Boundless Grace

So I haven't written anything in awhile. I've been too busy updating everyone else's blogs. I'm not complaining. I've been blessed with more work than I can handle. I'm supporting my family by writing. I could do worse. I have a hard time with being grateful. I'm never grateful for anything. I'm learning to give credit where credit is due, and no one I know deserves any credit for anything. God has been so gracious to me, and he has proved it over and over again.

For instance, two weeks ago before my wife and I left San Francisco (yes, I moved again. What a surprise! We lived in SF, and moved PDX a few weeks ago) I got on the wrong bus out of San Francisco's Portola District, and oddly so did two policeman. I'm riding this bus into what was quite possible the worst 'hood I'd ever stepped foot in, and the bus drives to the end of this completely fucked-up neighborhood, turns off the engine and shouts "End of the line." Me and the two cops look at each other not knowing how, or why we got in this bus. I step off of the bus platform, and the two cops follow closely behind.

As I'm walking through this really, really rundown area, the thought occurs to me that this is a very, very bad situation. I see windows with bars on them, which is not an uncommon thing in San Francisco, but they are bent to hell. Bullet holes in almost every window, and shattered glass everywhere. I see kids running around with no shoes on yelling "Po Po Alert! Po Po Alert" every five seconds. I slow a bit, and I turn around and ask the cops where the nearest bus stop is. They tell me that they'll walk with me. They tell me they've shared nearly 80 bullets between the two of them in this little neighborhood alone. They also tell me that all of those bullets made their ghastly appearance in broad daylight. As I'm hanging with them we talk about where we're from. I tell them I moved to SF from Seattle. We talk about how the commonality of shitty sports teams in SF and Seattle. We talk about coffee, rain, cigarettes, microbrews and the infestation of strip clubs in SF's chinatown. They also tell me that they accidentally got on the wrong bus, and that they had no idea why they followed me out here. They both shake their heads in annoyance and disbelief. Then we part ways at the "safe" bus stop. I thank them, and the go on their merry ass-kicking, gun-slingin way.

After the cops leave, I start to shake a little bit. I become overwhelmed by this feeling of fear, gratitude and this newfound safety. It was otherworldly. It became clear in that moment that Jesus "had" me. He brought me to a place where I could have lost my life to show my the boundless length of his mercy. I could have went there alone and got served up a heavy dose of baseball bat economics, or worse, I could have been killed. These cops who work in this neighborhood reminded me over and over how "lucky" I was.

Here's the thing, I'm not lucky. I repetitively get into the shittiest situations imaginable, and God pulls me out of them to demonstrate His grace to bring me to repentance. I eventually acknowledged that from time to time, even if I was forced to acknowledge it. But this, this was Jesus in pursuit. This was God saying, "I'm going to show you how much I love you, even though you will probably tell Me to fuck-off when you go home and snap at your wife for asking a simple question." This was the Holy Spirit calling me out, "Stop your bullshit, NOW!!!"

I'm still in shock. I'm still trying to humbly just keep my middle finger in my pocket. I'm praying that all my middle finger's will snap under the weight of His boundless grace.

San Francisco

A little over two months ago as Margie and I were cleaning out the rental home we lived in to move to Olympia with my parents out of necessity because I had been laid off for the millionth time in my life from a job that I hated, I had this creepy feeling in my gut..."What if this is it?" I said to myself. "What if my life has been resigned to bouncing around from job to job, town to town and my poor undeserving wife gets to come along for the ride?" This has been a haunting idea for a long time.

About a year ago, a good friend of mine advised me to move to California. I thought, in one of my few and far between moments of pure and unblemished snobbery, told him that the idea of moving to California is cliche and generic as I facetiously asked him if he would be willing to consider my bourgeoning screenplay idea. He then replied, "No, you should seriously consider San Francisco, you cocksucker." So, I began the asinine process of consideration. I thought through the pros and cons, "Well, it's not Seattle, that's a downside...um...there's a great deal of sun but it's a lot more expensive and about three times as crowded as Seattle..." At the end of thinking this thing through, I was still living in Olympia with my parents working construction with my step-dad attempting to go into business with him so we can have one big happy mormon compound in Rainier, Wa stockpiling food storage and guns. Although this neo-depressionist/pre-apocalyptic idealism was very enticing, there was an element to it that made me lose all hope for the future. So my wife and I had a very brief conversation. I asked her what she thought about San Francisco and in not so many words she said "Sure!"

Then on a whim, I began applying for various editorial internships in the bay area. One was for a semi-traditional copy-editing internship for a local weekly. The banality of that sort of job was very enticing to me. They contacted me for a phone interview and I bombed it. The other was for an internet start-up web 2.0/new journalism company that I wasn't crazy about, they contacted me for a phone interview. I nailed it. They scheduled a second phone interview. I nailed that one as well. Then they scheduled an expense paid interview in San Francisco after which they revealed the name of the company that was funding this start-up project. Then I became very excited about this prospect, but nonetheless I was very doubtful about the likelihood of my actually having a chance at getting said position. At the very least, I looked at it as a free vacation for my wife and I. So we made arrangements to drive our car to San Francisco, stay in an affordable boutique hotel in Downtown San Francisco and hang out for a week. It was an amazing experience. Never in our 3+ years of marriage have we ever rolled into a city (Note: we've collectively lived in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portland, Seattle, Burlington, VT, LA, SLC & Boston) and looked at each other and said "Holy Shit!" It just clicked. We made adventures to J-town, Chinatown, The Mission, The Wharf, Balboa, Golden Gate & SoMA. This was OUR city. There was this sense of belonging. We felt like ourselves. We felt stripped of all these cultural things that were expected of us and for a few moments we felt like humans again and not like ants in an assembly line. It was a liberating feeling.

Day two of our stay in San Francisco, I went in for the on-site interview and after stressing myself to the point of nausea, they offered the internship to me. I gladly accepted and agreed to be in San Francisco by the beginning of September. In addition, I'll be starting school at the end of August to finally finish my degree and to hopefully get our life started, FINALLY.

In christian circles, they say things like "I feel like I've been called to..." or "I feel led to..." but I feel those words are thrown around too much and have subsequently lost their meaning. I don't feel a sense of call, to be honest I'm not sure what that really means. In my experience, all that a "call" has represented is a justification from the divine for people to just do what they want to do. I want to take care of my wife. I want to be in a position to start a family with my wife and I want to raise that family in a diverse, major city. I have no idea what the future holds, all I know is that on August 10th, my wife and I are moving to San Francisco.

P.S. this blog post remains vague because I am contractually obligated to do so