Month: November 2018

It was dark! Where was I? It took me several minutes for my mind to clear enough and recognize that I was in my car, but where was it parked? I squinted my eyes trying to filter any light that may be found. One thing was for sure it was very cold. My teeth chattered as I sought the keys. As I lifted my hand to search pain shot up my arm. What had happened? The pain seemed to jolt my mind into action. Memories or what I assumed were memories began to filter in.

A fight. Yes, there had been a brawl in that bar where I had been drinking. Getting off swing shift I had headed into Elma Washington for a few quick drinks before driving home to Olympia. How the fight started was still a blur but I soon remembered the pool table and a game of ‘8 ball’. Yeah, that was it. An argument over a final shot. Soon a swing of my pool cue, then blackness. But how did I get here and where was ‘here’ anyways?

I rolled my window down a bit, more pain but it didn’t seem like anything was broken. The air was brisk and damp, it seemed to clear my head more. I could see I was parked on the shoulder of a road. I searched again for my keys. Feeling around the passenger seat, ah, there they were. Starting the car, cold air blew out of the heater vent, sending another chill through me but soon heat and warmth.

I switched on the headlights and they lit up the road  ahead of me. As I did this I saw flashing blue and red lights in my mirror. I thought, “This can’t be good.” And, of course, it wasn’t. It turned out that I had been in a bar fight and I had hit a man with a pool cue, in return I had gotten pretty beat up myself and thrown out of the bar. How I got to my car and ended up on a logging road off the highway, I will probably never know. But the man I had beaten had gone to the hospital and then to the cop shop to press charges, leading to those flashing lights behind my car and my arrest. Violence had once again led to pain and turmoil in my life and those around me.

I spent most of my addicted life angry. That anger showed up in so many ways. It was like a darkness that never was far from me ready to engulf and spread and hurt. The part that pains me most now is that I chose it. When you choose to live in darkness there can be no light. Jesus said it this way: “But anyone who walks in the night stumbles because there is not light within him.” (John 11:10)

Over the years I went through many programs either by choice or enforced. Yeah, doctors and shrinks; AA and rehab. None of it worked. Don’t get me wrong there are some great programs out there and they have helped lots of folks overcome addictions. But to me no program can totally heal unless it is based on the healer and finisher of all faith, Jesus Christ.

The reason I say this is that, yes, following the 12 step program of AA would have help me quit drinking, like it has for so many. But would it have gotten to the core of what was really wrong with my life? I don’t think so. It was not until I was able to turn away from the life of addictions and surrender all of it to Jesus that the anger, the violence left me. And folks that is called grace and because of it I came to believe what the apostle Peter tells us was true even for me: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that you should show forth the praises of him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” (1Peter 2:9) See, if I chose Him, He would let even a sinner like me become part of His royal priesthood, His holy nation. I could choose light.

And you know over the last eight years, without me knowing, I have been transformed. To a point now where I no longer want to walk where it is dark. I never have to experience again awakening in the cold darkness of my car, totally confused and lost, defeated. Because I now walk with the one who is …” the way, the truth and the life…” I like where I am going. It is sunny on this side of the street. All I can say is thank you, Lord!

Blessings John

Originally posted 5/22/17

I have to say that I have not had a lot of lasting friends. I would guess traveling like I have and living in more states than I can recall does not lead to lasting relationships. Nor would the fact that most of the people I called friends were as deeply involved in addictive habits as I was for many years. But even taking all of that into consideration. I have another problem that prevents me from staying in touch with those few who call themselves my ‘friends’, I hate telephones.

I don’t know what it is, but when I have to call someone on the phone, I break out in a cold sweat. It does not matter if it is friend, business, or stranger. I start to tap out the ten-digit number and I am a mess. I don’t know how this all started but I do know that it has been a problem from the time when phones actually had a dial and there were still party lines.

I recall an incident when I was living in Upper Michigan way back in the stone age of the early 1970’s. I had just bought my first house. It was what we call a ‘fixer-upper’. An old hand dug well in the backyard, no real plumbing in the house except a toilet and a kitchen sink with an outdoor spicket. No hot water, the old couple who had lived there took saunas in a little shed also in the backyard. Needless to say, there was a lot of work to be done before we could even move in.

I can tell you I was a proud guy when we finally did! Showing off all the work that had been done: new shower and hot water heater. Kitchen with a stainless-steel sink and hot and cold running water. And so much more. We had a real home! So, when the Bell Telephone man showed up to install our phone, that too was a momentous occasion. That is until he told me we would be sharing a line with four other households. The city boy now living in the country was introduced to a party line and it struck real fear in his heart!

