It was like the day was burning
Everywhere he turned, he saw the fields on fire
Captive by the wire

Home fell like breaking china
Fear was the only thing they shared at all
Bearing every soul

Oh, give me rest tonite

– Hoi Polloi, “Rest Tonite”

Texas is in the midst of one of the worst droughts in the state’s history and suffering through one of its hottest summers. Here in the DFW Metroplex, we racked up 40 days straight of triple-digit high temperatures in July and August, two days short of tying a record, and have so far had 57 days total over 100 degrees, with that number climbing daily. Further south, it’s much worse. Austin has already had 69 days of 100 degree-plus weather and much less rainfall. Losses in crops and livestock due to the drought have cost Texas $5.2 billion, and much of the state is under severe water restrictions.

And there’s no sign of relief any time soon. While the temperatures will eventually subside in a month or so, meteorologists are saying we’re probably in for another drier-than-normal La Niña winter. Which means things will probably get a lot worse before they get any better.

Not that I want to go back to the ice and snow we had back in February that all but shut down the Metroplex for a week, but I’d like to at least go outside without the fear of spontaneous combustion. Is that too much to ask?

As bad as the weather is, though, it’s something you expect living in North Texas. Triple-digit heat for weeks on end in summer is perfectly normal, and anyone who’s lived here more than a couple of years knows how to deal with it. What’s debilitating, however, is the other kind of drought, the one that doesn’t come with maps, charts, and rainfall records.

It’s the physical drought, emotional drought, spiritual drought, financial drought. All of which I’ve been dealing with lately. More than just being in a rut, it’s the sense that nothing is ever going to get better, that relief from the current stresses and struggles is never going to arrive.

I haven’t been sleeping well. My back has been killing me due in part to the horrible bed we have, and I toss and turn at night only to wake up just as exhausted as I was the night before. I haven’t been eating right or exercising, which of course hasn’t helped the situation. And the financial hardships we’ve faced over the past several months have weighed heavily on me, not that I’m bothering to pray about them like I should. I have been reading my Bible, still on track to finish my year-long commitment to read the Bible by the end of September. But often I squeeze in my reading on my lunch break just to get through it and cross it off my list, not taking the time to reflect on what God is trying to tell me through His Word.

The result is that I’ve felt drained all the way around. Stuck. Worthless. Hopeless. Even though I know that just as with the months-long drought, the situation won’t last forever. Even though I know I can actually change some things on my own now, even if the changes are incremental.

Costa Rican missionary Jamie Wright recently wrote about a neighbor who, unable to sleep for weeks on end because of another neighbor’s barking dogs, has repeatedly begged for the barking to end, desperate to get some rest: ”PAZ SEÑOR, PAZ POR FAVOR….necesito dormir. NECESITO DORMIR… HAGA ALGO…”

“PEACE, SIR, PEACE PLEASE… I need to sleep. I NEED TO SLEEP… DO SOMETHING…”

And that’s exactly how I’ve felt. Tired, sore, beaten down, and desperate for rest.

There was a tinge of disappointment when our 40-day streak of hundred-degree heat was briefly broken a couple of weeks ago. If we were gonna suffer through so much heat, then we wanted some kind of recognition for it; we wanted to be Number 1. But I think there’s something significant about the streak only lasting 40 days.

In the beginning of His ministry, Jesus went into the wilderness and fasted for 40 days. During that time He was tempted by Satan, but the Bible says Jesus also became very hungry. Knowing how long that 40 days of heat felt like (somewhere around an eternity), I can’t imagine fasting for that long. Something tells me “very hungry” would be a drastic understatement. And yet that’s how long He was out there. Did He feel tired? Beaten down? Desperate? I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure there was a reason He did it. Jesus was about to begin a three-year ministry that would end with His death on a Roman cross. He knew the road ahead of Him and knew how difficult it would be. But it was necessary, and He needed time alone with His Father before it began.

Of course, there’s a big difference between a fast and a drought. Jesus chose to fast; we didn’t choose to have a drought. Yet both are hardships, and both bring pain. Hebrews 5:8 says, “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.” There’s no question Jesus suffered during His 40 days in the wilderness. But through that suffering He learned obedience. In the midst of pain, you essentially have two choices: You can grow up or you can give up. Jesus didn’t give up. And neither can I.

