We have puppies.

I’ve been hesitant to get puppies. Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs, and most other pets to be honest. My go-to complaints have always been that a dog is a lot of work and we don’t have a wealth of free time to begin with. I also argued that having a dog at home when we are often away from home wouldn’t be a good experience for the dog. That argument backfired spectacularly when we purchased two puppies instead of one, so that they would have each other for company.

I was able to put off getting a pet for many years with my daughter. But she is clever and persistent. She desperately wanted a pet. At one point she began to send us pics of hedgehogs. She sent pictures of hedgehogs sitting in muffin tins and on top of sugar cones, like a prickly ball of ice cream. It became clear that her desire for a pet was not going to go away, so rather than being infested with hedgehogs, I began to research various dog breeds. I gave her the puppy that she named Finn on her sixteenth birthday. She was as happy as I had ever seen her. Her joy and tears converted me at that moment, and Finn became a treasured member of our family.

We had never trained a dog before, so Finn wasn’t especially well trained. We cleaned the carpet daily and purchased her favorite cow hooves to chew on (they smell exactly like the manure filled pastures where they formerly walked by the way). Despite all of the challenges and unwelcome smells, it was undeniable that Finn brought us great joy. As crazy as it sounds, she made us a stronger family.

Fast forward a few years and Finn got sick. It seemed like it hit her overnight. One day she was fine and the next day she couldn’t walk across the yard. We took her to the vet and then on to an animal hospital. We found that she had a blood disease and that there was no cure. That evening I joined Makena and Mindi at the hospital to say goodbye. I had spent my life trying to protect Makena from hurt and heartbreak. I believed that she deserved the world, and I figured that protecting her from unnecessary pain was the least I could do.

So, when I walked into the room where she was saying goodbye to Finn and saw how utterly heartbroken she was, I was undone. We shared a family hug after we left the hospital and I broke down completely. I was sad about Finn of course, but I was crushed by my daughter’s pain. She was hurting terribly and there was nothing I could do to help. I felt that I had completely failed her.

Grief takes time, and over the next few weeks her heart healed, slowly but surely. I learned that perhaps I hadn’t failed her as badly as I feared. She was better off for the love she had given to her dog, and for the time they had together. For her, the love and joy of Finn’s life was worth any amount of grief she had to endure at her loss.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” A broken heart is always preferable to a cold and calloused one.

Makena eventually got another dog, 50 lbs. of insanity named Loki, a rescue husky. She’s married now and she and her husband have two huskies. She loves them dearly and will no doubt be broken hearted if anything ever happens to them. But she wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. She’s braver than I am, but that’s not news, she always has been.

So, once again, we now have puppies. There will be aggravation and one day (hopefully long from now) broken hearts. But there is also joy and puppy snuggles and my son’s contagious laughter as they all run around in the back yard. It seems that some pains are necessary. Being truly human will mean being broken-hearted at times, but love is always worth the risk.

The post Love Is Worth The Risk first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

My Dad loved to read. He was a picky reader and tended to stick to action books, mostly westerns. Of those, his favorite author was Louis L’Amour. He had most all of L’Amour’s books and read them over and over. I now have his yellowing and tattered collection of paperbacks. I try once a year to go through the box of books and settle on one to read as a way of remembering my Dad. I find comfort in knowing that my hands are holding books that his hands held. This time of year, many of us are looking for ways to deal with the losses we’ve faced along the way.

I spoke with a lady from our church today who, over the years, has lost her husband, brother, and others, all during the Christmas season. She admitted, “I hate to see this season roll around”. She’s not the only one. The holidays are difficult for a lot of people. Some of you are facing your first Christmas without a mom, Dad, grandparent, or child this year. The empty chair at the table can be enough to make us want to cancel Christmas dinner altogether.

Carrying the weight of our losses can quickly become overwhelming. We are tempted to build a wall in our mind and shut off our painful memories. The wall that shuts off those memories, however, doesn’t just close off the painful memories, but many good memories as well. For those of you struggling into this December, here are a couple of tips that might help you remember well:

1)Share your stories with someone else.

Grief feels like a very private thing and in many ways it is. The processing of grief, however, needs to be shared. Tell you stories to someone else. Telling our stories and listening to others share their memories can open us up to important things we have forgotten. Share a story with your spouse. Give you cousin a call. Tell your child a favorite memory that you have of their grandfather. Saying the words out loud has a power that doesn’t exist when our memories are left to bounce around lonely and captive in our mind.

2)Say the obvious out loud.

