Category: writing

In His Grip

In His Grip

How is the year shaping up for you so far? Have your predictions come true, or did you have to face a curve ball or two?(Thank you, BasicallyBeyondBasic, for the timely prompt suggestions!)

2016 by no stretch of the imagination has been a dream for me, but not really a nightmare either. I have experienced the death of a friend and an infection that I didn’t pay attention to for far too long that meant to take me out. But, God is stronger than any experience that can come against me and His purpose will be fulfilled! 

I have learned to not really make solid, set in stone, no exchanges type of plans. Plans never go as we choose. My wedding day, I forgot to get to the courthouse the day before AND the day of to pick up the marriage license!! We are still married almost three years later and we have a funny story. We had planned to arrive in Montana to see my wife’s mom and dad, who has Alzheimer’s and cancer, three days before we actually got here. And now that we are here, we are spending another day here because of a storm rolling through. 

A famous musician once wrote, ‘Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long.’ The fun part, for me, is we can’t see the entire highway. Part of it may not be there anymore, or it may be detoured because of construction. That means we get to learn a new way to go! You may have travelled that road a time or two, but life will always throw curveballs at us all. 

I didn’t plan on my friend dying, I didn’t plan on spending five days in the hospital, but those events happened. 2016 has thrown some curveballs my way, and I am positive more are to come. But with my faith and my God, I know I am “In His Grip” as my brother has always said and I have adopted this saying. He’s got the whole world in His Hands and knows the deepest parts of the journey for each one of us. No, 2016 has not gone as planned, but I know it all has been for a purpose. 

Inspiration IS All Around Us!!!

Inspiration IS All Around Us!!!

I have recently become a huge fan of Bob Proctor. He was involved in the film The Secret and he has a Facebook page that talks about all sorts of ways to reach our full potential even though we truly have no idea what that even is yet!! 

I just finished watching one of these videos and I had to chuckle because there is a lady in this promotional video for a movie coming out and she is talking about potential and she brings up the old saying, the sky’s the limit!! Folks, if your dreams, your goals, your aspirations are only reaching sky level, YOU ARE NOT GOING FAR ENOUGH!!!!! 

As soon as you leave Earth’s atmosphere, the sky disappears. You are now entering the inner part of outer space. Like the character in  Armegeddon says, ‘This is only the beginning of space! We haven’t even reached OUTER SPACE yet!!’ 

So my challenge for you today is, don’t reach for the sky, don’t reach for the stars, reach for somewhere or something that hasn’t even been discovered yet!! The only way to find something new is to move as far away from what you already know as possible. 

I have no idea why this post hit my heart, but I pray right now, in Jesus’ Name that whomever needs to read this finds their way to this post. Please, if you feel someone needs to reach beyond where they think they can and you feel this message will inspire that, please share this post. I love you all! We are all meant to go further than we have. Reach for places not even discovered yet and you will find a creator willing to guide you.

More Inspiration!!!

More Inspiration!!!

I need to write more today, but what??! Where can I get inspiration? A friend who’s writing I quite enjoy, spiritual dragonfly, is doing this writing program a lot like The Daily Post, it’s called The Sandbox Writing Challenge. Seriously, go check out Spiritualdragonfly and then go check out The Sandbox Writing Challenge. 

I looked through the first assignment post and it is an assignment to help you get to know yourself better, what are your seven favorite colors, questions like that. I will be going back to find even more inspiration so my inspiration can flow through to each of you. 

As I was reading through it I began to think of one of my favorite literary films of all time, Dead Poets Society. My favorite scene has to do with the inspiration of a photo of Walt Whitman. Todd Anderson seems lost throughout the film and unsure of what path he should take. Apparently at the end he takes advice from Robert Frost and takes the path least travelled by. 

Anyway, I got to thinking about that film and that scene and I realized there is a great many people aching with desires to come out of each and every one of us! Sure, I am a blogger, but I am a blogger who has a no quit, full force ahead, and take Jesus with you attitude! 

You may be a blogger who takes photographs, or writes poetry, or a blogger with a business mind. Be whomever you are and don’t be afraid to reach down and search for it! Follow the example of this scene from A Dead Poets Society- 

http://youtu.be/gQU3EphIpMY

And never forget the words of Walt Whitman- 

I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world.

Walt Whitman

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. 

12,031

12,031

I came across a fellow blogger this afternoon who has reached the awesome milestone of 100,000 views!!!! 

I am currently at 12,031 views in the past year and a half. And the conflicting thought keeps coming back to me today, ‘Why are you doing this? Is this blog for My Glory, or yours?’ God. This whisper has been in my spirit many times over the past year and a half and I always always always wrestle with it!!! 

Yes, my blog is to help people all around the world to see the awesome Grace, Love and Glory of The Lord. But, my human side says ‘I HAVE A GIFT THAT I WANT TO SHARE WITH THE WORLD AND THAT IS A MORE THAN FULL TIME JOB!!!’ The world needs to wake up to the fact that there IS a God among us who loves us and wants what is best for us. He wants to provide for us. But that provision sometimes needs to come in the silence and stillness of ourselves, but it also needs to come at times when we get off the bench, get on the court and act.

