Cat Furniture and Social Retards

Travis makes cat furniture. Big cat furniture with varying elevations for the kitty to romp on with his little paws. He makes small cat furniture, just a basic scratching post for your conservative Mennonite cats who practice simplicity. Travis makes cat furniture.

Travis drives a big blue Ford truck that get's 30 mpg. He puts oil in the Diesel to make it last longer. It's a 7.2 liter that they use in dump trucks. If a Bradley Fighting Vehicle ran it over it wouldn't bust it.

Travis has a kerosene heater he just bought for his shop. It's fuel injected. It burns three gallons of Kerosene an hour; but he doesn't need to run it more than a half hour a day. It works pretty good to keep him warm while he's working on cat furniture. Before it cost him $200 a month with an electric heater.

Travis is awkward. I'm a jerk so if I'm honest I would say he is socially retarded.** He's a child of God, he is beautiful to the Father, he is loved by the Father. I'm not God, I'm not Jesus; as a result I tend to be really selfish, a jerk really.

Travis called the church looking for a singles group. They gave him my number. I could tell by his voice that he was socially retarded; and he wanted to know if there were single girls in the group... oh geez. I figured I couldn't get away with a clean conscience without inviting him to something, so I invited him on to hang out with us on Sunday. He hit on my now girlfriend, and was as I predicted socially retarded. I found out very quickly that he makes cat furniture.

It's been a few weeks, he's still socially retarded. I've heard so many times about what kind of carpet he uses for his cat furniture. I know his truck better than I know my own -now wrecked- car. It is so ridiculously draining talking with this guy. I don't even know what to say. Today he said "Did you know Wal-mart employs a million people around the world? I'd have to make a lot of cat furniture to have that many employees!"

I was drastically curious "What brought that to mind Travis?"

He shrugged "I don't know, just thinkin."

I have my arm around my lovely girlfriend who by this time has escaped the torture by falling asleep. Travis makes me want to have a Thyroid problem just like her. Sleep, sweet escape. I want to talk about deep stuff, fun stuff. I want to talk with my girlfriend for more than five minutes without hearing about freaking cat furniture! He draws you in, he just stares at you and won't let you get away from the conversation!

Travis.

Travis shows me how selfish I am. How disabled I am. I have such an inability to love. To have compassion. I know I'm trying, I know we're doing a ton just by continuing to invite him on Sundays. How does this line up with what the God of the Universe says to me?

From Philippians 2

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

There's this site called failblog.org that puts up all this pictures of obvious failure by us stupid humans. My life on the site would be LOVE FAIL.

Jesus is God, quite familiar with divine conversation, perfect love, perfect selflessness, communion of the Trinity. He became man and hung out with a region full of social, spiritual retards. Peter... retard. Thomas... retard. All twelve disciples... retards. Read the gospels, read acts. They did amazing things... and they did stupid things.

The tenderness and mercy of Jesus blew right past their shortcomings, their undesireableness. God interacting with man on a daily basis.

Being around Travis will be a good thing for me. Hopefully he feels loved and recieves friendship from us. Beign around Travis drags me into the street naked; standing before God next to my mistress, selfishness. He shows me mercy; but calls me to leave my lust behind, my lust for myself, my passion for my own desires. I can talk all day of what is "emotionally healthy" for me, or "what I can stand" in relating to Travis. God have mercy on me. This selfish, prideful man.





**The mentally ill are a beautiful part of God's kingdom, I have heard stories of healing and love that have flowed from simple hearts that put me to shame. If you read the whole thing right you'll see that my distinctions of calling someone socially retarded are a selfish sinful human distinction. Retard is a dirogitory term only because in our selfishness we have deemed the mentally handicapped as something 'less' than us. My use of the word shows not only my willingnes to make Travis something 'less' in my mind; but also acknowledges that in some way I consider myself more viable than the mentally ill. May God have mercy on me.