The Dreaded 'D' Word.

The dangers of World of Warcraft should be apparent upon log in. Messages flash across the bottom of the loading screen, "Be nice and maybe you will get invited back." "Take all things in moderation, even World of Warcraft." What they should have on there is, "Don't get close to people, because that's how drama happens."

I have seen several times, people who play a lot getting close to each other until there is an eruption and pain, then the guild splits. Sometimes the split can kill the guild, other times it is just losing a friend. What I realized is happening is the same thing that we deal with in high school. Drama. Sadly I see it happening all the time.

But I wonder why drama finds its way into things like World of Warcraft. Partly, and this may offend some and for that I am sorry, I think it is because the people who play are rather immature to a point. I am not saying they all are, nor am I saying that it is a bad thing. I think we all have a similar bit in us, we want the escape, the fun of a different world, just to play.

I really do think people should learn to play as adults as we did children. Not to the point where we start to mess things up, but to go out, with nothing more on our minds but to play. I think it would help creativity in the work place because our imagination is working again. It would give us more productive people and give us a lot more happier people than if we never played.

I think WoW gives us the chance to do that. And any game for that matter, whether you play Battlefield, Sims, those dumb, I mean fun, Facebook games, Halo, Gears, or CoD. It is a chance for us to let off some steam, clear our minds, and shoot things. It gets us out of the daily grind and into something that enables us to be kids again.

And people like us, we have a bit of immaturity in us. We feed it and play with it, all the while we play the games. So we find ourselves in places where we act like children. Most of us that play behind screens all the time, find it easy to be more of ourselves than we can in real life. So we begin to act immaturely.

This is not always the case, sometimes it has to do with wanting to fit in. Which is something I think everyone can recognize in life. We are always wanting to fit, be accepted and belong. So when things are going good, it is fine, but when things start to go bad, we find the drama begins again.

I have been part of the drama before. I have been participant, and second party to it. I have tried to fix it, and help move on from it. I don't really mind it until I take it out of the game. Then I turn to my friends to help me leave it behind. Drama isn't something people normally want, but as long as I can help make things better for people, I am OK with it.

There is one cure I can think of for drama. That is a relationship with Christ first. As I have mentioned before, if we let ourselves be open to God, keep our communication to God open, and remember he is always with us, then the drama doesn't get in the way so much. I know it seems like a stretch to say that. I can even hear you asking "How can God keep drama away?"

It is kinda of hard to explain, but I will try my best for you. Drama is created when you put your feelings, your thoughts, your heart even, before other people. You get these feelings in your heart and they take you over for a time. Then they find the object of your feelings, and begin to slowly tear a hole in your relationship. I have seen it happen first hand. Once the tear is complete, drama has been spewed all over the ground, and all you have left is a broken husk that was once your heart.

If we want to keep this from happening, We need to make sure God stays at the center of it all. If you put God first and foremost in your feelings, thoughts and heart, the result is an overflowing amount of love. Instead of twisting the feelings into black roots, they spring forth with a brilliance only God is able to shine. God will link your relationship with chains holding it together. And what you are left with is a bright and glorious beacon that is your heart.

It is really hard to do and I hope that all made sense to you. If God is your center, then everything in life will be easy. That's not to say you wont have hard times, you wont be rich, you wont be famous, but you will always have the strength to keep going. Foot after foot after foot, He will keep you moving forward. Ours is not a hope of flesh and blood, but a hope of a future with God. It is a better hope than all the hopes of this world.

I have recently seen drama effect my guild. There is more hurt from the aftermath and more pain. But God is working constantly through it all. He is moving people to where he wants them. Putting words of comfort and happiness where they are needed the most. Drama weakens the links between everyone in the guild. But weird thing is, when God has healed the wounds, what is left is stronger and better than before. Sometimes drama can act as pruning. The fruit of the guild will be sweeter and better than years before.

Seeing God work his will with the people involved, there is a song that comes to mind. I recently found this band through another band I listen to. The band is called Quiet Science. I have to say I love them, and I plan on talking more about how great music is but for now, I will say that their music wraps me up and holds me and aligns my brain to something God can use. They have a song called Cumulus. The part that reminds me of the drama and the aftermath that is slowly beginning to glow brighter is this.

"If everything was as it should be,
I'd be standing there with you,
Beneath cumulus clouds that,
Surround the full moon.
The only thing that comforts me,
When I watch my world breaking,
That in spite of my stillness,
God you're still moving.
Oh, God you're still moving."

Since God is still moving despite the drama we have caused, despite the depressions, the angers, the hatreds, and the silence we create, we are greeted with comfort, healing, peace and love. God is good and amazing being able to take our worst moments and make them bright, wonderful and glorious. In the end, drama is just another causality of God's greatness.



Sorry for no picture in this one, I just couldn't find anything that was just right for this blog.

