Posts Tagged ‘dad’

IF…

// September 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // My Thoughts

If you struggle with sin,
if you are selfish,
if you are an alcoholic,
if you are addicted to drugs,
if you are addicted to pornography,
if you don’t spend enough time with your wife and kids,
If you are a jerk
If your dad was/is a jerk,
If you were/are abused,
If you were/are neglected,
if you constantly need the approval of others,
if you are habitually whiney,
if you nag your husband,
if your spouse is cheating,
if your child hates you,
if you hate anybody,
if you just did it again and you feel horrible about it,
if you don’t know why you do the things you do,
if you feel hopeless,
if you feel insane,
if you feel like jumping,
if you already jumped,
if you just left and are never going back,
if they broke your heart,
if they broke your spirit,
if you are broke,
if you are bent,
if you are angry,
if you are afraid,
if you don’t care anymore,
if you care but are afraid to show it,
if you are confused,
if all you want is to be touched,
if it all fell apart today,
if they did it again and you just can’t forgive,
if you don’t want to go on,
if you don’t feel anything anymore,
if none of this fits you, or if all of it fits you

Please know that God truly does love you more than anything else in this world.  He isn’t concerned about how well you keep it together, or if you did the right thing.
he is not interested in how often you go to church, or if you said your prayers yesterday.

He just wants you to know he loves you… he really doesn’t need you to do anything…he has everything he needs,  he just wants to love you…  just focus on loving him back with all your heart.   stop focusing on trying to please others or doing the right thing, or being right, or even keeping it all together… let it all fall apart!    all those other things,  they are just distractions,  just love him back… and let me know how much it changes your life…

Seriously let me know…  at  jasonthebaldguy@gmail.com

Tags: Art, dad, doing the right thing, drugs, God, Kids, Love, porn, pornography, sin, spirit, spouse

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Waiver of Parental Rights

// August 31st, 2009 // 6 Comments » // My Confessions, My Life

I am thinking tonight about Abraham, walking up the hill to sacrifice his firstborn son, his only heir. These days God doesn’t just stop by for a visit and start up the conversation “I need you to make a sacrifice for me”, there are no stone altars, or rams caught in the thicket in the nick of time. There are lawyers and loafers, children and adults, men, and women, all in some way seeking their own interests. These days the issues are clouded and principals are less important. Being right, or winning, or out maneuvering your opponent is more important. These days if you do something wrong, just be sure you file the paperwork right and everything will be easy like butter. What you don’t say is more important than what you do say, and how you don’t say it is even more important! It is not doing the right thing but looking like you are doing the right thing while you are cashing out on someone else’s misfortune.

As I looked at the “waiver of parental rights” affidavit that old feeling came over me… the cold clammy fingers of fear and dread gripped over my heart squeezing it until my throat felt like I was swallowing a baseball. “It has come to this…” I breathed. There are really no words to express the feeling of being asked to sign a piece of paper that legally divorces you from your own child. The reality is that there are no words for these types of things at all… How horrible of a parent do you have to be for such a document to be necessary? Where is the rope that you grab to keep you from falling further down the nightmarish rabbit hole, where big is little and up is down? Perspective is all a matter of reality suddenly… the reality is that you have to make a choice… you have to think about “that which you would never willingly conceive of in your mind”… I am a man of reason, so how do you list your priorities and mark them off until you reach a reasonable decision? How… How do you even think about trying to choose?

The phone rings…he says it is what he wants, I will still be his dad… just not on paper.
I look at the paper… everyone says… fight! and win! God is for you! but the many years of seemingly good choices are dulled by a foggy perception…It is like looking back on a mine field where I stepped on every single mine and somehow survived. How can any choice be a good choice once you make the choice to walk through a minefield? I put my hand up to the past and turn away… “no” I cannot go there… others claim to remember it better than I do… and different… so different that I doubt myself… I wonder how my heart can be so sincere and yet so faulty… as faulty as my memory? The phone rings… he has questions… why I made choices… why I didn’t make others… I honestly don’t know… The questions are perfect and concise…. the type that don’t need answers… just delivery.

I sit… I sign. I sign the “waiver of parental rights” I go see a notary and look for the judgement on his face as he notarizes the “waiver of parental rights” I go to the post office and the postal worker drags the “waiver of parental rights” out of my resistant hand with a quizzical look. As the envelope leaves my hand my mind hears the deafening chorus of the abandoned as they scream at me of the fear of the unknown. I smile at the postal worker like a victim with a gun in his back as I swipe my card to pay the postage for the “waiver of parental rights”

The phone rings… people say… “you did the right thing” some of them are the same people that said “fight and win!” I think about all the times I have ignored the council of “Job’s Friends” thinking to have done the right thing, only to be found here apparently winning their approval… I value it little.. I value it less than little. I close my eyes to imagine a simpler time when life was catching toads and building forts.

