Personal & general: The Mental Gravity Well of Life

This is an open letter to my friend Mark and a way to set forth two things weighing on my mind.

A major reality that many of us must carry is the economic pressure of supporting a family in a two income economy.
I want to illustrate this point with the following account: After I moved to Tacoma in September of 2001 and took upon myself a huge (for me) mortgage, I found myself two and half months after my loan had closed, unemployed. For the next Forty months I remained under-employed (Does anyone know how humiliating it is to be in a Calvinist/winner type community and be on the out of work prayer list?). I struggled to keep from losing the house and had to put off maintenance on health, automobiles, and house. I even had to liquidate a retirement annuity at a substantial tax penalty to keep from losing the house. Now the Lord was good and provided me short two week to five month jobs here and there, and He also gave me opportunities for side jobs. I even thought about starting my own Electrical contracting business, but I had no capital and no credit. I started on a shoe-string budget "under the table" until I could get enough capital to go legitimate with full bonding, name, etc. During this shoe-string phase, I had a customer who was supposed to be a Christian, who did not pay me for nine months. The amount was only $900.00, but I really needed that money to eat and pay my supply bill. The positive entrepreneur would just roll with this sort of difficulty and keep on trying, but I am not naturally a positive business-minded person. This experience left me with a bad taste and I decided to seek employment with an organization that could weather the ups and downs of the market. In the state of Washington, these types of organizations are typically government agencies. This is how I came to be working at the Port of Seattle Airport. This job is a great job and a direct provision from the generous hand of God. With this job comes other pressures. In addition to the normal state of "the more you make, the more people's hands are open to be filled", there is the backlogged maintenance of home projects that must be done while working full time. And I must have excellent performance at work or the job could be in jeopardy. I tell you, I come home some mornings after working all night so tired that I just want to blow my brains out. Anyway, not to complain, I am grateful in the extreme for God's great provision and I pray often that He would also provide for you and your family.

The other factor that can wear a pilgrim down(probably unique to Americans) that I want to make is the observation and analysis of the decline and fall of our civilization. As you have blogged about the problems in Christianity and its decline in our culture, you have also observed the many ways our political system has imploded. See my entry on citizenship to see my rationale for the next few sentences. Many of us who care about our country, need to change our expectations. In the competition of the nations on the global stage, there is only the Will to Power. Our nation is not a Christian nation (by the true definition of Christianity there can be no Christian nation) and our leaders' constant pandering (from the left & right) to the civil religion of our country holds us back from really trouncing the other nations. Our country is profoundly flawed and without excuse in its behaviors (as all nations), but who said that nation-states in the modern epoch are supposed to behave in a certain way? The nature of "Total War" was the accepted modus operandi of the various empires and tribes from the time Noah stepped off the Ark. In ancient days, when another power defeated you, they burned your libraries, killed your men, and raped and enslaved your women and children. So now in the modern era, we are appalled when Nazis, Communists, & quasi-democratic empires dust off for use the ancient standard of "Total War". Why are we surprised? This is just the world's system that will be defeated and judged by Jesus Christ. But the news of the death of our civilization can be disconcerting. We like our materialism and (up until the last few years) our ability to complain without getting arrested and imprisoned. We were born into a land of great potential and opportunity and we were fed impossible ideals. I have and am having a hard time adjusting to the new global paradigm. I would hazard a guess that this is hard for many of us.

Of course these two observations could be totally off mark and it is just my own vain imagination that I am reflecting here, but these factors can weigh a pilgrim down here at the end at the bottom of our mental gravity well.