REALfitness by Scott

Gayle and I had the weekend over in Palm Beach County. We got to spend some time at the PGA National Resort. It was a pretty sweet place. Check out the pictures. We checked out of the hotel Saturday Morning. Because I had been there for work and Gayle had joined me later in the week, we had two cars. Gayle’s cell phone battery had died the day before so when we left Saturday in seperate vehicles we had no means of communication. She was to follow me, since I knew my way around pretty well and she is directionally challenged as well as not knowing the area. Before we got in our cars I had said I intended to take her on a scenic route and we had discussed earlier we might have lunch at a place called Duffy’s in downtown Stuart, a little town about 30 miles north. I vowed I’d be careful not to lose her and we were off. As we left the hotel driveway we came to a red light on PGA Blvd, which is about a six lane wide busy street. I made sure there was room for both of us to turn right on red and took off. I looked in my mirror and no Gayle. I slowed down and didn’t see her so I pulled off and a whole bunch of traffic came but still no Gayle. So, I did a U turn and zipped back and she wasn’t at the light any more either. I kind of panicked wondering what could have happened to her and I imagined her freaking out being some what afraid of being lost in a strange place. I raced back down PGA Blvd. toward route 1 but never saw her, I drove back almost to the hotel to see if she was along the road somewhere but never saw her. I prayed "Lord you are our only means of communication, I know we will both be talking to you, so what do I do?" I sensed a clear prompting to "get on the turnpike and go to Duffy’s in Stuart." I chaffed a little bit for a couple reasons. One, what if she is broke down and pulled into a gas station somewhere? Two, what if Gayle doesn’t think of Duffy’s and if she does she will never find Duffy’s! I got on the turnpike and headed north. I thought if she is in some kind of predicament with her car I’m just driving further and further away from her. When I got off the turnpike I began to think about how long to wait at Duffy’s and what to do next if she wasn’t there. I got stuck in a bunch of traffic and finally got to downtown and found a parking spot about a block away. I’m walking toward Duffy’s and crossing Osceola Street to enter the restaurant. They have outdoor dining and I’m scanning the patio looking for Gayle but she is not there. I look to make sure no cars are coming as I cross the street and the very first car just arriving at exactly the same time as me is Gayle! I felt like squeezing the stuffins out of her, she was a sight for sore eyes! I jumped in the car and led her to a parking spot right next to my car and found out what happened. She said, she thought the corner at PGA said no turn on red and as soon as I had turned a police car went by so she waited. That was it, apparently when I made the U turn to check on her she went by and I missed her. She said she felt for sure she would see me parked along the road waiting for her but never did. She prayed! She said, "Lord, I don’t know where it is but I remember talking about maybe going to Duffy’s for lunch, help Scott remember that and to go there." She didn’t know where it was and couldn’t get it in her GPS. She headed north on route 1 and when she hit Stuart she stopped at a gas station. She asked some guy if he knew where Duffy’s was (there are two of them in Stuart!!) he said no, but apparently a local he asked another guy. The guy said, Gayle could follow him, he was going that way and he led her to the restaurant. The amazing thing to us both is we arrived at exactly the same time though I spent at least 20 minutes looking for her and she went an entirely different route. I got caught in traffic jams and she stopped for directions. We both believed the Lord was our GPS and got us at the same destination at exactly the same time! What an adventure!!

