Month: February 2014

How to Connect With an Introvert

For those of you who read this blog but do not know me personally, let me make something clear…

I am not an introvert.

Though I do not always enjoy being the middle of the crowd, I do enjoy being around people.  I love backpacking.  The only thing better than backpacking is backpacking with somebody else.  I have spent quite a few hours by myself sitting in the woods on hunting trips, but I would much rather spend that time sitting in the woods with somebody else.  I have found that I enjoy bird hunting more than big game hunting because it is a more social event.  Drawback… you have to kill a lot of birds to equal a deer.

I love who I am.

I love how I am.

There are still things about me that need to mature and develop, but on the whole… I love being me.

I have four kids.  When they were very young, they were your typical toddlers.  Into everything, running around, making noise, making a mess, spontaneous.  Our house seemed to vibrate constantly with the activity and noise that simmered perpetually within the walls.  My home is not a safe place for an introvert.  I understand that and so, when I am hanging out with an introvert, I meet with them outside of my home.  We meet somewhere quiet… like the mall…

I have all these ideas about ways to raise my kids.  I have these ideas about things to do in order to communicate just how much I love them and to really connect with them in a meaningful and intimate manner.

It never crossed my mind that any of my kids would turn out to be a calm, quiet, introvert.

What do I do with that?

How on earth do I communicate my love to a little girl who would like to just sit and look at a book… or look at art!

How did this happen?

On a more serious note, it really is pretty fascinating to see the budding personalities coming out of my kids.  My oldest is displaying her individual personality more and more.  The girl loves art.  We have a friend of ours who graduated with an art degree teaching private art lessons to my daughter.  I have found myself reading blogs from artists, both Christian and non, in order to broaden my ability to appreciate the same things my daughter appreciates.

Instead of going places and doing things with her, I have started making it a point to simply sit next to her.  We sit down to watch a movie and I invite her to sit next to me.  I try to make it a point to have her sit in my lap when I read books to them instead of always letting the toddlers sit on my lap.  I have started paying closer attention to which kids are running around downstairs and when I don’t see her, instead of calling her down to see what is wrong, I go upstairs just to sit on the floor of her bedroom with her and make small talk.

I take each of my kids to breakfast on Sunday mornings.  The oldest gets the first Sunday of the month, the youngest gets the last.  One of my kids wants to go to a busy sit down style place that serves great pancakes.  My oldest prefers to buy a donut and a juice in a grocery store and sit in the front of our car to eat.  I used to ask her why she preferred to sit in the car instead of going to a restaurant.  I do not ask any more.

I know she values these moments with me and I know they are good for her, good for me, and good for our relationship.

I have no clue how to evaluate these moments.  I see these times through my own perspective as an extrovert.  If I am comfortable, I am talking or doing, not sitting and stewing.  So when I sit with my daughter and we just sit there… something feels wrong.  When I ask a question and get a little short answer, I feel as though something is wrong.  I believe that things are not wrong, but that is how it feels.

It makes it very difficult to relax and just enjoy being with her when everything in me is convinced that something is wrong.  She must be upset with me.  I have to have hurt her feelings in order for her to sit so quietly for so long.

As I sit and analyze this, my questions tend to drift from wanting to connect with her to wanting to diagnose the break in our relationship.  It is so difficult to diagnose a problem that is not there.

I love my little girl and I know she loves me.

But I really wish I could figure out how to connect with her, and her introverted little soul.

Painting a Car

I Have to Tell Her

(Click here for the beginning of the story)

I just knew that I had to.

I also knew that I was a coward and that I would wait until that last minute to say anything at all.

So I committed to telling her before we left the little town she was living in.

I decided to drive from Camp Lejeune to Knoxville to go on a hay ride in the Smoky Mountains with a church group that fall.  I had been sending emails back and forth with Jessica for a couple months by this time and I was really enjoying my relationship with her.  The last time I was in Tennessee I heard about a hay ride through the mountains and Jessica asked if I was going to come back to town for that.

Of course not.  Why would I make an 8 hour drive on a random weekend, burning my vacation days, just to sit on a hay bale and ride around the mountains looking at the leaves.

“No… I don’t think I will be coming back for that.”

Her mouth said she understood but her eyes said she wanted me to be there.  My head knew it was a completely ridiculous thing to do, but my heart said I wanted to be there too.

During the month between my last trip in and the hay ride, some things started to change.  I started to feel a deep affection for this girl.  I started feeling a longing to know her and all her secrets.  The really scary thing was that I wanted her to know my secrets.

I did not know what was going on and I was afraid of making decisions that would affect the rest of my life based on silly emotions and heart flutters.  I spent some time with some friends of mine asking them a lot about relationships, affection, and the way a woman’s heart works.  By the end of my time with this couple I had a pretty good idea what I needed to do.

I took some vacation time and drove to Tennessee for a hay ride.  I know I know… But I wanted her.  In a very legitimate and honest way.  I wanted to have this girl in my life and if it cost me the last bit of cash I have in my account and some vacation time to have her then so be it.

The hay ride was awesome!

She was going to school in a little town called Cookeville.  Really pretty place.  I knew that I had to talk to her before we left her little college town or else I would have squandered the entire weekend.  I stopped by her dorm and picked her up.  I was driving an old Jeep at the time.  Big tires, big engine, loud… loud, loud, loud.  I was so intimidated by the task at hand that I stalled over and over again.  We went to a little Mexican joint to get a bite to eat, but I wasn’t hungry.  We went to a little play ground and sat on the swings.  It started to get late and I did not want to be on the road much past dark, so we started to head for the interstate.  As I was coming through the tight curve of the entrance ramp, I knew I was breaking my commitment to myself.

