Let Go Of The Wheel

     As a child, my parents made sure we were in church just about every Sunday.  I hated going to church.  My brother and I would try any excuse to get out of going.  We faked being sick,  we hid our shoes, we even tried hiding in the closet (still not sure how that one was supposed to fool anybody).  There were only 2 things I liked about church.  I liked the choir.  For whatever reason I have always loved gospel music.  The best part of church was the benediction, for 2 reasons.  My father was a deacon then, and he always did the benediction.  I loved seeing my father in the pulpit.  The other reason; the benediction meant it was time to get up outta there. What I didn't realize then was that seeds were being planted.  I didn't really pay attention to what was being said in church, but still seeds were being planted.
     There was a time when I believed that for as much as you read the Bible and tried to live according to it's principles, that you really only knew of God.  Like many of the characters of the Bible, you couldn't really know Him until you had an experience with Him.  Abraham, Moses, and down to  Paul.  God introduced Himself to His people. Remember,  this is what I believed. So I continued to read the Word hoping that God would one day introduce Himself to me.
     April 9, 1996 there was an ice storm here in Delaware. It was an unusual day, especially for me.  That evening I had experienced an unusual sense of calmness.  It was almost as if I had been drugged.  I could not, for the life of me, understand why I was feeling what I was feeling. That following morning I had to be at work at 6:30.  I raced off to work in a hurry as always.  I remember passing quite a few cars thinking that it was odd to see that many cars out at that time of the morning. Shortly after I had passed the crowd of cars, I hit a patch of ice. I had to be driving somewhere between 70-75mph. Accidents usually happen so fast that you don't have time to react. This time it was just the opposite.  It seemed as if time slowed to a crawl.  I had been trained to handle a vehicle during a slide. This time, I never reacted.  It felt like I was watching a movie of myself; like it was just an image of me in the car, but I wasn't in it. I found myself sitting in the car sliding across the highway, thinking to myself. I thought about the cars I had recently passed, wondering how close they were.  I looked up to see if I could see any coming.  I hit the guardrail head-on, bounced off, slid back across the highway and hit the guardrail on the other side of the highway(didn't want that one to feel left out).  When the car finally stopped, all four wheels were in the emergency lane and the cars I had passed were right there.  I was facing oncoming traffic. Still, there was no sense of panic of nervousness.  I sat there wondering how I was going to get to work. A gentleman asked me if I was okay, which I was. Miraculously,  I only had a bruise on my shin and a cut on my knuckle. I was not wearing a seatbelt.  When the police arrived I explained to him how I slid on the ice, but I could tell he was not buying it. Just as he began questioning me about how I really slid, a couple of cars starting sliding off the highway. You cannot tell me that God is not an on time God. The officer offered to take me to the hospital since I did not need an ambulance.  I asked him to take me to work instead.   He politely took me to the hospital. After that type of accident, he said there was no way he could take me anywhere but the hospital. Despite all of this, I was still as calm as ever.
    I thought that this was God's way of introducing Himself to me.  I believed that it was God who took control of that car and placed me out of harm's way.  After that, it was as if I could feel the presence of Jesus. I had never felt that close to Him before.  I remember feeling as if my life had changed and my focus was now on Him.
   Fourteen years later and I find myself thinking about that incident. As I replay it over and over again I can sense God saying to me now, "When your life was in peril, without having a chance to think, you did not panic.  You did not try to take matters into your own hand.  You let go and you let Me bring you to a place of safety.  Just as you let go of the wheel of that car, let go of the wheel of your life and let Me guide you." For all that I've seen, for all that i've read, for all that He has shown Himself to be over and over again, the easiest decision I could ever make seems to be the hardest. I keep asking myself time after time, why is it so hard to let go and completely submit to the will of God?  21I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. Romans 7:21-24. I am thoroughly convinced that the greatest war I will ever fight  is not with Satan, for he is a defeated foe.  My greatest battle is with my own flesh.
     I am going to end all of my posts from this moment forward with my favorite part, the benediction: Do good today, better tomorrow, seek to excel, and now may the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rest, rule, and abide.  And our souls say.........Amen.

