Tag: live with hope

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Jiggle the Handle

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
~Napoleon Hill


Sunday dinner in the South is as sacred a sanctuary as church itself.  So to reject an invitation to the feasting festivities is next to turning your back on the Lord himself.  So when a good friend of mine invited to me dinner after church, I had no option but to attend.

Her father is a retired minister.  So like most preachers most everything spoken even at Sunday dinner is on the surface one thing but underneath a neatly wrapped life lessons if you peel the context back like skin on the potatoes.

On this particular Sunday in the South, I heard the story of a locked door. The story was more or less of a door that perpetually seemed to be unlocked despite his instance that he locked the door upon leaving.

In his deep, smooth Elvis style voice, he recounted going to the door, turning the lock, checking the handle.  Returning the next day just to find the door unlocked.   So the following night he turned the lock, checked the handle, turned out the lights.  Next morning, found the door unlocked.

Finally, he decided he was going to solve the mystery of the rebellious door.

So he turned the lock, checked the handle and heard a “pop” as the door unlocked.  Somewhere over a second serving of BBQ the man called Papa said “sometimes you just got to jiggle the handle.”

While it may have been a simple story of a stubborn door, the meaning was not missed.

There are so many seasons we pray for God to “open doors” for us.  We plead and pray and ask God to open the door.  Maybe God has all along presented us with closed doors and just asked us to “jiggle the handle”.

Discouragement often comes disguised in a door that is closed.  Dreams are dashed at the doorway of closed off opportunities.  Callings cease at the appearance of a sealed off passageway. 

Which makes me think there are moments God sits on this throne and face palms thinking “I put you in front of the door just jiggle the handle”.

God lays out a sampling of door handle jiggling moments in scripture.  Moses had to put the staff in the sea to see the waters part.  The priests put their toes in the water before the Jordan swung open.  Countless miracles were completed by Jesus when the one receiving the work of grace put a little work in. 

Sometimes God puts us in front of the door and asks us to “jiggle the handle”. The job application does not fill itself out.  But an opportunity may open with a phone call. Even if the book does  magically get filled with words, a publisher will never see it until you pitch it.  Sometimes your big break is opened with a simple jiggle of a handle you presumed was locked.

Opportunity does not always knock.  And there are days we don’t create the door.  Some days God presents an opportunity in the form of a door that seems locked.  In faith you check the handle to see if it is the door God has presented you to walk through. 

As was the wisdom handed to me over some Southern slaw “sometimes you just got to jiggle the handle.”

What opportunity door handle do you need to jiggle?

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Your "their"

If you want to run fast run alone, 
if you want to run far,
run together.
African Proverb


By no means do I consider myself a professional runner.  I am a guy who runs.  Mostly trying to out run age and extra weight I find in the bottom of bag of Chex Mix.  But I have run enough to find this African proverb to testify to truth.

Most times I run alone.  There is a little voice in my earbud that every 5 minutes tells me how far and how fast I am going.  Which triggers another voice in my head telling me to run faster.  In my runs alone like this, there is no pace partner.  It is me willing myself faster.

This a terrible way to run if you want to run long distances. Trust me.  Because by about mile 4 of a 5 mile run, it feels like someone poured gasoline on my lungs then light a match.  Running alone will might be fast, but it won’t get me far.

As I turned the corner of mile 3 yesterday in my unwitting lonely sprint, this thought it me.  It is the “their” in our lives that take us where we need to go.

There is story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man in the bible.  Not an odd occurence in the bible. Jesus healed lots of people in the bible and stil does.  But there is one particular story that stands out.

It’s a fairly famous Jesus story.  Jesus is on his teaching tour going from house to market to boat to synagogue dropping truth and love on people.  Along that road Jesus had a packed house, literally packed a house with people to hear him deliver the message of the Father.

The house was sold out.  In fact five friends were so desperate to get to Jesus they went topside to get to him.  This was the first Wrigley Rooftop experience.  These four friends dug through the thatch and lowered the fifth man who was paralyzed down in front of Jesus and the packed place.

As the mat with the man comes into view of Jesus his vision shifts to the friends.  He looks back to the man.  He tells the man, “Son your sins are forgiven.”  Jesus forgiving sins I get, but it’s how the forgiveness came about that hurts my head.

The passage in Mark says “when Jesus saw THEIR faith…” Hold the proverbial phone one second.  This man was forgiven and healed from not just his faith, but the faith of his friends.  