I looked over at Jessica and she was as peaceful as could be.  She really enjoyed riding in my Jeep.  The sun was just starting to set and the temperature was cool.  I jerked the Jeep to the side of the entrance ramp and pulled to stop in the grass.

I looked at her and then back to the front.  With one hand on the stick and my foot working the clutch, I said it.

“Jessica… I Love You.”

BAM!!  Slammed the gas pedal to the floor, dropped the clutch like a bad habbit and threw dirt and rocks all over the place as I shot down the entrance ramp and the interstate for the next 2 hours to Knoxville.  Usually the only thing I could hear on that ride was the sound of those giant knobby tires on the pavement.  This time all I could hear was my own heart pumping.  I felt so foolish.  I also felt really good.

The hay ride that weekend really was pretty amazing.  I sat next to Jessica and we had a really good time.  She was the first girl to whom I had ever spoken those words outside of my family.  While on the hay ride somebody else caught a candid picture of the two of us.  I think it captured the moment pretty well.

Hay Ride

She did not tell me she loved me on that trip.  When I dropped her off at the end of the weekend she actually took the time to make it clear to me that she could not tell me that she loved me.  I honestly did not care.  I loved her and I was convinced that she was going to be mine.

A month after this trip Jessica came to Camp Lejeune for the Marine Corps ball.  Is there anything more romantic than a room full of dress blues and choking Marines?  I think not.  After the ball we went down to the beach and went for a walk.  While listening to the gently crashing waves and holding her hand walking barefoot on Onslow beach, Jessica turned to me and said it.

“Michael… I Love You”

I do not remember what I said, but what shot through my mind was a simple, emphatic, “Of course you do…”

And that was that.  I took her back to the place she was staying, and then I went home.  I dreamed about my life and the way it was going to look in the years ahead.  I dreamed, but I did not sleep.

This is kind of the end of this part of the story.  Our entire dating relationship was a long distance relationship.  It moved pretty fast.  From the moment I saw her to the moment we were married was roughly 1 year.  We have been married for almost 10 years now.

I do not regret it a bit.

 

 

Daddy is at Work

It is an answer that my kids get a lot.

My precious wife is doing a superb job of replicating her character in our kids.  It is a true joy for me to think about the kind of people my children will become because of the influence of such a woman upon their lives.

I spend a lot of time at work.  Sometimes more than I need to, but that might have to wait for another day.  For the entire time that I have been in the Navy, I have been leaving for work in the morning before most people are getting out of bed.

This includes my kids.

It is part of their routine to ask where I am while they are getting ready for the day… or for them to just not ask at all anymore since it is normal for me to be away in the mornings.  The standard answer is usually given.

Daddy is at Work

So yesterday my wife and I went to a meeting after I got off of work.  I am behind on a few deadlines, so I stay late at work to get caught up.  I left straight from work to go to the meeting.  We left the meeting at about 9 PM.  By the time we got  home, my kids were already in bed.  I spent another day not seeing them at all.

As we were riding down the road, Jessica told me that my youngest decided to snuggle up in my bed after I went to work.  When Jessica came back into our room, my sweet little child asked her the standard question and got the standard answer.

Wife and Daughter

Jessica asked me a question…

“Does it hurt for you to hear that your kids ask about you when you are not home?”

“…”

“Or is it encouraging since you know  your kids are thinking about you?”

“Yeah…  it kind of hurts.”

But then I started thinking about this.

Why does it hurt?

It really is a matter of perspective.  I look at this from the perspective that I am missing so much, my kids seem to be growing up so fast, and they don’t have me around.  I miss them.  They miss me.

Here is what started to stir these thoughts around for me…

It does not hurt when Jessica tells me she misses me when I am away.  I have spent some hunting trips away from home for a week or two at a time and when Jessica tells me she misses me, it really doesn’t hurt.  I don’t feel sad.  I don’t ache to be  home.

So why do I feel that way after a long day without my kids?  Do I love them more than my wife?  Do I reason that Jessica’s understanding protects her while the kids are still vulnerable in their ignorance?

I do not love my kids more than my wife.

Her understanding vs. their ignorance… that may be.

What if it is perspective?  I have this feeling like I HAVE to be home with my kids.  I have this feeling that I am doing them a disservice and ruining their little lives if I am not home.

But what if my perspective is wrong?

What if my kids need me to be gone?

Check this out.  My kids are going to define normal for their lives based on what is common for them now.  If it is common for me to be gone often, then the normal for them is that Daddy spends a lot of time away from home.  If I can keep a very deep emotional connection to my kids for the duration of the time they live at home and protect the security they feel in our relationship,  then normal for them looks like peace and security in relationships even when not physically near.

I am not saying that I am going to find ways to stay out of the house in order to try and develop this in my kids.  Absolutely not!!

But it is something to think about.

If security in a relationship for my kids looks like face time and close physical proximity, then what happens when I leave?  What happens when they grow up and business or school takes them or their significant other away for extended periods of time?

Maybe it is good for my young kids to hear my wife say, “Daddy is at Work,” and then for them to feel the warmth, love, and connection to me when I am around.

Could this build that kind of security in our relationship that might not have otherwise developed?

Maybe.

 

And maybe I am just belligerently over thinking it…

 

I’ma Burn This Jungle to the Ground Finale

Why questions can be hard questions to answer.

