And then I felt the need to explain why it was going so great. But I had no answer.

So I said, “I don’t fully understand it, but I guess I don’t have to understand something to enjoy it.”

Reconcile

Why do we feel the need to reconcile everything? Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we learn to account for every penny, dot every ‘i’, cross every ‘t’, and have a reason for everything that happens.

Everything must happen for a reason. Everything must have an explanation. Everything must be earned, everything we have must be deserved.

Wonder

My son Austin does not know why the coffee grinder makes such an awesomely loud noise. He has no idea what it’s doing. But he loves it. And every morning, when I turn it on, his face breaks into a huge 8-tooth grin.

He also thinks opening and closing doors is awesome.

Have you ever stood next to a huge waterfall? Close enough to feel the mist as the water crashes on the rocks? Me neither. But I have a good imagination.

I imagine the feeling of extreme smallness.  The realization of how powerless I am next to such a force of nature. And then there’s the impossible quantity of water that flows over that waterfall every day.

It just. Keeps. Going. Every day. All day. It never stops. Even though I understand how water gets from there to here, the sheer magnitude and scale of the thing boggles my mind.

So at some point, I just stop trying. I stop trying to figure out how it all keeps working, and I simply stand there like Austin by the coffee grinder, with a big grin on my face.

And on some level, I hear myself say:

“That. Is. Awesome.”

Unfair

Bad things sometimes happen to good people. For reasons we can’t explain. Evil people sometimes prosper. And we can’t explain why they’re not dead.

Sometimes we don’t know the whole story. Sometimes we know just enough to drive ourselves crazy while we try to balance the scale.

We try to explain tragedy, justify blessing, validate increase, and reconcile loss. We just want everything to make sense. But sometimes it doesn’t.

In this life you will see and probably experience suffering. Some of it will be because of decisions you’ve made. But some of it will not be.

You will tire of people trying to explain it, giving reasons. Long after you’ve stopped trying to justify your suffering, people around you will still feel the need to explain it, not for your sake, but for their own.

You’ll also experience blessing. Sometimes as a result of your decisions. Other times, not.

Oh You Shouldn’t Have….

Nobody likes giving a gift to someone who doesn’t know how to receive gratefully. You’re excited because you know it’s something they’ll love.

All you want is to see them enjoy it.

You’re not giving it because they deserve it, you’re not giving it to get something in return.

All you want is to see them enjoy it.

But when you give it to them, they get all weird, acting like they’re ashamed to be getting it, trying to think of something they can give you in return. Trying to figure out why they deserve what you’re giving them.

And all you wanted was to see them enjoy it.

I’m That Guy

So when I find myself trying to explain why the guitar lesson business is thriving, and justify it’s success, I have to ask myself “Am I that guy?”

Am I the guy who can’t enjoy something unless I think I deserve it? Am I that guy who can’t enjoy something unless I completely understand it?

Maybe I need to simply look at it like that waterfall, appreciate it’s awesomeness, stop trying to understand it, and just be willing to say:

“That. Is. Awesome”

Sweet Release

Let me tell you what sweet release means to me.

Several years ago, my wife had an operation on her foot that left her nearly helpless for weeks. Unable to walk, there was little she could do but lie down, bear agonizing pain, and hope for some relief when she took pain meds.

I got the call a few days after her surgery. All I could hear as I picked up the phone was “Anthony, I need you!”.  I raced home to find her in excruciating pain, and with eyelids swollen. Her throat was starting to swell. The pain medication had triggered an allergic reaction.

We raced to the ER, as much as you can race with someone who cannot walk, in pain almost too great to talk.

I have never felt quite as powerless as I did that day. Powerless to provide comfort, powerless to provide relief, powerless to fix anything. As she laid in the ER bed, eyes closed due to the pain, the doctor injected her with something that must have been from heaven.

The look that came across her face is burned into my memory. Sweet release, played out right before my eyes.

That’s what sweet release means to me.  The memory of that day, the day I was powerless to help. The day I watched my wife go from unbearable pain to sweet, peaceful rest in a matter of seconds.

Quieting The Storm

The days leading up to our ER visit had been like a quiet storm. Constant pain, broken sleep, more pain. A storm of discomfort and anxiety. By the time we reached the ER, it felt like a tornado.

Jesus said it’s not those who are well that need a doctor, but those who are sick.

Maybe you’ve got enough money that you can ignore the deep, inner pain that so many people deal with their whole lives. Maybe you don’t know any people who’s lives are a wreck. Maybe you never see pain.

But for many of us, people like me, we’ve reached a point where we are not among the well. We count ourselves among the sick, the broken, the hopeless.

For 30 years of my life, I wrestled with so many deeply rooted issues of significance, worthiness, fear, and at times depression. No amount of money, or friends could hide the fact that something was wrong.

The picture of how I felt inside would look much like Lori’s face right before the medication hit. A tired, worn-out soul, a heart bruised and covered with scar tissue, too hurt to know that there was anything better.

..from the grip of these chains

One day, my first set of chains broke off. They were the chains I had been using to convince myself that nobody cared about what I had to say. Chains around my own self-worth.

And when they broke off, I broke down. I don’t know which was stronger, the grip the chains had on me, or the grip I had on those chains. But the feeling I experienced as they dropped was like nothing else I had ever been through.

That day, the storm inside quieted for the first time I could remember. I felt like I could breath for the first time. A millstone had been lifted from around my neck.

And when I looked up, I saw a God that had not been putting his foot on my neck to keep me down. Rather, he had been waiting, all those years, to take my pain, my heartache, my chains.

Waiting for me to walk by his side, released from false obligation, unbearable expectation, fear of failure, and the constant fear of abandonment.

That’s why when I hear the words of this chorus, the words come from a place inside so deep, that the tears often prevent me from singing.

Confronting Sin

Pat’s statements about Haiti being cursed because of their ‘deal with the devil’, brings each of us face to face with our own willingness or embarrassment about confronting sin.  Let’s forget for a second the timing of Pat’s comments, or even what he was referring to.  Forget the situation, the people, the messenger, and ask yourself “Am I willing to call sin, sin?”

Forget about Pat Robertson for a second. The fact of the matter is, if you’re like me, you’d never say anything like that whether it was right or wrong because you’d be too scared.  And God wants to change that. There is a time and a place for us to confront sin. Jesus did it, his disciples did it, and so must we.  The Holy Spirit will tell you when and how, but to act as if we can go through life, and pretend that everything around us is OK, is naive.

So, Pat was wrong, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not afraid to say the right thing when the time comes.

Sin and Consequence

What do you actually believe about the protection or lack of it, when we live by, or ignore a relationship with God?  I am not going to address this on the national, but rather on a personal level.

The fact is, when we walk in relationship with God, through Jesus, we have two kinds of protection. The first is the supernatural protection that you read about in the Bible through miracles. The second is the insight and foresight that the Holy Spirit gives us when we allow him to live through us.

If you live in relationship with God, and live according to his principles, you will avoid many, many things that other people have to deal with. Both because of his protection, and because of the simple fact that his principles work. In the areas that you ignore him, you will inevitably experience hardship. But not all hardship is because you’re ignoring God. The two principles are not mutually exclusive.

But if you do not live in relationship with him, and you open yourself up to all manner of ungodly influence, the consequences can be fatal.  This is not because God is judging you, but rather because he has already judged the sin, and you’re walking right in it. He’s offering relationship to protect you from the things that will harm you, and when you choose those things over him, the curse of those sins comes walking into your life like a virus on the hands of a dinner guest.

Just because Pat Robertson gets on TV and crassly states that God is judging a country right after they experience their worst disaster in centuries, that doesn’t mean that we can discount the fact that in our own lives, our sin will lead us to the very things that God will warn and protect us from.

It sounds unrelated, but at least for this Christian, they are not. I’m not in the nation-judging business, but part of what Pat Robertson said stirs an uncomfortable pot in my spirit. I think it’s wise to realize that a bit of truth mixed with a lot of crazy, still has a little truth that we can extract for ourselves.  And the truth is, sin takes us in the opposite direction of God’s protection.

The Problem With Pat Robertson

So now that I’ve wrung the only positive things from Pat’s statements I could find, let me talk about why I think he should have gotten prayed up before getting shaved up that morning.

Timing and Tone matter. Jesus was not a blundering idiot. He was a master of nuance, tone, approach, and wording. Because the Holy Spirit gave him the words and when to say them. Negative tone combined with bad timing can be extremely hurtful.

I don’t claim to be a biblical scholar. But I know the voice of God. And I know a bit about how he speaks to, and about, those who are hurting. And he doesn’t say what Pat Robertson said, when Pat Robertson said it.

God may send someone to tell a country to repent from witchcraft. But when God sends them, the buildings will still be standing.

When the buildings are in shambles, when the people are dying and in desperate need of hope, God offers his love, not his judgment.  How do I know?

Because in our darkest moments, God does not come at us with fists, he comes at us with open arms. Because when we are hurting, we are most aware that we are desperate for hope and love. There is a time and place for accountability, for strong words, and difficult truths. But that time is not now. And Pat Robertson should know that.

Pat, I wish instead of sitting in your thousand dollar chair, blaming judgment and curses for people crushed under collapsed buildings, you had instead listened to the voice of God and said this.

“Our prayers are with the people of Haiti in the midst of this terrible tragedy. I call on Christians around the world to pour out the love of our God to that country right now. To show his mercy and love to those who are hurting. Give of your finances bountifully, and pray without ceasing for those still in need of rescue. And be a source of hope to those around you who have none.”

That was the tone needed for the timing of that day.

“Some days I have to choose between taking a shower and eating.”

This is the kind of thing you get to hear when you’re not paying attention to what’s really happening in your household.  Unless you’re unfortunate enough to have a spouse that can hold everything in.  Thankfully mine cannot.

After Austin was born, our lives were turned upside down. Lori went from career woman to mother in 24 hours. At first, I was very helpful, making sure she didn’t have to do an any laundry, dishes, cleaning or cooking.

After a week or two, I got comfortable and lazy. And because she’s awesome, Lori picked up the slack. If I didn’t do the dishes, she did.  If I forgot to bring the laundry up from the dryer, she did.

I conveniently ‘forgot’ how much work she was doing at home taking care of a newborn, while I sat in my comfortable chair at a desk. I assumed that since she wasn’t complaining about anything, she must be getting better at this mothering thing and able to handle some of the housework again.

The problem is, none of my information was from outside my own head. Lori never told me that she found herself sitting around wondering what to do with her time. I never asked her if she still wanted me to keep doing all the housework.

I just stopped.

And we stopped talking about it.

Then one night, thankfully, she couldn’t take it any more and we had a very uncomfortable talk.  I listened to her describe her day, realizing how inattentive I had been, and how close to depression she was slipping.

All while I sat at my desk drinking coffee at work every morning.

It would have been much easier if she had been accusing me of being lazy, and not caring. Then I could have just gotten defensive, and we could have both felt entitled to something.

But as she poured out her heart to me, she wasn’t accusing me, she was practically begging for help. Because she was trying to do it herself and she needed my help.

You may be intuitive, you may be perceptive. But I challenge you to ask your spouse today if they need your help in some way you don’t know about.

Unless you ask, you’re just guessing.

But we were created to love, endure wounds, and to be healed.  Not to build up scar tissue around the part of us that most resembles our creator.

My Baby

Yesterday, my 11 month old baby boy pulled a wooden stool down on top of his head as he fell backwards onto our hardwood floors. I ran upstairs to find him in my wife’s arms crying.

Then he stopped. His little head rested against her chest, and those normally sparkling eyes slowly closed.  And my heart nearly stopped as my wife cried out “Why isn’t he crying?”

In that moment, I felt an indescribable fear, a prelude to the pain that would certainly follow if those eyes did not open again.

40 minutes late, as we left the ER, it was very clear that he was fine. But I was not.

