Category Archives: Family

FollowCraig: U+ME+?=1?

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U+Me+?=1? Is this some secret formula, something like H2O? Well kind of! It was sure a secret to me? When I married in the late seventies, I was so happy! My life was going to be just perfect. A wonderful woman, a daughter already in the family, my career was soaring and as they say: “my future was so bright; I had to wear shades”. It’s funny though, when your own life is not built on solid ground, when you don’t know your own standards it’s easy to begin drifting. I sure did, I was living in fear and didn’t even know it. That fear drove me to a very self-centered existence, Craig first, career 2nd, family and wife somewhere in the rear. I did whatever I wanted! When I traveled out-of-town on business, I would visit “Strip Clubs and Bars of every sort” I would be the big shot at every party, pick up bar tabs, wore plenty of gold and very expensive custom hand-made shirts! So very much about Craig! No one would really ever believe I had a wife and little girl at home? This was my behavior before my son came along. After he was born, I got even worse. So it’s known, I love my son with all my heart! It’s just at that time in my life having children and a family interfered with my busy playtime. As for my wife, she went to work, stayed quiet, didn’t speak out about her feelings. She just read paperback love stories all the time. It’s not until now at this time in my life that I get it! In a recent post I am “Housewife”; I am Man! | followcraig., I spoke of the three most important persons in every relationship. Do you know who they are? Some would say it’s both partners plus God or both plus the children. In fact when I married for the last time a little over a year ago, my pastor spoke of this. He said the three people in every relationship are the two plus God. I disagree! The most important persons are; the two plus the relationship itself. That relationship, like children are born of the two. It is so to speak their first child together, it must learn to crawl, walk, be fed, housed and loved. Both partners must pay attention to this gift. We will always have our personal lives, our desires, our own passions and that is what brings us together to create this relationship. It’s up to each partner to covet their relationship, to feed it with love, faith and attention. God is always watching over the relationship and it’s partners. These things I know!

You’re still reading, I’m still writing, so please keep following….

Craig

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FollowCraig: Intersection

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Several years ago a movie titled “Intersection” played at the theaters for a short time. Not a big hit but none the less important, at least in my life at the time. You see the story is about a man who is having an affair and has reached a decision point in his marriage. Whether to leave the wife and marry the girlfriend or not. Just as he has made his choice and is driving to the arms of love his car is struck at an intersection and he then lays deathly injured at a hospital. Both women show up at his bedside and the stories of each love affair is told through the eyes and hearts of these women. These intersections or crossroads happen in life to all of us. Not all are an affair or betrayal. Nor are all crossroads so dramatic as the movie. At that time in my life I was having an affair and the story played a big part in my decisions I made at the time. The road I followed took me to the life I have today. Without taking a chance, had I played it safe my troubles may have been less but my happiness and sense of what could have been would always haunt me. I am not recommending by any means to have an affair or that it is right in any way. In my life it seems the choices I have often made were the obvious easy ones, not the more difficult. Kind of like driving, the right turns are often easier than turning left. However each time I’ve turned left to the more difficult highway I seem to end up the happiest. In my story I did leave my marriage, not for the other woman but for a life I longed for a life I would only find by making hard choices. My journey to today has been bumpy and filled with many crossroads and intersections. The greatest thing about taking the left turns is the joy of the journey. If all we ever do is play it safe, take the easy turns and go down the easy roads that lead to those places we believe are safe, we may never really experience true love, true peace and self content? As I watched the movie come to an end and only guessing what his choice might have been before the accident, did he go home at peace? We can never know how our own movie of life will end or what God has in his plans for each of us. Whatever roads we take the left or the right they each lead to our destiny. I was told once that the “World is a stage and we are the players” If that is true, then God must be the producer, director and writer of the our story. That leaves us to enjoy our journey!

You’re still reading, I’m still writing, so please keep following…….

Craig

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FollowCraig: Humble Evangelism

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It’s true, evangelism makes many of us uneasy. Perhaps we have winced as street corner preachers harangued passersby. Maybe some earnest proselytizer made us uncomfortable at home or some other public place? I used to call these people bible thumper’s. Or even someone close to us found our expression of faith wanting? So what do we do when we hear we must carry the good news of the gospel to others, we just don’t know how to begin. How do we do this without embarrassing or offending others as we have felt? Perhaps it starts by staying grounded in our own faith community.

History tells us that Jesus called the Twelve “and began to send them out two by two” he sent them out in a relationship to form relationships. The disciples were to “take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts”. Like those early evangelists, we must approach others in humble empty-handedness. We come interested in those we meet, ready to hear their stories and be willing to understand what matters to them. Isn’t this the way to really meet people anyway? Eventually, in a natural give-and-take we can talk about our spiritual journey. Jesus’ detractors wondered with scorn: “Where did this man get all this?” Whatever wisdom and power Jesus had; came from God.