Wow, what a busy month this has been. It started with me flying to Dallas, TX for work early in the month. I got home late on a Wednesday and Gayle flew to Savannah to meet her mom and sister for a couple days of shopping and girl stuff. Then we had my mother-in-law and sister-in-law here for a week of fun and festivities. As soon as they left on Tuesday we began preparing to fly out to Chesapeake, VA on Thursday. We spent a long Memorial Day Weekend with Tim and Jessi in Chesapeake and flew home Monday. We slept in our own bed one night then headed to St. Pete Beach and the Sirata Resort for two nights. We just got home from there and have four more days of vacation. We rested at home all afternoon Thursday and then went for a Jeep adventure. We started with dinner at "Willie’s" The place for seafood. This is a local favorite but was our first time there. It was a delightful dining experience. The place is built around the old North Carolina "Fish Camp" idea. We felt like we were back in rural Carolina where we once lived. The dinner was excellent and the Mango Pie for dessert was really good. It was like Key Lime Pie only with Mango. We then went to Meddard Park, one of our favorite spots to see some alligators. We spotted four, check out the pics. We need a good night’s rest then we’ll decide what we are going to do next!! We next headed out Saturday for Withlacoochee rails to trails park in Inverness. There is a 40 some mile bike trail that used to be a railroad. We rented a bicycle built for two and road for a solid hour and a half. Then we headed to Cedar Key. It was an adventure!

 

Scott

My mind is spinning today. I just finished looking at a picture of a family who against all odds are all together for their first weekend. You can see what I’m talking about here http://cfhusband.blogspot.com/! I’ve written about them before. It is Nate, Trisha and Gwyneth. Over the last several months they have beat death on many occasions. Trisha has carried a baby eventhough she has Cystic Fybrosis and could barely breath. She gave birth to Gwyneth who was only 1lb and a few ounces at birth. Then while Gwyneth was battling for life, Trisha received a double lung transplant! Today Nate, Trisha and Gwyneth are spending their first Saturday together out of the hospital. It is such an amazing story in which God’s hand is obvious in so many places. Hundreds of thousands of people have had their faith stretched and I’m sure many have come to faith for the first time following this dramatic story of near biblical proportions.

 

I started this blog saying my mind is spinning because while one Christian family is rejoicing today in how good God has been to them, another whole communtiy is grieving because of the tragic death of their beloved, 44 year old pastor and his 13 year old son. Dr. Forrest Pollock, a friend of mine, and his 13 year old son, Preston were both killed last week when the plane they were flying went down in Asheville, NC. Today his wife Dawn will spend the first Saturday of her life as a widow. Their five remaining children will spend the first Saturday of their lives without a dad. You can read more about this here http://www.bellshoals.com/pages/page.asp?page_id=19886. Our nation has lost a very strong voice for the Lord, taken right as he is in his prime. His church has just had two weeks in their new 3,500 seat worship space.

 

So, this Saturday my mind is spinning. I see the tension of serving a loving and powerful God yet living on a planet that is coming apart because of the effects and consequence of thousands of years of sin. See, ultimately, Nate, Trisha, Gwyneth and everyone else mentioned here will die too. When and how is not for us to know. God has purposes higher than I can comprehend. If I understood everything then I would be God. I don’t and I’m not, so I must live with mystery and still trust. What a happy, sad day this is. Just like everyday on planet earth. No wonder the scriptures say, "All of creation is groaning waiting for the day of redemption!"

 

Scott

A week ago I was on a run and my mind began to run too. I came home and got a note book and my Bible and sat on our Lanai (a screened pool room common in Florida) and began to study. I drew a circle with a little stick figure inside it. Then I began to look at Bible verses that described my responsibilities before God. I read I was to glorify God in all I do. I read I am to love my enemies, my neighbors and my wife. I read as much as it is possible I am to live at peace with all people. I read I am to be filled with love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, self-control, etc. I read I am supposed to pray for those who would despitefully use me. I’m too maintain my integrity through times of suffering. I read how Jesus was mocked and beaten yet didn’t retaliate, rather he committed his attackers to the righteous judge, leaving judgment to the Father. Then I read I will one day answer to God for how I did.

 

Then I drew some arrows outside the circle pointing towards it. They represented all the things outside of me I have no control over. Other people and their attitudes, circumstances of all forms and fashions that may be happening at any given time in my world. It became clear that none of those things concern me except for how I respond to them. My responsibility is only to respond to anything that happens in my world in a way tht glorifies God.

