Author Archives: Seeking Peace

Memorial Day

27 Tuesday May 2014

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My writing often deals with the darkness in the world and how I wrestle with it at times, combat it at times and get run over by it at times.  The darkness does exist SO I am thankful for light.  Light shines on hope, on goodness, on kindness and on blessings.  Memorial Day weekend was one of those weekends where the light was evident, where the light obscured the darkness and shined on hope and goodness and blessings for me.

Memorial Day for the people of the United States is a day to remember those who have paid the price for our freedom and to honor those who still offer to pay that price each day.  I am thankful for my dad and my uncle who both served and who both have taught me so much about living a life of service and kindness.

Along with honoring this special day, it was a weekend where I felt the world slow down.  I needed the extra day away from work to truly rest my soul, rest my thoughts and rest my body.  It was a time spent with a wonderful woman who has been a gift in my life.  We spent time talking about the ups and downs of our past, the challenges and the joys of the present and our hopes for the future.  I am blessed to have her, someone I can talk to about things ranging from sports and cooking to the deepest and most soul-searching thoughts I have and to know she will listen, she will try to understand and she will offer perspective.  The beauty of it to me is not just in her hearing me but in her willingness to share, her willingness to become more open to being vulnerable to me, to trusting me with her hopes, her mistakes, her joys, her challenges, her goals, her life.

Memorial Day will always be about those who gave all and those who chose to serve so that I can experience freedom.  That is the greater meaning of the day.  Along with that, it will be a weekend I remember for the peace I felt and the time spent with someone who means so much to me and is helping me change into a better Christ-follower and better man day by day.

Grace and peace.

Hope?

25 Sunday May 2014

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“Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness” (Job 30:26)

I will start by admitting that I am writing from a very painful place right now.  My heart is heavy and my emotions are fueling the pain I feel in my bones.  In these times, it is easy to see the darkness.  That said, I think there is much more darkness around me and others than any of us care to admit.  Cancer.  Molestation.  Addiction.  Murder.  War.  Evil.  There is a lot of darkness in our daily lives.  I also realize there is much more good and light than I see at times.  People are doing things everyday to help others that no one ever knows.  Prayers are raised up.  Acts of kindness and compassion.  Charity and goodwill shared.

Hope is one of those double-edged emotions.  On the one hand, hope inspires and offers a glimpse of what might be.  On the other hand, hope causes me to look at the reality of a situation and see that this present moment is not good even though I choose to believe I will prevail in the end.  Some people are eternal optimists who always believe things will work out and some, like me, walk a fine line with hope that allows for the pain of the situation that is creating the hope.  There is also the potential for a lack of hope.  It leads to a brokenness that is full of pain and may lead to a brokenhearted end.

The challenge of hope is the shaky ground it is often built on.  In my situation, it doesn’t take much for me to want to abandon hope momentarily.  My situation is very hard on me and there are certain markers I have each week that allow me to hold onto that hope.  If the ground shakes and the markers move, my first reaction is to throw up my hands, abandon hope, lay down in a ball and wait to die.  I don’t handle these moments well.  I will admit that.  I do not believe I am a fatalist but I can adopt that attitude at times because my marker changed, moved or disappeared.  Basically, the rope I was pulling on to get me to the shore and dry ground got yanked out of my hand and now I have to paddle while the current is trying to push me back into the sea.  I was so close and then, poof, I have to start over.

That is the dark side of me and my hope.  While I fight that battle, I find myself continuing to hope.  At this point in my journey I cannot explain why I continue to put faith in God.  It would be easy to justify the course of my life as random events and nothing to do with a supreme being that I cannot see or hear or touch.  For some reason, I choose to believe.  Maybe it’s because of a great question a close friend asked me one time.  “What else?  If you won’t believe in God, what will you believe in?”  Belief still gives me someone to call out to.  Belief still gives me someone to hope in.  Belief allows me to think I will prevail at some point.  Belief allows me to stand up after I have been on my knees weeping from the current emotion.  Belief fuels hope for what is much further away than I want but I will hope it’s still out there.

