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“The glory of God is man fully alive.”
— Saint Irenaeus
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Loading ...God’s Love: The Story of the Prodigal Son
Posted on March 9th, 2010 by uberlumen.
Categories: Apologetics, Bible Study, Evil and Suffering, Love, Men on the Path, Parenting, Sermons, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
Mike Erre gives us a special glimpse into what the parable of the prodigal son truly meant to a 1st century audience. It was an incredible picture of God’s outrageous love for us.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
What if…we have it all wrong? What if there is…
Posted on January 8th, 2010 by uberlumen.
Categories: Apologetics, Book Reviews, Healing, Love, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, doctrine, marriage.
What if….we have it all wrong? What if there is a God that loves and adores YOU? What if there are angels? What if there is a heaven? What if there is a celebration filled with dancing, rejoicing, singing in heaven? What if there is a celebration right NOW over YOU?
Sally Beth Roe, a character in Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti, becomes a Christian, but Peretti provides us with a glimpse of what is occurring in heaven during the very moment that Sally Roe becomes a Christian. It is a remarkable moment of angels celebrating and the lamb of God embracing her. We have NO idea.
“Above, as if another sun had just risen, the darkness opened, and pure, white rays broke through the treetops, flooding Sally Beth Roe with a heavenly light, shining through to her heart, her innermost spirit, obscuring her form with a blinding fire of holiness. Slowly, without sensation, without sound, she settled forward, her face to the ground, her spirit awash with the presence of God…All around her, like spokes of a wondrous wheel, like beams of light emanating from a sun, angelic blades lay flat upon the ground, their tips turned toward her, their handles extending outward, held in the strong fists of hundreds of noble warriors who knelt in perfect, concentric circles of glory, light, and worship, their heads to the ground, their wings stretching skyward like a flourishing, animated garden of flames. They were silent, their hearts filled with holy dread…As in countless times past, in countless places, with marvelous, inscrutable wonder, the Lamb of God stood among them, the Word of God, and more: the final Word, the end of all discussion and challenge, the Creator and the Truth that holds all creation together–most wondrous of all, and most inscrutable of all, the Savior, a title the angels would always behold and marvel about, but which only mankind could know and understand. He had come to be the Savior of this woman. He knew her by name; and speaking her name, He touched her. And her sins were gone…”-pg 321, Piercing the Darkness by Peretti
Edwin Abbot in his book Flatland shares with us, through parable, mathematics, and physics, the very real possibility of dimensions and realities so very close to us, but we remain unaware of them. What if string theory is true? What if there are dimensions just beyond our reach? What if God and the heavenly realm is all around us, surrounding us, embracing us?
What would it be like to get a glimpse into heaven uninhibited, over joyed, overwhelmed in celebration? Here is a brief video of a wedding that brought laughter and joy to my heart as I imagined….dancing and rejoicing in heaven over US!
Johnny the Bagger
Posted on December 21st, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Book Reviews, Love, Parenting, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing.
We CAN make a difference every moment, every day. God help us to stop and listen for those moments in every day life that we can love and encourage those around us.
Johnny is a grocery store bagger who has Down syndrome. He heard from one of the grocery store people about how people can make a difference but he thought he couldn’t do anything special for the customers because he was just a bagger. But then he had an idea: ‘he decided that every night when he came home from work, he would find a ‘thought for the day’ for his next shift. It would be something positive, some reminder of how good it was to be alive, or how much people matter, or how many gifts we are surrounded by. If he couldn’tfind one, he would make one up. Every night his dad would help him enter the saying six times on a page on the computer; then Johnny would print fifty pages. He would take out a pair of scissors and carefully cut three hundred copies and sign every one. Johnny put the stack of pages next to him while he worked. Each time he finished bagging someone’s groceries, he would put his saying on top of the last bag. Then he would stop what he was doing, look the person straight in the eye, and say, ‘I’ve put a great saying in your bag. I hope it helps you have a good day. Thanks for coming here.’ A month later, the store manager found that the line at Johnny’s checkout was three times longer than anyone else’s. It went all the way down the frozen food aisle. The manager got on the loudspeaker to get more checkout lines open, but he couldn’t get any of the customers to move. They said, ‘That’s okay. We’ll wait. We want to be in Johnny’s line.’ One woman came up to him and grabbed his hand, saying, ‘I used to shop in your store once a week. Now I come in every time I go by–I want to get Johnny’s thought for the day.’ Johnny is doing more than filling bags with groceries; he is filling lives with hope.-excerpt from ‘When the game is over it all goes back in the box’ by John Ortberg
Tribute to ER Nurses
Posted on December 10th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Healing, Love, Value, Virtue, Vital Signs of Healing.
This is a great tribute and article pointing out the hard work and compassion of our ER nurses:
“I heard a guttural scream,” Rich says, “and a man was handing me his lifeless son.”
“How old?” I ask.
“Nine months. We worked on him for over an hour.”
Rich moves his chair, coughs. It’s freezing in the conference room. [Note: For privacy, nurses are mentioned only by first name.] The muffled din of the emergency room is audible through closed metal doors. It’s 7 a.m., and Rich’s 12-hour shift has just ended. “I flashed to something I heard once about how a casket doesn’t weigh very much—just enough to break a father’s heart,” he says, “and I lost it. I’m standing there, between beds one and two holding that dead baby, and I’m sobbing. I am in charge, and I’m crying.”
