There’s Something in my Eye

“I started my day in the usual way, looking through a two by four.” That’s a line form a song by King’s X. It kept popping into mind as my pastor talked about Jesus’ teaching on judging others and how love is the antidote to that. It’s so easy not to see we are judging since it is so part of our “normal” life, our daily routine. In fact, it’s easy to let the two by four become who we are or part of who we are anyway.

Many, many years ago, a Christian comedy group called Isaac Airfreight did a fun bit with this where the kept bonking each others heads every time they turned or moved because of the boards sticking out of their faces. And the best part is that they each blamed the other person for knocking into their board. Again, as we let the judgments become part of who we are, it’s easy to blame others for “making” us judge them. We are so reticent to be wrong that we can’t see that it’s the judgment that is wrong. 

A friend of mine once told me, “My judgments of others are more about me than they are about them.” It’s like the people bonking into our boards. The issue is more about our board than them bumping into them.  We have to look at what’s happening with us when this happens.

Now, with that said, we have to remember that sometimes certain people trigger us more than others. My pastor frequently reminds us of the spiritual warfare against us, the enemy’s attempts to prevent us from growing closer to God. This enemy knows our weaknesses and our greatest hurts. He knows how to launch strategic attacks that trigger me and then offer me the opportunity to hurt you too.

This is why we need to call on Jesus to help us get the two by four out of our eye. Only as this happens can we separate the judgment from ourselves and find freedom. As this happens we can learn to love as Jesus wants us too. And we can gain the vision to discern when we are being hurt and how that can be healed rather than defensively lash back at those who hurt us because they bonk into our two by four. Again, this is another step toward loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. Just like Jesus wants.

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 22

I frequently hear the quote that has become a cliché “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Isn’t that the definition of perseverance too? If you don’t give up, if you stand up and try again, isn’t that expecting different results from the same thing? Isn’t that believing that if I keep doing this same thing I will eventually break through to something new and different? Isn’t that insanity?
Granted, part of the idea of being persistent is that as I fail and start again, I (hopefully) learn from the failures. As I stand up again, I need to assess what has happened. Why did I fail? Is it something I can control and change? How can I try differently next time?
But there is power in erosion. Nothing changes in terms of the effort involved. It is constant, ongoing repetition that brings about the desired result, the change. Is that insanity? Or is that wisdom and patience?
Most days I think being persistent is lunacy. Most days, I am lazy and that is the true driving force away from persistence. I just don’t like change. I want the results of the change but I hate changing. So, am I crazy to keep trying? Am I strong enough to be crazy to get to my ultimate goal?

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 21

Paulo Coelho in his book The Zahir, makes the intriguing comment that what he would like on his headstone is: He died while he was still living.
This fascinates me. I want to live my life better. To get a life – a real one. As much as I whine about my prospects of such and my ineptitude at doing so, it has largely become an exercise in just that whining. In my mind, this blog is my grappling with the resolution to live life. My reality still has but flashes of this.
I am taking risks, learning new things, trying to make changes. BUT, they all feel superficial, surface, inadequate. Are they incremental deposit of faithful perseverance that will one day result in an impressive accrual some day? Or is it merely a little boy walking around in his daddy’s shoes to feel grown up?
I need to find some real risks, do something that takes real courage. But what?

