Thursday, December 28, 2017

Old Dog, New Tricks, Part 2

Editor’s Note:  In my writing, I’ll be referencing the book, “Same Kind of Different as Me”, which has also been made into a movie.  If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, and plan to, spoiler alert, I will be divulging the plot and storyline, which may ruin it for you.  Stop reading now if that is the case.

I recently read a post on Facebook from a friend, and it was from someone that they knew that had gone through a moment in a grocery store that triggered a flood of emotions for that person.  She had lived in the area previously, been married, raised a family, and subsequently got divorced.  When she entered the grocery store, it all came rushing back to her, and she couldn’t contain her emotions.  The experience, the memories of her family life, were just too much.

 This emotional story came to roost for me in a bit of a different way, but still, very emotional all the same.  Our Adult Education class has been reading and discussing “Same Kind of Different as Me”, and as I sat alone one Saturday, catching up on all of my reading while Laurel was gone for the day, I found a story that hit just a little too close to home. 

“God of salvation
You chased down my heart
Through all of my failure and pride”


It’s a true story of a couple in Texas, who gradually grow into affluence.  As they grow wealthier, and find the better things in life, the husband, Ron, gradually strays, and has an affair.  When his wife, Deborah, finds out, instead of kicking him out, divorcing him and taking him to the cleaners, she first wants to talk to the other woman.  She does, and surprisingly, she tells the other woman she forgives her.  Next, she tells Ron their lives have to change, and she introduces him to helping out at the local homeless shelter.  While Ron struggles with being around the “lesser of us”, Deborah embraces it and eventually wins over all she works with at the shelter, including a very angry and sometimes violent African-American man, Denver, who has led a terrible life and been homeless for many years.  Eventually, Ron becomes a little more comfortable, and he and Denver somehow become friends, but it wasn’t without a great deal of trials along the way.  Sadly Deborah contracts cancer, and eventually dies, but her legacy lives on through the friendship of Ron and Denver, and the homeless shelter built in her name to honor all that she had done.

As best I could, I just summarized a beautiful story with many emotional upheavals into one paragraph, missing many critical parts along the way, but hopefully, you get the picture.  While the story isn’t exactly the same as ours, as noted, it hit way too close to home.  As I’ve noted in previous blogs, I left Laurel for a while way back when we were around 30 years old.  I left her, I left Megan and Kelly, and I moved into a tiny one bedroom apartment all to myself.  Somehow, Laurel never gave up, as much as I gave up, she never did.  As much as she should have kicked me to the curb, divorced me and took me to the cleaners, she didn’t.  She believed in us, she believed in our marriage, and she held on strong until I eventually came to my senses. 

“Hold my heart, don’t let it bleed no more
Sometimes forgiveness is like a man at war”

While I wish I could say that somehow we have a beautiful story to tell about helping out the homeless, and me befriending someone like Denver, that is not a part of the story unfortunately.  What hit me when I was reading the book was when it got to the part about Deborah getting cancer.  You see, all of my life, I’ve lived in fear, I’ve feared that just like Laurel’s two sisters, Kathy and Karen, Laurel would someday fall to cancer, and I would lose her much too soon.  I’ve always lived with the thought that I was willing to give her up, and when I realized how crazy, how stupid I was, God would come in and take her away from me.  Each time she would go for a physical or exam, and she would say that they saw something and wanted to do further tests, panic would ensue, and I’d ask her if she could get an appointment sooner, I couldn’t stand the worry.  As Laurel would point out to me, “Worrying isn’t going to do any good”, I’d say, “OK, you’re right, but that still doesn’t help.”

"Your love has called my name
What do I have to fear?
What do I have to fear?"
  
So as I sat there reading that Saturday afternoon, I burst into tears, and I cried.  And I cried.  And I cried.  I felt badly for our two dogs, Little Bit and Daisy, because they had no idea what was going on.  They kept trying to comfort me, but it was no use, I was seeing my life flash before me, and I probably cried more than I’ve cried since my Dad died in 2013.  I couldn’t let go of my past failures, the pain I inflicted on Laurel, how I treated her, what I put her through.  I’ve never been able to forgive myself for that.  I couldn’t let go of my “perceived” future when I was going to lose Laurel, just like Ron lost Deborah.  I was caught between the inability to forgive myself for my past and fearing my future.  Wow, where the Hell do you go from here?

