Tuesday, June 29, 2010

What were we doing in there?

Last Thursday we spent a great evening together. As usual we spent part of our time discussing how amazing our God is in our everyday lives. This time we began our discussion with a video – a somewhat little seen video – of – my wedding. Of course, there were the prerequisite groomsmen and bridesmaids, the soothing music, organ and all, and then the view of the back of the church – the lovely lady dressed in white and her father choking back the tears. Then the close up on the groom (which in this case is me), as the bride comes to the altar – but if you look closely at the groom, you will see anxiety - he is one freaked out dude.
Now, I need to clarify something – I was not anxious about the woman I was marrying, she was fabulous and I knew it – I was anxious about the idea of being married, of being a husband, of all the things I was supposed to be and had no idea of how to do it. You see, I had not grown up with parents who communicated and lived the way with each other that I expected myself to be as a husband. I had no idea how to do the things I needed to do to be the person I wanted to be. I felt trapped. I felt like I was in a dark spot with only a flashlight to light the future of where I was to go. All the light I could see of hope in a future as a husband was about 3 inches around me. I had no idea how to get to where I needed to go and I was terrified. I spent my honeymoon feeling sick – I had no idea why – but I realized much later that the reason I was feeling so sick was the overwhelming anxiety I was feeling in my darkness. I needed to see that there was a way to get past my inability.
This is where God is so amazing. You see, I am not a hero, but if you asked my wife, you would find that while she fully recognizes my faults, she also would be the first to exclaim the fact that I am a fabulous husband. I am her rock. She depends on me through all the things that life brings our way. The distance I have traveled between the darkness I felt at the wedding to today is huge and I had no idea how it would be covered. The truth? God changes people. I was a terrible husband. I was awful and harmed my sweet wife so much that I'm ashamed to even talk about it. But, in the midst of all my anguish over harming her, I began to ask God to change who I was – you see, in the darkness, I realized that I could never be all that I wanted to be and I had no idea of how to get anywhere but where I was – so I reached out for God. Then and there He began to show me one step at a time the path toward how to become the man Melissa needed. Usually there was no giant vision of my future and the route to get there – simply a little more light in the direction of where I needed to go. After years of following a step at a time and asking God to change me, I find myself having come closer to where I wanted to be on that warm July day in 1993, than I ever realized I could be. Yet, I seriously claim no responsibility for this transformation that has occurred other than that I reached out to God.
This is amazing. Stop for a second and understand the fear I felt…understand the pain I caused and felt…soak up the devastation of not knowing where to go and yet knowing that where you are cannot possibly be right and yet not knowing where to even go next.
Do you every feel trapped? Do you feel like all you can see is the darkness of where you live now? Do you feel like you will never be able to make it out of the pattern of life you are in? Like you will never be able to break that habit? Like you will never be able to be the person you want to be? Like it is hopeless and you will never be able to get past the darkness of your life?

Listen to this news (some people have even called it good news). There is hope for you. You see, possibly better than all the noticing of sleep and noticing taste and all the other things we have noticed over the years is the noticing that there is hope. God is a God who cares about people and their lives and can change you. Even more than just changing you, He can help you actually be the person you were made to be – the one who is crying out in the darkness from inside you that there must be something More than this. This is the most amazing thing that there is about God. And this is what I see in all of the people who have been coming to More than more. You are being changed by him – I see it in you. So, when you notice the darkness and the prison of yourself – thank God for the fact that He is the changer of people and invite Him into the moment with you and when you notice the changes He has made in you and anyone else around you, thank Him for it and celebrate how amazing He is.

If this is interesting to you - if your heart is crying out for More, you are more than welcome to join us - we hang out every other Thursday at McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, from 6:45-8:00PM. the next time we will be there will be next Thursday, the 8th of July. As always there is free childcare so you can not have to worry about your kids. We would love to have you join us!

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

From June 10th - Noticing

Hi! We had a fabulous time on the 10th and we hope you are able to join us this Thursday, 6/24, 6:45-8:00PM, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette.

On the 10th, we spent some time noticing how amazing God is by talking a little about sleep. Now, I know there are some of you who are not the best sleepers, but nevertheless this is an amazing thing!

NOw, just think about it, without noticing it, each day, you spend your day working or doing what you do and then you come home, you have dinner and then you go to sleep - usually from 6-10 hours per night. This means that you spend more time in your bed, sleepnig, than anywhere else in your entire life!!

Each day you crash out - exhausted - many times unable to do anymore - and then you wake up - rested and ready to go again. You have thiswonderful period of rejuvenation built right into your world! God has made you with this - it is no accident!

Did you know that years ago there were some studies done in which they intentionally kept people awake for extendd periods of time - you know what happens? They all get psychotic - hallucinations and the whole shebang! You sleep helps your mind cope with all the things yo have to think about!

Did you know that the mecahnism for sleep to start is so complicated that it is not still completely understood (here's hope for you who have some struggles with insomnia) - wonderfully created!

Did you know that growth hormone is released during sleep - and children sleep much longer than adults (interesting how they are the ones who are growing!!) - see how magnificently the sleep cycle is made??

