A Prince Without A Mattress

There was this old Carol Burnett song from her very early days. You might recognize it if I repeat the first lines, or the chorus, (I forget). It goes,

I've always been SHYYYYY! I confess that I'm SHYYYYY

You might not recognize it because it's from an adaptation of The Princess and the Pea called Once Upon a Mattress. If Mother Goose did not completely bewilder and confuse our childhood years with Jack-Be-Nimble (pyromania is normal, kids) and Jack-and-Jill (vinegar and brown paper is first aid?!), the fairy tales should finish us off, and The Princess and the Pea is a good dose of nonsense. Its time-tested wisdom admonishes us to marry someone who can feel a pea under 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds.

Spring, Sprang, Sprung

Oh, man! Was it a tough winter or what? I can't believe how much of a problem it's been to my condition. Weather-sensitive chronic pain is for the birds!

I have been looking forward to spring like you could never imagine! Yet, even in this, I'm skeptical. Spring is volatile in Colorado. As a foretaste, last week on a day where the high was 64 degrees, the weather service issued a Winter Storm Warning! That evening, though, I could have told you it was a doozy of a storm. It just knocked me down for the ten-count! Until the storm actually arrived, I was miserable! Once it started snowing, I started feeling better.

Then the House passed the medical bill. Well, I was feeling better. Forget spring (and summer). I"m looking forward to November!

Street View For Winter Olympic Trails

It's no secret that I'm a Google Earth nut, but I'm amazed I didn't find this earlier. Street View is available for Winter Olympic trails at the different venues. Here's how they made it.

Mountains, Marmots and Missing My Mobility

You know that a disability is getting the better of you when it invades your dreams. Last night, my wife had her first "walking" dreams where I am walking unaided and feeling fine while I walked with her. I've had several of those dreams in the last few weeks. In one, my daughter was so amazed that I was having no trouble and we were both laughing at how good it felt to just walk! If only it weren't just a dream. If only it was real. But it isn't and I can't control it. 

On reflection, I love and hate my wheelchair. I always have. I love the freedom it gives me (and my family) to go do things when I have the energy. On the other hand, I hate the attention it brings me. I see the people take notice that I'm in a chair, that I'm different from them in a fundamental capacity, and I don't enjoy the feeling. 

Then there are the limitations that come with the chair. For example, I used to climb 14ers. In Colorado, a 14er is a mountain over 14,000 feet ASL. When I was 15, Grays Peak was my first 14er. My dad and I were about 2/3 of the way to the top when I sat down and just listened to the wind (after I caught my breath). Hearing some movement behind us, we turned to see some mountain goats coming down the mountainside right towards us. We held our breath, hoping they would get closer. The largest goat came within ten feet of me and simply lay down on the tundra. My dad came around and got this picture.

We sat there for a while and then they continued on down. We would continue on to the the top and I would then solo on Torreys Peak, all in one day! I was hooked by the time we got down. I would later go on to climb several more 14ers with my last being Mt. Princeton in 1995. 

With my declining health, my ability to get up there is almost non-existant. I say almost because I have ridden the Manitou & Pikes Peak Railroad to the summit house and I could still drive to the summit of Mt. Evans. Unfortunately, using a car limits your ability to truly enjoy the wonderful experiences of seeing the alpine tundra, taking in the myriads of small wildflowers that bloom for a few weeks each summer, and watching the pikas, marmots, and mountain goats in their natural home. Frankly, it's difficult to feel like you're a part of all that when you're sitting in an isolated environment like a car. I've found that the fewer man-made assemblages you take with you, the more real and beautiful the experience becomes.

Speaking of assemblages, while my power chair is great for around the house or neighborhood, it's not an all terrain model (do they even make those?). My chair can't go very far or very high because the trail has to be broad, reasonably level and easy to navigate with six wheels. In effect, everything a hiking trail is not. There are nature paths designed for people with disabilities, yet none seem to go where I want to go: among secluded aspen groves, over the tundra, beside creeks with waterfalls, and next to pristine lakes whose only disturbance is a trout chasing the hatch.. These are places I've been (just in Colorado) that I might not see the likes of again until God heals me. When I consider that such a thing may not come in this age but in the next, that's a hard thing for me to consider. Nevertheless, while I can do certain things to help, the power for my healing does not rest with me, but God. I depend on Him and His power. 

A year ago, I was thinking how much I needed a power chair to get around. Now, I seem to complain about how limited the thing is. I'm so human. I forget that true contentment doesn't come from where I am, what I do, or how I feel. It comes from being in His presence, seeking what He wants, and choosing to live at His place. While I can't control what happens, I can trust the One Who can.

Winter Olympics

Ever since I was a kid watching the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, I understood the athleticism, stamina and fortitude it took to compete. I was a beginner at skiing, but my brother had already been an "olympic hopeful" contender before damaging his knee. Even watching the alpine downhill with him taught me more about skiing than I could have learned skiing on my own.

Yet, as Kelly Clark says below, you can win every championship and still feel empty. If people love you just because you can fly down the mountain at insane speeds or whip 1080s like they're nothing, you intuitively know that the love is conditional. It will go away when someday you lose the ability to do what you do. That's why a relationship with God looks so good to those who perform for approval.

Haitian Orphans Come Home to Colorado

They're home! They're home! They're home!

Wants And Needs

If we had all we wanted, we wouldn't have what we really needed. God always gives us what we need, not always what we want.

If God Knows Everything, Why Pray?

My wife was feeling very poorly. A pinched nerve had developed into a condition where any movement was very painful. We called up a friend who is gifted in healing and asked if he could come over. He said "Oh, that's why the Spirit was telling me to make dinner for you guys!"

That evening, we sat together over pork chops and yellow rice. The kids had finished early and were playing downstairs, the boys trying out their Nerf swords on each other. As can happen, play fighting turned to real fighting when the blows got too hard or they were taken too personally, and the sword play broke off into other things. That night, as I was tucking my son into bed, his emotions still hadn't really cooled. I walked him through the steps of forgiving the persons in absentia. As I did, I told him that God wanted to hear what had happened and what he felt and why. 

"But God already knows these things, Dad. Why should I tell him what he already knows?" he asked.

"Because He wants relationship with you," I told him. 

"I don't get it."

"Well, why else would we ask God to heal me? He knows I need healing. He knows I want to be healed. But He wants me to come to Him and ask Him." It's the situations we can't handle that drive us to connect with Him, and that's what He wants. He wants to hear how our day was, even though he was there for every millisecond. He loves us and went to the trouble of creating mankind just to risk you saying "yes!" to Him. He wants that daily connection, even hourly connection with your heart. What moves us, moves His heart too. Eventually, it will be that what moves His heart will move us as well. That's relationship. That's love. That's the Kingdom.

Letters from the Field: Obamavilles And The Fruits Of Repentance

Dear Friends,

How are you? How was your Christmas? Mine was incredible! A family stepped forward and offered to help with our Christmas gifts this year, buying nearly everything we wanted and everything we needed. They are a family that dearly wants to hear God's voice in their lives and it excites me to see it.

Have you heard about Obamaville?

The name of the town reminds me of a classic Jimmy Buffet tune, a favorite of my cousin's. This is a real sign of America's Second Great Depression. Iconic pictures of the 1930s tent cities, in some cases called "Hoovervilles," dot the news. Like the early years of the last depression, economic measures designed to slow or even reverse the decline may not be all that helpful and in some cases may actually hurt the economy.

I am no expert, but having a blog means having a point of view. My great friend, Andrew, shares similar circumstances as my own, unable to work because of his physical condition. He told me on New Year's Eve what I had instinctively known and remembered from high school economics. The numerous bailouts the government has engaged in is against the fundamental rule of capitalism. If AIG, et. al, truly failed financially, the government should have let it fail and go into bankruptcy. That's the reason for bankruptcy courts. Procedures exist for failures like that, procedures that might have better served the American people. Instead, the executives are bailed out by the one entity that should have put them in court to defend their actions. This is corruption, plain and simple.

In times like these, it is not enough for us to simply pray that God help the needy and suffering. Nor is it enough to fast, to humble ourselves before God and expect Him to hear us. It requires a fundamental heart change. It requires individual and corporate repentance. It requires what God lays out in Isaiah 58.