While it throws itself against my run alone persona, it presses my need for a “their”.   

We need the faith of the “their” when our faith fades.  We need the prayers of the “their” when we lack words.  We need to encouragement of the “their” we struggle to encourage ourself in the Lord.  God designed us to run in a “THEIR” and not alone.

Which leads me to Moses.  Moses stands head and shoulders above many of the men littered in scripture.  He stared into the face of fire to find the voice of God.  He stood up to the king of the world to set slaves free.  He stuck a stick in the sea and saw waters part.  We picture Moses standing alone, white hair whisking in the wind, chest puffed out with the strength of Yahweh.

But even Moses, the man of God, had a THEIR.  In one of the first fights of the newly freed Hebrews, God ordered Moses to stand on the hill and hold up his hands.  As long as his hands were up Gods people won.  When his hands dropped, the Israelites were pushed back.  

Finally some THIERS finished the fight.  Aaron, Moses brother and a man named Hur held up the hands of Moses until the war was won.

I have been guilty too often of running alone.  The THEIR of my life is there to hold up my hands and lower me down to Jesus.  When we fail to run with a THEIR, we may run fast, but we won’t run far.  

Run with your THEIR and you’ll get there.

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Those 4 Words

I may never understand
That my broken heart is a part of your plan
When I try to pray
All I’ve got is hurt and these four words
Hilary Scott, Thy Will

I am just going to say it…I may be the worst patient on the planet. My minor boo-boo is drastically larger than your gaping wound. I know I am a big baby.  But I will own it.  

I have those days where the hurt of my life is more than anything anyone has ever experienced. My knee scrape is bigger than your cancer.   

I hate to hurt.  

In truth, we all run from the pain.

We struggle even more to understand how hurt is part of God’s plan of healing. 

God has a way of dragging me from my place of self pity to his classroom called life.  The father takes me to the Garden of my life   and puts me on my knees. He reminds me that my troubles and hurts are fleeting compared to the weight of the Gethsemane where Jesus kneeled. 

In his most pressing moment, Jesus, knees bent and heart laid bear, blood dropped from his brow, he wrestled the weight of the will of his Father. Jesus prayed the most dangerous and securest prayer he could pray.  Four words that changed his life and changed history: “your will be done”.

The danger lies in living out the will of the Father.  The security lies in…living out the will of the Father.

God plans takes us up mountains of faith and down roads of trust and even across seas of sinking hearts. In most moments we fail to understand how hurt and heartbreak can be in the mix of the plan of a loving Father.

Yet in perspective the cross was the cup that gave me life.  Jesus’pain was price paid to bring me healing.   It’s most often in our moments of hurt that the Father reveals the greater purpose in his will.

As much as I want to understand   the bitter taste of cup before me, it’s often in looking back I see his plan was there all along.

So while hurt may be on the menu, his will is the best place dine.

“O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

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Life is full of darkness. Come into the light.

And I’ll find strength in pain

And I will change my ways

I’ll know my name as it’s called again

~The Cave, Marcus Mumford

“It’s empty in the valley of your heart.” Philosopher and poet Marcus Mumford penned these words. Little did the lead man of the band Mumford and Sons know he was summing up so much of my story.

My primary residence for much of my life has been a cave, a cavern absent of light. It was decorated with picture perfect moments of shame and Polaroid snapshots of disappointment. It is made cozy and comfortable by the fear failing. It is neatly kept tidy by the nervous belief that I was never enough.

I have held the same emotional address since I was a boy. Occasionally visiting the land of light just return home to the well worn space in the dark. It is an interesting thing that when all you know is darkness you have a fear of light. But light was the longing and light was the enemy.

Shame shackled me to the lie that life had to always be this way because it seemingly has always been this way. So rather run to the life giving source of radiant rays that break into the mouth of the cave I would retreat from them. The sources of shame echo off the deep cavern walls reminding me of the image I saw of myself. An image that could never be worth loving, worthy of success, worth more of life than what was currently being offered to me. It was life where the little bit offered was enough. Not because it was enough but mostly because I failed to believe that I was.

You may ask yourself “how do you become cave dweller?”

It is quite simple, you quit risking being seen. Cave dwellers live everyday normal lives. They attend church, jobs, and school functions like everyone else. They marry and raise kids. While the physical exterior is on display, who they truly are stays hidden in the cave. It is not a physical facility for the body, but an emotional prison for the heart.

Cave living is quite simply not letting the world see your true self because the fear of exposure tells you no one will love you, accept you and give you what you need.