Every time I would want to make a call fear overcame me. “What if someone is on the line? Do I ask them to get off? Do I listen in? What in the world should I do?” Now the incident I spoke of happened in maybe the second week after we moved in. I had just gotten home from work and as usual the house was empty. My wife and baby must once again be at my mother-in laws house. She was supposed to do some shopping, so I could cook up a batch of spaghetti and meatballs, my favorite meal at the time, but the cupboards were bare. I really needed to know if my wife had done the shopping or if I would need to go out and get what was needed. That meant using the telephone. It came down to fear or famish. I wanted dinner but risking talking on the party line, well…

Telling myself to quit being foolish I picked up the line and yeah, no one was on, or so it seemed. But as I started to dial, I heard a woman’s voice thunder, “Who’s on this line? Can’t you tell we are talking here?” Again, she said, “Who is this?” I slammed down the phone in terror. “Would they be able to tell it was me? Would someone come to the house and penalize me in some way?” So many other foolish thoughts. I did not make that call, just sat in fear until my wife got home an hour later. I did not use our phone again for months. That is what fear does!

I guess you could say it is pretty weird or foolish to be afraid of talking on the phone. I think so myself. But it is there and so far, I have not been able to rid myself of it completely, yet I have hope. I know human fears and phobias know no boundaries. I know that psychiatrists have all kinds of treatments and even claim cures for human fear but, I also know that none of them would ever work for me. Like with my addictions I knew that the core of those were deeper than what ‘cures’ humans could offer. I believe that is the same with our fears and with our phobias.

God says this to us through the prophet Isaiah, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” (Isaiah 41:10) And I believe that this means for us to turn even the silly and sometimes embarrassing fears over to Him too. He knows them already and is just waiting for me to humble myself and say, “Lord, you know my weaknesses and know even the hairs on my head, today I need to talk on the phone, be with me that I may do your will.” I pray that prayer when that unreasonable fear comes over me and you know what? He always washes it away.

And even as Satan keeps trying to remind me how weak I am, it does just that opposite it shows me I am strong in He who created me and defeated the ultimate fear, death, for me. Pretty awesome stuff.

Even as fearful as I was about that party line, I eventually got used to it and even got to know a few of my neighbors because of it. When my house caught fire and burned to the walls. It was one of them who knew me by that time who called the fire department and did everything to console us. Even as we became friends, I still took a gulp every time I picked up that phone and sometimes still do. But when I do, I have an answer, His name is Jesus Christ. Even in the wacky fears He is my Savior!

Blessings John,
11/14/18

“When you are on the job you need to rely on the guys you are working with. There are tons of situations where if the person you are counting on does not do their job you will end up in the hospital or even worse six feet under.”

That is a quote, as I remember it, from the safety trainer in my union apprenticeship classes. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but I remember he was always harping on things that I knew were the truth but a lot of time the rules were not being obeyed. Some of the problem stemmed from the fact that many of us were under the influence during working hours. The use of alcohol and drugs on most jobsites was taken for granted. Then there was ‘showboating’. Guys who would do dangerous stuff just to prove they could do it. And there was the fact that some people did not know how to work safely, either they did not pay attention during safety training or just did not care.

There were several accidents that happened during my forty plus year career. And to be honest, I think about 80% of them were human error. A few of those led to deaths, four friends of mine died while onsite. Three of those could have been prevented if human error was not involved. I think today the construction trades are much safer. New and more effective equipment, written safety plans, and stricter control of substances are among some of the reasons. But even with all the new stuff in place construction is a dangerous business.

For me, if the truth be known, it is one of the main reasons I was attracted to the business. I have written blogs about my perchance for dangerous stuff when I was younger. Hobbies like rock and shear face free climbing and hang gliding to name a few. I liked to take risks or maybe I was just so out of control that I had a death wish but could not take my life the conventional way. Either way for most of my addicted years I put myself in situations where death was an option.

But amazingly when on the job I did take safety seriously. Yes, I drank and did drugs while performing dangerous tasks and I was, every now and again, a ‘showboater’, still I had an almost spotless safety record. The key word here is almost. There was one incident where I put guys in danger because I was not paying attention to ALL the circumstances going on, I was not protecting all of my crew members.

Here is briefly what happened. I was working on a nuclear power plant in Elma, Washington for a concrete reinforcing company. It was our job to erect all the reinforcing for the Auxiliary Building blast walls. Most of these walls were up to five feet thick and had a lot of rebar in them. My job at the time was swing shift ‘curtain’ crew foreman. Each wall had four pretied ‘curtains’ of rebar approximately 30’ tall and 70’ long. They would come up to us on a flat-bed truck and we would rig them and set them in place. Lots of technical stuff in what I just described but the main idea was there were many things that needed to be done right and it was my job to make sure that happened.

I had been on a ‘bender’ for several days, drinking after work, sleeping a few hours then drinking some more before heading off to work. That night I was not as sharp as I should have been and did not notice that one of the vertical bars on the curtain had been cut loose. I was on the truck and did a final examination then told the crane operator to pick up the load. As he got it about 10’ in the air, the loose vertical came plunging down like a 30’ spear. It missed one of my crew members by mere feet. Not knowing if there were any more loose bars, I signaled to bring the load down quick and this made more of my crew scatter because I had not warned them what I was doing. No one was hurt, by the grace of God, but from that point I lost a lot of trust of my crew. It took months to get it back, if I ever did.

