Tuesday, May 24, 2011

So...you want to talk about politics...


Like i was saying in the last post, we had a great time last time, learning about fractals and appreciating how amazing God is. We also spent time focusing on people and both how amazing all of them (even the biggest pains in the butt ones) are and how broken and messed up and hurting they are. We truly care about each other and it is not because of what we provide to each other - there is nothing much we provide except support and acceptance - but because as we begin to look for More in life, we begin to see that what really matters...is people.


Ok, so after we spent some time focusing on each other and people in general and noticing them, we talked for a while about politics and bumper stickers - 2 topics that most wise leaders try to avoid - i guess that tells something about our leader!


So, i was out at the soccer fields the other day and saw this Chevy Suburban-type vehicle with 4 bumper stickers on it - here they are:










I will not be discussing the "Good Bush"/"Bad Bush" or the "Vegetarians Taste Better" stickers - i cannot speak to the validity of either of those...but it is interesting that they happen to be placed next to the other 2.

So, what do you think about "Religion. You can't start a war without it." and Religion is regarded by the common as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful?"

These 4 stickers struck me so powerfully, that i had to get pix of them.

Then, the next day i was driving home and came across Jeep Cherokee with this bumper sticker:





and just below it was:






How interesting! 2 vehicles, 2 days, 5 bumper stickers ( i guess you might be able to guess that the suburban did not have the "In God we Trust" license plate), 2 license plates.

Well, we had a serious discussion about all this Thursday night!

The truth is that I feel a wide range of emotions and have a broad range of thoughts about the suburban and their clear feeling that religion is at best foolish and worst evil. One of the things, just to start off, is not violence.

I look at those and i am saddened by the distorted view that they have of the God who made fractals and them and me and gives so much More to life than i ever imagined before i began following Him. He is the God of acceptance and love and forgiveness and reconciliation and peace and joy and purpose and meaning. He is the One who made you to appreciate the wonderful moments of life, just like He does and to grieve the painful moments of life, just like He does. He is not a God who loves violence and war. He is not a God who wants to detroy or hurt. He is smarter than the wise and way more powerful than the rulers who may use His "religion" in a corrupted form to oppress or harm people. To view say religion of my God is false because corrupt leaders mis-use it would be like saying that the American government was not real, just because corrupt politicians mis-use it.

But, i am more than sad when i think of all this...I am angry. Who am i angry at?

Not the vegetarian, who apparently tastes so good. I am angry at the Jeep driver who apparently thinks it is a good idea to malign the president (no matter what you think of him, we, as Americans, elected him) right above his "In God We Trust" license plate. You see, by driving with that combination of plate and sticker, he is saying that the one thing he wants you to know about him other than his trust in God is that he thinks his president is a huge mistake. These are the only messages on his bumper - not "Love your neighbor." not "Forgive when you are wronged" not "Do something wonderful with your life." not "You can have healing from the brokenness inside you." not "There's More to life than economics and money and stuff and work." not "I will gladly help you if you ask me." not "I love all people." and on and on i could go. These would be Jesus' messages (were his messages when he walked on this earth) if he drove a Jeep and had an "In God We Trust" plate on it (and honestly i think if Jesus lived now, he might not be able to afford a vehicle - he would probably ride the bus or walk or bike).

You see, what i see in our world is that the majority of the population that claims Jesus and his teachings (called Christians as a religion) are much more ready to assert their political sentiments than to love their neighbor...more ready to trumpet the cause of their agendas than to forgive when they are wronged...more ready to beat on those who disagree with them than to do something wonderful with their lives...more ready to assert their claim to their lot line and neighborhood rights than to let someone know that you can have healing from the brokenness inside...more ready to flap their giant steaks in the face of the vegetarians and yell at them for not supporting beef farmers than they are to let them know that There's More to life than economics and money and stuff and work...more ready to give &10 via text to Haiti than to say to any random someone who appeared, in need, I will gladly help you if you ask me or I love all people. It is this kind of pervasive neglect for the truth of Jesus' teachings that allows someone to deny the Truth of it. There is no question in my mind that if the driver of that suburban met Jesus and hung out with Him for a few days, they would become convinced that He was not a starter of wars and that He was absolutely true - it rings with the quote from Ghandi - "I like your Christ, I don't like your Christians"

The misrepresentation of the the Truth of God is so bad in our culture that when More than more began, we started because there were so many who, encountering our love for them, wanted to know more about this God we talked about, but refused to go to church. So, we tell people about how amazing He is...and we find that more and more of them are encountering Him for real and see that He is not the God of the suburban, or the jeep.

