The Man With the Club

"He was beaten (he knew that), but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law... The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect, and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused." - Jack London (Call of the Wild)

The first fight I ever got in was in 3rd grade. It was right after school and I had thrown my backpack down so I could go play on some picnic tables with my friends. When I returned to where I'd thrown my backpack I found that it was gone. One of my friends brothers, who was a 5th grader, thought it would be funny to hide my backpack on the other side of the school. It was hilarious, only problem was the bastard decided to hide it in some mud. When he went and got it back for me and I saw that it was covered in mud, the attitude of that afternoon changed. It had to, as any young boy will tell you. Things can't stay the same. Action had to be taken. The action I decided to take was a type of action called "revenge." Let me tell you about this kid. Michael was obsessed with the Miami Dolphins. Why, I have no clue still to this day, but he loved them. Everything he owned had to do with them. He didn't have a backpack, he was one of those really cool kids that just carried around a binder when he was at school. Well, his binder just happend to be a Miami Dolphins binder. To him it was gold, an obsession expressed in school supplies. To me it was vegenance, vindication expressed through a piece of plastic. I took his binder and without any hesitation, tossed it in a nice new puddle of mud. And that's when he pushed me in the same puddle, right next to my vindication and my pride. He picked up his binder and took a step back. I stood up and took a step forward. Just as his dad was pulling into the parking lot to pick him up and as the principal was walking out of the cafeteria doors, I was pushing back. I wasn't about to back down. Michael landed face first and so hard that the mud splashed up onto my jeans. I stood there, towering over him like a giant, unphased by the grasp of my principal's hand. My adreniline rushing through my lungs like a roaring water. Now, I don't remember what happend after that moment, probably cause it was very forgetful, but that one single second where I was standing over that kid was worth remembering. Where I stood over him with clinched fists, gnashed teeth, and the crazed look of a lion after a kill in my eyes. He was scared in that glorious second. Scared of kid smaller and younger, but a kid who took a fall and had gotten back up to dish one out. All that was enough for me. That was all I needed. Now there's a reason for this story, for the quote sitting at the top of the page.