Trust

I believe in a thing called Trust. Trust is something that, regardless who you are, needs to be earned. Now, trust cannot be earned without a little bit being given first. When you meet a new person, you give them your name, and some vague info about you. If they take your trust and add to it, they give you some back. And the cycle goes back and forth until the new person becomes a trusted friend.

But trust can very easily be broken, and sometimes to the point of not being able to be repaired. If trust breaks down past that tiny bit that we are first given, it will never be able to be added to and built up. Trust is gone, and so is any potential friendship you might have had.

I am very big on trust, as well as things that go along with it. Oddly enough I feel me going into being vulnerable with our friends. We talked in the past about being vulnerable with God, because that is the most important thing in becoming who we are meant to be, and who we want to be the most. Now lets look at being vulnerable to our friends and how it enables us to be who God wants us to be.

I have many friends that I work hard to be trustworthy to. I keep secrets better than priests. I know things about people that make me feel so honored to know and I will keep those until I die. In the years I have also broken that trust of friends and lost people who were very dear to me.

Trust is an investment of time and love. It is to honor your friend, or whoever you are building trust with, and not only building a friendship, but you build that person as well. Trust, I believe is mostly built by allowing yourself to become vulnerable to the other person. 

As anyone who has read this before, I play World of Warcraft. In it, I find the ability to open oneself is magnified by the screen on which we view the world. Trust actually plays a larger role in the game than one would expect. Though it is on a small scale, when we run a random we are trusting the other people know what they are doing. If they ask, then we should try to help them learn the dungeon. But the skilled veterans of the game, we have played them before and we just hand out a small bit of trust to our tanks, healers and damage.

On a larger scale, we build trust and friendship with our guild members. We trust, as a Guild Leader, that when we are gone, our officers keep the guild working smoothly. As a guild member, we trust our other members to not ninja the bank. When you look at even a larger scale, you get into people who actually become your friend. We trust they are not actually pedophile old men, creepy little boys who screams "Pics or GTFO" in trade chat, but rather they are simply nice people looking to play a game they enjoy.

I met a friend on there we shall name Luna. We met through a mutual friend and since have become very good friends. Since we first began talking, I have been slowly opening my trust doors to her and every step of the way, she has done the same. We have the screen to give us protection, but soon we felt we didn't even need that. We were friends, and I trust her. The trust is strong with her.

I put myself at a vulnerable spot, where she met me. It blossomed into friendship, into a very good friendship. And this all comes to me so easy and willingly that it leaves me wondering why it is so hard for people to connect with other people. For example, why is it we cannot be open with our friends. Is it not the job of a friend to be there, to listen, to comfort and not to judge you? Sure it is. But not many people are willing to be good enough friends like that. What is it that keeps us from opening the gate to our emotions and truly connecting with people. Is it the vulnerability that it places us in, or is it worry that someone might think less of us?

Because of the hard work I put into trust, I have a few friends I trust enough to talk to about anything that is bothering me. I am lucky. But no matter how lucky I am there, I still feel this bit of hesitation when it comes to talking about my sins with them. Sin is one of those things we all deal with every minute of every day. Yet we try our hardest to push sin under a rug. Like in those cartoons when someone trashed a whole room, they push it all under the rug in the center of the room and the rug bulges up with so much sin. That is our lives and eventually that sin will spill out onto the floor and we won't be able to hide it anymore.

That is why being open, vulnerable and connecting to a small group of friends, or a single friend, is so vital as a Christian. We need to have people that will hold us accountable for our sins and build us up when we falter. I hope I don't sound too Catholic, but confession is good for the soul. Not just good, it is vital to our souls. Without confession the sin will sit and fester and rot us from the inside. But the problem is, we cannot connect to people to confess. It's so very hard to try to open that door to someone and they shut up and stare at us.

But when we can trust with all we are, our fellow Christians and friends, they can hold us accountable for our sins as the bible tells us to, and we can become more of what God has wanted us to be since he made us. I recently trusted a friend enough to confess to. Luna has only shown me some of the best a person can be and I opened up. When I was telling her, I felt so vulnerable and humiliated and scared. But she embraced me, though not literal, and told me it was OK and she would pray for me as I work through getting the sin out of my life.

It is a scary thing to allow that kind of trust with anyone. But in the end, I want to be the best I can be for a God who only deserves the best. So I urge you my friends and readers, embrace your friends and let them be open to you so that they may be better Christians and in turn, be open to you and you can become a better Christian.

Trust will always be a risk to ourselves. Though there is no real shield form the hurt if that trust is broken, we only have to remember one simple thing. We have God with us. So if people hurt us, we have the creator to fall back on and get comfort. He will always be there, waiting to pick us up when we fall, keep us steady when we are tired, and rebuild the bit of us that was broken when the trust was broken. If there ever was anyone you could trust with your everything, it's God.

Story of Konowa: Part 4: Authenticity and Hearts.

I know I have said it before, but sometimes things stick out at me and make me think on it. Tonight was a little phrase on the Tin Soldiers Facebook page.

"Authenticity is impossible without vulnerability."