You see recently More than more went to someone's house to help them for a night and the gentleman who lived there told me how he was struggling with God and whether He could be real with all the pain that was in his life. My response? "Look around dude. You may not be able to believe in God, but you cannot deny these people who have come out on a Friday night, to your house, for no payment, for no reason, except that they choose to share the love in their lives with you. This, my friend is what God is like."

Now, i don't want to give you any false ideas - we are soooooooo far from perfect. We screw up often, and we own it. We live broken lives and life has beat us up, one side and the other. We have addictions and bad habits and have made choices that we wish we could go back and change. We are mean sometimes and impatient and unkind. We are judgmental way more than we want to be. We are broken and hurting people. But, we will not deny it. And we are choosing to look at life in a different way. We are choosing a different path. Our lives will matter, not because of who we are - we suck - we will be very quick to tell you this - but because of the love that we are seeing in this God, this Jesus, this God of Christianity. Plus, we will accept you - we will help you - we will care for you - we will not make a war with you and by the end of it all, you may be able to deny God, but you will not be able to deny us!


So, to the people in the suburban, if you simply bought the truck with the stickers on it and could not get them off, then disregard the message, it is for the previous owner. If those are your stickers, i would love to have you join us at More than more, we will be hanging out again June 2nd, from 6:45-8:00PM

And to the people in the Jeep, we would love for you to join us too - we would like to re-introduce you to the God we trust - He is amazing and wonderful and i'm pretty sure He loves president Obama...

Monday, May 23, 2011

What is a fractal??

Well, we had a great time last Thursday! It was so cool to hang out and enjoy being with people who accept us as ourselves - and are all sick of the usual thing in this country of always trying to get more, become more, be more, buy more, achieve more, etc.

This time we talked about fractals.

What are fractals? Yeah, i had no idea until relatively recently either.

Fractals are shapes that when you split them into parts, there are reduced size copies of the original. They are amazing - allow me to copy a couple links to web sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_GBwuYuOOs

http://fractalfoundation.org/

The interesting thing (check out the 3rd of the web sites) is that fractals occur everywhere. In DNA, in weather, in geography, in math, in space - everywhere. Check out this quote from:

http://library.thinkquest.org/26242/full/


What is a Fractal?

Imagine flying in a space shuttle looking at the coast of Britain. From such a great distance the coast looks perfectly straight, going from north to south. But, as you approach the earth something tells you the coast is not perfectly straight... Of course! As you go into the upper atmosphere you realize that it has thousands of bays, harbors, capes, and peninsulas that you could not see from a distance. Thinking that now you have a detailed picture of the coast, you turn towards one of the harbor beaches, which seems to be straight... However, as you get closer to it, you see that it too has thousands of smaller bays, harbors, capes, and peninsulas! Wondering if this will ever end you decide to get even closer... Eventually you wind up on the beach looking at the coast through a microscope. You can now see every grain of sand clearly, but, it too has thousands of indentations and extrusions!


No matter how close you get, you will
always see a similarly detailed picture


The fact that any small part of the coast will look similar to the whole thing was first noted by Benoit Mandelbrot. He called shapes like this fractals. Fractals are figures with an infinite amount of detail. When magnified, they don’t become more simple, but remain as complex as they were without magnification. In nature, you can find them everywhere. Any tree branch, when magnified, looks like the entire tree. Any rock from a mountain looks like the entire mountain. The theory of fractals was first developed to study nature. Now it is used in a variety of other applications. And, of course, beauty is what makes them popular!


