Welcome back, stranger

You had the dream again. Probably about two weeks ago, but it's taken this long to find some time to write it down. Is it that I'm having a series of dreams featuring the same person, and the context is revealing different things that are  important, or is it that I'm having one single dream, but it's coming in parts spread out over weeks, or months, or years? 

Whatever the case may be, it's never the same circumstances. And they are always there.

Sometimes - often - the dream is very brief. This time it seemed to be much longer. They had arrived, although under what pretenses, I'm not sure. They stayed with me for a number of days, and I was sharing with them how I came to be called into ministry - something that I've spoken of before, but in this dream I was filling in a detail I've missed.

Years ago, I was a part of a youth group that traveled down to inner city Chicago, to an organization called Inner City Impact, which is a mission that reaches out to at-risk and impoverished youth in precarious circumstances, and conducts after-school programs, tutoring, distance learning, camping, scholarships, food bank support, etc. Many of the trips I took down to ICI were in the capacity of being a camp counselor, and we travelled directly to the camp site to help out. The final couple of years we went down, we spent a few days in Chicago itself, doing some service projects at ICI, meeting some of the kids that had been at camp in previous years, and then we took them out to camp for the week. 

This experience was foundational, and shaped my direction in life for years to come. Even as I write this, I'm still on that same trajectory of serving the Lord, and though it started with short-term missions, the work I'm doing now is no less important or significant.

But I digress. At the time of the dream, I'm not sure why it was so important for me to convey to them what I was doing, or where my roots in ministry lay, but as I write this, it comes to mind that they are in ministry also; they found themselves drawn to mission work, and I believe they are still working as a missionary to some degree. Or, perhaps they are not working as directly with missions as they used to be, and perhaps this is unsettling them at this time. My message to them, if they are reading this, is to reflect on Abraham's trajectory. The Lord called him from a strange land, and told him to start traveling to a place that He would eventually reveal to him. Abraham's journey took him to many places and many stops, and even though all around him, Abraham's friends and family were acknowledging that the places they stopped were good places to be, the Lord had other plans for him. Abraham's journey was not complete until the Lord deemed it complete.

My words are  meant to be kind. When I started out in ministry, I never thought that I'd end up in the work situation that I find myself in at the present. When I started out on the path to being a Youth Pastor, as I imagined was my life trajectory following the very positive experiences with ICI, I never imagined that I would be working with Seniors, in a company that professed to be a Christian domicile, but is apparently run from the top as though the word "Christian" didn't mean that business decisions had to be made with the Lord guiding those decisions.

And maybe the reason for dreaming what I did, was not for "them" to hear and be comforted or spurned to other ministry opportunities, but rather for me to see and realize that this short stop at the senior's home, though it be a great learning opportunity and a great mission field, is not my final stop either. Perhaps the Lord is preparing me to be uprooted once again, to continue on to the place He is going to show me.

I don't know why I dream these dreams. It'll probably make sense much, much later.

I think I'll end this one here. There's much more I could say, but the dream isn't fresh in my memory. I don't know if anything else I can say will be relevant or connected to this most recent dream.

Until the next time, then.

-UM

The problem with time travel

 If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, and tell yourself only 3 things, what would those three things be?

One question people sometimes have when I ask them this question is, can I travel back to 3 separate times in my life and tell myself one thing each time, or is it that I can only travel back once, and tell myself in that time period a maximum of 3 things?

I think I've always thought of the question as the latter situation, not the former, and I think it does matter which you choose. If, for example, you could only go back once, you must first make a decision of when in your timeline to go back to, and then choose what 3 things are most important to convey. I think this method of thinking about the problem most accurately reveals the things in your life that you most want to change right now, and so the question is most favorably asked in this context. It also means the traveler must take care to choose three things to let go of forever, as altering the timeline would have irrevocable consequences.