Several month into our journey as parents, I laid awake at night, staring at the ceiling, feeling an anxiety similar to what a skydiver must feel before leaping from a plane.  It’s the anxiety you feel knowing that you’re engaging in something you love, but knowing that you’re also exposing yourself to the very real danger of being hurt.

Having a son has uncovered some very tender parts of my heart.  There are times when I hold him that I feel my chest might burst with happiness.  It’s more powerful than how I felt when I got married.

That’s because my heart was not always so free to love recklessly.

Scar Tissue

As a teenager, I was a drama king, and had no idea what depression was. I went through numerous emotionally taxing relationships. Upon graduating college, I quickly experienced another gut wrenching disappointment, and began to build up my defenses. Protecting myself from getting hurt again.

By the time I reached 26, my heart was so callous I could barely feel any emotions resembling the love that had allowed me to get so scarred. Then I met the woman I knew would become my wife.

My heart slowly began to thaw as I approached my wedding day. I wrote a song to propose to her, and as I wrote it, I spent more than an hour in tears, as I felt the flow of emotion that had long been absent.

As I played it for her, more tears flowed.  Tears that she didn’t fully understand, and that I am only now starting to understand myself. There were several times over the next year where my heart seemed to melt a bit more.

By the time my son was born, my heart seemed free of the callous scar tissue that had once protected me from getting hurt.  And the emotions flowed freely.  It has been wonderful.

But as I lie awake staring at the ceiling, I considered the possibility that I could lose both of them. A small voice told me that unless  I kept myself from loving too much, I would certainly be hurt so deeply by that situation, I could not fathom the pain that would follow.

Think deeply about that. I was scared of loving my wife and son too much because of how bad it would hurt if I lost them.

It’s the same feeling that caused me to begin building up scar tissue around the hurt areas following my stream of hurtful relationships. An effort to protect myself from future wounds.

But what I didn’t realize then was that scar tissue prevents as much as it protects. To experience love requires sensitivity, and scar tissue that protects you from hurt, also prevents you from feeling, even when you want to.

That night, I realized something profound.

If the worst happened, if I lost those that I loved so much, my biggest regret would be that I didn’t get  and express as much love as I could possibly could while I had the chance.

The Point Of No Return

The little scare with our son reminded me of that truth.  I am in this too deep to back up. I am hopelessly in love with my wife and my son. If something happens to them, I am without a backup plan. I am vulnerable because I love them.

I was created to love them recklessly, without restraint, and without anything protecting me from hurt.  I was also created to carry inside me the one who can heal any wound, and the one who pours out the love that flows through me as I love them.

Living a safe life by restraining our love is not living. It’s survival. We were not created to simply survive, we were created to live. To love. To hurt. And to heal.  So if you’ve been protecting your heart because you’ve been hurt, consider taking your foot off the brake, give Jesus the drivers seat, and love like you were created to do.

But this past year has been full of projects that seemed to follow longer arcs than I’m used to. From the starting point to the ending point, there was enough distance and height in the arc for me to lose sight of why I started on this project, and unable to see the finish point, and unable to see the ground to know how high this arc had taken me.

It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it’s the best way I can think to describe some of the things that happened.  I’ll just share one example.

My dad was unemployed for about 9 months starting in Sept. of 2008.  At some point in spring of 2009, on one of their trips to visit us, we jokingly suggested that he look for a job in State College. We said that if he got a job here, we could hire my mom as Austin’s nanny instead of putting him in daycare.

It started as a joke, but the more we thought about it, we realized how many ways this could work, and how great a blessing this would be for them and us.  My mom was very, very overworked, my dad needed a job, and we needed a nanny.

The vision was very clear back then. So when my Dad got a job offer in State College, it seemed like it was a quick work of God. A month later, he moved up here. My mom could not move at that time, as she was so deeply rooted in her two jobs, she could not simply pick up and leave.

It took over two months for my mom to finally move up here for good. And even then, for the first month or so, she was back and forth a lot visiting with her dad who was in the process of going home to see his maker.  I remember thinking right before she moved up here, how it seemed like so long ago that we ever had this idea, and now, literally 6 months later, it still wasn’t ‘finished’.

Our vision was for my parents to have a secure home here in State College, for my mom to be free of the demands of her jobs, and for everyone to work together to make our unusual household run.  Instead, we had my parents living apart, my dad working hard to adapt to a new job, my mom trying to clean up after years and years of being solely responsible for too many things, Lori preparing to return to work, and I had just left my job to continue running my guitar lesson business.

This was not the picture we had in our minds so many months ago. I felt like we were at the top of a very long arc, unable to see where we started, and unsure if there was an end to this arc that connected with the ground. But I felt God telling me that this was the nature of long, drawn-out projects, even the ones that he starts.

Unlike the quick, can’t-catch-my-breath projects that are over and done so fast, these slow works of God require a strong relationship, especially at the peak, when you’re the farthest from anything that looks like the dream that you began with, and the reality of the finished work.  Without that relationship, you’ll be tempted to get distracted with something else that looks easier to complete. Or to try and force a quick end to the project.

Only when you know God’s voice will you hear him say “I started this. It’s real. It will be finished.”

Of course, there’s always the situations where we started on some project that was never ordained by God, and we find ourselves in this situations, just with a different response from him.  Although, hearing his voice is a great way to avoid finding yourself on an arc with no end.  If you find yourself there, you still need to have that relationship, to hear him say “Not this way, not right now.”

Either way, the arc, the project, the time, none of it is the focus. Those are just things we do. The real key is why we do it, and that’s directly connected to our relationship with Him. If that’s intact, there’s no arc too long for us to follow.

If you’ve ever tried to push a car with no driver at the wheel, you already know the problems of being pushed.  There’s a reason that cars are towed from in front, rather than pushed from behind.  But more on that in a minute.

A summary of this post

I spent over 8 years using all my skills to to gain attention and validation for myself as a musician in a band.  This need for validation and attention served as my steering as I was pushed by the need to please people and the drive to accomplish great things.  I couldn’t even see God’s plan for my life because it didn’t involve the things that I thought would bring me the most attention. Once God healed the areas that caused me to be driven, and I learned to follow his leading, I was able to follow him along a path that brought me more fulfillment than I ever experienced while being driven and pushed.