So, here is this naturally occurring, amazingly complex shape system that seems to be everywhere. It is perfect and it is not understood! Why does this happen this way? What is the purpose of all this?

Well, the problem is that this unbelievable organization does not fit with the idea that the world just randomly evolved into existence - if it was random and naturally selected only, there would not be this much consistency. What is does scream is that there is a marvelous creator who is intelligent beyond our imaginations and made the world in a beautiful, organized way. His creativity was applied with reason and purpose!

Now, i know this is interesting and i hope you enjoy learning about it, but if all you do is read this and go, "Cool" and then back to your life, then it is not enough.

My advice?

When you read about fractals, thank God - invite Him into that moment with you and ask Him to be part of your life. When you see fractals in life (which if you look, you will), do the same - enjoy the fact that the very same God who made the world so amazing and complicated, made you and if He went to all that trouble, He will not abandon you - and plus there is More to life than the everyday!! Stop and notice it, let is sink in, maybe there is something besides work, sleep, and bills!


Hope this can encourage you this week when the week begins to overwhelm,

Friday, May 20, 2011

Those who choose their pain - the second part

So, i feel like there is a 2nd part to the last post...

Within the most tragic of the pain sufferer's group are 2 groups of people:

The first is a group of people who see the good and identify that it is good and want to go there and leave behind their pain but for some reason their life circumstances, their issues, their confidence, their place in life keeps them from being able to do it - many times they feel guilty and tons of pain at choosing to go back to the pain, but in their minds they just can't seem to see the way to get from "here" to "there." Honestly, to some degree, i think all of us live in this place to some degree - we see that we could do or be better people, have more love, be more positive, or whatever, but we are not yet in a place where we can get all the way to where we want to go. This is actually a healthy kind of dilemma to some degree, as the accompanying frustration of not being able to get all the way to where we want to get tends to shove us closer to God - we yell at Him, we ask Him, we plead with Him, we go to friends and true relationships where He is involved and look for new ways to grow and challenge and become, the best we can.
These folks are actually wonderful - we struggle and battle and grow over time. The key here is that we find our way to the circumstances and life experiences that will help us grow and move past the choosing of the pain. I face this regularly in myself - i want to be more patient or understanding, but inside me something pushes that back and i become grumpy and frustrated and impatient. This frustration then pushes me to interact with God and those who i trust in Him and He helps me, but never as fast it seems as i want Him to (still impatient...). I face it in the office - the alcoholic comes into the office and wants to quit, identifies that there is a problem, really wants to do better, to move away from their pain, but they just can't seem to put it away - so, in their frustration, i hope they will talk to God and ask for help in finding ways to quit. Usually what happens then, over time, is that they experience cricumstances that motivate them to quit and draw them closer and closer to God. So you see, in this case, we are choosing our pain, but mainly because we just can't do any different.

If you find yourself in this group, my advice is to run after God and those who love Him with all you've got - do your very best. Pray for vision, that you would see a new way of thinking and doing things - that God would show you where to go next - He will. Ask those who care about you to pray the same thing...it will happen - i see it over and over. There is a beautiful future for you ahead - please do not pound yourself into oblivion for your mistakes, just keep going back to God with them and asking Him for help - you will find that over time you will get there.

The other group is a group of people who have seen the Truth and identify it and start toward it and then in spite of having an ability to go toward the good, they abandon all that is good, God and people, and run full force into their pain. They choose to stop having relationship with God and all that is good and instead embrace the pain and brokenness of their lives. Now, these people too are products of their circumstances, but they are where they are because they are choosing to go against all that they know is good. It is true that they may need to experience that time in their lives in order to get to the good and appreciate God and His love and plans for them completely - i know that my life has had some times when i went against all that was good knowingly and had the ability, to some degree, to change that pattern and i chose not to and i am convinced that that time was essential in my growth in God. So, while these folks hurt us very badly and are so frustrating because we invest so much love and care into them and they betray us and hurt us, they actually may still be moving toward God. Please if you are caring and love someone in this situation, please don't stop loving them...don't stop praying for them...don't lose that glimmer of hope at the bottom of your heart that they can change and become all that you see they can become. Pray that their life circumstances will take them where they need to go to see that their path is detroying them.
And if you are one of those people choosing to go against all that is good (i am excited that you are still reading!!), talk to God - He is not out to get you, but to give you a full and wonderful life. There is a better way!! There can be joy and peace and wonder in life. Please, reach out to some people who love Him and are trying to go His way in this crazy life. You do not have to keep going the way you are going - we will not stop loving you. Consider joining us at More than more - we are a group of people who are all messed up and trying to choose what's best and struggling with it every day, but seeing ourselves grow to be more pain free over time. We will be hanging out on June 2nd for the next time at McAllister recreation center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, 6:45-8:00PM - there will be free excellent childcare, as always. We hope to see you there!

