Recommended Reading - Thank God For Mormons

 Utah campaign against porn marches on with phone filter plan (apnews.com)

Brave Man Here - Recommended Reading

 Why Tyler Hubbard Thinks a Healthy Sex Life Is "Crucial" To Parenting - E! Online

I have no idea who this celebrity is, but he's one brave dude (father / husband) to have the guts to be this authentic.

Every man / every marriage is unique, and most men certainly aren't settled / at peace enough internally to talk specifics about their sexual needs to anyone much less the entire Internet.  

So many celebrities have no intentions of ever dialoguing about their actual sexual needs, not even in jest.  Whether they're married or not.  And partly, this is to stoke their fanbase, leaving them to their own imagined devices relative to the sexuality of their idols.

Some husbands, like Mr. Hubbard, genuinely need consistent intercourse with their wives as a means of affirmation.  This is a fact.

Life’s Footprints: Evanescent or Indelible?

Happy Friday, everyone! Today's post features something I wrote on my own personal blog back in 2014. I grabbed it and posted it here to share. I added an addendum at the end as a sort of 2021 update.   

Footprints in the Sand

“One’s options in this world are as vast as the horizon, which is technically a circle and thus infinitely broad. Yet we must choose each step we take with utmost caution, for the footprints we leave behind are as important as the path we will follow. They’re part of the same journey — our story.”

― Lori R. Lopez

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“I think that’s what we all want, in the end.
To know that we left footprints when we passed by, however briefly.
We want to be remembered.
So remember us.
Please.
Remember us.”

― Mike A. Lancaster

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Your way was through the sea,

your path through the great waters;

yet your footprints were unseen.

~Psalm 77:19 (ESV)

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Evanescent Footprints

                Life is a journey, and the footprints that we leave behind are interesting things.  Each footprint is different, and there are no two that are alike.  Wherever we go, we leave footprints behind us.  Some people leave big footprints, and some leave small footprints.  There are others who leave wide footprints, and those who leave narrow ones.  Sometimes the footprints we leave are evanescent, quickly fading, just as the footprints left in the sand are soon erased away by time and the force of the waves.

Some footprints are long-lasting.  Those are the kind of footprints that people should be striving to achieve.  The home we currently live in is an older one, but it is special because it’s the first home we’ve owned.  The subdivision where our home resides was developed in the mid to late 1970’s, making our home nearly 40 years old.  Besides having a wide and inviting front porch to relax on, the hominess of this house beckoned us to it when we first found it four years ago.  In a way, our home is unique because we purchased it from the original owners who had it built many years ago.  Although the house had sat empty for quite some time when we first looked at it, there was a sense of love and belonging that permeated the walls, and we could feel it when we first walked in the door.  In fact, when we first looked at the home, I almost imagined that I could hear the voices of the family who lived, loved, and laughed in the home for more than 32 years before we bought it.  It was a house that was well-loved and continues to be loved by us.

Footprints on Sidewalk in Front of my House

When the neighborhood was developed, sidewalks were planned and built up and down every street in the neighborhood for pedestrians to use.  One can travel to any part of the neighborhood using these sidewalks.  On the side of our home facing the driveway, we noticed that there were tiny little footprints of a long-gone child permanently embedded into the sidewalk.  My wife and I thought that these footprints were just about the coolest thing we’d ever seen, and I often found myself wondering how these footprints had come to be in the sidewalk, and who had made them.  Two of my neighbors directly across the street have been here since the neighborhood’s inception in the 1970’s.  One day I happened to be outside when one of my neighbors was walking her dog, and I just so happened to think about asking her if she knew the story of the footprints.  She indeed knew how the footprints came to be and proceeded to tell me the story of a little boy who had grown up in the neighborhood many years before. This little boy apparently lived in the house next to mine when they were pouring the sidewalk.  She told me that before anyone could stop him, he pulled his shoes off and walked through the freshly poured cement, forever immortalizing the prints of his tiny feet.  My guess is that they either didn’t catch the fruits of his labor before the cement dried, or they thought it was cute and left it as it was.  I suppose his mother was not amused at all on that day many years ago to find out that her child had cement all over his feet.  The footprints don’t go far.  They actually start a short distance up from my house and then terminate almost directly in front of my driveway.  But they’re still there nearly 40 years later and they tell the journey of a small boy who one day took a walk down the sidewalk.

