"...because you matter!"

Christmas, Dream Again, Expectation, Family Dysfunction

It’s Coming And It’s Going To Be Great!

Merry Christmas.

Too soon?

Not really, you’ve already been marketed to and possibly even brainwashed with brands and plans.

I think it was early August when I first witnessed that date locked and loaded. The crosshairs had you clearly in their sights. It was probably January 2nd when backroom, final plans were being made. The marketing machine has been ramping up ever since.

Before you even had a chance to pay off your last indulgence, they wanted more of your ‘interest’ and ‘investment.’ They always want more!

So, stop!

Do not give them one more year of indebtedness.

Make a choice to have a great Christmas without, (you can do this) the money you don’t have right now. They only want you to feel like you have a gun to your head. It isn’t actually there.

Make the change. Stop spending your tomorrow by living outside your means; the only way for you to get ahead.

Start modelling gratefulness and gratitude. Any package that opens, having been wrapped, brings surprise and wonder.

Have fun and wonder.

Your kids will love it and have fun when you lead the way.

Love your kids with what you have. Really. Stop trying to love them with what you don’t have.

Forget all the sayings, “Go big or go home. If you don’t get it now, you will miss out. There will never be another sale like this again.” Myriads of words have conditioned you, but they don’t have to any longer.

You can win this Christmas.

It is coming, and it is going to be great because you chose it to be so.

Attitude, Authentic, Character

Incognito

I just put down the book, caught by a sidebar comment that I’m not sure the authour even intended to land. The authour, Dr. Kevin Leman, in his book, The Real You, talked about a conversation he had with his daughter, that she initiated when she was a young teenager. She caught herself gossiping about her friends with some regularity, and she came and talked to her father about it.

What caught my attention was the very fact that this daughter would have that conversation with her parents in the first place. The very fact she felt free to come and talk and expose her inner self, exposed my deceit.

Conversely, I’ve learned to invite God. I’ve learned to invite, acknowledge Him in all my ways. I’ve learned to invite Him into my ‘good’ ways, that, I’ve always done. But, I’ve also learned to invite Him into my ‘struggling’ ways as well. I’ve even learned to invite Him into my ‘dark’ ways and my ways that have totally missed the mark. I’ve learned to be open, vulnerable with Him.

Maybe you are different, she was. But where I came from, that would have been covered and concealed. I would have dealt with that privately because real Christians don’t have those kinds of problems. Real Christians overcome. ‘Real Christians,’ I’ve discovered, often aren’t real Christians. I know I wasn’t.

Like the authour’s daughter, I have open, honest conversation with my Father in Heaven.

He knows anyway.

He is just waiting for us to uncover.

Attitude, Dream Again, Great Surprises, Growth out of Pain, Identity, Make it Pay

The Joseph Document

The Joseph Document is a compilation of twenty blogs that I did in 2017 on the life and surrounding story of the historic Joseph found in Genesis, starting in chapter 37.

Other than the story of Jesus, there may not be a more impacting and compelling Bible story in my adult life than the story of Joseph.

The story is full of innocent naivety, family dysfunction, and betrayal, brutal and cruel captivity. It shows life’s underside and how even that works for a bigger plan when God is involved, and by the way, God is always involved if we dare to look.

So, take the time. Use this tool to lift you and inspire the drama in your life for good. I guarantee that Joseph will speak from the ancient pages of history and will return the hope that you thought was gone for good.

Without modern communication, social media, church attendance, and face-to-face friends, Joseph was able to preserve his faith and equilibrium.

You can too.

The Joseph Document

Authentic, Change, Difference Made, Fact Check

Fresh Mercies

The sun came bursting through the atmosphere this morning dispelling darkness, fog, and metaphoric depression. It’s Easter. A new day, fresh dawn, with new mercies, the old gone and the new has come.

Their lives, the ones who were cowering in an undisclosed location, changed and transformed; not because of a new mindset, not because of a bible verse, but because their leader predicted his rising up from being dead, then, first thing on the third morning, he pulled it off. He did it; he came alive after being dead for over 30 plus hours.

His eleven men, his inner circle, his disciples saw first hand his coming back from the dead, not as a zombie, not as a convalescing recovering patient, but as the conqueror of death, hell, and the grave. Plus, a growing total of over 500 people saw his resurrected, transformed, new-life body.

