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Blah.

What do you write about when you lose inspiration? 

The last two months have been very difficult for me and my family. 

After reaching our 50th state (Vermont), my wife and I ventured out west to conquer 7 different National Parks in 8 days. Or as my wife likes to say, 12 National Parks in 13 days. Both are true. We also celebrated our 27th Anniversary by exploring the Gulf Shores of Alabama, a beach area we’ve actually never visited. 

It was an incredible summer and I was refreshed. I was ready to change the world again as a high school counselor at a large inner-city high school. We were exiting a pandemic and students were returning to in-person learning. Many struggled mightily over the last couple of years, but we were poised to bring them back to normalcy.

That was, until the next mask mandate came. Just a few weeks into the school year. I was befuddled. I had done everything right. Vaccinated at the first opportunity. Wearing a mask, following recommendations and washing my hands diligently. 

My renewed energy from the summer was boosted by the return to school without masks, able to see the smiles and sadness and excitement and frustrations on students’ faces as they shared their journeys with me from the past year and a half. Things were challenging, for sure, but things were moving forward and the prospect of positive change impassioned our efforts.

Then came an abrupt halt in that spirit—a new, updated mandate came down for our district that we would be returning to masks.

My motivation dropped immediately. My spirit waned. My effort, saddened.

Back to masks?!? Nooooo!!!!!

Whether it was the right thing to do or not did not matter to me at the time. I’m not one for political conversations. I had no agenda. I was simply tired of having to wear a mask and I was under the impression we were going to be free of them.

Within a week, I was exhausted and it appeared everyone else was too. That was about two months ago. Not much has changed for us. Except that we are more exhausted than ever.

The year has brought more challenges than ever. Students are not only behind academically due to missing school, but also two years of social and emotional development. TikTok challenges encouraging students to tear apart school bathrooms and facilities. Students releasing their aggression and pent up frustrations on each other. Parents, distraught and at a loss for how to help their children. Mental Health support is overloaded.

Yes, students and parents are dealing with the after effects of going through (and still going through) a pandemic, but so are the leaders. The administrators. The teachers. The support staff. Everyone of them have had to experience the pandemic for themselves and have made their best effort to guide others through as well. 

I recently attended a conference for high school counselors. My hope this year was to find some motivation, some inspiration to keep on keeping on. Out of nine sessions, I attended four or five on burnout or self-care or the like. Unfortunately, the answers were all pretty much the same. Keep doing what you are doing. 

I was already doing everything I knew to do. Except for physical activity. 

My energy had waned. I had been intending to work out for quite some time. In my head. I just couldn’t get my heart to go along with it. 

Now, thanks to those sessions, I have jogged three out of the last five days and did another workout at school led by our great JROTC instructors. I believe it will help.

The vaccine was recently approved for children ages five to eleven. I’m hearing about a lot of hesitancy. I totally understand even though it has been approved by the FDA and the CDC. But, that also makes me feel less hope that this pandemic will end any time soon.

Thus, my feelings of despair continue. 

What does one write about when they lose inspiration? What should I share? 

My reality. This is where I’ve been and why I have lost much motivation.

Not to mention that others have it much worse than I do. 

My wife, for instance, has been dealing with the aging of her parents. The last six months have been a challenge as the family has had to make difficult decisions together on how to best care for them. It has been overwhelming for her and the family.

Many people working in different fields have had to endure much more than education. I can’t even imagine working in healthcare right now. Yet, my 16 year old daughter has been doing that as an STNA at a nursing home while taking college classes as a high school junior, preparing to graduate a year early.

She had her own challenges coming through this pandemic and she has been incredibly resilient while also helping to care for her aging grandparents as much as possible. She has held it together and continued much success. She is an incredible young lady.

I suppose that is where I look for my encouragement. And maybe where we should all look. 

The bright side. The things for which we have to be thankful.

No matter how challenging, there are always bright spots and reasons to be thankful.

I am thankful for a supportive wife who always tries to make me feel better. I am thankful for my middle daughter who is working full-time as a PTA at twenty years of age and attending full-time at OSU to earn a bachelor’s in Criminology online. She is paying for school out of pocket, with no loans. 

My oldest daughter recently transitioned back to Ohio, completed a new EFDA certification in the Dental Assisting field, became a lead dental assistant with her dentist, and moved into her own place (twice) during the pandemic. 

They have all been incredibly resilient during a very difficult time, all working in the healthcare industry. 

I am thankful that I haven’t lost a job. I am thankful that I’ve been able to maintain present employment and continue to serve our community. I am thankful that my relationship with my wife is as strong as ever. I am thankful that I was able to still release my personal memoir (two years in the writing, 48 years in the making) during the pandemic.

I am thankful that my God has never left me. I am thankful to be his chosen son. I am thankful for eternal salvation that I get to experience every day. I am thankful for God’s provision to help us get out of debt during the pandemic and I am thankful for a future that I knew He holds for me.

While times may be tough, we don’t lose hope if we remember how thankful we are for the good things in our lives.

What do you have to be thankful for? What actually went well for you during the pandemic? What have you overcome to be where you are today?

Never Settled Life Coaching has launched!

I’m always so curious how other people have ended up in a particular job or career choice.  It seems the way that happens is almost as limitless as the number of job/career choices that are out there.

For myself, transitioning from the Marine Corps to being a youth pastor to a school counselor and now a college advisor has been seamless in many ways, easily accessing repeated skills under a new, different context each time. The primary goal after serving my country has been to help other people attain their goals!

While my current day job still lets me do that, it just doesn’t hit the spot of deep, meaningful conversations that can really impact lives. What I do as a college advisor is meaningful and helpful to so many, at least I hope so or I wouldn’t be doing it, but I love to dig deeper and help people overcome other types of challenges too, especially when the tables have turned on them or they are going through a particularly challenging stage of life. 

