Leaving Today

It's Friday and I will be flying out to Tampa at 4 p.m. this afternoon. Estimated arrival time is 6 p.m. As I had said, the wonderful (wonderful, wonderful) people who made this happen will be hosting me along with five others on the plane as we head toward Super Bowl territory. For the sake of their privacy, I will not disclose their names until I get permission, and I will be asking for that this weekend. If they grant it, I will let you know.

I'm nervous. Nervous, can you believe it? I've been a mess since Wednesday, and the game isn't played until Sunday. Great for my stomach, let me tell you. We Steeler fans all get nervous before a game. It's like seeing your sons go onto the field. We're all family, and if you're a Pitt native you know what I'm talking about. It's a Burgh thing.

If you look at the picture of Raymond James Stadium here, I believe we will be sitting in the middle section just under that balcony. They're called Club Seats. If those indeed are the seats I have, as I checked ont eh Super Bowl ticket prices they start at $4500 apiece. Either we will be there or in some luxury boxes, and I can't even begin to tell you the price of those. I told them I don't care if I'm on the upper lip of the whole place. Just being there is going to be stunning.

I keep thinking about this roller coaster ride I've been taking in the past year. 2008 was a horrible year for me physically. In fact, it seems like it was a bad dream - a nightmare, in fact. My back felt like glass was embedded in it. Depression set in. I was fatigued most of the time to the point that even a phone call seemed like climbing a mountain. Hardly any of my spiritual mentors showed any concern at all, and I felt lost. And I thought, why are things so bad for me?

Yet here in 2009 I get a chance few other people in this world enjoy - I get to go to the Super bowl and watch my hometown team play. More that that, my boy Nicholas is getting married to a wonderful girl on May 9th. My wife Jill is enjoying better health and overcoming her fatigue week by week. Peter is growing in responsibility and has shown true grit through personal setbacks. Julianne, of course, is the light in the household. My back is almost healed and I can sit through a full church service. And I wonder, why have I got it so good?

I look at the Scripture (Mt. 5:45) and see that God brings in blessings to everyone and is impartial in his overall goodness, because He "causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

He knows my future and He brings gentle testings for my strengthening, and things I cannot understand at the moment. Yet as I walk through those dark valleys I must admit that God has a purpose and His ways are far beyong man's intellect; indeed "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." as it says in Psalm 139:6.

Highs and lows in life. God has His watchful eye over all of it, and I must say that I am far beyond dissecting it for cerebral discourse, but I'm also continually amazed at how it all comes together time and time again.

Super Bowl

I will finish my story later. I cannot believe I am writing this, but through the generosity of some very very very fine people, I will be going to the Super Bowl this Sunday. I will be flying out on Friday... wow, this has knocked me over. I will give details tomorrow and I will do my best to blog what has happened at the Super Bowl and the festivities on this site.

This is stunning. I'm going to see my Steelers play.

At the Super Bowl.

Superhero Convention

I am going to tell you the absolute truth.

Not that I've filled this blogs with lies, mind you, but this one is going to be hard for anyone to swallow, but I swear it is true, down to every detail.

I wanted to be a superhero. More than that. I actually tried to organize a superhero convention. I was in second grade at the time.

I better explain...

These were the dynamic TV years of the George Reeves Superman, Green Hornet, but especially the Mt. Everest of all crusaders: Batman.

Oh, how we loved Batman. Every kid in Dallastown Elementary loved Batman. And Robin, of course. The TV show was the talk of the school. Playground time was all Caped Crusader stuff.

Add to this the fact that my dad bought us kids two crates - crates, mind you - of comic books ranging from early Iron Man, Spiderman, Aqua Man (I didn't really like him), Silver Surfer, Hulk, and others, and you could see I was a mess.

I would sit and read the old DC and Marvel comics and just hope against hope that I could be a superhero. We would, of course, gather into neighborhood superhero groups of our own in the gravel lot near our home with our own custom-made names and powers: FleetFoot, Inferno, Ultra Boy, and even Glasses Man (I found an old pair of plastic lens-less glasses and figured they were good for laser beams. I was short on creativity that day, okay?) We had come upon a set of old capes from a defunct high school band and we were set. Every day - and I do mean every day - we were running the lawns of the little town, defying imaginary hoodlums who all wore pork-pie hats and masks. I never could figure out why they would stereotype themselves that way, but that was their business, not mine.