That would change your life; needless to say, it changed their lives forever. Appropriately their fear and remorse vanished. They weren’t even afraid of torture or death. Back-room panic and protection broke into shameless declaration. In an instant, fear was dissolved and gone. Gone. Gone!

History shifted that morning. The Son broke through the atmosphere and dispelled the metaphoric darkness, fog, and depression. He changed every life he contacted. He still does.

He is alive!

About Pain, Death of a Vision

Post-Mortem

This was not a good day two thousand-ish years ago, and that is grossly understated. It was certainly not a Good Friday.

Their world had just been blown apart.

Everything they knew for the last three years has lost its hinge-pin. Death can do that, brutal death will do that more, it has a way of destroying every hope in you; it will strip you of your ‘why-a-bouts’ and void your reason without asking your permission or giving you advance warning.

Their reason for being, hoping, dreaming, future, for winning, was just gone. Gone. Gone!

They were terrorized. So, as friends, were trying to regroup and had gotten back together, loosely together, but now what? Would they be next? Who… would be next?

Peter, who usually had all the answers, was uncommonly silent, vacantly silent.

What in the world just happened? How could this happen?

Someone had provided some food, but nobody wanted to eat. Their system couldn’t consume one more thing.

Previously they thought. No, they knew things were going to change. They knew things would soon be very different, but this different? Not this kind of different.

Confidence and excitement were now just a blur replaced by angst and fear. They could vaguely recollect some things said, but it was mumbled in their heads with far-off interior voices.

Who, what, when, why, how? These cycling questions wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop queuing in their brains.

As they looked over at each other, the ‘connection line’ began to thin. Their reason for being ‘with him’ ‘with her’ was gone. Common ground was now starting to have the appearance of foreign soil. Would they still be friends? Could they get through this? Did they even care anymore? Was being here with ‘them’ even safe?

Phrases like; ‘I hoped,’ ‘I knew,’ ‘I couldn’t wait,’ ‘did you see it when?’ ‘He healed him,’ ‘Oh and look. Lazarus, back from the grave!’ These phrases exited their mouths with almost every exhale.

This was a house of confusion, a house of mourning.

This was Friday, but it didn’t feel Good.

Accurate Measuring, Attitude, Authentic

Fallen From Grace (A Fresh Perspective)

In the world that I grew up in, ‘Fallen From Grace’ was something catastrophic, an unwanted label, something hugely embarrassing, and something that had an irreparable air about it. At all costs, you wanted to avoid this humiliation, this shaming, this ‘DIS’ Grace. Coming back, if you could, from a fallen position was something that would take hours, days, months or even years to repair, and it might also bar you from a place in heaven. The message was as dangerous as it sounds. It was invoked with a warble in the voice and exaggerated gestures that made the most religious squirm.

That was then, and I for one am glad that it is over for me. Oh, there are still many who would follow that understanding, but for me, there is a fresh understanding that is light years apart from that and has brought back peace and purpose.

I believe that a person can and will fall from grace, but the definition of grace isn’t directly connected to a description of eternal consequence.

Grace simply put, biblically put, is God’s ability given to an individual to meet the task, problem, obstacle, or challenge at hand. God actually empowers you to meet face-on what you need to ‘get through.’ He gives you the ‘grace to help’ in time of need

Falling from that? Falling from grace just means that I have chosen to meet that same obstacle in my own ability and trying to use my own strength, or once again saying, “God I’ve got it.” That’s it. I can continue in that power struggle if I wish or I can yield.

But, that also intrinsically means that I can get back to where God is the one helping and empowering by simply admitting my error, “God I just tried to do this, again, in my own wisdom and ability. I want and need you. I need your grace once again. Amen.” No longer fallen, once again connecting and growing with Him.

Just like getting back on a horse, dust your self off, check out and correct your place of compromise and get back up and get going.

God gives grace to the humble.

Breakthrough

Breathe Again

You’ve heard the story, now here are forty-two seconds of evidence. Fleas will only jump as high as the lid that was on their lives even after the cap was removed. Forever, and also to their offspring, they will just jump only as high as the lid used to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBfniZuko3g

Several weeks ago we met a married couple that spent ten years in a third world country. The population of that country was huge, but the people there would never rise up and challenge the dictatorship they were under, even though if they wanted to, they would have the physical numbers.

The reason?

These people were trained, drilled, disciplined, and abused if they tried to think for themselves, all of this from their early ages and the first moments of cognition.

