Kick Drum Heart


Forgive yourself, if you think you can

8:14 AM
8/19/09

My heart’s, my heart’s like a kick drum. Ba bum-bum-bum-bum-bump. I’m exhausted, sore. As the strange army guy we worked with on Monday would say, emotionally starving. Or was it spiritually? Whatever.

I hate it when people think they know you upon meeting you. This man comes up to Brendan, Skylar, James and I at Assembly of God and introduces himself, tells us he was/is a drill sergeant at some military training base. He’s going back to Iraq next month. Now, that’s all well and good and interesting until he asks us what we’re doing after high school. So we tell him, and then he begins rambling about the army and how after an hour talking to his students/trainees/maggots/whatever he can see right through them.

Yes, great. So what do you see in me, Mr. Omniscient? Who exactly do you think you are, you cocky bastard?

Brendan asks him the same thing, albeit much more politely.

“So what do you know about me?”

He doesn’t break stride in informing Brendan that he believes Brendan to be an upstanding guy and dedicated to his community.

Well, obviously, moron. He’s only tired-looking, dirty, and at the volunteer base, sun-tanned and sweaty. However, one might take him for a demonic acid addict with a penchant for axe murdering.

Let’s just say I wasn’t so impressed with Military’s people-reading skills. He started speaking to us– four kids– about God and the military next. About how war is necessary, and if God has a strong-arm, the United States is it.

I can understand and respect the guy’s loyalty, but God is the only one who can judge who deserves to die and who doesn’t. And as Brendan very delicately pointed out, it seems like believing that is like serving two gods.

The Commander in Chief isn’t holy, sorry, buddy.

…….

Now I’m on to another thought process. Just kind of floating along, here. I had to go make the coffee and put my mom’s lunch in the fridge in the back room and now I’m wondering when Brendan will get here, so I’m a little distracted.

I’m so sore. I don’t want to have to walk from the bank to the relocated base at the Moose. I’m all bruised up and scratched. It’s a satisfied battered, but I feel like the hammer I smashed repeatedly into my hand yesterday hit everywhere else, too. And now Brendan’s here. Time to start another day.



Stress, stress, stress

Want to see my to-do list? It’s longer than Santa’s right now. I’m working on completing National Honor Society forms as waell as trying to finish up presents, while balancing yearbook and singing and band and percussion ensemble and jazz and play and class officer stuff. (I am now officially the Unofficial Secretary of the Treasury, by the by.)

God, and that doesn’t even cover the God-related stuff I should be doing… such as practicing my basic piano for my Sunday Sschool Finale/sendoff on the twenty-eighth.

It makes my heart hurt to think of it. My last day of teaching Sunday school. I must really be tired, I think I might cry.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the God aspect of it is important to me. God is important to me. So is faith. With the Christmas– not “holiday– with the Christmas season very, very near it seems important to be up front about that. No, I’m never going to force my religion on you .I am not, as Taylor is fond of accusing, a “zealot.” I’m honestly not even very sure about my own faith, except that I do believe in God– the God– and if I didn’t, I’d be a little less steady than I already am. Aything that gives me a foundation and a balance is a positive factor in my life.

The problem with Sunday School was, I didn’t have enough time to devote to teaching, the kids are all reaching the age where they dislike attending, and I don’t think I know enough, personally, to do a good enough job. I can’t do as good a job as they deserve.

And also, I don’t like to deal with the drama. Old ladies are a bore. I’m sick of it.

But I wonder if I should make one last-gasp attempt to get all of my kids back. Whenever I think “Sunday school” I think of either a metal chair being whipped across the single room, and shouting, or I think of the gilded days filled with sunshine where I’d walk into the church and within six minutes I would have ten kids there and ready to learn. Those were the best days, and I miss them. Maybe I wasn’t nearly as mature then, but they were there, and sometimes they stayed for church. When I had hope that some of my lessons were reaching them, it felt good… would you ever believe that at one point in past summers I daydreamed of entering the ministry?

But now, I can teach them more effectively about breathing techniques and drumming rhythms than I can about the Lord. So, there  you have it. I give up.

And I feel like shit about it.