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What is true strength?  For the longest time I thought strength was binging in control of your emotions.  Keeping everything enclosed so the world wont see what you are going through.  Putting on a front that says everything is ok and you are fine even when the world knows that things are bad.  I thought being strong was having others not see you struggle in the face of adversity, being solid  like a rock.  But the more I have been thinking, and the more I have watched the men that I consider strong the more flawed this view becomes.  As I sit and watch the men that I want to be it’s not the ones who act like nothing is wrong, it’s not the ones who act like they have it all together that I admire. It’s the ones who will stand in the face of adversity with tears in the eyes and proclaim to all the world that you may beat me down, but I will never give up.  You can throw your best punches, but I will move forward and the more you see the pain and the hurt  on my face the more I will come.  That’s the strength that I want to strive for.

It”s true for me…Is it true for you? 

What drives you?  What makes you “you”.  I know in my life it has always been that driving force to be important.  To have someone say they are better because of me.  That my life made them who they are.  But why?  Why do I need this.  I was talking to a really close friend  a couple weeks ago and she said to me “Greg, when I’m old I want to know i lived life well, with no regrets. I don’t want any do overs…I want to know I made a diffrence.”  This got me thinking, you see this freind and I we have like our own languge.  We have things we say to each other that make people look at us and go “What are they talking about?”  Things we say to each other if we hear the other complaining, things to say just as a pick me up and things just to laugh.  But one of our sayings has to do with regrets, and the truth is, my life is full of them. Moments that I want a redo in, moments that I wish i could take back what I did or said.  I would love to say they are all in the distant past, but the truth is they go all the way up to last night. So how do we get there?  When can we honestly feel good about what we did no matter how the situation might turn out?  I don’t know but I wish I did.  Let me go back a little bit to what I said earlier about wanting to be remember.  All my life I have looked up to people who have been remembered through out history.  People that seem to have that one defining moment in time where everyone looks back and says “That’s how they will be remembered!”  My whole life I have lived for this momemt, lived for a situation to shine where people would say “That’s why he is here, thats what he was called to do!”  But did these situations happend by chance to these people?  Did they set our looking for them? Or did it happen because of who they are, how they lived there life.  Is the big picture of your life one defining moment?  Or is it all the little snap shots that when people look back they see and say “That is who they are because of all of those moments”  Are these people remembered because of that one moment? Or because how they lived their life set them up for that chance, that chance for everyone to see.  Like I said my entire life I have been living for that one moment, when people siil stand up and say one day “That was Greg!”  But I keep letting the little snap shots slip by.  I know this kid that over the last year the two of us have gotten extremly close.  I don’t know how or why, it just happened, I look back and see that in the beginning I wasn’t trying, i wasn’t trying to be someone to this kid, I wasn’t trying to be their hero, I was just being Greg, just loving the crap out of them. They didn’t need me every second of everyday, but they knew where to go when they did need someone. But then the worst thing that could happen, happened.  They told me I was important,  they told me I was their hero.  And ever since then I have forgotten what made our friendship great, I forgot the little things that made us the partners in crime we were.  Every moment I tried to live up to this expectation of what they saw in me, tried to always say the right thing, sound smart, sound deep, tell them how much I loved them whenever I could, Be there all the time and try to fix everything when sometimes they needed to do it on their own.  It didn’t mean I didn’t love them anyless, but I wasn’t letting them grow, I was trying to shelter and fix everything.  But thats not what made us close, not what made us family.  I forgot to laugh with them, and cry with them, joke with them and show my love to them.  I started being everything they didn’t need.  This kid didn’t want me to act like their hero, they just wanted me to be there hero, and the hero was just Greg.  And now, well I don’t know now, I don’t know what I am to this kid anymore, I know I’m not there person I started out to be, I know I changed because I stated to act and try to be someone to them instead of just being Greg. I told you eariler that in my life there are lots of things that I regret, that I want a redo in.  I lied, there is only one.   I want a redo, I want to start over, and I want to be Greg again, to laugh with you and cry with you.  I realized now that I have to work on the little snap shots.  It doesn’t matter who it think I am, or who I want to be.  What matters is how I live my life now, to truly live with no regrets, to trully want no do-overs.

Why do we do it…Let the world tell us who we are to be, how we will act, live…All my life all I have ever wanted to do is make a diffrence, to be something more than just “living”…Some where through the years I stopped believing I could do it…I still have the dream, but not the faith, faith in myself that I have the power for more.  The power to be something to someone…To make a diffrence.  I listen to the lies that are whispered in my ear everynight…and now, now I believe them.  I see myself the way they wanted me to be seen, as broken, unusable, and destined for failure…I love everything about my life, my wife, my family and friends…but somewhere I started to believe the lies he told me that they don’t love me…That their love is only based on how much i suscessed…how important I become…On what I do in this world.  Instead of waking up everyday and enjoying another day God has given me, I look at it as a task…as simply I made it through yesterday, what can I do today that will prove myself to everyone I love, prove myself to me. And when I fall, I fall hard and I fall far…How could I not, look at how high i have set the unreachable bar for myself, and whats worse is everytime I fall, I move the bar higher so I can try to make it right, to do extra to prove myself…I just fell hard early this week and I put the Bar back up yesterday…It looks even higher.

 

Sometimes God uses trials not so we can prove our faith to him, But so he can show his faith to us.

I think Lauren and I just had a similar conversation

I’m Sorry

So if there is anyone out there who reads this and looks around the site at all you may have noticed that I am training for a half marathon.  We have just started week 3 and I have to tell you…I AM LOVING IT!  I have always ran but never really enjoyed it or looked forward to doing it…That is until now.  I am running this race in August with two of my favorite people, My Beautiful Amazing Wife and a girl in our youth group who is well pretty much a member of our family. Her name is Kailey.  These two have been doing amazing. First off Lauren hates running more than anything in the world but has been pushing her self so hard that she has just been flat out destroying all of my expectations for her.  And Kailey, well I am pretty sure by August she will be running times that blow mine away. Her desire makes her run harder and harder everyday.  But the thing is the two of them have made me better. Because of them I’ve been running some of my best times ever.  It’s getting to the point where I see there times and am nervous.  It’s been amazing, everyone knows my love of physical activity and just to be able to have the chance to share this with my wife and Kailey has been so special to me. I just sit around waiting for the email with the times to see how much better they did today then yesterday.  I hope this is just the start, and I’m looking forward to where this takes us.

Hey, judging from the way you were acting last night, I know you must be super stressed and worried about Monday.  You don’t have to read this now, but please find some time to before Monday.  I looked up some verses that I thought might help:
 
Matthew 6:34 (NLT) So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.
 
Hebrews 13:5b (NLT) …For God has said, “I will never fail you, I will never abandon you.”
 
Phillipians 4:6 (NLT) Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”
 
1 Peter 5:7 (NIV) Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.  (NLT) Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.
 
Psalm 25:12 (NLT) Who are those who fear the Lord?  He will show them the path they should choose.
 
Psalm 33:18 (NLT) But the Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love.
 
Psalm 34:4 (NLT) I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.  He freed me from all my fears.
 
1 Chronicles 5:20a (NLT) They cried out to God during the battle, and he answered their prayer because they trusted in him.
 
Pslam 9:10 (NLT) Those who know your name trust in you, for you, O Lord, do not abandon those who search for you.
 
And the best for last…
1 Chronicles 22:13 (NLT) For you will be successful if you carefully obey the decrees and regulations that the Lord gave to Israel through Moses. Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or lose heart!