The Delivery Driver Who Saves the Day

So, I work in a warehouse.

As you may, or may not know these places are generally dirty, hot, sweaty, depressing places where people are generally pinched into daily deadlines.  This place is no different. We run an Internet company and ship thousands of pieces a week with just a handful of people. Incoming, we have roughly the same amount of inventory. As you can imagine things get a bit tense from time to time. We all have good relationships with one another but things like this happen when you are under a crunch and its 85 degrees inside. "Woe is me" right? Nope! I love my job and the people I work with. But this is not a tale about them or me for that matter.

When we ship packages from the warehouse, drivers come to our dock and pick them up from us.  We share some words with them as we build relationships with them. It's always great to see them. One man in particular has had a positive affect on the morale at work. Every day at pretty much the same time his rugged, white panel truck backs up the driveway to the door.  The drivers side door pops open, he jumps out, and Spanish speaking radio pours out after him. He wears a smile from one ear to another, I figure he must be about 5'6".

"Heeeeey friend" he says.
"Hey man!" I respond.
"Are you good man?"  He is always showing this smile. He has a genuine happiness about him, it is so infectious. We usually trade stories from the day and do our normal business with the shipment. After no more than five minutes we say goodbye and he is on his way.  His name is Juan. I can only imagine that he must be having a rough go at it from time to time. But he never shows it to us. He's seen us at some of our worst. By the time he gets to our door we have been through the gauntlet usually and we are racing the clock. Paper cuts, tired eyes, and weary souls, we greet his attitude with open arms.

One day when Juan left, my friend Kenny asked me this:

"Do you notice something about him?"
"Yes, yes I do" I replied.
"Every time he leaves I can't stay upset or stressed, I just feel like everything is gonna be alright"
"I agree, too bad he doesn't get here first thing in the morning to get us started on the right foot!"

I have been thinking about this for a couple of weeks. Juan has been visiting our warehouse every day for about a month now and he hasn't failed to lighten the mood yet. We all look forward to it now.

Now that story time is over, on to brass tacks.... How do people react to us?  What is the taste left in their mouths when we depart? Are they asking what is so special about us? Or are they saying, "Wow another person who is too busy/too tired/too bored/too self-interested/too pessimistic?"  Or is it important to show your stripes? Is it important to let people know that you are hurting, sad, lonely, or agitated?

I know that I would like to be the kind of person who people go, "wow this guy is drinking some kind of Kool-aid to be this joyful, free, and caring! I want some of that!"

I want to believe that Juan is on Jesus-crack. I want to believe that he is high-on-life, and is really this happy all the time, while he is "considering the ravens," [Luke 12:24-26] since they don't worry about what they will eat or drink and they live for today. Nobody can be that happy all the time, is it part of being separated from the Lord that we are meant to struggle through our life at times?  I am kind of ranting at this point. But, I created this blog to get all the tangled wires out. So, I continue....

If I am to believe that we will see trials, which we do; then do I share my lamentations with people who might be needing a smile, a friend, somebody to help them through the day? Should I be a "Juan" for those people? I think maybe yes i should try, but it would all be in vain if it's not backed by love. This brings it all back to myself.  The water tower of care is not a water tower if it is not filled with love, without that love it is just a shell. The internal work is the key.  The faith in knowing that God will provide (like he does for the ravens) will free my heart and soul to be what He wants me to be in the world.  It's amazing how often Jesus talked about this moment and how important it is to be present.

Forcing myself to be kind wouldn't be prudent, although being a curmudgeon wouldn't be great either. Putting my trust in what He has seems to be the best way to become liberated and see more of the joy his kingdom has in store! Go to him first and the fruits of the spirit will fall into place, I heard that once (maybe more) and it seems fitting here. That is all.

What is this The End?

The date is March 23, 2012. 

Its been a rough month, things are kinda crazy for me now. I cannot believe the people who have left my existence. They haven't departed from my life on bad terms, the nature of life in this case has steered them out of my sight. One is a girl I was dating from 1300 miles away, if you could believe that. The other is my oldest living relative. She passed at age ninety-six. I am not bitter or angry that the girl decided to break it off, these kind of relationships are difficult but that is for another time. Heaven knows I asked a great deal of questions about these edits to my life. Had all of this occurred a year prior I would have handled it quite differently (see: anger, depression, self doubt, whisky, and so-on).  The events of this night put my life into a different arrangement and fear now rules....

The rain is coming down at a pace that can be described as less than pouring but not much more than a sprinkle. My clothes are sticking to the fake leather seats of my car since i got rained on. The windows of the coupe my coupe are beginning to fog up, starting where the droplet sit, indicating that the temperature is cooling off quickly. 

 I have the music turned up loud, and when I say loud i mean that its so loud I can't hear myself think and that is the idea. My mind tends to run rampant in the car if I don't do this "thought-deafening" drowning out the thoughts actually does bring me some form of clarity about whatever is ailing me emotionally.  