But I wanted to take it step further. I knew the world had superheroes lurking around, waiting to get organized. They just needed a leader. And I, a knowledgeable second grader, would be the one to band them together...and the International Headquarters would be in Dallastown, Pennsylvania... and I was absolutely serious about all this...

Love to Write

My writing assignments have been picking up considerably, and as much in the secular world as in the Christian realm. It has been amazing.

Among the assignments in my docket:

- setting up the content for a web page and e-book for a West Coast online website corporation

- writing a fiction novel based on the life of a retired DEA agent

- editing an e-book on the tournament preparation for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

- writing and editing a book for a Canadian e-company

- writing press releases and bios for the Ice Bears hockey team

- writing sports reports for the local pro basketball team

- getting back to my old radio days: writing copy and providing voice talent for a California website company

- writing articles and mini-bios for a new Christian e-magazine

- finishing up a proposal for a parents' book for Focus on the Family

The best way I can describe what is happening is the slow realization of Psalm 37:4 - "Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart. "

Few things in life I love doing more than writing. To turn a phrase spoken by Eric Liddell in the movie Chariots of Fire, when I write I feel God's pleasure. I know this is what He has for me, and I cannot get enough of it. I feel His movement as I work, whether it's a devotional from the book of Isaiah or a press release for the hockey team. Wow, this is good stuff, and it's one of the ways I feel God pats me on the back.

Snow Day

There's a blanket of snow covering the ground here in east Tennessee, and in our subdivision a layer of ice has added a tricky dimension to the driving conditions. Tan Rara subdivision is on a series of hills, so I am stuck. I can't make it up the first hill, so I am writing this from home. Ah, but it's beautiful though. Our yards are gorgeous.


I'm looking at the first hill coming down to our neighborhood and the thought strikes me that this would be the ideal hill for sledding. I admit that the logistical problem in this is at the bottom of the sledding course is a 4,000 square foot house that would pancake the face of any participant, but let's not get picky, okay? The course is smooth and about 100 feet long. It reminds me of my elementary school days back in Dallastown PA.



Snow came plentiful in those days, and as a child I remember every winter we would have at least two or three snow days that would cancel out the misery of classroom work for an entire day, as close to euphoria as a kid can get. The large brick schoolhouse hadn't been upgraded since the war effort, and I can still recall the sloping wooden floors and huge blackboards with a tray full of chalkdust in every room. A day to get out of that environment? Yee hah.

Near the school there was a long, long gently sloping road that curves towards - well, I don't know where because I don't think any kid made it all the way down to the bottom alive. We were all bundled with scarves, ski caps, boots and thick corduroy-type coats, toting our wooden sleds with strong red or blue-colored runners. For some reason I recall that there were no girls around at all - this was an all-male event, so you will clearly understand that no boy wore mittens - gloves only. Showing up with mittens would have been fatal.

We'd hit that slope and shoot down that long slide to the cheers of other boys who were not encouraging our success, but actually rooting for a seriously good crash into someon'e's mailbox or curb. It happened. More than once I flipped the sled end over end and once hit a dry patch of road, which shot me free of the sled and cartwheeling down the road. The boys applauded with gloves. Thud thud thud.

I remember the sheer joy of the clean white snow and the quiet crunch underneath your galoshes or boots. The world seems quieter. Moms were home whipping up some hot chocolate, and dads coasted back from work with a smile on their face as we would all pretend we were in for a blizzard, so we'd better have a healthy fire and an extra dessert.

Wow, I loved everything about snow.

So when I came across Isaiah 1:18 om the Bible and saw that God promised the results of my trust in Him was to have a heart white as snow... man, He hit the soft spot of my soul.

I was in my teen years when I found this passage. I was a rotten kid. I had realized the messy life I was living and the chaotic plans I selfishly made were jumbled without reason. There was no rhythm or sense to my plans or my morality. That's why Isaiah's passage struck me, and at the age of seventeen, I made a serious decision about following Jesus. And here's the kicker: my life started opening up like snow days.

Spills, yes. But also joy. Real joy.

Enkrates in action

The post-flu exhaustion had hit our family and we're holed up in the house this morning, unable to go to church because of the lingering effects of the many sicknesses we've picked up. It's good to say that the flu itself is not raging in us, but the final strains of the weeks-long ailment are trying to hang on: headaches, fatigue, sore throats, and watery eyes.