This past Sunday our pastor talked about James 1:2-4:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

When you’re going through the troubles, the pain, the drought, he said, you’re not gonna feel joy. You’re gonna hurt. You’re gonna mourn. But the joy comes in the fact that your faith is being tested, that it’s being proven real. It’s easy to have faith when it’s never tested, but if it’s never tested, how do you know you can really depend on it? Only through putting it to the fire can we know that it can withstand the flames. And for that reason, James says, we should be joyful.

So that’s where I am: in the middle of the fire. Tired, beaten down, financially broke, spiritually broken, desperate for rest. And yet somehow full of joy and thankful for the drought.

Previously:
Who is your Elihu?
Look for the search lights
What, me worry?
Who’s in your mine?

From the south, there is no industry to indicate a great city is near. Soon we will crest a hill and beneath us will rest a modern skyline complete with a towering cluster of buildings, factories, and freeways in a grand display of the New South. Dallas is the Seattle of Texas. It is what Chicago used to be. But no single man built the coming town. Dallas blew in on the wings of a Gulf coast hurricane and rained glass and steel onto a field of bluebonnets. It’s an odd town, though. A big, Republican, evangelical city where you can’t drink, girls wear black dresses for dates on Wednesday, and the goal is to join the local country club like your daddy and his daddy before him. When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration.

We crest a hill and there she stands, just as I recalled, puffed up and proud of herself, all bustling with activity and shining in the late morning sun. Cars line the distant freeways thick and slow, bumper to bumper, moving together as if they were connected like an endless train. The highway rolls straight toward city center, through suburbs, past parks and soccer fields and strip mall after strip mall after strip mall. If there is one thing they have in Texas, it is land. There is no need to build things tall and close together; everybody gets an acre; you get an acre to live on, an acre to work on, an acre to park your car in, and an acre in case you need an extra acre. Driving to work or the store may take you an hour because nothing is close together; no space is conserved because, save the cosmos itself, there is nothing quite as big as the state of Texas.

There is but one Texas, and for Texans there is need for nothing more. A country within a country, these people believe they have found the promised land. Businessmen wear thousand-dollar suits with ten-thousand-dollar Stetsons. They drive king-cab trucks to their office jobs while their wives drive SUVs filled with kids in transit to and from school, band practice and football practice and cheerleader practice, and so on. And they have these little white stickers on the backs of the cars that read, “Michael … Plano Football” or “Michelle, Redmond Cheerleader” advertising their child’s achievement like a political statement, teaching their kids that what really matters, what Daddy really loves, is what you do. Give me something I can brag about to complete strangers stuck in traffic. Brilliant. I will have to send my mother a sticker that says “Vagabond” or “Late Sleeper.”

What do I think of Miller’s assessment of his home state?

In short, it’s a load of self-righteous, elitist crap that perpetuates a bunch of outdated, liberal stereotypes about Texas and the people who live here.

To be fair, he’s not completely off the mark. Yes, we have a lot of strip malls and materialistic soccer moms and ugly glass skyscrapers left over from the real estate boom of the 1980s. Yes, we have a lot of mostly flat land that allows for people to cheaply build out instead of expensively build up (which is also why we weren’t as affected by the housing bubble that crippled many other parts of the country). Yes, we have a lot of traffic, made worse by all the families relocating here for work. Yes, we have a lot of churches (which Miller, a Christian, seems to think is a bad thing). And yes, we’re proud of our kids’ achievements, although I highly doubt that’s a trait confined within our borders.

But as for the assertion that Dallas is a “big, Republican, evangelical city where you can’t drink, girls wear black dresses for dates on Wednesday, and the goal is to join the local country club,” I have no idea where that came from. OK, maybe in the “old money” parts of Dallas, there are still country clubs. But I think if you asked anyone in Uptown, Oak Lawn, Deep Ellum, or Oak Cliff whether they fit this mold, you’d get laughed at. (Or in some cases, shot.) And since the publication of Miller’s book, Dallas has elected or re-elected numerous Democrats, including district attorney Craig Watkins, Dallas county sheriff Lupe Valdez, and U.S. congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. And to my knowledge, none of them wear thousand-dollar suits or ten-thousand-dollar Stetsons.

