cross to bear

A while back another mother of one of NJ's preschool classmates told Golden that she did not know if she could handle a situation we were dealing with regarding NJ at the time as a compliment to her patience.  Within a couple of months we received word that that mother had to deal with her son having a medical situation far, far worse than we have dealt with for either of our kids yet.

Unless he or she had a traumatic childhood, I do not think the typical person realizes the severity of the challenges that most people have to face in life until they are no longer considered a young adult.  Everyone has something, and that something is usually huge.  I feel like almost every family I know has some issue that I do not know how I would deal with.  Whether it is serious illnesses/death, miscarriages, affairs, divorces, major financial hardships, perpetual unemployment, mental/emotional instability, or simply rebellious children, almost no one is immune.  It also seems like all of this bad stuff is from recent years.

I know that a lot of bad stuff happened to people I knew when I was a kid, but a lot of that stuff is usually shielded from kids.  As an example, it may sound uncaring but when you hear about an adult in the hospital as a youth it does not sound unexpected.  You don't get the morbid details of the complications that person goes through, and it rarely directly impacts you.  Older people end up in hospitals, and you don't have an appreciation for someone in their thirties or forties being relatively young.  It's simply another name brought up for a prayer request.  That changes as an adult when forty isn't old any more and I am more closely acquainted with those who are sick.

To be fair, there are difficulties that Golden and I face.  In a vacuum they often seem serious, but when I compare to others, we do not have it that bad.  A lot of what we do face has to do with being parents of two energetic kids, so those difficulties even frequently have benefits that far outweigh them.

Given how poorly I have handled the curve balls that life has thrown me, I have some doubts about how I would handle a more serious hardship.  My crosses seem horrible until I see some of what others have to tolerate.  God, give them strength.

please pray

My friend Forest, whom about half my readers know, needs your prayers.  He has a very serious form of cancer and direct intervention from God is currently his hope, and unfortunately his only hope.  Please also pray for his family as well, as they need strength and peace as much as Forest does.

I am not abandoning the blog, and will likely put something up in the very near future.  I simply have not been in the mood to compose something, as everything I have sat down to type has felt trite in comparison.  Not to fear, though, my standards will go down to my normal level shortly and I will post again.

Update (7/6/2012):

Forest passed away yesterday.  Please remember his family in your prayers.

boundaries

I frankly don't know precisely where boundaries should be drawn in my life.  I never have.  In college I became overly active in classwork, student government, work, and maintaining a relationship with Golden and nearly burned out mid-way through my third semester.  A few times in my adult life I have swung the opposite direction and purposefully shut down nearly all offers for social activities beyond what was absolutely necessary.

I'm somehow guarded and over-sharing at the same time in my friendships.  In my close relationships I don't usually know what reasonable and unreasonable expectations are.  Do I expect too much or too little?  Do I sacrifice too much or too little?  Again, I think it's paradoxically both, but I usually cannot identify the specifics of what needs to change.

In social situations I frequently miss social cues, though I also notice people who miss them much more than I do.  Some people seem to be able to feel out others in a way that I can only dream.  Other people seem to miss what I think are obvious signs that whatever they are doing violates whatever the local social mores are.

The thing is, the more I think about this, the more I think this describes most people.  There is definitely a small group of people who seem to get where all of the social and personal boundaries are or should be, and there is a small group of  people who have no clue.  In the middle, though, I think everyone relies on others' reactions to figure out the grey areas.  What happens, though, when the people we use for reference have it wrong?

hymns

Tonight our church had a hymn sing, and this brought to mind how full circle I have come on this genre of music.

When I was growing up my family listened to hymns a lot, and since I went to church regularly in traditional churches I heard my share of hymns as a kid.  As anyone who hears a lot of a specific type of music will do, there were songs that I liked and songs that I did not like.  I appreciated hymns overall, though, until I became a teen.

As I got into adolescence I grew to resent the expectation that church-goers would like the one genre of music over the others, and the attitude that many had that everything that was not a hymn was inferior (or worse, unholy).  I also got tired of the tendency of hymns to use outdated jargon, and plenty of "thees" and "thous." As such, while I did not hate hymns, I learned to strongly prefer other styles of music.

