Truth and Grace Above All Else

Up above it all In my high school years I went to more camps then Yogi Bear in search of a picnic basket. These were not just camp grounds with smelly toilets and tents though, these were camp grounds with high ropes courses, mountain biking, giant swings, lakes and a ton of other fun activities. It was a paradise for me to test my limits and face my fears head on. I only had a few fears in my teenage years: The fear of not impressing the lady folk, the fear of accepting a dare that I really shouldn't have and the fear of heights. Of all of those fears, the last one could stop me in my tracks. I didn't become an ice cube of fear or anything, but I had an extremely difficult time getting past the fact that I could fall to my death at any second. I was not the kind of kid to pass up an awesome opportunity though. If I did, I knew I would regret it for a very long time. So instead of saying no, I said yes. Even if it freaked me out.  I woke up in my bunk to the smell ...

Boom When I was younger, I was obsessed with army men, tanks and things that went boom. I loved the Fourth of July. Me and my brother would walk almost a mile one way to the only gas station in our town to buy fireworks with change we had collected. Once I had used up most of the change I had collected, I would use my money from doing chores around the house. I didn't understand the concept of throwing away my money back then, but I think when you are eight to twelve years old, you don't really care about the value of money, you just care how much it can buy you. A dollar could buy me five packs of those snapper things that you throw on the ground and they make a sharp pop. Me and my brother would have competitions to see how many of these snappers we could throw in one handful in order to get the coolest noise off the surface of our driveway. I think we set an unofficial record of five boxes in one handful. It was cool for the second that it lasted for all of them to hit ...

The sickness When I was younger my parents would often tell me and my brother that we needed to go outside when it was summer time and enjoy the weather instead of playing video games all day. Most often times when me and my brother would go outside, we would pick up the sandy dirt clumps that often could be found in farmers fields that lay fallow and would act like they were grenades. We would lay on the ground in a grassy field and toss them over our heads into the dry field. Just like the guys in the movies did when they were in a bunker fighting off an enemy. The obvious sound effects associated with war movies were obligatory to tossing one of these dirt ball grenades. Some times if we got really bored with that we would start throwing them at each other to see who could take the most dirt grenades to the shirt or pants without mom noticing where we had been.  When winter time came around the same sort of scene unfolded, only this time, we had forts of snow and an alm...

What is that ahead? I live in a small town which contains a gas station, a Co-Op, a Post office, a golf course and two bars. Needless to say, there is not much to do there. This forces me to trek across the county line to a larger city that I have grown very fond of in the past eighteen years. It has coffee shops, restaurants, entertainment, my home church and many other things that make it a place I enjoy spending my time. This town is located about twenty minutes from my house and I feel like could have worn a path into the highway between my home and there by now if they did not repave the road.  Most often times I space out during the seemingly mandatory drive to and from my home. I might listen to music or enjoy the silence, but for the most part nothing exciting happens going to and fro. Sometimes when I am driving home in the dark I hope to see a massive meteorite plummet to the earth right in front of me just to I can say I was there to witness it, but sadly that has...

Inside or out? When I was younger I used to have friends that lived in my small farm town in rural Indiana. My town was one of those that no one outside of a forty-five mile radius even knew about. So, needless to say, it was and is to this day very small. Being a small farming community, almost everyone knew each other and everyone's kids would go to the local playground and mess around on the rickety, rusty and ramshackle playground equipment. If someone brought a basketball that was a huge plus! Then you could actually use the basketball court with grass growing through the cracks of the cement. Be careful though, there was no padding on the pole that held the hoop with no net in place.  Every once in awhile you and your friends would end up at this conspicuous place we called a playground. You would get to sit on the picnic tables under the pavilion and talk for hours about baseball and bottle rockets. Typically the only thing that drove us out of this watering hole was ...