each other and has made it more difficult to be close. In some ways we have greater closeness and intimacy now than we’ve ever had before while in other ways we are so consumed with the needs and necessities of life while simultaneously running on empty emotionally and physically that we have very little to give or share with each other. All that to say…Hawaii with my beautiful bride will be glorious and I’m choosing to not let blogging interrupt it (you don’t realize how genuinely hard this will be!).

So while I’m gone I’ll leave you with this glorious video:

Surprise! A few stories I never thought would be in my past

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I just never thought that I’d be able to claim these things as experiences that are a part of my past. Life brings surprises doesn’t it? Hmm…a few stories…

  • After ripping one out, for thirty minutes I sat there with my wife and our twenty-eight year old female nurse as she drained my bladder via a newly inserted temporary catheter. We sat there as she held me gently and talked about our kids and the weather. Later that night we all played cards together. I just never thought that, number one, I’d have five catheters ripped in and out, and number two, that I’d be playing games with the woman who did it! Awkward? No, not really.
  • On the same topic…I just never thought that I’d ever walk around with a bag of urine strapped to my leg…in shorts…the worst was when I was doing rehab therapy and had to lay down and do leg lifts. Lets just say that those bags don’t have any kind of valve to keep the fluid from going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Gross.
  • I never thought I’d have to re-learn so many simple things. At different points I’ve had to learn how to re-put on my clothes/shoes, re-learn to drive, I hope to re-learn to ride a bike, obviously re-learn to walk, and eventually re-learn to run among other things. There are so many things I took for granted! Who’d of thought?!
  • I never thought I’d have to inspect my feet like I have leprosy. Just a few weeks ago I got an infection on my middle toe. Mostly it was due to me not realizing that there was a sore that needed attention…because I couldn’t feel it. Similarly I never thought that buying new shoes would be so difficult! I can’t really tell if they fit, if they’re smashing my toes, etc. Strange.
  • I never thought that my four year old daughter would be a faster runner than me. My kids keep inviting me to race…I think they like that they keep genuinely winning!
  • I never thought that X-Men would bring me to tears.
  • Pit swelling. I never thought that I’d suffer from armpit swelling. Yes, it’s a thing. It’s when you gain water weight in your armpits because of those lovely and terrible steroids. Ever suffer from excessive pit fat? I do.
  • My friends call me Tony the Tiger because I’m covered in flakes. No joke (yes it was). Due to my meds (I hope it’s the meds!) my body is a peeling mess. From my feet to my head my skin scales off like a lizard. Its gross. I’m gross. And, yes, that just happened (referring to lame Tony the Tiger joke)
  • I don’t want to get gross on you here (the catheter stuff wasn’t too gross was it?) and I won’t turn it into a story…but lets just say that for three weeks of my life I’d head into the bathroom with a plunger, baby wipes, and latex gloves. It was a difficult time for me, and one that I’d like to forget.
Oh the stories, oh the things I just never anticipated, oh how I didn’t get into some of the more grotesquely awesome stuff! (you’re welcome)

Take Time to be Silly

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“Do you have space in your life for being silly?”

That’s the question that my friend Chris asked me today. It wasn’t intended to be a silly question, he was very serious. Later Dwayne added in the observation that there’s something about “becoming” and adult that makes us want to leave our silly ways behind. Katie becomes Kate. Joey becomes Joe. Billy goes by Bill. Why? Because they’re all grown up, we’re adults now and have to act like it!

There are some who live their lives without an ounce of seriousness and live into their silly nature a little too much. But for most of us we are so incredibly busy, we are so consumed with our work, with responsibility, with being mature, with being an adult that we miss out on the joy and freedom of silliness. Being silly in and of itself can be understood as an act of dignity can’t it? Allowing others to live into their silliness is to allow them to let go, to experience a bit of freedom, and to…well…have a little fun. Some might argue that being silly is actually an undignified way to act, but I would suggest that if we truly respect ourselves and others we will be willing to honor that part of us that demands light heartedness and freedom. Some of us will live into our silliness easier than others and we’ll all define what it looks like differently. But maybe its worth it to take Jesus’ advice and not worry about tomorrow, maybe its worth it to trust that the existence of giraffes proves that silliness is built into our worlds identity. We can’t escape it. All we can do is fight against it or give in. Our culture tells us to fight against it because you’re all grown up: Jim’s don’t act silly! Jimmy’s all grown up and has got to be responsible…OR…Jim could slow down his hectic pace in life just enough to find space to laugh, chill, do something goofy, stop taking himself so seriously, stop stressing about every little thing in life, and go draw with some sidewalk chalk infront of his house. I’d suggest drawing a giraffe ’cause you know those things are just plain ol’ goofy lookin’.