Wow, new weeks and months coming and it's time to prepare for them, now that our strength is retuning. Nicholas and Alexis will be married on May 9th here in Knoxville, and Jill and I are doing our homework on the rehearsal dinner and stuff. My writing assignments have ben coming in from all over the country, from a web corporation in California to a Toronto electronic firm to - believe it or not - a martial arts publication firm in North Carolina. Plus, I have signed on in writing articles for a new webzine out of the Midwest and am waiting back to hear from a book publisher and a television company needing content writers.

So much more to tell you, and here's the balance I must strike ...the need to be a responsible go-getter and bring in the necessary income to take care of the bills, along with the reliance on God to help us see Him work. Faith and works go hand in hand in real life... this is not a course in semantics. I trust in God and yet I don't sit back and expect Him to bring Publishers' Clearinghouse to my doorstep.

One answer I get is from the book of Galatians in the fifth chapter... "the fruit of the Spirit is self-control..." The other fruits I can understand: kindness, goodness, peace... I can understand how I'm supposed to act, and not smash someone in the mouth for taking my parking spot or threatening my kids. Okay, I see those. But self-control goes much deeper, especially in the context of my life right now. In the Greek it is the word enkrates and it comes into play very clearly here. The word literally means to have dominion over oneself, or "to hold oneself in." (I kind of picture someone who holds his breath.)

As I take steps to see the Lord's working in this coming year - and it seems very clearly that He is moving in ways I can see - that I "hold myself in" and take care to get a deep breath and step back whenever I want to run ahead and do things my way. I want to tithe on every assignment payment that comes in. I will reject any job offer that would compromise my testimony for Jesus Christ. I want to be fair and not overcharge and yet be realistic and not undercharge, either.. hey, we've got bills to pay. You see the balance that the Christian needs?

Jesus has been kindly leading us, and man, does that take so much stress off of me. I want to be sensible and remain open to His authority as he takes us down a new and exciting career path.

On the Court

I think one of the last things I would have ever predicted as part of my career would be that of a sports columnist. But here I am, now writing for my second professional sports team. The American Basketball Association has placed a franchise here in Knoxville and the Glisson family, owners of the Thunderbolts, have taken me into the fold as a writer for the fledgling team. I am still a freelance writer, but this is part of my work.

Man, is this ever enjoyable. I get to run across town - often with my family in tow - and watch basketball and ice hockey (my other reporting assignment with the Ice Bears), reporting on whatever scenario I want to highlight.

The ABA has a freshness about it that I like. Everybody is friendly, and you can't help but get caught up in the "let's do it" attitude. They're small and they know it; the humility is a nice change from the major leagues. The Glissons have a perpetual optimistic approach to the future, and I am deeply impressed that this Christian family has sunk tons of money into mission work across the world.

What a new avenue for me. What fun.

Spelling Bee

When I was in the sixth grade at Hershey Middle School, I was the typical geeky kid with a big head, goofy teeth and a subpar athletic ability.

Well, come to think of it, maybe I wasn't typical. I don't remember many kids with heads as large as mine. To this day I still can't wear a decent hat without my wife shaking her head in mock sadness.

But I digress.

I was a doofus of a kid, making it by in classes and being ignored mostly by the Inner Sanctum of cool kids. Especially the girls.

That is, until I won the school spelling bee.

Yeah, baby.

That was grand. The school held the whole event in a community center theater (Could anything be more cool? Could anything be more intimidating?) and lined us kids up in rows at the front of the auditorium. One by one we went through the agonizing process of taking on words that suddenly became enemies. We had to take them on in the public field of battle.

And, for once, I won.

I can remember my last word for the win: "commercial."

Oooooooh, man. What a feeling. I finally won something.

I remember standing next to the second place winner, whose name I only remember as "Dave", alongside the principal of the school, a kindly bald man who always wore bow-ties (He wore a red and green polka-dotted one for Christmas, which gave us schoolkids no end of delight) . I won a Roget's Thesaurus, which took me about five years to understand what it was to be used for. Never mind that, though. I won.

I entered into the realms of celebrity-hood. Kids waved to me in the hall. Teachers patted me on the back and smiled. Even the lunch lady congratulated me and called me by name.

The Beautiful Kids asked me into their group.