Footprints made in the sidewalk by a little boy nearly 40 years ago

Even though the mystery of the footprints has been solved, I have often wondered about that little boy.  Where did he go when he moved, and whatever ended up happening to him?  What did he grow up to become?  Does he remember the footprints he once left in my sidewalk, and has he ever returned to see them?  You see, whether he knew it or not, he was destined to leave permanent footprints on that fateful day when he decided to go for a stroll in the freshly poured cement of the sidewalk.  These are footprints that can still clearly be seen nearly 40 years later, and they cause people to stop and ponder where they came from.

The evanescence of footprints left in the sand poses a stark contrast to the enduring footprints of those left in the stone.  In our lives, we leave many footprints.  Everywhere we go we leave footprints.  These footprints tell the journey from whence we have come and to whither we go.  They tell the story of what we have done and of what we have achieved.  We also leave footprints in the lives of people.  In the scope of eternity, our time here on earth amounts to the mere blink of an eye. We are so small and so immortal. Our time is short in the grand scheme of things. But like the footprints left by the child in the newly built sidewalk many years ago, the footprints we leave in the lives of people should be long-lasting.  After you have left your footprints behind, you may never return to see them again.  If you have left footprints that are indelible, they will no doubt be felt and seen by many for generations to come.

In conclusion, life is too short for us to be concerned with those things that are of transient nature.  Whether it is the relationships that you form with others or the things that you choose to occupy your time with, let your mark be seen and felt.  In my own life, I am grateful for those who have invested in me and left permanent footprints in my life.  Some of them are no longer here, but their footprints continue to be seen and felt by me.  May your footprints be forever and a day, and may they leave a lasting mark in the lives of all those you will meet.

[2020 Addendum] - We are still here, living in the same house. It is a small, modest house, but it is home and it's where we chose to stay and raise our son. Several of our friends have since bought their second or third house and I'll be honest - we have considered doing the same several times. But this is home, and we just don't feel motivated to move. It's a house that was filled with so much life when we bought it, and we have continued to pour so much life into it as well. 

Sadly, we lost Mrs. Woods last year. She was a wonderful, sweet lady who loved everyone and looked out for all her neighbors. Very few original owners remain in the neighborhood, and no one else would know the history of those footprints. She knew everything, it seems. I'm extremely grateful I thought about asking her the history of the footprints one day several years ago. 

Those footprints are now over 45 years old. You can still see them, and I love them more than ever. They are truly indelible footprints.

So many people have come and gone in my life over the past ten years. Many of them, I still think of fondly from time to time and their footprints bring a smile to my face. Some, those footprints will fade over time, the victim of being washed away by the waves of time. But others will remain imprinted on me for as long as I live. I must ask myself: "What kind of footprints am I leaving?"

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.”

― Flavia Weedn

~ S

Recommended Reading "The Joys and Difficulties of Making Friends in Adulthood"

At Large ~ (c) 1908-1909 by Arthur Christopher Benson

   Throughout much of my life, I was not very good at making or maintaining friendships. Because of my past experiences, I can sometimes come off as disinterested, cold, or aloof when meeting someone for the first time. But that couldn't be farther from the truth; I would dare say that those who have really taken the time to get to know me have seen the real me and seen beyond that facade I put up. My thirties were spent learning how to be a better friend to people, and how to let others be a friend to me. I will speak more on that in next week's Bridges series when I talk about The Connected Bridge ~ The Bridge to Friendship. 

    In our adult years, most of us are incredibly busy. We have neither the time nor the energy required to make and maintain these friendships. But what I have discovered in my own life is these connections are so incredibly necessary. They keep me going forward in life. I NEED People in my life! After years of walking alone, I have been blessed with some amazing friendships in my adult years, and staying connected keeps me healthy mentally.