As an 11-year volunteer in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s emergency room, I’ve seen close up what ER nurses deal with. It takes rare emotional courage not to burn out when you know that every time those doors open—whether you are working triage in front, where a guy may stumble in with a heart attack, or in back, where paramedics may race in with a girl who has been knifed or shot—it’s bad news. Then there’s the physical strength required to survive 12-hour shifts with two half-hour breaks and 45 minutes for lunch. ER nurses never sit. But it’s the children—every ER nurse will tell you—who take the biggest toll.
“For a very long time,” Rich says, “I viewed it as a badge of honor—How much crap can I take? How much horror can I see and not show emotion?” He clears his throat. “But you can’t keep stuffing it down; you have to deal with the emotion.”
Rich has been a nurse for 22 years. He has a 12-year-old son. There are 98 nurses in Cedars’ ER. Their ages range from 24 to 67, and they are as different as heavy metal is to polka. What they share are guts and a desire to give. “I was an operating-room tech in the army. My CO said, ‘Nursing?’ And I thought, Maybe,” Rich says.
He is big and bulky, with soulful eyes and a wild sense of humor. When I ask why he really became a nurse, he jokes, “I liked the cute little hats, the white nylons and the sensible shoes.”
Rich was diagnosed with leukemia last year in his very own ER, when he showed a doctor some large bruises on his body. The doc ran tests while Rich was on shift and returned with the diagnosis. The story goes that he asked the doc if he could finish his shift so he wouldn’t get docked pay. After eight months off, five rounds of intravenous and oral chemo and too many bone-marrow biopsies, Rich is back working nights. I don’t know how he does it. I don’t know how any of them do it.
“It affects your soul,” Melissa says. She could be called the queen of trauma, having done 20 years in what she terms “the knife and gun club” at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in Harlem and five years in Newark, New Jersey, before coming to L.A. “Newark made New York look like kindergarten,” she says.
Hearing Melissa’s accent is like flying to N.Y. and walking into Original Ray’s. She recalls a guy “who was having a big heart attack in room nine…In the middle of his pain, he heard me, looked up and said, ‘What part of the Island are you from?’ ”
“Why nursing?” I ask.
“I had a scholarship to the American Ballet Theatre, and I was good, but I wasn’t brilliant…and my dad said, ‘You need an education—go be a nurse.’ ”
I can’t imagine Melissa in ballet shoes, but 29 years ago, she traded them for a stethoscope. We’re at Orso, across the street from Cedars, having dinner after Melissa’s 7 a.m.–to–7 p.m. shift. She’s wearing a chic black jacket over blue scrubs, but there are smudges under her eyes. “Where do you find joy in the job?” I ask.
Without blinking, she says, “Using my knowledge to participate in stopping bad things that happen to people.”
Of course, they can’t always be stopped. You can’t stop a mother’s pain when her 18-month-old drowns. “The mom was still wet,” she says, “making a puddle by room three. When she knew her baby was gone, she wailed…just melted to the floor.” She pauses. “I swaddled her in warm blankets. It was all I could do for her.”
“What do you do for you?”
“I compartmentalize,” she says, finally smiling. “And I buy very expensive shoes.” She must have a closet full of Manolos.
Shari runs to cope with the stress. She did the 2007 Boston Marathon. “I’ve also run after psych patients who escaped the ER and took off down Gracie Allen toward 3rd Street.” She works mostly as a charge nurse, overseeing patient flow. If paramedics bring you in on a gurney, you’ll see the charge nurse first. That’s who decides whether the man in room four gets kicked into the hall because the room is needed for the woman the LAFD just scooped up off the pavement.
Some ER nurses charge, but all work triage and patient care. There are approximately 15 nurses on each shift, and shifts change all day. There are 41 beds in the ER—58 if they fill the halls. Cedars is a number one trauma center—the wait can be 10 minutes or four hours. Think of all the L.A. hospitals that have closed.
Shari, who was raised on a farm in Racine, Wisconsin, has been a nurse for 21 years. The only other job she considered was a baker…and that was when she was five. “How come you didn’t do that?”
“They have to get up really early,” she says, taking a bite from her perfectly wrapped homemade sandwich. She expertly cuts her peach with a paring knife.
Shari came on at 11 a.m. and will work until 11 p.m. We’re in the cafeteria on her dinner break, but she looks like she has just showered—blond curls escaping a perfect ponytail—a Goldilocks nurse who behaves like a general. I have seen her hustle a parade of bloody, broken patients through the door with the cool calm of an air-traffic controller moving jets through a bank of thunderstorms.
Abby and Sylvia carpool from Santa Clarita. They call the drive back and forth to Cedars their “psychotherapy hour.” Abby, fast and funny, was born in the Philippines. She has been a nurse 27 years—Hoboken and then L.A. “Why nursing?” I ask.
“I got into the short line,” Abby says, and she and Sylvia fall into a fit of laughter. “I’m Chinese, and when you’re Chinese, you’re supposed to study math—go into accounting, banking. So I went with my girlfriends to apply to school. All of the lines were really long, but there was this one short line, so I got into that one.”
“It was the premed, premed tech and nursing line,” Sylvia adds, smiling widely.
“I passed the test,” Abby says, “and I said to my friends, ‘Nursing?! My mom is going to kill me.’ ”
The ER can bring out the worst in people—not just the patients but the people bringing in the patients. Week after week, I see fear breed anger and despicable manners. I ask Abby how she deals with that. “You can’t take it personally,” she says. “You have to get over it and move on.”
“What’s the joy in this job?” I ask Sylvia, who has three children and has been a Cedars nurse for 19 years—not long enough to dim her radiant smile.
“You get to help people,” she says. “You make a difference.”
The nurses remind me about the funny stuff: the toddler whose potty got stuck on her head when she tried to put it on like a hat; the four-year-old who shoved an aspirin up his nose. “Did you have a headache?” Rich asked the kid.
