I've given a lot of thought to how the story should continue from here because as I started writing this next segment I noticed the military terminology and how painful it would be for the casual bystander to read through. Also, once my own space was cleared for it I was compelled to clarify my purpose and write accordingly. Why tell a life story complete with baggage and self-inflicted misery? Because I now believe that once I understand what I must put off I can then learn what to put on. I actually have to actively discern patterns of misbehavior rather than categorizing it all with the broad "flesh" brushstroke that I used to. "That" is the flesh, "this" is the spirit, "here" is grace, "there" is the law, blah blah blah. I claimed to understand these things, but had absolutely no clue.

Now I look back and it's so clear and I see at different times where I got off the road and how far I've wandered so I can make my way back toward my destination. It doesn't matter who you are or how far you've wandered you can always make your way back on track, and it usually starts with an admission like "I'm lost." Next, you ask for help. Jesus will be there immediately and He will light up the path. His Word is really good at that. After that, the real work begins, climbing out of the deep treacherous valley back on track toward the original destination. There is no magic pill and the rabbit trail doesn't turn in to highway immediately just because I admit "I'm an idiot."

I do this not because I believe others will read it and be built up and encouraged and life will be great for all of us. It's about as fun as setting a broken bone or disinfecting an open wound. Although it's painful to the point of excruciating at times I now know that it's necessary and others will benefit from it if they observe the procedure, even if the weaker among us faint from the sight of all the blood and gore. I don't do it to win a popularity contest, in fact if no one reads it at all it's OK because I am facing things that I must face in order to navigate properly from here on.

May God be with us in all that we say and do.

Getting ready for Ranger School requires at least 2 things:
1. Physical stamina
2. Mental stamina
I was maybe average for the former, but lacking on the latter. Looking back I remember that I wasn't sure how my physical body would handle 58 days of torture because I'm not the most intimidating specimen around. I heard that I would lose 10-15% bodyweight and I didn't have the extra pounds available to shed. This would cut in to both my physical performance as well as mental. The one helpful trait I had was that I would not quit. They would have to kick me out, and it almost came to that...

Ranger School at the time was divided in 4 phases: Benning, Mountain, Florida and Desert. It is a combat patrolling leadership school that drills fundamental tactical knowledge into the minds of the ranger candidates. As a leadership school its main purpose is to stress the students' minds and bodies to simulate the combat patrolling environment and teach candidates to complete the mission regardless of physical or mental state.

One of the most harmful things we were all warned about that shows up during the training is the "hollywood ranger." A hollywood ranger is one who only performs well as a leader and is next to useless as a follower. This is the leader that gets all of his men killed in combat. In other words, he can give orders but has too much pride to accept them. I promised myself I wouldn't be one of these, but once the fatigue set in it just happened. It was something I needed to deal with at the time. We don't sleep much or eat much, and we walk a lot and stay out in the elements most of the time. Honestly given my temperament I was surprised I made it through the school at all.

Either way, I was there and quitting wasn't an option, so I had to find a way to make it work. Something wasn't sinking in and I had trouble passing my graded patrols, so I recycled the Florida phase twice. That's six trips through the swamps. It's kind of like a party but with alligators, water moccasins, thick tangles of trees, slimy smelly muddy waist deep water, and a bunch of starving bald guys in green who need hot chow and sleep.

Of course the best part of patrolling in the swamps while climbing through tangled swamp tree branches was the stumps under the muddy water. One after another would jump up and smack the bony part of my shin and I can't think of another time in my life where the fatigue managed to outweigh the desire to scream out loud. Once I realized this was happening it made me laugh and I made it through those nasty, smelly, muddy, cold, dark swamps after the sixth trip with a limp in my step and a song about those damn stumps and tangled limbs in my heart.

As I look back now I see that my personal pride mixed with a new-found spiritual elitism strengthened my sense of entitlement and I had a real personal battle going between those things and a genuine desire to know the mind of God and to live well. Because of the stress of the training I was going through it brought out the contents of my soul for all to see and it wasn't a pretty sight. It wasn't great for most of us there, but there was one guy who stood out above all others. I can't remember his name but I can see his face because I still marvel at how he handled the stress and pain of that time.