Everyone at this year’s family get-together knows that grandma is no longer with us. Don’t be afraid to say the words out loud. Everyone is thinking about it, and everyone is missing her. This will often give everyone permission to take a deep breathe, cry a few tears, or share a story. Don’t try to protect people from their pain, rather, create space for them to express it.

3)Don’t allow regrets to take over.

We are all human, and that means that every relationship we have brings its share of regrets.  There are things we wish we hadn’t said and other things we wish we had. It’s easy when we are grieving to become so focused on our regrets that we block out other good memories. You can learn from your regrets, but don’t spend time punishing yourself for things that happened 8 years ago. It’s not something that your loved one would have wanted for you.

4)Stay in the present.

Don’t’ allow your thoughts of the past cause you to miss out on the present. The pain of loss and remembering often demands our attention. Don’t allow those demands cause you to miss out on what’s going on around you this year. There is joy to be had and memories to be made.  Your friends and family need you in the here and now.

I hope this Christmas finds you with only the best memories and that for every tear of sadness, you’ll have several more of joy and laughter.

May you be blessed this Christmas with joy filled memories from the past, and laughter and peace in the present.

The post Dealing With Loss During the Holidays first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

Life is often unpredictable. Anxiety is what we feel when the uncertainty of life becomes overwhelming. Our minds frantically bounce from one thought to the next trying to fix, repair, predict, prepare, relate, or overcome. As our inability to control everything becomes apparent, so does our discomfort. Soon the headaches, backaches, or stomach pains set in. The small healthy fire that burns inside of us to be productive, rages into a forest fire that consumes all of our thoughts and energy. If your anxiety has become a common companion during your week, here are a few practical steps that could offer you some relief.

Quick Note: Some anxiety can reach levels of intensity that need extra attention. If that’s you, start with a full physical from your doctor and then find a trusted therapist to help you on your journey.

Divide and Conquer.

It seems impossible to ignore our anxious thoughts for an entire day, but 10 minutes is a reasonable start. When today’s anxious thought comes crashing in on you, decide to set it aside for 10 minutes. For example, if you are stressed about how you’re going to make ends meet financially, resolve to set the issue aside for 10 minutes. Say to yourself, “I will not think about my finances for the next 10 minutes”. If after that time, you decide to pick the thought back up, you can. If you would like to set it aside for another ten minutes, then that’s your prerogative as well. Remember, it’s not laziness or procrastination to set aside a topic until a time when our brain can think more clearly about it! Once your mind is clear enough to find the first step in the task at hand, you are ready to proceed. One step taken is better than ten steps obsessed over. Oftentimes the overwhelming size of the forest keeps us from chopping at the first tree. Take a deep breath, find one tree, and start chopping.

Give Yourself Permission To Rest.

When we are tired our anxiety feels especially intense, and we are unable to think as clearly. Life feels like a thousand issues that we can’t resolve, swirling around all at once in our brains. Battling anxiety requires a great deal of mental energy. So, as hard as it can be, take a (guilt free) nap. At night, set a time to be in bed and stick to it. Tell yourself (out loud if necessary) that your day is done and you cannot accomplish anything else until morning. At that point, stop making lists (either on paper or in your head), let go, and go to sleep. This may take some practice and could include a few nights of staring at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come. But stay committed to the routine and your body will adjust.

Repeat After Me: “I am more than what I do”.

It’s tempting to believe that we am only doing well when we have done everything and have done it perfectly. That is just not true. Life is hard and we are imperfect. Even at our best, some tasks are impossible. Who you are is more than just a reflection of how well you perform. You can control your effort but not always the outcomes, so show yourself a bit or mercy. Think of all of the imperfect people that you love, odds are, several of them love you back just the way you are. You are more than your biggest mistakes.

Implementing these three things into your life will reduce your anxiety and give you greater clarity in your thinking. We may not be able to avoid all of life’s anxiety, but we can take steps to address it in healthy ways.

The post Practical Steps To Reduce Daily Anxiety first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

How do we face an unknown future?

When the people of Israel escaped their slave existence in Egypt, their challenges had just begun. There had been 70 people who initially travelled to Egypt to escape the ravages of a seven year long famine. Those were the sons of the man Israel (Jacob) and their families. Now after four hundred years of slavery, the nation that bore Israel’s name were numbered at well over a million. Imagine a million slaves stumbling into the desert with no clear destination!  The plan for what was to happen next wasn’t very clear. What was clear was that there was no plan B. The only thing behind them was the Red Sea and thousands of dead Egyptian soldiers. The only options available to them were Moses, the road ahead, and a God they thought had forgotten them long ago. Where do you begin when everything you have ever known has been swept away? How do you move forward to a future than isn’t clear?