Monday, May 16, 2011

About Pain

5-7-11
I have been overwhelmed by the pain in the world. So many times I put my head down on my pillow and am haunted by the faces of people I have encountered who are in the midst of pain and heartbreak. Now sometimes the pain is a direct result of choices they have made – they are essentially dealing with all the “fall-out” of things they have done or said or been in the past. This is hard and frankly it sucks, but it is something we all have to deal with, me and you and everyone. We don’t want to deal with it, but if we are wise, we do and we realize our part in it all and trudge through, trying to learn as much as we can and make peace and goodness out of it as much as possible. Sometimes the pain is completely random, we are diagnosed with heart problems, or a tragedy occurs and takes someone we love, or a tornado rips through our town and destroys all we had planned, not to mention all our neighbors had planned, or something of the same type of thing. This also sucks, but it seems more unfair, like why me, and yet, as we look around, it seems that most everybody has those “why me” times and if they haven’t yet, we all have a sense that they will someday and we half smirk/half frown as we think about their naiveté. We say to ourselves, “Oh someday it will happen to you and you will understand like it or not and I will feel sorry for you then, but you will not be so cocky.” But, in spite of having to deal with the consequences of our own past choices and being struck randomly with painful circumstances (no matter how universal it is, it still is unbelievably hard), there is a thread of hope in these painful times. No, we do not wake up the morning after this happens and jump out of bed, glad to have been struck in such a fashion with the blind hand of life. But, those of us who are real people, forging through life with purpose, realizing that there is More to life than just the everyday work and pay your bills life that most people live, we attack these times the best we can, we see them as bad, but as the perspective dawns on them, as the reality sinks in, we usually find ourselves changing, growing, getting stronger, becoming a better person – something happens in these times and we sense it, deep in our souls. “There is an end to this” – and at the end, things are better – maybe even better than they ever were before the pain. We do not completely understand this, but it is there, nevertheless. Sometimes it takes a long time to make it to that place, but we get there, eventually, as long as we keep connecting with people we love and who love us, a God who loves us, and wants the best for us, and forging ahead, searching, looking, willing to become, to unfold, like a rose that is budding. I am reminded of a story one of our friends wrote about recently, as she and her husband rushed to their former home in Georgia, where a tornado had destroyed a town, taking with it the life that those people had known. No government aided disaster relief puts back together the pieces of your life in times like that. But our friend talked about this woman whose house had been shredded like a block of cheese. Our friend and her family had spent a portion of their day picking up family pictures strewn about because the tornado had no respect at all for family memories. And this woman, whose life had been so devastated, was a picture of hope – just as sure as she could be that there were wonderful things to come of this (sometimes when people say this I think they need to be medicated, because they must be delusional, but the sense I get is that this was a real spirit of hope, sure that the thread of hope she felt would lead her to something better and that she was not going to give up that thread, but instead she would follow it to a place far away from that field of devastation where she, and all she knew was new and alive and had a meaning and purpose she had never dreamed before the tornado came.) I am not suggesting that we all be jolly about pain here, simply saying for these 2 types of pain, there is an end that is often much better than we dream in the middle of them if we will go through the pain with God and some loving friends.
Now, this is actually not a story about the hope in pain – if you continue to read what I write, there will be more on that topic, but not this time. This is actually about a whole different kind of pain. This is about a kind of pain that slapped me in the face multiple times in the last couple months (and I actually see if very often in my day to day life). This pain is so heinous that I cringe at it. I fume at it. I get nauseated at it and I weep the deep places of my heart about it, more than almost anything else in the whole world. I have dedicated my life to changing it. I can no longer sit by and allow it to go on without a fight!
The first two times I wanted to tell you about occurred when my wife and I were sitting in church. I know, church should not be a place where one witnesses the worst kind of pain that exists and I want to tell you right now that my church is NOT a bad place. It has a group of people that come together to try their best to know God and do what He wants. Many of them live out the love of Jesus in their everyday lives – this story is not intended to be harmful to them – in fact – my church is a good place to learn about God and hang out with other people who are trying to get closer to Him. It is not the church’s fault, at least not directly, that these painful things were going on – the people are simply doing what they know, doing their best – I also want to tell you that this pain is not the fault of my pastor. He is a good man – I love him. He loves God very much. He would be equally grieved by the pain that I saw.
So, the first of them occurred just down the row from me. There was a young man. He was not peculiar in his dress, jeans and t-shirt, or in his look, he was well kempt and respectful. He was not making strange faces or disrupting the service. In fact, he was working, I think. He was with a disabled man in a wheelchair, who could not push himself. This young man was the caretaker, the chair pusher. There was something about the way he carried his body, kind of bent a little in the shoulders. There was a sadness in his eyes, something empty and lost, it seemed to me. He was not weeping and upset, but he looked as if he had taken it on the chin from life a few times. He was there, next to the handicapped man, with his dark backpack. So, as I said, it was Easter Sunday and the sermon was excellent – the pastor did a great job of speaking about how amazing our God is and that the fact that Jesus was resurrected basically meant that God did not do things the way everyone else did and we no longer needed to live all bound up by and controlled by and imprisoned by what was going on in the world – we could live lives that were free. Full of joy and meaning and purpose, our lives could explode with greatness!! I have got to say, I am excited about that message – I have lived far too much of my life bound and imprisoned, wrapped up with stuff and with no real peace in my life and now my life is amazing beyond description – all because of this Jesus of Easter!
