Welcome, To My Personal Requiem

I spent my weekend up in Michigan, much to my surprise, it was a change of plans considering the fact that I had originally planned the idea of driving down to Cincinnati to go to the New Port Aquarium. The sudden change of plans occurred as we were leaving the movie theatre. My uncle received a message from his cousin, whom he speaks to on occasion but has not seen in over five or so years. She did not know he had came to visit us from Chicago, and she stumbled across his FaceBook and sent him a Message stating he should come visit them soon. After briefly discussing the idea among the three of us ( my mom, my uncle and myself) we concluded that it would be nice to go visit them; so, it definitely was a last minute decision.

I was excited about going up to visit since the last time I saw them was last year around this time for Leo’s, their son, birthday party. Now Leo is a special little guy, not like any other three year old you have met before. He definitely has a very diverse family. His exquisite facial features immediately reveal his family’s ethnicity, half Mexican and half Chinese. He is as fluent as a three year can be in English, Spanish, and Laos with a few gibberish words in there. I’ve often found myself having some sort of deep conversation with him about his picture books and his purple bouncing ball. One could never get tired of spending time with Leo, at least that’s if you like kids. I am sure even if you don’t, Leo would be an exception.

Seeing Leo run to his kid-sized bookshelf and pick out a book that he wants me to read to him can’t stop my emotions and desire for a kid. Whoa! Did I just say that? Well, I am sure, as most of you know I am a very family oriented person. My family will always come first in my life. Now I don’t necessarily have my “own” family, by that I mean a kid and a wife, but I do have a younger brother and a mom that needs help every time I blink, (It gets annoying, trust me). But when I think about what I want in life more than anything it would be a family to call my own, a family to love and come home to, a family that can drive me crazy at the end of the day but I’ll still love them as much as I did the night before or that same morning. What ever happened to my desire to go out and travel the world, to party and have fun, to play video games until I fall asleep, to have endless hours to spend with friends? Well, to be quite honest, I don’t know. I do know, however, that all those moments I had in life were always fun but not necessarily what I always wanted.

I guess my “young adult life” or “teenage life” was just taken from me and starting from a young age I had always taken care of my direct family, my brother and my mom. My selfish ways were abruptly ripped from my life by the own hands of God and for that I thank Him. Now, as much as I love both of them very much it wasn’t necessarily the life I wanted, now as an adult I am ready to venture into my own world and live the life I want. However, there is a time for everything and I know now is not the time to do that. I do hope that within the next year or two I will be able to start the life I want to live by.  Still, my imagination runs wild with what the future holds for me. I constantly think about the way I will be raising my kid, playing with him, teaching him, putting him on time out, growing as a person as he grows as well. At the same time I begin thinking about what I will do to support such an important part of my life,  do I want a job that will make $120,000 a year but take away time from my family? Or will I want a job where I make half of that but with the available time to cherish my beloved family? Money doesn’t necessarily play an important part in my life. Sadly, money makes the world go ‘round, or so they say.

Well, I am still years away from that part of my life. Until then, I will focus on school and work and provide what I can for myself and just save enough to start my own life. After all, I am still a young man walking the path God has currently set me on. I know when the time comes I will be ready for what I desire and be able to provide enough for those certain desires. In end, I can’t stop and tell myself I am crazy for such thoughts. Now, someone needs to knock some sense into me. Until then, I will have wonderful little cousins such as Leo and Giovanni to learn from. Life is simply an education available to everybody. Depending what you make of it, to me, life’s education is more rich and fulfilling than that of an expensive private college.

With all this in mind I ask you this:

What would you consider being successful?

What are your goals and your desires? 

blah

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i wish this could be easy

It really seems like God has blessed my day today. If I were to describe my day in one sentence that would be it. My day is not half over yet but it seems like today is filled with great opportunities and people! He has once again reminded me how much control He has in my life. I’ve met a couple of great people today at work, of course patients of our clinic, but the conversations I had with them were just filled with guidance, advice, and encouragement for my path in education. As some of you are aware, I start school next week. I am ecstatic about, yet to be quite honest I am afraid and nervous; that’s a confession no one knows yet. It feels like the past two weeks God has been molding and preparing me for the road ahead of me. I have been able to let go of things in my life that I once spent too much time on. Such as games, movies, internet, etc. I can give up things so easily without having to deal at the thought of ‘losing’ them. I have felt like I’ve gained so much more by ‘losing’ such distractions in my life.

