Tag Archives: Christian

Urgency in the sound &Power in the Silence

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

We wait for the loudest sound before we act. Not much will clear a ball field or a swimming pool quicker than a roll of thunder or a crack of lightning. We all see it coming. The wind picks up, and the gray, angry clouds roll in, but we still sit there, watching the sky, commenting on whether we should pack up or wait it out, and finally we run for cover as the clouds spark.

There is a seeming power in sound. The throaty roll of an engine coming to life or the roar of the crowd as the cheering intensifies. We are drawn to believe that what is loudest holds the greatest power — that volume commands influence. And though there is truth in the thunder, not all strength needs to shout. Sometimes, power moves in silence, and influence flows in barely audible whispers

After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still, small voice. – 1 Kings 19:12

The most powerful forces in nature occur in the vastness of the universe. Exploding stars, massive black holes, and Gamma bursts produce unimaginable forces in absolute silence.

I think we have fallen for the folly that to be successful, you have to have a platform that makes noise. You have the bang your drum and stand before an audience of thousands to have an impact. Those ways can be good, and they have their place, but we must not forget about Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse is a red super-giant star in the constellation of Orion, and when Betelgeuse goes supernova, it is said it will shine in our night sky brighter than the moon for several months. Everyone on Earth will look up and take notice, and will be impacted by the beauty or just be in awe of the powerful mute death of a star.

A silent hug, or a whisper of encouragement in a friends ear can feel like a supernova inside someone who is hurting. A hand on a shoulder or your best friend showing up in an ER waiting room, without saying a word, can feel indescribable.

For the ones who are hurting, God may have you where your voice is not heard, or you feel like you aren’t seen. You may believe you aren’t impacting much of anything and in those times discouragement can creep in, grip you, and tell you, you are worthless.

Take that time to listen, to look. God maybe moving in silence. Take this blog for instance, it hasn’t blown up with hundreds of followers in over the couple of years I have been posting. When I started, I imagined I’d be answering emails and messages from readers and it would take up so much of my time and I would be connecting with people from all over the world but In fact, I can admit, it only has a handful of people who even know it exists. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry weight or have any impact at all. Maybe God didn’t mean this platform for the world, maybe he meant it for me. There are days when I’m discouraged, and I look back and I read one of my posts, and my very own words cheer me up and give me insight. They are old thoughts in a new season, and like the immense events of the heavens, these words on the screen don’t make a sound.

If you must shout, then shout resoundingly with purpose. But if the moment allows, move with quiet intent—
For silence can strike as powerfully as sound. If you have ever witnessed heat lightning then you know the silent flashes that can wink across a summer sky. Does the lightning lose strength for not roaring like the thunder?

In your experience does the squeaky wheel get the grease or is there something to be said for for quiet authority?

Keep developing yourself and to my future self who is reading this, don’t give up, you are loved.

I thought about sharing, the sound of silence, by Simon and Garfunkel (the remake by Disturbed is amazing in my opinion but I thought this fit better, so enjoy some classic Depeche Mode.

The ‘Y’ matters

Love your neighbor as yourself -Mark 12:31

If people-pleasing were an Olympic event, I’d definitely be standing on the winner’s podium. I have put others before myself for the majority of my adult life and for the most part, I see it as a virtue, something that I can hang my hat on. I nearly always acquiesce to other people’s wants and desires. They are happy and isn’t that a good thing? Wait…what? What do I want? Am I happy? Oh no, that doesn’t really matter as long as others are happy, that’s what matters, and besides, it would be selfish of me to seek my own happiness before others, wouldn’t it?

Thinking of my own happiness makes me nervous. It causes my heart to race, and my mouth to go dry. I’ve actually apologized to God for even entertaining such a, “selfish” thought.

Like a well-traveled antique suitcase, my life’s luggage is stickered with the titles of “people-pleaser”, “Fawn”, “peacekeeper” and, “codependent” and my life’s passport is stamped with “Type 9”, “INFJ”, and “INFP”. If this all sounds like nonsense I’ll leave a few links at the bottom to help make sense of it all. These monikers aren’t necessarily bad things until they are the only things that identify you.