So, this poor sad looking young chair pusher, sat there in that service, surrounded by the love of God, with the words of freedom circling around his head like he was a Sunday comic strip on steroids, all he needed to do was wake up, pay attention, grab even one of those word bubbles and ingest it – breathe it in - and feel the life rush into him. But, what was he doing? He was reading a cheesy paperback novel (now I must admit here that I do not know what he was reading specifically, but it was a small paperback book…). He would read his novel, every once in a while looking up when the pastor was particularly animated, kinda like he was tuning into CNN to see if there was some juicy piece of news or something and then he would go back to his novel. Then , just before the end of the service, when things were kinda wrapping up and all, he put his book away, got up and wheeled the disabled gentleman out, not to be seen again. This young man, slightly bent over, with sad eyes, in his jeans and t-shirt – he represents the worst kind of pain.
Another of the face to face moments I have had with this unbearable pain was also in church (please re-read the section now on how this problem is not my church in particular). It was the Sunday after Easter and the pastor was speaking about Mary of Magdala. She was the first person to see Jesus after He rose from the dead and she was first one Jesus trusted with his message of life. She was also unlikely in her being chosen. She was from a dumpy town, famous for its pickling industry and looked down upon by the people of the region. She was a woman and women were just the most beat down, pitiful, nonrespected people in those days. And to top it all off, she, prior to meeting Jesus, had 7 demons living inside her. Now, she was a pitiful case, but Jesus got rid of her demons, and then she followed him around. And He chose her for one of the most important jobs in all of history. He didn’t choose someone who was high society, or from the country club. He didn’t choose someone who was powerful or respected. He didn’t hold her past against her, but loved her unselfish and tender heart. He pronounced her worthy, even though she wasn’t until she met Him. Now, toward the end of talking about all this, the pastor said this great line: “Now, you may feel like your past is holding onto you and you will never be free of it. You are wrong. Jesus says that you have worth far beyond what you have done in the past.” Now, I don’t know about you, but that is phenomenal news!! I am not proud of my past. If you were to probe it, you would be shocked and I would be ashamed. But Jesus does not hold that against me anymore!!! Instead, He chooses me for something amazing for Him!! Now this makes me want to jump up and down, to express the thrill to everyone I know!! But, the next thing I heard was my wife leaning over and saying, “Why isn’t anyone else excited about that? That’s good news!” I looked around and I agonized to see dazed people, sitting in rows, then I became angry – overwhelmed by the fact that this amazing Truth was right there in front of them and they seemed to not see it – they were missing it, or they were dead! This, this is the worst kind of pain – beyond grief and sadness and destruction.
The third example of this horrific kind of pain that has absolutely slapped me in the face recently has been enacted by many many people I know over the years, some friends and some acquaintances, and some that I do not even know, but lately it has been particularly hard to see in some people that we love very much, who we have invested our lives in loving. The details vary greatly, but the basic story is the same. A person faces life, and while going through life, they face major problems. In the midst of the problems they are presented with the gift of a way of going through the problems so that, in time, they can grow and see the thread of hope of a better day. That gift is given to them in the form of friendships and unconditional love they have never known. It is given to them in the form of resources provided out of love and with no other agenda, but to show them that there is a way through – to be a thread giver, if you will. It is given to them in form of support and advice and experience from having walked that same road in the past. It is given to them in form of tears shed, prayers shared, and late night texts and phone calls agonized over. It is given to them in the form of lunches sacrificed and dinners shared. Now, there is nothing more beautiful than being a thread giver and watching someone grasp onto the thread, with as much grasp as they have, and then to wriggle and writhe their way, searching and seeking and clawing their way to the other side of the pain – then to have the joy of celebrating on the other side! But, there is nothing more painful in all the world than to watch someone presented with something so beautiful as this thread of hope and instead to choose to go right back to the place where the pain is; to stop looking for the thread; to stop searching for the God who can help them through to the other side of the pain; to deny and run away from the love of those people who have been thread givers to them. Instead of grasping onto the thread, they choose to live in their pain – they choose the familiar heartbreak of their lives over the unfamiliar possibilities of the future. They choose to wallow in the mud, when the spa is waiting and free. They choose shoes with no soles in favor of brand new shoes with jet packs on the heels! They choose to ride a broken down moped instead of flying in supersonic jets! They choose to read their cheesy novel and keep their sad face over grabbing the words out of the air and finding some meaning and healing in life. They choose to sit in their rows and satisfy their self-imposed requirement to be religious with that particular time instead of celebrating freedom! This is the worst type of pain of all! This crushes my heart and makes me want to tear my 40 year old thinning hair out. This is a tragedy of tragedies!

