I want to be a better man with each step I take in this life. Of course, I'm often times distracted by different things and people. But by far my biggest distraction are my own desires. I really want to know and learn about an open heart and the role that our hearts play in our lives. I truly want to grasp what it means to be open, authentic and vulnerable. The one thing that has remained constant in my search is that it always changes. My perspective on the topics change and once again I'm faced with reexamining portions of my discoveries. Here's a few things that I see today.
The Good...
I have found that if I live an authentic and vulnerable life I will have more joy and happiness. I have come into a place that being open hearted has allowed such beauty into my life. Frankly, there are times that I can't even understand or process some of the joy and beauty that I see. I see it in others as well. Those few who live a life open and loving toward others and themselves. I sincerely believe that living a life that reflects our hearts, being authentic and vulnerable, brings the greatest level of joy and happiness that we can have in our short lives.
The Bad...
As I live a life that reflects my heart I allow the beauty in me to flow out to others. There's also the not so beautiful parts of me that flows out. The ugly damaged parts of my life, my fear, my doubt and my selfishness also flows. I don't think I can control the bad without affecting the good. If I try and filter what flows from me than I end up filtering the good with the bad. I don't think we can have an honest life if we're always trying to control what flows from our heart. What you see is what you get. With my good, there's also my bad. I'm afraid sometimes, I want control sometimes, I doubt sometimes. There are things that lie in the depths of my heart that aren't beautiful and those who know my heart see those imperfections. My flaws, and yours, are part of who we are and having the courage to allow the world around us to see all of us is in my eyes profoundly beautiful.
The Ugly...
The ugly truth is, the more we allow others to see our true selves the more they will reject, criticize and judge us for our flaws and failures. That's just the way it is and there's no getting around it. We may be praised one minute and condemned the next. Frankly, I've struggled with this ugly truth. I think most of us seek guarantees and assurances in life, especially in relationships. When we see the beauty in another, we can't imagine that there's also darkness. But there is and it's in us all.
In my mind, I sometimes see a world where we look at others and have compassion for those people who are flawed, yes, that's everyone. We see the beauty in everyone around us and not only accept their imperfections, but embrace them.
The Beautiful...
We may know this; God see's all of us. All of our hearts, every single beautiful and dark place in us. Nothing remains hidden. We may know this, but we don't believe it. Not really. If we did truly believe this we would all follow a different path and see the world in a new light. In spite of my heart there's a place in the heart of God that only I can fill. His love for me isn't based on His emotions or my politically correct actions or words, but instead simply on who I am. His love for you is the same.
I think God wants us to live a life that is authentic and open. I think He wants us to live a life that reflects our hearts and I think above all else He wants us to be free. I feel that freedom more and more in my life, yet I struggle for the words to capture it.
Love, Courage, Kindness and Compassion
"Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness..." Galatians 5:16
"As water reflects the face, so one's life reflects the heart." Proverbs 27:19
I’m one of the foolish ones that must trip over many stones in my journey of life to learn a lesson. It would be much easier for me to simply read a book or follow the advice of others, yet I’m too stubborn to do so. So, here are my stumbling stones and the lessons learned. My struggles and my imperfect self in an honest and flawed way. May this help others see that it’s ok to be different and may it bring glory to God.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Thursday, July 30, 2015
A Lions roar...
Two dead in a weeks time. Two Gold Star kids, Alex Calahan age 13 and Destiny Stafford age 15, that I've shared part of this journey with have had their lives ended. I've struggled for the words to write on this page and I've struggled for the words to say to each of the families. What do we say to someone who's lost so much. You see, these families are not new to grief nor is this the first time they've seen death. Both families have had a father/husband die in service to our country. So what can I say to them now? How can the grief that is now their's be eased by my words?
"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
Howard Thurman
I could write something beautiful about each of their lives. The kindness that I saw from a boy in Texas and the smiles and beauty I saw in a girl in North Carolina. I could write about what their fathers did and how they died. Yet I want to write about the next chapter. I want to write about what comes next in the lives of these two young people and in our lives.
This very moment we have great power, some of us know it's there, yet we fear using it. We have the power to change lives. We can choose to heal wounds, help someone in some way, build someone and touch a life. We can also choose to cause harm, sharpened spears aimed at the heart of another, to destroy and to kill. We have this power you see, each of us have this power inside of us.
Most of us choose to sit on the sidelines of the world around us. Doing the basics needed to survive and make it through another day. We close our eyes to the war raging around us and simply take care of our own. Yet regardless of where we were yesterday or the sins of complacency that we committed in our lives we have this day to make a difference and change our direction.
