With Great Power…

Life for me started out in a trailer park just south of the Tennessee state line. I guess if a person had to rank such things, they’d say that this particular trailer park was on the low end of the spectrum in terms of elegance. My parents had just turned twenty and life left a lot to be desired. Both being from strong Christian backgrounds, they made sure I was introduced to the right and wrongs of life very early on. After all, a trailer park isn’t always home to the best specimens of life. The thing is I was always safe. As my world grew and situations changed, my family always made sure my brother and I were taken care of. Through the divorce, the years of being a family of three, the introduction of a new “dad”…we never missed a meal, never did anything worse than throw rocks at one another, we never had to worry about the hard choices in life.
Once I turned sixteen I began working as soon as I could. I knew every inch of that grocery store and had no clue where all my money went. Mom was still there backing me up, making sure those values stayed in place. There were some hard choices. Sometimes I didn’t always do or say the right thing. To this day I’m still a huge jerk when I want to be. The choices I made, to a certain degree, only affected me.
In college if I had chosen to do drugs, which I didn’t, the life of my parents would not have changed much. Sure they would have been upset, but it would have been my body that ingested the toxic fumes or my life that I risked ruining due to addiction. If I chose to drink, which I did, my parents would have survived had I become an alcoholic or mistakenly did something stupid while in a drunken rage.
Once I got married and took on the role of husband, hard choices were around every corner. Luckily for me I didn’t marry a stupid lady. If for some reason I quit my job and decided to follow Cold Play around the country, she would be able to make it on her own. Of course she would be devastated, but as my better half she’s stronger than I every thought about being. It might take some time, but ultimately I would be the one that would suffer the majority of the consequences.
This all ends at the exact moment the sperm meets the egg. The wife cares for the child inside her, arms and legs are created, the cutest button nose you will ever see is put perfectly on that angelic face, and as soon as he emerges…the doctor literally places is life in your hands. No longer will the wrong choices affect you and maybe indirectly somebody else. The days of doing what feels good no matter what kinda of hot water you’ll be in the next day are over. The hard choices become harder and an entire life…75+ years of somebody’s future may hang on doing the right or the wrong thing.
You start leaning on those values you learned in that trailer park a million years before. You begin to understand that the only the worse than doing the wrong thing is know the difference and not caring. Once my son was born I started this blog and I started hardening my opinions on things I had become too neutral about. I realized that if something goes against your beliefs and you let it slide…then you may as well not even have any beliefs. How effective is a God that you pray too when you need something but ignore when you feel like you know best?
We have decided to change churches…as new parents, mommy and daddy take their roles very seriously and with that comes the need to instill those same values that were taught to us by our Christian families. The need to “do as I say and as I do” is very strong. The hard choices never get easier but once made they sometimes seem less important. If we say there are mistakes being made, rules being ignored, consequences not being felt, and all the while we continue to worship in the same place…what does that say to Fred about the way he should live his life. Who respects those that know the rules, but ignore them for they the sake of peace and false tranquility…nobody that’s who.