chuck norris

I originally posted this over the weekend, but it is much more appropriate for a Monday morning.

What is WRONG with me?  I can’t read this stuff and not laugh.

After returning from World War 2 unscathed, Bob Dole was congratulated by Chuck Norris with a handshake. The rest is history.

Chuck Norris will never have a heart attack. His heart isn’t nearly foolish enough to attack him. 

Only Chuck Norris can prevent forest fires. 

Chuck Norris does not sleep.  He waits. 

Chuck Norris is not Irish. His hair is soaked in the blood of his victims.  

They say curiosity killed the cat. This is false. Chuck Norris killed the cat. Every single one of them.  

Chuck Norris crossed the road. No one has ever dared question his motives.  

One time, at band camp, Chuck Norris ate a percussionist.  

“Brokeback Mountain” is not just a movie. It’s also what Chuck Norris calls the pile of dead ninjas in his front yard.  

Chuck Norris is not Politically Correct. He is just Correct. Always.  

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.  

Chuck Norris once bet NASA he could survive re-entry without a spacesuit. On July 19th, 1999, a naked Chuck Norris re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, streaking over 14 states and reaching a temperature of 3000 degrees. An embarrassed NASA publically claimed it was a meteor, and still owes him a beer.  

When Chuck Norris falls in water, Chuck Norris doesn’t get wet. Water gets Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris CAN believe it’s not butter.

Chuck Norris invented black. In fact, he invented the entire spectrum of visible light. Except pink. Tom Cruise invented pink.  

Chuck Norris can drink an entire gallon of EGG NOG in thirty-seven seconds.  

The original draft of The Lord of the Rings featured Chuck Norris instead of Frodo Baggins. It was only 5 pages long, as Chuck roundhouse-kicked Sauron’s ass halfway through the first chapter.   

Along with his black belt, Chuck Norris often chooses to wear brown shoes. No one has DARED call him on it. Ever.  

They were going to release a Chuck Norris edition of Clue, but the answer always turns out to be “Chuck Norris. In The Library. With a Roundhouse Kick.”  

If at first you don’t succeed, you’re not Chuck Norris.  

Chuck Norris shot the sheriff, but he round house kicked the deputy.  

When Chuck Norris plays Oregon Trail, his family does not die from cholera or dysentery, but rather, roundhouse kicks to the face. He also requires no wagon, since he carries the oxen, axels, and buffalo meat on his back. He always makes it to Oregon before you.  

Chuck Norris once went skydiving, but promised never to do it again. One Grand Canyon is enough. 

www.chucknorrisfacts.com

quick update

The surgeries went well, and there were no surprises (the surgeon said he wasn’t fully sure what they were going to be dealing with until they did surgery).  All is well.  I am relieved.  I am a happy camper.  The dreaded part is over, now we get to focus on getting her better (and forcing her to rest!)

Mom is pretty out of it, but in good spirits when she’s coherent (which is only for about 10-15 seconds at a time).  It’s pretty amusing to hand someone jello, only to have them fall asleep with it in their hands before they’ve even taken a bite.  I swear, she’s like 10-Second Tom.  In a cute way.

Other than that, she’s doing okay.  She may even come home from the hospital tomorrow.

Thanks for the prayers.  I’m off to bed.

request

hi friends –

My mom is going in for surgery early in the morning for a hysterectomy, etc.  I’d really appreciate your prayers for her as she undergoes the surgery and for a quick recovery (estimated time: six weeks).

Mom was in the hospital three times last year and to be quite honest, it scared the crap out of me.  Although I’ve made a decision to really attempt not to worry, this has been a real challenge for me.  I’ve laid awake several nights, when the practicalities of “of course she’ll be fine” seem much more than a dawn away.  A week and a half ago I was sitting in my cubicle quickly wiping tears away because the words to Death Cab’s “What Sarah Said” hit me really hard.  It’s just been a long month and I will be so glad when the surgery’s done and she’s back home being grouchy at us because she’s restricted and bored.  I can’t wait, because at least then it’s all over.  I am more nervous right now than when I went in at 19 to have a tumor removed.  It’s so much more difficult to watch someone you love get wheeled by a stranger through those double doors, away and out of sight.  I would much rather go through those doors, and it’s not because I’m braver or any such nonsense: I would rather go because in many ways, it hurts less.