However, if you were to be able to travel back 3 times and tell yourself 1 thing each time, that gives the traveler more security and comfort in their selections and messages. Say, for example, you went back to when you were 5 to tell yourself to not take everything so seriously (not one of my selections) - that might have very negative consequences on your schooling, but help your social life, and you may find yourself in the present day stuck with a lot of debt and a string of meaningless relationships. You could, then, go back (assuming there is a moment between message delivered and things taking effect permanently) and undo the damage done by telling your first traveling self not to deliver the message... but then you've used up 2 traveling opportunities, and you're no further ahead than when you started.

So, lets just stick with the question as though you can't go back and undo things. That makes most sense, seeing as time travel isn't possible, and this is all an academic discussion in any case.

If you could travel back in time once, to any time in your history, and tell yourself 3 things, when would you go back to, and what would you tell yourself?

-----

This was one of the topics of discussion I had erased from my blog. We've covered why, so lets move on. 

What would I tell myself?

Hmmm...

1) I think it would be pretty safe to tell myself that I have Klinefelter's Syndrome. It's not something that I would be able to change, as it occurs as the first cell splits into two, and two into four, etc., but knowing that I have Klinefelter's Syndrome would help me understand a lot of things, things that I'm still learning even now. 

It's a tricky syndrome. What one person with Klinefelter's experiences is not necessarily what another person with Klinefelter's experiences. There are generalities that affect all across the board, and that typify all Klinefelter's patients, but each person suffers these generalities to varying degrees.

Klinefelter's is typified as a micro-addition to the XY chromosome, where an extra X gets added; sometimes more than one X. Generally speaking, each extra X added can mean a diminished intelligence quotient by about 10 points, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Since the human body has 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 in total), having 47 chromosomes is problematic. And, which chromosome did the additional chromosome get paired with? Change one thing in the perfect map of the human body, and you get chaos all over the place. 

Here's what I've been experiencing with Klinefelter's (not an exhaustive list, just what I've noticed so far) (and, also, listed in no particular order. Just what comes to mind as it comes) (and, I'm not even sure if some of these things are related to Klinefelter's):

    a) Allergies. There is some thought that Klinefelter's Syndrome (from here on out I'm just going to refer to it as KS) can lead to autoimmune disorders. Allergies, according to my latest information (several years out of date, admittedly), is a disorder in the autoimmune system. Okay, so not all people with allergies have KS. But, not all people with allergies have more than one allergy. Or more than 2. Or more than 5. I have 23. That in itself makes things not easy. I think I'll post a side blog about living with allergies, just to keep things a bit more on track here.

    b) Executive Functioning problems. So you know that thing that most people have that lets them stay focused on a task longer than 2 minutes, that people with ADHD have to take medication to achieve? KS patients (in general) lack that functioning. It's how most KS patients are first identified - they don't do well in school, and an IQ test doesn't illuminate the issues. I don't know if its the same as ADHD, or just similar, but I do know that it affects other Executive Functioning such as working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. Also, absorbing the meaning of complex issues through reading (textbooks) seems to be a near impossible challenge. And I read extra slowly, so that doesn't help. There's probably more problems related to this, but I can't remember them now.

    c) My body didn't form properly. I have under-developed lungs, for one thing, and apparently my follicle immune system doesn't function properly. If I get a cold, it can rapidly move to an infection in my lungs if I'm not careful, and that's where things go from bad to worse. Which is why COVID-19 could take me down hard if I get it. Scary times.

    d) Related to the last point, my body doesn't produce testosterone. That's got a whole range of problems associated with it. The most obvious one is that I can't naturally father children. I think I might have been okay with that if I had ended up marrying someone who either did not want children, or could not have children, but that's a decision that past me would have had the opportunity to make or not make. I chose (not having this information), to make the decision of having or not having children with my spouse, and we chose to have children. I'm not sure if knowing I had KS would have changed that decision or not. It's not something you make without a conversation with your partner.

