Kobe Bryant is one of the best basketball players to ever play the game.  On the other hand, according to a recent ESPN article by Henry Abbott, Bryant’s fear of failure blinds him from experiencing even greater success.

After missing 22 shots in a New Year’s Day loss to Denver, Bryant scoffed at reporters who hinted that he should have passed the ball to teammates: “If you’re asking me if I’m going to shoot less,” he said, “the answer is no. It starts with me. I do what I do. We play off of that, and that’s not going to change.”

As the NCAA Basketball Tournament continues I think back to the only basketball tournament I even played in.  For some reason the adult league in which I played allowed most if not all teams to play in the end of the year tournament.  Injuries, absences and poor play contributed to our team’s terrible record, but during the tournament all the pieces came together and we nearly won.

I love playing defense, and then, and now, I played with determination and success.
On the other hand, I dreaded every time I had an open shot.

When I was thirteen I was held underwater by a gym-class bullies.  As much as I struggled and fought to break free I couldn’t.  I wrote about my experience with the fear of drowning here. 

It’s been more than twenty-five years since that day, and yet, even in the beauty of Hawaii last week I was afraid of drowning.  Fear runs deep in many of us.  Maybe your not afraid of drowning in water, maybe your fear is drowning in:
– Debt
– Despair
– Disappointment
– Failure
– The Ocean of Bad Relationships
– The Sea of Doubt
– Your Fears About Your Uncertain Future

You and I can learn to become more loving. We can teach one another to be more loving. Only through humbly admitting our unloving side can we really find help, healing and wholeness.

That’s what the fear of God does, it allows our brokenness to draw us closer to God in dependence and interdependently closer to other people.

This is a treasure worth more than gold.

This is mysilentscream!

“For your own good.”  That’s the kinda phrase that adults used to get me to do something I didn’t want to do without explaining all the details for me.  Why they undoubtedly had wonderful reasons that “for your own good” was sufficient, inquisitive minds like mine were never satisfied.

While some people might have chosen to use their good judgement or “common sense” to avoid such mishaps, I did not.

Ignoring “for your own good” warnings was a choice, but ignoring “for your own good” has left me with many scars to prove my unwillingness to heed the “for your own good” warnings. 

Pecky’s. I can barely remember that name, Pecky’s.

I googled it. In the gazillion possible places that google.com could find something it could only find two references to “Pecky’s” & “Schiller Park”, both on Facebook.

One was by a guy I graduated high school with. Having felt grateful that Paul Z kept the legacy of Pecky’s alive, I wrote him a thank you note.

Pecky’s & A “Player’s Coach”

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.

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.