“And as You speak
A hundred billion failures disappear”


While there have been times in my life that I would have simply accepted this is just who I am, and would have quoted one of my favorite cartoon characters, Popeye, and said “I yam what I yam, and that’s all I yam”, this year has given me a new sense of optimism that I can be so much more. 

I look back to the challenge that our Pastor, Chris Henry, gave us for Lent on “A Clearing Season” and the journey I went on.  I explored myself, I explored my religion and faith, I sunk to the depths of Hell, driving myself into a state of depression, but I pulled myself out and garnered so many great insights and new visions of my life and the lives around me.  I grew and changed during that Lenten Journey, and I am so thankful for that.

“If you gladly chose surrender so will I”

I have continued to explore my worship through my running, as bad as it has been lately, but it hasn’t changed my focus on listening to contemporary Christian music, and finding so many nuggets of inspiration to live my day by.  I’ve interspersed some of the lines throughout this post, some of the ones that give me the greatest inspiration.  And it’s not just on the run that I get and keep that inspiration, throughout the day, I hear these lines running through my mind, and it helps me stay in focus. 

I started yoga this year, and it has been an incredibly uplifting and sobering activity for me.  I’m learning so much about myself and so much about what I can do, and what I can’t do.  While I’m still such a novice, I’ve only been doing it for five months or so, I look forward to it each time, and grow a little more each time.  Don’t get me wrong, there are times that I think I’m progressing, and times I think I’m regressing, at least in my stretching or balance, but I’m always growing in my focus, and my desire to keep coming back to see how I can improve.  As I’ve noted, I will probably never be very good at this, but it has been one of the best activities I’ve ever taken up in my life.  I’m surrounded by so many inspirational people, both teachers and students, that just make me feel good each time I go there.  Why in the world would I not want to do this?

"If You can calm the raging sea
You can calm the storm in me"
  
Finally, the entire church year has been amazing for me.  Through the Lenten Journey, through our Adult Education class, through the services, the music, the sermons, I’ve been inspired, and I’ve grown.  I’ve been lucky, I’ve been blessed through the years to hear some great sermons from great ministers, but the sermons I’ve heard at Shallowford this year from Chris Henry, Catherine Foster, and Bradley Kibler have been outstanding, particularly during Lent.  I have to go back to one (seriously, how do I choose just one?) where Chris Henry said, “But making space for renewal of the soul is not like adding another item to the to-do list.  Caring for the soul is a gift we give ourselves, not an obligation we begrudgingly meet… It involves setting priorities and holding ourselves accountable and sometimes, it means stretching ourselves beyond the comfortable.”  But with all of the great sermons like this, the eloquent weaving of stories together, taking Biblical passages and bringing them into focus in our everyday lives, Chris hit me with the Christmas sermon, with a simple story of Linus from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and the words the angel spoke, and I needed to hear – Fear Not. 


Those tiny two words, repeated by a tiny cartoon character many years ago, brought into focus once again, what has held me back for so many years.  Stuck agonizing over my past failures, fearing what the future holds in store, wanting to take control from God, which I know is ludicrous and makes no sense, and those two words brought it all back into focus for me.  I can’t change the past, and in so many ways, I wouldn’t.  While I have some huge black marks on me from my past, I also have thousands or millions of things of beauty that define my past.  I can’t control the future, and quite frankly, I’m pretty sure that God has a better idea of what my future should look like than I do.  I need to learn to accept that.  I need to stay in the present, be the best me in the present, which will help me be a better person in the future.