You see, we are Lions! We are powerful beyond belief and we can change the world! The moments don't come often for most of us and most of the time we have to seek them out. The moments we have to touch someone's life and make a difference in the world around us. A moment to roar like lions...
We will be afraid, we will face those who want to stop us or change us into bitter hoards of self-seeking humans. Yet if we can look deep into our hearts, summon the courage that is there and with the loudest of voices roar!
These two young people touched lives while they were with us, yet even after death they are touching lives. Alex is now a battle flag unfurled in a great war for the hearts of thousands. His life and death is now being used to save lives in our battle against suicide. Destiny's body was given to six other families that now have hope for life. She will go on and change the world through new families. Her heart still beats strong and her courage lives still.
These two young people touched lives while they were with us, yet even after death they are touching lives. Alex is now a battle flag unfurled in a great war for the hearts of thousands. His life and death is now being used to save lives in our battle against suicide. Destiny's body was given to six other families that now have hope for life. She will go on and change the world through new families. Her heart still beats strong and her courage lives still.
It is our turn. Our turn to take advantage of this moment. Let us use these two amazing people as an inspiration and guide to reach out to the world around us, to touch a single life, and in doing so change the world forever. Reach out in love, practice compassion, be courageous in our pursuits and be kind to the souls around us.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” Marianne Williamson
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” Marianne Williamson
Howard Thurman
"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth." Mark Twain
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Love, Grief and all that stuff… (Part 3)
I looked deep into her eyes and into the depths of her soul. She was radiant, beautiful and I was totally taken by what I saw. This woman in a brilliant flash shared her soul with me and I was taken! She was indeed beautiful. I'm not referring to her body or the clothes she wore, it was her heart and soul...It was who she is at the core.
Every woman has something beautiful about them and every woman has in the depths of her heart questions that they've struggled to answer. Women are the healers of the world, the comforters and the givers. A woman once she gives birth has "a piece of her heart walking around outside of her." She can use acceptance in church, work and family in her life to hide from her questions. She can try and control her life, make it what she believes will bury these questions. But her question still remains. Every woman wants to know if she's beautiful, if she's alluring and if she is lovely.
Her wounds are deep and continue to grow deeper and wider through adulthood. Many women had absent/abusive fathers or men in their lives that answered the question and the answer they heard was "no", "there is nothing lovely about you." Wounds continue with there husbands, children and others as they either dominate and control or become a desolate woman who's needy and lost her sense of self.
As a kid my father answered my own questions. I have wondered if I was good enough, if I was man enough or strong enough. I think most men also ask these same questions. In the absence of the the answers or when the answer is a "no" we turn to proving ourselves, wearing masks, pretending and posing. We are by far the biggest group of fakers of the sexes and we hide almost our entire lives.
"No man, for any considerable period of time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildard as to which may be the truth." Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the absence of my fathers validation and answers I turned to the women in my life. At some point in almost every romantic relationship I turned to them to validate or answer those questions and almost every man has done the same. She can no more answer the question than my dog Jake, yet here I am asking her to. Am I enough, do I have what it takes?
We look to each other for validation. I look to a woman to not only love me, share with me but also to validate me as a man. I look to her for my greatest question, the question that was answered in such a powerful and piercing way. I ask for validation. She too looks to me for validation. The woman with the broken heart, the woman who long ago was had her own question answered. She looks to me and asks.
One of a woman's greatest fears is being left alone or abandoned. This is so engrained by the time a woman is an adult that if they actually find someone that will stick with them they simply don't trust it. Often times pushing away those who are willing to stay or stand by them. A self fulfilling prophecy. I think most women are in their heart filled will loneliness.
Why are so many men refusing to engage? Why are we stuck in a place of anger, lust and fear? Why can't we dive deeper into the hearts of the women we love? Why can't we be more honorable and valiant? Seems most men live their lives in quiet desperation and the women in our lives have come to a place of acceptance of this. We lack the adventure and passion for life that once swelled our soul. We lack the courage to face questions long left unanswered and the willingness to confront the depths of the women we love.
I'll be honest, the depths of a woman's heart is beyond my ability to understand fully. In it is a vast amount of pain, suffering and anguish. There is also great love and kindness. I've seen into the heart of a woman, deep into her heart and doing so can be dangerous. To go there means to face my own questions. It's also a place that I'm deeply afraid I will not be able to help her. What if I'm not good enough? What if I fail her? Does she believe in me? These are things that are hard for a woman to understand and very hard for a man to face.
Loving Better
I started with a question, how do I love better? Each time I came close to an answer or closer to understanding it would change and see something new. Any of us can pick up a book about how to build a better relationship and include things like communication, quality time and so on. Yet there are much deeper questions that we all have and these questions are at the center of our being.