So, if you are a person who has faced disaster and is clinging to a thread, keep on clinging – find some others to cling with you, keep searching for the God who made you and loves you and hang on! You will get there!

If you are a person who is a thread giver, keep giving the threads – pass on the hope – let them know that they are loved and cared for and that you will never abandon them and you will never leave them and that God won’t either. Many you will find will find hope and meaning and peace in the world – many will put down their novels and grab up the hope in those threads like a thirsty man in the desert presented with a jug of water. Some will break your heart, I am sorry to say, but don’t let that stop you. Even Jesus, who was the most influential man that ever lived, had some who chose to wallow in their pain (read in the Bible Mark 10:17-27). But having someone not accept it doesn’t make the message any less True. When you feel the stinging pain of watching someone you love deny the Truth, pick up their novel and read away, take heart, you re doing the right thing – but you are not the one who has the ultimate responsibility for them. You only have the responsibility to be faithful and true in what you are asked. They have to choose.

If you are one of those people who is choosing to read your novel, to deny the love of true friends in favor of what you have always known, to stay with the same old pain and badness because it is easy even if it sucks. Would you consider just talking to God about it? Invite Him into your world right now – and keep doing it – i think sometimes we find ourselves denying the threads of hope because something inside us is too broken to actually see the Truth – we have no idea what to do next, or if there’s even a possibility that the thread might be True. Ask God to heal you inside. Ask Him to give you a new vision of what life can be like. Ask Him to change Your mind – keep asking – do your best – surround yourself with people who have an idea of what hope really is – thread givers – don’t isolate yourself in your pain, behind your little cheesy fiction book – there is so much More to life than you have seen if you will just lift up your head.

