Category: outdoors

I Have Seen Things!!

I Have Seen Things!!

It is no coincidence that today’s Daily Post Word is Eyes. I am on a trip in Northern Minnesota with a couple amazing friends (who are getting married and want to get married up here) and my beautiful bride. 

Today we started out slow, but by ten a.m. we were out the door and waiting at the gate of The Lake Superior Zoo. Definitely an impressive thing to visit if you are in the area. They experienced some flooding in 2013 and are still in the recovery process of that. But, they still have an amazing selection of things to see. Have you ever actually seen the eye of the tiger? Today, I literally got to look eye to eye with one!! Lemurs, lizards and spiders exhibits all got our hearts racing. And then we entered the night! 


It took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust, but the sites to see in the nocturnal exhibit were amazing!! Bats, and cute, fuzzy four-legged animals that look cuddly, but know how to hold their own in the darkness of the wild can be seen! As we exited the darkness we wandered to a souvenir penny machine that gave out engraved, flattened pennies commemorating the zoo. Peacocks, a bald eagle and cranes are available for all bird lovers. And I got to witness what I can only imagine Bugs Bunny would look like as a real bunny at 22 pounds!! 


There is so much to see at The Great Lakes Zoo that you have to experience it yourself. I recommend the zoo, but bring your walking shoes and if you are in a wheelchair like me, make sure your arms are in good shape for all the paved hills. 


Or, ride in style. But if you are in Duluth, Minnesota, make sure to visit The Lake Superior Zoo. It will be a memorable experience with many great species of animals. There is even a petting zoo for those who wish to get up close. Check them out online at www.lszooduluth.org and plan your visit soon!! 

Lost Again. 

Lost Again. 

Image from a Google.com search for ghosts are demons which lead to http://www.spectralintelligencesolutions.com 

Today’s Daily Prompt Word is Ghost and once again, I am lost on how to write about this word. I used to have a huge draw towards ghosts and the paranormal. I still enjoy things that are unexplained, but for me, ghosts are explained. 

In my honest, not highly educated on the subject, opinion, ghosts are demonic presences (Stacy, is presences a word?). God created this world and Satan really wants control of it. When a person says they have seen a ghost, for me, 99.9% of the time I can honestly say I believe it to be a demonic presence that is manifesting in the known world. 

Our world is full of things we know. Our world is full of the things we don’t know. And when we are truly honest with ourselves, we must admit there are things in this world, in our daily lives, that we don’t even know that we don’t know. Spirituality and how things really occur in God’s eyes is in this area. We believe in what we don’t see and we call it faith. 

We try to explain things so we can understand, but the truth is, we will never full understand every single morsel of everything this universe (or multiverse if you prescribe to that camp) has to offer. Ever. Only The creator can know all that and He chooses what to allow our human brains to conceive. 

All of the scientific and spiritual breakthroughs of the past few centuries were no mistake. And they were not out of God’s thoughts. There are things we currently know. There are things we currently don’t know. And, like I said, there are things we don’t know that we don’t know. 

I have changed a lot in my Christian Journey and if I am honest, I am not fully there yet. I still fail daily. Until I am so wrapped up in a relationship with Jesus Christ that nothing else matters except what He will have me do in this world, I am still learning. But, one thing I can tell you that He has taught me, ghosts are nothing more than demons Satan brings to entice us into a lower world where everything looks fun, sometimes scary, but we are enticed nonetheless. When we see something we really want to look into, we must ask ourselves, ‘Is this really something God wants for me? Or will it make me a ghost of my former better self?’ Satans demise will often be wrapped up in our greatest wants and desires and it is nothing more than a ghostly trap set to enslave us. Be careful of the ghosts in life, my friends. They can often trap you in a Devil’s Grasp. 

Food For Thought.

Food For Thought.

When I think of today’s Daily Post Word Of The Day, Fork, my thoughts veer off in two directions. Just like a fork in a road, I think of the journey and all the forks that can rise up to meet us, and I think of the untensil used to eat foods. 

Both of these forks can be nourishing in different ways when used properly. A fork in the road of life can give us new direction. As Led Zepplin said, “There’s still time to change the road you’re on.” Over the past five years I have often wondered if I am on the right road. Walmart was never meant to become a career for me, yet here I am five and a half years later and every opportunity I have tried to capture has died. 

