Agents of Empire

I’m glad a friend forwarded this to me.

USED vs LOVED

While a man was polishing his new car, his 4 yr old son picked up a stone and scratched lines on the side of the car. In anger, the man took the child’s hand and hit it many times not realizing he was using a wrench. At the hospital, the child lost all his fingers due to multiple fractures.

When the child saw his father with painful eyes he asked, ‘Dad when will my fingers grow back?’

The man was so hurt and speechless; he went back to his car and kicked it a lot of times devastated by his own actions. Sitting in front of that car he looked at the scratches; the child had written ‘LOVE YOU DAD’. The next day that man committed suicide…

Anger and Love have no limits; choose the latter to have a beautiful, lovely life & remember this:

Things are to be used and people are to be loved. The problem in today’s world is that people are used while things are loved.

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character;
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

I’ve been busy working on some changes.  I’m trying out a new Download Manager for my mixes. I’ve also swapped my theme about and played a little bit with the widgets … nothing really major, but the changes do make some dramatic changes in the presentation of information.

So this is it. The last week of 2009. This year marked some key milestones in my life. January, I finally decided to bite the bullet and started my schooling again. This time I’m I decided to chase my dream of becoming a game programmer. February my life turned upside down – in a good way – with the addition of Kandice-Leilani, my beloved daughter. August I came to realize that the family financial situation wasn’t as well managed as I was constantly reassured it was. September I made the decision to join the Army to put myself in a position to be able to allow Mona options and to make sure my wife and daughter are taken care of.

The decision to enlist has also prompted a change in my chosen major – instead of game programming, I’m going to switch to network security. I’ve also become considerably more active though my weight would betray my newfound active lifestyle. I’ve become less interested in gaming overall – though that’s more because I’m trying to spend more time with my family. Family is something that I’ve never been quite used to – seeing as my childhood was one of an only child living with two parents who were wrapped up in their work … so, to accurately portray it – close familial relations is something new to me.

This year has been rife with successes and failures … though I can’t complain too much. Most of the “failures” I’m experiencing is because I didn’t listen to my moral compass and failed to find the backbone to stand up to my father. I still can’t … because I understand yet don’t understand what he’s going through all the same … and he’s unwilling to talk about it in any serious capacity. Because to do so would mean he’d be held accountable for his actions.

The successes, however, have come from this family thing that I’m not entirely used to. I’ve been spending more time with my father – albeit on weekends and sometimes on weeknights watching football and some of the shows he likes to watch (like NCIS). I’ve found that I’m a very lucky man with my wife, Mona … who, really, has taken to motherhood seriously. A bit more seriously than I’ve taken to fatherhood – though I’m trying. I’m thinking of take Mona and Kandie-Lei to the beach this week. And Kandie-Lei is such a good girl and always so happy when she isn’t tired or hungry. She has a sense of boldness that I envy … a type of boldness that comes from being both naive and wonderfully curious about everything.

This year has been marked with some major changes in my life … however, this only marks the beginning of those changes. This coming year I will be leaving the rock and living someplace else doing something entirely different than what I’m doing now. I will share my home with only my wife and daughter later next year. My life feels like it’s only now beginning, after 34 years of living under my parents’ shadow. Tomorrow is looking hopeful, even if I’m a bit anxious about all these changes.

The spirit of celebration has not touched our household this Christmas Eve. This house is silent, more silent than the year we lost mother. This year, we worry about keeping ourselves afloat. I’m waiting to ship off – even looking forward to it since it means that some money can start coming in … some of the family debts can be taken care of. And that’s really the crux of it. Debt looms over our household like a reaper, threatening to steal the life out of my mother’s legacy.

And I know this weighs heavily on my father, such that he’s been going to sleep drunker than the night before. He’s still not over the pain of losing my mother nor the humiliation of that parasite of a woman, Lorraine. I worry that his will to continue has buckled … and I’m clueless as to how to get him back on track. He needs to get back into church … as odd as that may sound, coming from me, but His Word did a world of good for my father. I just don’t want to see him hurt anymore.

Tomorrow Mona and I will be celebrating Christmas with her side of the family. I’m looking forward to it. I wish my pops would join us – if anything to get out of the funk with me, but he’ll be staying home and maybe visiting mom’s resting place. If I had any wish for this Christmas, it would be that all the uneasiness that seems to hang over our family be dispelled and replaced by an unwavering spirit of hope – that the brighter tomorrows become today.