As I have grown as an adult, and especially in the past two or three years, I have come to appreciate the depth and maturity that exists in many hymns.  This is probably mostly due to the fact that I have more life experiences to appreciate a This has been in part because my understanding of Scripture and what practical Christianity really is has increased, and so some of what I thought I grasped before strikes me more seriously now.  Some of this is that I am no longer in a situation, or have recently been in a situation, where there are any expectations on what music I am going to like or what I am going to relate to.

One example of a song that I have only recently been appreciating on a doctrinal level is "Rock of Ages."  I am not Calvinist, and maybe this is one of the reasons it has taken some time to connect with me, but I feel I am only now grasping what I always claimed to believe—that I, and everyone else, truly come to God empty-handed.  I bring nothing to the equation except a reticent willingness to be changed.



An example of a song that I appreciate based on life experience in a way that I did not when I was a kid is "The Solid Rock."  Of my myriad of weaknesses, if there were one that I would pick out to say how much I underestimated the depth of it earlier in life, it is my ability to trust God.  My strength is in trusting Him, but it's something I need His help to even consider doing.



One song I am including here just because I like it is the Owl City version of "In Christ Alone."  It was written more recently than most traditional hymns, but it is essentially a hymn.  It is also every bit as meaningful as the other hymns I have been contemplating lately.



There are certainly some hymns I still do not enjoy, and probably never will.  However, I am getting to the point in my life where a good number of songs that I may have overlooked ten or twenty years ago can profoundly touch me.  I must be getting old.

demonization and favoritism

Something that perplexes me is the human drive to like and rationalize for those who we agree with and to demonize those we do not.  I am not pointing to any one group of people in particular.  In fact, what surprises me is how universal this appears to be.  I am also shocked at how on guard I have to be to keep from doing it myself.

This is probably the most pronounced in politics, but it also shows up in most other areas of life like religion and fandom.  Rather than accept that all humans are flawed and endowed with some redeemable traits, no matter their particular opinions, it is easier to see only the bad in those with whom I disagree and the good in those with whom I agree.

I cannot emphasize enough how amazed I am at how easy it is to slip into the line of thinking, "Of course that politician had shady dealings.  Have you seen his policy positions that completely contradict mine?"  It is also easy to think regarding my teams, "Ref, are you blind calling that unnecessary roughness?  That was a perfectly legal hit by the player on the football team I am pulling for.  I'd bet he volunteers his time and resources to his community, and saves people from burning buildings in his spare time—the saint!"  All of this is as if someone's position on the ideal tax system or role in a team from Detroit has anything to do with the quality of their character.

This sort of philosophical favoritism, giving some people unwarranted hate and others unwarranted admiration, is obviously not what God called us to.  I am not convinced that this is the sort of thing that most Christians are aware they need to give over to God, though.  Even though we all know that anything short of love for our neighbors is sin and we know that favoritism has been forbidden, do we (and I am certainly asking this about myself) really believe it?  Does this sort of thing truly make the cut of things we really think of as falling short of God's glory?

I am as in need of as much assistance in countering this flaw in my thinking on this as anyone else.  That is the point, though.  We all have natures so horribly flawed that we cannot on our own obey a simple command like, "Love your enemies..." (Matt 5:44).  This, even when the only thing that makes them an enemy is a difference of opinion about something relatively minor when considered in the grand scheme of things.

Disagree with me on this if you must.  Just understand it means that you must be a bad person.

blood and pastels

Easter, and Holy Week in general, is one of my least favorite holidays.  By rights it should be among my favorites because it represents the event that forms the foundation of my religious beliefs and my relationship with Christ.  It just seems so feminized, though.

This may come down to the fact that the real holiday is considered Easter and Good Friday is a day leading up to the ultimate holiday, but when I think of the Crucifixion and Resurrection I am disappointed with the emphasis on pastel colors and dressy attire.  I'd mention cute, furry animals as well, but that opens a can of worms about pagan roots on some of the celebration that I don't care to debate here.

