Category: Words To Live By

I’m really not one who is that hip on using any type of slogans throughout my life, but in the case of an episode that happened recently with my landlord, the phrase “Good Things Come To Those Who Wait” applied magnificently.

I did some research to try to find the origin of this phrase and discovered it actually is considered an English proverb that was most likely derived from a Biblical verse (Lamentations 3:25) that read as follows, “God is good to those who wait for him, to the one who seeks him.” Ironically, it was used and adapted several thousand years later by Heinz for the adverting of their ketchup back in the 1980s. Since then, it has become a widely used English phrase that people seem to use quite often to extol the virtue of patience. And with regards to my landlord, that is a virtue I have been seriously challenged with.

My landlord, who is also my roommate, most likely falls on the exact opposite side of the spectrum as me in regards to maintaining household chores in a timely fashion. Vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathroom, and doing laundry are all things I normally keep up with before any of their maintenance gets out of control. And thankfully, I have the complete ability to stay on top of all of those things within my landlord’s home without any of them ever getting out of control. But unfortunately, there is one task that is not within my own ability to maintain and control and that’s the mowing of the yard outside.

I like to spend quite a bit of time outside in the backyard of any house I’ve resided in. Last year, my landlord paid me to cut the grass and keep up the yard maintenance so this was never an issue. Much of the summer of 2012, one would find me out back enjoying the sunlight, or having a fire in the pit, or just keeping the grounds looking nice. But this year, that changed as he took it upon himself to add the yard maintenance to his long list of things that he already had trouble staying on top of. I still haven’t figured out to this day why he struggles with keeping up with his own laundry, cleaning, and various other chores, given that I see him with plenty of time where he’s just watching television or surfing the internet. But I have come to a place where I have had to accept the fact that we are just two very different people and that’s just who he is for right now in his life. Sadly though, this has seriously affected my usage of the yard this year as the grass has gone for many weeks at a time without being cut.

There are days that my patience has worn thin when I’ve seen my landlord sitting around the house on a beautifully sunny day where the grass was six inches high or greater. And sitting outside in that high of grass is never much fun as it draws a lot of bugs. The control issues I continue to work on within myself have at these times taken over and led me to verbally judge my roommate and start an argument about the yard. Most of my attempts to ask if I could just cut it myself have been denied and instead, day in and day out, it remains uncut. I’ve often wondered if its a pride thing for my landlord but I have no data to back that up. These past few weeks, since returning from my last trip to my partner’s house, I have forced myself to try a different path that didn’t involve my attempts at control and confrontation. And instead, it involved patience. Day in and day out, I’d return home and see the grass was still uncut. As the anger stirred within me, I’d immediately start sending love, forgiveness, and peace to my roommate through my prayers. Ironically, after three weeks of this, with the grass still not being cut, he finally reached out and asked me if I could cut it for him and he’d even pay me $20 to do so. I was shocked at first but then became extremely grateful to realize that good things really do come to those who wait. Through those many prayers and patience, I was able to expel all the anger from within me and reach a moment where God intervened and somehow motivated my landlord to ask me for help. So I did just that and got a nice cut yard to enjoy some moments being in again.

The moral here is simple. If you are finding yourself struggling with any aspect in your life, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and try to practice a little bit of patience with whatever it is. The more you do this, the more you might just find as I did, that good things really do come to those who wait.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The biggest news headline lately seems to be whether the United States is on the brink of starting a war with Syria. After evidence came forward that the Syrian government used deadly chemical weapons on more than 1,000 of its people (400 of which were children) on August 21st, tensions have been escalating day to day between our government and theirs. The sad part about this is the fact that once again the country I live in is trying to use its heavyweight abilities to promote democracy in other parts of the world. I am all for democracy, as I live in a country that is based upon that. But the sad reality is that I also know war is never the answer, especially when it comes to promoting any agenda, such as spreading democracy.

Sometimes I wonder if people don’t understand that war only creates more war. It also creates more anger, more hate, and more uprisings. Using even the threat of violence and war does nothing more than raise tensions all around. Doing that reminds me of the big bully in high school that uses their big body frame to constantly pick up on someone smaller then them. Except what often happens these days in bullying is that the little person eventually fights back and causes more pain and hardship, even to people that were never even involved in the bullying. They pick up guns and other weapons and go on a killing spree for anyone they perceive as bullies. This same principle holds true with wars. We bully another country with our military strengths and weapons stockpiles and at some point, that smaller country has citizens that rally together and rage their own terrorism back on us so that we suffer. We then retaliate back from these terrorism acts and so on and so forth. The result is that no one wins even if one country eventually seems to become a victor.

War causes deaths, destruction, and a lot of terrible emotions that are everything but love. I choose to stand more in line today with those that have lived in peace filled movements to create more love such as Martin Luther King Jr, Jesus, and Ghandi. They all practiced non-violence to promote their agendas.

While the United States is currently only doing verbal threats towards Syria right now to get them to give up their chemical weapons, what they don’t realize is the way they are going about this is all wrong. Regardless if Syria does the action that the United States is seeking, the fact still remains that we are doing a very large version of bullying onto a country where its citizens need to rally together on their own to move forward towards democracy and equality. Throughout our country’s history, there have been many movements to achieve more equality but that didn’t come with another country bullying us to get there. Martin Luther King Jr took many of our citizens and united them together to help achieve racial equality.