It is a true paradox. I would remain hidden while my greatest desire was to be seen. I would remain lonely while all I wanted was to be loved. I stayed in the shadows of pain instead stepping into the light to find healing.

It said of Adam before taking the forbidden fruit of the garden he was naked and unashamed. He lived in the open, seen by Eve, the animals and God. The moment he takes the fruit that God forbid shame enters the story.

What no one tells you about darkness of shame is that numbs you to the light. The cave becomes a place where feeling are negotiable. You shut down the feelings of hurt, pain and disappointment. But what I never knew is I was exchanging the absence of those emotions for the feelings of joy, happiness and love. As long as I could guard the hurt I wouldn’t feel, but then I began to feel nothing at all.

At the age of now 39, I finally realized that neighborhood I had called home for so long was no longer ideal. I knew I would have to quit. The cave has all the comforts of New York City 500 square foot studio apartment shared with 4 starving artist and singer who thinks she will make it on Broadway. It’s charming for a minute, but no place to call home. I knew I had to leave. I knew I need to move out.

And I came to the same crossroads in the cavern I had reached so many times “this is not the life I want, but I don’t know how to leave”.

It started surrounding myself with three little words “I AM ENOUGH”. Well to be honest, those three words were sprinkled in a book I for some reason ordered off Amazon called Daring Greatly by shame researcher Brene Brown.

I had no intentions on reading a book on shame. I was trying to build a better performance so no one would see the hurt. The cave teaches you to be a great liar. You lie to yourself. You lie to others. You’ll lie to the dog simply to avoid the truth being seen. But as the author unpacked story after story, theme after theme, the reflection in the mirror was me. And the me I saw was filled with this poison called shame.

Day after day I would ink my hand with those three words. I would scribble in dry erase marker over the mirror where the man I had been stared back at the man I was trying to become. The stacks and stacks of stones representing moments of life I had seen as hurt and harm that laid at the front of the mouth of the cave were now being removed one by one with the belief that the words of hurt they did not define me.

As I journeyed up the deep cavern to the place of light, I found a guide to help get me out. That guide began to teach that being enough was enough, but there was a more than enough that my life contained. I literally had to retrain my brain to take steps out of the darkness into the light of life. The mixtape of my brain would be on repeat with the negative words and hurtful moments that had filled my traveling bags into the cave. In order to move out meant leaving behind those heavy trunks of entrapment.

I had to force my brain to reframe the thoughts that played like a needle stuck on the scratch of a vinyl record. The thoughts of hurt, harm, and beliefs of being not enough didn’t simply need to be removed. They had to be replaced. One of the writers of the bible said it this way:

whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.

My guide literally had to force me to start telling myself the truth. Scribbled filled pages began to become my new voice as I battled the devils in my own head that called me out to me proclaiming I was not enough or I was unworthy or not lovable. I had to undo years of patterns of thinking. I had to unconvince myself of lies and believe the truth.

So my truths on those pages began to look like this:

Yes, mom and dad divorce but they still authentically love me.

Yes I have fallen short of dreams and goals, but the truth is a I am gifted, talented and called by God.

Sure, I am hurt and broken, but I am worthy of healing.

I have failed in many ways, but the truth is it does not make me a failure.

I have fallen short of God, but the truth is God still loves me.

I am divorced, but not disqualified from God using me.

I am a good father, friend, follower of Jesus.

And on and on the truths were written, spoken and believed. And with penned and spoken belief, I began to move out of the mouth of the cave, step by step, into the light facing the greatest fear of my life being completely seen. As truth became my anthem, the man looking back at me between the expo marker and the looking glass was the man I had longed to see. The hurt boy, damaged teenage kid and devastated son had found truth and truth set me free from the cave.

My new address is one of security, confidence, and love. I have cried more tears in the last 6 months than in the previous 30 years. With the tears came the ability to feel joy and love, hurt and empathy. At many times they happened at the same moment.

I have found love and life in a beautiful woman. I have found certainty in my calling. I peace with myself and those who hurt me. More than anything, I have found assurance in who God calls me. He calls me son and I am secure and safe calling him Father.

The cave will always loom darkly in my past but it will never be an address I desire to move back into. Because who the son sets free is free indeed. And I am happy to be free.

‘Cause I have other things to fill my time

You take what is yours and I’ll take mine

Now let me at the truth

Which will refresh my broken mind

Marcus Mumford, The Cave

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