The Stockdale Paradox suggests that I never lose hope but I accept that my present reality is not good, not kind and not forgiving.  Admiral James Stockdale was a prisoner of war who endured torture unlike anything I want to imagine and lived through it.  He is quoted as saying it was the optimists who died in that POW camp because their hearts broke when their optimism was crushed after a year or years of captivity.  He accepted the reality and brutality of his situation while maintaining the hope he would, one day, be free.  He didn’t set a time limit on his hope, just that “one day” it would be realized.

So many would suggest I look for the good in the present moment but they are not in my shoes.  Most do not understand what I am experiencing.  Keep your chin up, be glad you have a paycheck and be thankful for what you do have are all nice sentiments, and maybe they are words to live by to some extent, but they do not make the experience less real within me.  The present moment isn’t good, kind or forgiving compared with the hope I have for what life will be like when my hope is realized.  I must accept that my hope may never be realized.  I may never have the relationships I hope for, the daily life that I hope for, the opportunities I hope for but, while acknowledging those possibilities, I continue to hope boldly for things to happen that make no sense at this moment.

It is hope that both hurts so much for what I do not have and allows me to take one more step forward trusting that God will give me favor and bless me greatly one day.  The pain today is real and it is intense.  It is consumed with a marker that was moved, an opportunity lost, a hope not realized.  Yet more hope remains.  It may not look anything like what I am dreaming it to be in my head but it remains.

Grace and peace.

The Monster in the Past

22 Thursday May 2014

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My past, my history, is like a monster sometimes.

I remember when my daughter was young and was afraid of monsters at night.  I would pretend to write a note on her door every night.  With my special ink that flowed out of my finger, I wrote “Monsters better stay away from Kory or they will get beaten up by her big daddy!!!”  With my special finger ink, only monsters could read the message but she believed it worked because no monsters ever got her.  Of course, there were no monsters but something had made her fear they might exist and, to some degree, still does.  Even now when she comes home from college she sleeps with her closet light on.  It’s a fear of something that doesn’t exist.

My past doesn’t exist in the present but I often treat it like it does.  I keep dragging it along with me, living with it in the present moment as if it were real today.  It was real at one point and I know, intellectually, it died at the point the past became the present.  The past is dead, only a memory, so I have to ask myself why I try to make it come to life in current situations and relationships.

There is no doubt my past is a good teacher.  I want to do things very differently in a current relationship because of what I have learned in the past.  The danger is that I sometimes take the pain of the past and apply it to what is happening today even though a lot has changed.  It’s like a monster that isn’t real except in my imagination.

The challenge is to treat the past with truth that it did exist but also know that it does not live in the present moment.  I know people who won’t talk about the past at all.  They hide relationships and mistakes and failures fearing that someone will think less of them because of what happened in the past.  I have been one of those people.  I know people who will talk openly about the past and take every wound and apply it to what is happening to them today to keep people from getting too close.  I have been one of those people too.  I know people who can’t live in the present because their past haunts them too deeply.  I have been one of those people too.

I don’t want anymore special ink to keep monsters away.  I want to let the monsters die.  I want to leave them in the past and move on.  I feel myself doing that slowly but surely but it isn’t always easy.  Every now and then I let a monster come raging back in as if it were really alive and well.  It’s my imagination giving it life but I let myself do it anyway.

I’m tired of the past/monsters affecting how I see today and the future.  I’m tired of holding myself and others back by something that does not exist today.  I pray for the strength, courage and wisdom to lay the past down, walk away and live knowing today is a new day.  It doesn’t mean I can’t learn something from the past, only that the past doesn’t dictate the present if I don’t let it.

Grace and peace.