 A little over a year ago God whispered a phrase to my spirit and it needs to be shared and utilized by the world, I Make Positive Actions Come True. Positive actions coming true require actions. Period. All of life is not meant to be sitting around listening and not acting. Yes, listen and learn, but then act!! 

The year and a half of posts on this page is my action to that calling. Will God allow me to make this a career? Not without a lot more work and a lot more people being inspired to view and share. Maybe His plan is simply for me to write so you all know He Is Lord and He Loves Us All So Much That He Sent His Son, Jesus Christ, To Beat Satan And Hell For Us All. 

Will you join me in this worldwide event of Rolling Blogger and if you are inspired, maybe others can be as well? If a post I have created strikes a spark in your spirit, share it. Grace and Inspiration belongs to the world. God will provide the rest. 

Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

I always seem to run across people in need of prayer. We all need prayer. We need humanity to step up and raise us all up to Our Heavenly Father. 

So often on Facebook I see people say, ‘I am praying for you.’ Or, ‘My/Our prayers are with you.’. I admit, before I really, truly, deeply came to know Jesus I SAID THE SAME THING!!! And then I never actually hit my knees in intercessory prayer! I was a hypocrite! 

We can say the words, I am praying for you, to as many people as we like, but until we actually hit our prayer chamber in communication with God it does absolutely no good!! 

I prayed for a friend of mine on Facebook this morning who has been going through months and months of health problems and no answers have been found. There has to have been someone somewhere who has experienced these same pains somewhere! But they can’t find the answers. So, this morning I put my money where my mouth is and wrote a prayer on her page. I asked God to lead the doctors in her care. I asked God to give her comfort and love as they go through this process. And I asked God to give us peace for His Time, not ours. 

Action! Prayer. Written out. Committed to God. He already knows what all we need. But we are human. We don’t like discomfort. We don’t like not getting what we think we need. But we need to be at peace at all times. And the only way to do that is to be in His Presence. 

I have started a daily devotional time this year and I gotta admit, at first I was really shakey about it. It didn’t seem to help. I got demoted at work. I got frustrated at home. But then, literally after three days of committing to the journey, God opened my heart. The drop in pay at work means I can be around people who need to see The Light of Jesus in their life more. The time with devotions every day automatically sets my focus on God and His Son to know I am not rolling this world alone. I have supernatural support! 

I have actually committed to doing the praying and on Facebook I will actually type out the prayer so people can see actions are being taken. I will not just offer lip service to the power of prayer any longer. Thy will be done in my life as it is in Heaven. Amen. 

  

Actions And Consequences.

Actions And Consequences.

If you could return to the past to relive a part of your life, either to experience the wonderful bits again, or to do something over, which part of you life would you return to? Why?

I truly wonder if people realize what they are doing when they ponder things such as this. It is a waste of time and energy. You change one moment you change the whole story. 

No matter what moment you choose you are changing your perspective of it. You cannot erase the memories of things that have happened in the future of going back to the past, do you understand that? Your experiences all go with you in your mind. However, you go back and change one thing, you now change the entire story. And there is no way to tell from the past what parts will be changed. 

When Marty McFly went back to 1955 and accidentally met his parents and almost had his mom fall in love with him, not only was that the most Freudian thing ever on film in my memory, but it was in his parents memory and they became these hip, rich, book-writing parents. Ahhhh, the dream! 

Marty had no way of knowing that he would create that kind of reality. And that is what we have at this moment! We have no clue of where our story is going, and that’s kind of awesome! It’s freeing. But each step will impact the next! 

In 2008 I accepted my first, real, ‘I think this is a career!’ Position. I was wrong, but I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t tried. And God forbid I wouldn’t have met my wife without every opportunity from then until now falling out from underneath me for a variety of reasons. Some my fault, my choice, some not. 

If I could change any of those opportunities do you honestly believe I would? NO WAY!!! A life without my wife at this current moment is not a life I would want to experience! Period. 

So, what if I was to just go back to that ‘I can make this a career’ position and I actually excel? What if I was to rock that thing out and still be there today eight years later?? Well, that means no photography for The Science Museum of Minnesota, that means no Research Caller for two different companies and being promoted to Traffic Director of five major magazine publications for wealth managers, that means no experience as a collections agent, and most importantly that means no move back to West-Central Minnesota to work for WALMART and that means I would have never met my wife– ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE!!! NO!! 

We live in a world of ‘If Only’. We need to live in a world that understands consequences. Nobody seems to think ahead any longer and realize that every action you take takes you toward somethinng, but it also takes you away from something else. Action/reaction people.

Before you move ahead, know where you want to go and be willing to accept the challenges that arise. We don’t really need to discuss going back because, well, you can’t. Live to move forward and live for purpose. I Make Positive Actions Come True and you will I.M.P.A.C.T. All of your tomorrows and not worry about the past.