Some of the nurses are on their second careers. Paul, one of the calmest in the ER, was a Navy SEAL. Jerry, who could find a vein in a stone, was a fashion designer. Joe was in marketing at Anheuser Busch. “And then came 9-11,” he recalls, “and I was watching those firefighters on TV, and I just knew I had to change my life. I had to do something honorable.”
Clean-cut, in pressed scrubs and Clark Kent glasses, Joe is the one you’d want to marry your daughter. “Can you have the same compassion for a drug addict as you do for a cardiac arrest or the patient back for the third time with terminal cancer?” I ask.
“You have to. What about the guy booked on a double vehicular manslaughter, still drunk, spewing ef-yous and showing no remorse? He’d kept driving after he hit them,” Joe says, eyes narrowing. “You have to give him the same care.”
Lots of people are brought into the ER in cuffs—think of gang shootings, car wrecks, domestic violence. Bad guys get hurt just like good guys, and they’re all brought to the same ER.
Kelly wanted to be a cop. “First an actress, second a cop,” she says. Raised in Tennessee and Arkansas, she calls herself a hillbilly but looks like a movie star. She hunts, motorcycles, parachutes and has an 11-year-old son. A nurse for 10 years, she once did CPR on a woman in the ER driveway.
“I was triaging, the doors opened, and someone was yelling for help. It was the sound of the help; the hairs on the back of my neck stood up,” Kelly recalls. “Female, mid seventies, cold as a cucumber, not breathing, in the passenger seat. I pulled her down onto the cement. There wasn’t any time; her feet were still in the car.”
Flor nods. She, Kelly and I are at Du-par’s on their day off. “I did CPR on a doctor once,” she says. “We were moving him to the OR, and he went into cardiac arrest. I jumped up on the gurney, straddled him and did CPR—in the elevator. It probably didn’t look good,” she says, brown eyes wide.
Flor is a “good Catholic girl” from Manila—nuns and rosary beads to Kelly’s bikes and rifles. “My aunt was a nurse in the U.S., and when she’d come home, it was like she was a celebrity. People gathered around—they made a fiesta: We have to kill a pig,” she says, grinning. “They respected her, and I thought, I want to be like that.” She has been a nurse for 31 years. She has three kids in college and looks like she’s their age. “I’m a caregiver,” she says. “That’s what I took the oath for.”
Triage is the hardest, most ER nurses agree. It’s not just the patients’ vitals. What are the skin signs, the alertness, the level of consciousness? Sweaty, pale, faint, red? It’s not just their pain.
“Triage is the most dangerous,” Nili says.
“You use your clinical judgment to assess the patient. You can’t let anyone slip past you, and you can’t make a mistake.” Tall and impressive, if Nili walked into your room with a needle, you’d extend your arm. “Why did you go into nursing?” I ask.
“Oh,” she says shyly, “I was out of control at Cal State Northridge, and my parents said, ‘It’s either nursing school or leave home.’ ” She has been on the job for 16 years. “Not everyone can do it.”
Well, that’s for damn sure. I’ve seen Nili on the trauma team, suited up in blue plastic, waiting for the paramedics to arrive, like a solider about to take a hill. I’ve sat next to her at the radio when the LAFD calls. The silent blue lights in the corners of the ER flash and spin, and a nurse on the blue team hotfoots it to the radio room. “Cedars base, copy,” and the line crackles: “This is Rescue 41. I have a 57-year-old male, altered LOC, in moderate distress; this is Rescue 27, I have a 16-year-old female…” And on it goes.
“Every day is a crisis,” Nili says.
ER nurses don’t give long-term care. They don’t get to know you, and they don’t even know what happens to you after you leave the ER. They are a platoon of adrenaline junkies with invisible capes and angel wings, there to take care of you at your worst moments. And it never ends. “Patients are like waves of ocean hitting the beach,” Shari says. “New ones just replace the old ones.”
“If I have to cry, I cry,” Mark says. “You can’t carry it to the next shift.” Blond and lanky, he has the mischievous air of a reformed bad boy. He did 10 years as a paramedic before his 10 as a nurse, so he has seen his share. “I wanted to be that person who knew what to do, how to run a code—perfectly.” A code, even laypeople know, is when the heart stops.
Mark thinks about the process for a moment and flashes one of his rare smiles. “It can be a miracle,” he says.
“Does it scare you anymore?”
“No,” he says. “I’m either enlightened or f–ked up.”
Love Binds Doctors to their Patients in a Unique Way
Posted on November 21st, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Love, Vital Signs of Healing, medicine.
Truth in the Cathedral of Medicine
Leap, Edwin MD
Dr. Leap is a member of Blue Ridge Emergency Physicians, an emergency physician at Oconee Memorial Hospital in Seneca, SC, and an op-ed columnist for the Greenville News. He welcomes comments about his observations, and readers may write to him at emn@lww.com and visit his web site and blog at www.edwinleap.com.
When this is published, we could be on our way to a new health care system. I don’t know what that will entail. Few in the government really want my opinion. That’s the way it is; we have limited power. Or do we?
Last night at work, I diagnosed a man near my age with new onset diabetes and osteomyelitis of the toe. He was terrified, and fear radiated from his face. He was afraid of diabetes, of neuropathy, of amputation.
We talked a while as I dealt with his blood glucose, then admitted him to the hospital for a surgeon to evaluate his foot and a hospitalist to control his diabetes. He thanked me for smiling and being kind. We shook hands and laughed before he went upstairs into his diabetic future. He felt better. He felt that someone cared for his situation.