The Way I Am

20 Tuesday May 2014

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Last night I was having a conversation with someone close to me.  I’m an introvert so my close relationships go deep.  One of the pros and cons of this is that I invest in reading people.  I read their expressions, their words and their silence.  There are times that doing this leads me to good insights and understanding of their feelings.  Then there are times I read things into what I see or feel that goes beyond what they may be thinking or feeling.  I am learning that when I am an observer and the conversation isn’t about us, I’m generally right.  On the other hand, when the conversation is about us, I worry so much about hurting them or causing them any discomfort that I can go too far and overthink the situation.  It’s the way I am.  It’s the way God built me.  It can be one of my greatest strengths.  It can be one of my most trying weaknesses.

While I want to improve where I am weak, I am thankful for where I am strong.  I would rather be able to have my intuitive ability to read people, to know when they are hurting and to know when they are full of joy than to be without that ability.  All the while, I need to learn to calm myself when what is a gift God gave me becomes a weapon against me.  It’s the way I am.  It’s the way God built me.  I have to learn how to use the strength of it and harness the weakness of it so that I help others and myself.

I do build close relationships and when I become invested in someone, that investment runs to the core of my being.  The thought of hurting someone’s feelings (the way I felt last night) or doing damage to our relationship gnaws at my soul.  My initial reaction is to talk too much.  The secondary action is to run far away so they will not have to deal with me again.  Or maybe, so I won’t have to face the discomfort, hurt or pain I have caused.  The strength is in the deep connection I build.  The weakness is in my reaction to hurt.

I hear voices.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I hear voices.  Not audible but very powerful.  They tell me my relationships are tenuous.  That I do not do enough to make others happy.  It causes me to need lots of affirmation.  I would go so far as to say it makes me needy.  That’s not where I want to be and I am trying to listen to Godly wisdom from friends and counselors who tell me I am good enough.  I am far from perfect but they want me to just believe I am good enough.  For them.  For others.  For God.

I grew up in a production-oriented mindset.  You had to go to church 3 times a week to be good.  You had to be busy doing something, sometimes anything to be good.  If I wasn’t doing, I wasn’t good enough.  If I wasn’t doing enough, the right way, perfectly, then I really wasn’t good enough.  It’s a mindset that has followed me through various stages of life and still affects me today.  And, it’s affects can be damaging to me and others close to me.

The way I am isn’t the way I have to be.  I want to celebrate the strength of reading people and understanding what is going on behind the curtain.  At the same time, I want to drop the burden of guilt from feeling like I have to produce, that I have to be perfect, and that I have to receive continual affirmation.  I want to be mighty where I am strong and I want to be stronger where I am weak.

i hope the people who know me and love me will accept my strength and my flaws as the way I am and I hope they will gently continue to remind me I can be so much more.  I seek their prayers and their love.

God made me the way that I am.  I want to learn to celebrate that fact and celebrate my strengths.  I want to use them for good and I want to continue loving people the way that I do.  I want to love them so much that it hurts me when they hurt.  I want to love them so much that I am filled with blue skies and peaceful waters when they smile.  And, I want to be an asset to their lives.  I want to fill them up when they needing filling and I want to stand beside them when they need support and I want to celebrate with them every time there is the smallest of victories.

I go deep.  It’s the way I am.  Thank you God for giving me insight and recognition.  May I use it for your glory and never abuse it to my own end.

Grace and peace.

Why?

15 Thursday May 2014

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Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

I have been walking through a season or seasons of life for the past 15 years that have included a lot of “why” thoughts.  I don’t understand why I have had to go down this path.  I look back and see things I have learned that have moved me ahead but I have not been able to enjoy many of the fruits of that learning in ways I can see or understand.  As a believer in YHWH, it is painful at times to wonder why I am in seasons of pain or seasons of frustration or seasons of complete lack of vision or revelation.  I believe God has given me gifts and talents and I do not feel like I have the platform to use them effectively.  I am separated from people I love and want to be close to, want to hold on to, want to enjoy being in their presence.  I don’t know why.