On a much much much smaller note, I’d appreciate your prayers for me as well.  It’s nothing major, I am just plain worn out.  Someone dropped some major balls at work and I had some real frustrating messes to deal with (translation: I had to get feisty to get things moving, which I hate); all’s fine now and we’re finally moving forward, but it sapped me of a lot of time and energy that really needed to be devoted elsewhere, such as to the actual daily responsibilities of my job.  I have major in-house meetings at work this week, I have clients flying in from San Jose early next week, and not enough time to prepare for it all.  I’ve been putting in long hours, only to come in the next morning and be fairly overwhelmed all over again.  And uh, yeah… we’re going to need you to come in Saturday…

It’ll all be over in a week or so and I’ll be able to rest — this job just has seasons like that, and most times it’s kind of a crazy sort of fun — but right now, there’s a double load on my plate and I need a lot more energy than I have.  I’m just beat. 

Coffee.  Loads and loads of coffee.  Starbucks, tomorrow you will be my best friend.  None of that hospital-crappy-excuse-for-a-mocha coffee.  The real stuff.

Mom goes in at 7 am, and the surgery is expected to last about 2 1/2 hours.  Dad and I will be at the hospital most of the day, except when I’ll leave to be with Grandma.  Again, I really ask for and appreciate your prayers.  Thanks, dear ones.

S

super bowl!

It is 8:03 pm Pacific Time, and I am still at work (and will most likely be so for quite a while longer).  Ugh.  I needed a break, so what better thing to do than post pics?

We had a lovely pre-super-bowl-game-party with the fam on Sunday, complete with food-induced comas.  They play football; we get fat.

Yes, in case you were wondering, I attempted the Seahawks logo in frosting…

Great game, great outcome.  The Seahawks.  Playing in the Super Bowl.  Of all craziness.

I am still in awe.

 

Nog Bong 2006

There are moments in life when you look at someone you dearly love, and suddenly realize, “Damn, you’re cool.”

Ladies and Gents, my brother won the Better than Second (AKA First Place) Trophy in the Webb’s second annual Nog Bong Event.  That’s him, in the middle.  What a guy.

This year’s fierce competition:

The scorecard:

And Kevin, our proud winner.  It turns out that, among other super-hero powers, my brother can stomach more egg nog at a time than anyone else on the planet.  Or at least in the immediate vicinity.

You can see the video here (quite funny actually, sync’d perfectly in time with music).

Way to uphold that little value I like to call Rich Family Pride, Kevo.  You are a source of inspiration to us all.  I thought that Pizza Hut Binge 1999 was impressive, but I stand corrected.

(Sorry you puked first, Chelsie.  At least you got First Puker Trophy).

2: where humanity meets grace

I wrote that church is no different than the rest of the world, that we can expect no different. 

In a sense, that’s true.  Anywhere we see human beings gathered, it follows that we see frailty.  Because the one thing we’re all truly afraid of is being exposed in the depths of our brokenness and depravity, we go to long and desperate lengths to defend ourselves — to defend an image of our ideal self.  Distracted by the carefully-crafted words we are speaking, by the face we’re busy creating and presenting, we have a sad propensity to never really hear one another; to never truly see each other as we are.  In the midst of all this, we often wound each other to protect these fragile faces; we topple someone else’s wall before people see the cracks in our own.

We humans write such bad stories for ourselves.

I’d like to say it’s different in the church, but it’s not so.  We have not yet become… we are becoming.  This is where the frustrating, gut-wrenching agony lies.  As my friend Josh always liked to say, we live in the tension of the not-yet.  A bunch of ragged, street-starved orphans, we have been welcomed and accepted into God’s family, set before a lavish feast of the deepest love and grace, but this does not mean that we necessarily know how to act at the table.  We jostle for position, unaware that there is room for all, and that there’s not a bad seat in the place.  We grab and snatch at as much as we can as fast as we can, wrestling and fighting each other for table scraps, not understanding that what’s placed before us is in endless supply.  The church has not yet arrived, not by any stretch of the imagination.

The not-yet is a hard place to live.  It’s hard to trust that things will ever come out right in the end. 