I think, though, it’s Miller’s last paragraph that really pisses me off the most. Specifically the part about “what Daddy really loves is what you do.” Is he serious? Does he really believe that all Texas fathers only care about what their children achieve in school or in sports? This, the same guy who founded The Mentoring Project, a non-profit organization aimed at providing male mentoring to fatherless boys? The same guy who serves on President Obama’s task force on Fatherhood and Healthy Families? Does he really believe that we are really that shallow? As a proud Texan and an even prouder father, I can honestly say that that’s not true at all. I love my daughters unconditionally. I’m proud of who they are, not just what they do. And I know other fathers who feel the exact same way about their kids. Why would anyone assume that a parent is that superficial just because they have a sticker with their kid’s name on the back of their car anyway? To me, it says that that parent loves their child and is involved in their life, something I would think Miller of all people would encourage. But I guess not. I guess I better run out to my car and remove the Upward soccer magnet so that I’m not judged by anyone on the way home (in the suburbs, where I live with all the other materialistic evangelical Republicans).

Give me a break.

Miller’s multi-paragraph diatribe against Texas is the kind of pretentious nonsense you would expect from some liberal Oregon hipster who’s too cool to ever come within a mile of a Chili’s, Walmart, or anything else that wasn’t locally-owned and organic — unless it was considered “ironic”, in which case it’s OK. But the thing is, Miller doesn’t strike me as that kind of person, which makes me all the more disappointed in him. I’ve read and enjoyed all his other books, but I have to say I’m genuinely saddened by the gross mischaracterization in this one. Maybe he can be forgiven on the basis that this was his first book, originally published in 2000 under the title Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance. Maybe he’s matured since then and come to different conclusions about his home state. But it really doesn’t matter to me. Twenty-two pages in, I’m done with it. I still love his other books, especially Searching for God Knows What, but I won’t be reading any more of Through Painted Deserts.

I just can’t.

Previously:
‘Blue Like Jazz’ movie on hold indefinitely
Politics, the emerging church, and Donald Miller
Every state wishes it could be Texas
Don’t mess with Texas
Dallas is foreign to me even though I visit there every day

Source.

Now we get the sequel.

First, we find out that Texas employers hired 41,700 new employees in October (a number almost identical to the jobs lost a month before). But then in another article (also from the DMN), we find out that Dallas-Fort Worth “lost about 60,000 jobs in October compared to a year earlier.” Both stats, conveniently, come from the Texas Workforce Commission.

OK, so I guess you could argue that the DFW area lost 60,000 jobs while other parts of Texas gained 101,700. If so, how do you explain the unemployment rate rising from 8.2 percent in September to 8.3 percent in October? Something’s not adding up.

Further, the first article states that “Dallas-Fort Worth lost 59,100 jobs between October 2008 and last month”, while the second article (quoting the Dallas Federal Reserve) says that DFW has “lost almost 115,000 jobs this year”.

Huh?

Have we lost 59,000 jobs in the last year or 115,000? Did we gain 41,000 jobs in October or lose 60,000? Honestly, I don’t think anyone really knows.

And that’s why our economy is so screwed up.

Previously:
Texas gains jobs, Texas loses jobs
‘Stimulus’ spending could cost Texas 171,900 jobs

Wait, wha?

Have we gained jobs or haven’t we?

See, this is why you should never let politicians do math.

Previously:
‘Stimulus’ spending could cost Texas 171,900 jobs

Like many residents in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, I live in the suburbs but work in Dallas. I drive to work five days a week to my office in North Dallas, then drive home when I’m done. And that’s pretty much the extent of my association with Big D.

I was reminded of just how foreign Dallas is to me when Fort Worth urban blogger Kevin Buchanan took a self-guided tour through the city, comparing Dallas’s urban design to that of Cowtown’s. (And yes, I know how much he hates that term; wouldn’t want to promote Fort Worth’s agricultural roots too much, would we?)

Anyhow, while I disagree with Buchanan on a lot of things, I agree with him that much of Dallas is designed more for car traffic than foot traffic. It’s designed to accommodate workers who commute in by car to work, not for residents or visitors to spend leisure time there. And while there are a handful of attractions to be found, there aren’t many, and those that exist are spread out really far from each other.

As a result, there’s very little incentive to drive way back across town to visit on my time off. After all, what would I do when I got there? If you’re going to a Mavericks or Stars game, there’s the American Airlines Center, but the adjoining Victory Park is almost completely vacant. (What few restaurants and retail stores open there struggle to stay in business.) You could go to the Dallas World Aquarium, but the nearby West End is also pretty vacant. There’s the State Fair in the fall, but the fairgrounds are pretty quiet the rest of the year. Or there’s the Sixth Floor Museum if you still have any interest in the JFK assassination.

