I've been way outside my comfort zone, venturing out at an exponential rate.
I've actually spoken to some ladies who's dress triggered a little something in me. A couple took it pretty well. At least one got offended. But I believe this visual trigger was meant to be used by wives on their husbands. I don't see it as appropriate anywhere else. (Not that I can demand that anyone change; I'll just have to keep not looking at the ladies that disagree or misunderstand.)
There is some danger that I'm just going to unload all this... That would be neither nice nor good. I've gotta finish that book, No more Christian Nice Guy. I don't want to be nice, but I still desperately want to be speaking in love.
When she got offended, and the two of us spoke (online, as I've not yet been bold enough to speak in person about it, yet), I shrank back. She was upset, and I jumped to the conclusion that I must have done something wrong. This is a "Nice Guy" attitude... I realized I was rocking the boat and sat down.
I started to mentally climb back into my quiet little box of not saying anything about it. And I discovered that I no longer fit inside. I've come to far to stop talking now. I'd spread my wings and jumped off the cliff... got scared and tried to fold my wings and pretend it didn't happen... but I'm still airborne.
....
Maybe I should start this review back at the beginning...
I was reading through my journal, trying to remember how I'd managed to put God in the center of my life, because that was key to describing all of the changes that have been taking place.
I realized that I can't take much credit. I'd turned to Him as a last resort... I had at last admitted that I needed to break things off with Alicia, and came to realize how disconnected I had become with everyone else. God literally felt like all I'd had left.
It struck me then, that in the same way I'd been neglecting to make time to really connect with anyone around me at school, I'd done the very same to God. We were on a first name basis, and I recognized Him in passing, and we even talked occasionally... But that's not a relationship at all. And a relationship is His main priority with any of us. Using Jesus to pay our way into eternity is all about Him wanting to be with us forever!
...
There is so much that's been happening, even after reviewing the 2006 entries, it's daunting to think of summarizing it all.
God got my attention, and I've stuck by more closely than ever before; and He's rewarded me for it. He led me to the right books and people to help me with exactly what I'd been needing. For Women Only, to ease my feelings of being misunderstood by my former girlfriend; Wild at Heart, to answer my curiosity about what real Manliness is; man-friends to open up to and share myself with and pray for and be prayed for by; a remarkably open prayer group that I was eventually open up more completely than ever before about how easily I feel distracted by the female body; No More Christian Nice Guy, a book that reveled the gaping chasm between being 'nice' and being 'good,' a theme brought up in Wild at Heart that really captured my attention and I felt needed to be integrated into my life; and at last, the long anticipated For Men Only, a fantastic starting point in understanding the female mind, which is what I've grown increasingly certain is the primary audience for my delivery of God's message on modesty. Whoo! It's been quite a ride... And it's only just beginning!
And then there was this bit that I wrote the other night, about a day later that what you just finished reading:
I just can't sleep. The most profound truth has finally found its way to me. No More Christian Nice Guy is my new favorite book. I'm a little confused about where to rank it relative to the Bible itself.. I don't want to say it's better than God's Word, but... it helped me so much in understanding what God had been saying all along about what it is to be a Man!
....Most of society has been promoting a softer, less threatening, caricature, that even a lot of churches have bought into.... Just think of any sitcom or commercial..
Anyway, ... It's a fantastic book that anyone who is, or knows someone who is male should read.
Men are supposed to be fierce! We are supposed to be dangerous! How can we offer any true security to our wives if we are not? How can we defend the standards of God in a world that wants to pull us just a little beyond that necessary boundary.
Jesus himself did not follow the rules. Jesus himself was considered harsh, loud, and obnoxious! He did what he had to to bring people's attention to what was important.
I am of course NOT advocating senseless or needlessly reckless or malicious behavior. Jesus was acting in love, when He was being gentile, and when He was being fierce.
Makes me think of a time when some guy tried to walk off with Kim's backpack, and Dad took off running and shouting for a policeman and declaring what the guy had tried to do. I remember overhearing someone comment that Dad sounded more like someone who should have been arrested... At the time I thought this comment was just dumb; why would the thief want to draw that kind of attention to himself? Though looking back it strikes me more as disrespectful of a man out to protect his daughter.. as if his extremely vocal cries for legal assistance were somehow less excusable than someone running off with Kim's bag. Meh.
Dad was not even remotely nice about it. He was good.