As I drive down the dark road MUTEMATH is pumping through the speakers, the pace encourages me to speed up. Quick note: it would be nearly impossible to do the speed limit while listening to this band. My head is cleared up now, I am enjoying the return to my parent's suburban home and observing all that is around me.  Buds on the trees displaying that pale green that they do in spring. Some flowers have fallen to the streets from the hail earlier. Also on the road I notice the glaze of liquid trickling from the high points to the gutters on the sides. 

It looks like a wavy, black mirror and distracts me for a good portion of my ride home. Street lamps, stop lights, and other cars' headlights cast what seems like shadows on the black asphalt mirror.  The light redirects to me in streams  that look like they could be light emitting themselves and last about two hundred yards. I follow the green stream up from the hood of my car to it's source just as I am about to cross under the light. What i see when I pass the light and am still looking up towards the light is what I didn't want to see.

Just above the trees and off to the left I spot a tower of some sort. This tower is no ordinary tower, nor have I ever seen anything similar to that near here.   The details are hard to make out because the rain is making the air grey and they sky is overcast.  The sky is brighter than it should be, lights from downtown must be reflecting off of the clouds. Thanks to the city clouds I can make out the shape of the structure as if it was set out on a enormous light table. 

This is a tower. It must be at least 200 feet tall or 20 stories, certainly bigger than anything we have around here. From my perspective it looks bigger than the mountains, but i know it is not. The main structure is either round or triangular.  Off of the center pillar there are three feet or maybe they are buttresses extending a third of the way up. The pillar continues up until there is only about maybe 20 feet to the top, then on the very top of the structure it looks to be a giant daisy shape.  Several extensions branch out like petals from the "stem" they extend to about the same diameter as the buttresses.  The petals look flimsy and fragile almost like real petals, but looking at the rest of the structure I am certain they are very strong if they are to be of any importance. 

What could the purpose of this thing be? And why keep its construction a secret? 

By this time I am one of the only people on the road. The vehicle curves right to make it's way to my house. The rain is till coming down just a little harder now. I pull the car into the gravel pad next to the house.  While walking up the sidewalk to my front door I notice that there is now a light being pushed out from where the tower's petals are.  This light seems to be pulsing with higher and higher frequency until it appears to be on full power, the light is quite bright, but not bright like a flashlight, its bright like white.  I pull my keys out and fumble for the deadbolt one. "Got it!" I think as i pinch the metal between my fingers. I look to the sky once more.  This device is now shooting light from the petals up to the very top of the tower. which is now glowing like amber and reflecting the light skyward.  The color of the reflected light can only be described as burgundy.  Something about this light was also very strange, it was pumping as if by a heart.  Is this some kind of artery? 

Not much more than two seconds after the arterial light started the rain changed color. Emerald droplets fell from the sky.  I watch in astonishment and awe. As the beauty of the rain fades, the horror of it quickly takes hold.  The rain is melting everything except for the houses. The tree in the front yard is disintegrating from the top down even the rocks buffering the tree from the grass are turning to pebbles. I look right to the gravel slab, yep, my car is slowly disappearing.  The squirrels in the tree are the same, i am standing under the covering on the porch but they are exposed and dripping away, poor things.  This rain must have be some kind of a turpentine rain, dissolving the outside world and leaving us with bedrock and houses.

Clearly somebody wants us to be living in a different way. They want us to re-prioritize our lives. I hope we have a good stockpile of food because undoubtedly this will have ruined any chances for anybody to produce food. 


The sun is making its first appearance the next morning, the rain has run away. Bedrock, houses and people inside the houses are all that remain when I peer through the blinds of the front door. We will have to learn how to be a community of people who work together now. This neighborhood wasn't built by individual families, but it could fall by individual families. And that's when I realize,  COMMUNITY, that is what this was about, the desired result of the tower is for people to learn how to do what we were built for: relating on a personal level. 


Maybe I can be thankful for this after-all; its terrifying, its ludicrous, its Turpentine Rain..... 

Where to start? Presidential style promises, hopeful outlooks.

So I determined I would start a blog. My ideas and thoughts tend to overrun me from time to time. This is the purpose of this blog: to get these things out of my head. If y'all wanna read it, then so be it. Otherwise, maybe eventually I'll be confident enough in my storytelling and writing to be willing to share this outwardly.

The basic idea of this is simple. I will be posting in no regular time frame. My thoughts will hopefully be inspired and guided by God. There will be photographs, short stories, and traditional style (this-is-my-life) sort of posts. I hope that my journey through the caves of my mind can be an experience of growth for you as well as it is for me.

God has been nagging me at this for a while. Somehow I guess micro blogging (via twitter) was not the type of expression he is building me up for. Perhaps I am doing this solely on my own, wanting a different kind of adventure (I have never been much of a writer). I would love for my stories, near-stories, thoughts, and experiences to bring praise to the Lord. It being most important to realize that he owns the full rights to my stories. He gave me breath, He gave me my experiences, my troubles, my victories, my love, my regrets, and my savior.

lets get this show on the dusty, twisty, narrow, road shall we?