Even still, some of these people have become very skilled in the processes they have learned. However if you throw in a ‘why’ into their mix, they are at a loss. They have learned to process by ritual, by rote, by the system, but they were and are forbidden to think or inject their ideas into that process.

This dictatorship government has effectively put a lid on these people.

Growing up in Western Canada, I find it almost impossible to imagine such a world until… until I consider some of the lids in my own life.

I have lived with socioeconomic, educational, and most disappointedly of all, religious lids.

The process to the fresh air has been ominous, but I love it up here, and I am learning to breathe again.

Attitude, Trust

Small Victories

I’ve had great moments where I trusted entirely. But, probably like you, that trust didn’t stay Front and Centre very long.

I, once again, rose in my humanness and took over the thought process. I once again began to fixate on things I couldn’t change, bringing tomorrow into today’s capacity and finding it overwhelming. Ya, once again.

Today is a small victory; today I decided that I would live like my prayers have been heard. I’ve decided that my faith and my action would be harmonious.

Now that I remember God’s got it, I’ll rest.

Comparisons, Great Surprises, Musing, Travelling

Ordered Steps, (321,090 of them)

Three times on our recent trip to Europe I got us hopelessly lost, twice in Paris and once in Helsinki.

41043279-1eb4-4c30-b57e-3de605f9ed78 Mostly we had an amazing time of meandering and discovery. Our amazing discoveries included; a cup of Cappuccino with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; the Changing of the Royal Palace Guard dressed in their royal blue regalia in Old Stockholm; Swedish Meatballs at an exquisite restaurant in a small, hidden, triangular courtyard; and Ratatouilles’ friend Remy alive and well at dusk in a hugely populated courtyard. (Chill your spine and curl up into a fetal ball on your chair encounter.)

My wife and I have learned to travel together by meandering and off-the-grid discovery. It not only works well, but it also works best for us. We don’t spend a lot of money on tourist nets that have been previously set with our names on them. Instead, we discover great places to take a break and sometimes, too often, eat. Parks, bridges, architecture, and archways garnered photo ops by the megabyte.

The hopelessly lost part happened because we had to get to someone else’s ‘great discovery’ restaurant. The ‘have to’ combined with my North American grid mentality was not a right combination in a city of circles and wedges, especially when you add in about 10,000 extra steps.

Even a good relationship can get somewhat testy when you circle around your hotel an extra 2 kilometres in the dark cobblestone streets with rain, without GPS because it’s 11:20 pm and your phone has just died.

We loved the vibe of ancient Europe. We loved the clash and harmony of the architecture of days gone by with the new and innovative appeal. Europe for us equals an amazingly inspired time of pause and reflection.

In a quiet time this morning, I read, “A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way?” (Proverbs 20:24, NIV)

It occurred to me that not only our positive steps but all of our steps have a divine oversight because God really is taking us on a discovery journey, an amazing could be inspired time, of pause and reflection.

Attitude, Life-Long Learning, Marriage and Life, Now What?

Is That It?

Thirty-seven years, fourteen days, and fifteen hours and forty minutes ago, I almost said out loud, “Is that it?” The preacher had just said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife…” All I could think about at that moment was, “That’s all there is?” “We waited this long and spent this much and planned so intricately, and it’s over?”

The only thing over was that part of the ceremony. The work was just beginning. All-be-it, it has been considerable work. Right babe? Right…babe?

I’ve had it happen with holidays, destinations, stuff, and things. All the time spent dreaming and planning; the time of hoping and wishing is over in a moment of acquisition.

Life works that way.

We get that new car, and after a week we see someone has gotten a better car with more options on top of a better base package, for a thousand dollars less than what we paid.

Sound familiar?

Even though these things happen and happen with frequency, I believe that the question is a great question to ask, “Is that it? Is this all that there is?”

Some save the question for mid-life so that they can commiserate over it. Others try to ignore it all together.

Instead of allowing the question to intimidate you, come to the table with your sleeves rolled up and your strategy hat on. Ask the question. The fact that you are here to ask it means the answer is a definite, “No! There is more, way more.” The fact that you still have breath and thought means that a new course could be charted, a new normal can be achieved, a new standard can be realized; It just requires you to ask and answer boldly.

So, thirty-seven years, fourteen days, fifteen hours and twenty minutes ago, I ventured on a life-altering, sometimes terrifying, always challenging, and totally rewarding journey. It only required four words, “I do,” and “I will.”

What will you do?

If you would like marital direction please consider the Marriage Consult.

The Marriage Consult