So many of our country’s previous actions have led to things such as 9/11 and other terrible terrorists acts. Haven’t we lost enough soldiers already from all these wars where we try to promote our own agenda? How long is it going to be before our country can wake up and realize that bullying is only leading us to more pain and bloodshed.  Sometimes the best thing we can all do is just work on ourselves and create a uniformity of light and love that shines as a beacon for everyone out there who hasn’t reached that point yet.

I pray to God that our country doesn’t go to war with Syria. I pray as well for the end to our country’s bullying it’s agenda in other places in this world. Like so many continue to say, we have a lot of problems right here in our own borders that need to be addressed first. Aren’t they more important to find solutions for than trying to promote our agenda elsewhere, which often just leads our country to new wars.

The bottom line is that the United States is acting no different right now than that big bully from high school. As my country uses its weight to threaten Syria with war, it’s already going down a dark path that is only going to lead us and them to more pain and hardship. War is NEVER the answer, and once started, it only leads to great losses of lives and land that never have to be lost in the first place. The only solution for creating love, equality, and peace in this world is to create that from within. And when all of us can unite together and have those feelings present from within, it’s then that everyone will truly begin to realize that war is never, and never was, the answer for any agenda.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I’ve come to the conclusion that up until recently, I’ve played the world’s longest running game of hide and go seek with God except I was always the one trying to find the best hiding spots.

As a kid I loved the concept of hide and go seek and played it all the time with the rest of the neighborhood children. All I had to do was find a great spot to conceal myself and wait until someone discovered me. Often, I was able to find those unique ones that the person who was “it” was never able to locate me in. And somehow I see the parallel in that now of how my relationship with God has been for a long time.

Growing up, I really didn’t think much of God. What I thought most about was what most kids probably do during their younger years which was to have as much fun as possible and to avoid homework, chores, responsibilities, and the blame for anything. The only relationship I had with God was the one in my United Methodist Church that I attended diligently with my family each and every Sunday in my nicest of clothes. And I hated it. My family forced me to go each week and the only things I can really remember about it were the boring sermons, the same worship format that always felt empty, and sitting through Sunday School dreading every minute of it. On top of that, at every family meal we sang our grace in a song, and at night, I was forced to do my pre-bedtime ritual of saying the “Now I lay me down to sleep…” prayer. What I never realized though was that during all that time, I hadn’t yet played that hide and go seek game with God, given that so much of my life was surrounded with connecting to a Higher Power. It was at the age of 17 though, when I picked up alcohol for the first time, that I found that first unique hiding spot from God.

Drinking alcohol and then finding drugs was truly one of the best hiding spots I had not only from experiencing that relationship with God but also from life itself. That period of my life lasted just over five years. And I find it rather comical to think about how those five years were similar to that of a game of hide and go seek. Many times when I got into one of my best hiding spots as a kid, I’d make noises after awhile when no one found me, all for the purpose of giving clues as to where I was. During my drinking and drugging phase of my life, often I’d come out of hiding for a few moments when life got out of control with my binges. In those moments I’d cry out to God to help me feel better. Other times when my exams were overwhelming me, I’d ask God to get me through them with good grades. There were plenty of other cases too where I came out of hiding for brief moments because of various troubles I was experiencing in my life. But in each case, when life settled down again, I’d go back into that unique hiding spot with the drinking and the drugs where I didn’t think much at all about God.

On the day I got clean and sober for good, I left that five year hiding place that had kept me hidden from God for most of that time. For a brief period, I sought a deeper relationship with my Higher Power as I tried to adjust to a life of sobriety and the fact that I had come out of the closet. But at some point, when those fears and pains lessened of dealing with a sober life and being gay, I found other addictions that were no different than alcohol and drugs. For the majority of the next seventeen years of my life, I jumped from one addiction to the next and each was like another special hiding spot in that game of hide and go seek with my Higher Power. There were plenty of moments throughout all those years when life got out of control and the drama became too great. In each of those times, I’d make all those noises to have God be able to find me. Most often, those noises translated into many torrents of tears and anguish filled prayers of saying “I’m sorry.” But in every single case, once I felt better, I’d always go right back into hiding from my Higher Power with some type of addiction.

There comes a time for most kids who like the game of hide and go seek, where they feel they are too big to play the game anymore. They essentially get tired of finding those unique hiding spots and spending all that time in those places alone. Instead, they trade in that game for doing more grown up based activities and living life in new and different ways. That moment happened for me at the end of April, 2012, when I had gotten too sick and too tired of being alone all the time and feeling miserable more than not. All those brief times I had come out of hiding and sought God since the age of 17, had proven to be the only good memories I really had during those years. It was enough to convince me that I didn’t want to play hide and go seek anymore with God. And it was then that I decided to permanently come out of hiding and never go back to any of those unique spots I had found to conceal myself from God.

Today, I can smile when I think of the times I actually play hide and go seek with my nephews when I’m visiting them. Usually I can see where they are hiding right away but sometimes I pretend I don’t just to keep the game going. It gives them an illusion that they’ve found some great hiding spot and generally it’s them who start making those noises to help me find them or sometimes they will re-emerge all on their own. Maybe this is no different than how God was with me for over 22 years of my life when I had found all those unique places to hide in with so many addictions? And now that I’m not hiding, I’m definitely doing a lot of seeking, and I’m finding that ironically, God really never goes into hiding, it’s only us that do.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson