Spirituality

A little boys dream,

Ripped away in the blink of an eye.

Then the dreams stop.

Life happens.

We stop dreaming.

We forget that we can have as many dreams as we want.

We are infinite,

So we get to have infinite dreams.

If we are breathing,

We can have dreams.

I don’t want to die with the music still inside of me.

Screws and staples.

Playing football for the Minnesota Vikings was my dream.

I was consumed by this dream.

Morning and night.

I saw it in my mind.

I was on the path.

Unti…

Very different.

Not better.

Just different.

99.5% different.

It’s just a statistic, but it’s important to me.

It’s a deep understanding of who I am.

It’s been a journey of radical Self-acceptance.

Male.

INFJ Myers Briggs Personality Type.

Introverted, so introverted.

Almost off the charts introverted.

HSP

Highly Sensitive Person.

My body processes dopamine differently.

That’s it.

My nervous system is highly reactive.

Loud noises create chaos in my system.

Violent images stay wit…

The pain of feeling misunderstood.

Why don’t you get me?

Maybe a better question to ask is why don’t I get myself?

I have been trying to get people to understand me my whole life.

To accept me for who I am.

I have tried to fit in so I feel understood.

I have sacrificed who I am.

I haven’t been true to my soul.

The truth is I haven’t understood myself.

I haven’t accepted who I am.

I have sacrificed myself to try to fit in with the crowd.

It hasn’t felt safe to be me.

I feel trapped an…

I got it all wrong most of my life.

I searched for power in all the wrong things.

I was misled.

Money.

Followers.

Likes.

Muscles.

Religion.

Sports.

Relationships.

Things.

Body.

Image.

External validation.

The search outside of myself led to despair.

We are sold a way of living that creates constant seeking and attaining.

Know thyself.

That is true power.

It’s right there.

It’s too obvious.

It’s too simple.

It’s profound.

Know myself.

That is where the wisdom is.

Master my…

I was lost.

And now I am found.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

So many poor choices.

So much pain.

So much desperation.

It was buried deep down.

I journeyed for years carrying a deep burden in my soul.

Sadness pervaded my spirit.

Heaviness.

Darkness.

The shadow.

The truth was slowly revealed.

Understanding came bit by bit.

Healing through tears.

The revelations that came.

It first tore me down.

Took me to my knees.

Slowly ever so slowly,

I started to wake up.

The deep cond…

Jesus wants our hearts, not to be blind rule followers. Jesus broke his fair share of rules and was revolutionary in how he lived while he was here on earth.

If you haven’t been watching The Chosen, I highly recommend it. It’s a beautiful portrayal of how Jesus lived, the interaction between his disciples and the profound impact that Jesus had on people’s lives.

There was one particular scene from season 2 episode 4 that shook me to my core where Jesus healed a paralytic at the Pool of Bethesd…

When I have been frustrated with life or with people in the past, I would go into isolation mode. I would cut myself off from the world not wanting to deal with the reality of my life. My fantasy was to run away to a tropical island being a beach bum avoiding the world. Sometimes life can feel so hard. I have wanted to do nothing more than isolate and escape my problems.

But that has never served me. When I finally decide to come out of isolation, my problems are still there and so are the peop…

Do you ever wonder how you get to where you are in life? I found myself this past weekend pondering that question. How did I go from being a rebellious pastor’s kid who hated going to church to voluntarily going to a silent retreat at Sacred Heart Jesuit Retreat House spending hours in silence. The only thing I could come up with was once God gets a hold of our heart, he doesn’t let go and when we surrender to God, there is no telling where that will take us.

The four days I spent at the silent…

One thing that has shown up in my life lately that has gotten my attention in a not so comfortable way, as it usually does, is that I have not been living from my heart. I haven’t been trusting my own intuition and inner wisdom. I have taken on the challenge of writing a book. This is my Mt. Everest to climb so to speak as my business and life coach, Kimberly Dawson pointed out to me. My big hairy audacious goals usually revolve around physical feats. I am finding this one to be considerably mor…

Why? That is the question that keeps popping up in my mind and I am sure everyone else’s too.

This past Monday another mass shooting occurred right in my own backyard in Boulder. Every mass shooting is a horrific tragedy, but when it hits this close to home it somehow gets magnified one hundred fold. I have been in that King Soopers grocery store many times over the past several months since I have moved to Boulder. I know the layout well.

The image keeps popping up in my mind of having a dera…