digging for wild...

do you ever have this scary thought that the thing in which we so thought we had so accomplished is that which we have not yet even begun to begin? I have always defined myself as a man that is all about the heart and passion and "feelings". Yet, recently, i have begun to realize that maybe i have only really scratched the surface of my own heart and pain. Mars Hill really has an amazing way of making you rethink and deconstruct and just well really slam your head down into your heart and really look around. and i am slowly realizing that i really don't feel much. i really don't cry much. i really don't let people see my heart much. i really am not near as honest or real with people as i hope to be. in fact i am quite distant from all of these. and at first this was all so dissapointing, but after a brief time of thinking, "damn, i thought i had it all figured out, and now i realize i know nothing"(this happens a bunch, it's called humility i think), this realization has begun to transform into this sweet invitation into a new life and new territory for me.

I think the key of it all that i'm learning is how I cannot get out of my head. my head-trying just to figure everything out-is my escape from my heart. i have noticed that as soon as i begin to feel something, like pain or anger or maybe even love, i cannot look the other in the eye, and i immediately retreat to my brain to try to bring some sort of understanding or reason or who knows what. just anything so i don't feel. perhaps this is a plan of satan to keep me away from my heart.

I wonder if it has much to do with how i was raised. all the men under the Marchman name have always had a severe temper, and so when i was the first born son of my family, it was said that this temper would be "beat" out of me. and i am beginning to wonder that maybe somewhere around age 11 or so, at the height of my being disciplined-i wonder if something in me died there.

i wonder if i was told that it is better to be good than honest. that something in not listening to my sister telling me just to lie to my parents about getting demerits for having a peeing for distance contest in the kindergarten bathroom(the lower toilets helped for greater achievable distance for us 5th graders), that just lie mikey, forge their signature, it's better than getting spanked with the belt, - but something in me wanted to bring the truth, maybe it was a search for attention, someone to delight in my humor or my life, i wanted to be noticed, and i was, and was disciplined hard for it. and i think somewhere in the year of 1993 there still stands a boy with his hands on the kitchen sink after getting 5 spankings with my father's belt - i wonder if i left him there - a boy who felt, and dreamt, and cried, and was brutally honest - and i left him there - and went on to live a life where i didn't feel but as long as everything was perfectly put together and cool looking, everyone was happy.

and so 12 years later, here i write, also almost 7 years after my father's death, wondering why i have never really cried over my father's death, why when i begin to feel the overwhelming flood of pain and anger i have for him, i stick a cork in the cracking dam. i wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that i have been told not to feel by so many. especially by that leather belt.

so i wonder how that little 11 year old boy is doing...or perhaps, i was 12, or 10, or 9, or 14, there are too many memories to dig through to find where he was abandoned and left to become a man with a hardened heart, who now is desperately trying to find that little boy...