Determination

Yes, that is Microsoft Paint. Moral of the story...


Anyone can do anything if they have enough determination.

By the way, if you think this was easy, here are a few of this guys earlier attempts at the Mona Lisa...

Just kidding, but seriously, anybody can do anything if they have enough determination.

I'm a Proud Native American!

My mom is 100% Lumbee Indian. My dad is 100% white. So as a kid, I got to choose whichever race I wanted. It was a very easy decision for me. I can remember as a small child proudly telling people, "I'm Indian". I loved bow and arrows, horses, trees, running around in the woods barefooted, and anything else that made me feel like an Indian.

I think that virtually every group of people on the planet takes some degree of pride in their race. Mexicans have viva la raza! (Long live the race!), African-Americans have the godfather of soul James Brown with Say it loud...I'm black and proud! And rightly so! I think we should be proud of our heritage. By pride, I don't mean I think I'm better than you. I just mean I'm very glad that I'm me.

But this morning I was thinking, I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say "I'm proud to be white." I'm sure white people are proud of their race, after all, they've made tremendous contributions to society throughout history. But why aren't they allowed to say it? Why, even to this day, am I more proud of my Native American 50% than my white 50%? In our efforts to overcome racism and bigotry in this country, is it possible that we've just created a different form of racism? I personally think a lot of our efforts against racism tend to use negative, rather than positive, reinforcement. In other words, we use negativity to try to bring about something positive. From my perspective, I don't think it's worked out so well. There are so many positive things we could emphasize and encourage that I think would nurture more unity in our society. Maybe we're heading in that direction. I sure hope so.

I guess all of this is coming to the surface for me, because we're adopting an Ethiopian child. So then, our family will be 33.3333% African-American. I'm very proud of that. We plan to make every effort to keep Ethiopia a huge part of his life and ours. I know we'll have to deal with some racism as he grows up, but with God's help, we will teach him to honor and respect all people...even those that are different from him.

Forgive me if I violate any of the rules of blogger etiquette here, it's my first time.

I basically just wanted to chime in on the election and all that good stuff. First of all I have to give props to Barack Obama for being the first African-American president of the US. I was kind of hoping my son could eventually fill that position, but it's all good anyway.

That being said, I wasn't an Obama supporter. Wasn't much of a Mccain supporter either, but I voted for Mccain. No need for me to get into all the reasons why I was for or against either guy, since the election is over and all.

The main reason I started blogging is because I'm noticing that a lot of Christians are kind of bummed right now. And when I say "Christians", I'm talking about Socially Conservative Christians. I mean, for a while now, Christians have kind of been on a politically motivated high, because in recent years, we've had a stronger voice and we've become more of a force for "liberals" to reckon with. And for most Christians that has seemed like a good thing. I mean, for me it seemed like a good thing. But really I'm not so sure anymore. I'm not so sure that this hasn't been kind of a false security, or a crutch for us. It's like there's a part of our faith that we haven't had to use for a while.

So what do we do, when we don't have that crutch anymore? We have a democrat president, an overwhelming majority democrat house and senate, and probably before the end of the next 4 years, a majority democrat supreme court. That means there's a pretty good chance that democrats could soon have comfortable control of all 3 branches of the US government.

For Socially Conservative Christians, that's downright scary. But the more I think about it, the absolute worst that could happen is that this country will go in a completely opposite direction than we think it should go. Abortion, gay marriage, high taxes, big government, etc.

I love this country, I really do. But the Bible's pretty clear that things won't stay peachey forever. Is now the time that things start to become less peachey? I don't know. I just know the sooner we get rid of all our crutches the sooner we'll be ready when that time comes.