A Bouncing Baby Lesson

Yesterday, I took my boys to the park.  It was a nice cool morning and Ian and Gavyn played on the playground.  Sean isn’t really that focussed on the playground.  He likes to swing and slide a bit but he’s still pretty much too small to use a lot of the stuff there.  He does however love to run.  He will run fast and far, straight and in circles.  Yesterday, as I was following the bouncing blond head around the park,  I was struck by something.  He will run for a bit, he will stop and look at something that catches his eye, stand back up, and keep running.  One thing he doesn’t seem to do is to look back.  He runs forward, always seemingly in search of a new thing to discover, to explore, to eat.  I thought about the older boys and how they have started to look back a bit, but still for the most part are focussed on what’s ahead.  They don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what has already happened in their lives, they just think about what is yet to come.  I thought about my life and my tendency to live in the past.....and I wondered, where did that change happen?  When did I shift from thinking only ahead, to looking mostly back?  I think that it’s healthy to look forward and look for new and exciting adventures, but I also think there are lessons to learn from reflecting on the past too.  As with many things, it’s a pendulum effect.  The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle but it seems that it’s hard to stop the pendulum from swinging when you are in the sweet spot, mostly because it’s hard to know you are in it at the time.    The bittersweet thing about this as a dad is that so many of the lessons from the past, are from a place of pain and the last place I want to imagine my kids learning from is a place of pain.  I often wish they would just listen to me and then they wouldn’t have to experience the pain.  I use that line when I’m reasoning with them.  If they just listen and follow my directions, they won’t have to be yelled at, or they wouldn’t get hurt, or things would get done more quickly, etc.....  This isn’t usually effective.  They have to experience it for themselves, and in fact, since they are my son’s, usually have to experience it several times before they figure it out.  I have to be honest and say that it doesn’t really help my frame of mind that much to realize that I do the same thing with Christ.  He calmly and reasonably lays out advice, instructions, and counsel that is designed to show me how to live and if I just listen and follow that instruction, I will experience a lot less pain.  I am pretty bad at listening to that counsel though. I have to experience it for myself, many times, over and over again, just like my sons.  It’s amazing what a morning at the park watching a baby run can teach you and I’m thankful that God talks to me in more than one way.  Now if I could just perfect that listening and applying part.

You Are Not Alone

This is the second of my blog post's blogging through the HOPE Campaign for the MST Project.  Be sure and subscribe to the blog located at the MST Project website.  I will be posting my HOPE Campaign blogs there from now on.  I will use this blog for other posts on different topics.  Please feel free to let me know your thoughts.

You may remember a time when you walked into a room full of people and yet somehow felt completely alone.  I remember that feeling well and yet somehow, I remember also thinking how strange it was.  How do I walk into a room full of people and feel alone?  What’s more, I can easily tell, that most of them feel the same way.

See the rest of the post here.

See the first post, My Kingdom for a Fig Leaf here.

My Kingdom for a Fig Leaf

As I have reflected about the past few years and on the adventure that I am on with the MST Project, I keep coming back to the topic of vulnerability.  We have all experienced on some level, the freedom of confession but as I think about it, I’m left with some questions.  Why is the process of baring our souls, so freeing?  I think the reason for this, is that we were created to be known completely by God.  When we choose to be vulnerable, we are somehow closer to who God created us to be and we feel that.  God didn't create us to hide.  We weren't supposed to have anything to hide.  What somehow doesn't make sense to me is, if I feel more like God intended me to be when I drop my guard, why do I always have the inclination to hide.  Without a doubt, every single time that I need to let someone in, even if I actually follow through and do let them in, it follows a life and death struggle to keep my secrets secret.  I think this comes down to a couple things.  Pride and fear.  In the times that I have hidden rather than shared, it usually came down to one of two reasons.  Either I didn't want to admit that I was not feeling as strong as I needed to be, and that I should not be struggling with these things anymore, or I didn't want to admit that I failed.  I was afraid of what others might think, even as they literally begged me to let them in and never once judged me when eventually my secrets came to light. The irony is, all my efforts at hiding are about as effective as when Adam and Eve hid behind those fig leaves.    When God created them naked both physically and spiritually, they were as close to God as any humans have ever been.  Then they sinned and their way of dealing with their spiritual failure was to make some clothes out of leaves and hide.  Who exactly did they think they were hiding from?  As if God couldn't see them just as well hiding in the bushes, hoping their fig leaves didn't wilt, as when they walked freely and openly with God in Eden.  It’s easy to sit here and write judgmentally about how ignorant they were for thinking this way but the uncomfortable truth is, that I would give anything to be able to hide.  I put on my mask and build up my walls that I hide behind and feel somehow more secure in my separation from God than I do in his presence.  I have to fight against that all the time.  What I have to do, as difficult as it is, is to force myself to stand spiritually and emotionally naked before God as he created me to be and to realize that being close to God is counter to every fleshly instinct I have in my being.  My comfort or lack of comfort is directly tied to how much I willingly allow God to be a part of my life.  It really has nothing to do with what I allow God to see of my life.  Nothing is hidden from him.  In Psalm 139:7-12 it says;

 7

Where shall I go from your Spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

9 If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

10 even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light about me be night,"

12 even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is bright as the day,

for darkness is as light with you.

Here is the application for me.  I need to be vulnerable and in the spirit of vulnerability, I am going to blog my way through the HOPE campaign material.  I am going to write my story through the eyes of the HOPE campaign, an entry for each chapter.  

Before I do this project, I need to say publicly how thankful I am for my wife.  She didn’t really know the extent of the details that she was signing up for when she married me and many of the experiences that I am going to share are things that I wish with all my heart, she had not had to deal with.  She has dealt with my sin, my shame, my deceit, my lack of discipline, and overall bad behavior with an amazing amount of grace and forgiveness.  The same can be said about many of my friends who while not to the extent of my wife, have graciously forgiven lies, lust, avoidance, and betrayal and I’m thankful for their example which has been huge in my journey.  I hope that this project is helpful or at the very least insightful into the mind of someone who wants with all his heart to want to be closer to God.