    Today, I want to share with you an excerpt from the chapter on "Friendship" from At Large by Arthur Christopher Benson. This is a wonderful volume of essays on life written around 1908-1909. I have the original book, but it's also available in the public domain through Project Gutenberg - CLICK HERE. So I'll leave you with this reading for today. You can click on the link below to read the .PDF version of the excerpt from "Friendship." The language is slightly antiquated, but I assure you, the message is just as relevant today in 2021 as it was back in 1908.

CLICK HERE TO READ "FRIENDSHIP"

~ S

 

Bridges, Part Two – The Disconnected Bridge

 

Author’s note: I had fully intended to write and publish this blog entry a week after my first entry in the series. Unfortunately, life got in the way and I have really been struggling with some things lately. Perhaps I will be able to share those struggles in greater detail in an upcoming blog. – Stephen

 

May 2005

It was a warm summery day in early May 2005. The windows were rolled down in my old blue Dodge sedan, and the faded blue headliner, barely held up by safety pins, flapped noisily as the humid summer wind buffeted through the car. I was a man on a mission. As a teenager growing up in the mid-1990s, I remembered reading (along with the rest of my community) with absolute horror of the story of a young couple in their early 20s. This couple had met an untimely demise while stargazing on a rickety old bridge late one summery evening. This couple had become the victims of an evil family who lived in the woods nearby. All these years later, I do not remember the motive, but I do remember the story quite vividly. I remember reading about how the couple had been abducted at gunpoint and taken from the bridge to another location where they were murdered in a double homicide then buried in the backyard. It was such a horrible tragedy that it shook every community within a 60-mile radius of the bridge and as a teenager, it truly opened my eyes for the first time to the evil that humans were capable of. However, that warm summer day, my goal was not to think about the grisly murders, nor was it to visit the site of a crime so grisly that it should have appeared on the “48 Hours” television show. No, my goal was simply to find the remnant of the beautiful old wrought-iron bridge that I had remembered seeing in the newspapers 11 years prior.

Back in those days, Google maps was not even a blip on the radar; in fact, Google was not even a name in the .com industry. These days, one only must type in a landmark, or a place of interest and Google will lead them right to it. Back in those days, we had “MapQuest” and a LaserJet printer that printed pages. So off I set, printed maps in hand, to find the massive old iron structure. Even though MapQuest claimed that the bridge was located less than an hour’s drive from where I lived, I must confess that I made many wrong turns on that day and spent well over an hour just trying to locate the bridge. Finally, I arrived at the bridge and received the shock of my life.

You must understand, the abduction and subsequent murders had taken place 11 years prior to the day that I visited the bridge. The local community was devastated by the sequence of events and had subsequently done everything possible to erase the bridge from their collective memories. At the time that the murders took place, the bridge was still very much open to the public and the country folk who lived in the sparsely populated rule area used the bridge to cross from one side of the river to the other as they traveled between their communities. Following the homicides in the mid-1990s, the road was barricaded to the public, the bridge was condemned, and all the wooden decking except what for remained in the very center of the bridge had been removed.

As my noisy, ever-clattering old Dodge sedan stopped at the barricaded road, I pulled over and ensured that my car was well off the road in a grassy parking area. As I walked down the barricaded road on foot, camera in hand, I was taken by the fact that I was so incredibly isolated. There was literally nothing on that abandoned road aside from the dense forest that bordered both sides of the road. I was truly alone. In some ways, walking down that road alone was symbolic of the way that much of my life had been up until that point. The deafening silence was broken only by the crunch of my shoes as I walked across the disintegrating asphalt. The occasional bird song emitting from the forest served to somewhat lighten up the melancholy and slightly sinister atmosphere. I remember feeling extremely nervous on that day, but I wanted to capture a photograph of the bridge. I was determined not to leave until I had my photographs. Suddenly the abandoned roadway gave way to a sheer drop off, and there it stood before me. It was a magnificent two-span wrought-iron bridge from the turn of the 20^th century. It truly looked like something out of a Gothic horror novel, as vines and kudzu had taken over everything alongside the bridge and had started to take over the structure itself. I got as close as I could and took quite a few photographs that day using the zoom lens on my newly purchased SLR camera.