As my dad says, ‘Grow where you are planted.’ He also says, ‘Growth happens in the valleys.’ So if you feel you have taken the wrong fork, or are trying to come to a new fork, stay the course. God has a way of working out blessings no matter what forks we take. 

For example, if I had left WALMART and opted for a different career, I probably would not have stayed in the small town we are in. I say ‘we’ because now for the rest of my life I am a we. My wife and I are on one journey together, no matter what forks come up. And without staying at Walmart that wouldn’t have happened. She was a very pleasant surprise on this fork in the road. 

The other fork I wish to talk about today is the fork of nourishment. Forks feed us. They bring fruits and meats to our mouths. I wouldn’t recommend soup with a fork though. I also wouldn’t recommend any soup that isn’t home-made. We need to retrain our brains and our forks to eat like the majority of the world still does- Healthy!! 

Somewhere over the past 40-50 years America has entered the fast food nation. We like everything on the go. We have put down our forks for hand-held, preservative rich hamburgers and fries– Finger Foods. 

I was made aware of my own fork habits this past few days. I have an ongoing battle with cellulitis and I can’t help but wonder if my own eating habits are mostly to blame. The doctor told me during my hospital stay that cellulitis is like asthma or pneumonia, once you get it, it is in there and will continue to flare up whenever it wants. Bah!! Talk about an unexpected fork in the road, possibly due to my own fork habits!! 

So, cleansing it is. Fruits. Vegetables. Fresh, lean meats. I admit, this morning I did sneak a Dr. Pepper and some peanut m & m’s, but hey, I’m only human, right? I am going to do everything I can to hold to it now. That’s why I confessed it here. Now, the whole world can hold me accountable to my fork actions. 

One final story I wish to share with you all about forks. The year was sometime around 1988, maybe it was 1987. I was 11 or 12 years old and our family was around the dinner table. If memory serves, which it often doesn’t these days, my parents were talking about taking my younger brother to one of our local small towns for ice cream, or to run an errand. I remember that I was not going to be included in this trip, so with as much gusto as I could muster, I said, ‘This is where I put the fork down!!’ because I wanted to go too! Sadly, now at 234 pounds I have picked that fork back up too many times!! 

Well, here we are at another fork in the road. I am a blogger. The entire world has access to my words. As one world, all nations, under God, will you all join me and say, ‘This is where we put the unhealthy food and forks down!!’ My friends, we were created to be so much more than we have become. But we will only see our true potential when we first seek Him who gave us that potential. He and He alone will rise us to potentials we have never dreamed of if only we seek Him first. 

‘Seek Ye first the Kingdom Of God, and His righteousness. And all these things shall be added unto you.’ 

Matthew 6:33 

He wants to add blessings and years into us, not pounds. And when we seek Him, He will make every fork that comes up in our journey and on our plates a blessing. 

Photo credit of enjoyingthejourneys.com 

Let Go!! 

Let Go!! 

Edge~ 

So many people only tip toe up to the edge and stop. 

What would happen if we lost sight of the edge? 

Would we lose ourselves and all that we love? 

Or could we possibly find a deeper meaning for ourselves in the unknown? 

The next time you find yourself at the edge, the edge of a crossroads, the edge of a major decision, the edge of your sanity, the edge of an unknown journey, take the leap of faith and go beyond the edge. You may be pleasantly surprised how far you can really go. 

From My Corner To Yours.

From My Corner To Yours.

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

We live in a media-saturated world. These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone under the age of 20 who isn’t strapped into a cell phone, or iPod, iPad or MP3 player. Verbal communication has given way to text-only. Hardly anyone ever speaks on the phone any longer because now it is a computer. I am guilty as charged, your honor. It wasn’t always this way. The definition of progress has meant a chasm of growth in separation. 

I am part of the odd generation. We remember a time when all we had was Oregon Trail on our Apple IIe during computer class in the early-80’s. We were in school, and most of us even graduated high school, or God-forbid college, without the internet!! Say it ain’t so!!! It’s true young ones. The Internet didn’t really rage on to the scene until the mid-90’s!! 

My life without a computer, in its simplest terms, looks a lot like my childhood and how I wish I could live my life now. If you ask my wife she will say I am flat out lying, but even husbands have these secret places of desires of living out in the wilderness they never tell their wives about. It is engrained in our nature. Well, it was. Now we have a generation of entitled people who want everything handed to them. 