Those questions sound pretty familiar don’t they?

Our present is spent up a moment at a time. Each moment gets shoved back into the past whether we are ready to let it go or not. Our past is a collection of successes and failures, laughter and tears, and while there is encouragement to be had and lessons to be learned by looking at our past, just like the people of Israel, going back to live there isn’t really an option. We are therefore left to plod forward into our own deserts. The future may seem uncertain, but it’s unavoidable. Which leaves us with the question: what do you do when you don’t know where the path forward is leading?

The first step in any journey is to assess your thinking. The thoughts we think drive everything we do and everything we feel. The goal is to focus on what we have and not on whatever it is that we don’t currently possess.  For the people of Israel this meant forgetting the predictability they had known in Egypt. Obsessing over the fact that they didn’t really know where they were going would not be helpful either.  There was no use in worrying about the desert terrain or anything else they couldn’t predict or control. Their journey started with focusing on what they did have, freedom (after 400 years, they were no longer slaves), hope (God was promising to give them a home), and the presence of God in their midst. The more they soaked in thoughts of their freedom, and the hope they had, and that God was with them, the more clearly they would be able to think, and the better they would feel.

I can spend way too much time thinking about things I don’t have, or that I don’t know, or that I can’t control. How about you?

What thoughts are you thinking that aren’t taking you anywhere? What thoughts only bring worry and confusion? What are you trying to control, that is uncontrollable? What unknown things are you trying to predict? Life is unbearable when we become preoccupied with things beyond our control, especially when better thoughts are available to us. Like the Israelites, we have freedom, hope, and the presence of God with us on our journey. When we return our mind to these things we find comfort and purpose.

May you find respite from the unknown which troubles your mind, and may God give you peace.

The post Facing The Unknown first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

It’s been over a decade, but I still remember one particular trip to my optometrist. I sat in the waiting room, flipping through outdated magazines. Across the room from me sat a teenager with special needs and an older man who appeared to be his grandfather. The younger man was engrossed in a puzzle book, Sudoku puzzles to be exact. He would work on a puzzle, solve it, turn the page and begin again. It was clear that he enjoyed the activity. He was well into the book and moving quickly through the puzzles, when something changed. A clear sense of discomfort registered in his eyes and his body tensed. He rubbed his forehead and focused again on the page in front of him. The book’s next puzzle didn’t operate by the same rules that the others had. What had just moments before brought him comfort was now a source of stress. The confidence he enjoyed had disappeared into self-doubt. I wasn’t the only one to notice this change, his grandfather recognized that something was amiss and leaned over to glance at the puzzle his grandson was working on. When he realized that this young man that he loved was stumped, he began to slowly and patiently explain how the new puzzle worked. The boy didn’t understand at first, the panic hadn’t worn off and was affecting his ability to think clearly. But as the grandfather continued to calmly talk through the problem, the young man’s body relaxed. The numbers began to connect and a comprehending smile stretched across his face.

Sitting there that day, I related immediately to the teenage boy. I had developed tactics to deal with the predictable challenges of life that allowed me to feel comfortable. But life isn’t always predictable. When old answers no longer satisfy new questions, doubt creeps in. In those moments I’m not just left with a difficult puzzle to solve, but with questions about my ability to solve it. It’s in those moments that God slowly and patiently speaks to my heart, walking me through the unfamiliar challenge.  His patience overcomes my panic and I’m able to face the problem in front of me.

Now, ten years later, I also relate to the grandfather. I aspire to be as patient and relational as he was that day. When my young son stumbles into a problem that feels bigger than he is, my first instinct is to plough the path clear ahead of him. Perhaps what he needs most isn’t always a clear path, but a patient guide willing to walk the path with him until things make sense again.

That’s what God does for us. He doesn’t normally wipe away all of our problems with one large swipe of his arm. Rather, he joins us, step by step, as we face new challenges and develop strength and wisdom we hadn’t known before. Like everyone else, I enjoy it when I have the right answers and know the best path forward, but when answers aren’t forthcoming and the path is hidden from sight, I am grateful that I am loved by a God that is bigger my understanding. Someone who walks with me, patiently expanding my horizons, even when it’s uncomfortable.

The post Unsolvable Problems and the Presence of God first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

God loves you.