 

Since that day, I’ve drawn my little circle with the man inside on numerous occasions as a reminder to me of my responsibility. In many ways it is very freeing and in many ways it is a huge responsibility to keep myself surrendered to the Lord and full of His spirit. I understand more fully "get the beam out of your own eye before attempting to extract the splinter from someone else’s eye."

 

Scott

Gayle and I married on January 20th, 1973! 35+ years ago. We hit a really rocky time a couple years into our marriage then came to know the Lord and got swept up in church life. We were so busy during child rearing days we didn’t really spend much time or have a clue what it meant to have a happy, satisfying marriage. Then it was off to Bible College at age 25 after 6 years of marriage. I went to school full time and worked full time for 7 more years. Again, at this point it was survival mode. Gayle with three kids by herself and me with all the stuff I had to do. We had very little time together, though we loved each other again clueless! The whirlwind continued it seems  18 years of public life as a pastor, our family always in the public eye and learning things but not much concerning loving each other the way we needed to be loved. Near disaster came to us and now in many ways looks like a gift in disguise. All I will say is the Lord used that train wreck in 2000 to begin teaching us about really loving and respecting each other as a couple. Today as we walk, talk, take day trips like the latest set of pictures and as we pray together on those walks, we thank God for allowing us to be so much in love after all these years. It is great to have peace inside, no secrets from each other, no games just a from the heart desire to love each other, serve each other and serve the Lord together. Life is so good right now. I’m so thankful we held on and worked through everything life ever threw at us. I’m so glad neither of us ever threw in the towel. I’m so thankful we’ve learned to forgive and let resentments go. Knowing now what the prize is it was worth all the necessary training to get here. I really don’t know that our marriage could get any better but I know we are both still growing so it could. If I died today, I would die knowing I’ve experienced genuine love at the deepest level with my bride. This life is worth fighting for!

 

Scott

 

 

Lately, I’ve had two things converge on my life of interest. I’ve been making some major discoveries about who I am and what I absorbed in my upbringing the other thing is I’m doing tons of marriage counseling. I started seeing this pattern that I’m sure isn’t 100% true but I think is a general observation that applies to most cases.

 

We are drawn to the person we marry for several reasons. 1)Usually we find them physically attractive 2) there is something about their personality that attracts me and that something is going to take some explanation.

 

3) Whatever parent you are the most like in your personality you will marry someone like your other parent. That happens for several reasons. The first is you think that feels normal. You lived in that environment of how your parents related to each other for years and absorbed  this is how to relate to others. So then you are drawn to someone that will relate to you in a way that feels "normal." For example, I’m wired much like my mom and I just realized in a strange way I married a girl with a nature and personality much like my dad. Gayle and I used to relate very much like my mom and dad did. Dad was a wise, quiet, strong willed man. He would stuff his feelings and then occasionally blow up. Mom would push him to that point and I did the same thing. We used to sing an old song growing up, "I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad." Turns out I want to marry someone like the parent that is least like me! Ponder that awhile. 

 

This is why a person can grow up in a home where a parent was an addict or abusive and then go out and marry the same kind of person. Even after divorcing the first partner they often will marry the same kind of person again. It is imperative to do some hard work on ourselves and identify this pattern so we can learn from our parents strengths and weaknesses relationally or we will be destined to duplicate them.

No offense to the fans of the TV Show by the same title "24," but what Trisha and Nate Lawrenson and extended family and 1,000’s of others went through yesterday is the real "24!" Trisha had a double lung transplant at Duke Medical Center. You can read the whole story at www.cfhusband.blogspot.com I wasn’t there and can’t really relay the story the way it needs to be told. I can point you in the direction so you can experience it through the eyes of Nate and his dad Rick. You will be inspired!