As I kept looking at what was going on in my life, I started to feel an awareness that I had not yet known.  I had been doing all of these Christian things, leading other believers, and submitting to Jesus for years.  I talked about this life being a spiritual war and I talked about Angels and Demons.  I had not spent any time thinking about the implications of this ideology.

It was almost as though I talked about these things like a peace time military talks about war.  There are great examples and references to war.  There is an intimate understanding of war and the stuff that goes along with it.  There is no knowledge of the taste, smell, and sound of war.

I continued to sit and think.

This is why I believe Jesus allowed my life to spiral out of control like He did.

Jesus says at one point that the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few.  He commands His disciples to pray unto the Lord of the harvest to thrust out laborers.  I am a laborer.  I want to be a leader of laborers.  Jesus knows that His Kingdom advances.  In that language, the language of an advancing Kingdom, there are strong implications.  There is a King.  There is a Kingdom.  The Kingdom advances into new territory.  This territory must be held by an enemy.  Jesus wants men who labor to be prepared to lead other laborers into a hard environment as He advances against His enemies.

These leaders need to be seasoned.  I remember the calm and peace that would come over me when I knew that the team leaders in my platoon were seasoned combat veterans.  They were intimate with the hardships, tactics, logistics, and mission of the war in which we were engaged.  They knew the pain of loss and the exuberant joy of mission success.  They knew the sting of missing family and the innate passion to get back home.  I knew that they had felt everything I was going through, had the same fears, had the same misgivings.  I also knew that they had found a way to survive and that built a lot of trust.

I think this is what Jesus was looking for in Peter.  He knew He was going to thrust Peter to the front line of the advancing kingdom and he wanted Peter to lead well and fight hard.  It worked too.  Peter was sifted.  He was broken to a point of abandoning Jesus, abandoning his only friends, and running away from what he had come to believe.  He made his exit and went back to fishing.

After a short conversation with Jesus, Peter felt encouraged, took up the task, and left his nets for the last time.

I endured such despair.  I quit the mission.  I told everybody around me to move on.

As I started putting these pieces in place, I got in touch with a friend named Mike.  Mike had helped me walk through some hard times in the past, so I trusted him.  He got me in touch with a group of counsellors in Colorado and, for 2 weeks, I got some help.  We talked about my family history, my marriage, combat, and ministry.

After these trips I felt like a new man.  I felt grace in my life like I had never felt before.  I felt as though Jesus really had chosen me to lead.  I felt a deep peace in the midst of the parts still falling down around me.

I firmly believe that Jesus has invited me to labor with Him for the long haul.  I believe that Jesus has asked me to lead others as they labor with Him.  I believe Jesus has chosen for me to fulfill a specific role in the Kingdom.  I believe He let me struggle and flounder in order to season me.

I believe I met Jesus.

Before this encounter He was the most significant character in a story.  He was the point upon which an entire religion pivots.  He was something to study and talk about.  He was what Christians try so hard to represent well.

After this encounter I became a significant part of His story.  He is no longer the point upon which my religion pivots, He is my friend, my encourager, and coach.  I do not study and talk about Him, I spend my time with Him in study and conversation.  I do not have to try to represent Him well.

I simply have to follow Him and tell the truth about who He is, what He has done, and represent my story with integrity…  even the ugly and hard bits.

And what about the things in which I had been misled, or misguided, or misunderstood?  Well… I’m still working on those.  I have taken a step back from a lot of the dogma which I used to believe.  I have taken a step toward simply knowing Jesus.

I can already see a massive change in my life because of this new paradigm.  My political views have changed a lot.  The way I grade whether or not a ministry is successful has changed.  I have become very sensitive to the hippy, liberal, college age critics of Christianity.  I hear them saying things that have now started resonating deep within me.  I no longer feel as though their rhetoric is an attack on me or the Church.  It is a passionate plea for me to be like Jesus, as I get to know Him, instead of the dogma that goes along with Christianity.

Hopefully this demonstrates the difference…

Before this ordeal I spent a lot of time thinking about the points of Theology which were presented by Jesus in His various discourses. I completely missed His heart.

Jesus reads a scroll at one point in His life that says,

The Spirit of the Lord is on Me,
because He has anointed Me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent Me
to proclaim freedom to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He finished reading this and sat down making the point that this passage is talking about Him.

I have found myself being deeply moved to see captives set free.  I spend more time trying to figure out how to free slaves than I spend strengthening the points of an argument.

Jesus escalated force to beast mode in order to set me free.

I am no longer motivated to argue the points of Christianity.

I am excited to sacrifice my desires in order to see grace, love, and freedom come to those who are oppressed and enslaved.

I guess you could say that I am no longer so concerned about representing the religion of Christianity…

I just want to be like Jesus.

Key-West-Sunset-2.jpg

So here I am…  Standing on the beach having just broken through the jungle.  I guess it is time to learn how to swim or fly above the waves!

I’ma Burn This Jungle to the Ground part 2

I had to take another look into this Jesus dilemma.  It was my understanding of Him and what He wants that got me into this predicament.

In the years that I have been labored for His Kingdom, I had seen some really fantastic things happen in the lives of other people.  I have seen a man who was abused for years by his dad call him and forgive him.  I have seen a girl who was trapped in an abusive relationship find the means, the courage, and the strength in order to put an end to the abuse and abandon the relationship.  I have seen young men and women work through major insecurities in their life and move on to fulfilling careers and relationships.  I have seen men who were deeply wounded and responded with anger to everything become peaceful examples of calmness and joy in the midst of strife.

And that is where my problem began.