As any writer will tell you, however, the not-yet is a most vital element of any story.  The process of becoming is what makes the story worth the telling, and the more twists and turns along the way, the better.  Remove the tension, and there is no story.  Remove the mess, and there’s nothing to tell. 

I believe that God is telling a story with my life, just as he is telling a story with your own.  The moments of tension, the seasons of our not-yet are where his character, his gracious nature, is revealed.  The foggy doubt of our not-yet is where, at the end of our own resources, we meet God once again as we first did — slightly scuffed up and bedraggled, fully aware of our own weakness, conscious of our need for a strength beyond our own.  There is no pretending in the midst of the not-yet, no confident fascade, no bold bravado.  Just a lostness, and a need, and a vague sense of where to take that need. 

And God loves it.  Listen to Jesus’ words:

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.  With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”

“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you.  Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are — no more, no less.  That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.”

The tension of the not-yet drives us to a place where these at-first-glance-completely-ridiculous words become true in the deepest and realest sense possible.  I have found it to be a dark and painful place; a place I would never choose to travel of my own accord.  It is unsure, it is unstable.  It is, more than anything, infinitely lonely.

It is the place I meet God.

The disappointment I experienced this past year, the death of some hopes and dreams, the loss of relationship with someone I greatly admired and aspired to please — all of these were things that caused me to question my life and my faith in ways I never had before.  There was a stripping down, a stripping away of so many things that kept me from meeting God in that humbled and human state.  Many of my illusions, some long-carried, were torn from me, and it felt at times as though my heart would be torn away right along with them.  For many months I allowed the pain not to draw me closer to God, but to embitter me.  My tender heart grew hard and remained that way for several months. 

Wonder why I went silent for a while?  Bitter hearts aren’t moved to words by sunsets and conversations and laughter.  They have nothing to say.

Just a few days ago, pattering around in my little house, thinking of what I wrote the other day and picking up laundry of all things, it finally occurred to me: in my refusal to forgive, I was screaming at God THE STORY YOU’RE WRITING FOR ME ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH!!  He hadn’t protected me enough; he wasn’t doing right by me.  No good end could possibly justify this.  In refusing to relinquish control of the pen, I wasn’t trusting his ability to bring an eventual resolution to the tension, to bring healing from the brokenness and dawn out of dark.  In refusing to understand and accept someone else’s state of imperfection and still-becoming in their own God-story, in denying grace and insisting on standing up for ME — what I deserved and what I should’ve gotten and how so-and-so should’ve known better (fighting once again for table scraps) — I was effectively denying God his sovereign authorship.  I was telling him, Sure, write my story, but don’t you dare allow tension or pain or heartache in the telling. I was telling him, in essence, that I know better than he what my journey should and should not include.

This thought scared me and humbled me and moved my heart in ways that nine months of alternately sulking and pitying myself and steeling myself against the hurt and willing myself to be over it could not do.

I met God there in that place, and found that suddenly I had nothing left to defend, no forgiveness to deny.  I don’t need that approval any longer, but neither do I feel any need to strike back or get my due.  God is writing my story; I will leave it to him.

It is the very act of giving grace that allows us to receive it and understand it.  This community we call the church is where we learn how.  It is not our lack of humanness and screw-ups that defines the church — it is our response to it.  We are, of course, no different in our abilities to wound each other and be stupid and be unfeeling and so misunderstood by each other.  Some of us discover this first truth and go no further, but if we can just stick it out with God’s help, there is a beautiful truth that lies beyond: In learning to submit to God’s authorship and in understanding that we are mid-story — both in our own lives and in other’s lives — we allow grace to be expressed.  Our own individual stories are ultimately God’s story.  To understand this is to live at peace.

In every word, every sentence, every page, we are the very telling of God’s story, living and breathing testimony of the gospel.  Even in our imperfection, we are God’s story.  Especially in our imperfection, as we are proof positive that God loves screw-ups and failures and sinners, and that no story is beyond redemption.  This collective work-in-progress is the ragged beauty that is the church. 

The not-yet will not last always.  The story of the church does not end with what she is, but with what she will become.  Hope for her is, in reality, hope for myself.

your own journey

Where humanity meets vulnerability, part 2 – coming soon.  Tonight, if possible.

But in the meantime: I read this passage this morning and it speaks to why we share our stories… and why we need to hear each others’.