One last thing and then I’m done.  Let me tell you a story about my hamstrings.  Stay with me here, there’s a point to this.  As I related in my last post, “Old Dog, New Tricks”, yoga is really, really hard for me.  For many reasons, but the worst is my hamstrings.  I’ve spent 57 years not stretching them, and while I could wallow in the fact that I’ve never stretched myself beyond the comfortable, and letting that define me, I’m giving it my best to do something about it.  The one yoga class, Brooke said, “You need to stretch your hamstrings at least 90 seconds at a time just to maintain your flexibility.”  I actually started laughing.  I thought to myself, I have to do this for 90 seconds just to maintain zero flexibility?  Then the one time, Megan was working on my hamstrings, and she said, “Your hamstrings are really confused.”  Well of course they are, they’ve gone 57 years without any stretching, they are rebelling and saying, what in the world are you trying to do to us?  As I was in a stretch the other night, my hamstrings began yelling at me once again, my legs started shaking uncontrollably, as my hamstrings went on strike and wouldn’t take anymore punishment.  I just started laughing.  As I looked up, Dani smiled and said, “It’s OK, you’re good.”  No I’m not, but with the help of some great teachers I will be, or I’ll be content with where I can be.  Believe me, I’m not quitting, and next time, I’ll go back at it again, and see what my hamstrings are willing to do.  But I can’t change the past, I can only control the present, and I’m not going to worry what the future brings.  If someday, I work myself up to say, 2-3% flexibility in my hamstrings, that’s great, but I’m just going to keep on doing the best I can and not worry about the future.

So am I saying that just like with my hamstrings, I’m not going to wallow in my past failures, not going to worry about the future and just live in the present?  Sadly, no, I’m not there yet.  But I’m getting better.  While I’m not one to ever give myself much credit for anything, I’ve grown this year.  I’ve actually gotten better.  As I always say, I’m a work in progress.  I am committed to be a better me in the present, and I hope that leads to a better me in the future. 

“Thy Will Be Done”

“And what does the Lord require of you?  But to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God”

“But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”

“I Can Do Hard Things”

“Fear Not”

While it’s impossible to distill down a year of learning, growing and inspiration into a few simple phrases, these are some of the ones that have captured me this year.  As I close out the year, this blog post, my blog posts for the year, I wish you the best, and I promise to do my best to give you my best in 2018 and beyond.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Old Dog, New Tricks

“Some of you are approaching this time like a lion, ready to attack this yoga session.  Some of you are approaching this like a unicorn, ready to escape out the door.”

I recently quit teaching part-time at Georgia Gwinnett College after seven years, partly due to my travel schedule and partly due to the fact that I wanted to spend more time with my wife Laurel.  It isn’t ever like I’m bored in life or don’t have enough to do, but I tend to always like to be busy and active.  So while there wasn’t necessarily a “gap” in my schedule after retiring from teaching, mentally, I still had a bit of a gap to fill.  And, as noted, I wanted to find a way to spend more time with Laurel.

In July, I went to a meeting at our headquarters in Germany, and as a part of it, I participated in the WIKA team marathon, which they hold annually.  You only have to run about six kilometers, which isn’t a huge challenge, or shouldn’t be.  To say I sucked would be an understatement, it was one of my worst running performances, and experiences, I can ever remember.  While I could make a number of excuses, the reality that I knew was that I had become too “running centric” and had quit doing anything to stay fit other than running.  That just doesn’t work, you need to do more than just run to be an effective runner.

When I came home, I told Laurel, “I need to start going to yoga with you”, which made Laurel ecstatic, she’s been trying to get me to go to yoga with her for years.  Now this was huge because I have done my best to avoid any type of stretching throughout my life, and have made it basically 57 years with virtually no stretching.  Why, might you ask?  Because it hurts, plain and simple.  I am extremely tight, my hamstrings are awful.  So, when Laurel said to me, “You may not realize this, but yoga is hard”.  Uh, no shit, I had no preconception that yoga was going to be easy for me.  On the contrary, I was scared to death of how hard this was going to be. 

It reminded me of something that my good friend and mentor Dave Carr taught me once.  When he was teaching a course, he talked about three “zones”.  One is the Comfort Zone, where things are familiar and we are comfortable.  Then there is the Learning Zone, where beliefs, ideas and perspectives are challenged, and we grow.  And then, there is the “Panic Zone”, where our eyes get big, our heart rate goes up, our breathing gets faster and our palms get moist.

“Take time to set your intentions, what do you want to get out of this time here?”

When I began going to yoga, a short four months ago, yes, I was scared to death, I was in the Panic Zone.  As many times as Laurel would remind me that it was going to be hard, or I probably didn’t realize how hard this was going to be, no, the truth of the matter was, I knew how hard and painful this was going to be for me.  I know my body, I know how tight I am, how awful my hamstrings are.  But oh, I found out so much more.  I found out how weak my hips were.  I found out how tight my shoulders were.  Each week, early on, I learned new things about my body, and it wasn’t good.  I remember remarking to Megan Kearney, the owner of Ebb & Flow and leader of many yoga sessions, that I’m learning new things that my body can’t do each time, and her response back was, “Yeah, but isn’t it amazing what your body can do?” 

And that is why I have fallen in love with yoga.  Each session I attend, I am the unicorn, I am in the Panic Zone.  I often remark to Laurel, “I really don’t think you realize how hard this is for me.  I know it is for a lot of people, but it’s really hard for me.  I’ve not stretched in 57 years, it really hurts.”  But each time, I give it everything I have, I’ve figured out what I just flat out can’t do, but I’m gradually learning to be OK with that, and becoming content with what I can do.

“If you only spend five minutes today intentionally, you are doing yoga.”

It goes far beyond the physical part though.  So much of yoga is about spirituality, focus and breathing.  OK, breathing should be easy, but I’m constantly forgetting that I need to breathe when I’m doing yoga.  I wish I could say I’m getting better at remembering to breathe, but this will take some time.  Focus is another area that is and will be a struggle for me.  I am Type A, no doubt, and my mind is constantly wandering to all of the things I need to get done.  But, I am seeing some glimmers of hope.  I’ve been able to concentrate on what the teacher is saying more and more, and sometimes, I am able to focus, and really concentrate on being intentional.

Which brings me to the spirituality, and more particularly, the teachers I’ve had.  Since I’ve only been doing yoga for four months, I’ve only had the opportunity to experience four teachers, Megan, Brooke, Dani and Felicia.  Again, I’m such a novice to yoga, but they are just incredible.  They are wonderfully unique and amazing in their own way.  Each brings different gifts, different teaching methods, different music, and I’m just mesmerized at how they encourage and inspire me to be my best, and also to be OK with myself when I can only be my best.  There are so many times that they’ll say something in class, and unfortunately, my Type A personality will have me lying there thinking, “wait, what did she just say?  I need to write that down.”  Unfortunately I can’t, so I have to commit the concept to my brain, not the actual comment. 

“You can do hard things”

I have come to realize, and accept, I will never be good at this.  You can’t overcome 57 years of never stretching, and 57 years (or close to it) of being a Type A.  I have gotten better, I have grown, I have improved, but I’m pretty confident and comfortable with the fact that I will never be very good at yoga.  But that doesn’t change the fact that I am loving every minute of it.  Don’t get me wrong, every class, I’m a unicorn, I’m ready to bolt out the door.  I’m scared to death, but I stick it out, and I do the best I can do.  And I’m not ashamed to say that at the end of every class, I get teary-eyed because I’m proud of myself for doing something that I never believed I could ever do.  I firmly believe, they are changing my life.  Physically, spiritually, I’m becoming a different, and better, person. I am so thankful for what they are doing for me.

I can do hard things. 

Stay tuned for “Old Dog, New Tricks, Part 2”.  If I can accomplish this, I can accomplish so much more.  I am still a work in progress.

Sunday, December 3, 2017

Marriage Vow Renewal

Editor's Note:  Laurel and I renewed our vows five years ago on our 30th anniversary.  I wrote the following for that ceremony, and I have to say, I feel even more in love today than I was five years ago.  As you can see, I had our children read our story, partly because I knew I couldn't, but largely because they are such an integral part of our lives.  And yes, I'm the luckiest man alive.