Disconnected Bridge

With the decking removed, there was no way to walk to the middle of the bridge, as the approaches from either side were totally inaccessible. From what I understood from reading the reports in the newspaper and talking to local people, this had been done to not only prevent vehicular traffic from crossing the bridge but to also strongly discourage any pedestrians from ever walking out on the bridge. The superstructure of the bridge was intact. The amazing ornate ironwork was there. The decking on the middle span of the bridge directly over the river was there. But there was no way to cross the bridge. You were truly disconnected from one side of the river to the other. Unlike the bridge in my first blog post in this series where only my fear kept me from crossing, a lack of physical flooring would keep me from crossing this bridge. This was a much larger bridge. The bridge of my first blog post was a single span camelback through-truss iron bridge as opposed to the bridge in this blog post which was a magnificent two-span through truss bridge. Although humans may have built the bridge many years ago, their abandonment had caused nature to slowly begin the process of reclaiming the bridge for its very own. Indeed, it was not that hard even back in 2005 for one to imagine that nature would completely obliterate the bridge from view within a few years.

Have you ever felt disconnected in a way that made absolutely no sense to you? I felt that way for so many years. My life was disconnected for many years prior to my discovery of Samson. I would dare say that it was even disconnected for my first few years of Samson, as I was not walking the path as I should have been. I am realizing that trauma is a real thing, and so is PTSD. Even if we have endured a lifetime of being told that we are not to feel any emotion nor show any emotion, that emotion is there – within us – swelling to the point where it will someday boil over like an unwatched pot on the stove. Sometimes we don’t even recognize traumatic things in life as being such, but they nonetheless are. Sometimes we have spent so much of our lives being so disconnected, that we are left with no way to truly understand how to begin to bridge that gap – to rebuild the decking of that disconnected bridge.

I remember vividly having a conversation with another Samson guy several years ago. During the course of that conversation, he point-blank told me that he believed I had missed a critical step in childhood while growing up and until I went back and identified and made attempts to recover that critical step, I would never be able to move forward with my life on this side of heaven. A number of years ago, my wife and I were going down to Florida to visit her family one summer. We had stopped to grab a bite to eat, and upon getting back on the interstate, I took the wrong exit ramp. A few minutes into the trip, I started telling my wife that “I believe we have passed these towns before.” She said, “no, I think you’re going the right way.” Now, at that time, I don’t believe that I owned a cell phone that had navigation capabilities as I do these days. Since we had previously made the trip before, we had not felt the need to use a GPS system. But the further that I went, the greater my unease grew. Finally, I pulled over on the side of the highway and grabbed my Garmin GPS out of the glovebox. I powered it on and programmed it with the destination that we were headed to. Sure enough, the Garmin came up and told me to take the next possible U-turn and start going the opposite direction on the interstate. By that time, we had wasted about 40 minutes of our trip, and I remember driving a little faster at that point to make up for the lost time. My wife and I still laugh about that to this day.

Sadly, the critical step that I missed in my own life while growing up cost me far more than a mere 40 minutes. No, that missed step cost me about 25 or 30 years of my life. These past few years have been years of intense self-examination and exploration with the help of my Silas and trying to figure out exactly where I went wrong and where the disconnect in my own life started. It was hard, but I finally over these past few months, wrapped up that self-examination and had my aha moment. I spent much of the years between 2017 and late 2019 unpacking boxes that I had long packed away in the attic of my brain. This was stuff that I did not want to see and stuff that had not seen the light of day for near 30 years. I was left with all of these pieces that I had unpacked; they were lying in front of me and I was in the process of trying to figure out what I needed to do with them and how to reassemble those broken pieces. Then 2020 hit. I know that 2020 was a rough year for every single person alive. For me, it provided the perfect excuse to pack up those pieces and not have to look at them anymore and isolate and withdraw from all in-person meetings. I cannot tell you how damaging that was to all of the hard work I had accomplished over the past few years or what it did to me mentally. Things recently came to a head towards the end of January and I knew that I had to pull those storage boxes back down and begin the process of going through the pieces once more. This time, I was more familiar with the pieces and could identify them more clearly. That is why I was able to have my aha moment recently. I discovered the missing piece of the puzzle from my past, and I knew exactly what damage this missing piece had caused me.

