Follow Me There

For those of you awesome readers who went to my new site www.realGodrealpeople.com and clicked the brown follow button in the bottom right hand corner, it didn’t work. I know it didn’t work because several told me they did it but the subscription count never changed. I did it with my email and it didn’t work.

Now it’s fixed and I’ve tested it with several emails.  So feel free to go back and Follow Me there.

I apologize for these little bugs. But if I waited until it was perfect, I never would have gotten the stories published. It’s been several months as it is.  And I see lots of things I want to change.  It will just take time.

As I said come Follow Me There. I would love to have you!

Single Mom Won’t Forget Mother’s Day 2012

The following link is to a story about a 16-year old who got pregnant. She decided to keep the baby and became a single mom.  Her story is one of inspiration and determination.  Read it here at my new site. www.RealGodRealPeople.com, click on Magazine Tab. Or go to this link. Be sure to click the brown Follow Button in the bottom right corner to be notified of other blog posts.

It’s time for a change

Everything changes.  The is true. Everything does change.  So it is with my blog.  You may have noticed for the last few months I’ve not been publishing much.

It’s not because I don’t have anything to write about or that I’m bored with writing. Actually it’s just the opposite. I have lots to write about.

My main passion is writing about real people going through real struggles living real lives connecting with a real and powerful God.  Thus my new site: Real God Real People.com.

I’m committed to publishing stories about ordinary people encountering an extraordinary God.

See, I believe in the power of a story. The Bible is comprised of them.  Real stories about real people. They may have lived thousands of years ago but they were still real people.

Today all around us there are real people who are finding fulfilling and meaningful lives in the midst of their struggles.

The stories in this first issue of Real God Real People are about those going through relationship struggles: a teenager who finds herself pregnant, a woman who has five children by four different fathers and a couple who got a divorce.

What they all have in common is how they came to realize God had hope for their situation.  They came to believe Him and take Him at his word.

These are stories worth telling, stories I hope you will read.

I hope to bring stories like this to you often perhaps in terms of a monthly publication along with a little feature I call Ten Things. These are written by those featured in the stories.  The latest issue includes Ten Things About Sex and Teens, Ten Things About Keeping A Relationship Strong and Ten Things About Marriage.

In addition, I’ll still be writing various blog posts as I have in the past. I’ve also moved the articles from this site to the new one.

Please follow me to the new site and enjoy.

I’d love for you to subscribe there as well. You can do so by clicking the follow button in the bottom right-corner.

Reprogram your life

The old programs tend to run continuously whether I want them to or not. I need the power to flip the switch.

Ever just wish you could reprogram your life? I do, especially when I’ve had a bad day or a series of bad days. Bad days for me include feeling totally unproductive in moving forward with a main goal I have.

I want to reprogram my life because when I have a bad day, I tend to resort to comfort zones that include habits I thought were behind me, broken, forgotten. The deal is a comfort zone habit is one of those things that never really goes away.

It is like a program running on background in my life. It is always there. I might put some new lines of code but somehow the old program will come to life at what seems to me to be totally unexpected times, times when I’m having a bad day or two or three.

What I need is a way to overwrite the old comfort zone program with a totally new one. Problem is, it doesn’t work that way. When the old program rears it’s head, I have to acknowledge it’s up and running again and switch back to the new format.

It sounds easy, right? The flip of a switch? Not so easy when it’s years of programming I am consciously choosing to change. It’s so much easier to just let the old comfort zone program run.

The reality of the situation is this: I can’t flip the switch by myself. I need help. That comes by acknowledging I am powerless over the Comfort Zone, recognizing there is a power greater than myself that can help me and then giving my Comfort Zone programming over to that Greater Power.

I’m thinking about this a lot because of the approach of Resurrection Sunday. Normally on a day-to-day basis I don’t think ponder the cross of Christ, His death, burial and resurrection. I don’t think about the power that it took for Him to come to life after being in the tomb for three days.

In reality that power is available to me and each and every person who has accepted Christ as savior.

Paul said it best, “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you (Rom. 8:11).”’

His power is residing in me. Power to overwrite old programs. Power to flip the switch and allow a new program to run.

“I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised Him from the dead (Phil. 3:10).” I am allowing Him to change my program. What about you?

Clouded thinking

When will I ever see clear sky again? (Photo by Andrew Parker)

Floundering.

Lost in a sea of my own perfections.

Treading water until

The exact right moment

 

When the universe is correctly aligned.

Every is calculation pre-thought.

Every decision re-examined.

No action taken until . . .

 

Absolutely

Nothing

Gets

Done.

And I wonder,

 

Why am I

Getting nowhere?

Don’t Miss Russ Roast 2012

Don’t Miss Russ Roast 2012.

Does frustration equal success?

Frustration can get the best of anyone. But is it the path to success?

Frustration: the act of being frustrated.

Frustrated: disappointed, thrwarted, dissatisfied.

These definitions even frustrate me because they don’t really come near to the reality of the frustration I feel right now.  It is stress oozing out of every pore of my being.

“Frustration, although quite painful at times, is a very positive and essential part of success.” A guy named Bo Bennett said that.  Who is Bo Bennett? Well, he’s a husband, father, martial artist, motivational speaker, amateur comedian, programmer, author and business man. He started his first business at age 10 and since then has sold numerous businesses for anywhere from $1 to $20 million.

So, I’m guessing this guy must know a little bit about success. If frustration is part of it maybe I need to be accepting it rather than finding reasons to try to push it away.

The deal is I’m trying to begin an online magazine.  I have articles written. A photographer has taken pictures. Other pictures have been scanned in. For several months now I’ve been planning and working on this. I know what I want to do and how I want it to look but I just can’t get the pieces to fall into place.

I’ve heard it said that frustration is just veiled anger.  And if that is true, then I think it must be myself I’m angry with.  I’m angry because I am not making this happen by the time frame I wanted it to happen. I’m angry because I have all the pieces but I can’t figure out how the puzzle fits together. I’m angry because I feel stupid and old and frustrated.

I do have to agree with Bo, however.  I’ve learned an awful lot about what doesn’t work and those things I can just check off the list of how to make it work. That must mean I’m closer to a solution.

It makes sense, then, to embrace the frustration and work through it with a fresh start tomorrow.  My daughter tells me older brains work better in the morning.  I guess we’ll see if that is true.

By the way, my definition of frustrated is to have a mental picture of  yourself dressed in a toga, screaming nonsensical syllables at the top of your lungs, running madly down the middle of I-70 pulling your hair out and beating a bass drum.  Just a mental picture, mind you, because if you actually did that you would be called insane. The two words, though,  are extremely close together in my dictionary.