old post from myspace

I thought I would share a post from my blog on myspace that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy!

Hey Everybody....

Have you ever felt like you were "surviving" rather than "living" life? Now, I don't mean literal survival, where you have to fight to stay alive or anything like that. I'm talking more about emotional survival. It's a place where you feel drained almost every day emotionally, and you don't really have anything significant to look forward to that gives you that emotional boost to make it through. I think most of us will go through this season in our lives at least once, and it's usually partly our fault.

Misty and I have lived in Green Bay for a little over 6 months now, and I have found it to be probably the most challenging season of my life. Moving away from home is never easy, but I thought it was. Yeah, that's right, I THOUGHT it was! For the several weeks leading up to our big move, all my mind could focus on was the excitement, the adventure, the potential benefits of leaving home (town) and making something of myself. While I was naively concentrated on the positive, my wife was dealing with the negative side - leaving family, friends, warmer weather, great job, history. And in those moments, I couldn't understand her, why think about those things when we can think about the positives - owning our first house, being more independent, helping to turn a church around and experience growth? The truth is, I didn't think much about what I would be leaving because they didn't have much value to me at that moment. "I can always make new friends, and I'll stay in touch with the ones I do have," and "Family will always be there," is what I thought. I didn't realize until New Year's Eve 2008 that aside from my wife and God, those people are the most valuable things in my life. It's sad that it took an 8 hour move for me to realize that. But hey, I'm a guy, I'm a little slow when it comes to these things.

So, I've been emotionally "surviving" for about 4 months now, and I am now trying to figure out how to break out of it. I've found myself praying "God, what are you trying to teach me in all of this," and "If you are, would you let me learn it already!". It's hard to open yourself up to new people when you don't feel like you have anything to give them. Survival mode can even affect the God-given passion you've had all your life. I find myself at times not caring much about worship & media which is foreign to me. I believe God puts us through this time of testing not to say "woe is me" or "my life sucks", because I certainly realize that my problems pale in comparison to other people, and I am truly blessed. There is a lesson to be learned through all of this, and I'm slowly figuring it out.

My buddy Josh has been encouraging me through a lot of this (that's his nature, it makes me want to slap him in the face sometimes :) J/J. He told me to read a book by Mark Batterson called "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day". Now, I am not a reader, and haven't read a book all the way through in quite some time. But I dedicated myself to read this one, and I'm glad I did. If any of what I'm saying relates to you at all, you should pick up a copy of this book. It basically talks about how our greatest challenges in life can turn into our greatest accomplishments. Most of us set a priority to keep ourselves away from tough situations and avoid seasons of trials. But Mark encourages us to seek out these opportunities as a way for God to do something incredible with our lives. In one chapter he talks about how God takes our greatest weaknesses and puts us in a position to overcome them. For instance, I am shy by nature, and do not enjoy speaking in front of people. And what has God called me to do? Lead worship. In front of people. Doing a lot of speaking. Needing to be somewhat charismatic. I've often wished that I was like a lot of people that are naturally outgoing, and getting up in front of people was easy for them. But I realized if I were like that, it wouldn't take any effort to do what I do, and there would be no reward in that. I believe that God is taking a shy guy who doesn't like the spotlight, and using him to lead thousands of people in his lifetime to prove God's ability to use us. Please understand that I don't say any of that arrogantly, I just want to prove how big God really is!

I don't really know why I wrote this blog, I guess I just wanted to share what I'm going through in the hopes that you can be encouraged that you're not alone if your going through the same thing. It also helps me open up in a way that I might not do if I was talking to you. I hope that things are going well in your life, and I will keep updating you on the progress here.

Blessings,

Tim