        d) (2) Not making testosterone also depletes the calcium in my body. I need to consume copious amounts of calcium to stay ahead of my body's needs, or what starts to happen is my body will start eating the calcium out of my bones and teeth. It happens anyway, but I can minimize it by having a diet high in calcium. That also will eventually lead to early onset osteoporosis, so I have that to look forward to later in life. Already I've experienced the fallout of that with soft teeth. My teeth are showing excessive wear, and I have lots of fillings.

        d (3) Testosterone also affects mood. I'm prone to depression and mood swings.

e) Permanent "lanky" build. Teenagers who are growing fast in puberty will experience moments where their lanky build throws off their sense of balance and coordination. They eventually get over it. I won't. My legs and my arms are each 2 to 3 inches longer than they should be. Normal clothes don't fit me, and I'm always bumping into stuff. My spatial awareness is permanently uncalibrated. 

f) My emotions are all over the map. I have trouble regulating joy and sadness, and sometimes I have trouble feeling excited or expressing excitement over things that I should be excited about.

g) I have trouble reading/interpreting situations, or forecasting the response to actions. This can get me into a lot of trouble socially.

There are lots of other things that living with KS makes difficult. This is the tip of the iceberg, and already it's not a great thing to live with. Will telling myself that I have KS make it go away? No, but it might help me, my parents, my teachers, and my friends better understand who I am. It might even help me make better decisions in life. I think it would even help me gain a sense of confidence earlier than I gained that piece of me, and in a healthier way. I think that changing the timing of knowing that one piece of information would have helped me avoid making a number of mistakes that I now regret making. 

But would I have just made other mistakes instead, and have regrets about those? Only time will tell.

I'm wrapping this up for now, look for part 2 soon. If you want to know more about Klinefelter Syndrome, you can start here:
https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome#1

I'm not sure how thoroughly they discuss the syndrome, but it's as good a place to start as any.

-UM

Through a window darkly

I'm going to cycle back to talking about dreams for a bit. In my last post I was wondering about the origin of some dreams (what process generates them or their content) to which I will give a brief recap:

With respect to the occurrence of recurring dreams, the possibilities for how they are generated are:

- nothing generates them; they are random selections of memory of past events strung together with a loose narrative. 

- psychological triggers in the subconscious mind, alerting the dreamer to unfinished business 

- God delivering a message in which an action is needed/warranted

- a brief glimpse across the barrier of realities, where you get to see an alternate version of yourself living a different life

...and I'll add one more:

- premonitions of future events.

Now obviously, some of these don't make sense. Most likely the origin of a dream is mundane - it is either born of nothing or at most is caused by subconscious triggers. I want to clarify that I don't actually believe in Fringe Science, so the alternate realities theory, though fun to think about, is off the table of serious consideration.

But my personal experiences of seeing future events and of God relaying messages through dreams means I cannot disqualify these as possible origins for some dreams.

Again, I must stress that this only applies to some dreams, not all.

Prompting the exploration of this topic is the occurrence of one of these recurring dreams. It's not the right name for it - the situation is different, but the people are the same.

I don't quite know how to express this next bit. Let me just say that I woke from the dream feeling empty and sad. Perhaps, if there is a "soul mate" element in play, its possible that I'm feeling the emotions that the other person is currently experiencing, but in this most recent dream, the other person was truly happy, and I was not. I was not happy because regrettably, I could not share in the happiness of being reunited with the other person, despite wanting to feel that happiness. 

Now, it makes most sense to say the origin of this dream is unfinished business. Equally possible is that the dream "meaning" is that I feel stuck in current circumstances. A bit of clarification on that - my job sucks currently, and I feel like I'm in  catch-22 situation. I should be feeling fulfilled, but its possible that the stresses of working under management that seems to be making decisions that go against my core beliefs, is coming out as imagery of wanting something I can't have, or having something I can't let go of.

But if the origin of this dream is a glimpse of future events, I can take joy in knowing that the one who holds me in His hand also has my future secured, and has good things in store for me. 

A weird alternative also presents itself as possible. We know that in the "end times", God has promised to make all things new. There will be a new heaven, and a new earth, and we will live on this new earth in harmony with creation. If this is a glimpse of that future, then all the regrets I have and mistakes I've made will be undone, and the promise I have to hold on to is that one day, all of us who now see as through a window darkly, will then see clearly. 

