13 Ways to Ruin Your Life, the FREE book from Jarrod Jones

Happy April Fool’s day. I’ve learned the hard way that people actually take this day seriously. Below, is the intro section of a chapter I wrote in my 13 Ways book.  It is fitting for today. I left the bit of application at the end of it for context too.  Feel the pain…

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It happened on April Fool’s day my eighth grade year of Middle school.   Before school most of my friends would hang out by the outside doors of the gym.  As I was walking toward my posse they were all chuckling and looking at me. My first thought was “zip up.” But all was well there.  I walked up to them and said, “What’s up? What’s so funny?”  My best friend at the time, Lance, pulled out from behind his back an egg.  He slammed it onto my head.  I stood in shock.  I leaned my head over to catch the egg goop as it ran off my head.  But there was no goop.  Lance had pulled a glorious April Fool’s joke on me. The egg was boiled.

Once I shook off my instinct to pummel him I laughed and thought it was the funniest thing ever.  Then he took out another egg.  I was putty in his hands. I said, “Let me get somebody.” He gladly handed the egg over.

I was waiting for my other friends to come by. But none ever showed.  The first warning bell rang.  I didn’t want to miss out on the prank. I had to pull it on somebody pronto.  Most everyone had made their way to class except for me, Lance, and three or four of our friends.  The last kid to walk toward the door was a sixth grader hobbling on crutches and barely hanging on to his books under his arms.

I walked up to him and said, “Hey, would you like an egg?” Then I slammed the egg on top of his head just like Lance did me.  Problem:  This was a raw egg.

As the egg yoke ran down his face he looked at me in horror. I was speechless. I spun around and Lance was foaming at the mouth he was laughing so hard. My friends had taken off running trying to contain themselves.  I chased Lance around the building as the final bell rang.

Out of breath I decided to simply go surrender myself to the Principal and accept my fate. Consequences were inevitable. I walked into his office and confessed the whole thing.  As my story unfolded it was all my Principal could do to suppress his laughter.

Surprisingly the kid had yet to come to the office. I had a hunch he was in the hall bathroom by the office. Sure enough there he stood propped on his crutches swishing water over his face and head.  I felt so ashamed.  You should have seen me wetting paper towels and helping him clean egg off his face while he slapped at my hand as if it were a gnat.  I rambled on about how Lance had set me up, that he (the kid) was my last chance to pull the prank, and so forth. I told him I’d be his body guard the rest of the year.   He looked at me with fire in his eyes. You couldn’t blame him.

Unfortunately, I am still just as gullible.  Pranks pulled on me aren’t a difficult task. Actually I think fewer pranks are pulled on me now because it’s just plain boring. I’m too gullible, too easy a target.

It’s one thing to be an easy target for innocent pranks. It is an entirely different issue to be gullible in sexual temptation.  Upon further thought, gullible may be too soft a word.  Naïve is more like it.  To commend your emotions and issues to a woman outside of your marriage is a travesty. To entrust your heart and purity to just any woman before marriage can bring brokenness and regret.  It’s plain naïve.

Don’t be gullible.

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If you find I haven’t written on this blog in a while, check out www.jarrodjones.com.  Thank you for checking out this site. I have gotten so many comments lately (and suddenly!) I bless the Lord for how He uses this site although I haven’t blogged on the site in a while. Now that I’ve discovered that it’s ministering powerfully to many of you, I will try and do better.

Thank you so much for your encouragement!

Much love and power in Christ!

Follow me on Twitter at @jarrodjones

I posted this on my personal website, but just in case you don’t check that one I posted it here too.

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I had to get some pictures made a while back. I had a specific picture in mind that I wanted made along with the others.  The picture holds personal significance for me.

My dad had a blue chair.  I wanted a snapshot with me holding the chair on my back.  The expression on my face is half daze, half-hiding something.

That chair on my back represents the weight of issues that I tend to put on myself. My dad snapped the picture in such a way that it faded me out into a brownish tint and highlighted the bright blue of the chair on my back. It’s a statement he made unknowingly but personally to me. It’s a near-perfect image. My thoughts and heart tend to highlight the weight I put on myself.

Now, I don’t believe in vomiting my junk out for all to see. But I do believe in bleeding out for some to see. Because we’re all bleeding.

More than not, who I am on the platform is not who I am in person.  More than not, who I am when chatting with a friend over coffee, or who I am as I’m shaking hands with someone at a Church or event, is not who I am deep down.  The face I present is not what goes on behind the face.

And the face you present to people is not what is going on behind your face either. I hear some say, “What you see is what you get.”  I don’t buy it. The face you present to who you golf with, pray with, work with, or go to the movies with is not the real you. And if you ever do wipe off some of the cosmetics that hide you, and then bleed a little with someone, you walk away wrenched in the guts that the person has some kind of upper-hand on you. And doesn’t like the you revealed. And will never see you the same. And it’s traumatizing.

As a teenager I had a bit of an acne problem on my forehead. I coated my forehead every morning and night with a medicated gel to get rid of it. Meanwhile, I would cover my head in my mom’s Coverup makeup to hide it until it went away. I still use Coverup makeup… but not on my forehead. Rather, I use it on the insecurities and fears of my life.  All the while I pray and hope that Jesus will completely take away these insecurities and fears.

I wake up many mornings with, as Frederick Buechner expresses, feeling like “I’ve swallowed an anchor.”  Anxiety deep in my stomach, unstoppable negative thoughts, fears of not meeting expectations, fears of letting people down, fears of doing something or saying something, or not doing something or saying something that ruins my sons’ lives. Yet I am determined to present an aura that I am “too blessed to be depressed.” I paint a “fairy tale” portrait of myself.

And so do you.

You have emptiness in your stomach that you try to fill with caffeine, or porn, or achievement, or relationships, or sex, or religion/spirituality, or unhealthy pride in your child’s intelligence or natural abilities.  You have good days and bad nights. You wonder if there’s something more. You carry within you good dreams, unaccomplished dreams, faded dreams, and failed dreams. “Terrible things and wonderful things have happened to us all,” says Beuchner.

It’s not easy being human.

This is where the picture of me and the chair missed it.  There is no Cross in the background.  No hope displayed that the weight of sin and fear and insecurity and guilt Jesus took on the Cross. And the Cross is what makes the gospel so glorious. This is what makes the gospel good news.  Because before there is good news, there is bad news.  We are a wreck. Sin be damned!

The good news is that Jesus damned sin. And He knows what you feel, what you struggle with, and what goes on behind the cosmetic Coverup. Jesus knows the truth about us, and as you very well know, it is no fairy tale. In fact, Buechner describes what the gospel does with our fairy tales, “[It's] a kind of fairy tale where everybody is disguised as something he or she is not and only at the end are all disguises stripped away so that all are finally revealed for what they truly are…”

With Jesus the fairy tale ends. We can be naked in our fears, sin, anxieties, shame, insecurities, before Jesus. We can bleed before Him, because He bled for us.

Upon thinking about a Shakespearean play, Beuchner wrote, “Shakespeare is not willing to run…from the conviction that if the truth is worth telling, it is worth making a fool of yourself to tell.”

Our stories connect with each other. We all carry chairs on our backs. We are all human. We need to bleed together. We need to seek the mercy of Christ together.