What I propose to do now is try listening to my life as a whole, or at least to certain key moments… for whatever of meaning, of holiness, of God, there may be in it to hear.  My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.

For the reader, I suppose, it is like looking through someone else’s photograph album.  What holds you, if nothing else, is the possibility that somewhere among all those shots of people you never knew and places you never saw, you may come across something or someone you recognize.  In fact — for more curious things have happened — even in a stranger’s album, there is always the possibility that as the pages flip by, on one of the them you may even catch a glimpse of yourself.  Even if both of those fail, there is still a third possibility which is perhaps the happiest of them all, and this is that once I have put away my album for good, you may in the privacy of the heart take out the album of your own life and search it for the people and places you have loved and learned from yourself, and for those moments in the past — many of them half forgotten — through which you glimpsed, however dimly and fleetingly, the sacredness of your own journey.

-Frederick Buechner

the fours

First:

The Seahawks?  A game away from the SuperBowl?  And people say miracles don’t happen anymore.

Thank you, Matt Hasselbeck and Co., for giving me the first reason to watch a game with my Dad in about ten years.

***

And now, thanks to JEM, I give you the fours:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:
1. Legal Secretary
2. Nanny
3. New Accounts/Loan Officer
4. Poucher (As a starving college student, I packaged bags of dry formula containing E. Coli antibiotic for baby cows at a farming factory.  No kidding).

Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. Office Space
2. Love Actually
3. You’ve Got Mail
4. Swingers

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. The Office (best show ever.  I’m not kidding)
2. 24 (just recently)
3. The Daily Show
4. Simpsons repeats

Four places you have been on vacation:
1. Maui
2. Mazatlan, Mexico
3. Cayman Islands
4. Lake Cushman, WA

Four websites you visit daily:
1. Guh-mail
2. Google
3. McSweeneys.Net
4. Blogs: Kevin Rich, Kevin Stills, Myles Werntz

Four of your favorite foods:
1. Steak
2. Mashed Potatoes
3. Oriental Chicken Salad at Applebees
4. Chicken Marsala

Four things you would change about your house:
1. INSULATION!
2. A bit more room for bookshelves/seating.
3. There’d be a hammock in the yard (this will change, come summer)
4. Pool Boy.  Just kidding.

Four favorite authors:
1. Anne Lamott
2. Brennan Manning
3. Frederick Buechner
4. Philip Yancey
5. David Sedaris

I hereby tag:
1. O’Rich
2. Jules
3. The Twins Webb
4. Anyone else who’s bored and finds themselves needing something pointless to do…

where humanity meets vulnerability, part 1

Cathartic as writing about these last several months would be for me, I had no idea it would strike so deep a chord in others.  Wow.  Much thanks to those of you who took a moment to tell your story, or to encourage me in my own.  Some of you wrote things to the effect of “I know it probably doesn’t help much to hear this, but ___________.”  Well, it did help.  So thank you.

This post is the work of two or three days… so I’m sorry about the length.  Anyway, at least you’ve been warned.  Here’s what’s been bouncing around in my head about the matter:

Human Being = fallible.  Human Being = imperfect.  Human being = messed up.

And yet, I find myself surprised at this: Human Being + Human Being + Human Being + Human Being (and so on) = fallible, imperfect, messed up People.

Actually, scratch that.  I thought that somehow Human Being + Human Being + Human Being + Human Being x Church = Something Somehow Different.

I was wrong.

It’s not so much that I expected perfection.  None of us expect that out of the people we share community with.  We don’t.  We just hate it when another person’s shortcoming happens to perfectly correspond with our vulnerability.

It’s true.  We each have our buttons — areas of raw, open vulnerability.  These are the areas of our hearts that refuse to heal easily once wounded, for many reasons (most of these reasons wrapped up in the intricacies of our own individual stories).  I promise you, ask anyone about the details of their wounds in the church and 99% of the time, it will relay back to one of these buttons if you dig a little deeper. 

Mine was a need for approval, especially from church leader types.  Someone else’s button is servant syndrome — a lack of ability to say “no,” even when it’s the healthiest possible thing they could possibly say.  Another’s button is fear of failure.  Or sensitivity to harsh words.  Or putting others on a pedestal.  Or high hopes toward a certain calling.  Insecurity.  Loneliness.  Perfectionism.  Pride.  Low self-worth.  Whatever.  Name a button.      