I have very often been called a good friend, best friend, whatever friend, but they are all the same, I am the best friend I can be to everyone. I do care about people even though I say all the time how much I hate them. Even when I dislike them, I want them to be happy and comfortable with me. I want to show them, even if I may dislike you, I still care. That sounds really funny when I read it back. But it is true.

If I had a wish, I would wish for everyone to be happy and friendly. I recently started talking to a good very dear friend of mine. I have mentioned her before, and I still care greatly for her. It was so very nice to talk to her the other night. I am so very happy she is happy were she is and happy with her boyfriend.

I want to be known as being authentically me. In games I go by other names, most often it's Cayel. But even when I don the moniker, I am still me through and through. I hate when people put on a facade. They are friendly and nice to your face, but then when you turn around, they start spouting mean things and verbally stab you in the back. And I can see this all the time.

The saying above is true, I put myself out to my friends farther than most people ever would think to go. I open up and become vulnerable to them. I suppose that is why I develop feelings for some of them. When I open up and so do they, and we mesh and get along so well, its hard not to. I see it as a bit of a problem, but I would rather that than be so closed off I never get hurt.

But where we can do this with our friends and family, we so very often have a hard time doing it with God. Why? God already knows us better than anyone ever could. He knows your very dreams and wants nothing more than to share those with you. Yet we keep him closed off, in our hearts, yes, but not in the part that we show the world.

My little bit of anatomy that I know, our hearts have four chambers. What if our metaphorical hearts also have four chambers. We could have a chamber to show the world, a chamber to show our friends, one to show our family and one for ourselves. Where does God fit in? God really should be the nerve that runs down the center of our heart. What nerve? Well glad you asked.

From Howstuffworks.com

A few months back, one of my co-workers was studying for his EMT classes. He had a physiology book and we were looking through it one night at work, yes, instead of working.  There is a group of cells in the heart that are able to generate electricity on their own. It is called the SA Node. It sends the electrical impulses to the right and left atria, causing them to contract together. Then there is a delay to allow the atria to contract and the ventricles to fill with blood. The electrical impulse continues to travel to the AV node, though the Bundle of His, then it splits into the right and left bundle branches where it rapidly spreads using Purkinje fibers to the muscles of the right and left ventricle, causing them to contract at the same time.

Ok, sorry for the in depth health class there. But you see how this stuff is so amazing?! I don't know what all that means, but I know it is awesome. So if God was that group of cells and nerves that ran the length of your heart and kept it beating 72 times a minute, imagine how much intimacy he has with our hearts.

God would be directly giving energy to each chamber, God would be the center of your world, your friends, your family and you. Isn't that where he should be anyways? God is the power to keep you alive, without you ever having to do anything to stay that way.

Yes yes, there are probably things that can go wrong with that nerve, creating irregular heart beats, heart attacks and whatever, but with God, it works flawlessly day after day, year after year, until God sweeps you into his arms and takes you to be with him. If we let God be that nerve and cells, and let him control each part of our lives, we would open the vulnerability to him as we should. We would still hurt when someone close hurts us, but God would be right there, making sure you keep going, you have the strength to take that next step, then the next and the next.

If you want to be you, be the truest you that you can be, the authentic you, then you have to open yourself to God, you have to become vulnerable to Him and His will for you. Philippians 4:13 says it the best. Below is from the Amplified Bible. I like this version sometimes because it gives other meanings of the words that were used.

13 I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].

I love the last part, I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency. That is so beautiful to me. There is only way to be like that, open your heart to God, become vulnerable to him. It is very hard to do. I mean, God, the creator of everything, who can measure the universe in the palm of his hand, is so big, and we are so small, how could He ever love us. We know he loved us so much that He sent His only son Jesus, who is himself God, to save us from the evil that we brought upon ourselves. That is a lot of love there. It might be even harder for us being so small, to be able to love someone so big. But if we want to be happy, be ourselves and be authentic, then being that vulnerable is the only thing we have.

I hadn't intended to have another follow up to The Story of Konowa, but God put this out there for me to write, so I did. It is so important to be who we are. The world tells us we are not allowed to be who we are sometimes, but God tells us otherwise. I like the idea of being authentic. I like being me. I love the idea and the fact that God loves us being authentic and ourselves. So I guess I will end in a short prayer. I normally don't write any prayers but this just came, actually wrote it before I wrote this part. I think this one needed to end this way. Thanks for reading!


I want to be more vulnerable to you, God. I want to be authentic and real. I want my friends and who ever may read this blog, to know you more deeply and be truly themselves for you. Lord, I pray that you empower my heart with your will, let me beat day after day for you. Let your spirit be the blood that feeds my body. Lord you are the SA node, the AV node, the Bundle of His, and the fibers, you give the spark of life to my heart. Lord, let my heart be like your Son, giving and sustaining my life so that I can show the world You. May you be the center of my four chambered heart and the center of everything that I do. To you Lord, be all glory and honor forever and ever. Amen.