 

Scott

We just arrived back in Sunny, Warm Florida after several days in Williamsport, PA our birth place. It was a really nice visit. We got to see many of our family members and enjoyed some quality time with our moms, sisters, brothers and their families. We got to have our own immediate family all together as our son and his wife joined us from Virginia. Williamsport is a great small town with a lot of history both on its own merit as a town and for us as individuals. In many ways, it was a trip for me that helped me in my attempting to figure things out. I firmly believe my previous post has great merit. We become the people we are partially through what we learned/caught from home then from our own choices in life. A person really can’t know themselves without visiting the past. Many prefer not to do that but I believe it is to their own detriment. Our choices in the present are often steered by the past and we don’t even know it. All in all it was a good trip. Landing in Tampa and having it be 79* and beautiful, arriving at our home here in the "Valley of Gold" which is Valrico, I am thankful for our heritage in Williamsport and for our own choices to live here now. Life is good!

 

Scott

I’ve been doing major work on myself for several years now. It has been like peeling an onion. I know I am a person like all people who has a will to do what I want to do. The Bible says we are all born with a "sinful nature." It appears as soon as we are old enough we begin exercising our choices to go our own way. Often I hear addicts say, "I have an addictive nature." Or I hear someone say, "anxiety attacks run in our family." Or just recently, "The hospital gave him diabetes, he didn’t have it before they gave him that pill!" Dr. Keith Ablow in his book, "Living the Truth," says all these things can be traced back to the first two decades of life. But before a person is too quick to blame anything on the family tree, it must be realized the patterns started prior to your own parents. No doubt negative patterns of how we relate to each other and how we survive in our home environments began several generations ago, possibly starting with Adam and Eve. After all, there was blaming, hiding, and even murder in the first family!! It makes me sad when I think about it. Preparing for a trip to where I grew up to visit family, I began to brace myself and my adult children for hurtful comments that I felt certain would be made because that is just the way it has always been. Shortly after warning my adult daughters to be prepared and them acknowledging how often those comments had cut them, I made a very hurthful comment to one of my daughters over a card game! This morning as I thought through all that I thought how often those who have gone before me must have heard similar comments growing up and basically caught the way to treat people who displease you at the moment. You cut them with your tongue, you shame them into submission. Those being treated this way learn to become people pleasers to avoid the harsh cutting, dehumanizing remarks that come when you don’t. It is an ugly pattern that has nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with the environment you lived in.  These kinds of patterns have to be recognized, admitted and changed or the same destruction is visited on the next generations and to them it just feels like normal behavior because it is all they ever knew. God help us in a day of shattered and broken individuals who marry another wounded person and somehow think two damaged people will make a healthy couple and create a loving environment to raise the next generation. We are in serious trouble! Only the Lord forgiving and teaching us will lead us out of this destructive cycle.

 

Scott

I just read the report of the Pew Research on Christianity in America. The article told how many have left the church of their youth and have migrated to non-denominational churches. The research showed that 25% of the population of the 18-29 year olds have no religious affiliation at all. The most rapid growth is among non-denominational protestant churches. Because that is where my affiliation is I have grave concerns about the future of our country. I just heard from another source that 93% of the people attending our type of chuches are "cultural Christians." That means they go to church because it seems like the right thing to do. Our church has about 2300 people in attendance and I’d bet the ranch there isn’t 10% of them who could intelligently discuss their faith, what they believe and why. Our type of church is really one brief step away from the unaffiliated. Some who come move toward a stronger faith or should I say a beginning faith, but for many it is the last stop before no man’s land.

 

I submit that when our type of church is the fastest growing in America we are one generation away from being like Great Britain where 1% of the population attend church. So, Jesus question to his disciples makes sense now, "When I return, will I even find the faith on earth?"

 

What is the solution? Many contemporary churches basically have abandoned the Bible. We throw in some quotes, here and there but have no avenue to systematically study the Word of God to see what it teaches. Part of the solution is to bring the Book back into focus. I know in the ministry I lead there are only one or two people who have any clue what the Bible says about anything. When that is true, people will follow who ever puts on the most entertaining show and that might be the NFL or NASCAR! We must start teaching people the value of the Bible as the bedrock of their faith. There must be a forum, an elective or some means to study the Bible in depth or we are doomed as churches and as a nation.