I have carried deep wounds because of past experiences.  One of the easiest to talk about (easy in terms of it being a concise story, not in terms of it being emotionally easy to rehash) is a medevac I was involved with in Ramadi.  I saw how my predisposition to an angry manner was exacerbated by combat and produced an uncontrollable simmering rage.  As the Jesus I knew healed me, the anger was taken away, but was not replaced with peace, joy, or any such emotion.  It was as though the storm had gone but the clouds persisted.  I just knew that as I kept doing the things I was doing, Jesus would develop this joy, this peace within me.

It did not happen.

dark mountain

Then one evening while dealing with my kids, I had a flash of rage like I had not experienced in more than a year.  After the blinding outburst was over, I felt as though I was not healed at all.  That I had swallowed my emotions to a point of numbness, but that Jesus had not healed me at all.  If I had been healed, then where did this outburst come from?

I did what I usually do in these times, I evaluated scripture and my situation to determine what happened and what needed to happen next.  The Bible seemed to indicate that Jesus loves me and wants me to be healed.  I felt like it was pretty clear… I was yet unhealed.

So what is Jesus’ problem?

Is He not as powerful as the Bible says?  If He wants me to be healed and I am not producing the fruit that is congruent with a healed life, then He obviously cannot carry out His desires.  If He is incapable of carrying out His desires, then He is not all powerful.

Is He a liar?  If He says He wants me to be healed, and He is powerful enough to carry out His desire, yet I am not healed, then He must be a liar.

Am I effectively blocking what Jesus wants for me?  This could have been an option, but I felt pretty certain that I had maintained my discipline and walked according to the principles of the Bible.  I had given an honest, earnest attempt to comply with what I read in the Bible, I saw fruit being produced in the lives of the people who were taking my advice, and I could feel things change in my head and heart…  but I was still left with this wounded heart.

Since I had come back to a belief in the Bible and the God of the Bible, this was something that had to be reconciled.

As I spiralled out of control, I remembered a verse from the Bible in which Jesus says to Peter,

“Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, but I have chosen to pray for you, and when you return, strengthen your brothers.”

This was an easy verse for me to dismiss.  I have seen so many Christians who start to fall apart and they run to this verse claiming that they are just being sifted.  While this may be true, I have found several of them who have not opened their Bible in months, other than when sitting in a Church, and have not prayed in just as long or longer.  They abandon the spiritual disciplines in their lives and then try to use this verse to explain why they feel the way they do.  This has happened enough times around me that this verse lost its power, and it became more and more impotent as it became more and more cliche.  Several weeks into this struggle I got to thinking about this verse again.

And then I saw a Jesus I had never seen…

The cliche part of the verse is that Satan sifts believers.

Let me make something clear.  I do not think any verse of the Bible is impotent or cliche.  I find that some verses are used in a very cliche manner and are often taken out of context in order either to make a Christian feel better about something in their life or to support a particular argument.  Neither of these are appropriate.

The part of the verse that hit me like a brand to an unsuspecting bull was Jesus’ response.  Let me put this in my own words for a minute…

“Peter… Satan wants to beat you up… I have decided to let him.  I’m not abandoning you, I will be right here through the whole ordeal, but I am going to allow you to feel the pain in the fight.  You will survive and when the fight is over I want you to encourage your brothers.  Be ready, Peter… life in this moment is going to be rough.”

Who in the world is this Jesus and where has He been hiding?  Jesus is a savior, a healer, a righteous judge, a man who got angry and flipped tables in the temple.  Jesus, as far as I knew, was not an MMA coach training a young fighter, sending him into the ring against a brute of an opponent, simply to strengthen his understanding of the battle and then use him to motivate and encourage the other fighters.  This Jesus is a tactician.  This Jesus is a warrior.

While I knew that this was true of Him, this truth did not make its way into my heart.

Could this be?  Had I just endured this garbage in my life so that Jesus could reveal another aspect of who He is to me?

Scripture proved to be true.  Jesus was powerful enough to heal me.  I had not blocked His power in my life.  He had not lied… He did want to heal me, but He wanted me to get into a fight first.

I had misunderstood His desire for me.

But why?  Why on earth would He allow me to create such caustic damage to His Kingdom in the process?

And why would He choose to sustain my life?

 

I’ma Burn This Jungle to the Ground part 1

I stood on the edge of a pristine beach.  My heart was broken within me.  All the hope I had ever known had just been flushed from my soul.  While other people rested at the waters edge upon the warm, sugary sand, I stood lost in a numbing,  bitter pain.  As the confusion faded and I began to realize clearly the position I was in, my pain became anger.  Anger became Rage.

And I decided the best choice I had was to burn the jungle to the ground.

I have been a Christian for a long time.  I have taught lessons, led studies, and hosted discussions.  I have given advice and counselled those who were looking for help.  I have read and studied so much and memorized entire books of the Bible.  I have spent entire backpacking trips focussed on prayer.

And I have collapsed to a point of suicidal hopelessness when it was all said and done.

The only analogy that I could come up with during this dark night of the soul was about me walking through a jungle all my life.  Surviving as best as I could.  I had been told at one point that on the other side of this massive jungle there is a magnificent city.  Paradise.  Rest.  Gumbo and cold beer.  As I encountered other folks cutting through the vines and brush, I would tell them about this restful paradise.  I would encourage them to keep pressing into the jungle.  I would help them sharpen their machetes and coach them as they started swinging again.  I was making my way to the clear meadow with warm sunshine and a bath, and I was encouraging and leading others to the same.