This past weekend was filled with many great gifts. My brother and I both purchased MacBook Pro’s, something I have been waiting years and years to buy. My mom finally made a good decision in purchasing a consumer friendly vehicle, my brother turned 20, and I found out that my dad will be back with us by the end of the year! I’ve been waiting for this news for a long time. I never knew when the day would be when we would all day be together as a family again, I never had a date but I finally received one. 

My brother and I have been talking about moving out and getting our own place once my parents can be financially stable together. Due to current situations he and I still stay with our Mom to help pay for expenses. It was a rough start but it seems everything seems to be fine, with flaws here and there. However, I guess I better start searching for my own place! It’s not that I don’t like living at home with my parents, on the contrary, I LOVE it. There are far less responsibilities and once Dad is back home I wouldn’t have to pay ANY bills which means I will be saving ALL my money! Hopefully I will be able to save enough to take a break off work and focus mainly on school, who knows! However, my current goal is just going back to school, growing closer to God, and growing stronger as a person! Lets hope this current path I am on continues going in the direction it is going.

Well, I am on my lunch and I should probably continue doing some research, so with that I bid you all farewell!

P.S. I Love You Pookie……..

I’ve been gone for a while! A lot of things going on right now. 

I’m getting ready for school, getting a second job as a translator, finding a new car for my mom, trying to improve my guitar playing, trying to make video promo’s for my church. 

What’s new!? 
I just purchased my MacBookPro! Am I excited?! YES! Considering that I can take this bad boy anywhere to go to my online classes I am pretty excited. Oh, we also found my mom a brand new car! It’s a 2003 Honda CRV and it is ballin’ (please excuse my ghettoness lol).

I’m hoping to write something tonight before I go to bed if I have a couple of minutes to spare. It seems life I’ve been been too busy trying to survive I haven’t had time to actually think.

Well….I’m still trying to swim through these rough water, but I know my path will be healed and directed!

Hope to write more soon! :)

Adios Amigos!  

These last three or four months have been a journey for me.  A journey in which I was walking blinded by the creations of man. I was alive without actually living. I was dying, without actually dying. I suppose I was stuck in a form of limbo. I was not aware of the infectious manifestations of idols that I had permitted to guide my life. I was in a coma, without really being in a coma. A part of my body and mind was aware of the disease I had allowed to dwell within my soul and I was watching as my life was slowly decomposed into the roots of history. I had permitted my ethics and morals to crumble into the ground such as an old archaic structure would with time. I was ‘living’ simply to exist, to survive, and nothing more. It was not until the end of January and the beginning of February that I began to see myself from an ‘out of body’ point of view. I was walking down a path with an unstructured future and I finally had enough of it. 

I made the decision of becoming more pure. Pure, in such a way that my mind would be clear and empty. I decided to rid myself of the things that polluted my mind; things such as video games, movies, music, facebook, were just a couple of pollutents that I wanted to dispose of. I recently stumbled across the story of Balaam’s Donkey. A story some of you, if interested, can find in the book of Numbers 22:21-38. It’s an interesting little story, unique in its own special way. This event revolves around Balaam, a man called upon by Balak to curse the people of Israel in return he would receive a great amount of wealth. The reason behind Balak’s action to call Balaam was caused by fear; because he was afraid of the growing strength of the Israelites he decided he wanted to place a curse upon that nation, but I will leave that out of my discussion for tonight. What I want to revolve my thoughts tonight is around Balaam’s Journey while arriving to Balak. His story reveals the deception of trying to maintain an outward appearance of spirituality over a corrupt hidden life. 