Both my wife and my Silas claim that I spend way too much time living in the past. And they are probably right. Each day, I must wake up and remind myself to count my blessings and to remember that the past doesn’t exist anymore; I live in the here and now, in this very moment. And then I am reminded of how incredibly blessed I am. My Silas told me a few years back after a particularly rough venting session “Stephen, you know how much I love you and I say this in love, but sometimes I wish I could just beat the snot out of you.” Once I had recovered my initial shock, I asked him why in the world he would want to do that. He said, “for one thing, you would be in so much pain in the present that you would forget to remember the past!” When I later told my wife what he had said, she told me “good, I have often wanted to do the same myself!” I suppose that those two were on to something.

Connections are so important in life. They give us cause to live, and they provide a bridge that allows us to move from one area of life to another. Like a solid bridge, they support us as we go over the murky waters of life, giving us a safe passage and allowing us to have a sense of peace. Nearly 30 years later, after discovering Samson and beginning the self-examination process in my own life, I discovered the missing pieces needed to repair the decking of my own derelict bridge. My bridge is a work in progress. Some days are a lot harder than others, and I feel like I am getting nowhere. But other days, I feel like I am so much closer to the other side of that bridge; that, more than anything, gives me hope to continue moving forward. My wife, my friends, my son, my Silas, and my heavenly father are waiting for me on the other side of that lonely bridge, cheering me on and awaiting that day when I can fully bridge the disconnect in my own life. I would love for anyone who wishes to join me on my journey for a while.

One of the recent joys in my life has been to introduce my son to movies that I loved growing up. Last year, we found Benji, you know, the lovable mutt from the 70's and 80's. One night, we were watching a Benji movie from the 80's, and it was one that I don't remember seeing as a kid. The introduction began with a song that nearly moved me to tears, so I looked it up and found it. It goes like this:

So many yesterdays...

haunting my soul today...

Now time is standing still, 

in the tears and the rain

I'll find another spring,

No doubt the birds will sing,

But will never shine, so very bright again...

I had so many yesterdays that haunted me for many years. Maybe you can relate? In a way, I think that we all can. For years, I thought I had missed my chance to shine so very bright. Perhaps I will never shine in the same way I would have once in another lifetime. But there is another spring, and we can find it on the other side of that bridge once it is rebuilt. Someone recently told me that if I hadn't gone through all that I had, I would not be where I am at today. I have to remember that. Everything I went through prepared me for this moment in time to live in the here and the now and to be there for my family in only the way that I can be.

Having taken all of the photographs that I wanted to on that warm summery day in May, I once again climbed into my old trusty blue steed and made a U-turn on the overgrown road that nature was slowly reclaiming. As I slowly drove away, the warm wind hitting my face, I looked into the rearview mirror and bid the bridge goodbye. I have never returned. Unlike other bridges featured in this blog series, that was a place that I never wanted to return to or experience again. Unlike my own bridge in life, that one would never be repaired.

~ S

Bridges - Moving ahead....

 

    Good afternoon, everyone. Stephen here. 

    I realize that I have been missing in action for a while now.  Some seasons of life are just busier than others and navigating the waters of being a husband, father, working full time, and finishing up the last semester of my second Master's Degree has taken a toll on me... in some ways not so good. I have been asked to step up this coming week and post more content, so I would like to invite you to come alongside me for this next stretch of the road during this next week while I share more content on this blog.

    In January, I began a new series titled "Bridges" in which I interweave my love of old historic wrought iron bridges with experiences I've had in life. I meant to continue this series, but as usual, life caught up with me and threw me a curveball. 

    Tomorrow, I look forward to sharing with you, the next entry in the series: "Bridges, Part Two – The Disconnected Bridge"

    Be looking for this next entry tomorrow! Hey, if I say here that I'm going to share it, I actually have to follow through and publish it, right? I need some accountability here!

    In the meantime, I've posted the link for Part One below in case you missed out on reading it the first time.

Bridges - Part One - The Lost Bridge 

See you soon. 