The Nature of Love
Megan: Our father has asked us to expand on the nature of love.  Our role is two-fold.  He knew that it wouldn’t be possible to do this himself without crying like a little baby.  And so much of the nature of love for our parents relates to their children, so it’s appropriate for us to be a vital part of this service.
Kelly: Our father chose 1st Corinthians, 13: 4-8.  Thirty years is a long time, and there are many memories, many life moments that shape a marriage, shape our lives together.  Our father chose four moments, four snapshots that highlight the love that our mother has shown to all, and the reason why, our father loves her so much.

Megan: Love is patient.  While there have been many ways that Laurel has shown great patience with all of us, such as the purchase order policy, “goodbye I love you goodnight”, “I cut off the sweaty parts”, it seemed appropriate to at least start with some humor and focus on her favorite of all of her children, Snickers.  When the boys, particularly Sean, fought so hard to get a puppy, we had no idea what we were getting into.  Snickers was the worst baby anyone could imagine.  While experts would tell you, dogs will never go the bathroom in their crate, we found out the very first night, Snickers hadn’t read the manual.  He stayed up most nights for his first three months or so, he hated his crate, he teethed on our furniture and ruined it, he would pick, pick, pick at the berber carpeting until he could get a good strand and pull it across the room, so we eventually had duct tape throughout our family room.  While Sean and Patrick and I all promised to take care of Snickers, the
one who got to stay up all night with Snickers, was of course, Laurel.  There were many times, she said, it’s either me or the dog, but she knew how much the boys, and I, loved Snickers, so she persevered.

When I finally knew that Snickers had won her heart was one night when we were sitting in the family room watching TV.  Snickers was out back, in the dark, and all of a sudden, you could hear him barking.  For some reason, Laurel thought that Snickers was in trouble, and she leaped off the couch, running out the back door in her bare feet, screaming, “Snickers, Snickers”.  He had won her over, and had become her favorite.  Patience is a virtue, and Laurel definitely possesses this virtue.


Kelly:  Love is kind.  There are many examples, but one has always stuck with me, and it is from early in our marriage.  We were at church at Westminster, sitting on the center aisle of course.  The ushers were taking the offering, and there was a homeless man who had come into the sanctuary and he was sitting a few aisles ahead of us.  The usher tried to be kind and gracefully move past the man, but all of a   sudden, the homeless man tugged at the sleeve of the usher’s jacket.  He had a handful of change that he wanted to put into the offering plate, and he got the usher’s attention to put his change in the plate.  Laurel instantly burst into tears.  I feigned ignorance and asked her what was wrong, but she just shook her head and didn’t say anything.  After the service was over, Laurel was still crying, and I asked her what was wrong.  She said, “Did you see that homeless man?  He didn’t even have shoelaces in his shoes, but he still took the change from his pocket to put in the offering.   If he can do that, how can the rest of us be so selfish?“  I saw the love, the compassion, the kindness that she has for others that day, and I’ve seen it countless times over, whether it is Tawanna, B2B, or whatever small or significant random act of kindness she does along the way. 

Sean: Love bears all things.  When it comes to child bearing, if there is a normal, Laurel didn’t get to experience it.  The most normal child birth along the way was the first, Megan, and she was a month late, at least based on her due date.  Megan came into the world screaming, and she did a lot of that for the first several months.  We used to joke that Megan was a patriotic baby because she always stayed up until the TV programming shut off and they played the Star Spangled Banner at one or two in the morning (yes, back in the olden days of TV).  With Kelly, Laurel ended up on bed rest for the last month or so, and had to endure lying in bed, holding back the contractions.  With the boys, it became much worse.  Laurel had to endure about four months of bed rest, only allowed to leave bed to take a shower each day.  She had to lie there all day, watching TV, doing crossword puzzles, whatever she could do to pass the time, holding off the contractions, so that the boys could grow enough to be born safely.  I constantly wondered, how can she do it?  How does she not bend, how does she not cheat, how does she endure this?  I asked her one day, and very simply, she told me, “I just tell myself each day, if I don’t do this, they won’t survive.  That’s what keeps me going each day”.  I don’t believe I would have been strong enough to ever suffer through this, but Laurel’s love for the boys allowed her to endure those four months.  Her love for her children drove her to bear all things.


Patrick: Love endures all things.  I wish I didn’t have to do this one, but to completely cover the extent of Laurel’s love, this painful part of the journey has to be addressed.  At one point in our marriage, I reached the conclusion that our marriage wasn’t working.  I didn’t see a future for us together, and I determined that it would be best for each of us to find our true soulmate, the one who could make us the happiest.  Maybe I had watched too many movies, too much TV, not sure what it was, but I believed there was something better, something bigger out there.   I left, I became a vagabond of sorts.  I lived on friend’s floors, in their spare rooms, I eventually got an apartment of my own.  I spent a lot of time alone, soul searching, wondering where my life was headed.  I still remember the one morning, getting up in the morning, looking in the mirror, and really not recognizing the person looking back at me.  I was completely lost.

The whole time, Laurel never gave up, who knows why.  I gave her every reason to give up on me, in some ways I kept believing, if she were really smart, really strong, she would just say the hell with me, and move on.  But she didn’t, she never gave up, she never gave in, she kept pushing and pushing me to come back.  I found out how strong, how committed, how dedicated she was.  She believed in our marriage, she was committed to our marriage, and because of her ability to endure all things, we are still together today.  If it weren’t for her, who knows what the girls’ lives would have been like and of course, the boys would have never been born.  Her love and commitment changed our lives completely.

Megan:  My commitment since then has been to try to make every day of her life a better day than the day before.  I realize that I fail at this most days, but that’s my commitment.  She gave me life when I didn’t deserve it, she gave me love when I didn’t deserve it, and my goal, my purpose is to show her the love she deserves for the rest of our lives. 


Too many times, we believe that love is a storybook romance like you read in books, like you see in movies.  True love is loving each other through all the difficulties, loving each other when it isn’t easy to love each other, loving each other through the bad times, as well as the good times.  In my mind, I have had a storybook romance, and I thank God for letting me be a player in this story.  Lou Gehrig once famously said, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”  Lou Gehrig was wrong, he wasn’t the luckiest man on the face of the earth, I am.  Thanks be to God.


Friday, December 1, 2017

Advent Devotional

Letting Go

I began writing my blog about nine years ago.  I had always loved writing as a creative avenue (my
dream was to be a journalist and write novels), and due to the fact that my career is in business as a Chief Financial Officer, I needed some way of expressing myself.  I titled my blog, “Stuffed With Fluff – Oh Bother!”, partly due to my love of Winnie the Pooh and the fact that in many cases, my head is stuffed with fluff.  I write about life, my family, friends, students, pets, church, and in many ways, how God speaks to me through all of those avenues.  And I wait to see where God is going to take me.     

I’m not exactly sure how most people write, but my blog posts often take many months to “percolate”.  The process is very similar in each case, the difference is typically in the timing.  It all begins with an idea, something strikes me, something interests me.  And that idea sits there for a while.  And like we do in the Advent season, I wait.  Sometimes, I wait, and the idea never gets beyond that point, it dies a slow, but quiet, death.

If the stars were made to worship so will I

In most cases though, the idea progresses, and the way it progresses is through my morning runs.  As I run, I listen to contemporary Christian music, and I talk to God.  As I listen to God, I write my blog in my head.  So I wait for it to formulate, because I know it will be something eventually.  Sometimes God must talk very slowly, or I must listen very slowly, because it takes months for me to write it in my head.  

If the wind goes where You send it so will I

In these nine years, I have not had a goal or a set amount I want to write or themes I want to write about.  It all depends on what strikes me, what interests me, and then I wait for God to help me foster that idea into a creation.

If the oceans roar Your greatness so will I

What really strikes me about this waiting is that in my everyday life, I very much want or need to control everything.  While spiritually I realize that the only one in control is God, I can’t seem to let go of my desire to be in control.  My blog is the one thing over which I give up all control to God.  How it’s written, what is written, the timing of it, all depends on how God speaks to me, and yes, how well I listen.  It is the one thing in my life that I patiently wait for God to deliver on His terms and timing.  Maybe that is why it is so precious to me.

If the rocks cry out in silence so will I

As I approach Advent this year, what am I waiting for?  What are you waiting for?  What will come out of this waiting?