We don’t wear these things on our sleeves, of course.  They lie hidden and for long periods of time, probably all is well.  However, at some point in our involvement with church community, inevitably someone pushes one of those buttons.  Whether by offense, or neglect, or sheer accident, at some point in our journey there is (or there will be) a fantastic collision between a hurtful action and your deepest vulnerability.  And it hurts like hell.

The thing is, I could be describing any sort of hurt.  I could be describing any situation in life.  These moments happen to everyone, wherever there are groups of people, whether it’s a church or a family or an office.  We all know that life can give some hard knocks.  And that sometimes people are pretty damn adept at it as well.

What kills us when it comes to getting bumped and bruised in a church is the element of shock and surprise.  We expect that it would be different.  We feel intrinsically that it should be different.  Being deeply disappointed by someone in a church community feels like getting sucker-punched.  You simply never saw it coming.  You’d left your defenses at the door.  You trusted early.

Ouch.

Like I said, as I look at my story, my button has almost always been need for approval.  The most painful moments of my life are tied to this need, and to the denial of it.

[Before I go further, let me make sure I say this: I am deeply loved by my family and deeply blessed by the people God chose to give me by flesh and blood connection... but it took me a long time (a good chunk of my growing-up years) to grasp the fact that they love me unconditionally.  I was a good kid -- smart, talented -- and worked very hard to maintain good reasons for being loved.  It took some failures (big ones!) for me to understand that I am loved as-is... and forever.  That I don't have to earn my way into it.  That I never did.  This realization came late, but it came with such a sweetness.  We have grown into each other, and I find great satisfaction and joy in the imperfect beauty that is my family.

My family shows me a glimpse of how God loves me.  They have rained down grace and understanding and acceptance on me when I had no right to expect any and certainly deserved none.  I am more "me" with those three people than with any others.  I forget myself when I am with them, and that is among the greatest senses of peace and relief that life affords me.  To lose myself in laughter, or in tears, or occasionally in an angry torrent -- and for once not worry about how I'm coming off... there's nothing like it.]

When I look back at my story, I’ve been dealt some decent-sized disappointments from church folk in my 25-year experience.  If I thought very long about it, I could list them.  There are the classics (senior pastor has affair) and the not-so-classics (girls’ group leader runs off with her girlfriend and ditches husband and family; or, pastor friend murders wife and covers it up for two years… you’re friends before and after her death and have no idea until it hits the papers)… but as much as those were difficult (especially Dawn’s murder), they didn’t cause the same degree of damage as disappointments that related directly to Rejection. 

These were difficult times, but they weren’t that perfect collision I spoke of above.

When that button is pushed, when that collision occurs, it’s different.  It hurts deeper, it hurts longer, it hurts absolutely.  And things that other disappointments and challenges couldn’t topple are now shaking with ever-growing intensity.  Once-sure things like Calling and Commitment and even Faith grow pretty wobbly.  Your own feet grow pretty shaky.  Some mornings, just looking in the mirror is painful.  You wonder who you’re looking at, where the good Christian went.

I was ready to throw in the towel, quite frankly.  I love Jesus, but was growing ever more comfortable with no longer being a part of church community in any way. 

More frankly, I was ready to throw in the towel before I’d ever be ready to forgive.

I’ve been thinking a great deal over the past few days about what unforgiveness says about me… about what is says regarding God.  I’ve come to some conclusions and would like to share them, but my eyes are getting heavy, as are any eyes that have bravely read thus far, I’d imagine. 

I also talked earlier of how I was wrong to believe that Church is any different.  I was.  I was also right.  I’ll talk of that tomorrow, too.  Til then.

Thanks for letting me share this season. 

all is a gift

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes.  I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty.  I am trusting and suspicious.  I am honest and I still play games.  Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark.  In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.  As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes.  It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches.  For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is a gift.  All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.  While there is much we may have earned — our degree (snicker) and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night’s sleep — all this is possible because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love.  We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh.  We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt.  This and so much more is sheer gift; it is not reward for our faithfulness, our generous disposition, or our heroic life of prayer.  Even our fidelity is a gift.  “If we but turn to God, ” said St. Augustine, “that itself is a gift from God.” 

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”

–Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel