A 180 view of 9/11

I remember the day like it was yesterday.

Not September 11, 2001 (although that day still resonates heavily in my mind).

No, the day I’m referring to is the day that forever changed the way I recall 9/11, and other misfortunes like it.

My wife Amanda and I had driven down to Orlando in separate vehicles (I was in town on business and she would later join me for a planned, kid-less weekend once I finished up business  at work).

That morning we left the hotel headed in different directions, she went out for a little shopping and I drove to my Orlando office for a meeting.

The day seemed to be entirely ordinary, but that would quickly change.

In the middle of my meeting, my cell phone began to quietly buzz – it was Amanda.

We’ve worked out a little system for situations like this.

If she calls while I’m in a meeting or if I’m busy, I simply let it go to voicemail.

But, if it is imperative that she contact me right away, she immediately calls back.

So when I saw the words “Amanda Cell” appear again within seconds, I excused myself from the meeting and answered her call.

Apparently while she was shopping, she had received a message that a mutual friend of ours, Jennifer, had suddenly fallen ill with a seizure and before she could reach the hospital was placed on life support.

To give you a little background on Jennifer, she had just come through an immense battle with breast cancer the year before and looked to be in total remission.

But on this particular morning, she collapsed in her bathroom from a brain tumor.

The cancer was back, but this time it had moved to her brain in the form of a golf ball-sized tumor.

I have to be totally honest here, at that time I was really only just “OK” friends with Jennifer and her husband Steve.

And there have been several instances in the past when similar circumstances involved someone closer to me that I didn’t feel the need to react suddenly.

But for some reason, the moment Amanda called to let me know what was happening, I felt strangely “compelled” to leave Orlando and drive back to Gainesville immediately.

So I politely excused myself from the meeting and within a few minutes, Amanda arrived and we headed back toward Gainesville (remember, in separate vehicles).

It was during that drive back that I felt – for the first time in my life – an overwhelming urge to reach out to God.

I really didn’t know what to say, but because the impulse was so strong, I just started talking to Him like I’m talking to you now.

And to give you a little background on me, you need to understand that until that very moment, I had never genuinely prayed – ever.

Oh, I talked about prayer prior to that.

I even use to look people right in the eye – when they were going through a tough time – and tell them, “I’ll keep you in my prayers,” yet I never did.

In my defense, I honestly meant no harm, but I guess I simply viewed prayer as the right thing to say to someone who was going through rough times.

Well, needless to say, I had my first conversation with God that day on the drive back.

I don’t remember everything I said, but I spoke to Him for about 25 minutes or so.

I’m sure the people having to maneuver around me on the interstate thought it a bit strange/annoying to see a guy just rambling on and on with no one else in the truck.

But I suddenly felt as if a HUGE weight had been lifted off my chest.

It was the most freeing conversation I’d have ever had in my life!

From that point on, I speak to Him often – mostly in the mornings over peanut butter toast and coffee on the way to work – behind a steering wheel, just like our first conversation.

My life literally hasn’t been the same since that day!

It’s changed the way I view God, how I view others and how I view what most people call tragedy.

I use to question how God could let bad things happen.

And right or wrong, I now firmly believe that it isn’t God who “allows” the bad things or “creates” the pain, suffering or death – it’s the wonderful things that happen during those awful occurrences is what He’s doing.

For instance, I would imagine not one single person in the Critical Care Unit waiting room just outside Jennifer’s room that afternoon was thinking about me.

And rightfully so.

Though Jennifer would eventually (maybe even miraculously) fully recover, their thoughts were focused solely on a wonderful young lady battling for her life and how this situation was crumbling around her family.

To the casual observer, it was obvious nothing “good” was happening in that situation.

Except for the fact that two hours south of that hospital, somewhere along the interstate, someone as insignificant as me was encountering the Holy Spirit for the very first time – all because of this “tragedy.”

Now whenever I hear or see something terrible happening, I automatically turn my thoughts to what God’s mercy and grace might be up to in that situation, regardless of whether or not it is visible at that moment or not.

And that brings me to the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.

On the surface, most people recall that day as horrifying, heart-breaking, sad, angering, etc. – basically, nothing “good” seemed to be happening in that situation.

And though I’ll never downplay the senseless and tragic deaths of all those people, because of how Jennifer’s situation has changed the way I look at things, I now look at that infamous day with a sense of awe and wonder.

Crazy?

Not if you think about the hundreds of people who – under tremendous duress and unthinkable chaos – willingly and selflessly sacrificed their lives to save the lives of complete strangers in moment’s notice.

I know it’s not easy to accept that the reality just may be that we are all somewhat at the mercy of death, tragedy and suffering – mostly due to the free-will decisions of others – here in this world.

But just remember this, God is infinitely larger than this world, and one day He will perfectly and completely undo every pain, every suffering and every death.

And until then, take comfort in the fact that He is and does work tremendous “good” in every “bad” situation, whether we see it or not.

Healing our Hoarding

My wife Amanda and I were watching the television show Hoarders: Buried Alive the other night when a depressing thought occurred to me.

Could that ever happen to me?

So many of us watch shows like this and think “how could these people live like that?” or “how could they let things get so far before getting help?”

And that’s when the thought hit me…maybe we’re ALL in danger of falling victim to the perils of extreme hoarding.

But the kind of hoarding I’m referring to, however, can’t be seen by the human eye and is exponentially more threatening to our lives than a home stacked waist-high in a cluttered mess.

No, the extreme hoarding I’m talking about is extreme Emotional Hoarding, and it is wedged deep within the darkest reaches of our souls.

A big reason for this is because we live in a society that tells us to be independently strong, to stand on our own two feet, to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and that any sign of fear is a cowardly display of weakness.

I certainly don’t want to minimize the positives of a healthy self esteem, but many of the people we think of as having a healthy self esteem are internally petrified amidst a pile of Emotional Hoarding debris.

Tragically, Emotional Hoarding is born from our inability and unwillingness to confess – not just our sins, but all our secret fears, doubts, guilt, insecurities, habits, addictions, etc. – even to the ones nearest and dearest to us.

Much like the TV show where the homes can look normal on the outside, our outward appearance may seem just fine, but that is only because we have constructed a stone fortress wall around our hearts that hold all these things – fearing someone might see through to those dark secrets.

But, unlike the subjects on TV, the effects of this silent, inward suffering produces a terrifying psychological hardening, never allowing us to feel 100% free or comfortable in our own skin because “if anyone knew ________ about me, they’d never feel the same about me again.”

Now, I totally get how difficult it is to just voluntarily open ourselves up to others about very personal subjects, but think of a world where we could actually do just that?

I’m sure you’re wondering that even if we could, how would that help us mend such deep scars?

Well, just imagine if you came home from work one day, turned on the TV and suddenly heard your name and every – and I do mean EVERY – sin, secret and insecurity only you knew about yourself being broadcast in HD on the evening news?

Just the thought of that makes us ill, right?

However, if you really think about it, though it might be the most frightening moment of our life, it would also serve as the most freeing moment of our life too.

Yes, it would be crushing to hear, but as soon as it was all out there, we would no longer have to fear someone finding out the unthinkable about us anymore.

In the New Testament, James tells us in chapter 5 that we should “Confess our sins to each other and pray for each other so that WE may be healed.”

Again, a scary thought, I know.

But I think we have to ask ourselves, is it any more dreadful than living in a world where a grieving widow can’t bear to let anyone find out about the horrible guilt he carries because a hurtful argument was the last time he spoke to his wife before she suddenly died?

Or where a woman who finally feels she has found the love of her life but is riddled with terror that he might find out about her promiscuous past?

All because “if anyone knew ________ about me, they’d never feel the same about me.”

I think author Donald Miller put it best when he wrote, “I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man(kind) is to be (fully) known and loved anyway.”

So how do we at least begin the healing process?