Last night, I was asked how I bear what I do.  I was with someone who was struggling through some tough days.  The comment was made about how I get through my tough days and it’s honestly the why that is the answer.  I get through them because I need income to take care of my children.  I get through them because I need a job to keep moving forward because forwards is where a future lies with someone I love.  They are the why.

Bearing the how isn’t easy or pretty for me.  No one sees many of the tears I cry.  No one hears the screams when I call out to God to deliver me from this pain.  No one knows all the dark thoughts that go through my head.  Bearing the how isn’t easy or pretty.

The why, the reasons I bear this season, is beautiful.  I have an incredibly intelligent and beautiful daughter who needs me to come through for her.  I have an outstanding son, a man of character with an incredible future, who needs me to come through for him.  I have a woman in my life who is showing me what love looks like and I want to learn more from her and return all that she gives me.

I’m tired.  My body isn’t holding up well to the stress.  My mind isn’t performing at it’s highest level because of the anxiety.  My spirit is weak and I need God to hold me up more than ever.  I press on because there are people in my life I want to encourage, to lift up and to push forward.  Along with the three I mentioned, I have some incredible friends who love me for some reason and want the best for me also.  And, as weak as my faith seems at times, it is still present.  I choose to believe God has something in store for me.  So I press on.

Grace and peace.

 

I’m Sorry

13 Tuesday May 2014

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I’m sorry.

Those are two powerful words.  Said flippantly, they can create wounds that continue to fester.  Said sincerely, they bring peace, relief and hope.

After one of the most difficult, painful, heart-wrenching weeks I have faced in some time, I had a conversation that included “I’m sorry for…”  I was sorry for putting my hopes and expectations on someone else without doing a good job of communicating why I hoped for what I did and how we could be on common ground.  I also received an apology addressing the issue that was sincere and it was amazing what it did for me.

In the past, when expressing my concerns, I was met with resistance, defensiveness and a reminder of my weaknesses whether real or perceived.  Saturday, I was met with listening, calm conversation, mutual discussion and a desire to understand and work towards a better answer in the future.  And, “I’m sorry for…”

To know someone cares enough to apologize for a misunderstanding is very meaningful to me.  No one did anything that was wrong.  It was all based on some past baggage.  That didn’t matter.  We both realize the baggage isn’t something we can’t just walk away from without some time and trust.  We also both realize that we have to be aware of the other person’s hurts, wounds, fears and hopes for the future.  And, we were both sorry for the way things happened and not just sorry but also agreeing to work together to make improvements in the future.

I’m not used to receiving an apology and the power of getting one was incredible.

I’m so thankful for a woman who sees more deeply into relationship than a misspoken word or hurtful action.  I’m so thankful for a woman who looks into the future at what can be through growth and all that comes with it to imagine what a relationship can become.

I’m so thankful I am learning too.  It isn’t easy to put my heart on the line and give trust where the wounds of pain still exist.  I’ve got a ways to go but I’m learning and living and hoping and trusting.

Grace and peace.

I Wish

09 Friday May 2014

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Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3     he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

I wish I felt the peace this psalm offers.  I wish.

I hope God will cover me with the peace this psalm offers.  I hope.

Grace and peace.

Let Her Love You

08 Thursday May 2014

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This post is very different from the first one that was scheduled for this time.  It’s also very different than the second one that was scheduled for this time.  Both were dark and dealt with hard, scary thoughts from the deepest recesses of fear and doubt and unworthiness.  I had gone to those places with a friend who was struggling at the same time I was struggling and we both dove deep into our hurts.  I thought that was how this week would go; dark and filled with fear.  Until I heard, “let her love you.”