But after a flighty day of head-rushing excitement, I soon came to the realization. I was not as smart as I was made to look. I couldn't even fool myself. I hit a good run of words that were within my capabilities, and I didn't freeze on stage. That was it. A week later in the State Spelling Bee first round, I realized how stupid I really was.

I came to discover - as we all do sometime in our lives, many times more than once - that I was not the invulnerable, independent superior being I'd like to think I was. I just received a big batch of grace. I realized that it was not my prowess, but by the grace of God I won. There were numerous kids smarter than me. And I realized something else, as the flock of cooler kids came by to absorb me into their Winner's Circle.

I didn't want to be with them.

I found out that God drops occasions of grace into our laps to encourage and sustain us, and to brighten our walk once in awhile.

What I won was not by my superhuman merit. It was by effort, yes, but also - I believe truly - a time for God to give me a nice gift I hadn't expected.

It was a small lesson, but a worthwhile one. And a nice diversion from Grammar, which I hated.

This goodness from God was one of the small directional signals that led me to see how He really was, and that path eventually led me to salvation.



Gen. 49:25 - "From the God of your father who helps you, And by the Almighty who blesses you {With} blessings of heaven above..."

Baritone Thoughts

When I entered the second grade, my dad encouraged us all to find an instrument to play. After all, since he was the local high school band director, it would seem right for his up-and-coming charges to have some experience in the aesthetic tools of the trade, right?

Gwen chose a glochenspeil ( some people call them the "bells" - sort of like a portable xylophone), and Brent went for the French horn.

For some reason I cannot fathom - it may be because it was the only other instrument sitting around the house - I chose the baritone. The baritone. That piece of metal was bigger than me.

I immediately hated it.

I could get the notes down fairly well, but I couldn't keep up with the pressure of staying in tempo with others (probably a foreshadowing of my ill-spent youth) when we played in band. I got bored of daily practice. The thing gunked up too much. But worse, the baritone is the school bus rider's nightmare. Shoving and pulling that thing onto the bus was an embarrassing and frustrating tribulation. I detested taking that thing to school. Why couldn't I have chosen a trumpet? Or a harmonica? A kazoo? I'm amazed I didn't need professional counseling.

Well, I hung on with that thing through the fourth grade, sliding into fourth chair (out of four) and not caring that I was probably shaming my dad into exile.

But here's the weirdest thing: when our teacher asked for talent entries for our classroom Christmas party, I volunteered. Again, my actions were inexplicable.

I couldn't even read music, let alone get a good note out. Nevertheless, I thought I could wing a rendition of Silent Night - by pure talent alone. I am not making this up. I had the answer: I would pray.

I thought God would give me the talent. That's the truth. I practiced not a lick, but the night before the party, I forced Brent to pray with me that God would give me the ability to pull off a stunning performance and be proclaimed God's virtuoso at Dallastown Elementary School.

Well, it didn;'t happen. Silent Night takes like, how long, two minutes to play? ... if you know what you are doing. It took me longer than ten. Don't get me wrong - the class loved it. Wouldn't you, a low-self-esteem-suffering kid with huge ears and clod feet love to see one of your classmates go down in flames? I was a hero and a goat at the same time.

Prayer became more clear to me after that. I learned - and this is the truth - that God is not the end product of a magician's trick. He's not to be pulled out of a hat for self-fulfillment. He wants to talk with us, not be yelled at or commanded about. Yet some people still feel like I did in that baritone recital - God is a switch to be turned on and off.

Yet there is so much to prayer, and God does invite us...

Jeremiah 29:12 - "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. "

We'll talk more about praying to God in the next couple of weeks.

Forgiveness

I don't want to give anybody the impression that I was a sweet angelic kid who was an undeserving victim of daily trials, that my childhood was filled with abusive attacks around every corner, or that I was some Oliver Twist with an unknowing and innocent life of smiles and tears as I suffered each step of the way.

I was bad at times. Really, I was downright rotten. In fact, I can now relate this story since it's been so many years:

When I was a second-grade student at the Dallastown PA elementary school, I had actually conned kids into thinking that we were creating a basement railroad city in our little home. I had just come back from a summer family retreat to see Roadside America, a huge model railroad city of tiny trains and miniature houses. I was enthralled by the scenery, and I carried the whole vision back to Dallastown, and openly lied to the little schoolyard gang that my dad and I were laying out the mountains, streets and tunnels in preparation for a whole line of railroad trains.

