I’m diving in

It’s early morning.

No, maybe it’s late at night. 

Whatever you call its past my bedtime, but like most things when my ADHD kicks in (Or is it ADD) and I can’t stop.

The squirrel in my backyard is reflection – one of my favorite pastimes, one of my worst habits. 

If its not the tree-hopping rodent, it’s definitely the shiny object of intangibles that I use to plot my mental attitude and my next step.

I’m happy to tell you I’m emerging from what might be the worst summer of my life.

That makes it the best summer, too.

Funny how the stress and strain of gritting out the day to day opens up another world.

COVID-19 swept my sports calendar clean. I had to hustle to find anything to pay my bills… more or less, I did.

Thank you very much.

It wasn’t pretty.

If there was an assistance program for coronavirus I tried. If there was an odd job to get. I got it

I delivered food.  I wrote newspaper articles.

I created new podcasts.

I went through so many cushions.

I picked up every penny i found.

A friend or two gave me money WITHOUT asking.

I learned to pray a lot. No. I prayed a lot. I learned to stretch my budget…then stretch it again.

Listened to a lot of speakers and watched a lot of YouTube.

Then one day it hit me, just about everything is an emotional battle.

It’s the wisdom of King Solomon in Proverbs 4:23 saying …Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

And the truth, sometimes you have to go on seek destroy missions. You need an expedition or two to chop down trees and bushes that grew up from the roots of unhealthy thinking.

If you aren’t strong, emotions will wrap around you until you cut them loose.

If you don’t a sift through the truth, you got a lot of bad thinking building a beachhead in your soul.

Its like a commercial I remember as a kid for an auto parts store.

“You can pay me now, or pay me later.” The point, you’ll still have to deal with it at some point.

A leadership consultant friend told me once, “you can’t out run your problems and they’ll catch up with you faster than you can run, further than you can run and will be packed with even more momentum than when you started to run.”

You can’t escape them, by avoiding – in other words.

Emotions are fickle.

I’ve listened to so many voices in my head. These are the feelings that keep me moving or kept me snug in bed.

This photo accompanied me for much of the summer. I imagined the raging fear and shaky courage these men had as they departed for the shores of Normandy June 6, 1944. I wrote these words – “I can’t go back. God give me this beach. I’m scared to death, but I have no choice but to keep going.” This summer in a lot of ways was my D-Day.

One day I decided until I confronted every fear, every excuse, every habit – you know you can justify everyone – before I could really move ahead.

It really is about the results and the attitude we have before and during the process before we get to the result. 

I’m gonna be digging in for the rest of my life, but I decided I wasn’t going to be locked into thought patterns, but find their source, find the reasons I do what I do.

So it’s been a tough three months, but its been good, because I basically stood at the edge of the cliff and said I’m driving in to the deep.

The deep, is taking the battle to the enemy in your mind. Like Paul said in Second Corinthians 10:5 “… take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”