For the past 6 months I've gotten the absolute shit kicked out me. I've been waking up with the rusty taste of blood in my mouth since the middle of June. It might even be longer, maybe I've been marching on like a soldier completely oblivious to the stomach punches I've been recieving. Well, I know now. I can see the bruises; I'm bent over on buckled knees and broken ankels gasping for air. The palms of my hands, painted red by my blood, spilled by failed attempts to catch my fall. The inside of my forearms now colored by webs of scars sown by the unapologetic blow of the trail I've been walking on. I'm taking a beating; caught up in the spiritual war for the soul. I've felt like just another casualty for quite some time now. A casualty beaten by his excuses, by his blame on the King, his lack of knowledge and complete loss of control. A casualty killed by a lack of discipline and a faithless doubt haunting him in his lonlieness. His vision blurred by the smoke of the bombshells and bullets exploding just beside his body, laying lifelessy in the mud. He turns his head to the left, sees the same vindication he saw in the third grade when he layed in the mud puddle. He turns his head to the right and sees that same pride and confidence. You want idea of what my life has looked like for awhile? There you have it. Just a boy, trying to be a man, laying like a corpse on a battlefield covered in his blood. His sword burried somewhere beneathe the debris of his scattered life. His heart, the same. Now I can come up with a world of excuses on why I'm laying in this state. Could write you a list of a 1000 pages to justify my indecision. Started the summer working at a job I thought God had designed me to work the rest of my life, only to find out that He didn't want that from me. I stood in the sun the middle of that summer with my hands in my pockets, confused with His will, but anxious to move on into the mystery. Then I got a phone call from my mom. She, along with my grandparents and my sister, met me in Rogers the following weekend to tell me that the chances of me coming back to OSU were pretty slim. I can remember sitting in a hotel room with my mother with the stintch of unwelcomed emotion hanging in the air. She was there to tell me that financially there was no way my family could afford to send me back to school here. That the scholarships we'd been hoping on weren't headed our way, and that the future looked bleek for the promise of any others. I watched her cry from across the room, broken by a dream she felt like she couldn't fufill for her son. I sat there bitting my lip, an anger and uncompromising confusion brewing deep in my chest. I could feel the cold waters of doubt begin to rise up on my body. I was drowning in it. She gave me two options: come back home or stay in Stillwater and become an Oklahoma resident. Number 2 meant working 40 hours a week for an entire year, living off campus, and only taking 6 hours of school a semester. It also meant growing up way too fast. I left camp early, came home to collect my things, and within a week I was headed north on 35 back to the place I was so sure God had beckoned me to one year ago. I found a place to live but struggled to find work. That was August and this is January. I find myself covered in scars, crawling like a crippled child in the muck of a battlefield still fresh with the stintch of spilled blood and sweat. I find myself tonight with clinched fists, angry with the condition of my soul. At my failure to recognize the purpose of defeat. I have been harvesting an anger so deep and so strong, a hate in my heart against myself, the lion below, and The Lion above. An anger and reckless passion once eager to do damage for the Kingdom, not against it. It has been months since I've seen the sunshine with all the glory of The Lamb. I haven't felt the weight of my blade in my worn hands for quite some time now. I am missing the war. And tonight, I can feel the bear in me breaking out of its hibernation. I can hear the roar of a Lion calling out to its son, to its cub lost in the desert. I am tired of tasting my own blood. What we miss sometimes in life, in this great battle, on this road where we can stumble so easily, is that sometimes The Maker doesn't always fight for us, but against us. Sometimes He pushes us. Sometimes His blade strikes our blade. What I've failed to realize for the past 6 months is that all the crap I've endured, every bitter taste of defeat that has lingered on in my mouth, every potentially fatal blow to the body that I've felt, didn't all come from the enemy- It came from my greatest ally. It was no mistake. All of this was on purpose, a call beckoning me, ushering me on deeper and deeper into a war of great glory and great pain. God kicks the shit out of us sometimes to teach us to get back up. We get sucker-punched by The Creator, and He expects us to sucker-punch him back. It's His way of letting us know that we have what it takes to do this. It's okay to push God, to get angry and wrestle with Him. Sometimes he instigates it with us just because its so necessary. Part of this war is questioning The Colonel. Ive been pushed around for a long time. It's time to push back. I'm going to gnash my teeth again. I'm going to sound my barbaric raw and swing my blade, even if it's in the direction of My Maker. I want to learn and I want to endure. I want to smile back into the face of death with all the confidence and passion of a man that wont ever back down. I will stand. I will find my footing and I will brace myself for friendly fire. Because sometimes friendly fire is the most dynmaic process that any man will ever endure. Of course, we have no chance against The Man With the Club, but the fact that we weren't intimitated by it is sometimes enough. Maybe getting our ass kicked by the King is exactly what all of us need. It's what I needed. A good ass kicking arouses the primitive beast in all of us. I might be beaten, but there's no way Im broken. When we stand up, when we find our sword, and we brush the blood off our faces, we find ourselves on a new battlefield. On a battlefield where blood that isnt ours can be spilled. We will run a battlefield, and stand over the broken bodies of our enemy like I stood over that kid when I was in third grade. We will stand with glaring nostrils, bloody blades, tightened fists, and gnashed teeth. Our chests will rise and fall with smell of victory filling our lungs. We will stand with the glory of God sparkling in our eyes. Sometimes God's fist in our mouth is His grace washing our hearts. He is spilling our blood to reawaken a sleeping beast. Oh, that I would learn what it means to push back. That I would be recklessly disciplined. That I would learn what it truly means not to fully understand but to never stop fighting. That I would learn never to lay down my sword, to let down the defenses, and grow apathetic in this war. And that you would learn to push back. That we, as brothers and sisters, would learn to get up from the mud, and muster up the courage and strength to push back together. That we would all come to understand that the blows we take aren't always sent from hell, but can come from clouds too. We must push back. We were fashioned to be fighters. The heart was designed for war. We are hunted, like Frodo and Sam through middle earth and eventually we have to stop running. Eventually the sword has to be taken out of the sheen. Eventually, blood will stain the ground beneath our feet. May whoever it is we strike our blades with know that they better be ready to bleed. May they know from the foolish and feverish grin on our face that we're not afraid to push back.