When I am weak

I'm not liking this. I'm not liking being told I can't do something. Whenever I've been told "You can't" to me that's a challenge not a deceleration. I was told I was physically unable to learn Hebrew due to language aphasia. Guess what I did? Yeah. I learned it. Spent hours working on it. But I did it. When I was told that I couldn't win against Apollo Creed, guess what I did? Wait, that's Rocky.

But now that I've been sick for the last month, I've been told I can't push myself to hard. That I can't lift weights. I can't go all ape poopy on my heavy bag. I can't even jump rope. I said watch me and guess what happened? I nearly passed out. This walking pneumonia is one big bad word.

So, I have to accept my weakness. Which I hate. I really do. I mean, c'mon, I have to actually admit that I cannot do something! You gotta be kidding me? I can't do something? I've always been able to do what I put my mind to. Yet, this one time, I can't. And it bugs the frak out of me, to tell the truth.

So, what do I do? I think of these words from Paul who had a thorn in his side that wouldn't come out. He begged and begged for it to come out and it didn't. Then Jesus said to him

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9

So, I will live in this weakness. For when I am weak then is He strong. Now, I just gotta keep telling myself that over and over again. I have to stop. And admit I can't do something. I need to stop and trust that Jesus will do what he said he would. He is the Great Physician so why can't use medication to heal me. So, I must rest and wait. I'll maybe get my geek on with reading some Full Metal Alchemist. That might work.

What about you? What weakness/es are you struggling with right now?

The sins (I mean geekiness) of the father

In the Bible it says that the sins of the father will be passed down to the third and fourth generation. From a psychological/family systems point of view, what this is saying is that the bad habits of the parents are passed down to the child. In many ways, one of the goals in life is to break the cycle of that negative behavior.

Yeah, way too heady for me right now so I'm not going much into it. One things for sure though, my son's been picking up on my geekatude. He's heavily into Transformers now. He loves Star Wars, he even knows what a Sarlaac pit is. Yeah, he's cool like that. He is getting his identity from me. He is learning from me what it means to be a man. And I so don't want to fail him on that.

But this got me thinking about another father I grew up watching. Grew up watching and saw how he felt he had failed. Saw how his son felt he had failed. Yes, I'm speaking of Worf and his son Alexander.

Worf son of Mogh, lived a life of failure in many ways. He was a strong Klingon. To tell the truth, he in many ways is more Klingon than Klingons. In my mind (and of fans) he is the epitome of what it means to be a Klingon. Yet he still lived with the shame of being raised by humans. He lived with the shame knowing that his father was blamed for the destruction and massacre of the Kithomer colony outpost.

After the death of his babymamma (that is what Alexander's mother basically was, no offense), Worf attempted to raise his son Alexander. The shame of the father was passed down to his son. His son did not take a Klingon name. Maybe this could protect his son. Maybe. But soon Alexander was sent to live with Worf's adoptive parents and was raised amongst humans, even taking their last name Rozhenko (Row-shank-O). Sadly, we do not see the child Alexander again until the war with the Dominion. And then, he comes in attempting to be a Klingon but keeps the surname Rozhenko. Again, shame for Worf that his son fighting on a Klingon Bird of Prey knows nothing of his own Klingon heritage, the honor, the valor, the philosophy of what it means to be Klingon and Worf is teased because of it.

As a father, I fear failing my son. I fear that I will bring him shame, that I will create in him some wound that will take years of therapy (and in turn tons of money) to deal with. I don't want to pass down my shame to him. I don't want to pass down my own personal demons, my own failures as a man down to him.

Instead, I so want to pass down to him those qualities that are good. Are honorable. What I like about the relationship between Worf and Alexander is that Worf, after some struggles of his own, is able to welcome back his son into his life and Alexander is able to welcome his father back into his life too. Worf is then able to begin passing down the honor, the valor, all that it means to him to be Klingon down to Alexander.

I want to do this for my own son too. I deeply want to teach him what it means to be a man of God. I want him to know the importance and honor it is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I want him to know that he is strong in Jesus. I want him to know the honor and valor and responsibilities that are required to be a man of God. I want him to have what I had to learn.