Life without computers for them? Ha!! They wouldn’t have a clue how to research a library, possibly keep a checkbook and again, God-forbid, one day will not know how to go to a store and pick out an item they see on the shelf. They won’t know how to write. They won’t know how to communicate without a keyboard or a screen. Progress???!!! Ha! Not to me!! 

Lately I have been on a serious kick, I mean almost an obsession, with survivalist shows. Man vs. Wild, Dual Survival, Survival School, life in Alaska I have watched all these shows over the past few months! It’s almost like God is preparing me to live that way, even as a disabled male. A fellow blogger friend said don’t count us disabled people out just because we are disabled. We can even do the hard stuff. 

I feel a pull within my soul to go hardcore!! And that may even mean writing journals by hand. That’s how they used to do it. Lewis And Clark, (you young kids reading this can Google them in a minute), they WALKED shore to shore of the oceans here in America over 200 years ago!! And other countries? They have histories even richer and broader than that! I am talking thousands of years!!! And in today’s world, we sit on our phones (if we can still call them that) and we have the entire internet in the palm of our hand. 

You want to know the greatest thing in the universe? He holds this entire universe in the palm of His hand!! He is God. He sent His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to Earth for all of us! He sent the ideas for technology to human beings to create. Imagine a world where one of them said, ‘Nope! I will not create this technology! We will not advance!’ We would all still be writing by hand waiting weeks to receive a letter from family. We would all be so distant from one another. Technology has brought us closer than ever before and we have allowed it to tear us apart. 

I have so many things that I wish to share with the world. I want to document when I first make a fire without the use of a match or lighter. I want to live off the land and share it with the world. I want to experience a life where my computer/phone is not accessed. But I also want the technology available to come back and write to all of you from the viewpoint of a disabled male born with Spina Bifida and say, ‘I did it, so there is no reason you can’t!’ Get out and live life, but share it! Life without computers? Sure. I could do it. But I also like being able to reach the world from my own little corner of it. 

The Huddle

The Huddle

NEW YEAR, NEW PLAN.Last night I dreamed I was in my old junior high school gym. The building has since been torn down and only a grass field remains. Which is interesting because with tearing things down sometimes new growth remains. 
Anyway, in this dream I was being cheered on by everyone I know and many faces I don’t know. Maybe your face was among those I haven’t yet seen and we are to meet one day, who knows? The crowd is cheering and I am in a huddle of six other people. Here’s where it gets interesting. We never leave the huddle. 
Too many people are interested in playing the game of life. ‘GET ON THE COURTS!!!’ They shout. I was one of these! I have always been a huge facilitator of you need to act. What if we only act when the coach asks us to? What if until He says move we stay in the huddle with our team and all listen to Him? 
Sure, the game must go on and it has many players within it. But what if we became more concerned with the huddle with our coach and our closest teammates?
I want to start the new year 2016 in a huddle. In order to know the game plan we need to be close and listen to the coach. Only then will we be prepared to get on the court and play. Most of us, me included, need to spend more time in a huddle with our closest people and listening to The Coach. Who’s on your team in 2016? Are you all willing to huddle together in the coming year and only listen to The Coach? 

  

Branch Out!!

Branch Out!!

As we in the world all now enter 2016, I want to encourage you all to spread your wings. 
I am branching out by sharing my writing with another page. In turn this is inviting me into an entirely new audience I wouldn’t have had originally on rollingblogger.com. 
As the new year begins where can you branch out to reach more ground and touch the lives of more people? Maybe it is in your occupation. Maybe you can branch out in an entirely new direction you never have before. 
Do not be afraid of growth in 2016. That is the key to new life and stabilization. Your growth may look like that of a tree or root system. It may look entirely complex and chaotic, but in effect it is greater stabilization and greater surface area to encourage more growth. Grow in 2016, my friends. Be a tree. 
Another advantage of growth is strength and ability to combat that which means to suffocate us. A deeper, stronger root system can combat a weed which may try to take over a space. It takes time and fertility to grow, but as it does life always becomes stronger. As you enter 2016 you are infinitely stronger than you were in 2015. Continue to grow and thrive.