A story of mine that I hope will enrich other people's lives

The recent events in my life has caused me to reflect on a lot of things that are most dear to me. I believe that when life takes it turns and dips for the worst, it is often like winter. I find it a cold, dreary, dark, lonely and miserable place. But, if you choose to fight and endure through it, (it - like all seasons - WILL end) it can often make the spring and summer of your life a whole lot sweeter. The reality is that it can also permanently affect you in a good or bad way. A wise man once told me that we all have a "fight" or "flight" mechanism inside of us that is usually invoked when we are confronted with challenges in life. If I feel overwhelmed by the challenge, the flight mechanism becomes really tempting to me, unless it is threatening something that I hold dear. Of course, if you don't hold anything else dear except for yourself you will probably choose to avoid (flee) any challenges as long as it does not impact you personally.

This reminds me of a quote by Martin Luther: "A man who hasn't found something he is willing to die for is not fit to live". Do you have something to live for? If you believe so, is it worth dying for? If not, then is it really worth living for?

When we are confronted with something that challenges what we hold dear, whether we "fight" for it or not will usually be determined by the degree that we feel passionate about something in comparison to the degree of the challenge. We perform a cost vs. benefits analysis in our minds and the outcome will determine our decision to fight/engage or run/avoid the challenge. I believe that everyone on this planet lives their entire life making these types of little to big choices many times a day... I believe that most people want and need something to live for. But finally, we all have to live with the consequences of the sum total of all those choices. Unfortunately, in our modern society many don't like to face the music and they chose to "flee" as victims that they perceive themselves to be and therefore they can do nothing about their situation(s).

I believe that I have discovered some nuggets of truth that have radically changed my life for the good. I am a 34 year old family man. I have 7 daughters and 1 son. I have a beautiful wife. I am blessed with a great career that I enjoy. But, above all, I am a Christian. I have a personal and intimate relationship with God. I know this sounds weird to some, but it is only because these people are ignorant about God - I pray that will change soon. (After all He is invisible! If you learn philosophy, you learn that supreme reality is all invisible. All visible things or tangibles are changeable and corruptible, therefore are not really real. Ugh! There is too much to digress on - I will leave that to another post)

I believe all people encounter Him and some know in their heart, but have some fear because of the ultimate consequences of that realization. It means that we may be accountable to Him for the way we live the life that He gave us. That thought does not set well with many who want to live their life only as they wish. It is usually people that are not happy with the way they have lived their life that finally try God. Ironically, it is also the same unhappy condition that cause some to leave Christianity and blame God. I know this by personal experience in the last few years. I have been a raised a Christian all of my life and have lived a pretty fulfilled and happy life. I learned how to live this way by learning to be thankful and content with what I have, be thoughtful of others and always strive to be the best I can be through experience and education.

By the way, I do have a few degrees in the world renowned School of Hard Knocks. :o)  I owe a lot of who I am to my parents, and my second spiritual father, Dr. Nathaniel J. Wilson. I am also a big fan of Dennis Prager and his friend Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. All of these people have had a profound positive impact on my life, but most of all Jesus Christ. I have had many fantastic experiences throughout my life with God, but recently He has especially and incredibly changed my life in a way that is really impossible to express, but I am going to attempt to anyway:

Up until about 3 years ago, life with my family has always been blessed, it was almost like a dream. I was brought up in a wonderful Christian family who lived what we believed with all our hearts. My parents are still happily married. I can't say that my life was without many problems, dysfunctions and pains, but I was truly spoiled and blind to how much I was really blessed. I was blessed in marrying my wife who is one of the finest Christians I know. We had seven healthy, beautiful daughters. I had a stable and fulfilling job/career. I felt I had mutual respect with other people. I was used in ministry to teach kids in Sunday School and later to older teens to college and career age for several years. Life had its challenges, but none so great that I felt I could not take them all on.