One day I was home alone without a, “honey-do list”. I could do whatever I wanted. The problem was I didn’t know what I wanted. I walked around the house in a circle thinking of what I could do and never did any of them. Eventually, I began to guess what others would like me to do and then, like a good people-pleaser, I did those things. I realized that my identity was based on what I thought others wanted. I was trying to become a mind reader and I was failing at it. My counselor asked me once, “What do you want?” and in response, I just stared at him and after an uncomfortable amount of silence, I declared, “I don’t know.” The honest answer is I probably really do know, but the idea of thinking about my wants is really uncomfortable.

It became scary. I thought I knew who I was. I mean, I’m me, right? I don’t think I’m in the middle of some existential crisis but I think my eyes are opening to the fact that I have been living life for others so fully, that I stopped listening to myself, and even more scary, I stopped listening to God.

A few months ago I was given a book by a church counselor titled, Discover your true self by Jack Ingram. I’ve known for a long time now that God loves me but I didn’t think about how He actually values me. God gave his son to pay for me, that is how valuable I am, and if I have that kind of value, then don’t I matter? Don’t my thoughts and feelings carry weight?

As a people-pleaser, I love the scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself‘. -Mark 12:31. I can do that. I love doing for others. Imagine my world crashing down when it hit me. How can I love my neighbor when I don’t know how to love myself? If I love my neighbor as myself then I’d end up ignoring him and not putting his needs first because that is how I treat myself.

The lie I believed was that to serve others meant I had to neglect myself. Treating myself poorly goes against God’s view of me; someone of immense value, someone worth the death of His son. My father-in-law, told me to live by the acrostic for JOY (Jesus, Others, Yourself.) This at first sounded good and plugged right into my way of thinking until I realized in my version, there was no ‘Y”. For the acrostic to have meaning all three letters must be there. The ‘Y’ matters, I still matter.

This lie of, I don’t matter, and I’m selfish for thinking I do, has built a stronghold in my life. Some days it completely takes me captive till I see myself as a little more than worthless. I had all but stopped writing and doing any type of woodworking. Anything I enjoyed doing was selfish until everyone and everything else had been taken care of.

The good news is God is working on the stronghold. Some days I let him tear it down more than others. He has recently blessed me with tools for my woodworking that I could not afford on my own and He has reignited the spark to write again. Not only am I worth it, but the things I create have value too.

I hope this wasn’t a Debbie Downer for you but an inspiration that you are worth more than you can ever imagine. We will never realize how much we are truly worth until the day we meet God face-to-face. He has given us some good indicators of how he feels about us. Take him at His word and stop believing the lies that are heaped on you by others and the lies we heap on ourselves. You are worth it and you are valuable.

Keep developing yourself and expect more posts from me soon.

Enneagram Type 9: The Peacemaker
Co-Dependency

https://www.16personalities.com/

Peace and…

My five-year-old daughter loves to sing. In a single car ride, she will serenade you with her renditions of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer”, and a finale of “I Love Rock n’ Roll”.

I usually enjoy the entire car seat concert but my love for my daughter’s singing prows isn’t shared by her brother. While she is belting out partially correct lyrics, my son is pleading for her to stop while he holds his hands over his ears next to her in the back seat. His pleading usually ends with him yelling, “I just want peace!”

Working as a peace officer I’ve answered numerous calls where people want me to give them what my title suggests, peace. from the neighbor’s kids with the loud go-cart or from the landscaping crew doing the lawn next door. I even had someone call 911 because a helicopter flying over was making too much noise.

As I began to think through all these incidents and back to my son’s pleading in the car, I began to realize that our cries for peace are masking what we really want, control.

My son doesn’t like what my daughter is singing not because it interrupts his peace, but because it’s not his music and it’s not him singing it. As soon as I put a song on that he likes he will begin to sing along just as loud as my daughter and when she tries to join in, he will shush her. He never wanted peace, he wanted control.

Dictionary.com’s definition of peace is to end hostilities and abstain from further fighting or antagonism. I think we are looking for more than that. Yes, it feels good to not fight but you can have tension and uneasiness and not be openly engaged in an argument or fight.

In the Bible, the word peace is mentioned a total of 328 times. What’s interesting is the word peace in the Old Testament is the Hebrew word, Shalom. While the word peace in the New Testament is the Greek word, eiréné (i-ray’-nay) Shalom means completeness, soundness, and welfare. Eiréné means one, peace, quietness, and rest.

Compare our word for peace today against the biblical definition of peace and you can see a vast difference. It’s not just the absence of conflict but it’s a complete state of being made whole. If your world were to crumble around you, control and worldly peace would fail you. But true peace isn’t only attainable it’s promised to us by God.

