Embrace the Suck!
It was probably the summer of 2000 that I first heard the term, Embrace the Suck! Another Marine, Sgt Maldonado (RIP) whom I had just met, and would later become my best friend, first shared the term. If you know anything about the heat in 29 Palms California in the dead of Summer, then you completely understand why the term was being used. It was HOT, and even at 530 am the heat was felt and there was just no hiding from it during Physical Training (PT). What else could you do but Embrace the Suck! According to an article in the Military Times the phrase was born out of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but anyone who served in the 90’s knows, that term was around way before that. The bottom line is, things suck, life often sucks and will find you in places you don’t want to be, but why complain, just embrace it!
Here’s the thing, life has kicked the ever-living shit out of me for the last, idk, 10 years maybe. In that time, I had to step down from 2 different pastoral positions, switched careers 4 times, suffered more loss than I care to recount at this time, have failed my soon to be ex-wife and my children in more ways than I can count and am about to become a 47-year-old single man. At this point, if life was a test, I’m looking at an F- or worse, just a big fat ZERO. Maybe I get some points for showing up and putting my name on the paper. The thing is this, I’m at bottom, or at least as far down at the bottom as I care to be, and as I consider it all, it’s time to just embrace it.
What’s that mean exactly, especially since I’m not talking about just getting through a grueling PT session in 105-degree heat in the middle of the dessert! That’s bad, I know, but I’m talking about my life here. Well for me that starts with just acknowledging that things are bad, and I am largely at fault for where things are today. Maybe not the career stuff and the losses suffered, but my very current circumstances, are all on me and it all started when I started to take my eyes off Christ. I’ll write more on that in another blog. But, since doing that it’s been a downward spiral, ending with me sitting back in front of my Mac writing on Truth N Life, with all be it, a bit of a different perspective. Instead of writing hoping to encourage the Church, I write now to regain some sense of sanity and work through my own crap.
This new season, if that’s what you call it, of blogs will be a bit different than the theological takes on current events and issues plaguing the church. Instead, I’m going to work through my own crap, some of it sin, some of it pain, some of it even joyful, but all of it still very much theological. The craziest part of this Journey is that my theology hasn’t much changed, I tried to run from God, I wanted to prove that I was not one of his sheep, but the Hound of Heaven would not let me go! So here I am. Still very much disgruntled and working through feelings of anger and frustration. Only now I’ve come to accept God will not let me go and the only way out of this, is with Him.
So, I hope you are ready because it will get ugly, and at times you’ll probably question my faith. That’s o.k. At times I question it myself. But my hope in all of it is simply this, to Embrace the Suck! Also, to come out of it all with a faith more secure and grounded than it ever was, and that anyone reading this would be encouraged by what God has done. Lately the words of Psalm 42 verse 11 have brought me comfort, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” This has been my state for years… and only now am I choosing to believe in the answer. “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” I can’t say I’m there yet, but for the first time in a while, I believe I will be!