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 20

Perseverance is hard when you’re trying to learn to persevere. I used to be good at this, but over the years I’ve gradually grown lazier and lazier and have los t my edge to fight to continue. For anything. At all. Now that I’m trying to learn to do this again, I find it hard to keep going when things get rough.
Not that long ago I wrote about the importance of getting off the ground. Simply standing up is sometimes the hardest action to perform, but it is crucial to stave off defeat. I keep reminding myself that. Everyday because it seems that everyday the grass becomes softer. Everyday just standing up seems to take more energy. Some days, it is getting out of bed that creates the struggle. Will it be worth it today? Some days my life (in terms of my commitments, schedule and pace) is not sustainable.
I recently read The Dance of Fear by Harriet Lerner. She relates the tale of a client of hers who lost 190 pounds. The woman said that she never thought she could lose that much. Even fifty seemed too much. But, she knew she could lose one pound. She committed to that and each time she accomplished that, she committed to doing it again. She claims she never lost 190 pounds but that she lost one pound 190 times.
That sounds like the mantra of the New England Patriots (may they never win another championship) back a few years ago when they won all their regular season games. They claimed that they didn’t win 16 games but that they won one game 16 times. A friend of mine made the same comment about trying to come back from a huge deficit in a racquet ball game.
The point is to focus on the now and the achievable. Big goals are nice but they are also daunting. Sometimes the need is to focus on the next step and doing that as well as possible. This may sound a lot like a 12 Step Program; take one day at a time. That is the wisdom I am applying here.
So as get out of bed, I push aside the thought that this is not sustainable. I only have to worry about getting out the door. Once I’m at the fitness club, I just focus on today. The next 40 minutes of aerobic activity is all that matters, not my goals beyond that. Focus on now, focus on what I can achieve and let the pieces fit together into the bigger thing.
Just get off the ground one more time. Get out of bed today. Today is sustainable. Press in and be thankful for today.
I look forward to finding what my string of single days looks like when I finally have the perspective to see them all together.

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 19

So the theme of my blog has been rebutted. Well, not directly. Last Sunday’s Hagar mocks my running commentary. In the strip, Hagar decides that he is going to squeeze more out of life. He is really going to live until he dies. And Lucky Eddie responds with “Doesn’t everyone do that?”
It’s a great joke. The reality is that we all do live until we die. It’s kind of self-evident. Talking about it seems moot.
But my rants here and what Hagar is on about is the quality of life, the deliberateness of our living. How much effort do we put into trying to live? How much do we let life just slip past us?
I think the movie poster from Braveheart sums up my sentiment better than anything. Way back in the day, when you walked into a theater, there was Gibson as William Wallace, kilted and armed and the lines, “All men die, Very few truly live.” That tagline grabbed me when I first saw it and I still love it. Even though it wasn’t what drove the inception of this blog, it is underneath it all, part of the foundation of this movement in my life.
I want to truly live while I can. I hope to inspire the same in those around me. Yes, we all will live until we die, but how deliberate will we be about using that time we’re alive?

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 18

So a week after I write about how it sucks to only see people at funerals, I find myself on the way to funeral. I saw a bunch of family that I haven’t seen in years. Some of them are people that I’m not that close with but are good to see none-the-less. Some, however, are people quite dear to me, people that have had a big impact in my life.
And I’ve failed to stay in touch with them.
And it took a funeral to bring us together again.
I am trying to figure out a way to stay connected. They live several hours away, so I can’t just drop in on them. Yes, this is an age of technology so I can email them or even go old school and call them. Even that seems hard to squeeze into the schedule too. Not sure why. It just does.
At this point I realize some of this is being deliberate and actually doing something about it. I can actually pick up the damn phone and make the call rather than sit down to rest for a few minutes at the end of my work day. It’s not that exhausting to call them. Usually it’s invigorating. And work, isn’t that hard. So why is it a struggle?
Maybe because there are so many other people that I want to stay in contact regularly and fail at as well, so I feel guilty calling my mom because I owe a call to three other friends. But I could be more deliberate about contacting them too. I love these people, don’t I? They are important to me.
Somehow this ties into the discipline of exercising. Or writing. Or anything. I can find the time to call and connect. I can find the energy to express and feel love. But I want it to be because I love them not because I’m being disciplined. But can I use the task to help me connect which will grow the love that drives me to want to connect? I know, it sounds convoluted.
But it has to happen. This can’t be my cycle. I can’t be connected through funerals alone. Life has to be the reason to seek people out, not death.