I have made mistakes. There are times when I wish I could go back and do some things differently - not all things, just some. But if the promise we have in Christ is that all those things will be undone, then all I have to do is wait on the Lord and in His strength. 

- UM

Glitches in the Matrix

 Okay, future me. The thing with you (us) is, we say we're going to really get into writing blogs, and then we write one with the promise of keeping up the habit, and then we don't. We just don't.

I don't know what it is. I love writing. Or maybe its that I love telling stories. And from what I've just read, this Urban Monk guy is really telling a whopper of a story. 

But there are missing parts. Don't you get the feeling, reading the past posts, that someone has done some heavy editing to the parts in between? Well, that's because they have. I have. They is me; us.

There is a piece in the last one referring to Time Travel, and I promised to write and post that piece right away. I'm here to tell you that you were not tardy on that one - you really did post it. and a sequel. But I did away with them for good. For my good. I was in a very dark place.

Oh! Well! Now, you say, you have to tell me. 

I'll elude to it, basically because not knowing what it is, could entice a re-post in the future.

It was about intimacy. Well, no, the word I used was sex. But it was crass, and unbecoming of the now 46 year old me (you) are. But the point is, I was in a dark place where the realities of life, love, and intimacy had just permeated my young (35 year old) brain. I could blame it on Klienfelters - one counsellor said many Kleinfelters patients had either a reaction away from ever wanting sex again, or a reaction to going out and being as diverse in sexual partners as anyone can. At the time, I expressed that neither had affected me as a result of discovering my "condition", but I think that part of me (a deep, hidden kernel of a part, the nihilist part) thought "sex is meaningless without the possibility of creating life, so why does sex seem to have mattered to a younger version of me? Or no - that last part was misleading. I did think it was meaningless, and so devalued the dance of intimacy and trust one must learn in order to make it meaningful (or make it happen at all). And so, if I were to fall anywhere in that counsellor's array of options available to me, I would be leaning toward "more sex, 'cause who cares?"

So I erased it. And now I'm convinced that the next time I roll around to reading this (and any accompanying future blogs), I will have totally forgotten what the story actually was, and I may be prone to repeating it, depending on how large that nihilistic kernel grows. Just trust me on this, it's better left alone.

So I'm 46 years old. In 12 days I'll be 47. What have I learned so far? And what perplexities am I still experiencing? 

.......

I'm not sure I've learned anything of value, save perhaps that faith matters. A WHOLE lot. If you're feeling stuck in your job, and the overall feeling of unease relates at all back to a breach of what you believe in, and what core values you believe should be universal, aren't... then there's a big problem there. That needs to be resolved, one way or the other.

What perplexities am I still experiencing? 

Hmmm. Well. That's a biggie.

It's really the reason I even looked up this dusty old blog. There's really only one way to tell it.

Periodically, I have a dream starring the same person. The circumstances and happenings in the dream are nearly always different (I have some repeats, sometimes), but there's always one same person in them. I really hate it when I read these things and feel like younger me is vaguebooking older (but still younger than me) me, but in this case I want to be vague so future me doesn't have to deal with regrets of the actions of younger (present) me. We both know who we're talking about, and if you don't, then you've returned too early, and you haven't had the dream yet. Go back to sleep - when it happens, you'll know.

I digress. Periodically I have dreams about the same person in different circumstances. I literally probably have met to some degree (and so inner-brain "knows") roughly 10,000 people. Maybe more. So why are most of the focused dreams (those I can remember lots of detail from), about just 1 person? If every person I've met had an equal chance to show up in my brain on any given night, 1 person showing up even once in a dream would be a 0.0001% chance. I don't know the equation to figure out repeat appearances of the same person. Let's add some weight to this statement by allowing a variance for the recurrence of some particular people appearing in dreams, based on how much interaction one has with someone they know (so, more interaction means better chance at a recurring dream with said person), and then let me just tell you that I have had approximately 6 interactions with this person in 5 years, and 2 of those interactions were occasions where we spoke face to face. And the last interaction was about 20 years ago. There ought to be many more people who should appear in my dreams more often - my high school principal should appear more often, and I never even once got called down to the office to speak with him. NEVER.

