I lost a Beacon (video)

I lost a Beacon. The doctor placed it in my Prostate but it’s gone. What dos this all mean?

The Only Easy day was Yesterday.

I do not know why I am so blessed by God. I do not understand why I have people in my life who write things like you are about to read. This email came to me from the father of a young man in our community who has Downs Syndrome. The dad wrote me the other day to tell me his son, who loves me a lot, is praying for me every day and following my blog.

He agreed to let me share this letter but not their names. Their names are important to me and to God but the real message is hidden in these words you are about to read.

Take a deep breath and discover what tears, tenderness and the love of a father is all about.

I imagine this is how God feels about each one of us. Enjoy the words of a father.
“When he was old enough to understand and his language skills improved I would tell him, “The only easy day was yesterday.”

When he would hoist himself up the stairs to the front door of our home from the bus after a long day at school and say, “Dad, it was really hard today”, I would tell him, “The only easy day was yesterday.”

I used to look into his tender eyes filled with tears when the world had been too hard or people too cruel and tell him, “The only easy day was yesterday.”

Why?

Because I won’t live forever and someday I will need to leave him alone here. I won’t be here to rescue him from walks in the wind and rain from the bus stop or the dramas and traumas of life as I do now. I will be gone. So he has learned to do the hard thing and knows; the only easy day was yesterday.”

Never Walk Alone: Relay For Life Concert (Video)

What people with cancer need is someone to simply support them. We know you can’t cure us, we know you can’t change our circumstances, but what you can do is pray, think, or love us through cancer. Saturday Night is your chance to do just that and meet some of the amazing people who have fought, and are fighting cancer. Watch this video and then show up Saturday Night.

Sprout Film Festival

We recently shot this interview for Full Access and agency in Western Oregon that helps people with disabilities. The agency is holding a Film Festival and each film is either about, starred in, produced, directed or written by someone with a disability. Watch the video to find out how you can participate and where you can go to see a trailer for the festival.

I have a question for you? Don’t be afraid.

I posted a simple question on Face Book the other day and got tons of responses.

What is the one simple thing you can do, but probably won’t, that could change your life?

One of my answers was “Live as if things don’t have to get better.”

For some, that would seem to mean lack of hope. But I think it’s deeper than that. I think to live as if things don’t have to get better just means your hope is in the right place.

Maybe the better question is “Where do I place my Faith, my Hope and my Dreams?”

Monday morning I begin the process of radiating my prostate with the hope that it will kill and cure my cancer. If I didn’t think I was going to be cured I probably wouldn’t do it.

Does that mean I’m living for things to get better? I guess to a degree it does and baby I’m hanging onto that tiny thread of hope.

But the mere process could create problems that are worse than what I’m currently experiencing. Right now I have no symptoms at all just this little SOB cancer growing in my belly.

Let’s go back a few sentences and talk about faith, hope and our dreams. I think this is the key to all of this. Where does my life center? What foundation can I depend on so that I can live as if things don’t have to get better?

I’m not going to answer this one for you. Figure it out for yourself. I know mine so, what’s yours?

You don’t have to tell me but you’ll thinking about it all day won’t you?

What do you want?

When I was a child I asked God for things. I’d kneel by my bed and speak to Him as if I were calling a radio station’s request line, asking for songs.

As I grew up the requests became more mature, more meaningful but still focused on selfishness and things.

A lot of us hide behind our request line. We say we will do God’s Will but if we dig deep enough the things we ask for are basically selfish.

We want our lives to be better, we want to be happy, we want to prosper, we want to be successful and if this happens it will show the world that being a follower of Christ brings on blessings.

What we fail to understand is that blessings may be disguised in pain. Blessings are often times simple things, small things, little, tiny, microscopic things that on this earth seem like nothing but in God’s Kingdom move mountains.

What if today, you cease with the “here’s what I want request line” and just say to God, “Your Will Be Done.”

This blog comes with a warning. He will.

Isn’t it time we stop looking at us and start looking towards Him?

Hey, here’s an idea. God, what do you want for me? And then be ready to live out His answer.