Can you imagine the way I felt when, all of a sudden, I could see the edge of the jungle.  I picked up my pace and feverishly hacked and slashed through the vines to get to the clearing.  As I got closer and closer the sound of water grew louder and louder.  Like a bowling ball striking the pins, I came bursting out of the jungle and onto the beach.

There was no city.

The very thing which I had set as my life’s goal had been washed away.  I had been deceived.  My life had no purpose.  I could not keep doing what I was doing because I had come out of the jungle.  Go back in?  Not hardly!!  That place is full of hard work to survive and I knew there was no point in pressing on.  There was nothing for me to press on towards.

I had never even heard of the beach and swimming was not a skill ever discussed in the jungle.  What I needed to do was communicate to everybody else that they were living a lie.  A sham.  The most effective way to do that is to light a match and watch the whole thing go up in smoke.

So I did.

Burn It Down

I would go for a run each day during work and I would cross busy roads without ever looking for traffic.  I would chant over and over again that my life was worthless and death would be better.  I did not care if I got hit by a car.  Getting hit by a car would have been an improvement.

I told my wife to take our kids and move back in with her parents.  I told her it would be better for them to not be near me.  I explained to her that I was about to put an end to life as I knew it and that she really did not want to be there for that.

I told the group of people who met in my house for a Bible Study that I was a sinking ship.  I could not tell them with any confidence that God existed.  I was sensitive to the fact that they cared about their beliefs and I did not want to cause them such turmoil and pain.  I encouraged them to leave, seek spiritual guidance elsewhere, and stay as far from me as possible.  I was full of poison.

I was hit by the bumper of no car.

My wife refused to take my kids and leave.

The men and women who had trusted me to teach and lead them in their faith risked their sanity and remained faithful to me.

So I was stuck.  Sitting on a beach.  I lit my match, I started a small fire, I warned the people to take a step back, and they just sat and watched.

Then the fire went out.

And I just sat…

Since there was nothing else to do but sit, I started to think.  Thinking can be dangerous.  My dad told me years ago that a mind is a terrible thing.  (We did not have many deep conversations growing up, but that one was a life changer for me.)

What if the goal of my life was wrong?  What if I had misunderstood who I was or been misled in the early years of my travels?  What if my entire perspective were wrong?

So I sat still and started rethinking my paradigm.

I could not be an atheist because of some of the things I had already heard and seen.  Just like there are some things in the world that are hard for a Christian to explain, and things within the Bible that are hard to reconcile with other things in the Bible, so also are there some things in the world that are hard for Atheists to explain, some things in life that are hard to reconcile to a belief without God.  So I maintained faith in a higher power.

I have read and studied a wide variety of religious writings which lead me to believe in a monotheistic God.  After getting to that point, it was easy for me to reaffirm my belief in the God of the Bible.

But this left me with a dilemma…

I believed this before and it led me to a beach instead of a city.

In order for this Jesus to be real, and for me to have been let down as I had been, then perhaps the Jesus that exists is not the Jesus that I knew.  Is it possible to be a Christian, pray to Jesus, read His word, and still not really know him?   Or to know Him but miss a really significant part of who He is?

…

 

 

Porn Commitment

I have had an on again off again relationship with porn for a long time.

For a really long time.

Sometimes I try not to get involved with porn, sometimes I just don’t care.

I have found that I have a binge, puke, and starve relationship with porn.  It became an almost controlling entity in my life several years ago and I watched, almost like a bystander to my own life, as a death affect crept across my relationships like shadows in the evening.  Everything I did seemed to have been influenced by my involvement with porn.

I could tell that my attitude would be a little extra hostile and angry, possibly from the guilty feeling that would wash over me, and so I would deliberately choose to not engage in order to make sure that I was not hurting anybody in my home.

If there is something I have learned in my life as a dad it is this…

An angry dad, an emotionally dead dad, and an absent dad all cause great harm to the family.

So as I pushed back on my negative emotions, I also pushed back on whatever good things I felt, and this left me in a state of unresponsiveness to my wife and kids.

I deployed in 2012 and managed to go for 5 months without watching anything pornographic.  I really felt as though I had come out of a fog and was really excited to begin life clean.  I managed to stay clean just long enough to get home.  I watched the shadows creep back into my life and started living the same binge, puke, starve cycle all over again.

After enduring some significant hardships in 2013, I decided to rethink my approach to porn.  I started thinking a lot about what I had done differently during my brief intermission in 2012 and decided to bring as much of that as I could into my life now.

My wife and I went out to eat in January and then found our way to a frozen yogurt joint that we like.  While eating my standard chocolate, vanilla, coconut, and chocolate chip dessert, I let Jessica know what I was thinking about.  During our conversation, I decided to let her know about a commitment that I had made a couple days earlier.

I have committed to go for a solid year without watching any porn.

“Why on earth would you do that?  There is nothing wrong with porn!”

[My wife has requested that I edit this post and make it clear that SHE did not make the above statement…]

Well…  I think there is something wrong with porn.  I understand that the word “Porn” is not an English word, but actually a short form of a Greek word that sounds something like “Porneia.”  This word is used in a sentence in the Bible that says to stay away from all Porneia… in english this is translated as sexual immorality.  Pretty broad phrase.  Sexual immorality…  Because I am a Christian, I feel a desire to conform to the standards of the Bible and that means no porn.

Something else that concerns me greatly is when I see things in my life that control me, instead of me controlling them.  I hate seeing friends of mine who have become addicts.  It pains me to see them struggle to control their lives when it comes to the vice with which they have been struggling.  There is an analogy that goes like this:

Food was made for the stomach, the stomach was not made for food.

