This Is What I Know...

Hold your breath, I’m about to get a little bit religious on ya.

For full effect, download “The Stable Song”, by Gregory Alan Isakov, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

If you were to ask me what are the two most influential factors that have shaped my current character the answer would be simple: The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and How I Met Your Mother.

Now before you put on your rage face and rip into the fiber of my writing, thinking this is going to be a repeat post from last week lamenting the loss of my all-time favorite television show, just take a moment, hold your breath, count to ten, and keep reading on through the next paragraph. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed. 

With that being said, on a semi-serious/semi-half drunk on four hours sleep note, I would like to tell you about some of the principles and beliefs I have come to accept as laws that govern my life, laws in my head I categorize as “Brocktrine”. Yes, I know that is a witty way of using my name as a synonym for law, but all jokes aside, I want to tell you about things in my life that I know with absolute certainty to be true…

I know that there is a God, and that he’s a pretty cool guy, and that he wants us to talk to him every once in a while and fill him in on the details of our lives. He cares about us. He L-words us. He wants us to disclose information to him, like our worst fears, our passions, our secrets, our questions. And if we do, he’ll throw us his two cents. We may not like his answers, but he’ll give us the facts, and that’s just one of the things that makes him The Almighty.

I know that the high five is the purest sign of friendship between two parties. There are different kinds of high fives we can use: the phone five, the relapse five, the word play five, the condolence five, the break up five, and on the rarest, most important occasions, the high six. All of these show a level of friendship that cannot be duplicated.

I know that the best stories are told for an ultimate purpose: to teach us something. When we hear of legends in the Old Testament being swallowed by giant whales, or Prophets spending entire days on their knees in prayer, or our Dads recounting to us the night of their 31^st Birthday when they wrestled a goat, the main purpose for this is to teach us a lesson. Yes, some of the details may be slightly askew because of a storyteller’s use of exaggeration, but that’s not what is important. What matters the most is the lesson these stories are trying to teach us. 

I know that we need to be patient in this life. We may not have the answers to our questions, or the solutions to our problems in the exact moment we want, but they will come. Sooner or later, they will show up. Think about it, if everything was gifted to us the very second we needed it, how in the curse word would we grow as human beings? We wouldn’t. We would be as shallow and one-dimensional as MTV. Good things come to those who wait. Even if we feel that girl with the yellow umbrella is never going to show up. If we’re patient, and we wait, things will work out in the end.  

I know that people are placed in our lives for a reason. Now don’t be confused, I’m not going all pre-destination/soulmate on you here, all I am saying is there are certain people in our lives who we cross paths with that will have an impact on who we are now, that will change the way we behave, and will alter who we become in the long run. Whether it’s Barney, or Robin, or a pair of young teenage boys wearing white shirts and ties knocking on our doorstep, there are people placed in our paths not randomly, not by chance, but for a reason.

And lastly, I know that none of us are perfect, however, despite our foul ups we can still love each other whole-heartedly. Yes, I know I just spelled out the L-word, but I really mean this. Every single one of us has flaws, has faults, makes mistakes, screws up, but those aren’t the things that should matter. What should really matter is that we should love every screw up we bump shoulders with. Ted Mosby summed it up best when he said:

“See here’s the secret kids, none of us can vow to be perfect. In the end, all we can do is promise to love each other with everything we’ve got. Because love, is the best thing we do.”