Seeking God

 Some days you may not feel like trying.  Why not just go with the flow like it seems most people do. Enjoy the ride.  Take in the scenery, rest, and relax. Sometimes the goal doesn't seem so worthwhile when you really don't feel that well or things are not going that great.  And you question yourself, your abilities, your drive, and the need for it all. Days like these can go into other similar days until there is a certain fatigued despair in the moments. These are seemingly the "dog days" of our lives; a bad patch you just have to live yourself through and come out the other side with renewed hope.

Sometimes faith gets like that but the remedy can be quite different.  Sometimes God just seems not to be listening.  Prayers drift into thinking about something else.  You just can't stay connected.  But I have found that during these disconnects, I am one not listening.  I am the one holding on to  a habit, a thought pattern, or even a sin that separates my heart from God.  When I ask God to "search me and try me" and really mean it, and really take it inside, I find it is I who is holding on to what causes the disconnect.  It is I who has moved away from this relationship.  

A lot of the time that revelation is on a long run or bike ride. We have to become aware of and remove the impediments keeping us apart from God and physical activity is not only good for your body but good for truly seeking God.

Living in Hope and Expectation

 Next week is a series of tests to see what may be wrong with my heart if anything.  I can't say I look forward to the next week and I hate not to be looking forward.  To me, looking forward is the essence of life well-lived. Looking forward is living in the hope God would have for us.  Living with sense of hope and expectation- why not? What is there to lose that won't be lost eventually here in this world.  No matter how high we climb, the time to come down will come.  No matter how forward looking we have in our hopes here, there will come a time when our hopes will have to be penned to eternity; our only true hope. 

But, knowing we win, because He won; that death was swallowed up in victory, we can live victorious in this life as well, knowing how the story ends- with a new beginning. Amen

Hold My Hand Lord

 

"When you start doubting yourself, remember how far you have come.  Remember everything you faced; all the battles you have won, and all te fears you have overcome.  Your greatest strength come in your weakest days"  

Today was a day of doubt; one of those weakest days.  Where can I go from here?  What can I do from here?  Who can I become from here?  

I was diagnosed with A-Fib -erratic beats of the heart, bringing with it the heightened possibility of heart attack or stroke.  The numbness caused by this diagnosis still has me in a numbed state.  Now it might seem my time to join in the little old men's pill lines to receive a bit a of life to wash down with a bit of water, then wait until lunch or dinner and the next pill line to shuffle to.  Not my idea of a life. 

The big suspense is how I will take this once the numbness of the diagnosis gives way to reality on hard terms.  I just don't know and I just have to depend.  Hold my hand Lord 

The Only Way Home

 

Miles of the Journey - Along your miles do you often contemplate the end of that journey?  Perhpaps at the death of someone you knew well, you seriously had a scary look at your own mortality.  Or, you vistited a cemetery and seen rows of stones and other type markers.  Did you wonder then, is that all there is to this journey.  Is life but the time between born and dead dates?  Does life consist of the dash between the dates? 

I don't want this journey to end, do you? But it must and I want to end well.  But I can see that that takes some real courage.  Despite all the religious noise we made along our journey of life the fabric of our faith will get  tested to its core. Do you have faith enough to step out into the waters of death without whining, I ask myself?  As my own health seems to be deteriorating, I still believe I do.  To be honest there is a sublimal anger, I think, that God is putting me through this and abandoning me.  At a time when I should be feeling closer, there is a strange distance in our relationship.   Maybe when I move myself closer to accptance, and give up my spoiled child attitude, we will be close again.  For now, I don't have any warm fuzzies to keep me warm in these cold times, and I have to have faith in the dark.  No fulfilled "bucket list" will navigate this lonesome journey we all have to take.  Yes, "nevertheless," I still believe:  God has the only way home.

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I Know That

 

Am I in an ironman rut?  I keep signing up.  It seems I am incurable of this ironman addiction.  What can I say?  Moving on would be a good option.  Why not? Hasn't there been enough time, energy, and resources expended on this ironman stuff?  

Despite all that, I find myself still in the ironman game; theoretically at least.  Recently I deferred Ironman Texas to Ironman Texas 2022. Of course, I will be too old then.  I'm too old now.  I have too old for ironman for a few years now.  Old guys like me trying to do an ironman are an anomaly, not having the self-respect not to go out and make a fool of oneself trying to outlive your time.  Just an old fool trying vainly, desperately, and pathetically to hang on to the shreds of athletic life.  I know all that.  But I trudge on unsure now that I have the drive to complete all the training, unsure my wife, who is older than I, will have the health to support me in yet another Ironman quest.   But yet, I keep going on, acting out the senility that comes with this age, I suppose. Like a robot, I just numbly keep signing up as if I were some robust thirty-year-old with all the energy and rah-rah necessary for this beast of a quest.

Maybe too,  my malady is an indication of an personal life vitamin deficiency, an indication of an incompleteness; a life that needs an ironman future to give purpose and fulfillment to it?   I don't know.  We all need a reason to get out of bed and go at whatever makes us purposeful and come alive, don't we? But,if that is true wouldn't you think that  I have  about used this ironman purpose thing up?  I don't know.   

Do I really want to go at it again with all that goes with that?  Do I want the dead-legged feeling in my life for a few months next year?  I don't know.  Do I want that brain-dead foggy mental feeling that comes from the long training?  Is the price too high for me this late in my game?  Can't I find, and be satisfied with some other purpose, some other  reason to get out of bed and have a go at life; something besides Ironman?  I don't know.

If things remain the same in family and personal matters, I could conceivably do the ironman training.  If things go really, really well, I might have a chance to finish.  If I finish it would be seriously been  a crowning achievement in my life.  And if others note that achievement, see my faith, my perseverance, they might become inspired to assume the risk and try to become all God intended them to be ; whatever that might me.   It's not impossible.  I know that.

There Is Still An Ember

 

We are burning a stump out on the place.  A fire of varying magnitude has been kept going on it for a couple of days and nights now.  This morning there was no sign of fire or embers.  Had the fire gone out?

A few leaves thrown on the ashes told otherwise.  It wasn't much but the fire was still there to be rekindled and be about the business of burning out the stump.

So it seems with the rocky year we have had in the year 2020.  Sometimes it seems there is no fire left in me or others.  But God has another plan.  Embers still beneath the ashes - though small right now - will bring the fire to our lives again.  Good is not through here.   Amid all the problems and conflict coming with the election and the COVID pandemic, there are still embers put there by God, that we might fan ourselves to flame yet again.

This may seem too optimistic to some, but  I envision a big roaring fire going on and in our lives in the future.  I see smiling, happy people, crowds, people  hugging one another fearlessly; laughing out loud, going places, doing things, and feeling more grateful than ever for the simple privileges of life that we practically took for granted before

May our embers be fanned to flame to become a catalyst that makes us one in joy.  

Time After Time, After Time, After Time

 Is there any other good choice but to try?  Doesn't failure to try begin and end with failure already?  Why choose failure without trying first?  Why give up until totally defeated?  My view is that the spirit is broken long before the body is. 

"A man is never defeated until he is defeated in spirit."  Protect the spirit as one of the most vital assets we have for fulfillment.  It must be guarded against from outside influences. You know:  the chicken little, the sky is falling and subsequent  panic crys of the media using any opportunity to scare you into staying tuned until perhaps they can sell you something.  Be careful.  You have the money and they want it.  Besides doomsday prophets out to make a buck, we  must be on guard ourselves  againt naysayers that can  often be  friends and families.  Additionally,  we must be guard against our own laziness and lack of courage and take a stand for hope in our lives. We have to make the choice to be ourselves and refuse to buckle under the surf of that cascading waves of negativativity  the voice of the world sometimes heaps upon us, time after time after time. Negativity won't quit.  We can't either.

And so, time after time after time, after time, we must put our faces into the winds of misfortune and negativity, grit our teeth, look to the heavens and say "NO."  

As an example, time after time, after time, I have failed at my ironman quest. The sky is not just falling, it has fallen on me several times already.  My life is cluttered up and covered with broken sky pieces.  Common sense would say it is time to "stay down." Don't get up to take another beating.  The demons of negativity spotlight all my former failures and whisper in my ear, mercilessly  reminding  me  that I am too old for this.  Their winds of misfortune discourse  blows  hard against the spirit the demons try so hard to break.   

Somehow, from that everpresent Somewhere, I find the Hope within and without. Somehow, I still put my face into those winds, look toward  heaven  between clinched teeth and say "NO."  I will try again. God's still got it. The spirit of Hope is still intact and it will be - time, after time, after time.