(This post is a very real and honest post that describes the events surrounding the day that I actually did sign a “waiver of parental rights” for my first born son Collin James Carroll. My Ex-wife continues to actively read this blog and pass along my confessions that are meant for your encouragement as information that causes him to question my character and loyalty to him. My reasons for this post are not for the sake of drama, or sympathy, or counsel. I am simply hoping that through this post that you gain an insight and understanding possibly an empathy for those that are facing similar issues in life.)

Tags: Art, blog, choice, choices, dad, doing the right thing, dread, fear, friends, God, perception, perspective, sacrifice, sin, the past

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Homesick

// June 21st, 2009 // 3 Comments » // My Confessions, My Life, My Thoughts

Today was Fathers day, and all the days leading up to Fathers day my thoughts have wandered to thinking about my Dad, It has been over 2 years since I have seen him. I think about how my brother and I – his two oldest sons-  have moved away to start a life of our own. We are busy with our families, our careers, our lives… I see pictures of my new brother-in-laws and my youngest brother where my pictures used to be… helping, building, being sons. being good sons!  while I love my brother-in-laws as much as any brother, a part of me feels like I should be there helping, being a son, watching my parents grow older, surrounded by neices and nephews…  But I am over 14 hours away.

The older I get the more value I place on family and relationships, and the less I value all the stuff that gets in the way of family- and relationships.   So today I am homesick,  wishing I could hop in the car and drive across town and hang out with my dad on the front porch and really spend some time… because love is not calling once a year to say happy Fathers Day,  It is so…. so much more.

Happy Fathers Day Dad…

Your Bald Sappy Son!

Tags: Art, brother, dad, Family, Love, My Thoughts, neices and nephews, relationships, sin, Thoughts

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The Wilderness

// May 12th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // My Life, My Thoughts

So many people are having “wilderness” experiences it has almost become a fad in christianity!   It seems every day I hear of some person or other describing their own “wilderness”.  It is not so much that I doubt, far be it from me to judge someones personal experience; however, my tendency is to purposely avoid whatever “The Herd” is doing.  Call me an Individualist, or whatever, but I have often avoided running off a cliff with “the herd” by steering clear of religious fads.  It does get tiring though, always questioning whether something is real or fabricated, whether I am really feeling something or caving in to peer pressure.  Like right now.

I am having a hard time lately… my well intentioned segment here “Diary of a Deadbeat Dad” suffered a serious hemorrhage of comments and spun out of control. While I would love to repost the entire segment of posts, I struggle with frustrations, and worry that others would misunderstand my motives.  The entire segment was originally meant to communicate the struggles of a daddy that has absoloutely no idea how to communicate with his son.  My hope was that this would encourage other daddys to start a journal or something similar.. just to get out the frustration and pain.  To my shame,  The entire segment became an out and out war zone and all I could do was remove the posts.  Soon after removing the posts, I received paperwork from my ex-wife’s lawyer providing me an affidavit to surrender my parental rights.  It could not have been a darker time for me… I talked with my son several times about the consequences of signing the affidavit. Each time he assured me that he understood and that he still wanted me to sign the document.  I went before my Father God so many times for guidance, and every time he delivered what I needed.  Ultimately the document was signed,  and I have voluntarily given up my legal rights to my son.

You may judge me… but I have learned it is a small thing to be judged by men. Not to say that such an action does not carry a heavy price, the price is greater than many can imagine and the consequences could be incalculable. But hard choices are hard for a reason, and ultimately we discover that God is greater than our choices.  I can say that it is my strongest desire to run away and hide, or do the “wilderness getaway vacation” I would like nothing better than to go eat worms right now… but with the “wilderness fad” going so strong I am somewhat hesitant to jump on the bandwagon.

The wilderness is harsh, barren, and unfriendly, but it is a passive unfriendliness. The wilderness does not try to destroy you, it just exists, and you must accept the wilderness as it is and learn to respect it.

I think that many choose “the wilderness” because the other option; “the battlefield” is much less fun.

The battlefield is like the wilderness, in that it is  harsh, barren, and unfriendly, there is no respect, the battlefield is a cemetery , and the reward of passivity is a gravestone. As much as I would like to run off to the wilderness… The battlefield is where I belong, bringing principalities, and powers under the dominion of the Prince of Peace. Ephesians 6:12

I refuse to let the fleeting mirage of earthly existence or the struggles of my own humanity distract me.