Reform or not, the one thing we can do as physicians is just that. We can be competent and compassionate. We can smile and touch. We can do the right thing as long as government lets us. (Pay attention to that thought: as long as they let us. Store it away, and watch the future unfold.)
I have been told by some that government-run health care would be better than industry-driven health care. I have been told the opposite as well. Each side makes the argument that it will have greater accountability to the sick. Advocates for government suggest that we as citizens can hold them to more rigid standards, can get what we want and need more effectively through the legislative process. Those for the market believe that profit will always do a better job of driving customer satisfaction, efficiency, and lower costs, that profit and shareholder interests will make the market a better choice.
I have an idea about that. The only direct accountability any patient can ultimately exercise is between caregiver and patient. You can argue on the phone for weeks, and never speak to the right person at an insurance company. They can delay and evade for months. You can call your favorite government functionary who works behind a shield of anonymity and distance, guarded by layers of voice-prompts on telephones. None of them is accountable the way we providers are.
And so, we have power. We can do what I did with my diabetic friend. We can touch and smile. We can care. We can do the right thing as much as possible. We can show compassion, live compassion, feel compassion. We entered medicine because we genuinely cared about the sick, the dying, and the broken. Our best hope for the future of medicine is to continue to do the same, or if lost, to rediscover what was driven from our hearts.
Our proximity to the sick is an advantage no one else possesses, and in truth, that no one else desires. Our love for them is the most powerful weapon we have as we try to reform.
I don’t know what the future holds. I hope it holds continued jobs, continued freedom and choice, continued competence in medicine. I hope it involves amazing innovations and improvements in quality of life.
But whatever it holds, good or bad, I do know the way to safeguard our place in the process as physicians, nurses, and other health care providers. The solution for caregivers is, ironically, to give care! If we give care, if we give love and concern, if we give of ourselves to those suffering, we will have far more power than any government functionary or insurance company voice on the phone.
We may have our payments cut, our influence squashed, our opinions silenced. But our compassion will continue to connect us, our love will continue to rebuild the broken and to speak with a thunder no government or corporation can match.
Maybe, in the end, we can reassume control of health care. And why not? We know it better than anyone else; we know the sick better than anyone. We touch them, treat them, listen to them, and even see them leave this life. Those are powerful qualifications for leadership.
But we’ll never have control, ever again, if we give up the one velvet weapon we have, which is love for those charged to our care. For faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. And it’s never more true than in the cathedral of medicine.
Life Principle #2: Give Honest, Sincere Appreciation
Posted on November 4th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Book Reviews, Evil and Suffering, Healing, Love, Parenting, Spiritual Growth, Value, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
I have been struck by the power of affirmation and appreciation. I have also been struck by the destructive power of criticism.
Recently I tried to encourage someone to always find the good, always look for the opportunity to compliment and appreciate, and never complain or criticize. Their response was, “But if you only knew that person, if you only knew how difficult they can be, and how much criticism they deserve.”
This response misses the point completely! It was only when I dropped the contempt and criticisms did I start to see the gifts in the other person. It is only when you look for the appreciation will the critical spirit in YOU fade away.
It is NOT about the other person; it is about YOU. It is about healing YOUR image of yourself, the world around you, and others.
Our marriages and relationships would truly be transformed if we followed Carnegie’s first 2 principles always leading with this one.
“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people…the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loathe to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise… in my wide association in life, meeting with many and great people in various parts of the world… I have yet to find a person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.”-Charles Schwab
“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learned from him.”-Emerson
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie:
- “That is what Schwab did. What do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like to think, they ball out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: “once I did bad and that I heard ever/twice I did good, but that I heard never.”-pg 38
- “I once succumbed to the Fad of fasting and went for six days and nights without eating… I was less hungry at the end of the sixth day than I was at the end of the second. Yet I know, as you know, people who think they had committed a crime if they let their families or employees go for six days without food; but they will let them go for six days, six weeks, and sometimes 60 years without giving them the hearty appreciation that they crave almost as much as they crave food.”-pg 40
- ” When Alfred Lunt, one of the great actors of his time, played the leading role in Reunion in Vienna, he said, “there is nothing I need so much as nourishment for my self-esteem.” We nurish the bodies of our children and friends and employees but how seldom do we nurish their self-esteem? We provide them with roast beef and potatoes to build energy, but we neglect to give them kind words of appreciation that would sing in their memories for years like the music of the morning stars.”-pg 40 one
- “When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95% of our time thinking about ourselves. Now [just imagine], if we [ could] stop thinking about ourselves for awhile and begin to think of the other person’s good points…”-pg 41
- “Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of gratitude on your daily trips. You’ll be surprised how they will set small flames of friendship that will be rose beacons on your next visit.”-pg 42
- “Pamela Dunham of a New Fairfield, Connecticut, had among her responsibilities on her job the supervision of a janitor who was doing a very poor job. The other employees would jeer at him and litter the hallways to show him what a bad job he is doing. It was so bad, productive time was being lost in the shop. Without success, Pam tried various ways to motivate this person. She noticed that occasionally he did a particularly good piece of work. She made a point to praise him for it in front of the other people. Each day the job he did all around got better, and pretty soon he started doing all his work efficiently. Now he does an excellent job and other people give them appreciation and recognition. Honest appreciation got results where criticism and ridicule failed.”-pg 42
- “Hurting people not only does not change them, it is never called for. There is an old saying that I’ve cut out and pasted on my mirror where I cannot help but see it every day: ‘I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not deferring or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.’”-pg 42
- “Let’s cease thinking of our accomplishments, our wants. Let’s try to figure out the other person’s good points.”-pg 43
Sex & Intimacy at Mariners Church
Posted on October 31st, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Healing, Love, Sermons, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
Please enjoy the handouts, audio presentation, and slides. Please share your comments, learnings and feedback with us below.
Sex True False Quiz and Intimacy True False Quiz
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Life Principle #1: Don’t Criticize, Condemn, Complain
Posted on October 27th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Book Reviews, Love, Parenting, Spiritual Growth, Value, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
I continue to revisit a book and audio book that I wish that I had memorized when I was younger: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
Time and time again I have found myself using (or trying to use) his principles in my marriage, parenting, and other relationships.
Recently I have had conversations about affirming and its counter–criticizing your spouse. I have seen and heard about a wife or husband who continually criticizes their spouse. I have been a master at this myself. For the most part, I have made a major effort to STOP completely this process. It is a waste of time, and it turns out to do the opposite of what you want it to. We seem to think that by giving ‘constructive criticism’ the other person will improve, but they don’t. In fact, they seem to do MORE of the actions that we want them to change!
2 things: 1. The more you affirm and not criticize; the MORE likely their behavior will change! 2. Don’t try and change your spouse; just love them the way they are!
Principle #1: Don’t Criticize, Condemn, Complain
- “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.”
- “Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment….B.F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior.”
- “Lincoln…had learned by bitter experience that sharp criticisms and rebukes almost invariably end in futility.”
- “The secret of…Ben Franklin’s…success? ‘I will speak ill of no man…and speak all the good I know of everybody.”
- “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain–and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
- “As Dr. Johnson said: ‘God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days.’ Why should you and I?”
The Top 3 Things That Women Struggle With
Posted on October 22nd, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Love, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
My wife returned the other day from a Beth Moore Bible study group. They listened as Beth Moore told them of her interview results. Beth had interviewed 400 women and asked them what are the top things that they struggled with in their lives.
As told by my wife, they were:
#1. submission. Now when I said, “REALLY?!” My wife clarified that women struggle with not having control over their lives and having to give up control over certain things at work, parenting kids, and in marriage. So I said, “They struggle with the same thing that men do: PRIDE.” We ALL struggle with the fact that we LOVE control but really have very little of it, and we all LOVE ourselves and think mostly of ourselves. Call it a struggle with submission to authority, submission to others or lack of control, but it boils down to pride. We want to be large and in charge.
#2. balance. This again could or should be on the men’s list as well. We all struggle with balance. Finding the time for what is truly important (which often is at the bottom of our to do lists): Wife, Kids, & Relationships. Relationships are HARD work to maintain and to do right. It is often times much easier to just go to work or tune out checking email etc. than to do the work necessary to have a deep, abiding relationship with your wife and kids. Not to mention the struggle that most men have trying to develop truly meaningful relationships with other men.
#3. hormones. This one my wife and I had a GREAT laugh about, but the really sad truth is that men are clueless with their OWN hormones! Yes we have hormones too. They produce anger, jealousy, frustration, lust, etc. I have been told that the ‘window to reality is through our emotions’. We would be much better friends, husbands, etc. if we would embrace our emotions and learn to process them better rather than trying to stuff them down and then using a pop off valve to unleash the pressure–which often looks very ugly. AND, of course, being more in tune with our wives emotions and hormones.
An interview of 32 Southern California women in my wife’s group came up with a different list but equally important for us to consider change :
#1. High Expectations: Denmark is the happiest place on earth. When researchers went to find out why, they found that it was because they had low expectations. Our wealth and materialism has driven us to covet and always believe that the “grass is always greener” when we should be focused on watering our own lawns and counting our many blessings
#2. Beauty/body image: Again interesting and sad. Our obsession with the perfect figures has driven women mad trying to augment everything.
#3. Hormones
Reunion Relationships
Posted on October 16th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Evil and Suffering, Healing, Love, Men on the Path, Parenting, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
It finally happened. They found me. I wasn’t hard to find although I have been missing since I was a little boy. They knew me when I was ‘in my prime’ or so they say. I abandoned them once as I transitioned into a different social group. I was added to their brief email banter just prior to our 20th college reunion.
I am no different than all the rest. Men don’t do relationships well. We lack the gene or we are raised within environments that continue to perpetuate the small talk training, distant/missing father figure woundedness that continues the cycle.
Although my dad and I have been through counseling together (shocking, awkward, and painful–really you should try it) and connected in deeper ways (yes, we even hug, at times!), it still amazes me how quickly we fall into small talk going on and on with the safe, meaningless discussions of the weather as if there is any weather to talk about in Southern California.
My freshman roommate had found my email and folded it into the rest of my dormmates email list to reunite just prior to the reunion. I faded from their lives while I was still in college when I joined a fraternity, and since college, I have faded from my fraternity fellows as well.
Have I learned how to relate. Not much. Do any of us? 2 of my closest friends know when my relationship receptors have maxed out. One of them will even cut our conversation short and say, “I’ll call you later.” (knowing that I have shut down and tuned out). My other friend asks, “Is the turtle’s head out of his shell today or not.” (funny and sad)
Most men really do live alone. Yes we are married with kids, co-workers, and a few buddies, but we are still alone with no one to share our fears and hopes. I can share story after story of men who have told me that they are ‘buddies’ or ‘close friends’ or ‘best friends’ and who are convinced that they know each other well. But with some deeper sharing time, I find that they don’t REALLY know each other at all. This is no fault of their own. It is in our genes and from our environment, our upbringing. We major in the minors of small talk–sports, weather, politics, etc.
If there is anything that I have learned over 20 years, it is simply that I don’t do relationships well.
About 10 years ago, I took a risk and stepped out with my wife and shared with her my final ’skeleton’ in my closet of secrets, and our marriage has been transformed from good to truly amazing.
About 7 years ago, I took a risk and stepped out with a friend of mine and shared some of my deepest hopes and fears, and he didn’t laugh or run away, and our relationship is now one of those unique, transformational relationships: you can turn to in time of crisis, tell ALL, and share ALL.
About 5 years ago, I took a risk and slowly developed another transformational relationship with another friend.
About 3 years ago, I went to counseling during a crisis time in my life. It was awkward, stressful, but important. I learned a great deal about myself, and how I was ‘trained’ to disconnect, never to show emotions or need to be connected. But in a time of crisis, I found the importance of my wife and my friends–thank God that I had developed those deep, intimate relationships! ”Emotions are a window to reality.” At least that is what my counselor told me. I am still working to understand that reality.
Do I know anything about relationships? Not really. But I am so thankful that I took risks. My relationships with my wife and my 2 ‘best friends’ continue to grow—far too slow for them–but for the turtle–they are moving at just the right speed.
Regrets? A few. Learnings? Yes. Hopes? That my friends would take risks, do the hard work, lean into their relationships–in the end–it is ALL that matters, and when the going gets tough (as I have learned it WILL), there is nothing like a friend and a wife who are by your side laughing and crying with you.
Advice. Be more vulnerable, take more sharing risks, take the time to develop your marriage (it is HARD work, and easier to go to work for many of us…but it is worth it–this I DO know.) and find a friend who you can relate to and start to do the tough, awkward work to develop a true relationship.
I am not enough!
Posted on October 15th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Evil and Suffering, Healing, Love, Men on the Path, Parenting, Spiritual Growth, Value, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
I am NOT enough! My eyes have FINALLY been open to this reality. Most of us have this ‘wound’ but we just don’t know it. I have written a brief summary of my learnings to help us all to learn from our past so that we may grow spiritually and emotionally in the future:
“Drew, can you be 1st base coach?” How hard could that be? The player’s are only 5 years old so all I had to do was point them in the direction of 2nd base, say, “great job!”, and my job was done. Or was it? My dad came up to me afterwards and said, “You know that you could have coached them more.” How many times has your mom or dad told you that you could have done a better job at something? Well at 35 years of age, my dad’s comment went on deaf ears until I mentioned it in passing to my wife. She thought his comment was significant, and comments such as those can have a lasting impact especially when you are young. When she said this, I shared with her those times when I was young that my dad would critique one of my school projects, and he would insist that I throw it out and start all over.
More recently, I followed my father-in-law’s advice and bought a new barbeque from the exact same store and arranged the details of the delivery just as he instructed me. I proudly mentioned to him that I had left just the right amount of money on top of the old bbq so the delivery man would willingly take it away when he delivered the new bbq. When I showed off my new bbq to my father-in-law, I couldn’t get the propane tank hooked up to the bbq because my new bbq had a different attachment than my old one. My father-in-law said, “Oh, I always have the delivery man make sure and hook up the propane tank to the bbq before they leave to make sure that it works.” Finally, I recently had the pleasure of trying to pass a kidney stone. Not wanting to miss any work, I arranged to have it extracted during my vacation time. In passing, I mentioned to my retired father-in-law that I had only missed 1 day of work in 11 years. He said, “I missed 1 day of work in 30 years.” Have there been times in your life when your mom and dad have ‘zinged’ you (probably not even knowing that they had)?
Our dad’s (sometimes our mom’s) tell us over and over again as we are growing up—You are NOT enough! In so many subtle and not so subtle ways. This is the wound that so many men (and women) carry with them. It creates a fiercely critical spirit, a chip on our shoulders, and abrasive arguments when anyone tries to give us “constructive criticism”. We become our dad. It was only recently that a friend pointed this “I am not enough” wound out to me. It was life changing to begin to process what it meant, how often I responded to my wife and others because of it, and how to learn and grow from it.
There are many practical ways that knowing about this wound has transformed my life. In the past when I would write an article, I would immediately ask my wife to proof read the article for me. When she would quickly use the red marker to slash and destroy what I thought was an almost perfect article, I would respond in a fury. Now I see that I was only responding to my childhood experiences of not being enough. My wife now knowing my wound has taken it upon herself to help heal my wound. When I ask for her to proof read anything that I have written, she will affirm me, put it aside for at least 24 hours, and then she will slash away with her red marker. It is amazing how quickly I become unattached to my work, and then can handle her critiques and edits much better.
My wife and I have an amazing marriage, but we have our share of arguments. To my surprise, most of our arguments revolve around my “not enough” wound. We argue because I feel that she has told me that “I am not enough”. It can be simply because she told me that I loaded the dishwasher the wrong or that I should drive around the block again so my oldest son will be late to a birthday party because he does better when he is not the only kid there. Yes, believe it or not this can set me off because I feel she is critiquing my driving and my favorite mantra that being early is one of life’s valuable secrets.
Two things have occurred since my “wound” was discovered. Our arguments still occur, but they are much shorter and often end in laughter. A less obvious by-product of my discovery stems from my wife’s repeated comment, “Ok already, I got it. You are not enough. When will it stop being about that!” The wound is now so obvious and so prevelant that we both can laugh about it. I have been healed enough through the process to laugh and with my wife’s encouragement to even tell myself, ‘Get over it!’
Piercing the veil to our hearts
Posted on September 28th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Evil and Suffering, Healing, Love, Men on the Path, Parenting, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
Patient Satisfaction Linked to Expectations
Posted on September 10th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Book Reviews, Healing, Love, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, medicine.
This article in the September 2009 Annals of Emergency Medicine: Patient Satisfaction as a function of Emergency Department Previsit Expectations points out, once again, the importance of interpersonal skills often can be more important than what you know and what skills you have as a physician. I am confident this applies to most occupations.
Books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People can help us to be better husbands, friends, parents, and professionals by focusing on interpersonal skills. I strongly recommend this book.
Judge NOT & love and understand as Jesus would (Matthew 7:1)
Posted on June 29th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Evil and Suffering, Healing, Love, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, medicine.
As I write this I am STILL recovering from the tongue lashing that I got from a patients wife yesterday. We were having a congenial discussion about her spouse (the patient), and as I prepared to write orders and discuss the possible diagnoses, she went OFF. I mentioned that his chronic abdominal cramps may, in the end (IF all the tests continue to come back negative) be entirely from stress. Well she did NOT like that option at ALL. ”Don’t tell me it is stress! It is NOT stress! I KNOW it is not stress. There is something wrong with him. That is what the other doctors said….” She proceeded to sware at me for a good solid 2 minutes which seemed like a lifetime. I was so frustrated and mad! I just finished a great book on how to be a better doctor, and I continue to try and improve my doctor skills. In the book that I had just read, the author spoke about what a disservice doctors have done by just ordering more and more tests without getting at the heart of the matter and just talking with the patient. It is SO frustrating to try to spend the time and show compassion and try and educate the patient to get spit in the face for it. When you see over and over again that the patient is NOT interested in hearing what you have to say then you become hardened and numb and just give them what they want even if it is not necessary or the best treatment option!
After this very stressful situation, I found from the patients primary doctor that his wife has ‘gone off’ on him many times in the past, but that she is a professing Christian. Now I was even more frustrated and angry. I SO wanted to go back in to tell her how angry I am at her behavior. How dare she act like that and claim to worship my precious Savior.
Now this is where the healing, the importance of fellowship, and the lessons were learned comes in. I talked it over with one of my colleagues who is a believer. And he challenged me to not judge her in that way. OUCH!
He said: 1. just think how tough she would be without Christ and most importantly 2. you have never acted that way??? really never??? we are ALL like this at some time in our lives. You MUST consider HER situation. She is frustrated; she is scared; she has been dealing with this without any answers for months….WOW!
Now a day later, I see that God was teaching me a powerful review lesson on forgiveness, understanding, judgment, compassion, love, AND that I MUST continue to strive to love and go against the grain–and communicate with my patients with MORE compassion and understanding!
How simple is the Christian walk of faith?
Posted on June 29th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Evil and Suffering, Love, Men on the Path, Spiritual Growth.
Here is a marvelous quote from 2 Christian missionaries who live in Africa about the Christian walk.
“Loving God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength will take you to the end of yourself, and you will find yourself looking out over a precipice. Only God can keep you from falling. Only faith working through love counts. Let’s never leave the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus. All we know when the pressure becomes great is Jesus and Him crucified. We exist by the power of the Cross, safe and secure.”-Rolland and Heidi
Kingdom Living: Listen & Look for God moments
Posted on June 19th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Apologetics, Love, Sermon Notes, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing.
In Mike Erre’s newest book: Death by Church, he has an important chapter titled: Postures of Incarnation. We need to show the world the incarnation through out actions. We need to prayerfully watch and listen for the God moments–those moments every day where God is nudging us to show his love to others.
“I used to hate interuptions to my ministry until I understood that interruptions were my ministry.”-Henri Nouwen
Sex, Marriage, Intimacy and Screwtape Letters: chapters 18-19
Posted on June 1st, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Love, Sermon Notes, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
The Love Dare (Alex Kendrick)
- Highlight Loc. 42-46 | Added on Sunday, May 24, 2009, 07:03 AM
The Love Dare journey is not a process of trying to change your spouse to be the person you want them to be. You’ve no doubt already discovered that efforts to change your husband or wife have ended in failure and frustration. Rather, this is a journey of exploring and demonstrating genuine love, even when your desire is dry and your motives are low. The truth is, love is a decision and not just a feeling. It is selfless, sacrificial, and transformational. And when love is truly demonstrated as it was intended, your relationship is more likely to change for the better.
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The Love Dare (Alex Kendrick)
- Highlight Loc. 930-35 | Added on Sunday, May 24, 2009, 07:10 AM
Yet this great blessing is also the site of its greatest danger. Someone who knows us this intimately can either love us at depths we never imagined, or can wound us in ways we may never fully recover from. It’s both the fire and the fear of marriage. Which of these are you experiencing the most in your home right now? Are the secrets your spouse knows about you reasons for shame, or reasons for drawing you closer? If your spouse were to answer this same question, would they say you make them feel safe, or scared? If home is not considered a place of safety, you will both be tempted to seek it somewhere else.
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The Love Dare (Alex Kendrick)
- Highlight Loc. 938-47 | Added on Sunday, May 24, 2009, 07:12 AM
The Bible says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). The atmosphere in your marriage should be one of freedom. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, your closeness should only intensify your intimacy. Being “naked” and “not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25) should exist in the same sentence, right in your marriage?physically and emotionally. Admittedly, this is tender territory. Marriage has unloaded another person’s baggage into your life, and yours into theirs. Both of you have reason to feel embarrassed that this much has been revealed about you to another living soul. But this is your opportunity to wrap all this private information about them in the protective embrace of your love, and promise to be the one who can best help him or her deal with it. Some of these secrets may need correcting. Therefore, you can be an agent of healing and repair?not by lecturing, not by criticizing, but by listening in love and offering support. Some of these secrets just need to be accepted. They are part of this person’s make-up and history. And though these issues may not be very pleasant to deal with, they will always require a gentle touch.
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The Love Dare (Alex Kendrick)
- Highlight Loc. 953-55 | Added on Sunday, May 24, 2009, 07:13 AM
(Psalm 139:2?4). And yet God, who knows secrets about us that we even hide from ourselves, loves us at a depth we cannot begin to fathom. How much more should we?as imperfect people?reach out to our spouse in grace and understanding, accepting them for who they are and assuring them that their secrets are safe with us?
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The Love Dare (Alex Kendrick)
- Highlight Loc. 1689-90 | Added on Sunday, May 24, 2009, 07:15 AM
Even its boundaries and restrictions are God’s ways of keeping our sexual experiences at a level far beyond any of those advertised on television or in the movies.
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The Love Dare (Alex Kendrick)
- Highlight Loc. 1699-1701 | Added on Sunday, May 24, 2009, 07:16 AM
This same oneness is a hallmark of every marriage. In the act of romance, we join our hearts to each other in an expression of love that no other form of communication can match. That’s why “the marriage bed is to be undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4). We are not to share this same experience with anyone else.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Men’s Group: Fellowship from Calvary Road, May 13, 2009
Posted on May 11th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Evil and Suffering, Healing, Love, Men on the Path, Sermon Notes, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing, marriage.
The progression of the chapters in Calvary Road is significant. We started with brokenness, then went to confession/cleaning our lives (cups) up so we can fill them with the Holy Spirit, and now we turn to fellowship.
Years ago I kept secrets from my wife, and one day I finally ‘confessed’ and ‘cleaned’ out ALL the skeletons in my closet (cup). It was a scary, crazy, and bold move that kept us up talking until 3am. I was scared of her not forgiving me and not understanding me. She did both.
Shortly after my cup was clean 2 things happened. My marriage went from great to amazing. The comfort in KNOWING that there was nothing to hide freed us up to have a depth and peace and intimacy that I would have never dreamed of.
The second thing that happened is that I learned to share my dirty cup with other men. I found several men who were willing and that I felt save enough with to share my deepest fears and struggles. I talk and meet with these men weekly. This has transformed my relationship with my wife, with Christ, and with everyone around me. A very large weight has been lifted from my soul, and I have a place to run and hide when things get overwhelming.
Hession in chapter 3-The Way of Fellowship outlines the importance of fellowship in shaping our lives and our relationships with our spouses, our friends, and our God.
Through the years, I have continued to try and coach and encourage other men to ‘date’ each other. There is a richness to life that is sorely lacking without this process. But it takes men SO LONG and most NEVER are able or willing to get there.
The only way to do it is by finding a guy that you feel comfortable with and you take a few baby steps by sharing some private struggles or sins. See how they respond, If they respond in kind and with understanding then dig deeper and continue to share more. As you trust more and learn to share more, you will find that your marriage is better, your walk with Christ is deeper, and your life is richer.
Any questions?
Calvary Road, Chapter 3, Fellowship quotes:
But if we have not been brought into vital fellowship with our brother, it is a proof that to that extent we have not been brought into vital fellowship with God
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Sin always involves us in being unreal, pretending, duplicity, window dressing, excusing ourselves and blaming others–and we can do all that as much by our silence as by saying or doing something.
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The only basis for real fellowship with God and man is to live out in the open with both.
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Spurgeon defines it in one of his sermons as “the willingness to know and be known.”
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We must be willing not only to know, but to be known by him for what we really are. That means we are not going to hide our inner selves from those with whom we ought to be in fellowship; we are not going to window dress and put on appearances; nor are we going to whitewash and excuse ourselves. We are going to be honest about ourselves with them. We are willing to give up our spiritual privacy, pocket our pride and risk our reputations for the sake of being open and transparent with our brethren in Christ.
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We have not necessarily got to tell everybody everything about ourselves. The fundamental thing is our attitude of walking in the light, rather than the act. Are we willing to be in the open with our brother–and be so in word when God tells us to?
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When the barriers are down and the masks are off, God has a chance of making us really one. But there is also the added joy of knowing that in such a fellowship we are “safe.”
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Jesus wants you to begin walking in the light with Him in a new way today. Join with one other–your Christian friend, the person you live with, your wife, your husband. Drop the mask.
In the beginning was the Word…
Posted on May 6th, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Apologetics, Healing, Love, Prayer List, Spiritual Growth, Vital Signs of Healing.
John wrote these profound words to start his gospel. Do words have power? Do words have more importance than we realize? John was clearly stating to his audience that Jesus was God and that He was the Word which in Greek is logos (where we get the word logic in English).
I have come across something very interesting and if true, very powerful. If this is true and accurate, it implies that the very fabric of the universe is ‘powered’ by the Word.
There is a man who has played music and taped words written on paper to glasses of water and then photographed the water molecules (scroll down on this website to read an interview of him). The water molecules seem to change after being ’spoken’ to. What is the skeptics response to this? Please share with us if you have any thoughts.
“After seeing water react to different environmental conditions, pollution and music, Mr. Emoto and colleagues decided to see how thoughts and words affected the formation of untreated, distilled, water crystals, using words typed onto paper by a word processor and taped on glass bottles overnight. The same procedure was performed using the names of deceased persons. The waters were then frozen and photographed.”
The image on the left is from the word: LOVE on the water glass. The image on the right is from the words: ‘you make me sick’ on the water glass….hmmm……
The message of Christianity: The Bridge
Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by uberlumen.
Categories: Apologetics, Evil and Suffering, Love, Spiritual Growth, Value, Vital Signs of Healing, you tube clips.
This is a powerful video that illustrates the message of the Cross…you have to watch until the end…