Where He’s Led Me

Over the past 16 months, I’ve been creating blues guitar lessons and posting them on YouTube, and selling them to like-minded guitarists around the world.

As of this writing, these lessons have attracted over 2 million views on YouTube, and draw about 10,000 people a month to my website.  I get emails from people every day that would, and sometimes do, make a grown man shed a tear of joy.  Emails telling me about how someone picked up the guitar after 20 years and is finally playing the way they always wanted, or how a proud dad is watching his 6 year old son learning things he never thought possible.

Most of the skills I needed to accomplish this I had learned long before I ever started to use them this way.

Where I Was Driven

Being driven can make you do some crazy things.  The slightest bit of ’tilt’ in your wheels can cause you to veer off course, at the mercy of whatever drives you.

For the longest time, I thought I was going to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan.  Not once did I stop to consider why.  I realize today that I had a massive need for validation.  My guitar playing skills were what I felt made me special, and I intended to prove it to the world.

My steering was off.

With such a void in my life, the constant push to please people, and the pressure to accomplish, I was pushed again and again, driven off course by the loneliness that ached at my very core.

I spent 10 years of my life starting bands, playing a few gigs, writing songs about stuff that only mattered to me, and constantly wondering when my ship was going to come in and rescue me from this life of obscurity that I was condemned to with all the ordinary people of the world.  I was destined for greatness, and all my skills were testament to that fact.

I made websites, advertisements, logos.  I converted a spare room or basement in every house I rented into a recording space for my ‘art’.  In 2001 I recorded a CD and played every instrument and sang everything myself.  By the time I had spent $2000 getting it finished, I realized that it sucked and over 900 of them still sit in boxes in my attic.

In 2005 I recorded another live CD of a concert I had been planning for 6 months.  The quality was mediocre at best, yet I sank another $2000 into getting another set of boxes full of CDs for my attic, again.

I prided myself on my songwriting skills.  I wrote complex songs that didn’t groove, and abandoned the music that I really loved. The strangest things is that I was taking songwriting cues from other songwriters who’s music I didn’t even really enjoy.

Being pushed to please people caused me to expend my time and energy on projects that I had not even consulted my wife about.  For many months, I had people coming into our house 2 or 3 times a week to record.  All because I felt a false sense of obligation to people that I loved, a slight misalignment in my steering that allowed me to be driven off the path that God would have had me on.

One day my wife asked me what my 5 year plan was, and I was brought face to face with the reality that I had no vision for my life.  I had no 5 year plan.  I was completely caught up in what I could do right now to make myself known to the world.

When I Stalled

It’s a vast oversimplification to say that I read some books and was fixed, but that’s how it started.  I learned some things about my faith that I hadn’t known before, and before you know it, I stopped caring about getting a record deal or getting famous.  I stopped feeling obligated to please people, or even to participate in most things I was doing.  I just wanted to stop.  So I did for a while.  And it felt good.

But that’s not where it ended.

The Pulling Begins

In October 21, 2007 I put up my first guitar lesson on YouTube, and in less than 4 months I was selling hundreds of lessons a month to people around the world.  I didn’t start with a plan, I had no agenda.  I actually felt like I could barely keep up with the growing success of the lessons.

Slowly I began to see myself being pulled along a path that I had never seen.  I had answered a simple question from God that night when he asked me "Why aren’t you putting guitar lessons on YouTube?"  I wasn’t driven to do it, I just did what I felt he had asked me to do. 

As the lessons grew more and more successful, I tried to turn the steering wheel a couple times, but when you’re being pulled by a force stronger than your ability to turn the wheel, the pull straightens out your steering.  His leading kept me from getting bogged down in things that would only take me off course.  The vision of where he was leading me was so compelling that it caused me to stop putting my hands on the wheel and just trust the pull.

It was as if he was in control.

I’m not going to suggest that God is the only source of pulling.  Certainly people who don’t know God are pulled by great dreams of things to come.  But I truly believe that God’s pull is the one that will bring the most fulfillment in any person’s life. 

But it’s hard to be led, when you’re still being driven.

Are you living to prove a point?  Are you waiting at the drop of a hat to tell someone about that thing that you care so deeply about?  If so, I’ve got some very bad news for you.  People probably don’t like hearing you talk about it.  It’s not you, it’s us.  It’s just how we’re made.

I’m not trying to bring anyone down, or anything like that, but my heart is for people to experience life to the fullest, and you simply can’t do that when you walk around with a millstone of knowledge that you’re waiting to drop around someone’s neck.

How do I know this?  Because I was once the point man, and sometimes still slip into that role.  Whatever I was going through at any given time, was my point, and it didn’t matter if what you were talking about had anything to do with it or not, you better believe it was coming up in conversation. 

Being a Christian only made this worse.  Now I had good reason to prove my points.  Beacuse I was doing God’s work, and trying to make people better.  Until I realized how broken I was.  Hurt, scared, terrified of not being heard. 

What kind of point can you try and prove when you realize that you’re whole life has been spent trying to gain people’s approval?  About the only thing you want to do is shut up and not open your big fat mouth ever again.  This phase doesn’t last forever, but you can never again start dumping your point all over a perfectly good conversation in total innocence again.

When I started to learn what it really meant to experience complete validation and really know what the love of God feels like, I stopped caring about proving points to people.  I just wanted them to experience the same thing.  That can turn into a point to prove in and of itself, but part of that whole experience is learning that people can not be bullied into experiencing true validation. 

Are you living to prove a point?  If so, it’s possible that you’re not really doing either.

There is about 100% chance that sometime today, perhaps even while reacting to this post, you will do or say something that you think is perfectly normal, but is in fact a way of coping with something you feel because of something that happened to you while you were growing up.

Nice, right?  But of course, we all want to say "Not me, I’m over <fill in name of event that hurt you here>".  Sometimes we can’t even think what to put in the <   >.  We picture ourselves free and clear of the past, in control of our lives, and we just are the way we are.

But what if we’re not?  What if I’m not just the way I am?  What if I’m really better than I am?  What if I’m coping with hurts from the past and I don’t even know it?  And here’s what can really start your wheels turning.

What if other people can see what I’m really doing even if I can’t?

Where it all began for me

My unraveling began several years ago when talking to Rob, someone who saw right through me.  I was telling him, half-joking, about how when i get on the phone with a company who has acted shady, I want to rip them a new one and MAKE them remember me.  But then I tell myself "Who do you think you are? Nobody cares enough about what you say to make it worth while.".

As I told this little story to him, I assumed that he would chuckle and agree that it’s not worth unloading on a customer service rep. when they don’t really care what we have to say.  But Rob pulled a 180 on me and got really, really serious, really really quickly.

He held up my car keys, and his car keys side by side.  He said "Don’t you see that you want to tear into this person." as he moved his keys front ahead of mine, "and then you say ‘nobody cares what you say’", pointing to my keys, which represented what I thought came second.  "But in reality, it’s the other way around.  You feel as if nobody cares what you think, and that makes you want to tear them a new one, and MAKE them know who you are".  At this point he swapped the keys to reflect the reversal or order, and I completely lost it. I burst into tears like a little girl and wept for at least 10 minutes straight.

That was my moment.  That’s when I realized that I had been walking around like a puppet on a string.  I wasn’t simply calling up AT&T and yelling at them because they suck at customer service.  What I was REALLY doing was much deeper.  Inside I was terrified that nobody would listen to me, that I’d be taken advantage of, and that they’d all sit there and laugh at how badly they ripped me off.  So to make sure that didn’t happen, I called and tried yell my way to a position where they’d remember me and think twice before taking advantage of me again.  And I just thought I was reacting to an errant charge.

Right now, what are you doing?

You’re eating lunch with a friend you haven’t seen in a while, you’re talking too much.  What are you doing?  Making small talk?  Maybe, but what if you’re not?  What if you always do this every time you feel as if you’re unsure how a situation will go?  Talk, fill space, keep it moving.  You think you’re just being conversational, but you’re really being fearful and controlling the situation.

You’re at the basketball court waiting for a chance to play.  You think you’re being polite and waiting to be asked to join a team.  But what if you’re deeply afraid of calling "next game"?  What if by waiting to be asked, you’re really trying to fill a need for being needed?

What, Why, and Why

I have found that in the years following that event, there is a pattern that has emerged from the times I realize that another part of me is still being controlled like a puppet.  It involves 3 little questions:

1. What: What am I doing?
2. Why: Why am I doing this?
3. Why: But why am I feeling this way?

Here’s an example from above:

What am I doing? 
Calling AT&T to complain about a bill they sent that I already paid.

Why am I doing this?
Because I’m furious that they’d try to rip me off.

But why is that?
Because I’m terrified that they are ripping me off and that no matter what I do, it won’t make a difference because no one cares about what I say or do.

Answering that second ‘Why’ is an entry point into some uncomfortable areas.  The real kicker is that it starts a series of "Yeah, but why?" questions that would make any 2 year old jealous. 

The other side of why

If you allow yourself to ask those questions, and don’t accept that everything you do just is the way it is because you are the way you are, you will find deliverance, freedom and peace beyond anything you’ve ever experienced.  And a lot more strings attached than you ever imagined

Christians interpreted the movie "The Matrix" the way we interpret a lot of things.  Because of our inexperience, and lack of understanding of what it really means to know God and abide in his love, a lot of us latched onto the most obvious metaphor the movie provided.  Neo was supposed to set people free from the pretend world where people were unconscious slaves to the machines.  Just like Jesus sets us free from our slavery to sin.  And the fact that the "real world" was dark, dingy, full of pain and suffering, hard work, and constant danger, fit very well with a worldview that many Christians hold. 

Sin is glamourous, full of color, bright, shiny, just like the pretend world of the matrix.  But of course anything that glitters can’t be God, so the real world must be shades of grey and black with striving, and suffering everywhere.  But hey, at least we’re not living in that awesome pretend world of sin anymore…

This is a twisted view of reality.  The Matrix had it backwards.  And a lot of us bought it hook line and sinker.

The reality is this.  Sin is not glamourous, it’s not shiny.  Sin is dark, it’s miserable, and it eats you from the inside out.  Our life without God resembles more of the "real world" of the Matrix.  No refuge, no comfort, just a confusing maze of tunnels and robots that like to try and kill us with their long tentacles.  OK, so I made up the part about the robots, but really, we need to stop treating sin like "it looks so good but it’s really not".  Take a look at someone who’s lived a hard life of sinnin, and see how glamourous they are.  And the thing is, sin is not fake. It’s very real, and so is the pain and despair that come along with it.  It’s a cursed land, and people who live there are going to have to deal with all that comes along with being separate from God.

So if sin is like the "real world" in the matrix, what does that make life with Jesus like?  I have found that in the past 2 years, my life looks more and more like the fake world inside the matrix, except that it’s real.  My world is brighter, more joyful, more peaceful, and I can leap from one building to another with a single bound.  I honestly think that the colors of nature around me are brighter and more colorful too, but that could just be because I’m finally able to take time to look at them instead of living my life in fast forward always thinking about the next thing I’m going to accomplish.

This metaphor is far from perfect, but I hope that it makes some sense those who read it.  Life after death to sin is not supposed to be a constant struggle, a dark world of grime and grease and robots.  Rather, Jesus sets us free from a life that looks like that, and opens up the door to constant communion with the Father, and that kind of life is full, overflowing, and abundant.  Maybe not always in the physical sense, but what we experience in Him does not have to match what’s going on around us.

If your picture of "the Christian life" has looked more like the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix, ask yourself if this is the kind of thing Jesus really died for.  Sin separated us from God, and we’ve been miserable ever since.  Did Jesus die so we could wake up to a life dirty torn clothes and cold metal beds?  Or did he die so that we could wake up into a new world of uninhibited, unconditional love from our Creator?

Am I reminding God of something he forgot about?  Does he ever get a startled look on his face when I pray "God, so distant and powerful, I want to remind you about that thing that my friend is dealing with right now." He never actually answered me by saying "Oh yeah, that thing…. Don’t worry, I got it covered, thanks for reminding me….", so I always suspected it was kind of pointless to bring up stuff as if he didn’t already know.

But something inside me knew that there had to be a reason to pray for someone.  We’re not alerting God of a situation he wasn’t aware of.  He’s not watching our prayers like we watch the news to get the latest updates.  He’s already ahead of us on all of this stuff, but there has to be some reason he wants us to pray.

In order to understand it, I think we have to look at what his entire purpose of creating us was.  Relationship.  For whatever reason, God keeps wanting to involve us in his will on earth.  Sounds crazy, knowing how good I am at taking care of my own responsibilities, but for some reason he gives me the opportunity to interject my disfunctions into his divine will instead of just letting me sit on the sidelines.

So I think I’m starting to learn that prayer is not about waking God up from his power nap after church to remind him that one of my friends just got fired and needs a job.  It’s about realizing that he’s already working in that person’s life, and all he wants me to do is agree with him here on earth that I want His will to be done in that person’s life.

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven".

Nothing ruins a good action movie like the main character drifting off into some daydream sequence, away in some peaceful place with his family……

When I watched "The Gladiator" with Russell Crow years ago, I was in awe.  That’s the kind of movie that makes you want to be noble, to do the right thing, and in some weird way learn how to fight with a sword.  Eventually reality sets in the next time you get a paper cut and are tempted to cry about it…but I digress.

The only part I didn’t like about that movie is that Maximus, the big tough Roman Army General turned rebel gladiator, kept having this re-occurring dream sequence where he’d be walking through a field towards his family.  For a long time I just though that the director had included that part of the movie to be artistic, to give the main character some depth.  And I thought it was a waste.

I wanted to see action! I wanted to see Maximus take control of the army, to fight some more battles.  To restore the glory of Rome.  And to give my my money’s worth for the ticket I bought to live vicariously through this movie as an ancient superhero.

Alas, it was not to be.  Maximus dies, and floats away through the grass to his family.  But now, at the young old age of 31, with a life that seems more cluttered than the office I sit in, with too few hours in the day to have both a job and hobbies, I finally understand why the gladiator daydreamed.

At a certain point in your life, you long for the action, for the glory.  You have a point to prove, and you’ll do anything to prove it.  To be peaceful is to be boring.  To be resting is to be wasting time.  So you go out and pack your life full of the things you think you need to do, only to find that they high they bring is only temporary.  It’s never enough, no victory is good enough.

So one day you stop and look around at your life and think "What am I doing?"  "Where is this going to end?".  You take a look around at all the unnecessary things in your life that you’ve been chasing, and all of a sudden you feel like one of those horses pulling a chariot, and the stress of being driven around the ring of life has left you with a tired mind, and an empty soul.

For a while you don’t know what to do.  So you cry a little, get anxious a little, maybe get angry a little.  But at the end of the day, you’ve got a mess to clean up, and there’s no use getting angry about it, it won’t make it disappear any faster.  So you begin to clean up the cluttered mess that is your life.

At some point you begin to get a vision of a place you want to get to.  A peaceful place with only the essentials.  Free to take an evening with your wife to go down to the park without feeling like you’re leaving the world without a savior.  You imagine this place, and then the reality of your situation settles back in. 

But you know where you want to be.

It seems to me that in our culture, there’s a widespread trend of buying lots of stuff, as soon as you can, for as cheaply as you can.  This brings me back to the title of this post.  Quick, Quality, Quantity, pick two.

I want it all, and I want it now

You can certainly have high quality stuff, in large quantities, but it won’t be quick.  It will take time until you own it, which of course includes paying off credit cards used to buy it.  Or you can have high quality stuff, right now (quick), but not very much of it.  Or you can have a lot of stuff, right now, but it won’t be very high quality. 

Unfortunately, I think that this is the mentality that stores like Wal-Mart  promote.  Get everything you think you need, right now, for cheap.  But most of it’s really bad quality.  All ethical issues aside, most of what Wal-Mart sells for cheap is cheap for a reason.  It’s made cheaply.

The part of this that causes me major heartburn, is that it sends the message that quality is expendable.  Just ignore quality, focus on how much you can get.  While this is great in the short term, it breaks down in the long term because of more frequent repairs and replacements.

Learning to appreciate less for more

The idea of spending more money to get less stuff is a pretty direct affront to the mentality that most of us hold.  If presented with an empty living room, most of us would choose to fill it up with a sofa, loveseat, and recliner, TV, and entertainment center, with enough money left over to buy a coffee table.

But what if we made the decision that instead of buying all that stuff, we were going to buy just two pieces of furniture that would last for 15 years.  That’s a really hard decision to make when you’ve traditionally placed a high value on quantity over quality.  If we make that decision, we’ll end up with more comfortable furniture and we’ll worry less about spills because the fabric will be stain proof.  The reality is, for most of us, living that way takes longer.  You can’t have the room filled up right away, because you’re valuing quality over both quantity and quick.

Choosing wisely

Knowing that the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other before settling in the middle, I feel that it would be careless not to mention that price does not equal quality.  Many times one is an indicator of the other, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat.  The rule of thumb I use is this.

Buy the highest quality items you can afford to pay for with cash.

That simple rule keeps you focused on quality, as well as financial stewardship, and that can’t be a bad thing.

There would be other times when she would ask a question, and for whatever reason I didn’t understand what she was asking. But instead of simply asking her to repeat it, my response to her seemed to say "What is wrong with you, why can’t you explain this?". Part of this stemmed from my frustration about not being able to understand what she’d be saying. Nevertheless, it is something I had to learn to stop doing because of how it affected her, but still,I did not understand why.

Then one day, in a split second, I had a revelation that rocked my world. The Holy Spirit showed me a vision of my wife as a little girl, growing up, completing high school, going to college, getting 3 degrees. Graduating with a Ph.D, doing awesome research, being confident in her abilities. Taking care of herself, and doing fine.

The he showed me her beginning to doubt herself. All of a sudden she’s not so sure she knows what she’s doing anymore. Even basic things like paying bills, and banking etc… She begins to wonder if she’s not that intelligent, and that causes her to second guess everything she does.

Now comes the fun part. At that moment, the Holy Spirit revealed to me that this is what my words were doing to Lori. A strong woman who had been doing just fine on her own, now in marriage beginning to doubt herself because of the way I treated her.

My heart was broken, but not from guilt, or shame. It was broken for her sake. I felt God speak to me and say

"How dare you speak to her in such a way, someone that I love so much."

This was not condemnation, it was correction. And I needed it. Lori needed my support, not my correction. She needed someone to praise her, not look at her with frustration. It broke my heart to think that someone who used to be confident in herself, would look inward and think "Maybe I don’t really know what I’m doing", because of something I said.

When we begin to understand how much God loves us, and we stop being so hard on ourselves, our hearts become soft enough to realize how much we’ve hurt other people. Things we couldn’t see before because we were afraid to look. This experience was painful, but I was ready to face it because I knew that God would not abandon me for having done something so hurtful. That’s a wonderful place to be.

Not because I was scared, not because I felt bad, but because I simply in that moment didn’t want to contribute to the possibility of getting cancer someday. As I left the store, I realized that this is the first time I’ve been leaning one way on a food issue, and upon a small nudge from the Holy Spirit, changed my mind simply because of what He told me.

What a strange feeling to be able to abandon something you want so quickly because He asks you to. In that moment, the will of Anthony Stauffer ceased to exist, and all I wanted was to do what He asked of me, regardless of how I felt about it. My desires would be to do what He required.

As soon as I reached the stairwell in my building, the spell was broken and I immediately went back to being impatient, and edgy as I followed someone up the stairs at a forth of my normal speed. But for a brief instant, I had a glimpse of how Jesus approached life. Simple obedience to the one He loved.

However I find myself now facing some new things in life that could mean some radical changes to the structure I’ve gotten used to.  It feels like the beginning of a new adventure.  And I find this new-found peace being shaken by an invitation to come along for a life-changing journey.  There was a time when I plunged head first into things like this because of the need to prove myself to everyone, to prove myself worthy of God’s love.  To earn the respect of others.

However, now that much of that has passed, I find myself here still afraid of change, worried that the blessings will run out.  So without the push of my ego and need for validation, I have to ask myself, why would I go?  Why would I dare mess with what’s working?  Why would I try something new?

I am compelled to accept the invitation because I believe that He has good things for me ahead.  He will not force me to go anywhere.  But if I accept the invitation to follow Him through this transition period, I know it will be a great adventure.

Have you ever faced a potential life-changing decision?  Do you just plunge in headfirst with no thought for why you do it?  Maybe you sit back and do nothing because you’re afraid….

Walking with God won’t always be the same picture.  It won’t always be still waters around us.  But He can create still waters inside us.

You see, when I saw God as a distant figure, up in Heaven waiting for me to earn my way into his paradise, I felt like I had to defend that he existed because all I felt between me and Him was distance.  I saw obligation.  He was something that needed proving, defending.

But when I began to actually experience him, I couldn’t find words to prove that it was right.  It seemed pointless to try and prove that this was real.  It’s the difference between showing a picture of your wife to someone and trying to prove you’re married to her, and looking into her eyes and seeing that you are.  One is distant and disconnected, and might even look contrived.  The other is sincere, heart-felt, and real.

I still find apologetics interesting.  I still believe that God’s principles have very beneficial application even outside the church.  I still believe that Jesus’ sacrifice was done in accordance with Hebrew law, and even more so, I still think that the need for salvation is a clear, cogent argument.  But if someone doesn’t believe that, what I experience now might be the most convincing thing I could show them.

And I can’t even find words for it.

Square Pegs, Round Holes

Over the past 12 years, I’ve developed some interesting skills.  I developed the strang ability to mimic the guitar style of Stevie Ray Vaughan, arguably the best blues guitarist of all time.  I also taught myself how to build websites in my spare time. Another computer related skill set I’ve also learned is the art of studio recording and video editing.  To top it off, I was surprised to learn that I make a pretty good teacher on subjects I care about.

So here were 4 fairly disjoint skills that I picked up, and for the longest time I felt like I had a bunch of square pegs and my life was made of round holes.  How in the world could all these things fit together?

• Guitar Playing
• Website design skills
• Recording and video editing
• Teaching

Quieting the noise pollution of religion

Over the past year and a half, I’ve dealt with a lot of old testament style beliefs that I held.  Feeling like I had to earn God’s favor, I had to fix everybody, and make them happy.  These kinds of thoughts and beliefs were polluting the air between me and God to the point where I could not hear him.

As I began to walk away from some of those mindsets, I started to experience a kind of peace I had never felt before.  A peace with who I was, who he had made me.  I began to hear him speak about things I would have never considered important enough to him to talk about.  I began to trust that there really was nothing that he considered insignificant.

The blinders come off

For years I had dreamed of putting together a curriculum to share what I had learned on guitar.  But the task of creating a series of DVDs seemed so monumental I always wondered if I’d ever get the chance to do it.  One night while I was cruising around YouTube, watching videos of other people playing guitar, showing off their amps, pedals, guitars, or just showing off their skills, an idea came from that still small voice that I’ve learned is the Holy Spirit.

"Why don’t you start making your own video guitar lessons, and build a website to show them on?"

And my immediate response was "uh…….yeah.  Why haven’t I?"  It was so simple, it was right there in front of me, and it had never occured to me that I could do it.

To make a short story even shorter, in the 3 months since I put up my first lesson, I’ve had my first 22 lessons watched over 60,000 times on YouTube, I’ve had over 3,000 individual people from over 20 countries visit my website.  The number of pages viewed on my website is more than 30,000.  I now get about 1100 pages viewed a day on my site and over 1000 video views a day on YouTube.  I’ve had people send me donations, ask me to sell DVD lessons.  I’ve even had people go out and buy amps, guitars, and guitar effects pedals after watching my videos.

All of this was a complete surprise to me.  I have no idea how far this will go, but my bigger question was "Why didn’t I think of this before?".  The skills were there, but I couldn’t see it.  I was so wrapped up in trying to please God, that I couldn’t see the most obvious thing right in front of my eyes.  The one thing that pulls together all my skills towards a common goal.  It makes so much sense now looking back, but for years it was hidden in plain sight.

You can’t afford not to hear God

To close this series, I want to say again that a Christian cannot afford to go through life not hearing God.  We will miss many good things that he’s laid before us, uniquely designed for the skills he’s given us.  While we’re stuck running in circles trying to figure out how to get our act together enough to please him, we will miss the ideas that he’s hidden in plain sight, right in front of our eyes.

There are very few ideas that cannot be imitated, duplicated, copied or bested. But there is one man who had such an idea. An idea so good that it befuddled his competition. Hidden in plain sight. Waiting to be discovered.

The idea was based on a mistake.  A mistake that millions of people make every day.  In a hurry to type in the .com at the end of some website addresses, an awful lot of people type .cm instead of .com.  So you end up seeing a website you didn’t intend to see, or you see a message telling you that there’s no website at this address.

But it seems that ".cm" is a special mistake.  Every country has it’s own offical "domain suffix".  The UK is ".co.uk", German is ".de", and as it turns out, ".cm" is the offical domain suffix for the country of Cameroon.  This small twist made one man, a Christian, very rich.  Let’s find out why…

Revelation Knowledge

So one day, this idea hit him.  What if there were some way to capture all those mis-typed .cm mistakes that people make every day?  Upon finding out that .cm was the official suffix of Cameroon, he went and talked to the government officials there, and worked out a deal.  The deal went something like this.  Every time someone typed in a domain name ending in .cm, whether on purpose or by accident, the government would check to see if a real website existed in their country at that address.  If nobody had claimed that domain name yet, the person would instead see a page full of ads for this man’s company.

Try this out by visiting www.nolongerdriven.cm.

You’ll see that it forwards you to his company’s page full of ads.  His ads.  You didn’t mean to go there, but you see the ads anyway.  This is a very powerful thing.  Because for every person that mis-typed .cm instead of .com, they’d see this same page.  That’s over 7 million people a day.  It’s like having a website that everyone wants to visit.

One Time Only

To get a sense of the magnitude of his idea, understand that this "idea based on a mistake" could only happen one time.  There is no way to mis-type .net, or .org and get a combination of letters that happens to be assigned to a country.  There was ONE TIME that this could work.  When he made this deal, it could not be imitated, duplicated, copied, or bested. 

He had essentially found a way to get more than 7 million people every day looking, and clicking on his ads.  He now makes in excess of 70 million dollars a year, due in no small part to that mistake.   A mistake that had been around for years and years.  A mistake that any one in that business could have seen.  But nobody did.  And God showed it too him.

Next time I’ll talk about how this type of revelation has brought a sense of purpose and cohesiveness to my own life over the past 3 months.

Yesterday I got 1200 pageviews in one day on my guitar lesson website.  At the same time, I got 2300 video views in one day on YouTube.  Since December, people have sent me donations, hand made guitar pedals, and asked me to put out DVD lessons for them to buy.  I’ve had at least 3 people buy a guitar amp, and one person buy a guitar after watching my videos.  Two other people bought the same pedals I use. 

What’s even more surprising?  3 months ago, I hadn’t even thought about doing my first lesson.

Hidden In Plain Sight

The first recorded role of God is that of a creator.  An artist.  An infinite being with infinite creativity.  The best part?  When Jesus left this earth, He told us that we’d have that same creative force given to us in the Holy Spirit.

I remember watching a show about how easily our brains can be fooled into completely ignoring something if we’re given something else to focus on.  There was a group of about 10-15 people put in a room in front of a big TV.  The were told to watch the basketball players with certain colored jerseys on, and count how many times they passed the ball.  When the video started, 10 players came into view.  Half had on one color jersey, the rest had on the color that the group was supposed to watch.

They ran a tight figure 8 type pattern in a very small amount of space in front of the camera, passing the ball.  The people in the room watched very intently.  Halfway into the video, a mascot wearing a head-to-toe gorilla costume walked into the camera shot, stood right behind the players, and then walked out.  Oddly no one seemed to notice.

When the video concluded, the host of the show polled the participants to see how many people got the right number of passes.  Most were within 1 or 2 of the correct answer.  Then he asked if anyone saw something unusual about the video, and nobody remembered anything of the sort.  So he asked them to watch it again, this time without paying attention to the basketball, but just to watch the whole scene.  When the man in the gorilla suit came out, people’s reactions were of disbelief.  In their mind, there was no way that they could have missed that.  But they did.  Because they were focused on something else.

So I sat on my couch and laughed at all the dimwits who couldn’t even see a man in a gorilla costume walk across the screen.  Then the host of the show looked right at the camera and told me and everyone else watching the show that we shouldn’t be so amused.  He then showed in slow motion 4 or 5 clips from the past half hour of the show, where the same man, in the same gorilla costume had interrupted the shot during other segments of the show.  But because we, the viewing audience were so focused on the characters in the clip, we missed it just like the people watching the basketball video.

What’s the point?

The point of this series of posts is to explore how much we need to be able to hear God in order to live out the fullness of our days here on earth.  Our minds are not as sharp as we’d like to think.  There are parts of the big picture of our lives that we will surely miss without his help.  There are ideas hidden in plain sight that God has set before us that we will never see.  Missing those ideas could cost some people millions of dollars.  Even more important?  Missing those ideas could cost some a lot of happiness and fulfillment.

Next time I’ll take a look at a man who’s once-in-a-lifetime idea made him one of the most envied men in his field.