I am a man blessed with some INCREDIBLE friends.  Our sins are laid bare in front of each other and our hearts are handled with love and care between each other.  I talked to one of them on the phone and we got around to struggles and some I was having with my own insecurities.  I have been given a gift in the form of a woman who loves me by every evidence I can see.  Where I see ugliness in myself, she speaks beauty back to me.  Where I see hurt in myself, she speaks healing.  Where I see turmoil within myself, she speaks calm.  Yet, I continue a self-talk pattern of unworthiness.  I have heard I am not good enough for so long that I have allowed myself to believe it.  She is trying hard to convince me otherwise.  I struggle with allowing myself to trust her goodness completely and I have tried to hang on to my heart in spite of her efforts to hold it, caress it, love it.

My friend said, “let her love you.”  Let her.  Quit fighting against it and let it happen.  He says I’m worthy of love.  So did another friend who called the day before and told me he needed me in his life for the hard times.  So did another friend who texts me 3-7 times a day reminding me that I am loved and all other voices are liars.  (I told you I had incredible friends!)  “Let her love you.”

For the last day and a half, I have tried to lay down my wounds and my scars and my fears and my self-doubt and just let her love me. That mantra is resonating in my mind as I begin to trust her with my heart and with my self-worth.  Thursday afternoon, we had a conversation on FaceTime.  It’s a great tool because you can see the person and read the body language.  Everything about that conversation told me she loved me, she trusted me and she was willing to hand her heart over to me.  Everything I saw in her eyes and in her body language told me she loves me.  Everything I heard in her words told me she was willing and ready to help me do whatever was needed to feel better about myself.  Everything I saw and heard said, “let me love you.”

To “let” her means to make a choice.  I choose whether she gets to love me or not.  I already told her my desire to let her love me and that I will begin to be intentional in allowing her into places that bring me fear; I CHOOSE to let her in.

“Let her love you.”  Thank you Dennis.  Your words were the words of God.  What they really meant were “Let me (God) love you through my instrument on earth.”

“Let me love you.”  Thank you Kelly for seeing me through God’s eyes and being willing to tell me over and over and over what you see.  You are a gift from above.

Grace and peace.

I Knew It Was Coming

06 Tuesday May 2014

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My son played what may be his last organized baseball game the past Saturday.  To see him play baseball is the epitome of passion and desire.  He wasn’t blessed with the greatest athletic talent early in life and was a “late bloomer” by most standards physically.  Yet he never gave up his passion for the game.  He never quit trying and listening to good coaching.

He started playing for the Fort Worth Bombers as a youngster.  The Bombers were based in Keller and we made the 80 mile round trip up to 5 times a week with tournaments thrown in the mix during fall, spring and summer seasons.  Josh came into the program a little timid and unsure of himself and left with a confidence that has carried him through some mentally challenging and disappointing times during his high school career.  Two of the greatest sports accolades a dad can hear about his son came during his time with the Bombers.  Luis Ortiz was a hitting instructor there (while also serving as a minor league hitting coach for the Texas Rangers and was a former pro player) and was working with a young man who would be playing AAA level pro ball the coming year.  Luis was working on leg positioning and stopped the pro athlete to watch my son (who had also been coached by Ortiz and his coaching partner, Jason Noonan) as an example of what Ortiz wanted to see happen.  Heady stuff.  Later, another coach in the organization told me Josh was the poster boy for what they did.  “We took a little, timid kid who listened and applied everything we tried to teach him and now we see a young man who can play baseball anywhere.”  That is neat stuff when you are watching your son give it all he has.

I can’t begin to guess how many thousand’s of miles we have traveled together, how many thousand’s of hours in a truck going to a practice, game or another try out.  I don’t want to count up the dollars spent on gas, food, hotels, bats, gloves, fees and coaching lessons because there isn’t a single dollar that wasn’t worth it to spend that much time with my son.

He has grown into a remarkable young man.  I look up to him because of the choices he makes and the way he conducts himself.  He has far surpassed his dad in intelligence and in faith and I am thankful to God for giving me such a joy and treasure.