But if you just want to stroll around town to eat and shop and listen to live music, you won’t be going Downtown. Other than a plethora of skyscrapers, there’s not much there.

Contrast that with some other big cities like Chicago. I’ve visited Chicago a few times on business, and when the weather is nice, it has a lot to offer. Grant Park and Millenium Park sit between downtown and Lake Michigan, offering plenty of family-friendly space to hang out. The Navy Pier, Lincoln Park, and the Magnificent Mile also offer plenty of activities, just to name a few. Downtown is extremely pedestrian-friendly, and the buses and trains allow most workers to take public transportation to work rather than have to navigate the already-insane streets.

Dallas, meanwhile, can’t even figure out how to build a convention center hotel.

Listen, I don’t mean to bash Dallas, I really don’t. I just don’t have any strong feelings towards it, despite the fact I’ve lived in the Metroplex for over 20 years. Yeah, I guess I could make more of an effort to get to know the city better. Who knows, maybe I would learn to appreciate it more. But for now, other than a biweekly paycheck, there’s not much compelling me to come back.

Previously:
Better than Fair

Six Flags. (SIX; about 30,000 employees; stock down 84%). This theme-park operator has been losing money for several years, and selling off properties to try to pay down debt and get back into the black. But the ride may end prematurely. Moody’s expects cash flow to be negative in 2009, and if consumers aren’t spending during the peak summer season, that could imperil the company’s ability to pay debts coming due later this year and in 2010.

OK, so the numbers don’t look too good. But as someone who worked there for three seasons while in high school and whose kids beg almost daily to go back, I’m really hoping they’ll be able to ride out the next couple of years (no pun intended). Not that anyone expects them to be profitable, but then again, who is these days? (I mean, other than Exxon.)

Despite the grim forecast, I think Six Flags actually has a lot going for them in a down economy. After all, if you live reasonably close to a Six Flags park, it’s a lot cheaper for a family to buy season tickets than it is to shell out a ton of money for airline tickets to fly somewhere. That’s what we did last year, and it worked out great.

And besides, how can you possibly trust a list of soon-to-be-extinct companies from Yahoo when they themselves aren’t on the list?

’Nuff said.

Previously:
What I did on my summer vacation
Better than Fair

Wouldn’t it be weird to see him in the elevator in the morning? Or would he and his Secret Service agents get their own elevator? Yeah, I can see it now. You’re running late for work, trying to catch the elevator doors before they close, and just as you get close, two Secret Service agents pull their guns on you as the 43rd President of the United States waves goodbye. Awkward.

But here’s my complaint. Dubya’s office is about three miles from his home. Three miles! What kind of commute is that?! I don’t think you’re even legally allowed to live in the Metroplex if you don’t sit through at least two traffic jams a day!

We had planned to go yesterday. The girls were out of school for Columbus Day and had been given free tickets, and I took the day off from work. But ultimately we decided to go to Six Flags instead. We still have season passes, so it didn’t cost anything to get in. It was also a lot less crowded than the Fair, and we could ride as many rides as we wanted without having to buy additional tickets.

OK, so we didn’t get to experience Big Tex, the Texas Star Ferris wheel, or chicken-fried bacon. But we had a lot of fun nevertheless.

We’ll try for the State Fair next year when we can save up for it and maybe go on a less-crowded weekday.

Aptly named, the Funnel is the area north of DFW Airport where seven different highways converge, a pretty good design if it weren’t for the roughly half million cars that pass through it five days a week. (Really, it must be more than that.)

There have been plans for years to reconstruct the area with additional lanes (including some toll lanes) and a better design. We were told it would take years to complete (up to 10 years by some estimates) and that it would get worse before it gets better.

Now it looks like it may just get worse.

Having done nothing so far, now the costs of construction are a reported $1 billion (up from $400 million in 2000), which has some people wondering if the project is too expensive to complete as designed.

Money, however, is not a deciding factor in this case. The Funnel provides a critical northern link between Tarrant and Dallas counties, and as the population of the Metroplex continues to grow, something must be done to relieve the pressure from all the cars that swarm the highways each morning and evening. Even if that something runs into the billions.

I’ve always had a strong dislike of toll roads, and this is no exception. But honestly, there are days I would happily fork over the extra cash just to relieve some of the stress of dealing with an already-long commute.

I’m sure there are many others who feel the same way.