Here's the kicker: anyone who wanted to come and be an engineer in our soon-to-be railroad city could earn a pass by helping us pay for the completion of the village.

That's right - I was a con man in the second grade. I had kids handing me nickels and dimes and even an occasional quarter in the hopes that they might sit alongside me and direct a Sante Fe freight line around the countryside.

Man, Ponzi schemes had nothing on me.

I cannot believe I did this. I am still ashamed of what I did.

Even worse, I was a pretty fair shoplifter, and I can now count on my hands the things that I pilfered from stores or other places as I went through childhood. I don't need to line-item them; what good would that do?

I do remember, however, going into a local supermarket and scouting out the Brach's candy display - you remember the one that had an "honor system" bucket, where you threw a nickel in and took a piece to taste for yourself right there? Well, not only did I grab a bag and start loading pieces of candy as if I were taking samples ( I might steal two pounds or more) but I also would steal the money out of the Honor Bucket.

And that was just my childhood. How could God find any good in a wretched kid like myself?

As a teen I had heard a clear message about salvation but I had serious reservations about whether God could forgive a person like me. There were, of course, even worse things. Could this Jesus forgive the things I had done?

Yet there it was, again and again in the Bible: Jesus took seriously the people who seriously sought Him and followed Him...

"...to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’" Acts 26:18

Getting to Know Great People

I've always made it a habit to find a great person and try to get to converse with them and listen as long as possible. It's been a lifelong habit of mine. Note, please, that I didn't say a celebrity or the most vocal or even necessarily the leader of the room.

No, it's finding someone who has a character, talent, or history that would be important (or fascinating) to learn. Doing this has led me to sit at the table with a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, a man who was buried alive, parents whose life and love was in the loving adoption of international babies, a personal bodyguard to the great General MacArthur, the pastor of a miniscule South Dakota church who adored his people... the list goes on.

I just like to get to know these people.

This take me back to my Boy Scout days. My brothers Bruce and Brent were Scouts in leadership in good ol' Troop 65 of Hershey PA, one of the great troops in BSA history. There are so many stories I could share of hiking through the Appalachians, camping in subzero weather, getting caught in a downpour in Gettysburg... but I want you to know why I loved the troop so much. Why all of us - boys and parents - loved the troop so much.

It was the Scoutmaster, Don Stevens.

The man was a father figure and yet a willing fall guy for a prank. He would discipline fairly and yet he would encourage guys like nobody else I'd seen. After my dad left our family, I saw Mr. Stevens as a caring and fair leader who kept us post-divorce boys in good spirits and in hard training.

Once, in a misunderstanding, he shouted at me in front of the entire troop, chastising me for something of which I was completely innocent. As a new Scout and a green Tenderfoot, i went back to my tent and sobbed in solitude. Within minutes, as soon as he had been told the truth, Mr. Stevens came in and sincerely apologized. "Boy, did I mess this up," he said. "Would you forgiveme, brad?" I was stunned. A man of his stature, asking me for forgiveness? I wasn't even 12 years old! I, of course, accepted the apology, and then he did something I will always remember: he took me in front of the troop and reasoning that "since he made the shouting public, he'd make the apology public," He addressed all the boys.

I don't know if Mr. Stevens is alive today. I hav searched and cannot locate him in pennsylvania. What I do know is that this Christian man did more than talk the way of Christ - he showed it in fair and caring leadership.

I wanted to get to know this fine man at each and every campout or Scout meeting.

In Phillippians 3:10 I see the same desire by Paul:

That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

Just as much as I loved the troop and the camping, firebuilding and merit badge-earning, my biggest kick was in getting to be under the tutelage and care of a great man. I learned principles in leadership that I still use as a teacher today. Paul is in the same mindset. He loves the people of the church and the organization of the ecclesia, but the whole foundation is to know Jesus. That's Paul's obsession. And int eh Chrsitian walk, it's mine as well.



The excellent Bible resource of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown says "To know HIM is more than merely to know a doctrine about Him." In other words, it is Jesus we want to know, not the trappings of the church. My goal is to read the Bible through by Easter break. In it, I want to see Jesus from the first words of the Scripture all the way through to the Apocalypse. That's my goal.