So why does all this matter in today’s world? A world of busy people, families, jobs, bills, cars, traffic, cell phones, computers and more. It’s hard to remember with so much going on in everyone’s lives what things in life really matter. In everything we do, every person we meet and all those in our lives deserve to know all that God has given them. We can really only share this by living or striving to live a life of gratitude, of love and true caring of others. If you believe as I do that Jesus is real and that he is the son of God as well as God, that he walks beside each of us whatever our faith or background then we will never walk alone. Our faith will always be our companion, no matter how busy we are.

You’re still reading. I’m still writing, so please keep following…..

Craig

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FollowCraig: Hell in the Hallway

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Jobs and careers go and new ones appear, friends go and new friends appear, things we love go and new ones appear. “When one door closes another will open”, God works in wondrous ways we are told and many of us believe with all our soul that is true. I’ve got to say though while those doors are swinging it can feel like “hell in the hallway”. We worry and regret, we wonder what we did wrong or we blame someone else for what’s happened. Perhaps we cry, get depressed, go on addictive binges, over spend and the list goes on. Facing change in life especially real personal change is frightening. I think it’s a real test of our faith, our faith in ourselves, in our family and God. I know some that say faith is enough and just hang in, everything will be ok.. My life experience has taught me that’s not entirely true. It is important to make peace with the changes that is for certain as without peace the fear of the unknown will overtake you. I find it helps to repeat the Serenity Prayer when I’m in this state, perhaps you have another way to rest your mind. It’s then the most difficult thing to do of all appears? It’s called ACTION. Oh my that’s a though one, but without taking action, without reaching out for the next doorknob, no amount of prayer, faith, support or family will get you out of that “hell in the hallway”.

You’re still reading, I’m still writing, so please keep following…..

Craig

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FollowCraig: Are my addictions bothering you?

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The other day while attending a 12-step meeting I could not help but wonder what others in our world might think about those of us recovering from our addictions? It seems so many people suffer from so many addictions, alcohol, drugs, smoking, food, sex, debt and so on. How do these behaviors affect those around us? It’s easy to say “oh, that’s not my problem” he or she are just a…., it’s not my business,etc. While that all may be true, how do our addictions really affect others? I think that’s the beauty of the 12-steps to recovery. Perhaps you have never read these steps or just not reviewed for a long time so I have listed them. These are “The Twelve Steps of Recovery”

1. We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Once again, after reading these myself I’ve come to the conclusion that those who have made the effort to live by these simple 12 principles do understand the impact of their actions on those around them. So, if my addictions are bothering you, I get it!

I’m still writing, you’re still reading, so please keep following…..

Craig

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FollowCraig: Oh God!

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Before I get to far ahead let’s talk some about faith. I never had it! Really! I was brought up in the Mormon church and never gave any of this much thought. It was assumed that after high school I would participate in a church mission then marry a good Mormon girl and have lots of children. Sounds easy enough doesn’t it? Well that didn’t happen for me as I was a bit of a rebel when I was young. Going my own path would be for me and that I did. I left home when I was about 18 years old and moved to Arizona to live with my father. My dad was not a religious man so it was refreshing not to be attending church all the time. I’m pretty sure it was then that my agnostic point of view took shape. It was easy to just not really participate in any church, religion or faith for the next thirty or so years. Even as a married man with children, I never went to church or introduced my kids to any level of faith teachings. Why bother I would say. Funny thing though? Faith was always surrounding me wherever I would be. As a salesman faith and faith principles would be taught in most sales training classes. People at work would talk about their faith, always on television I would hear it. Faith and God were always around me but I would not jump in. I just didn’t want to talk about it, it was uncomfortable! Once while attending a sales seminar we attendees were told to draw a wheel with eight spokes.

20120626-154011.jpgSo I drew one like this, then we were told to mark the spokes from 1-10 rating our own life experiences, then connect the dots. Needless to say when it came to the spiritual spoke my wheel was very flat on one side.

I really knew for a long time this part of my life was not in balance, what was not known by me was the effect this imbalance would have on my life to come.

All this talk of faith became very important as my activity in the 12 Steps of Alcoholic’s anonymous became part of my life. Earlier I wrote of reading the Bible when I first stopped drinking. Believe me, I found it an interesting book of incredible stories. So many people say it’s hard to read and perhaps that’s true. However I struggled through it every night for a couple of months then read it a second time and it was much easier to understand. Reading this book really did not lead me to my faith however. I just knew it was time for me to decide what I believed. Was I to believe that no God existed, or that no higher power surrounds us? That was just not possible for me, I really could not accept an atheist position. So if I believed in a higher power, should I have faith? Well yes faith made sense to me. After all someone or something had been watching over me all these years. After all the screw ups in my life, my wrongs, my lies, my craziness. I was still here and pretty healthy at that, so I knew about faith. Now it was only a matter of deciding whether or not to accept and celebrate my faith. To take one last leap of faith on my own to believe that God was real or not. Oh the proof of this can easily disputed if one wants, but I always had this one question that still haunts me. A question that no scientist can really answer? The one thing that makes me believe that a God exits. That question is; “how do we know to breathe?”