That’s probably the most used phrase in all of Christian history. To be fair, it’s a central truth in much of Jesus’ teachings, and you would be hard pressed to find a more valuable phrase in all of the Bible.  Like many popular phrases however, this tiny declaration has been used so much that it’s lost some of its meaning and its punch.

So, what does it mean that God loves us?

I believe that God’s love isn’t just an emotional warmth that I can feel when I am receptive to it. Also, is not simply a fact that I carry around intellectually. It is a truth that must be experienced. God’s love is an active, aggressive process that engages my thoughts and emotions. It provokes me to see the world differently and to act in ways that I would not normally act.  It is disruptive, healing, and unpredictable. His love seems to push and pull, challenge, and at times even appears to ignore. I can never take His love for granted because I never know how it will manifest itself at any given moment.

That lead us to another honest question: What difference is that supposed to make in our lives?

Think back to someone in your life who has loved you well. (Hopefully, you have a few to choose from.) You enjoyed being around that person because of the way that their love made you feel. But it didn’t stop there. The love the person gave you changed the way you understood yourself. You became more confident when you were around them. You laughed more. Your stress seemed lighter. What enabled their love to make such a difference in your life?

You believed them.

You believed that they valued you, and therefore, you began to trust that you had value. You trusted that they were right about you.

The same is true of our relationship with God. “God loves you” is simple to understand but difficult to believe. We struggle to trust that God is right about us. So, we explain away his love for us as a nice platitude and fail to feel it’s full impact. When we believe that God loves us and trust how he sees us, it changes how we see ourselves and how we see the world around us.  Our lives become an unpredictable adventure. You may be minding your own business when God sits you next to most chatty person in history at the coffee shop or behind an exhausted mother with three screaming children in line at the grocery store. Instead of seeing this person as an impediment to your day. You see them with fascination, as a person to be valued. When we are secure in God’s love and the value that he ascribes to us, we no longer need this person to be anything other than what they are. When God loves us, we are set free to care for others, no strings attached.

I was taught a song in church when I was a child. We would sing of God’s love as a “fountain flowing deep and wide”. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I see now that being loved by God is a lot like being carried downstream. The stream of his love is deep so my feet can’t reach the ground to try to control it. It’s wide, so I can’t reach to the side and escape it. It bruises me, frustrates me, cleans me, and calms me. It’s constantly changing me and in the end, I will be in a very different place because of it.

May God’s love carry you downstream and leave you clean and full of hope.

The post Being Carried Downstream first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

She normally had the beach to herself. She always woke up long before daylight, a habit honed from necessity rather than preference. While others slept, she enjoyed the calm before the chaos of the day began. Long before the sunburns and the sandcastles, before the frisbees flew and kites fluttered, she walked, scanning the Atlantic tide as it rippled up onto the beach.

She had never been to the ocean before in her five decades of life. She most enjoyed scooping shells out of the surf. She walked at an even pace with a hunter’s stare fixed on the water lapping at her feet. She was well accustomed to finding value in the people and things the world discarded. For this reason she was drawn to the tiny, beautiful shells that the ocean abandoned on the sand.

She waited patiently, sifting through the sea debris. She didn’t grab for every shell that tumbled onto the shore but selected deliberately. When we all gathered to look over our aquatic souvenirs in the evenings, it was hard to believe that we had all been on the same beach. She had found and redeemed things from the ocean’s periphery that the rest of us had never even seen.

Life also has a periphery, where people are washed up after plan A and plan B have both failed. It’s where freshly rejected people, still in disbelief that their marriage has ended find themselves. It’s where children with unsteady parents try to survive. It’s where drunks dry out. A place for unrefined folk, whose rough edges rub society the wrong way. You might find yourself here if you married too early or stayed single for too long. If civilian life no longer makes sense after a senseless war, the periphery offers a place out of the blinding glare of judgmental eyes.

It’s lonely on the edges of life, unseen and unwanted. There, we tumble from day to day in hopes that someone will find value in us and thereby teach us how to value ourselves. It was in these waves of human debris, that the same small and fragile seeming lady waded patiently. Her eyes searching, seeing things others couldn’t see. Some thought her a hard woman, but that’s just because she not only searched the periphery for lives to salvage but had lived there herself.

She would stoop down into the life of a child and offer a kind word and a smile. It was always the child most in need and least familiar with encouragement. She sought out the invisible. The abused and broken. Her compass pointed her to nursing home rooms that rarely received visitors. She had a natural ability to collect those that the world had discarded.