I have no desire to minimise the struggle of those who are truly in the midst of a wilderness experience;  But if you are simply “draft dodging”  then quit whining about your wilderness experience, and join the ranks of warriors that will gladly sacrifice everything for the sake of “The Kingdom”

Tags: Art, choice, choices, christian, Christianity, consequence, consequences, dad, dead beat dad, depression

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Unplugged Takes Shape, Flexing My Muscles With WordPress

// April 19th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // My Life

Well even though I am an IT Guy there are a few things I avoid… one of them being webdesign, which is initially why when I decided to blog I chose blogger as my platform. Over the past few months I have been urged by many fellow bloggers to move to wordpress. I have to admit, I was concerned about moving the blog to a completely different platform and ruining what was already working fine. The only thing that was left was to try out wordpress and see if it was what everyone was making it out to be.. so I headed over to GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans
and decided to take a look. One of the cool things about GoDaddy.com is that they provide a 1-click install of WordPress on your domain and they give you some free advertising on Facebook, so for less than a hundred bucks I had a domain name, and a hosting plan, free advertising, and my blog was practically set up for me! I easily found templates and plugins that suited my needs and WOW! what a selection! With a little bit of hard work and minimal webdesign on my part I had a pretty snazzy blog up in no time.

There are some big changes here on Unplugged! The archives are in a word… Awesome! take a look and see for yourself on the “Archive” Tab. There is also tons of ways to get to my older posts. The biggest struggle is deciding what to leave out because there are so many cool features… so explore and let me know what you like! and thanks for reading and commenting on my articles. My primary goal at unplugged is to challenge you to be authentic, and transparent, and free from all the misconceptions that we easily accept as truth these days.

Tags: Art, blog, dad, facebook, God, misconceptions, moving, sin, the past, truth, unplugged, Wordpress

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CauseAidan…. (Autism and acceptance)

// March 28th, 2009 // 9 Comments » // My Life

Aidan

Aidan

I recently realized that in all of my blogging I was unintentionally leaving out an enormous chunk of my life, my family. The subject of my family is rich with so many moments of joy, fascination, revelation, exasperation..the list goes on… all of these experiences are often the motivation for the things that I write.

I was meant to be a daddy. From an early age, I wanted children of my own, to hold and hug and put to bed at night… there is nothing in the world like looking into the eyes of your children and seeing the unwavering trust and love of a heart that is fully devoted to you. It is the blessing of being a father.

Aidan my 6 year old is Autistic, he is the most perfect child you can ask for… he is perfectly loving… perfectly adorable… and perfectly frustrating! Autism spans a wide range of symptoms that are too numerous to name and vary from child to child. From about the age of 7 months Aidan began to show signs of delayed development… and has consistently fallen further and further behind the development curve over the past 5 years. He has struggled with communication and sensory issues and has yet to gain more than a few pounds per year… topping out at 32 pounds this year, the size of a healthy three year old.

We coined a phrase not long back that effectively captures the spirit of things in our household… “CauseAidan…” It seems odd at first look… I admit… but try it on just a little. “Honey where is the stack of CD’s that I set here a minute ago?” the answer… ” I have no idea! I am sure they are destroyed somewhere CauseAidan….” I think you get the idea… Lots of things happen Cause’Aidan!

Well recently Aidan received the official diagnosis of ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) which hopefully opens up several opportunities to connect with foundations that can give us tools to learn more about Autism and be prepared for the dangers ahead… and beleive me there are dangers! In just reading through a few Autism websites they are full of stories about Autistic children wandering off and getting lost… leaving the house at night while everyone is asleep.. Crazy stuff… we have to give information to the police now so that “when” Aidan wanders off they can more efficiently find him quickly…I am getting stressed out just thinking about it now!

There are so many things to do… we currently rent so we must soon buy a house that we can modify so that he has a room that is a “safe place” for him and to properly protect him from wandering off… we also want to purchase a service dog that will stay with him and will assist him in making good choices, and prevent him from wandering off.. he needs special toys that help him learn… and we need special classes just to keep up with him and deal with discipline and emotional issues… the amount of things to do and information to absorb is absoulutely staggering! to complicate things the costs of these things are far in excess of what my salary can provide… so we must depend on the provision of God… through hard work and determination and faith we know that Aidan will have what he needs. Our lives are rich with unique experiences and challenges… CauseAidan!

Jason Carroll

Jason the bald guy
jasonthebaldguy.com

Tags: anger, Art, Autism, beleive, blog, choice, choices, dad, dog, Faith, Family, God, Love, sin, spirit, stress, the past

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