In my thinking, Christmas should be the more feminine holiday and Easter should be the more masculine holiday.  Christmas is about birth and potential.  Easter is about violent death, death's defeat, and promises fulfilled.  Mary is as much the symbol of Christmas as anyone because God used her humble spirit for His glory.  Christ is the symbol of Holy Week because he showed what true humility and sacrifice was.  Christmas is about love and commitment in new relationships (Mary and Joseph), and Easter is about what love costs in a mature relationship (Christ and the Church).

We all choose how to celebrate and contemplate the holiday, but there are also cultural expectations within the church regarding how the holiday should be observed.  I wish you a great Good Friday and Easter as we all contemplate Christ's sacrifice and its implications on our lives.  This is what I will be doing this weekend.

it worker backgrounds

I have worked in technical support ten of the last eleven years, and have had significant interactions with people with all kinds of technical skill sets.  This post is about one observation I have made that I have not  seen anyone else make about people in general in the industry.  Specifically, I think technical workers are disproportionately from poorer backgrounds.

My observation that a lot of people in IT came from poorer families could be completely wrong, and it is almost certainly partially due to the fact that my career to this point has mostly been in technical support rather than something more glamorous in the industry.  I have seen a large number of technical workers who have purported to come from modest backgrounds, though.  Beyond this, I have also noticed an inordinately large number of people from modest backgrounds who have taken a significant interest in tech as their key to a better life, even if they have not ultimately gotten a technical job.

In some respects this makes total sense.  It seems like the industry more than most others rewards and punishes workers based on ability and intelligence.  Politics applies, but to a lesser degree.  If you're not cut out to be a programmer, or a systems administrator, or whatever it is going to matter less if your dad is the CTO for the company.  You probably could coast in a different department, such as Marketing, where individual contributions are more difficult to quantify.  On the flip side, if you are naturally skilled and someone gives a chance you can do well.

This also makes sense from the education perspective.  This is a white collar profession where a bachelors degree or a graduate degree is not required.  The same cannot be said for other white collar roles, from doctors to lawyers to mechanical engineers.  Sure, most technical jobs claim to require at least a bachelor's degree, but most of those will also allow for "equivalent work experience."  Less of an educational requirement means a lower barrier for people who don't have the money up front for a college education and/or four to eight years available to make a bet on a specific career.

I think the biggest reason for this, however, is the marketing from schools like DeVry and ITT Tech.  By their nature they target students with lesser means (in either time or money) than a traditional school targets.  Since the biggest bang for their buck is to target those industries where someone with an undergrad degree or less can make a decent living, they focus on the tech and healthcare industries.  I have worked with a lot of DeVry graduates, and an unfortunate side-effect of their education that seems to be a universal is significant student loan debt.  Since not everyone is cut out to work in technical fields, this presents a bit of a risk that the degree will not lead to a job to pay off the loan for the degree.  It presents a hidden risk to those who are cut out for the industry as well, though.

Something that I learned before I had much technical experience on my resume is that, unless your degree is from a relatively prestigious school, experience matters far more than education when applying for a technical job.  The places that hire straight out of school usually expect some specific ability or depth of knowledge that you don't necessarily get in the classroom.  The people who do well tend to be the ones who did a lot of out-of-class learning on their own.  This is a problem for any student with limited real-world experience.  For-profit school students, with their higher-than-average debts that will not go away until they are paid off, are in a much tougher situation, however.  A degree does not guarantee a job in the industry, and one may not ever be available for specific, individual graduates.

As a final note, I do seem to run across a lot of people who think that IT is the gateway to six-figure incomes, and I think this draws in people looking for something akin to an earned lottery payout.  There are people who make that but, based on what limited information I have, they tend to fall into one or (very likely) more of the following four categories.

• They hold a senior role.
• They live in an expensive city that necessitates high pay.
• They are a consultant and can tolerate the income variability.
• They happen to be an expert in a relatively new and highly-used technology.

Tech jobs pay better than those in a lot of other industries, especially for the amount of education required to succeed, but six-figure incomes are rare from what I can tell.

My foundational point is that technical jobs do offer opportunities that do not exist in other places, but they should not be pursued by people who do not have a genuine interest in the work.  The payout simply is not as high as some people think it is, and there is a good chance a person looking to enter the field for the money will have to fight for opportunities just to get a position to acquire the experience employers expect.  If you do like the work and have realistic expectations regarding what you will make, then entering the industry makes sense.