At More than more we cannot prevent pain from entering into your life. In fact, all of us have been pretty well slammed by pain. But, what we can promise is that we will journey through it with you. We will care about you and we will continue to point you in the direction of goodness and healing. We will journey with you toward More than you have been living for.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, please join us this Thursday, May 19th, 6:45-8:00 PM, at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Ever thought about Thyroid??


Well, let me tell you, if you have not thought about thyroid, you are missing out!!! This is a truly amazing gland in your body (ok not all of you - some of you may have had it removed...) The thyroid is this gland, in your neck, that makes thyroid hormone - great name!! Now, thyroid hormone is absolutely essential to your well being - it controls how you grow, how you maintain weight and energy, how you use food, how you feel, your mood, and tons of other stuff - in fact, one of the rules of medicine is that if something is wrong and the thyroid is messed up, fix the thyroid first, and the other things may normalize too! It is truly amazing and powerful!

So, the way that thyroid works is remarkable - i have attached a picture for those visual learners, like me - basically, it begins in the brain and a signal is sent to the pituitary gland in the form of a hormone - TRH - this tells the pituitary to make TSH, another hormone, and then that goes to the thyroid gland and tells it to make thyroid hormone! Now this seems complicated and unnecessary until you know the next part. The thyroid hormone then floats around doing its work in the body, but both the TSH maker and the TRH maker have a built in sensor for thyroid hormone - these sensors tell them when there is enough thyroid in the blood and then the signal to make more decreases automatically - so the system is so miraculously made that this vital hormone stays at very consistent levels in your system, because of this delicate feedback mechanism!!!


Now, as if this is not enough already, we have known for a long time that thyroid levels change during pregnancy and it used to be thought that it was because the newborn must have plenty of thyroid hormone to grow and develop (and God designed an automatic system to protect that little one!!), and because there are more proteins in the blood of a pregnant woman, the levels of the labs we use to test are harder to interpret. But there is more than these things - it turns out that the hormone from the placenta that women make during pregnancy - HCG (this is what pregnancy tests measure) also goes straight to the thyroid gland and stimulates production of thyroid hormone (thus giving plenty of supply to this essential hormone to that precious little baby), but there is some unknown automatic adjustment in the pituitary and brain signals that does not allow the level to decrease because of this special extra hormone floating around!!! Do you see, the baby and mom need extra, and the body would not usually allow that because of the balanced system that it has, but because of that system, God put something in place tht we do not understand to protect them!!!!

Now, i went to a conference a couple weeks ago and this big shot guy was talking about this as if he was surprised by this - as if he has everything all figured out - and there i was in the back of the room, wanting to jump up and down and scream that this is God's plan - to provide for that little one!!! Amazing!!

So, the next time you get up, get that cup of coffee (this is what i do) and feel the energy start to surge through you as you wake up - consider thyroid hormone. The next time you see a little baby, or a pregnant lady, consider thyroid hormone, and God's amazing plan to protect that little one, that even the big shots don't understand. Talk to God in those moments and invite Him to join you in your world, in your moment, in your day. It will be a better day for it!

You see, it makes more sense to believe in a loving creator who made all this especially for us, than it is to believe that is was an accident. And that is beautiful - because if He loves us enough to guard our little ones like this, then He is not going to let us go in our lives - You see, He wants to be part of our lives! And when He is part of our lives, we have the chance to escape the crazy, get more, buy more, become more of this world and find the meaning in life - we find MORE than more.

We will be hanging out tomorrow night - May 6th - at McAllister Recreation Center, Lafayette - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave - 6:45-8:00 PM - we would love to have you join us - you will never find a group of people who will accept you for who you are more than these people and theya re all on this same journey - searching for More.

Hope you can make it!