Treading Lightly

One of my favorite movie lines is from the movie Con air. It is about bad convicts who are being transported on an airplane, and while in air, they take over the plane. After taking control, they are playing the song Sweet Home Alabama on a radio. The character played by Steve Buscemi looks at the character played by Nicolas Cage and says, "define irony, a bunch of convicts singing and dancing on a plane by a band that died in a plane crash". I have my own definition of irony. The first day of a long awaited spring, and it's freezing cold and snowing. Gotta love it. Me and my guys got to spend over an hour standing on the highway last night, after people decided to start playing bumper cars on the frozen bridges. Come on warm weather!

I am going to to go in a different direction. They are subjects with which I will tread lightly. Most of you who know me know that I don't get too involved in political banter, try not to rail too much about the going's on in the world, and try to mostly mind my own business in general. But the last few weeks things have happened and are happening in this world that give me pause. The first is Washington. I never cease to be amazed at what they do. I am fully convinced that there is some sort of alien bubble around them that prevents their return to reality. I will keep most of my personal opinions about them, and the health care bill, and the president, to myself. What I will say is as a working, tax paying American, I do not like what I see and hear coming from Washington. We are headed in a bad direction. Then there is the Southern Baptists'. I have mostly lost touch with them and what they do or don't do. But Kenneth Star as the president of Baylor University? Really? I won't even go into that. Then my current favorite is the Tulsa County Sheriff attempting to take control of local Police Departments in an attempt to create a metro department. Make no mistake, it is basically a hostile take over where the municipal officers like me have no say at all. I would love to go into all the details and how I feel about it but that would take an entire book to cover it all. What I will say is that it is simply an attempt by the Mayor of Tulsa and the Sheriff to gain more control and power, and destroy the Fraternal Order of Police in Tulsa County. It will cause good, hard working Police Officers to lose their jobs and their retirement pension for no other reason than power and control by political leaders who are power hungry. The cities we work for are not broke. One of the cities affected has had the best and fastest growing sales tax income in Tulsa County for the last year or more. We as Officer's are very much afraid that we could be unemployed sometime over the next two years, for no other reason than power and money. Period. It is a scary and sobering possibility.

So, I know some of you may be asking, where did this all come from? I came home the other day, after hearing the news about the Sheriff's plans, and after a not so good day at work, and was very scared and angry. My thoughts were two fold. What is it about power that makes people loose touch with reality? The saying power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, keeps running through my head. It seems to me that more and more we seem to be losing the freedoms this country was founded on. I hate to sound like some sort of extremist because I am not, but at some point when do I say enough is enough and become at least more active in saying enough is enough. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. He said something very interesting. He said his wife looked at him and asked him, when was the last time you prayed for our government? It took me back for a moment. I haven't done that in a very long time. I think I will start. I think we all need to. I really will stop before I voice too many of my personal opinions.

The second, and more pertinent thought for me, was control. Another one of my favorite movie lines is from "Day's of Thunder". Nicole Kidman's character tells Tom Cruise's character, "control is an illusion you infantile egomaniac". It always hits me between the eyes. Control. One of the biggest lesson's I have learned in life is just how little control I have. Sure I can control if I go to work or not, or if I wash the car or not, or if I put the trash out. But I cannot ultimately control the weather, what goes on in Washington, or Tulsa County, or cancer. I went through a rough period in life several years ago and one of the biggest lessons that I had to work on was control. I began to understand that I cannot control people. No matter how bad I want to, no matter how hard I try, I cannot control people and what they do or say. I also cannot control life and what goes on. I had to begin to learn how to take care of me and my decisions, and let go of everything else. Don't get me wrong, I am not very good at it. But what I began to learn, and have been reminded of lately, is that control is somewhat of an illusion. And if I spend my time upset, mad, or worrying about things I ultimately cannot control I am waisting my precious time and energy. When you get that "phone all" from the doctor who says "I don't normally do this over the phone but in your case time is of the essence", you have cancer, you learn a lot about control! So I have had to step back, take a deep breath, and do my best to give these things that are going on to God and trust they will work out. Besides if I did have that kind of control I would probably just mess things up even worse. God knows better then me for sure.

On the health front. Not much new. I have had pneumonia for the last couple of weeks and have been at home again on the couch. I hopefully am on the down hill slide now. Unfortunately I think Rebecca has it now! I go to my regular doctor on Monday with some new issues to deal with. I will go to the Oncologist in May for my next check up. Other than that we are very ready for some spring and warmer weather. We are very ready.

Remember everyday, to put one foot in front of the other, drink a lot of water, and don't forget to breath..........