He was an army lieutenant whose father was a general and he grew up in the company of the sons of great WWII generals who also became officers and generals. He didn't know much but was humble and quiet, and every time he screwed up on weapons knowledge and patrolling tactics and got yelled at he accepted the correction, apologized, and did it better next time. I remember one time yelling at him over how he was handling the M60 machine gun because I started out on a machine gun team in the Ranger Batallion on Fort Lewis, which made me an "expert," and he did the one thing I didn't expect. He apologized, corrected the error, and we moved on. I can still hear him in my head putting my harsh words to complete silence with his subtle reply. It has been 19 years since this happened and it's still sinking in to my very hard head.

After I graduated from Ranger School and received my very coveted Ranger Tab that is black and gold and commands respect from the left shoulder of all who wear it I entered in to a new phase of pride in my life. You can only imagine what would happen next, but suffice to say that someone recently told me about my former pastor repeating this story to others and mocking me over what I did.

Does it surprise me? No, I guess not, but it would have been great to think I could have gone to him one time in my life with some screw-up and he wouldn't repeat it and laugh with his buddies about how dumb I was. He did it then, he's doing it now. Does anyone see a pattern here?

So anyway, the guy that really never should have been a Ranger to begin with is still there, ranger qualified, doing my job, and actually doing it well. I mean, I was the guy voted most likely to never be a Ranger in basic training because I like food and sleep so much. They laughed at me when they found out that it was on my contract to go through ranger training. I used to stand over the garbage cans when we would eat hot food out in the field and ask the guys "you're not going to eat that?" Sometimes I would miss someone tossing perfectly good food in there and reach in grab it--3 second rule of course (give or take a minute or two). I am a 6'2" garbage can.

I was starting to make a name for myself as a fast road-marcher, an excellent shot with anything that shoots, and a never-quit attitude that worked well for me up to that point. Most of the guys that laughed at me back in basic training quit long before and I was feeling pretty good about that. The next thing I needed to develop was my hazing skills. This meant that I was supposed to participate in "smoking" privates, meaning yelling and making them do push-ups and stuff. I wasn't too good at that, but I tried. I had one problem, though. I was proud. It was already in me, but the ggwo spiritual elitism combined with military elitism that I was developing was turning me in to a monster.

Not the kind of monster that succeeds and goes around wreaking havoc for years to come, but one that claims special status with the Kingdom of God and a special intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, and therefore one that will fall very soon. God has intervened in my life on more than one occasion, and this was the first one:

We were in Panama training with the whole unit and at the time I was an anti-tank gunner. This means that my primary weapon was a 90mm recoilless rifle (we called it the 90) that was 53 inches long and weighed 37 pounds. My side arm was a 9mm Beretta pistol normally (just in case I had to defend myself close-range). On this particular day we had to do an orienteering course, which is map and compass work. I couldn't carry the 90 and they wouldn't let me just carry my 9mm so they issued me an M16 with a grenade launcher just to do the compass course like everybody else.

It was the rainy season in Panama, and if you know anything about rain in the jungle, it comes down hard and fast and the jungle is a like a big festival of mud. It was pretty mild that day as far as the rain goes, but doing map and compass work in the jungle and going up and down the steep hills to walk in straight lines makes you head to toe muddy. There are trees out there called black pines, and they have long toothpick-like barbs all up and down the trunk, so you learn not to grab on to trees when you lose your balance going up or down hills. All you need is one handful of those needles to remember not to do that. So if you lose your balance, you slide down the mud on your can.

When we finished the course we had to stop off in the showers to rinse ourselves and our gear off. I put my rifle up against the wall and proceeded to rinse my gear off, and then we went to eat dinner. Afterwards, we had to go back to our bunks and clean weapons before turning them in. That's when it hit me. I left that stupid rifle leaning up against the wall in the showers outside. I couldn't believe it. What an airhead. I've always been forgetful, but this was serious. I lost my job that day. What a drag.

When I told Pastor Powell about it he seemed very sympathetic at the time. He acted as though I had been ripped off in some way and that they "owed" me more allegiance than that. I knew it was my fault and that there was no excuse. I recently learned that he repeated this story to others and laughed about it to make me look bad. I don't need help looking bad. I'm great at doing that all by myself. My alma mater is the School of Hard Knocks. I have to make a lot of mistakes to arrive at the same conclusions others get the easy way.

At least this is how it has been up to this point. I just recently discovered that it doesn't have to be the hard way. I've had more character transformation in the last year than in all of the years that I was in that place. I've learned more about how to deal with myself by not being afraid or ashamed of the past. I have learned that we all have stories that intersect and weave in and out of our lives. I have learned that we can learn from each other by telling our stories and speaking openly about our experiences, good or bad.

