Is grace happening to you?
Is grace happening in you?
Is grace happening through you?

I’ve been stuck emotionally and spiritually more than I’d like to admit. Raise your hand if you can relate? Okay, we’re all “not alone.” But, let’s not stay stuck!

Looking to take a step forward in your life?

Want your actions to more closely match your intentions?

Me too!

Each of the themes below links to a previous mysilentscream post that has been helpful to readers looking to make a change. 1

Love – Tired of empty expressions of “love”?

God transforms. God heals. God restores. God does so in my life and can do so in yours.

Max Lucado wrote, let grace, let God, “so seep into the crusty cracks of your life that everything softens. Then let it, let him, bubble to the surface, like a spring in the Sahara, in words of kindness and deeds of generosity.”

God will change you, my friend.

“Jesus’ death is the means to new life for others…suffering is an avenue for God’s life to transform situations.” 1

I meet many people in my work. The vast majority of the people I meet are generally normal people. Children are children. Teens are teens. Adults are adults.

I live in a community in which the high school is populated by about seventy-percent “people of color.” Generally speaking I like people different than me.

Across from me is the other kind of person.
I have really tried to like that person, but woah!

Background

I’ve known her family for about twenty years. I’ve been in their house. I’ve pet their dog, talked to their cat, spent time with her parents, and gotten to know her siblings. I have tried to like her, but woah.

Years ago some friends and I rented snowshoes and drove into A-Basin (Arapahoe Basin) in Colorado. When we arrived we strapped on our snowshoes.

Though we were all about the same size with the same size snowshoe, no one seemed to have any trouble, except me. For some reason I kept dropping through the snow-pack. I kept getting stuck.

The worst was when I had one leg plunged deep into the snow all the way to my groin and the other flat on the surface. While trying to extricate my left leg my right leg plunged through the snow nearly reaching the depth of the other. I howled something impolite as I realized that I was now going to dig myself out of the snow while wearing my snowshoes.

We need wisdom.
We need clarity.

We need accountability.
We need to stop pretending.

We need to admit we need others.
We need someone to be honest with us.

We need to pull our head out of…
We need to shut down the machine we use to crank out “I can handle this alone.”

We Need Perspective

Usually when we’re worried or upset
that we start trying to force it, to fake it, to “make it happen,”
then things start falling apart;
it’s because we’ve lost perspective.

This past weekend I was in a conversation with a group of people about when they received their first pair of glasses. I received my first pair of glasses in second grade. I couldn’t read the blackboard in school very well.

One person said third grade.
Another said fifth grade.
A fourth person said, “in junior high.”

“Really?”, I asked.
He added, “Well, I needed them years before, but I was just faking it.”

Just Faking It

Ah, just faking it.

Too often we fake reality wishing it was different, when it’s not.

You freely admit it. You’re a social guy. It doesn’t matter where the action is—you want to be in on it. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with his best buddies on a Saturday night?

On this particular Saturday night, however, there’s a problem. Your parents are out of town for the night, and you promised you’d stay home. Alone. As in you, yourself, and the family goldfish.

But then Drew calls. The movie’s over, and the guys are looking for a place to chill. Nothing wild, just to hang out, play some Xbox, unwind. You know you should say no. You gave your word. But Drew can be persuasive, and he knows your parents are gone. Before you know it, you’ve invited five guys over.

Twenty years ago as I was working through some of my unresolved anger I saw The Anger Workbook by Les Carter and Frank Minirth on a book shelf. 

This book’s insights, probing questions and the subsequent dialogues that followed certainly contributed to my healing.  In turn, I have shared insights from this book with several people.

Fortunately, for all of us this book has been re-released.  

Carter and Minirth explain their Thirteen Steps Toward Anger Management:

Step 1. Learn to recognize the many faces of anger.

Step 2. Admit that all angry expressions, good or bad, are the result of choices.

Jesus Christ’s journey meant that he spent time at parties, dinners, friends’ houses, and enemies’ houses. 

He learned.
He listened.
He told jokes.
He gave hugs.
He laughed.

Jesus explained to the the people, “I am the world’s Light. No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness. I provide plenty of light to live in.“

“The Pharisees objected, ‘All we have is your word on this. We need more than this to go on.‘” 1

I couldn’t agree more.
Not with Jesus.
With the Pharisees.

The Journey Is As Important As the Destination

Traveling through the Twin Cities today has been anything but easy.
– Lengthy delays
– Slippery streets
– Stressed drivers
– Exhausted snowplow drivers
– Anxious bus drivers
– Fed up commuters
– Snow-day praying students who got a “no” answer

Our Destination

Our destination is just a tiny slice of our journey.
– We worry about approval
– We strain toward goals
– We stretch for benchmarks
– We dream about the future
– And too often we miss the present

When we’re fixated on the next, we miss the now.