Isaiah 58:1-8

(the Message paraphrase)

Tell my people what's wrong with their lives,
     face my family Jacob with their sins!
They're busy, busy, busy at worship,
      and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people—
     law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, 'What's the right thing to do?'
     and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
     'Why do we fast and you don't look our way?
     Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?'

"Well, here's why:
"The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
     won't get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I'm after:
     a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
     and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
     a fast day that I, God, would like?

"This is the kind of fast day I'm after:

• to break the chains of injustice,
• get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
• free the oppressed,
• cancel debts.

What I'm interested in seeing you do is:

• sharing your food with the hungry,
• inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
• putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
• being available to your own families.

Do this and the lights will turn on,
     and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You'll call out for help and I'll say, 'Here I am.'

If you want to see a change you can believe in, if you want to see God answer prayers, don't just fast and hope that He blesses you. Don't just hunger after God. Model your heart and actions after Him! Engage those around you and work to ease their suffering. If you see injustice, work to end it! If you see your employees hard pressed, stop work until they catch their breath. God does not saddle you with a heavy burden, does he? He does not bicker and fight with you, does he? Can you honestly say you follow Him when you live in ignorance of His most fundamental motives? We may claim to love the Lord God with all our passion and prayer and intelligence and energy, but until we love others as well as we love ourselves, we cannot honestly claim the title Christian, literally "Christ follower."

This is heavy stuff, but God does not pull any punches when we've missed something this elementary. Christians in business cannot place profit above and beyond the humanity and charity God commands from us all. As Marley lamented in A Christmas Carol, "Business! Mankind [should have been] my businesss!" Indeed, Scrooge himself walked in repentance by placing a very human interest in his employee Bob Cratchit and his family. The complaints that socialism and fascism brought against capitalism were very similar to the complaints that the three spirits of Christmas brought to Scrooge, that men in capitalism only enrich themselves by exploiting the working poor. The very reason America was successful in the first place was that men lived by the morality of their faith, putting into practice the charity and kindness that their faith professed. Alexis DeToqueville, in Democracy in America, put it this way,

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

If we profess freedom, and we do, then we must live by God's morality. Instead of seeking what we can get out of our employees, our "human resources," should we not treat them as good or better than ourselves? This change must start in our hearts, work into our minds, and out through our hands. Obamaville may be a ghost town in years to come, but only if we get the message.

A brother from a different mother,

Steve

Benched

I have not had too many "up" days recently. A lot have been spent laid out in bed, searching for some way to lay my body that didn't cause pain. I don't have an explanation. I can't readily point to something and say, "I overdid it and I shouldn't do that." It's just been one long string of ow. Ow, this hurts. Ow, that hurts. It wouldn't be so bad if the fatigue wasn't the super-industrial quality that gives me 30-120 minutes before it knocks me out again. It's just one more day in the life of Fibromyalgia. On the up-side, I found a good page that really spells out to folks what FM is like, thanks to Adrienne Dellwo of About.com.

The most frustrating part is knowing that I missed a day of my kids lives with nothing but a dented mattress to show for it. They only have 120 more before their birthdays (all in April), and they're changing every day. I feel like because I can't keep my head from the pillow, I'm failing them as a father. This isn't reality, of course. I have no choice in the matter. It's just the way my emotions get the better of me when I miss time with them. I can certainly relate to those who are imprisoned, those who can't beat their addictions, and those like me who struggle with a debilitating illness. You see life passing by and it hurts to know that you're not a part of it every day.

Yet, I have to believe that God will give me the ability to be there for my kids when it matters. I need God to give me the strength and stamina to be a father and pastor to my family. I need Him, period. He will supply all my needs. His grace is sufficient for me, for His power is made perfect in my weakness. He's given me everything I need for life and godliness. My hope will not disappoint, my faith is steadfast and firm, not because I am powerful, but because He is all-powerful in me, my weak and tattered body. He will deliver me from this body of death through Jesus Christ, our Lord! I cling to this, even in the darkest of times.

Take comfort in Him. He will meet your every need.