Only a higher power can decide that. Knowing that, I chose to practice my believe as a Christian and celebrate as a Lutheran. I did indeed take a leap of faith and was baptized into the Christian faith at a Wisconsin Synod of the Lutheran Church in all places the heart of Mormon land “Salt Lake City, Utah“. It felt Great!

For me and I can only really speak to that, I found freedom. My eight spoke wheel of life wasn’t so flat anymore. My life got easier, it really did and has.

My first and second year of sobriety was only a beginning of the tests to come. My relationships with my friends, my family, my children and all those I knew would be affected by choices I would make. As I have learned over these years is that many people care about each of us just as we care about many people ourselves. They all want the best for us and make every effort. But until we decide for ourselves to surrender our self-centered behavior and begin to have faith our lives will never be peaceful. We will never be able to lend a helping hand up to those we care about without doing this for ourselves.

As I talk more about my times and trials to come it should become clear I am still learning these lessons everyday of my life.

You’re still reading, I’m still writing, so please keep following……

Craig

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FollowCraig: Brotherhood of Men

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It happened this week, eight men age 50-60 plus gathered together. Each with very different backgrounds, each who at one time were defined by their career and station in life. One an engineer, another a wall street broker, another a diesel mechanic, a car salesman, and so on. Just what do they all have in common? What brought them together at this time in their lives? Everyone in this group have had to pick themselves up from what had defined them just a few years ago to now change the direction of their lives and begin a new career. On Monday these eight men did not know each other and now have been learning and training together to become professional chauffeurs. Yes it’s true each one of us have joined together to learn and become something different from our past. Each of us have picked ourselves up after many changes and challenges in our lives to continue to move forward. As we help each other learn this new career and a bit about each other, it reminds me what a wonderful experience it is to be among the “Brotherhood of Men”

I’m still writing, you’re still reading, so please keep following…….

Craig

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FollowCraig: “Follow the Leader?”

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Follow the leader, remember that game when we were kids? It was so much fun; each person one by one follows the leader often times in single file copying what ever the person in front of them is doing and the one in front of them and so on all the way to the leader. So imagine several children following along, if the leader jumps the first kid jumps and then the next and so on. Now they are walking, hoping, stopping then turning and pushing the one behind, then of course the next and so on. Wait a moment did the leader just push the first kid who then pushed the next, then the next? Didn’t they know that pushing someone is wrong, not nice? Or are they are just kids following the leader in front. Of course they know the difference between right & wrong don’t they? So if they know then why would they push rather than just stop and say wait, pushing is wrong. It’s funny isn’t it? We all know what is right and wrong but how often do we just follow along with everyone else anyway? Perhaps it’s just human nature to think it’s ok to do something we know is wrong when everyone else seems to be doing the same thing? Just follow the leader and it’s all ok because the person in front of them did it and the one in front of them. So just what do you think would happen if just one of these kids stopped and did not push the one behind him because he knew what was right? Just think about our own lives today, if we just stop following and not questioning and instead stood up for the right thing to do and stood on our principles of right and wrong. Is it possible that your world and the world of others around you would change? So maybe it’s worth trying. The next time when you’re ready to do something just because everyone else is doing it, weigh what you’re about to do with the weight of your principles. If your principles are too heavy to move, then don’t!

I’m still writing, you’re still reading, so please keep following…….

Craig

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FollowCraig: Be Yourself

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I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out how to just be myself. As a young man I was always told what I was to be when I grew up. You should be an architect, an accountant a lawyer and so many other things. I was taught to believe a certain faith and be of one political party. When my children were growing I didn’t ever tell them what to be, what religion or faith and nothing about politics. Let’s see who turned out best? I think the kids did. You see they found there careers, perhaps have found their own faith. So when I read the following written by; Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal” I felt like me!

“All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself.”

I’m still writing, you’re still reading, so please keep following…….

Craig

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FollowCraig: Birthday’s

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I just love Birthday’s and today is my grand-daughter’s special day. Children really have it all, that innocence and peace that only childhood gives. They are so cute and so full of joy. Why do we forget how special those days are in our own lives? As we get older and begin to work and build families we so often forget about our own special days. In my life I’m blessed with three birthday’s; The first when my mother gave me life, the second when God gave me recovery and the third when I was reborn as a Christian. These are all days I celebrate with the greatest of joy and gratitude. But for today, I celebrate my grand-daughter’s birthday. May all the gifts that life and God give be hers today.

Happy Birthday Jewel!

I’m still writing, you’re still reading, so please keep following……

Craig

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