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 17

We watch Biggest Looser in my house and I entertain fantasies of getting fit while watching. Some days I’m even motivated to exercise. Gradually, I’m creating a lifestyle that is more health focused. More active anyway.
One of the things that drives me nuts with the show is when people whine and quit in the middle of a workout. Let me say now, and first of all, that I am fully aware of my hypocrisy as I bail on workouts all the time. Actually, I might cut 5 minutes, or reduce the intensity level on the elliptical part of the way through. That said, I once was a fitness stud and I understand the importance of pushing through to the end. I get that I need to persevere rather than quit.
I remembered what it was like to play ball in college and when we had three-a-days for training camp. That last practice each day was a matter of will, not strength. We did what we did because we forced our bodies to do them. The sprints at the end were the worst. I literally had no energy to run forty yards, much less do it again and again. But I did it. Somehow, I did it, just as all of my teammates did. We whined and moaned. We never cried because we were men, manly men. But we suffered and pushed through.
Sure, I wanted to quit. I wanted to with every step. But I didn’t.
At this point in my life, if I ever am to have a life as I often propose in this blog, I need to rediscover that ability. To be able to push on by will when my strength and courage are gone, that is a virtue that I have let atrophy beyond recognition. Perhaps I would have finished a novel or two. Perhaps I would have pushed through to publication. Perhaps I would have not gotten fat and lazy and stuck in a rut.
Perhaps.
More importantly is, “what the hell am I going to do about it now?” I’ve gotten myself into this rut and I’m in process of getting out. Maybe someday, and hopefully soon, I can recover my strength of will and push forward. It may start with not lowering the intensity of my elliptical work. It may begin with actually hitting my self imposed deadlines on this blog. Whatever it is, this resuscitation needs to happen. If I am to get a life that is.

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 16

Life is a long race.
I suck at long races. The thing that gets me through on long runs is focusing on my form. I completely withdraw into myself and find the rhythm of breathing and moving my arms and tune everything else out. It’s almost trancelike. The problem is I forget to enjoy the run. Of course that usually means the scenery because the actual pushing myself to the point of fatigue isn’t really all that fun.
With life, I feel like the same thing happens. I focus on what needs to happen to get through a day, maybe even just an hour. I just try to remember to breath and move forward and usually get to the end. Somehow.
In the process, I forget to enjoy myself. I forget the important things like connecting with the people around me. Important people.
About five years ago, I ran into some old friends at a funeral. People who are very dear to me. People that I love a lot. We realized that we hadn’t seen each other in years. Here are legitimate reasons: geography, growing families, work other life commitments. Sometimes it’s just hard to connect.
But are those reasons really legitimate? I mean, there are real and important, but aren’t the people too? Can’t I find some way to squeeze in some time with them? We decided that we couldn’t let funerals be the reason we gathered. If we left it to that, before long, it would be one of our funerals that brought us together.
So we became purposeful and deliberate about connecting with each other. For a while. Then life got in the way. And I started focusing on getting through each day. Almost trancelike. Just breathing and moving forward.

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 15

Many people dismiss the physical strain of football because it isn’t constant motion like you see in soccer or basketball, yet it is an immensely tiring game. The most draining part of it is getting off the ground. If you think of the fact that most teams run roughly 60 plays a game, depending on your position, you may be getting up off the ground 40-50 times a game and that’s if you’re lazy. If you hustle, you might get knocked down and get up to finish a play, thus increasing you odds of getting up off the ground about 40% more times per game.
That’s a lot of time and energy spent just picking yourself up.
Thus, the penchant for coaches to make their players do the dreaded “up-down” drill. For those of you fortunate enough o never have engaged in this drill, the basic idea is to run in place until a cue, such as a whistle, then you drop to the ground and then get back to your feet as quickly as you can. Although the sadistic side of a coach might be the driving force behind these drills, or at least the duration of the drill. But it has purpose.
The truth is, there have been times in a game after I’ve been knocked down that I considered how soft the grass was and that I might just want to stay there for a few minutes, perhaps grab a nap. But if I wanted to win the game, I needed to get up and get back in the huddle. I needed to stand up and continue the game.
Sometimes defeat is fended off in small increments. In measures of standing up again. In each decision to re-enter the game.

