just sit with it

If you are feeling sad, then feel the sorrow.  If you are feeling angry, then feel the anger.  Don’t deny the feelings that are trying to surface.  Sometimes they don’t make sense right away, or you realize that they are ridiculous.  Feel it anyway.  We will only understand the depths of our heart when we allow the emotions that it has to offer to swell over.  If something is hurt then seek to find it’s healing through grief or comfort or just making it right with the other person.

Be angry but do not sin, and don’t let the sun go down on your anger.  Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth.  Be still – just sit with it.

When appropriate – spank your inner child.  Sometimes it could use a gooding spanking. =)

to be broken and complete

So many times I find myself in situations that I cannot control or subjected to rules, expectations or consequences that I fall short of embracing as appropriate.  It comes in so many forms, and at the hands of many different people including myself.  Sometimes it is intentional, but most times I think it’s just life. 

It’s when I embrace the truth of who I am that I come face to face with a hard realization.  I am incapable.  As a man, as a husband, as a father, as a manager, as an employee, as a worship leader, as a __________.  I do not have it within to me to always prevail and be successful.  I fail.  Obstacles are too high, the weight is too heavy.  I am overwhelmed with a feeling of hopelessness and loss.  My mind and heart feels like it is spinning and longing desperately for solid footing.  My heart was never intended to bear the weight of tragedy and failed expectations.  I submit to the weight and allow it to crush me.  I know that I am in that place when my anger, frustrations and fears are replaced by tears brought on by embracing the hurt or the inadequacy. 

The arms of my Savior pick me up and I hear Him whisper, “It’s ok.  I’ve got you.  You are safe.”  The weight is lifted off of my heart, and I experience the fullness of Christ in my life.  His heart is intended to bear the weight.  He is capable.  In Christ, my failures and inadequacies find their rest.  I am complete.  The irony of a man, is that true strength is found in true weakness.  It is only when I embrace my brokeness that I am able to experience the fullness and completeness of my Savior.  My heart rejoices with the truth that I am loved, and that I am held.  I have no need of fear.  My heart is free to love.

As I’ve looked back at the hurt that I have caused, I’ve told my sons that I want them to be better than me.  As their father, one thing that plagues my heart is the heartache that awaits my children as they grow older.  I know that while my arms will be strong to carry them, they won’t be strong enough.  In the end, I am not what they need.  They will need the arms of my Savior.  I will be the man in their lives showing them the way.

tear stained stone

This is a post that I started over a year ago, and only got so far as the title.   This reminds me of a time in my life that felt far from God.  Unfortunately, those times seem more prominent than others.  God brought me face to face with the condition of my heart.  I had received some criticism regarding cavalier comments I’ve made that have come across as arrogant or otherwise.  The things that I said ended up being hurtful instead of my words lifting others up.  That brought back floods of memories for me.  I was mainly apalled by things that I’ve said to my wife.  She would repeat the things that I had said, and then she would have to convince me that I said it.  I had a hard time accepting that I would actually say those things.  Why was I so hurtful?  Why am I still? 

The source of this post came when I was driving to work one morning.  I was retracing my conversations and tears began to form as I thought about all of the hurt that I have caused to so many people over the years, especially to my wife.  I pictured those tears falling on a stone crusted heart.  The tears dried on the stone as permanent imprints of people’s pain, pain that I had caused. 

I read a quote the other day.  It’s a prayer – “May my heart be broken with the things that break your heart”

Regardless of what I acheive or accomplish in this life, more than anything I want to leave this world known as a man of love, integrity and a broken heart that could only survive by resting soley in the arms of his Savior.  I’m not that man today, but with every day and every trial I am getting closer.

I feel like I have been broken by so many things.  I have come face to face with so many inadequacies in myself.  My first resolve is to anger and frustration and fear.  My ultimate resolve is always to fall, and embrace the pain of brokeness knowing that I can only experience the fullness of Christ when I am broken.  God is faithful to desolve the tear stained stone that is my heart until it beats as His. 

I love my wife, and I love my children.  I know that I do not deserve them.  I know that they deserve better than me.  They are evidence of God’s grace in my life.  I never have to look any further than the cross and my home.