Now that last sentence is what I want to focus on tonight. It is what I want to reflect on through my Blog today. I want to focus on the deception of trying to maintain an outward appearance of spirituality over a corrupt hidden life. How can that apply to my life? How can it apply to yours? Well, to begin with I have felt like I have been trying to manage this “appearance” of my Christianity to people, when my heart knows I have been living a lie. How can this apply to you? Well, whether you believe in God or not I am sure most of you can relate to efforts spent on keeping up an appearances to cover up our real selves. Some of us have put on masks at one point in our lifes to simply try and survive through this life. However, at one point in our life who and what we are will somehow come to the surface that will destroy those masks, and quite possibly destroy us. 

In the story of Balaam’s Donkey we have our main character, Balaam, going off on a journey to meet with Balak. During three instances of his Journey, the donkey on which Balaam was riding on headed in a different direction than intended to. Now, our little friend here did not understand why  this was happening, such events slightly angered and annoyed him. Now I’m sure there are times when things in life don’t go as the way we had planned them to go, such instances result in us getting frustruated and angry. In my past, this was a great weakness of mine. I had dreams, I had plans, I had goals…Yet there were times where I felt like I was being pulled into a different direction. I was young and naive, my eyes had not been fully opened to see the direction had wanted me to walk towards to, so such emotions/reactions were expected. There are times where we become blinded by the desire for money, fame, or possessions. We allowed such things to manipulate our emotions. These objects had control of our lifes to the point where we let them control who and what we were. We let the clothes we wore define the type of person we were. We let the music we listened to define us as a musician. We would let other personal possesions or desire define us as people. Now, as I am typing this I am saying “we”, yet I am speaking for myself. I had let these things control me and define me. I had placed these masks over myself and had put much effort into keeping up an apperance as oppsed to finding an answer to the sin in my life. In Balaam’s case, it was the desire for money that drove him to Balak, it was his greed for wealth. 

What are the consequences in living a life behind masks? Well, growing up as a teenager I would act harshly against family by trying to correct who I really was. With time the problem eased, yet it did not mean it was fully gone. Now, in present time, such actions have led me by striking out at blamelss people who have simply tried to correct my ways. It was my pride that was embarassed that caused such actions. After readion Balaam’s Story I had realized that lashing out at others was simply a sign that there was something wrong with me. I had hurt loved ones by trying to head in the direction I wanted to go as opposed to the direction God wanted me to go. Some of you have lost those closest to your heart by letting your pride take over. What I ask of you that have not encountered such instances is to not let your own hurt pride lead to the hurt of others. We can avoid such incidents by facing ourselves and realizing that we are accepted and forgiven, knowing that we have the chance to start over from within should encourage those with lives lost or misled to start over. 

If there is anyone that reads this whom I have hurt or lashed out due to my pride being hurt, I ask you to forgive me. I thank you for your guidance and ask for you to give me another chance. If it is time you need than you have all the time of the world. Just know that I truly regret the things of my past. 

Now with my main point being spread across through words I must say that these past couple of weeks have been life changing for me. I have let go of many materialistic objects in my life that once held me back. Items such as video games and movies are now gone. Traded or sold for less than what they are worth. I continue to go through each day giving/selling/donating such items. You want to know the best part of it all? I am happy. It feels great knowing that I have been freed by such things. They no longer cover the person I really am through masks. I can now face the world by the person I truly am and not by the person they want me to be. 

I can only pray that you find it in your hearts to accept me, just as I accept each and every one of you.

With all that being said and done, I wish you all a good night.  

If you asked me how my day went I wouldn’t be able to recall it. I have not been feeling well for a couple days. I think I might have had a small fever at work. Over exhaustion perhaps? I felt dizzy, nauseas, and had a killer headache. 

But it’s all good. I am now writing this as I am laying down getting ready to get my eyes shut and dream….don’t expect anything deep or thought provoking tonight. Just check out the last couple blogs I’ve written.

Extrano tu presencia, mi vida…mi amor….
Los dias se pasan sin ti, las noches se largan sin ti, sin tu amor, sin tus besos.
Y no vivire sin tu amor, y no parare hasta tener tu amor y tus besos. Estoy viviendo sin vivir, estoy muriendo sin poder morir.

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