Where do we start?

Well, the first thing we need to understand is that despite what the world may tell us, we need to start by admitting our weakness to ourselves – that we, like SO many others are simply a little broken inside.

If you ask me, THAT takes amazing strength!

It’s actually the key that we recognize our weakness, because that’s when we’ll finally realize we need the power of something/someone much stronger than ourselves to get through something so enormous.

But many of us don’t have someone we feel close enough to dump our baggage on, and even if we do, we fear losing their love or respect if we were to spill it all out on them.

What about Jesus?

I mean it’s not like He doesn’t already know what has built this massive wall around our heart anyway.

Just start getting alone for about 15-30 minutes at a time and just talk to Him, no fancy prayers or words, no pretense, no more hiding from shame.

And please don’t underestimate what you think He might say to you.

If you pour your heart out to Him, eventually He will pour Himself into your heart.

Then maybe with His strength you’ll be able to take the next step and confide in someone else without the fear of vulnerability.

Because all we really need is to just hear someone say, “Really? Is that ALL you were worried about? That could never change how much I love you.”

Let Jesus be the first to tell you this and then the healing process will finally begin.

The mission and intended ministry behind “A Changing Grace”

Simply put, I am someone who had a completely backward view of what it truly means to be a Christian.

I used to think being a Christian meant you had to be someone who “had everything all together” and were able to successfully check off the admirable “Living Right” check boxes of life.

The problem with that is it puts everything on MY shoulders and MY power to reach a certain status or salvation, which is impossible.

The trouble with that way of thinking is that it usually manifests itself in two dead-end scenarios.

On one hand, if we are somehow able to do “all the right things” (which we can’t do them all), we leave the back door to our soul wide open for pride to slip in and give us an inflated view/opinion of ourselves, and a moralistic view of others who don’t do the things we do, or as well as we think WE do them.

And on the other hand, if it’s by our doing, we will eventually crumble under the pressure of never knowing if the good things we did were “good enough” and we can become hopeless, or worse, turn away from God because we think He is too demanding or is trying to ruin our “good time” here on Earth.

However, if we fix our eyes on the cross – and truly meditate on the fact that while we are so undeserving Jesus HAD to die for us, but yet so loved He was GLAD to die for us! – it will change us from the inside out.

Totally backward from the way I used to see it, and I have a sneaking suspicion that many still see it like that today.

And that is the very purpose behind “A Changing Grace” – it’s not that grace has ever changed or ever will, but instead, if we commit ourselves to focusing on the pure meaning of grace, IT will change us!

It’s not about the things we do or have done.

It’s ALL about the one thing He did for me and you!

I like to call it 180-degree thinking (you’ll come to see this is a pattern of thinking I do a lot).

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are consequences for our actions, but the point is, the ONLY way our proverbial slates can be wiped spotless is through Jesus.

So instead of trying to gain grace (which, by the way, is an oxymoron), if we let an overwhelming sense of gratitude for what Jesus has already done for us on the cross motivate us – I mean sincerely let it penetrate our hearts and become the porthole in which we see everything and everyone around us – that is when lives can be transformed.

By His power, not mine or yours.

Since this is my inaugural post on A Changing Grace, I would like to ask you to keep a few things in mind if you read any of my musings:

1. My intention to deliver a fresh, dynamic, relational and practical view of Christianity far outweighs my qualifications to do so.
2. However, I believe God can, and regularly does, work wonders through ordinary people (even people named Mike).
3. I promise (to try my best) to keep my posts to a “comfortable” reading length.
4. Because of that, please understand I will not be able to answer every question or issue about Christianity in any one given post. I personally couldn’t do that regardless of the length of my posts anyway.
5. And because of that, please view A Changing Grace as “a body of work” rather than singling any one post out as my entire theological stance.
6. I can almost guarantee someone will disagree with something I write, so please refer to No.1.
7. Lastly, I thank you in advance for reading any word I write.

Welcome to A Changing Grace,

Mike