I do not have a stomach simply to indulge in eating whenever and whatever I want.  (Ironically enough I am snacking on a pop tart as I write this)  I have a stomach in order to process food to fuel.  If I loose the ability to skip a meal, or  loose the impulse control when it comes to snacks and cookies, then I have been replaced as the master of my stomach by food.  In the same manner, if I have lost the ability to control my impulsive desires for porn, then I have essentially submitted control of my life to porn.

It is not like I was a zombie mindlessly seeking my own pleasure and going for it at all cost.  I was in control to the extent that I would decide the when and where to engage my habit.  I did not feel like I was in control of whether or not I was going to fall prey to my vice.  I feel like I can identify with the alcoholic that chooses not to buy beer at a grocery store, but takes a drink in a restaurant with supper, looses his willpower for the rest of the evening, and polishes off a fifth by the time he goes to bed.

Like I said earlier, I can also see the way my emotions change when dealing with my family and friends.

Because of these reasons, I have made a commitment to abstain from pornography for a year.

I would appreciate your encouragement if you have ever tried to fight back against the almost undeniable combined influence of our culture and desire when trying to recover self discipline.

I would appreciate your prayers if you are a praying person.

I would encourage you to take look at your life and evaluate whether or not you are truly free in your decisions, or if you feel like you are a slave to your impulsive desires.

For the record…

I am 1 month into this commitment.  I have 11 more to go.

Thanks for reading!

Why Did You Laugh?

(Click here for the beginning of the story)

I saw an image of Sarah standing around a corner when God told Abraham that he would be a father.

Sarah laughed.

I thought about me wearing a wedding ring and coming home to a wife after work.

I laughed.

Jessica and I had started sending emails back and forth.  It was a lot fun.  We talked about what we wanted out of the future, our plans, our dreams, and the things we enjoyed.  As time went on, we started talking about the things in our pasts, our missed opportunities, goals we let go of, and the stuff we have to do but that we really don’t like at all.

At some point she asked me about my faith and made some kind of comment about how she wished that she was more like me in that area.  That made me feel good, and instead of telling her the truth, I jumped at the opportunity to lead.

The truth was that I really was not mature in what I believed.  The truth was that the only time I really spent reading my Bible or Praying was when I was at the Bible Study on base.  The truth was that, other than the Bible Study, I spent maybe 1 day a week reading my Bible and 2 mornings praying at best.  The truth was that I was probably just as immature as she was.

The truth is she was carried away by my dashing good looks, winning personality, and could not resist a man in uniform.

The truth is…   I had no idea how to respond.

But I knew what the guys who were influencing me were doing.  They were reading a passage of the Bible with me, and then asking questions.  Easy Day!!

So in addition to our standard email traffic, Jessica and I started studying scripture from 500 miles apart.  I had no idea what I was actually teaching and had no vision for where I was leading, but it felt good, was fun, and brought me a little bit of joy.

After a couple months of this, I was sitting at my computer when I got this ridiculously crazy thought.

“Mike… It’s time for you to get married.”

I laughed about that.  Like a whirlwind I saw in my mind as though a movie were playing before me, a woman in a long white toga style dress, carrying a jug of water and a bunch of grapes, jump back behind a wall as she heard the men talking.  “What did he just say?  Did he say I was going to have a baby?  Funny…”  I guess when God communicates something, He does not particularly enjoy being discounted and then laughed at.

It felt like a glass of ice water running down my back as I contemplated the connection between that old story and what was happening in my life.  The implication was pretty overwhelming.

Did God realize to whom he was speaking?  I was a committed bachelor to the rapture.  I was not going to be slowed down by some woman.  I was going to live a wild and dangerous life, free from the burden of having to provide for and please a woman.  I just knew that my future had a lot of travel, a lot of living cheap, train hopping, hitch hiking, running from danger, eating questionable food, kind of elements in it.  Things that do not mix so well with a wife, and lets not even start talking about kids.

For me to get married would mean a complete loss, a total sacrifice of who I was and what I wanted out of life.

This all moved so fast I was left in a bit of a daze.  I left my barracks room and went for a walk.  That walk ranks among the most sobering walks I have taken.  While cruising down the jogging path along the water’s edge and between the command buildings, I presented what I believed to be a pretty iron clad reason why this was all a bunch of garbage that I had made up in my own little head.

I didn’t have a girlfriend.

I didn’t have any girl friends.

I didn’t have any girls who I felt would ever want to be my friend.

I had precious few friends…

So I said,

“If this is God telling me that it is time to get married, then who should I marry?”

Before I could really finish the thought, I immediately thought of 5 different girls.  I wanted to dismiss that too but remembered how I felt when I laughed after the first experience in this developing conversation.

This cannot be.  This is not how it works.  There is a man for a woman and a woman for a man, but not many possible matches for a woman or a man.  There is just the one out there.  I know this to be true because of my extensive background in the dogma and philosophy of Disney and chick flicks…  and the Bible… right?

Wrong.  I will not hijack my own post in order to start a treatise on the will of God, but suffice it to say that this conversation began a really great foray into that topic.

I had a lot of assumptions but no direction and no way to test any of these assumptions.  I was assuming that it was God speaking to me, that He wanted me to be married, and that He was giving me a choice between these 5 ladies.  I felt like I had nothing really at stake yet, so my bets were still safe.

“God… if this is really you speaking with me…  and this is really how this is supposed to go…  then I choose Jessica.  If you really are telling me it is time to be married and I can pick between any of these women, then I choose her.  If all that I have just said to You is true and accurate, then I ask You to affirm this decision by blessing the relationship and making it crystal clear that we are to be married.”