    After my first post I felt a sense of accomplishment.  The day after, I was anxious to write more.  My mind was flooded with ideas, so many that I struggled to keep up with them.  When I was finally able, I sat at my computer and........nothing.  My mind is always racing with various, but at that moment it went blank.  I do not consider myself a writer, so it couldn't be writer's block.  Besides, earlier I had more thoughts than I could count.  I felt I needed to step back, to take a minute to gather myself and figure out just what was happening.
     I began all of this, feeling as if this was something that God wanted me to do. I suddenly found myself questioning my own motives. Was I moving ahead without finding out from God if this is something that He planned for me?  There are times when we call ourselves "doing something for God", yet not doing it with God. Jesus told his disciples "Apart from Me you can do nothing". What were my true motives?  Was I doing this to satisfy self?  Doing the right thing for the wrong reason isn't much different than doing the wrong thing for what you feel is the right reason.  There is wrong in either of them. So there I sat, lost. Not really knowing why I was doing this blog thing.  I had to ask God to help me to see myself, to see my motives.  More than anything I felt I needed to apologize to Him for moving ahead without Him.
     For the record,  I never wish to paint myself as anything other than someone trying to find his way.  I am as flawed and as messed up as the next person.  For every mistake I make, God is there to show me  and to teach me.  I pray that as I continue to grow that I may be able to show and teach someone else who may be walking down some of the same paths that I walk.  Just as Christ reaches out to me, I have a responsibility to reach out to others. Whenever I write, whatever I write, is meant to uplift everyone that reads it.  I am passionate about the things I write and I pray that everything  I write is from His inspiration.
 Oh, and by the way, I do not proofread what I write. I hardly ever like what I write when I read it for myself.  Thoughts????

Thoughts About My Father

When I was a kid I idolized my father.  For whatever reason, he was like a super hero to me.  As I grew older, I began to see him from a different perspective.  I started to see the flaws in him.  I still loved my father, but he was not the super hero that I made him out to be.  He was just a man.  There were so many things about him that I just didn't understand.  I wanted him to be more than I thought he was.  Somewhere along the way I lost sight of who he was and paid too much attention to who he wasn't. Because of that I couldn't appreciate him the way I should have.
      When I was blessed with a family of my own, I began to have a better understanding of my father.  While we never  really had a lot of those father-son talks, we had one that completely changed everything I thought about him.  He explained to me that he didn't have someone to teaching him how to be a husband and a father.   He was learning on the job.  He admitted that he had made a lot of mistakes, but how he was, what he was, was all that he knew how to be.  He knew he wanted to be better. As he said to me that day, "I wasn't too old to learn." That statement alone changed how I saw my father.  I didn't realize it at that time, but I was watching my father grow.  I saw a side of my father that I had never seen. Once again, he became my hero.  Here was a man in his sixties, with all of his kids grown, and he still wanted to be a better father and a better husband.  I had the privilege of seeing him do both.
       That was the only heart-to-heart that I ever had with my father.  I wasn't the type to go to him when I had problems or when I found myself in need.  The funny thing is, when he passed, one of the first things I thought was, "Where am I going to turn for advice?", "Who am I going to talk to now?" Nine years later, and I am just starting to understand why.  Without ever saying a word, I was getting advice from my father just by watching him.  I watched how he reacted in difficult times.  I watched how he stayed strong despite circumstances that I'm sure must have made him, at times, feel weak.  My father was the living example, for me, of all the do's and don'ts.
           Now, there is a part of me that yearns to talk to my father.  I realize now, that just watching wasn't enough.  Sometimes I just want to know what he was feeling at various times.  I want to know just what was going on underneath that calm exterior. I find myself wanting to know his emotions.  As a father and a husband, at times it can be overwhelming to think that God has placed the well being of a couple of His children in my hands, and every decision I make, no matter how small it may seem, affects my family in some way, shape, or form.  My father was limited in how much guidance he could provide.  Now God wants me to stop looking to my father for guidance and turn to Him for guidance. I am learning day by day to look at life and my role as a husband and father thru God's perspective.  I thank Him for my father and the examples he's shown me, both good and bad.