I knew this day was coming but I didn’t realize how hard it would be on me.  I’m sure being alone right now isn’t helping my emotions but I think it’s really the flood of memories that are pouring over me the past couple of days that are making the end so unwelcome.  There is a season for everything and baseball season is over but that doesn’t mean it is easy to let it go.  I have watched him grow and develop on the baseball field, both as a player and as a person and I don’t want to take my eyes off of him for one second.  I have to accept that this season is over and another is beginning and trust the future will bring many new, good things to his life and mine.  Still, I wish I could go back and replay every minute of the past 12 or so years but it isn’t in the cards.  So, I will watch my boy continue to grown into a man and know he will continue to excel and continue to be an example of goodness and righteousness to others.

I will.  With lots and lots of tears and great memories along the way.

Grace and peace.

Stretchhhhhhhhhh

01 Thursday May 2014

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You know what I’m talking about.  You roll out of bed in the morning, stand up and take that long stretch to get blood flowing through your body once more.  It feels good and refreshing.  The blood pumping through your muscles makes you feel alive again.  Sometimes, however, the stretch isn’t completely pleasant.  I’m getting old and stretching for me means that some joints and ailments scream a little bit.  I might feel a shooting pain through my shoulder or in my back near my rib cage.  For a moment it hurts but when the stretch is over and blood is flowing again, here comes that good feeling.

The good thing about stretching is that you can do it quickly.  You can spend time stretching also, if you want or need to work certain areas of the body a little more.  It can take 30 seconds or 30 minutes.  Either way, it’s not long.

Faith is a stretching exercise.  Faith pulls on some things that need to be worked on.  Faith targets some areas that need more work.  Faith, when realized, also leaves a refreshed feeling.  Just like the blood pumping through the muscles of my body after physically stretching, faith sends blood pumping through my heart for God.  Faith is good.  Faith is fulfilling.  Faith can take 30 seconds or 30 minutes.  Or years and years.

That’s where faith gets hard.  Imagine doing the same stretching exercises for 6 months without stopping.  That’s a lot of stretching.  Consider that same faith through the darkest, hardest storm you can imagine.  It’s not easy.  Maybe it’s a shooting pain for some or a long dull throbbing ache for others.  Imagine doing those stretching exercises for 5 years non-stop.  10 years.  How long do you accept the pain that might come with the exercise before giving up on stretching?  On faith?

Job.  Jonah.  Abraham.  Moses.  David.  The apostles.  People of faith.  Heroes to many of us who read the Bible and believe in the power of God.  People of faith…who questioned God; who tried to hide; who sin against God; who made excuses and asked the same questions over and over.

I look at those names and a host of others and think “I could never be a person of faith like them.”  Or could I?  You see, I question God.  I try to hide.  I sin repeatedly.  I make excuses and ask the same questions over and over and I try to negotiate and bargain.  And, just maybe, I am more like them than I allow myself to imagine sometimes.

Faith can be painful.  Like me stretching, it comes with some pain.  Sometimes that pain is intense and drops me to my knees just like a rib in my back pushing on a nerve does.  Sometimes it sends shooting pains through me just like my shoulder that was overworked from too much pitching.  Sometimes it is a constant, throbbing ache just like the arthritis in my back and the pain in my knees and hip.  It hurts and while I exercise faith, hoping for that same sensation I get at the end of a stretch, it seems to take much longer than 30 seconds or 30 minutes to realize it.  I, like so many others, am going on years of a constant stretch waiting for the good feeling, waiting to see God work, waiting to see the rewards of my faith and to rest easier with the blood pumping and the body and mind feeling refreshed, feeling good, feeling confident, aware of God’s work in my life.

I know I am already experiencing benefits of my faith.  Great kids that I cannot believe are mine.  A good woman who is an encourager, a caregiver, a balance and a friend.  Some incredible friends who love me in spite of my failings, insecurities and times of insanity.  They all prove the stretching is worthwhile but there is still some stretching to go.  I know because I still feel some of the pain.  So, I keep stretching until I know it is time to feel the reward, to feel the renewal and refreshing of a good, long stretch.

This from the storms in Arkansas…

Casting Crowns

Grace and peace.