I imagine that we’ll gather together again one day, and that it will be hard to imagine that we had walked the same earth. She will have found treasures and beauty in people and places the rest of us hadn’t even seen.

The post Thoughts of Mom first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five star general, and served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during World War 2.  He later became President of the United States and served during a tumultuous time in our history as a nation. If anyone knew something about handling time effectively it was Ike. He once famously said, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Those are pretty amazing words for someone who both oversaw a multi-nation campaign in Europe during a world war and a government transitioning to become a world power. As we begin to form a rule of life, we would be wise to heed Ike’s wisdom.

None of us live our lives in a vacuum. There are countless voices competing for our time and attention. The difference between a life of purpose and a life spent chasing our tails will depend upon which voices we listen to. The things and people that are most important to us should command the best of our attention, energy, and time. It seems like a simple thought, but it’s not always an easy thing to execute. Urgent demands, important or not, can often distract us from what we value the most.

Here are a couple of questions to carry with you this week as we think about what is urgent and what is important:

Are there things/people/tasks that you believe are important to you that do not get the time they deserve in your week?

Are you ever tempted to address “urgent” requests just to get someone to leave you alone?

The post Constructing Your Rule of Life first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

Life is unpredictable. When the twists and turns are mild the unexpected can be pleasant, but sometimes our lives are changed dramatically in ways we couldn’t have imagined. When that happens, just making it through the day becomes a challenge. Anxiety is what we feel when the uncertainty of life becomes overwhelming. Our minds frantically bounce from one thought to the next trying to fix, repair, predict, prepare, relate, or overcome. As our inability to control everything becomes apparent, so does our discomfort. Soon the headaches, backaches, or stomach pains set in. If anxiety has become a common companion this week, here are three practices that may offer some relief:

Divide And Conquer

It seems impossible to ignore our anxious thoughts for an entire day, but 10 minutes is a reasonable start. When today’s anxious thought comes crashing in on you, decide to set it aside for 10 minutes. How long is this virus going to last? What happens if I’m not able to be at work next month? Those are fair questions, but sometimes we just don’t have the answers.  Say to yourself, “I will limit my thoughts to what’s in front of me today for the next 10 minutes”. If after that time, you decide that you are ready to pick the thought back up, you can. If you would like to set it aside for another ten minutes, then that’s your prerogative as well. Sometimes an answer just isn’t available. Remember, it’s not laziness or procrastination to set aside a topic until a time when our brain can think more clearly about it!  Once your mind is clear enough to find the first step in the task at hand, you are ready to proceed. One step taken is better than 10 steps obsessed over. Often times the overwhelming size of the forest keeps us from chopping down the first tree.

Give Yourself Permission To Rest

The more exhausted we become the more intense our anxiety becomes. When we are tired, we are unable to think clearly and life feels like nothing more than 1000 issues that we can’t resolve, swirling around in our minds all at once. Battling anxiety requires a great deal of mental energy. So, as hard as it can be, set a time to be in bed and stick to it. Tell yourself (out loud if necessary) that your day is over and that you cannot accomplish anything else until morning. At that point, stop making lists (either on paper or in your head), let go, and go to sleep. This may take some practice and could include a few nights of staring at the ceiling, telling your brain to knock it off! But stay committed to the routine and your body will adjust.

Repeat After Me: “Who I Am Is More Than What I Do…”

It’s incredibly tempting to believe that I am only doing well when I have done everything, and have done it perfectly. But that’s just not the case. Life is hard and we are imperfect. Even at our best, some tasks are impossible. Who you are is more than just a reflection of how well you perform. You can control your effort but not always the outcomes, so show yourself a bit or mercy!  Think of all of the imperfect people that you love, odds are, several of them love you back without needing you to be perfect either.

Implementing these three things into your life will reduce your anxiety and give you greater clarity in your thinking. We may not be able to avoid all anxiety in life, but we can keep it from controlling us. And finally, remember the fact that God is in control, means you don’t have to be. May God bless you this week with a peace that is bigger than you could have imagined possible.

The post When Anxiety Takes Control first appeared on Michael Ramsey.

Grief is painful any time of the year, but the holidays can be especially difficult. I recorded a video for our church that discusses the sorts of emotions and thoughts you may be dealing with this Christmas. I hope that it will help you process your grief in a healing and redemptive way. Please feel free to share with anyone who might be feeling alone in their grief. May God bless you and yours this Christmas!

Grace and Peace,

Michael

Grief During the Holidays

The post Grief During The Holidays first appeared on Michael Ramsey.