I think the first step in loving better is to look at our own hearts. To reach deep and discover our own damage and our own scars. To find the courage to face the things that scare us to death. We must be willing to reach deep into our wounds and find healing. And we can not do this without being real, authentic and vulnerable.
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best , night and day , to make you everybody but yourself - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight- and never stop fighting.” E.E. Cummings
We must also be willing to accompany our mates into those places and accept them. Have the courage to really listen to her as she exposes her beautiful, radiant and messy soul. Stand next to him as he lets down his masks and allows you to see that he is very much afraid, and offer him love and healing. A woman has the ability to do something that men just aren't very good at, they can help heal a mans heart. In a relationship, we are meant to speak to the others wounds. We offer the other our joy, happiness, beauty and strength.
We also need to stop holding on to the past. That includes past expectations, past lovers, past hopes and dreams. We need to be in the present, in the moment. Stop looking at the joys of a past relationship, comparing ourselves to their past loves and comparing our mates/relationship to the highlight reels on Facebook. Comparisons rob us of happiness today. We also need to stop judging them and start accepting them. Judgment does four things, we lose fellowship with God, exposes pride and insecurity, harms relationships, and invites God to judge us by our own standards. "A critical spirit is a costly vise." Our judgement reflects our own insecurity and pain.
In a relationship we have the opportunity to find at least part of the answers we've been asking all our lives. Yet there is truly only one place we can find those answers. It is from God. It is only in growing our understanding of his love for us and understanding that it was He that was meant to fill those places in us. It is in He that we can find the answers. We truly cannot know the depths of a romantic love and truly know joy in our lives without an intimate relationship with God.
We always believe that we aren't ready for a romantic relationship. We will never be healed enough or know enough, but that's part of it. It isn't in perfection, but in the willingness to strive forward and grow that we should look. Love is certainly a beautiful "action" and we should enjoy it while we have someone in our lives. The grief we have after love ends is the price we pay for love and as terrible as it can be, it was well worth the pain.
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt
Love, courage, kindness and compassion
http://www.powerofpositivity.com/9-signs-time-let-go-relationship/
Every woman has something beautiful about them and every woman has in the depths of her heart questions that they've struggled to answer. Women are the healers of the world, the comforters and the givers. A woman once she gives birth has "a piece of her heart walking around outside of her." She can use acceptance in church, work and family in her life to hide from her questions. She can try and control her life, make it what she believes will bury these questions. But her question still remains. Every woman wants to know if she's beautiful, if she's alluring and if she is lovely.
Her wounds are deep and continue to grow deeper and wider through adulthood. Many women had absent/abusive fathers or men in their lives that answered the question and the answer they heard was "no", "there is nothing lovely about you." Wounds continue with there husbands, children and others as they either dominate and control or become a desolate woman who's needy and lost her sense of self.
As a kid my father answered my own questions. I have wondered if I was good enough, if I was man enough or strong enough. I think most men also ask these same questions. In the absence of the the answers or when the answer is a "no" we turn to proving ourselves, wearing masks, pretending and posing. We are by far the biggest group of fakers of the sexes and we hide almost our entire lives.
"No man, for any considerable period of time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildard as to which may be the truth." Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the absence of my fathers validation and answers I turned to the women in my life. At some point in almost every romantic relationship I turned to them to validate or answer those questions and almost every man has done the same. She can no more answer the question than my dog Jake, yet here I am asking her to. Am I enough, do I have what it takes?
We look to each other for validation. I look to a woman to not only love me, share with me but also to validate me as a man. I look to her for my greatest question, the question that was answered in such a powerful and piercing way. I ask for validation. She too looks to me for validation. The woman with the broken heart, the woman who long ago was had her own question answered. She looks to me and asks.
One of a woman's greatest fears is being left alone or abandoned. This is so engrained by the time a woman is an adult that if they actually find someone that will stick with them they simply don't trust it. Often times pushing away those who are willing to stay or stand by them. A self fulfilling prophecy. I think most women are in their heart filled will loneliness.
Why are so many men refusing to engage? Why are we stuck in a place of anger, lust and fear? Why can't we dive deeper into the hearts of the women we love? Why can't we be more honorable and valiant? Seems most men live their lives in quiet desperation and the women in our lives have come to a place of acceptance of this. We lack the adventure and passion for life that once swelled our soul. We lack the courage to face questions long left unanswered and the willingness to confront the depths of the women we love.
I'll be honest, the depths of a woman's heart is beyond my ability to understand fully. In it is a vast amount of pain, suffering and anguish. There is also great love and kindness. I've seen into the heart of a woman, deep into her heart and doing so can be dangerous. To go there means to face my own questions. It's also a place that I'm deeply afraid I will not be able to help her. What if I'm not good enough? What if I fail her? Does she believe in me? These are things that are hard for a woman to understand and very hard for a man to face.
