Stories from the Mission... bit 43

   Reflecting back on my life, doing some thinking about my old ways. I thought I was cool, a real road warrior that fought great battles with booze in one hand and drugs in them other. We drank beer by the case, tried to smoke more than Cheech and Chong, we partied till we puked, a lot, and thought we had really accomplished something. My thing was to hit as many bongs in a row as I could and drink fast to be Mr. Gusto, I'd even take pride in saying that I can only remember the first five minutes of a lot of parties... which is in reality a sad thing. All I really was doing was erasing big chunks of memories from what should have been the best part of my life... I had robbed myself. If I had been in a nightly coma and just woken to head to work, it would have cost less. I talk with people from my past and it's like reverse Alzheimer's.
   As of today, I have a full week in of getting myself to devote at least an hour reading the Bible every day. I plan on reading it from the front to the back, all the way through. No, it's not a deep study, we have classes for that, I just want to be able to do it at least once, then go back for deeper self studies. It's going to take a while, but it's the least I can do for the one who gave me all.
   Want to have a laugh, read a verse in a King James Bible, The song of Solomon, 2:12. Ok, I'll write it here for you, "The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;" Can't you just see the little turtles, raising their heads to sing for you? this is a prime example of how the every day words we use now might be the same as way back when, but they might have different meanings. The turtle they speak of is what we call now a turtle dove, almost like if I where to say drive my Mustang instead of drive my car.
   Today Pastor Green talked to us in class from behind the podium, then from down in front of the stage next to the grand piano (That he makes look small) and then at one point, back up on stage, he grabbed a chair and sat on it near the front edge. He talked about how cigarettes and crack don't have any life till you give them yours. I've gotten to know a lot of good guys that had used the hard drugs and are now fighting those urges, I can't imagine how hard that must be.
   Many guys work the night shift here at the mission, so in the dorms there is a rule called library quiet that is hard for the guys to follow. Your living in a close quarter communal thing, it shouldn't be hard to respect your neighbor, but then again, not respecting the people close to you is probably one of the things that brought you here.
11/2/11
   Yep, praise the Lord new glasses! For the last year or so I couldn't see clearly at all, now I am looking at the skyline anew tonight, seeing details so crisp, things I couldn't make out at all before. Reading my Bible has been so much easier, I don't need to get perfectly aligned with the lights anymore.  My whole being is feeling better, to where my hearing seems to have bumped up a notch, lol. I can't describe how good it feels, thank you Lord!
   In other news, my score on the four month test was 96%! Woo hoo! I had a feeling I passed, but didn't expect it to be that high. Robert, who I have always respected for his knowledge of the Bible, was a point ahead of me, I never thought I'd be that close.
   I became foreman of my work crew today, so I'm going to pray for guidance. The guy above me, Cook, is a laid back and slick. Everyone wants to be in charge, but it's never as cool as it may seem.
   I walked outside yesterday and looked at the changing color of the trees and thought how much I miss the smell of burning leaves or the smoke from fireplace chimneys. I'm not a big fan of my nose, but these are a few of the things I miss with it. It's like someone popped a video in and those wonderful memories come flooding back in techno color. Oh great, perfect timing, just now, to my right, a guy was opening the door to the bathroom to go in when the sound of a man farting came echoing off the ceramic tile walls nice and loud. The guy holding the door, let it go and promptly did a U turn. I shake my head...~sigh~ I did this to myself.
   Saw a new girl here the other day, short, Asian or Hispanic, slim and well proportioned. I couldn't stop thinking about her the rest of the day she was so cute. It got me thinking of how much of my life was goofed up by being blindly in love with just the visual of a woman, a tiny part of who she really is. I had been considering changing the church I go to because there are so few women even close to my age, but now I'm thinking it's a good thing till I get my body more under control. I should be looking deeper at the parts that you come to live with, not just the wrapper. I just know if I go to church like Broadview, with what I hear about all the pretty women there, I'd be going nuts, head on a swivel, never learning a thing from the pulpit. ~you're like 151 Rum, you're making me dumb~ lol.