I figured if I was going to play a hand with God I might as well go all in.

I made my way back to my barracks room, got something to eat, and then went to hang out with the couple guys that I usually spent time with.

I told nobody about this conversation.

Nothing changed in my life.  It was like every other time that I thought I had communicated with God.  Big, exciting, encounter and then left waiting and watching… and watching…

      … and then I saw my life changing right before me.

 

(The final part of this story is here)

Identity, Purpose, and Values

I talk about this one a lot.

I have been very fortunate to have been allowed the access and involvement in the lives of people with the purpose of influencing them to greater maturity.  I have spent a lot more time working with guys than I have girls so this may not be completely accurate for the the lady folks out there, but it seems to be quite accurate for the dudes.

So I said to the tool,

“What kind of tool are you?”

“Are you a screw driver, a shovel, or an axe?”

“Easy question,” said the tool, “I’m an axe!”

“Awesome… how do you know?”

“Because I have this handle and my blade is sharp.”

“I enjoy cutting down the weeds and scrub brush in the ditches…”

“I like when my blade is sharp… that is when everything is right in the world.”

No… I have not ever actually wandered into my garage and selected a tool at random and started a conversation, though I have gotten frustrated enough that I have rebuked my tools for not working as I think they should.  This conversation seems to fit the standard pattern that a lot of my conversations with younger (and some not so younger) guys tend to go.  I am essentially asking them, “Who are you?”  The answers I usually get is, “I am this, because I have evaluated the things I enjoy and the things I value, and that has led me to believe that this is who I am.”

This is not a bad thing.  Introspection coupled with some good observation skills and a little bit of counsel or advice can really help a man define precisely who he is.  Although this is not a “bad” evaluation method, I find it to be a bit flawed.  I would rather start with an identity, and then use this kind of evaluation to bring a bit more clarity, detail, or understanding to that identity.

Why do I think there is a flaw?

Because I have lost count of the men who tell me who they are, and yet live defeated, unfulfilled, frustrated lives of simmering anger and a frozen, stifled resignation to accept the status quo.  They rage within because of the frustration, some of them even going to great lengths to straighten out what is crooked, and often there is no deeper fulfilment, no longer lasting joy, no resonating peace within their lives.   If so many of the men whom I have spoken with have defined their identity in the above manner and yet come to this same end result, then there must be a flaw in the equation.

“An axe, you say?”

“You derive great joy and pleasure from cutting the scrub brush and weeds in the ditch, but what about the firewood?”

“Yeah… about firewood… I’m more of a ditch weed kind of axe.”

“You do not cut wood?”

“Nope… I’ve had a bad experience in the past… really hurts.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe you are not an axe?”

“Maybe your starting premise was wrong?”

At this point it gets kind of grimy.  When I look a man in his eyes and start to imply that he has no idea who he is, I feel as though I am potentially releasing a raging bull hopped up on coke and looking for a fight.  I’m always scared when I broach this part of the conversation.

Here’s why…

Our identity seems to be defined for us when we are young.  Whether this is done by people that we love, or people that we have to be with, it is defined for us.  We go through life viewing everything around us, including our own thoughts, values, priorities, actions, desires, etc., through the lens of our identity.  If I tell a man that he does not know who he is, then I am pulling a card, a bottom card, from his house of cards… his whole world might collapse.  Lucky for me, I am not too convincing the first time I start talking about this kind of stuff!

“What if you are not an axe at all… What if you are  shovel”

“Shovels have sharp blades…

       long handles…

          and do pretty well at cutting the weeds…

              and scrub brush in the ditch…

but they really come alive when they get to dig…”

I get to ask questions!!  I love asking questions.  I never know what is about to get uncovered.  I am not trying to cause trouble for these guys, I want to see them free.  So I ask questions that will hopefully get them to start thinking the “why” questions for their life.  I want to introduce doubt into the equation.  Even if who they think they are really is who they are, a little doubt and questioning goes a long way in shoring up their confidence in who they are.  At the worst I get to help them embark upon a seekers journey…  and sometimes I get to help them figure out who they are.

After establishing an identity, I like to talk about purpose.  The trick is that this is where these conversations usually start.  A man will tell me that he feels so frustrated because he is doing everything that he knows to do, is doing good things, things of value, and yet he is frustrated.  He just wants to make his little mark on the world but feels as though for all his work, he is still waiting to work where he feels he fits.  This is a question about purpose, but I cannot encourage a shovel to keep on beating his head into trees in an axe world.  So we go back to identity and figure out we are a shovel.  Most of the men I have had these talks with have a hard time understanding that identity drives purpose.  They seem to instinctively think that purpose drives identity.  “I am good at this, and it is what I do, so it must be who I am.”  Sorry bro… no.

“Is a shovel a shovel because it digs, or does it dig because it is a shovel?”

So after working out identity, purpose kind of starts to fall into place.

After purpose starts to fall into place, values start to fall into place.

If we judge our purpose and then derive our identity from that, then we have determined who we are.  If we are the ones who define our identity, then our values are really quite arbitrary.

So where does identity come from?

I believe it comes from Jesus.  In the book of Ephesians, I read a line that says, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father in Heaven, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.”  There are a couple other passages which talk about Jesus giving us a new name or knowing our name.  I understand that my name is the label of my identity.

So I spend time reading scripture with the these guys and sitting at the feet of Jesus.  I encourage them to forget about trying to figure out what to do with their lives, and instead give this a shot and try to figure out who they are.

It has not worked %100 of the time, but it has worked a lot more than it has failed.

