holy moley...

I dont think we realize that some of the things we do in life are dangerous. This guy, for example, is willing to risk severe physical injury just to fix his truck. He probably isn’t thinking right now that if that truck falls he is in for a world of hurt probably because he has never known anything different. We can look at this picture and go, "holy moley, is that guy dumb" but that guy is just working away. Isn’t life just like this picture? Our actions in life will normally follow what we have always known regardless of how it might be harmful to us. The challenge is moving beyond that mental state and into a realm of listening to the people around us that we know love us and want to see us succeed in life. I am convinced that the crap we go through in life is there to move us from a place of blind knowledge to a place of seen understanding. To go from the things that we THINK we know to a place of real understanding about ourselves and our lives. I always want to be in a place to be able to listen to my wife, for example, when she sees that my attitude about life can harm me and to snap out of it and get perspective. Please believe me that listening and changing are hard things to do when you don’t feel good.

My Pain is Worse than Yours...

I have learned something very important since being sick; that my pain is worse than anything that anyone else is going through. I can prove it. Start to tell me about what you are going through or tell me about a struggle you are going through and I will compare it to me and because I cant really experience what you are experiencing I will know that mine is worse than yours. Don’t tell me that you don’t feel the same way when someone starts to talk about what they are going through and you have challenges of your own. I am being funny about this, but it really is interesting how we compare pain with others when we are going through something in our lives. This type of comparing really show us mentally where we are and if we are focusing on the pain in our lives more than being grateful that we were able to wake up and live another day. I call it “the perspective of our pain” and it is a dangerous place to be emotionally. That place is like an emotional quicksand that is impossible to escape without the power of God to get out of. It isolates us and keeps us from caring about others and the things that they go through because we are so worried about our crap. I used to think that to get people to pray for me that I needed to fill people in on all the gory details of my eye and what I was going through. To make sure that they got my “perspective of pain” and felt sorry for me so that they would “lift me up to God”. I realize now that that is a poor way to get people to pray for me and what I am going through. I was at the eye clinic a few months ago and had a new technician that was helping me and was asking questions about my condition and she said “I know how you feel”. Mentally for about three seconds I was like “uh, no you don’t. You haven’t experienced this and who are you to say that you know how I feel? I have been on prednisone for two years, have a foraging squirrel face and the possibility of a whole list of physical problems that can develop just from the medication I am on to keep my eye from rotting out of my head. Don’t tell me that you know how I feel!” My perspective of pain. While I was yelling at this lady in my head, she started to tell me about her son who had dealt with multiple physical problems and had been on prednisone for the past 16 years and was only in his late 20’s. I then shut up, stopped my mental yelling and had a paradigm shift in my perspective of pain. It doesn’t make the pain I feel hurt any less, but realizing that other people go through stuff worse than mine helps me to keep my perspective and attitude in check.

Growing Up in Church

Don’t you love this cartoon? It reminds me of growing up in church and singing out of the good ol’ hymnals. I know that the strength I have had to get through this time in my life came from a dedication from my parents to make sure that I was in church learning the things that I needed to be the man of God that I am today. I would say in many ways that I have been spoiled in life by never knowing what it was like to be without God. I relate that to my eye and what I have been going through. Until two years ago I have always had perfect vision. I can remember a competition with my dad at the 4B’s restaurant where I grew up and trying to see who could see the farthest. (I won of course!) Because I had never been without perfect vision I never realized the value of being able to see without glasses and without pain. When I got sick and my eye started to be inflamed I REALLY wanted to have that sight back again and realized that for all those years of my life I took 20-20 vision for granted. I know that with God it has been the same way. I have never known life without God and to not have a relationship with Him. I have always had God there to talk to and to trust him with helping me make important life decisions. Before everything with my physical body I had never even entertained thoughts of suicide or just thinking that I would really rather die than go blind. I go back to the years that I spent in church and I can say again that all the years of my mom yelling up the stairs at me and saying on a Sunday morning “Brian, its time to get up for church” and I would say “I’m tired” and my mom would say “GET UP” was the best thing for me. I didn’t hate church growing up, but I was not always happy to go to church all the time but now that I have experienced the depths of my life I appreciate every time mom and dad had me in church to sing out of the hymnals and get something from God. If you have never had a real relationship with God or you have and then walked away, please give him a try again or seek him because the Bible says that if you look for him you will find him. If you have been hurt or disillusioned by the church then I’m sorry for that. I guess I just have a new found respect for the things that were instilled in me at a young age and a new found relationship with Jesus now that I am older where I don’t take His love or care for me for granted. I challenge you in the middle of the crap of your life that you reach out to him. If you want to know how to do that then please leave a comment for me and I can connect with you.
Remember this – “In this life you will never know the real impact of your life on others until you are remembered in death”. What will you be remembered for?