And, last but not least, sleep is prompted by 2 signals - one is a hormone called melatonin and the other is...a drop in temperature - isnt it amazing that we need to sleep at night, when we can't be as productive because of the lack of daylight - and when it just happens to get cooler?

It is truly amazing that God has made your sleep and mine to be so perfect - it is just impossible to believe that something as perfect as this happened by random chance - God made you this way!

So, the next time you head off to sleep, or wake up, talk to God about how thankful you are that He has made you so amazingly and perfectly for what you need! Invite Him into the moment with you and relish the time you get to share with Him. Notice...and you will begin to live for More than just the usual more of American life!

Saturday, May 29, 2010

a 3rd Note

We ended the time together Thursday with a story:

Julie is a young woman who I see in my practice who asked that I share her story. She came to me as a new patient years ago when she was a newlywed and doing well. I enjoyed making sure that her sinuses were clear and she was doing routinely well.
Then one day, she came into my office, pale and broken and not herself. You see, her father, who had been so close to her, had just died suddenly. She wept and hurt and tried to get through it. But, she was now raising her baby and had lots to do, a job and a life and a husband and she really did not have time to grieve (or she chose instead to throw herself headlong into her life so that she did not have to think about her grief) so she tackled day after day.
After some struggles with burying her father, she seemed again to "hit stride" and be close to her usual happy life, with only some intermittent issues with anxiety. Then again one day, I saw her name on my schedule and when I walked into the room, I knew something was going on that was not good. She looked down at the ground, eyes red, tears flowing down her cheeks, her voice hushed. "Jacob has left me," was her only sad sentence. So, again she wept and cried and we shared the grief of the pain of her life. She seemed to somehow still function here and there for months after this. She began to go to try to involve God in her life some and yet her husband was really not interested in getting back together with her.
Then one day, she came into the office smiling and happy and much more her normal self again. She announced to me that she was just sure that she was supposed to be back with her husband again and that she was planning to go meet with him and announce her intentions to get back together, in spite of all that he had done to her and her little boy.
The next week she was back, the most beat down and sad that I have ever seen her - even wondering about the value of staying alive. "He didn't want me. He didn't want to get back together. He wants no part of me," were her words. Racked with pain, it seemed her entire existence was coming to an end.
We talked for a long time that day, and I began to remind her that she was a fabulous person, not because Jacob said so, or because she was married or because she was a mom or a daughter or because her dad said she was valuable, but because God made her as an amazing and intricate gift to the world. He made her just the way she is - she did not have anything to prove in order to "be someone" to God, or to me. She looked up, kind of not totally believing me. We prayed and she promised to begin trying to get in touch with God in new ways and to allow Him to be the One who gave her More to life.
She returned in a few days (I was checking on her because she had been having such a hard time the previous visit) and this time she still had a hurting look to her eyes, but she looked me in the eyes, and what I saw there was peace. She smiled when I came in...
She proceeded to inform me that she was already trying to involve God in her life more and she was beginning to realize that she had been searching for more in the relationships she had with her husband and her father. She felt that her entire self was tied up in these things and when she began to see that WHO she was God's child and that He loved her very much and not Jacob's wife or her father's daughter, she began to be more at peace with life. She still is not sure what direction her relationship will go - it is painful to her to see the destruction of so much of her life - but her changed perspective on life, pursuing God as her "More" instead of wife hood or daughter hood, has helped her so much already and her future is promising regardless of the path that her journey will take.
Now, by no means am I saying that being a good wife or daughter is a bad thing - it is a fabulous thing - but relationships with people, whether it be in Julie's way, or feeling as if you must always make everyone happy and always serve everyone, or feeling as if your life is over when your kids are out of the house and grown, must not become who you are. If they do, at some point in your life, you will have to face the fact that these things will never completely make you full and happy. If you do these things and make God the More in your life, you will find that these relationships have better perspective and when the troubles come, which they always do, life will continue to have meaning and purpose and there will be joy behind the struggles that you are having.
At More than more, we are continuing to try to find ways to experience life more fully, to get past the usual "more" that we find ourselves pursuing in everyday American life and that so seems to crowd out our joy and meaning.

We would love to have you join us 6/10 at McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette, IN - here is a google map link

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=McAllister+Recreation+Center,+Lafayette,+IN&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=42.85226,91.494141&ie=UTF8&hq=McAllister+Recreation+Center,&hnear=Lafayette,+IN&ll=40.442505,-86.87439&spn=0.080738,0.178699&z=13&iwloc=A

6:45-8:00 PM - as always there will be free childcare for your kids!

Hope to see you there!

A 2nd Note

I think my posts are too long - so I am trying to split them into more readable sections - let me know what you think...

Thursday after noticing handshakes, we noticed people. We looked around at each other and saw each other as people, full of joy and peace, full of pain and doubt and fear and hurt. We dared to step out of the life of America where we simply try to get to the next task and get it completed and into the real life of wonder where amazing people surround us everyday - each of us wonderful!!!