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 14

I recently had a flashback to the first conference I ever coordinated many years ago. The church I worked for at the time held conferences on a regular basis and part of my job involved making them happen. The first focused on people under 25. Since many churches disregarded people that age as not mature enough to lead, we decided to invest in them, to develop them since it seemed to be a time when many people had frequent sense of calling, a sense that God had big plans for them. Why not nurture and encourage that?
That was the environment where one of the worship bands closed their session with “Where the Streets Have No Name.” The audience clapped and stomped along as they sang. It revved me up. Inspired, I found my pastor who was the speaker for the final session and told him the first thing that came to my mind when I heard the stomping, “you are listening to the sounds of the Army of God marching on the gates of Hell.” He then related that to the full 300 people in the audience.
The flashback came when I heard that song on the radio. Immediately I was back in that old church listening to the army of God marching on the gates of Hell and I was moved. Then I remembered a paper I wrote in college about how Aragorn faced the gates of Hell three times throughout the Lord of the Rings. When I wrote the paper, it mostly came from a desire to grow up and be like Aragorn, to be a hero that rises up and leads. At the time of my flashback, I felt closer to Stryder, the lost and broken wayfarer trying his best to make something of life but far from the king he was meant to be.
My unemployment and depression held me in a place far away from where I had hoped to be. Far, far away from what I once thought I was supposed to be. I longed to get back to where I wanted to be, to be part of the army marching against the gates of Hell. In the movie of the Lord of the Rings, there is a point when Gandalf tells Aragorn that Sauron (the top bad guy, the embodiment of evil) feared Aragorn; he feared what Aragorn was becoming. I thought about that as I sat in my car listening to U2. Did anyone fear what I had become? Did Hell? Or had I simple become another tired joke for them?
For the last few weeks since that experience, I am trying to find my way back to my feet and get back to marching. That event is part of what inspired this blog. I am searching for my life in attempts to find me. If I find me, I want to get back on the road toward Hell. A long, long time ago, I saw a tee shirt with the slogan, “Born Again to Raze Hell.” I didn’t get it at the time. If I can come alive again, razing Hell will matter again. If I find my way there, then I will be someone that hell fears.
Hopefully there will be an army of us.

Brad Bellmore Gets a Life – 13

A recent musical discovery for me is the song “39” by The Cure. Sure, it’s been around for awhile, I have even had it in my library for a few years, but it just never made it into my rotation. I have a lot of music by The Cure and I listen to my favorites all the time, rarely digging into the wealth of all they have to offer me. Finally, I played my full arsenal of The Cure and I discovered “39”.
This song could have been my theme song for the last few years. I love the lyrics about how everything in life used to be fuel for the fire that burned within. Everything fed the flames. That is/was true of me. There was a time when everything, good bad or everything that fell in between served as fuel to keep a massive fire burning inside my spirit. But, like the song, I am now in the place where the fire is almost out and there is nothing left to burn. All that happens around me, even the good, even the exciting, seem feeble fuel for such a fire.
And that hurts.
Breaking a vow is a terrible thing and it crushes us. That is part of the power of vows. It is easy to disregard them as mere words, but vows lock into our spirit. They can be horribly heavy to carry at times, but breaking them steals something form our souls. We are somehow less.
I have become a man I vowed I would never be. When the fire was raging and everything fed it, it was easy to believe I could never become this man. It was easy to despise others who were where I am now. The vow was such a tiny, tiny burden then.
But it almost feels like there are forces out there that attack vows. Forces that want to destroy us and destroy our spirits and they know the power of vows, so they use them against us.
That is part of why it feels so hard to get the fire going again. I shouldn’t be here. My soul has been injured in landing as awkwardly as I have in a place with so little fuel for a few dying embers. But I don’t want to stay here. I want to have that raging fire in me again. So, I nurture the little fire I have left. I feed it what fuel I can find and breathe all the life into it that I can.
I think I need the breath of God to give some serious life to these embers, like when god breathed on Adam and Eve and gave them life. Like when he breathed into the all the carcasses in the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel, bringing hem back to life. I think this might be the only way that the fire within me becomes a raging blaze again. I think that is the only way that everything in my life will become fuel for the fire again.