Perspective is an Amazing Thing

Perspective is an amazing thing. Everything you believe is based on your perspective. It is basically a prioritizing of your life and putting things from least important to the most important in a kind of filling system that you live your life by. It is something that the media plays on and challenges you to rearrange everyday of your life. For most of us, our perspective of life is pretty selfish and self centered. It probably started when we were babies and cried for what we wanted and mom gave it to us. That was our only way to communicate with “big people” was to cry until we got our way. Our perspective was to eat, poop and be merry. (make sure you read that right – not eat poop and be merry! Duh!) When we grew up we were supposed to leave the childish ways behind and act like an adult. The problem is that in the culture that we live in today we are catered to and told that you can (as Burger King across the street from my grandma and grandpa’s house would say) “have it your way”. When I got sick my perspective of life changed. I started to look at the real value of my life and what it meant. Was I just living for myself or was I really making a difference in the lives of others? The picture I posted is of my dream car (or at least one of them as my wife would say) but it has a small reminder at the bottom to keep my “perspective” correct – “…not more than souls”. It means that I can really want that car but …not more than souls. Not more than wanting to see people changed and encouraged by the power of God. It is not bad to want nice things like cars, money and the sort, but when those things take the place of seeking God in a deeper way and understanding that our time on this earth is so brief then we have lost perspective. I want my life to matter for more than the things I owned or even the intense opinions that I had about things going on around me. I want people’s lives to be changed by them seeing God in me especially right now with me going through a real time of testing mentally and emotionally. I am not saying that I have all this figured out but I do want the devil to remember me and have some kind of alarm in hell that goes off when I get up in the morning and know he's saying, “oh crap…he’s up again”.

My Path is Set By God not my Circumstances

I love this picture. Psalms 25:10 says - The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulnessall those who keep his covenant and obey his decrees.
It's great to know that the path God has me on doesn't look like this picture! Even though everything seems like I am falling off a cliff, He knows the path of my life and promises to protect me when I follow his ways. Think about this statement - The gift of new life in Christ is free, but it will cost you everything. If you dont have a relationship with Jesus right now, you need to consider the direction and path of your life. Maybe you feel like this guy in the picture. Wouldnt you rather know that all your steps are ordered by a greater power that has your VERY best interests in mind even in the middle of the crap of life?

Gratefulness Provides and Atmosphere for Change

Did you realize that gratefulness provides an atmosphere for change? I don’t think we realize that when we are grateful for what God has given us instead of complaining about what we don’t have we put God in a position to bless us. I can remember growing up when I would complain about something with my parents that they would be less and less likely to give me what I wanted. They loved me too much to give in to me complaining. If they would have said, “Brian, you have complained so much that now we are going to do what you want” then they would have taught me nothing and would have trained me to just complain to them and get my way. Why would I expect my relationship with God to be any different? If I just complain to him about my situation instead of looking to see how it can make me stronger then I am expecting him to be a crappy father and just give me my way because I want it. Also, I don’t know Gods master plan for me and I can’t see my life from beginning to end to know what is going to happen. I don’t know if my medical condition right now is for some greater good that I cant see (no pun intended) and I will look back on this episode of my life and actually thank God for what I went through. I told my wife the other day that before I got sick that I was pretty much a spiritual loser. We laughed about it, but I really think that I have had to evaluate my attitude with God these past two years and take a long hard look at what is inside me and question whether or not I am operating everyday at “full gratefulness”. It really is something to ask yourself and evaluate your attitude with God. Will I be thankful for what God has given me and believe for His best for me, or will I continue to complain about where I feel like He has me and stretch out the growing process until I “get it”? The other thing about my opening statement is that I didn’t say that gratefulness changes the atmosphere; I said that it PROVIDES for change. Just because my attitude is right doesn’t mean that things will change. I think this fact is actually harder than keeping a positive attitude about life. I want to know that God is thankful that my attitude is right and then reward me for my “hard work”. Our greatness will never be realized until we understand that God is the only greatness in us and His ways are not just literally but in every sense of the word higher than our ways.

