How to live a Healthier Life.

2-28-12
The other day i was a real butt-head. I know, you're like, "What is this guy doing writing like he has something to say if he's behaving like a butt-head?" I treated my wife badly. Sometimes i just get so caught up in my junk and hurts and issues that i act stupidly. I don't like it, it just happens.
Now, each time i act like this there is a period of time when i act badly and then some time later, usually a period of hours, if i'm lucky minutes, i start to feel guilty and bad for acting like that. I start to feel like crap. The goodness of our relationship plays in front of my eyes and i face the fact that i have betrayed that. The heaviness of it sometimes feels like a literal weight on my back. It absolutely bites! I can feel my stomach churning and my head pounding along in beat with my heart that is racing. I feel a tension in my shoulders and my muscles.
Shortly after that i go, with head down, tail between my legs (if i had a tail), to my wife and hardly can stand to make eye contact with her. But with much effort i look up at her angry eyes (did you think she takes me being a butt-head lightly - i don't think so - that was said with a hand on the hip), and i choke out those words, "I'm so sorry. I was wrong. Can you forgive me?"
What i hear sometime after that (it depends on how serious of a butt-head i was how long it takes) is something beautiful. It is accompanied by a softening of those beautiful blue eyes and a taking of the hand off the hip. Usually it is along with some closeness of her to me...those words, "I forgive you."
When she looks at me with those words and embraces me, when she accepts me as her husband again and loves me in spite of my butt-headness, the pressure lifts from my shoulders, my heart relaxes along with my muscles and my stomach settles down and i can begin to see the joy in our lives and future again.
I think you all can identify with this, in some fashion at some point in your life. Do you remember what it is like to ache inside and out for the pain you have caused? Can you revisit the hurt you have caused to someone you love and what it makes you feel like? Can you remember what it feels like, the relief, to be forgiven. To see those relationships restored and full again? To feel the warmth of the hug of love in the post hurt rest?

Well, believe it or not, this is a moment worth noticing. Check out these links:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/forgiveness/mh00131

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/31/health/he-forgiveness31

http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/power_of_forgiveness

How about that? The observation of our relief is not just something that is unique to us. Apparently medical authorities like Mayo Clinic and Harvard University and even popular press like the LA Times, agree with us!!

This is all nice if we are simply chatting about being good people and asking for forgiveness and all, but this shows us something even more important than this.

Do you seriously think that people developed from chemicals at the dawn of the Big Bang and all and somehow we developed this unbelievable need to have wholeness in our relationships? Or is it much more likely and take a lot less leaps in judgment to decide that a fantastic and loving God made us to love like He does - to be in deep and loving relationships?

Yet, our world does not encourage us to foster deep relationships. Nothing out there is teaching us that love and friendships and depth in our relationships are important. What we hear is that getting more stuff is the key to happiness - play more, get more, achieve more, become more - we abandon our relationships if they are hard (but who experiences forgiveness unless we go THROUGH the hard times???) and they end in shambles...

You see, in our hearts, we understand, and we may even say that we believe in this stuff about forgiveness, but we do not strive for it as a society or as individuals. We live on and on and on after this emptiness we call the American Dream...

So, how do we break away from the usual American lifestyle? Well, you might start my noticing. Notice that you are made to forgive and love and even your body tells you so...In that moment recognize that there is a magnificent God who made you this way - He is the One who made you to love like this and to appreciate the really wonderful things about life that we all know exist, like being forgiven. And in those moments as you notice, thank Him. Thank Him that the emptiness of the American dream is not all there is. And, if you really want to begin changing your life, invite Him into the moment with you. Ask Him to join you in your life and try to begin to notice Him in the every day things of life and see if things don't begin to change in the way you live your life.

Also, if this kind of life appeals to you, you might consider joining us. At More than more, we are all about this way of living. We will be hanging out together Thursday March 8th at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 6:45-8:00 PM, as always there will be free, excellent activities for all kids - both those under and over 5th grade, with separate activities for youth and kids.