Rain Rain Go Away

As of Friday September 14th I am officially engaged to be married. It was a very interesting experience, amazing, wonderful, and I am relieved I don't have to face the anxiety again. I put so much careful thought, consideration and planning into the event that I almost missed the beauty of it as it quickly passed through my life.

Growing up I never was much of a planner. I simply did what I wanted when I wanted to but as I have gotten older and particularly since I began college planning has slowly taken a larger hold on my life. See before college parents tend to due the majority of the planning (for males this tends to have been mostly pertaining to mealtimes.) but college begins and home is has become a place for visiting each second of the day has to be filled doing something. When I first obtained the "planning" responsibility I didn't handle it well. As a result of poor planning skills I was lonely and board often. But alas, as I have grown in my collegiate years so have my planning abilities (homework, work, class, meals, church, social time, time spend with my girlfriend, ect.). So much in fact that when I spend a large amount of time planning something and it doesn't go the way I envisioned chaos is soon to follow. Such a time was it on Friday.

I had everything planned to the last detail for how I was to propose to Ashley, then on Thursday while traveling to Alabama (my ideally planned proposal location) I heard the forecast, rain...all weekend long. Not wanting to lose my cool I did not panic (at least not immediately). I quickly began text messaging my brother-in-law who was located in the seat directly behind me in the van full of my family and Ashley. We were text messaging in order to covertly discuss the looming dangers of a weekend full of isolated showers. In the end we decided it best to hold out and hope the rain would break.

Friday, after sending Ashley away with my mother and sisters for the day I began putting my plan into action while keeping a weather eye on the chance of precipitation. While the news said there was a thirty percent chance and the dark gray clouds threatened rain the ground remained dry. It was looking good, everything was going to worked as planned. I had received to supreme confirmation in the fact that it would not rain by the premiere weather expert in Dunbar, Alabama (population 7) my own Grandfather. He was wrong. Twenty minutes after the said prediction the rain came in the in brute force (the official Alabama term that is used is gullywarsher). At this point I lost it. The plan hinged on the participation of the elements as the occasion would take place at a specific spot outside. After demanding the weatherman's resignation I took a deep breath collected my thoughts and began freaking out all over again. Even if the rain did stop the ground would now be to wet for the setup that was the center point of my plan would sink (quite literally). I had to go to plan "B" which I quickly realized I had forgotten to make...again with the freaking out.

It was my brother-in-law that came to the rescue. He took me aside and said to me the most prophetic words I had heard all day, "Joel, its going to be perfect." Kyle convinced told me that the planning I did was great but what made it perfect wasn't all of the little things I had planned but the event it self. That night I was asking someone to spend the rest of her life with me. Thanks to Kyle I regained my composure moved my setup 12 feet under the protection of a covered porch and enjoyed to perfect evening and the beauty that was the moment that I said, "Ashley, will you marry me?"

Oh by the way it had stopped raining.

Who am I to be god?

The death penalty has always been something that vexed me. I didn't know how i really felt about it. On the one hand i firmly believe in justice and the responsibilities of one's actions resting on their own shoulders but something never seemed to sit right with me concerning taking someone's life as punishment. Before I go any further I would like to give the disclaimer that I have never had or even known someone who had wronged another person so much that the law was imposing a punishment of death on them. I cannot honestly say how I would feel if one of my loved ones was killed by another and the possibility of the death penalty came up. With that being said I realized something today. The occasion for having such a realization was a very small moth. I was sitting and working the desk at my job when a small moth started fluttering by my computer screen annoying me. As soon as the moth landed to the left of my lap-top I swatted, it forever ending it's existence. The realization I had was the fact that I took life away from something. I decided that the life that was flowing through something was less important than my annoyance level. In turn I played god to a moth and took it upon myself to decide the fate of another creature. This realization brought me again to thoughts of the death penalty and i asked myself, "Who are we, any of us, to be god to another's life?" With this realization I cannot help but come to the conclusion the killing someone for justice is wrong. Incarcerate them, remove them from society, yes but killing them is not the solution to the problem.