Freedom

“The broken lights were a warning, you got inside my head, I did my best to be guarded, but I was an open book instead.”

 

Those lyrics are the lines to one of my favorite songs. It’s a reminder that in all of life and trouble, there are broken lights on the freeway. You spot them, sometimes at the last moment, but they are there.

Do you remember a time in your life when you saw the warning sign, or perhaps felt the twinge of resistance, yet you forged on instead only to experience a dead end? 

Maybe it was a relationship, or a career, or some other open door you knew you shouldn’t enter. Sometimes it takes years, before you can see clearly.

There are moments when the allure of the path not taken, and the expectation of success, seems exciting, but what if we let go of the expectation in favor of now?

I personally am thankful for the warning lights on the freeway, and even more so when I take the detour. Sometimes it’s a warning in someone else’s life that we need to pay attention to, and at other moments it’s in our own. I don’t like to learn the hard way, but why does it seem as if that’s the way it often is?

A friend said today; “I just want to hang on to my thankfulness. I remember the day I had quarters in my pocket for coffee, and that’s it. I am thankful for even that. Thankful that when I was homeless God brought me through.”

He’d survived a lot, like we all have, and there is joy, and true freedom in that.

Happy Independence weekend, friends.

Crisis management

I was on the phone with a successful entrepreneur who talked about Post traumatic stress disorder after a crisis. “It’s something a lot of people have,” he said, “even if they weren’t in the war.” This man was in Vietnam, and now works with veterans to help them, but he noted that PTSD can be present in someone who had been in a terrible accident, car crash, or abusive childhood. He said it could also be present in someone who witnessed something really bad, and many people would not know they had it.

A crisis is difficult, and sometimes never ending. CS Lewis wrote something to the effect that grief sometimes feels like a neverending circular valley.  Last night at my booksigning at Barnes n Noble, a beautiful girl sat in the crowd, silent. I fielded questions from readers, and tried to search for her in the back of my mind. Who was she? Had I seen her before?

After it was over she waited for the last person in line to leave. ‘I have a personal question,” she said, her eyes filled with tears.

She handed me a long letter, typewritten, that she had prepared just for me. We’d never met, but she was compelled to come. As we talked privately between a stack of books, my heart was filled with compassion for her. She’d lost her corporate job, her car, her apartment, and was at the edge of herself. She’d lost so much, yet here she was this gorgeous healthy woman standing before me, in tears, struggling to see the light. I love what I do and it seems the only way I can be more effective is to write more, to reach a hurting world.

Grief is so individual for each one of us. Can you recognize it in others?

Sometimes I walk by someone and it seems as if they are covered, literally, in a blanket of grief. These are the times when a simple touch, or word, can help turn a life in a positive direction. 

I recall working a commercial airplane crash in Cali Colombia in which everyone on board died except for four passengers. Working there with the families in search of their loved ones who were still on the mountain, it was a challenge to remain cold and closed off from my emotions. I did fine, until one day when a 6 year old boy spit on me, screaming “feo! Malo!” His parents had perished. 

It was a crisis in which many lives were changed.

There was nothing I could say, or do, to change it. I was powerless to do anything, except just be. So I stood there and listened, and at times fumbled for words.

At times we have a crisis that feels like a 10 on the richter scale, and at others they are small cracks in the foundation of our lives. In all of it, God has a plan to sharpen and mold and strengthen. God’s got your back.

How do you handle the crisis in your life? Reach out, as a first step. Take an outstretched hand. Chances are someone around you has been through a valley, to the other side.

Chasing the Oakleys

My brother was in town recently and he told an amusing and poignant story about a time in his life when he chased material things. “I was young,” he explained, “and I was riding a bike through traffic. But my sunglasses fell off, and I slid across the pavement unconcerned with my life, safety, or being crushed by a car. I was reaching out, trying to get the new Oakleys I had purchased. I didn’t want to scratch them!”

His story was funny but also a metaphor for the lives we lead.

How many times do we find ourselves ignoring the risk, and chasing the

Oakleys? 

Of course, it doesn’t have to be about money.

It could be pride, arrogance, a position, a person, or something else we are harboring or idolizing.