Why do I tell this story? I guess it is a good example of what can happen if you work when under the influence. But that is not all I want to share. The bigger picture that this incident reminded me of, is that when I relied solely on myself lots of bad things were bound to happen. Here is what I mean.

I have come to know and trust that God is in control. Does that mean accidents will not happen? No, but I believe if more of us rose in the morning and surrendered our day into His care we would find that many of the ‘accidents’ I just described would not occur because of several reasons, starting with a sober clear mind. Not all of us get up in the morning and distort our brains with alcohol or drugs. But how many of us are plagued by stress and pressure of our day to day life. Driving to work, texting or talking on the phone. An accident waiting to happen.

We can convince ourselves we are just multi-tasking but really, we are just about as out of control as I was that night long ago. It is really simple. Turn it over to Him. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

Today, as I recall that night long ago, I see that I was trying to control the world around me by being conformed to that world. I have accepted Jesus transforming power and I now seek to live within God’s will. I can say I do not start a day anymore with asking God’s will be done. But there are those days where I allow this world to creep back in and like that accident waiting to happen, I need to trust and obey. I pray this day I can, how about you

Blessings John,
11/12/18

Joe Jackson was not really a friend. Like so many people I knew at the time, he was a drinking buddy. Which generally meant that he drank in the same bar as I did and was there most of the times I was. We normally talked about the weather, sports, or some gossip going around the bar, Joe knew all the gossip. But after he had four or five good, stiff, whiskey and ginger-ale’s in him, talk always turned to the seminal moment in Joe’s life, it happened near a bridge on a Sunday in 1965, in Selma, Alabama.

Joe was a black man, who grew up in Selma during the civil rights movement. And as we sat in that bar in Glendale, California over twenty years later he would tell stories of the life he lived and the things he experienced. But when he talked about the bridge, he would often say to anyone who would listen, “You don’t know nothin’! Unless you were there and saw what I saw. You, just don’t know nothin’!” Joe Jackson had been a young boy who was watching as 600 peaceful protestors led by Hosea Williams and John Lewis tried to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge on March 7, 1965.

He had not been among the protestors but was on his bicycle delivering newspapers, so his story went. Of course, he had heard of plans for a march. There had been a lot of talk since the shooting death of a young African American man during a demonstration in February. But his family was not involved. His mother worked two jobs and his father was away most of the time working on several farms in the area. This left Joe and his brother to earn all the extra money they could.

Joe would always get emotional at this point in his story. He would describe how he had seen the protestors as they came out of a local church and as they marched two by two heading toward the bridge. And even though he had papers to deliver he could not help himself, he wanted to follow along. He remembered there were others who were doing the same following but not part of the march. As they approached the bridge Joe decided he needed to get back to delivering his papers but within minutes he heard such a ‘clatter of noise’, those were his words, that he turned back around and rode again toward the bridge. A man who knew his father stopped him from going anywhere near the carnage that was happening, but he saw the results, people running and bloody. Almost at every telling it would be about here he would say again, “Unless you were there, you don’t know nothin’!” Then Joe would be silent and so would I, just two people staring into our drinks. But soon talk would return to the mundane, sports, the weather, and gossip. Joe knew all the gossip.

I had forgotten about Joe until I moved to Georgia, a few years ago. Driving from Oregon to our home here we made a point of crossing over that iconic bridge. But the funny thing was, that I did not think of Joe as we were doing it. It was not until quite a few months later when I was listening to an interview with Congressman John Lewis that he came to mind. As Lewis was describing that Bloody Sunday, as he had innumerable times before, I could hear Joe telling the story as he remembered it. A good feeling came over me. Congressman Lewis, Joe, and so many others had been affected by what happened that day back in 1965, when peaceful people came face to face with evil hate and in the end peace won. It was a time of true overcoming.

I don’t know why I thought of Joe this morning. Maybe it is how I see that even as our world, our country has made progress through peaceful means that is no longer our rhetoric or our way. Ugly words and even uglier actions seem to now dominate every aspect of our interactions, even as a portion of us call ourselves Christians. I am sure one reason Joe came to mind because he was right, we do not ‘know nothin’’ and we did not learn anything from our past or history, hatred still seems to rule. But the real reason the Holy Spirit brought Joe back from the cobwebbed recesses of my memory is to remind me that I need myself to be a person of ‘peace’, through Jesus Christ, in the face of hatred.

Jesus assured us of this: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do, I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14: 27) It is His peace in this time of trouble that will allow me and you, if you seek it, to see that we are nearer than ever to His soon return. I do not need to be sucked into the rhetoric of hatred but move forward, as Jesus did, in the face of it.

Joe witnessed the results of peace in the face of hatred. He never forgot it. We are in a time when all of us who truly believe will be tested in ways as bad or worse. Today the Holy Spirit is asking me, “Are you ready? Will you stand?” I pray my answer is yes. But I can only know that for sure if all my trust and really all my life is in the one who faced death to save me. That is my only hope and even I ‘know nothin’ else, in that I am sure and at peace!

Blessings and Happy Sabbath,
John
11/9/18