The devil said what?

I love this picture. It really reminds me that everything the devil tries to tell me is a joke and I need to decide to listen to God instead. Our lives are really a refelction of who/what we listen to. Who are you listening to?

Are you an "I can" or an "I will" person?

I just downloaded a song from iTUNES called “I Will” sung by a group called Men of Standard. (Great group by the way). There is a line in there that basically says to stop being an “I can” person and be an “I will” person. About two and a half years ago I was diagnosed with an eye condition called Scleritis. It is an inflammation of the white part of my left eye. Thirty doctors and mega doses of prednisone and other various drugs later I am still dealing with this disease. I take about 25 pills a day and have a regular date with the Arthritis clinic once a month to get a Remicade treatment to try and stop my body from eating my eye away. I have never known physical or emotional pain like this ever in my life. I was the kind of person that if I had a headache I would never take pills of any kind and would go lay down for an hour and be fine. The best way I can describe my eye pain at its worst is if you take a grape representing an eyeball and peel the skin off of it. It has not been fun. I have dealt with serious thoughts of suicide over the past couple of years as well as losing my job because of not being able to be a youth pastor and hang out with kids. The inflammation got so bad that I developed a partially detached retina as well. I guess the most frustrating thing is that no doctor can tell me what is causing this condition even after being seen by thirty doctors. The last conversation with my eye doctor was about how we have one more drug that we can try and if it doesn’t work that I need to consider letting the eye die or going on some sort of Chemotherapy. Not really things you want to think about when you are 34 years old or really any time of your life. Ok, back to my downloading the song “I Will”. On the roller coaster ride known as my life right now, I have a decision to make every day I wake up and look out of an eye that has vision loss and never feels the same two days in a row to make each day that God gives me a positive or negative experience. I can choose to be an “I can” person and just know in my mind that I can get through this with the help of God and through the Bible saying “yes, I know I can be an overcomer in Christ” or I can choose to be an “I will” person and put actions behind my knowledge of what I am able to do. It’s funny how different the words “can” and “will” are. One speaks to ability while the other speaks to engaging that ability. If I have a $50 dollar bill in my pocket I will never understand its ability until I spend it. Just because I don’t spend it doesn’t reduce its value but its value cannot be seen until it’s spent. It really is the same thing with our lives. God sees value in us and knows our ability. Unless I am willing to be “spent” and search for God and work on developing who God wants me to be through my struggles, the ability inside of me can never be seen. I know that the devil wants me to blame God and only look at how bad my life is right now with medical bills and crappy physical health, but I need to listen to Jesus and what he tells me. I am an overcomer in Christ and have the ABILITY to overcome the enemy with tools that God has given me. God’s part is done as far as the strength he has given me, now it’s my decision to be the “I will” person and overcome the devil by choosing to live a life of victory instead of defeat.

The start of my blog site...

This is my first attempt at blogging and I am kind of scared. Actually, I'm not because you cant see me and I cant see you! Don’t you just love this new digital age? I wanted to start this blog because I feel like it can help people that are going through a tough time in life and are questioning the meaning of their existence. I know that the things my wife and I have been through personally the past two and a half years have tested our metal so to speak and have given us something to share with others to help encourage them on life’s path. The name of my blog is going to be the name of the book I am writing as well – Holy Crap. I think the name is important to not only get people’s attention but to let people know that you can find God’s presence in the pain that you are going through or the “crap” of life. I know for me that the things I go through are either going to make me stronger or I am going to let them determine the direction of my life. I think that many times people let circumstances that they go through determine who they are instead of seeking for a true relationship with God that goes past being led by your circumstances. In reality, circumstances don’t really make us who we are they really do more to show who we are. If you are going through some hard times right now I can tell you that I can empathize with you as you will see with this blog. Well, I guess its time to get started on sharing my story and what God has shown me through it. Hopefully you will find something in it that will encourage you to keep going and not stop, challenge you to seek God if you don’t have a personal relationship with him or to just appreciate what you have instead of complaining about what you don’t have.