Why does this matter? Why should it matter to note the occasion of experiencing multiple dreams with the same person? Because it's weird. It's like I'm occasionally awarded the chance to peek across the dimensional divide and spy on a different version of me, living a different life. It comes unbidden. I don't think about this person at all, except for the occasions that occur immediately after having another dream. And then I'm driven here, and I read all kinds of weird musings from people in stages of life set 10 years apart. 

But what does all this mean? Why is it that I periodically have recurring dreams about the same person? Is there meaning behind the dream? Am I peeking into a parallel universe? Are there some connections to people that run deeper than others, no matter how much or little contact you've had?

Is there such a thing as a soulmate, platonic or otherwise?

UM

Not great at this blogging thing

Yes, I realize it's been a few years since I "rebooted" the blog. I see from previous blog entries that I hinted at a problem with fertility, but left the subject hanging there.

So here's an update:

1) We have a child now. Her name is Abigail (meaning: source of father's joy), and she is going to be 16 months old in a couple of weeks.

2) We figured out what the problem with conceiving is - and before you say "well, duh" and point to #1... I have something called "46/47 xxy Mosaic Klienfelter's Syndrome". That's the root cause of the issues with conceiving, but it's not clear what this is without some explanation:

a) First a lesson on making babies, beyond the fun part: as the boats drop hordes of soldiers onto the beach, many don't make it out of the water. Many more die just at the shoreline. Many more are gunned down a few steps onto the beach. Of the few that penetrate the many defenses, only one makes it into the bunker. When that happens...

i) Life begins, and the cell starts dividing.

ii) More cells divide from those cells. They tell two friends, and they tell two friends... and so on.

iii) These cells make up the building blocks for every function and form in your body.

b) In my body, the first cell split in two imperfectly. There were errors. One of the two cells decided there was an error, and fixed it. The other did not. This is where the "mosaic" part of the disease comes in - half my cells are normal, half are affected with Klienfelter's Syndrome.

c) Klienfelter's Syndrome is characterized by an extra "X" chromosome (or multiple "x's") attached to the normal XY chromosome (only guys can have Klienfelter's. Sorry ladies.). This makes for all kinds of silliness, including (in my body) the inability to produce Testosterone.

d) No Testosterone means many things, not the least of which means no sperm. No sperm = no conception, no conception = no babies.

e) But... hold on... #1 says we have a baby? She is the result of a donor + my wife. No sperm also means no IVF (invitro-fertilization, where my army dude gets put directly into her bunker). There's something called "ICSI", but it's $5000.00 more per shot, and we're not made of money. Besides, all the children from that procedure would either be carriers of Klienfelter's (all the girls), or have Klienfelter's to some degree (all the boys).

3) I'm coping with this knowledge that I can't make life. Part of me wishes for the technology that would make time-travel possible, if only to go back in time and tell myself this piece of information... I'll probably make that a spin-off post sometime in the near future.

4) I'm done school. I work as a youth leader in Cobourg, ON. Sometimes I question that decision. I didn't make it through the second round of ordination testing, and honestly sometimes I question that path as well. I'm doing a lot of path questioning these days.

That's all for now. Before I forget and three more years pass, I'll end this post and post the other one.

Forming Habits

They say the best way to make something become habitual is to keep doing it. Isn't that what habitual means? And who are They?

I thought it would be best to keep this blogging thing up, for posterity sake. Who knows what will happen ten or fifteen years from now - I may look back on this time of life and shake my head, or I might be wondering what was happening in my mid-thirties to make me what I will have become.