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” -John 16:33

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 4:7

You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast because he trusts you. -Isaiah 26:3

God holds this perfect peace in such high regard He is called the God of Peace ( 1 Thessalonians 5:23) and the Prince of Peace is one of many titles given to Christ in Isaiah 9:6 before his birth.

Next time you yell, “I just want some peace and quiet!”, know you are just wanting to regain control. No one can give you the peace described in the Bible aside from God and once you have it, it is amazing. As a deputy sheriff, a husband, and a father I have been in some crazy and bizarre circumstances and while others are losing their minds, I’ve found myself calm and focused. It doesn’t mean you are immune from stress or the weight of things won’t get to you. Trust me, stress and turmoil feel like they live rent-free in my life sometimes. Daily I have to turn to one or more of the verses above while massaging my temples and closing my eyes to make it through the first part of my day, and I don’t drink coffee, so prayer is appreciated. But what having that inner peace means is you’ll be able to cope better than let’s say Kramer from “Seinfeld” who repeats the mantra, “Serenity now.” when things go wrong. By the end of that particular episode, Kramer loses it as he just bottled up the anger until he eventually blew up. It wasn’t true serenity or peace.

I’ve typed it before, life isn’t easy and sometimes it downright sucks but I want you to know, that even if quiet never comes you can at least have a peace that surpasses all understanding.

I said I’d have a project update coming soon but I don’t. My woodworking tools have sat quietly in the garage while I recover from surgery. So for now I will focus more on writing and will have more to share on that front soon. I hope you all are well and you continue to develop yourself.

Shalom Shalom (Perfect Peace) my friends.

Through

You missed it. The signs and arrows warned you but you were engrossed in your podcast or rocking out to Van Halen while playing air drums. Either way, you missed the signs and are traveling in a different direction than you wanted.

Your head is swaying as you frantically look for some way to change lanes. You use the turn signal (probably for the first time in a while) and honk your horn (probably not the first time in a while) and slam your hand on the steering wheel but it changes nothing. Your GPS announces it’s recalculating your route. The feminine British accent holds an inflection of condemnation you swear you’ve never noticed before. There is no way out, no shortcut to getting back to where you need to be. No, the only way, for now, is straight ahead, and whether it will be a ripple or a tsunami on your day is yet to be seen.

When our circumstances change unexpectedly our first response is to find an escape. A concoction of anger, panic, and fear stirs until like a trapped animal we claw and seethe for our freedom from the unknown. Even Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prayed to not have to go to the cross and though not unknown to Him, his human desire was for his circumstance to change.

And He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, where He knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done – Luke 22:42

The unknowns are scary. Losing a job, a loved one, or a marriage can seem like your world is crashing down around you. Family and friends may stand with you but ultimately it is you who has to stumble blindly through the unknown and though it feels like a nightmare, it’s not always bad.

Take one step back and breathe. If you can do that you are still alive and if you are still alive you have a purpose. Stop looking for a quick way out. Sometimes the quick way out means we miss out.

It’s uncomfortable for me to allow people to critique my writings. Thinking of you critiquing this post right now makes me cringe. A lot of authors claim to be thick-skinned, and whether true or not, I know I am not among them. If I take a shortcut around having my work critiqued, I could miss out on some excellent advice. Without criticism, I will not grow as a writer, a supervisor, or a dad for that matter.

What is the name

of your valley?

The term shortcuts could be interchanged with the word avoidance. Avoiding hard conversations in the present could make a situation worse later on, and if you know me well enough you know that I’m incriminating myself in this statement. Avoidance is fine when it comes to poison ivy, poisonous snakes, and poisonous relationships but when it comes to people you care about, including yourself, hard conversations have to be had and tough calls have to be made. It may not always go well. It may even get downright ugly but by going through it you will learn something about yourself and those around you. God refines us through tough times. Psalms 23:4 says Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death... It doesn’t say, though I walk around, over, or next to the valley but through the valley.

Fill in the blank: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of_________ I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. What is the name of your valley? bankruptcy, addiction, divorce, or maybe it is death. Sometimes, the best way and the only way is through. How much more deep would our conversations be if instead of asking what are you going through, we asked, what are you avoiding today? Life is beautiful and life is ugly. We all have to go through it. For to side step life is the cruelest thing you could do to yourself, for the reward on the other side could be the best thing you’ve ever experienced. John 14:6 no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Take it from Rocky.