It's easy to get bogged down in the past if we do nothing about the future, but what if we just want to find our way from where we are right now? If I'm lost outdoors, then the only way to find my way out is to determine where I am now. The best way I can determine this is to find an open area where I can see as far as possible in every direction. I use my compass to locate where I am from three easily recognizable terrain features, and now I am no longer lost. Next, I look at where I came from and use this knowledge to discover where I went wrong so that I can learn from this mistake. When I make it to my destination I am armed with the knowledge I need to make future trips less hazardous.

I can see after reading back through this stuff that this story could use some serious editing to get rid of the stuff that doesn't make much of a point...Now I think I'll just type and get some of the storytelling down and maybe it'll make sense later. Sorry to all of you who take the time to read it. Again I think I'm doing it for therapeutic value more than fascinating reading.

Anyway, the next thing to happen after deciding to really go for at Greater Grace Church in Tacoma is Bible College! I mean, that is the highest form of education, and GGWO has a corner on the Finished Work and Grace messages, so doesn't it make sense that once you get a taste for elitism that moving up to the spiritual elite is the next most natural step?

After I left the Ranger batallion I was demoted to a desk job to finish my remaining 2 years in the Army. I was trained to kill people and perform mass destruction and now I'm killing time. Believe it or not, I kind of liked it. Not because it was challenging, but because it wasn't and it was nice to have some low standards to attain to. There's nothing like setting the bar nice and low to make sure I can get over it without any extra effort.

Well, I got to live in the dorms for a while, take a few classes here and there, and just monkey around waiting for my last day in the military. I don't remember much of this particular episode, because it was as boring as it sounds. What really burns my butt is what happened after I finally got out.

It was August 1990, and Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait. America was gearing up for Desert Storm, and I was turning in my gear to out-process from the military. My last day was August 25th, and 6 days later no one else was allowed to leave. Yes, I missed the lock-down by less than a week. I considered myself fortunate that I didn't have to go to battle with a unit that would have had some very bad and boring jobs in the Middle East.

Well, I had planned to go to California after I got out because my dad got me a job in the HVAC industry. I had sent some of my belongings down there and forwarded my mail and what-not, and then the inevitable happened. You know--everyone has to talk to their Pastor before making any major life decisions--just to make sure your decision is spiritually intelligent. Guess what? He talked me out of leaving in a 5 minute conversation and several weeks of messages that convinced the congregation that "once you leave the perfect will of God you can't be sure you'll ever get your heart to serve Him back again."

So now I'm moving in to the dorms and they promised me work with Basement Waterproofing Nationwide. One of my first jobs was to replace the roof of the Pioneer Way church. Dan Cerigioni and I had to replace all of the plywood up there, and wouldn't you know it? One of those darn sheets of plywood fell off of the second story while I was looking the other way and destroyed all of the toes on my left foot. What a drag. I was on my back for about 2 months after that. That sucked. Thanks to Karol Stauff for making food for me while I was sleeping behind a desk in the dorms. Double thanks to Les and Cec Kallam for taking me in after discovering that I was sleeping behind a desk in the dorms.

Right about the time I was getting on my feet, literally, I decided to chase some vandals that were defacing our CAP buses and get my ass kicked near downtown Tacoma. Real bright. I must have been on pain killers. Just before they were going to kill me Rodney Rosier (a guy who left the church a few months before) drove up and chased them off. I was a bloody mess. I got a ride to the nearest emergency room and woke up the next day with one whopper of a headache. The neurologist told me that I had a cracked skull and blood clot on my brain that morning. The next day he walked in and told me "Well, we lost your films, but I think you're fine so I'm discharging you." So I left and shortly afterwards convinced Pastor Powell to let me get up in the pulpit in my hideous state and give some deranged rant about how stupid I was (am, whatever).

That must have been quite a sight for the new people, like Marilyn Murphy. I can still see her face and the shock and disgust at my swollen head and bloody eyeball. What a retard. I should have hidden up in the belfry since I looked like Quasimodo. There's a new one--WWQD? That should have been a clue for her to take her family and run like the wind. Sorry Marilyn, I tried to clue you in in my very clueless way.

One thing that stood out in this particular time was what God was trying to say to me: arrogance has no place in the Kingdom of God. He was showing me that I needed to be humbled in a very physical way, and it worked to some degree, although there are certainly several more examples of this type of disciplinary action that He has taken with me since then. I'll save that for a later story.

Don't even think about editing. Keep writing just like you are and don't stop.