I think life happens in stages. These stages may or may not coincide with decade markers - I haven't figured that one out yet - but as far as I can figure, there have been at least four, possibly more, life shaping events that have occurred approximately 10 years apart from each other. Or maybe it's that as I look back, I can see myself progressing through life, reacting to things with varying levels of grace and very different attitudes, and that these shifts happen at approximately 10-year intervals, and the life events around this time have served to shape me into what I have been and am at the time I'm observing myself.

Confused? Maybe I am too. It's late. I'll try to explain.

When I was 5, I had a dream about the occupations I would have to decide between. One was construction work, and the other was more vague, but I came to believe (later, when I was reflecting on the dream as an adult) that the other vocation was youth ministry. I would forget the dream in time, although it was a recurring dream that happened so often, that when I was in my late teen years, and I had the dream again (after deciding my vocational path), I immediately recognized it and found its contents more than mere coincidence.
I think I might have had that dream at the time that I did, because it required the simple belief of a child to not dismiss it right away, as an adult would. I also found faith when I was 5.

When I was 15, my first taste of ministry came in the form of traveling down to Chicago to work with the pre-teens at a camp. I also was asked to be a camp counselor at a camp in Ontario (Pioneer Camp) immediately following this missions trip. My attitudes and actions were clearly not that of a 5 year old, but probably more reflected the crazy energetic actions of an early teen... which was probably perfect timing for whatever seed was being planted there, at that time.

When I was 26, I got my first job as a youth pastor in a church. I remember distinctly feeling that I wasn't a teen anymore, and wondering how I was going to both relate to the teens in the area I was called to, as well as direct student ministries in a church of people almost twice my age. It was a difficult time (I might write more on that later), but I learned a lot. Mostly I learned that youth ministry is hard, but that I'm called to do it, and anything else would be a Jonah experience (read up on Jonah in the bible if you're not familiar with this - it's only four chapters, and has a really cool ending). My reactions were not those of a 15-year-old, nor a 5-year-old, yet I can look back on that era, and I know I didn't have the maturity I have now (just as I will likely look back at this time when I'm 45, and realize how far I've progressed then).

Now I'm 34, turning 35 this year. I'm married; no children yet - that looks to be a great struggle we have only just started grappling with. I have a great working relationship with the church I'm with currently, but I feel called to leave it and go to the Anglican communion, which is in the middle of a potentially great upheaval. It looks like it's going to be an interesting and rocky time, but I think that I'm here in this time, having weathered the storms I have, in preparation for the storm(s) ahead. I find myself to be more patient than I have ever been, and more grace-giving. And, I'm surprised to find myself as sad as I am, when I have the thought that I might never be a father.

I'm definitely a different person now than I ever have been, and I think that change has only just recently come about - or, maybe it has been gradually taking shape, but I'm just noticing it now. I'm getting older. And hopefully, wiser.

Reboot

I've been re-inspired to kick this blogging thing back into gear. A friend of mine (Ryan Paulsen) is moving to Pembroke, ON, and has started a blog about his life there, and his family.

My last post was about my wife and I moving to Oshawa. We did so for a couple of reasons... first let me say that we weren't moving to Oshawa, but that we were, in fact, moving to a house. Which happened to be in Oshawa - we could only afford so much, and the things we could afford which were in Toronto were in scary parts of the city.
So, two reasons for moving - one, to start building equity (stop throwing your money down the rent hole!!!), and two, because we wanted to start a family.

That second one might not be so easy.

It might not even have anything to do with the fact that both my wife and I have crested the 30 year mark (me by a few years, my wife by a couple) - as we progress through the battery of tests (why do they call them a battery of tests anyway? Seems more like a gauntlet of tests), it's looking more and more like conceiving is either going to be really expensive, or not possible at all.
We don't think the problem is with my wife - it seems like all systems are go with her, but I guess testing (when it comes to that for her) will confirm or debunk that - but we do know that there are issues on my end. What these issues are, we're not sure yet, but I think that as things progress and we find out more, it's going to be one of the bigger subjects of the next few posts.

I guess I'll cut things off here; save the next few thoughts for another post.