Sometimes, just talking to someone, using them as a sounding board can be enough to get some tough things off your chest or help you discern things swirling around in your head. I know I have a few of my closest buddies I love to bounce ideas off, which I even did multiple times with this idea of life coaching itself. We all need people that can help us do that. 

Sometimes though, we need more than a friend. We may need a more trained or skilled listener, someone outside of our normal circle, or maybe most importantly, someone who’s been there before. Someone who’s had similar struggles or experiences.

What excites me about the potential of life coaching is seeing life change for someone in a way they’ve only been able to dream about or imagine. I love the idea of being that person who can help them flesh out an idea or put rubber to the road and begin to make the changes necessary to SEE the change they want become reality in their life. 

Now that excites me to no end! 

If you need to talk to someone like me, I would love to hear from you! If you don’t need this for yourself, will you please take a few moments to think or pray about whom you might share my life coaching page with? 

It could make all the difference for them.

What the 🤬🤬🤬🤬?!?

I had a problem when I first became a Christian. I read the Bible. 

I know how that sounds. I mean, aren’t new Christians supposed to read the Bible? Isn’t that support to help, not create problems?

Yes, I suppose, that is probably true.

But, not for me. Not in 1992.

You see, I wasn’t “raised in the church,” as some may say. I didn’t have the “baggage” of a learned theology or religious traditions. In fact, if I had, I often wonder if I ever really would have said YES to Jesus.

But, I did. And, I said it emphatically.

And I was also, very alone at the time. Oh, there were other Christians around, probably. And, lots of other people too, but I was alone.

You see, I was literally in the middle of Marine Corps boot camp. Not exactly the spot you might imagine coming to Jesus. 

(Well, except maybe if your next step was off to war. I mean, they say there are no atheists in a foxhole. Google the expression if you aren’t sure what I mean.)

Yes, all alone with my platoon of 60 or so of my closest friends. I wouldn’t say that either. They weren’t exactly my friends.

For one, most of my life, I’ve felt out of place no matter where I am. 

For two, while we were learning to rely on and trust our brothers with our very lives, I felt like I didn’t hardly know anyone around me. Not in a close, personal or meaningful way. It’s not like we had talk time in boot camp. Even the week I put my faith in Jesus, these guys were all mad at me for waking them up in the middle of the night. (You’ll have to read more about that in my book, NEVER SETTLED, for that to make sense.)

For three, I didn’t know one person directly available to me in boot camp who could guide me spiritually, and that included my best friend from high school who was our platoon lay leader, whatever that title meant.

So, I began my new journey with Jesus on my own, periodically hearing from a Navy Chaplain or the occasional church visit after boot camp. It was mostly just me and my Bible.

What I began to learn right away was that many of the church practices and ideas that I learned just prior to becoming a Christian or on those occasional weekend services, didn’t always line up with what I read in my Bible.

I mean, simple, obvious things like the idea of “dressing up” for church. I read somewhere that man looks at the exterior but God looks at the heart. So, why focus on what we wear, I thought.

But God expects our best, someone in the church told me, so we must dress up to give it to him.

Immediate clash, to me, between the Bible and man’s traditions/ideas. So, I chose the Bible and have always elected to dress as down as I felt like I could get away with.

Here’s one where I fell on the opposite side of organized religion, on their side. I had quite the foul mouth before coming to know Jesus. Almost immediately after trusting Christ and finding this new life, I became convinced that I needed to change the way I talked. I was convicted that “cussing” was a sin, so I made it my first and primary goal to quit sinning, er cussing. 🤬 

Ironically, there aren’t really any convincing scriptures I’ve read to this day that say I can’t say f&$k, s@$t, or d*+n. (See, I can’t even type them out straight in this example.)

But, there were some that alluded to the way I talked, having a pure mind, out of the mouth overflows the heart, etc. It was enough to convince me to clean up my language even though specific words weren’t banned. It was quite the challenge for me, it was a rather nasty habit. But, God had cleaned up my heart, changed the way I thought so that helped a lot. I mean, I also had a lot more peace within so I didn’t really feel the need to curse as much.

All that being said, I was constantly noticing how the Bible’s focus seemed to be in one place, but the Christian world seemed to be some place else. Personally, I decided to follow the Bible over these traditions and focuses, at least internally. Sometimes I kept my opinions to myself, sometimes I voiced them, usually as questions so as to illicit as little conflict as possible.

Another example was when I returned “home” from the Marine Corps. The church that had introduced me to Jesus before I went to boot camp and accepted him, was a denominational church. While I didn’t yet know much about denominations, I didn’t love that. The Bible’s focus seemed to be on Christian unity but denominations seemed to be the opposite. So, I mostly kept that opinion to myself while learning the traditions and theological ideas of this particular denomination and got closer and closer to marrying it.

But all this and these examples to say, just try actually reading the Bible. It’ll mess your world up. In a good way.

If you’re not a Christian, it might make you say, “what the… “ or “wow, I wish more Christians actually read this.” 

If you are a Christian, it will challenge you to reconsider your traditions and beliefs. If you really read it and consider the implications, it might wreck your world.

It wrecks mine all the time. BUT to me, there is no more real of a way to follow Jesus than to read what is actually written and then to consider the obvious implications. There is probably nothing this world needs more. 

(Except for perhaps, beginning to live in the ways of Jesus that he both taught and lived.) Lord, help us do both of those things.

I would love to hear back from you. How has the Bible wrecked your world? What have you read that seems so out of whack with the church today? How have you seen your life transformed by reading the Bible?