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.

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.”

I grew up in Chicago. This photo is an overhead view of streets by my parents house.

Ever since my folks helped me over the drivers license finish line I had to figure out challenges like congested traffic, the endless stop light delays, and how to merge into traffic.

Merging Into Traffic

In the Chicagoland metro at the end of the ramp you immediately enter into the tragic flow. You get a running start and then you must force yourself into the oncoming traffic.

Either you have initiative and are assertive or everyone behind you will honk impatiently adding to your anxiety.

I’m not a hunter, but I can relate to the feelings that many of my hunting friends have enjoyed.  I love thinking about food, the hunt for food, capturing my food, preparing and consuming my food.

My love for food — like many loves — can easily be mismanaged.

Mismanaged MMMmmms

I loved Arby’s “5 for $5.95″ deal.  I remember sitting in an Arby’s with a freshly filled bag of Arby’s Beef and Cheddar sandwiches — toasted bun, piled high with sliced beef, a doll up of tasty cheddar cheese, complimented by Arby’s Sauce and Horsey Sauce.  Since Arby’s no longer sells that amazing sandwich a quick search turned up the nutrition information. 1

Ten years after I wanted to meet him, finally I walked up to 98 year old “Alex” and introduced myself. I wish I wasn’t so … fear-filled.

Mortal Kombat, the classic video game introduced ‘Fatalities’.1  A fatality is usually a lethal final move that defeats a foe. Fatalities were often cruel and unusual means of exterminating an opponent.

Sound familiar?

Ever felt like a former best friend finished you off with a fatality? Ever sat in a lunchroom watching with morbid curiosity as people who used to be lovers are now involved in a death match? Ever squared off with your boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse wondering if this was the end?

My hope is that after reading this you will no longer choose to use your fatality moves.

Genuineness trumps tension, and shame crumbles too.

Blessed are those who:
1. Quit pretending about their sin.
2. Quit hiding their mistakes.
3. Quit hiding their pain.
4. Are willing to feel and be humbled by their guilt and pain.

You’ve heard it said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you.”

Sadly, more than one parent has used shame and humiliation to try to change the behavior of their children.

We have a lot of them, cultural blunders.

Here are a few blunders, but there are thousands more.
– Walking around with your “fly” undone.
– Farting in an elevator.
– Talking loudly during a movie.
– Singing, loud, off key.
– Throwing a tantrum in public.
– Breaking something in a store.
– Dirtying, or staining, your good clothes.

Rules Change

Yesterday I wrote about my music shame. You can read about it here.

I didn’t mention it yesterday, but I had never actually heard and followed the beat in a song until August 7, 1998. I was thirty-five years old.

How can I be so certain? How do I know the exact date?

I was at a concert. I saved the ticket stub.

I was at a reggae show with some TreeHouse teens. “Tansoback” was the leader of the reggae group Christafari. 1

Shame Lays In The Shadows  

Shame waits.  Watching.  Looking for an opportunity; to pounce!

Shame, researcher Brene Brown explains, “is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection.”  That “there [is] something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection.”

Shame tells us we will, and should, be rejected by others.

Brown goes on to explain that the “only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection…we all know that feeling: ‘I’m not blank enough. I’m not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough.’ ” 1