As a matter of fact, one of the guys I meet regularly with right now started meeting with me because of one of these conversations.  He was adamant that identity does not matter!  Purpose… what is my purpose?  He trusted me and decided to play my little game… and in the last 6 months this dude has figured out 2 things…

1.  A shovel is not a shovel because it digs, it digs because it is a shovel.

2.  He is not a shovel.

So this is what I say…

Identity drives Purpose, Purpose drives Values.  Looking for the source of identity within tends to be inaccurate.  Looking for the source of identity external seems to produce slightly better results.

If you do not know who you are, send me a message.  I would love to help you start looking for the source of your identity.

Scary Noises

** Disclaimer**    or warning… or whatever you want to call it… I have been told that this post has caused difficulty for some readers to sleep… it looks like the scary noises I heard still have the ability to scare folks, so do not read this before bed, or having just finished fish tacos, or if you are particularly sensitive to scary stories…

And she laughed at us for saying that.

I loved her though.  I felt like she was a distant step-mom in a way.  Her son and I had been roommates for years… and years.  We lived in Okinawa together, we deployed together, we did pretty much everything together.  I would tell people he was not home while he hid in the bathroom, and he may have done the same for me.

We did a lot of growing up together… and because of each other.

So when his family would come up to North Carolina to visit, it was just natural that I would tag along.  He spent Thanksgiving with my folks, I took my wife to spend a week with his family in South Texas even though he wasn’t going to be home.  We were family.  This guy is my brother… not as in, “He is close to me like a brother”… this dude is my brother.  We don’t talk very often because he lives in a state that might as well be a different country from me and our jobs keep us ridiculously busy, but such is life.

So there we were… (the way every legit story begins)

Hanging out with his family, sitting on a screened in porch at a little cottage on a quaint lake in coastal North Carolina on a warm summer evening.  So peaceful.  Crickets chirping in the background, the animals bedding down, and that warm breeze coming across the lake.  Everything felt right in the world.  We were just sitting there talking as the night closed in around us and the last tendrils of conversation were working their way out as we started to settle down for the night.  The tea glasses were mostly ice in the bottom and the last cigarette was smoldering out.

And then we jumped…

His mom started laughing at us, and then attributed our action to our combat experiences.  We looked at each other and said, almost in unison, “Scary Noises.”

And she laughed at us a little more.

I understand.  I laughed too.  We had both deployed, we had both engaged the enemy, we had both treated casualties, and yet we were spooked by scary noises.

I also understand what noises my brother and I had heard before.

We were both very spiritual and pretty disciplined with our individual faith.  His was not mine.  Mine was not his.  Somehow we forged a bond in spite of our religious differences.  I really have no idea how.

I do not believe in Ghosts.  I’m not sure what he believed.  I am not entirely sure how to explain some of the things we heard.  Sometimes it was just little stuff.

Coins falling in the hallway but nobody outside.

A girl talking and then calling for help in the laundry room… with nobody there.

We heard a cat stuck in the air ducts one night and decided to rescue that thing because it was keeping us awake.  We could hear it out in the hallway, and followed the sound to the laundry room, and then it went quiet.

Creepy.

One night in particular, we stayed up talking and laughing until sleeping was kind of pointless.  We both had to work the next morning and we were going to have to go about our tasks on a fewer than 4 hours sleep.  I feel a little embarrassed to say it, but we kept giggling and then laughing and then trying to stop and go to sleep.  Then one of us would say a word or make a sound and the other one would lose it again.  Just like a couple little kids who share a bedroom and have to have their mom chastise them for not sleeping.  Finally we let our fatigue get the best of us and we knew it was time to call it a night.

“Good Night Bro”

“Good Night”

And then the conversation got started

From the foot of his bed I heard a voice, clear as can be, speaking calmly and deliberately in a language I had never heard.  The voice started, spoke a few lines, and then stopped.

I was shaking…

And then another voice, very similar, answered in the same fashion, but this time from the foot of my bed.

I considered throwing up.

The voice from his bed responded, and then from my bed, and back and forth.  The voice from the foot of his bed became more and more agitated each time until I genuinely thought my life was in danger.  A response came from the foot of my bed that sounded curt, as though it was finished with this conversation and was invoking it’s authority or superiority.  Then from the foot of his bed this voice was furious, made an outburst, and then silence.

I could not breathe.  I could not cry.  I could not scream.  I would have urinated 2 days worth if I could have mustered the courage.

I just laid there.

I have never been that afraid in my life.  Not on any of my deployments.  Never.

I wanted to know that this was not in my head, but I did not want to wake up my brother because he needed to sleep for his shift the next morning.

As I lay there in my fear stricken turmoil, I heard the shakiest, fear drenched voice I have ever heard come from him.

“Did you hear that?”

That was all I needed.  Like lightning I was out of my bed, had the lights turned on, and was in the hallway…

I don’t know what he thinks that was.

Quite frankly I do not care.

Sometimes I think my life would be a lot less complicated if I were not a Christian.  Sometimes I think it would be easy for me to reason away my faith in Christ or the Bible since I have never seen anything tangible or concrete to affirm my beliefs.

But I cannot shake those voices.  My hair stands up on my arms to this day when I think about that.

If I accept that we both heard this, that it was not a shared delusion, then I have to accept that there is a world beyond the one which I can see.  Two plays on the same stage.

My search for answers to define and explain what I heard in that room that night has caused me to evaluate my spirituality and the way in which I practice.

That happened close to 11 years ago but I still remember it and feel it like it was yesterday.

So yeah…

That’s why we jump when we hear scary noises.