But about three years ago, I found out that my family and I were getting sick from our home. We found out that our family was not just passing a virus around and getting perpetually sick (some getting asthma), but we were being exposed to toxic mold. In March of 2008, we were told that if we stayed in our home, we would be further endangering our family's health, possibly for life - if not already! In a matter of days, we picked up and moved into our family travel trailer temporarily until we could figure out what we could do. Our entire 6 bedroom house was infested with this nasty mold and we had been living in it for about 18 months. This exposure to our belongings meant we had to virtually leave EVERYTHING behind in our home. To do otherwise without proper cleaning would mean that we would likely contaminate our next living environment. We called our homeowner's insurance to try to get coverage for our losses, we were denied multiple times due to the fact that it was "pre-existing" damage. We realized that we had made the purchase of our home in November of 2006 based on fraud and that this incurred damage to our family. The papa bear inclination to fight for my family was in full gear. After discussing with my wife, I decided that it was right to fight for my family as we realized that we were the victim's of others' misdeeds and not of our own. Meanwhile, the costs of legal, family, maintaining two homes (our vacant home and the one we rented), starting almost all over with our possessions was sending our finances to the point of disaster. It was unsustainable, something had to change and we cried out to God to help us. To our demise, we saw it coming to an undesirable end with not very many options other than giving up. With our financial and living situations, it started to take a huge toll on our family and marriage. While all this was going on, my wife found out she was expecting and then later learned our son was found to have a cleft lip. The reality of the continuing stress slowly began to wear away my and my wife's optimism. We unintentionally started turning on one another instead of to each other. Our children could sense the stress and you could see it affect them in some ways. In some ways, I think children are much more resilient and adaptive than us adults are. But the stress of life was starting to tear Shawna and I apart. We both still loved each other, but we were both blind to our lack of proper care and maintenance of each other - we were just caught up in our own cares/stresses and focused at our own individual hurts that we neglected each other unintentionally. When the condition of my relationship with my wife was in such turmoil, I started to turn and ask God why all this was happening? What did I do to deserve this in our life? We faithfully gave our tithes, offerings, attended church regularly at least 3 times a week, lived a godly life - not perfectly, but as good as we could. Where did I go wrong? I started to then question everything, even to the point of if God really existed. Only because of past experiences did I know that He was real. But, I was still struggling in the meantime... I then asked God to show me myself in the proverbial mirror to see myself as He saw me. My wife was also a good mirror for me. :o)
I will just say this, it was painful. I realized that I was not able to be good enough on my own and needed God help more and I believed that the only way I could get to Him and have Him intervene was for me to fast and  pray fervently. My circumstances drove me to my knees - but I decided to stay in the fight. It was after this that some amazing things started to happen. I started praying like I had never prayed before because I was beginning to feel His presence. He rewards them that seek after Him.  The more I felt His presence, the more I began to feel peace, love, joy and happiness. I am not exaggerating and it was blowing my mind, because I saw my circumstances were getting more dire, yet His peace, love, joy and happiness were still present in spite of them.  I had never felt this so strong and evident in my life.  It was the perfect contradiction.  I knew the peace could not have come from anywhere but God.  I was truly blown away at the power that I was feeling in my weakest time of my life. It happened in the time of my life that I had never felt more ALONE, STRIPPED DOWN, BARE and HUMBLED. I began to see errors in my ways that I had ignored before and sometimes even justified in my mind. I did not feel condemnation, but I felt that I needed to embrace TRUTH in my life no matter how painful it was. The more I embraced TRUTH in the Word of God, the more I would literally stumble on another connected truth. It was like a layered domino effect, the more that I would see, the more it would humble me in a positive way and realize that I am SOOO HUMAN and that I need Him. Honestly, I have summarized to keep this short - there is so much I could expound upon... I learned a valuable lesson. I am (we humans are) not near as smart and I/we don't know near as much as I/we sometimes think I do. Ironically, it was the beginning of learning and wisdom to realize this humbling fact I need to depend on Him and His word. I realized even more than before that the only rock that we humans have in this life is His Word - The Holy Bible. It has the answers and we need to emulate, glean, obey, respect and love it a little more every day. But we need to be humble and teachable with our little finite pre-concieved views so He can help us confront our mis-pre-conceptions as painful as it can be and learn His ways. Only with both His Spirit and His Word can we do this. I know this because I have tried to live right on my own all my life even with His Spirit, but not to the degree that I have experienced Him now. You see, it cost me a lot to get here. I had to lose a lot to get here. Because I am so hard headed, I had to hit bottom in almost EVERY area of my life that meant most to me: My marriage, finances, loss of things, my jobe and even my spiritual understandings.  The odd thing is that I did not feel that I did anything that would merit the troubles and tribulations that I was experiencing. I honestly felt like Job in the Bible - I know he went through much more than I did. Job is a hero to me because he endured to the end!  I don't think I could ever handle what he had happen to him.

 Although I hope I never, ever go through the HELL I went through again, the extremely ironic thing is I WOULD go through it all again if I had it to do over again in order to experience the fulfillment and incredible peace and joy that works in spite of my circumstances! I feel more humble, wise, peaceful, courageous, loving and forgiving than I have in my life, yet I know as powerful as it is manifest in my life, I have NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO THE WIDTH, HEIGHT OR DEPTH of it all. I feel a new vigor of life that I have NEVER felt before. I feel like I have a new zest for life that I have never known before. I feel like I can achieve anything with the help of the LORD. He has truly given me a peace that I am terrified to lose.  About the only thought that terrorizes me is losing my relationship with my Savior. I have very little fear of anything else but God and His Word.  Let God be true and every man a liar.  Our best in righteousness is like filthy rags to Him. We are only righteous through Jesus' and He alone saves us.  We are unable to save ourselves.  I welcome any critic to try Him for their self before they judge contrary.  I believe that we have an obligation to God when He saves us to testify to others that they too can experience God's grace (unmerited/undeserved gifts/blessings) in their own life. I think if everyone understood just an iota of the things that God has for them, they would literally drop any and all false pretenses and fears they had and fall into His arms of love!


Love you all and may God bless you!