I told about a young man who entered my office just prior to our time together - he had just returned from Haiti. What he had seen there had devastated his heart. The heartbreak of the little children, hungry and hurting, will never allow him to return to normal again. He was so crushed that he struggled to even spend the money to come to my office across town and the $1 of gas that he was spending! That was money, he reasoned, that could have fed 2 or 3 of those kids, as he wept before me. There he sat, crushed, broken, by the pain of those kids and that country and his inability to feed them all, save them all, help them all...

You see, he noticed. He saw those kids as beautiful little creations, each with their own handshake. He noticed their brokenness and pain...and it crushed him.

The thing is, we are surrounded by a society of hungry children. Yes, there are those who are hungry and hurting right there in your town (and we should be helping them). But, even more than that, we are a society that has lost its meaning and joy - we strive for things that mostly have no meaning - we spend almost of our time trying to earn enough to pay off our credit card bills and to buy the next thing we want. We spend most of our hours and days trying to build up enough to have joy in a few moments - rather than having joy in the everyday. We are bankrupt and broken and lost and full of pain - this land is filled with people who need to hear about the life that opens before us when we dare to notice. They need someone to SEE them - to be crushed for their pain and love them - and then to know that there is HOPE. When we are noticers, we have the chance to give HOPE. We want to notice!

The problem is that noticing means that we must LOOK and then we must be willing to give up our agenda, our plan, our timing, what ever we had in mind for that moment, in order to notice them and care about them. We do this everytime we get together at More than more. We NOTICE.

Just a Note

Hey you all!

We had a great time Thursday night. It was a time to get our minds and hearts onto something "More" than what we have/had been living for. We find ourselves many times living out dreams to have more fun, more money, more toys, more sex, more power, more degrees and status, more friends, more escape and we find that when we get these things we find only emptyness - yes, fun for a little and then the need to go after something else to make us "happy" - as we continue this journey after something "More" we find more peace in the midst of where we are, more joy in the everyday - it is good.

Thursday we noticed handshakes - we noticed the character of the hand we were shaking, the callouses, the softness, the strength of the grip, the tremor, maybe even sensed the tendons of the hand, and if we dared, we might even look into the eyes of the person whose hand we were shaking - we find an unbelieveably complicated thing in a handshake - something we do many times per day.

You see, when you shake a hand and notice you, realize that in the instant of the handshake you know many things about the person whose hand you are shaking - you can tell the kind of work or hobby that they have (my surgeon's hands better be soft!) - you can often sense their fear (shaking or sweaty) or their confidence (real or exaggerated) and desire to dominate you (if they squeeze the heck out of our hand)and you make a connection with that person - whether you want to or not!

All this processing occurs instantly - you do not have to ponder on it for hours to figure it out - your hand gives the information to your brain and instantly you know all these things as your brain instantly remembers a million handshakes before this one and correlates this one to all the others! Amazing!

But, here's something funky, there are people who would have you believe that this is all accidental - that something this amazing came about by accident! This is ludicrous - this has the mark of all kinds of meaning to it - we cannot help but connect with each other...all the time!

You see, God made you this way! So, the next time you shake someone's hand - don't just cling to the hand and think about it - the person whose hand you are shaking will thing you are a handshake stalker or something - but notice how amazing it is! Tell God how thankful you are that He has made you so wonderful and invite Him to join you in your day. You see, I choose to not go through my life as a shadow of who I am, simply trying to produce and consume. I choose to notice the wonder and amazingness all around me - this frees my mind and heart to something "More" - God has given all this and when I invite Him into the moment and thank Him for the amazingness, my life gains a new fullness and meaning than I never knew before!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Notice

Hi! I just realized that my last post actually was published as a past post because I started it before the followup one. So...look past the "uterus" entry to the next one for the post leading up to this week's More than more time - this Thursday, 5/27 - 6:45-8:00PM at McAllister Recreation Center, just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette.

Hope to see you all there!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

From the heart...and the Uterus?

Well, we sure are a prolific group - seems we have a way of having lots of children among us - sure does keep things lively! This was the topic of discussion this last time we got together - we had the extreme pleasure of having Autumn Renee with us - she is the daughter of Jenna and ws only a couple days old last Thursday! She is beautiful and perfect and amazing and all the adjectives in the world seem to not do her any level of justice!

Well, we talked about how her life inside her mom had some pretty major rough patches, and things seemed dark and scary for a while - just like life so often does. But, there she was, amazing and delicate and such a beautiful little gift to her mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and More than more - and it becomes very clear that when God gets involved in the lives of people there is hope. So...as many people in our group and probably many of you who are reading this need to hear as you struggle wit the circumstances of life - the heartbreak and pain and dark days that we all face - there is hope. This is what we are all about at More than more - we want to notice the Autumn Renees of the world and begin to invite God into the moments of our lives - in this we find newness in life and meaning and purpose!

If you are living in the everyday American dream of get more, become more, be more, buy more, have more and you are finding it empty and shallow and lifeless and you long for something "More" or if you are just curious about such a strange group of people, then we would love for you to join us next Thursday, May 13th, 6:45-8:00PM, at McAllister Recreation Center - just off 20th and Schuyler Ave, Lafayette.

Hope to see you there!