Loving Better
I started with a question, how do I love better? Each time I came close to an answer or closer to understanding it would change and see something new. Any of us can pick up a book about how to build a better relationship and include things like communication, quality time and so on. Yet there are much deeper questions that we all have and these questions are at the center of our being.
I think the first step in loving better is to look at our own hearts. To reach deep and discover our own damage and our own scars. To find the courage to face the things that scare us to death. We must be willing to reach deep into our wounds and find healing. And we can not do this without being real, authentic and vulnerable.
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best , night and day , to make you everybody but yourself - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight- and never stop fighting.” E.E. Cummings
We must also be willing to accompany our mates into those places and accept them. Have the courage to really listen to her as she exposes her beautiful, radiant and messy soul. Stand next to him as he lets down his masks and allows you to see that he is very much afraid, and offer him love and healing. A woman has the ability to do something that men just aren't very good at, they can help heal a mans heart. In a relationship, we are meant to speak to the others wounds. We offer the other our joy, happiness, beauty and strength.
We also need to stop holding on to the past. That includes past expectations, past lovers, past hopes and dreams. We need to be in the present, in the moment. Stop looking at the joys of a past relationship, comparing ourselves to their past loves and comparing our mates/relationship to the highlight reels on Facebook. Comparisons rob us of happiness today. We also need to stop judging them and start accepting them. Judgment does four things, we lose fellowship with God, exposes pride and insecurity, harms relationships, and invites God to judge us by our own standards. "A critical spirit is a costly vise." Our judgement reflects our own insecurity and pain.
In a relationship we have the opportunity to find at least part of the answers we've been asking all our lives. Yet there is truly only one place we can find those answers. It is from God. It is only in growing our understanding of his love for us and understanding that it was He that was meant to fill those places in us. It is in He that we can find the answers. We truly cannot know the depths of a romantic love and truly know joy in our lives without an intimate relationship with God.
We always believe that we aren't ready for a romantic relationship. We will never be healed enough or know enough, but that's part of it. It isn't in perfection, but in the willingness to strive forward and grow that we should look. Love is certainly a beautiful "action" and we should enjoy it while we have someone in our lives. The grief we have after love ends is the price we pay for love and as terrible as it can be, it was well worth the pain.
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt
Love, courage, kindness and compassion
http://www.powerofpositivity.com/9-signs-time-let-go-relationship/
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Five Years...
It’s been five years today since Kim Hunter ended her life. It doesn’t seem possible for that much time to pass without hearing about her new success or her crazy adventures. I can remember each anniversary and there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t remember something about my sister.
I wish you could share in my shock over some of the crazy stuff that girl did as a teen. Even thou our mom would disagree, she was a total nightmare! As the years passed, she found her niche and her place in the world or at least from what everyone could tell. It was a combination of things that filled her life with passion and purpose. She loved getting outside and doing things. Which was anything from running, kayaking, the dreaded triathlons and over course making a difference in the lives of others.
She’s missed by many and her personal impact is still seen in lives around us. Yet in all the wonderful things she did during her life, it was her death that had the greatest impact. I believe her story of life, of death and the struggles of those who loved her have touched many lives outside of their own, which in my view is simply beautiful. To not only inspire and touch others, but to do so in a way that will carry forward to even more people.
We will all face grief and death. We will all face tragedies that will rock the foundations of our lives. It will be up to each of us to decide what to do with what has happened. We have a story to share, scars to show and lives to touch. We have an opportunity each day to change the world and we can do so one heart at a time.
Semper Fi Chief Hunter
Love, kindness and compassion
I wish you could share in my shock over some of the crazy stuff that girl did as a teen. Even thou our mom would disagree, she was a total nightmare! As the years passed, she found her niche and her place in the world or at least from what everyone could tell. It was a combination of things that filled her life with passion and purpose. She loved getting outside and doing things. Which was anything from running, kayaking, the dreaded triathlons and over course making a difference in the lives of others.
She’s missed by many and her personal impact is still seen in lives around us. Yet in all the wonderful things she did during her life, it was her death that had the greatest impact. I believe her story of life, of death and the struggles of those who loved her have touched many lives outside of their own, which in my view is simply beautiful. To not only inspire and touch others, but to do so in a way that will carry forward to even more people.
We will all face grief and death. We will all face tragedies that will rock the foundations of our lives. It will be up to each of us to decide what to do with what has happened. We have a story to share, scars to show and lives to touch. We have an opportunity each day to change the world and we can do so one heart at a time.
Semper Fi Chief Hunter
Love, kindness and compassion
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