~S

Demystifying The Archetype

I was introduced to my archetype whilst in 6th grade.  The year was 1985, and I was at a weeklong summer camp for 5th and 6th grade boys in south Alabama.  This summer camp experience was hosted by our church, and surprisingly (to me today), I can only recall 5th and 6th grade boys from First Baptist Church Jackson attending.  Therefore, there were no more than 30 to 40 of us there (if that many) during this week, and this made it a truly intimate experience.

The retreat center was small and rural.  I remember a somewhat small, placid lake accessible by a gravel road, a couple of small bunkhouses and a combined cafeteria / meeting or assembly building making up the campus.  The music of this particular summer was Van Halen's 1984 album, therefore it well represented that particular masculine vibe that was hitting us culturally from most every side.  I can recall vividly during the Friday night "talent show" having the privilege of "running the lights" (turning the fluorescent troffers on and off spasmodically) relative to supporting one of the "boy band" lip sync acts.  No doubt, their song of choice was "Jump".

Our bunkhouse of boys had +/-12 young men within with one college-age chaperone.  His name was Greg, and it was he who made such a distinct impression on young Rob during that week (& beyond).

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What is an archetype?  

To me, it's a figure of mystery that's sexualized relative to timing, in part due to the inevitable awakening of one's sexuality during puberty (childhood).  

Greg was mysterious to all of us boys.  He was very quiet and built like a much older man than his college age suggested.  Therefore, we were all quite intimidated by him.  Yet we were as well, glad to know he was amongst us.  It wasn't that his presence threatened us overall, but you could sense - particularly due to his quiet demeanor - that he wasn't all that pleased about spending his week that summer with us.  

But this mystery was catalyzed when I had a personal encounter with him on the eve of the day we arrived.  This occurred as he stepped naked out of a shower stall.  Both he and I were alone together in the men's room with me standing at one of the lavoratories when his naked and wet reflection in the mirror caught me off guard.  I remember laughing out of shock, and him reacting to my laughter with a "What?".  

Me sharing this very innocent yet intimate moment with him served to elevate this young (but very mature-looking) man within my mind.  Eventually to reside high above the stratosphere throughout much of the remainder of my childhood.

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I longed to be pursued by my archetype.  That was my ultimate desire as a boy.  Not having a father, older brother, uncle, etc. that I felt close to / mentored by, I chose Greg instead.  From there, lust and sexual fantasies ensued.  And this was a bittersweet solution, as you might imagine.  For it certainly didn't reconcile well with my Christian faith, yet it was at times exhilaratingly satisfying to have - within my mind's eye - an older male within my life serving me at my beck and call. 

So how do you demystify these figureheads within your mind?

You don't.  You can't.  They've grown too big, become to strong and are so far removed from reality.  I know that because I attended a funeral a few years back at my home church, First Baptist Church Jackson, and Greg was there with his mother.  They were seated on the same pew as I was.  I realized then how useless an attempt it would be to defang my mind's understanding of the archetype that was birthed out of him.  

But what you can do is face it by providing a narrative to the archetype itself that's best described as back / forward story.  And this needs to be a narrative that's grounded much more so in reality than (sexual) fantasy.  Sure, the archetype can still be over the top aesthetically within this back / forward narrative, but what you're striving for is grounding the character somewhat within your adult mind.  From there, I've found at least, that its influence begins to diminish.  From the standpoint of the archetype being such the exclamation point versus a series of paragraphs (if not more) within your grey matter.

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Why is this important to consider?

The narrative (back / forward story) you contrive for your archetype will reflect your ideals as they exist today versus what they were during your childhood.  And this will reflect clearly upon who you've become as an adult, having grown out of childhood.  

This gives the archetype legs so to speak, and in turn, somewhat equal footing to stand on as you yourself.  In lieu of simply existing as a puppet.

Also, my hope is that you're no longer isolated as you were as a boy, having involved yourself in some form of authentic Christian community like Samson Society.  This should, in turn, diminish the authority of your archetype as you dialogue about it with other men.  And maybe too, what comes out of those conversations will provide you with inspiration therein.  Inspiration that's relative to how best you might approach expanding your ideal into more of a reflection of yourself and less of a teddy bear.