Jamie Moyer is 49 years old, like me.  Like me Jamie Moyer is the oldest active “player” doing his job at his workplace.

On the other hand, Moyer is a Major Leagues Baseball pitcher.  In fact, his next win will be the oldest victory for a pitcher in MLB history. 1

Moyer and wife Karen live with their eight children in Florida.  There the Moyers promote the nonprofit Moyer Foundation.  Their mission is “to empower children in distress by providing education and support – helping them to live healthy and inspired lives.” 1

I’m forty-nine years old. I don’t feel old, but I don’t feel young either.

I spend my life encouraging others to live their life well.  Mysilentscream.com exists — through stories, some tips, and some Scriptures — to inspire you to live well. 

As I’m nearing fifty I’m looking for “older” people to inspire me to live the rest of my life well too.  Billy Graham’s book Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well seemed like a good fit.

Billy Graham’s book is honest, vulnerable, and inspiring.

Amy’s dream vacation — and therefore my dream vacation — was to go to Hawaii.  Not just to go to Hawaii, but to go to Hawaii and see whales.  That meant, of course, that we would have to do many things that we had never done before. 

As many of you know a very kind and generous man gave us his frequent flier miles so our airfare to and from Hawaii was free.  Thus began our scramble to do our part to make the rest of the dream a reality.

Overcoming Fear

Eric Valli, a professional photographer, is dangling by a nylon rope from a 395 foot cliff in Nepal.

Nearby on a rope ladder is another man, Mani Lal, doing what he has done for decades: hunting honey.

Here in the Himalayan foothills, the cliffs shelter honeycombs of the world’s largest honeybee. At the moment, thousands of them are buzzing around both men. Lal, a veteran of hundreds of such attacks, is calm. Not so Mr. Valli.

My friend Jimmy Cooper has one of those experiences that you want, and don’t want to have. I’ll let him explain. 1

 On January 19th, 2012 -  I was with my wife Christiane in our apartment in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. We had been out on a date and we had just gotten home. Actually, I guess we had been home for an hour or so and it was pretty late at night, about 1:30am. I started having an overwhelming feeling that I needed to lie down. It was out of the blue and I couldn’t fight it, so I lay down in bed and closed my eyes. I wasn’t feeling well and it came on so quickly, I just had to close my eyes.

Thomas, one of Jesus Christ friends, asked him about eternity “How can we know the way?” Jesus replied, “I am the way, the truth, and the life! Without me, no one can go to the Father. If you had known me, you would have known the Father. But from now on, you do know him, and you have seen him.”

Sweet invites his readers to consider the implications and benefits of living our Story as Christ’s Story.

Sweet captured the gospel and it’s implications accurately: “To be the humans God made us to be, we need grace.” We need that grace to effectively represent Christ for a dying world.

Friday I met with one of my favorite people. For more than a decade Erica Wilson and I worked together at TreeHouse. While Erica is disinclined to gamble with her money, recently she gambled with her life. Erica left behind her job, friends and family and moved to Belize for three months.

While it was not a permanent departure from her life in Minnesota, it was a significant life transition.

I asked her, “How do you gamble losing all that?“

Erica smiled with a slight shrug, “The only thing that comes to mind is that I trusted God with it completely.”

Tomorrow night my wife Amy and I will be attending Sara Groves’ CD release concert. As I wrote yesterday I have been a fan since my friend Dan Adler first played us her song Generations.

I am excited to hear her in person, and I’m also anticipating her new album. 

Sara’s last album — Fireflies & Songs — was widely acclaimed, and even won as 2009 album of the year.  Commendably the reviewer added, “Already known for her transparent songwriting, Sara Groves gets even more piercingly honest on this, her ninth album. Whether her relationship with God, marital tension, or a private battle with anxiety, it’s poetically spilled forth…” 1

Pain Despite Faith

My friend Brandon, like many people, lives with the pain of migraines.  Brandon has explained, “migraines make me very ill.   They can put me out of action for an entire day or more.  I can feel one coming on and then when full blown I feel horrible, nauseous and need to go to bed. While some people can have a migraine every couple of months or a couple of migraines a week, sometimes my migraines can repeat day after day for a week or more.”

I didn’t start playing chess until I was in my thirties.  I’m not very good, but I do enjoy playing. 

Well, I enjoy playing people  have a chance to win against.  While I love my friends Eric Swendsrud and Jeff Prentiss I’m intimidated playing them in chess.

Jeff and Eric patiently play while I try to outwit them.  Masterfully they wait until just the right time to turn things in their favor; every time.

I’ve never beaten them.

Some people suggest that God seems to play an unbeatable divine chess game with us.