If Worf can do it, so can I, but by the Grace of God go I.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

How does that saying go? The only way to kill a zombie is to blow off its...head, right? Okay, so why zombies? Well, honestly, the majority of people find my blog by searching for zombies. Seriously. I get hits on my blog with search words like: zombies, pics of zombies, zombie Jesus (yes, seriously, say it with me: Zombie. Jesus.), zombie apocalypse, etc. And they all stem from one post (which you can read here). I wrote it sometime back for a Spiritual Sci-Fi Friday. (Which, by the way, this isn't, just to let you know).

So why Zombies? Well, they're in popular culture right now I guess. Real big too. Now, with Zombies, you have rules. You can find these rules at Zombielandrules.com. And rule number one: Cardio. Yes, that's right. Cardio. (Of course, Rule 21 is stay away from strip clubs, but if you ask me, that should be a no brainer if zombies are attacking, that's like the last place you wanna go to tell the truth.)

And now here's the kicker, recently from a tweet from Think Geek.com, I saw this video and fell in love. Check it.


Honestly, I just gotta say wow! Now that's a way to put a passion, pop culture and exercise to a great fusion together.

Now, of course, I'm not going to make any Zombie Jesus jokes (again, say it with me: Zombie. Jesus.) Jesus, of course, isn't a zombie. That's a whole 'nother raising from the dead thing that deals with the power of the Holy Spirit and is probably a Spiritual Sci-Fi Friday someday.

But right now, what I like about this video is that there's some fun and play in getting encouragement to run. I'm not a runner and I'd probably be that idiot who some how survives. But what I do like is that encouragement that's given.

And honestly, getting over this blasted walking pneumonia (my Megatron right now if you will) I need all the encouragement I can get. I'm looking forward to the all clear to start lifting again and hitting the heavy bag. Getting ready to maybe not be the idiot that survives or the idiot that survives by punching zombies. I'm not sure.

What about you, how do you get encouragement in working out?

The Epic Battle that Never Was

I'm ill. I've had this blasted walking pneumonia so long that I don't need spell check to help me spell pneumonia (and for a dyslexic that's pretty long). I keep getting told that I need to rest to get better. But I need to get work done. And of course, I get myself all outta breath and then can't do nothing.

And then I think of Indiana Jones. Well, more like Harrison Ford to tell the truth. And not in that way. Dude. No, during the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy is running through Cairo and comes upon a dude with a sword who does all the cool sword moves. Indy on the other hand, just finished running for his life and quite in a foul mood, pulls out his gun and shows the guy.


Now, there's a story behind that. Apparently Harrison Ford was quite ill that day. But they were on a very tight schedule. In a moment of improv, he just shot the guy and kept going. This has become one of the most classic scenes in the movie.

Since I've been sick, I've hardly been able to work out or exercise. Before I knew I had this blasted walking pneumonia, I was trying to go at my heavy bag and do some basic calisthenics to stay in shape because I was so busy. But I'd get outta breath real quick like. And then I was told by the doc to rest and not push it.

So, I've been improvising. I've been doing what the doc has told me to and to stick to drinking lots of liquids. But I've also stuck to the Weight Watchers (for Men) very tightly. And I've been resting. And I've been getting better. Yet I also know that I can't push myself too hard because Friday I felt better so I went for a walk and that made things worse.

So, I'm thinking WWID (What would Indy Do?) of course, it'd be more like Harrison Ford but of course that wouldn't make sense either.

But I've also been using this free time to read through my Bible and stay in prayer. A healthy body needs a healthy spirit to keep it going. So, I'm making sure I'm focusing on my spiritual health as much as I am on my physical health. And with this free time, It's been helpful. I've spent a lot of time in prayer these last few days. Now I just hope I can get this blasted pneumonia kicked and get moving on with things.

They said me said

So, I wasn't planning on posting something just because I've been sick. I mean, really sick. Apparently there's something called walking pneumonia. And right now with how tired I've been even my illness is more active than I (can you hear the rim shot or is that just me).

One thing I've been noticing while I've been sick is how many people tell me so many different ideas of what I should do while sick and what I should have done to prevent being sick. And I'm not saying these are suggestions but instead they come across as absolutes, as if this is the only way I should go.

"You should have had more Vitamin C"

"You should have had more fresh air."

"What you need now is less dairy and more juice."

"You need to think positive" (okay, trying that, nope, still sick)

Honestly, this doesn't just end with being ill. It's also in parenting:

"Put the kid on your schedule because you're the parent." "Just let them cry." And then parents look at me weird when my kid falls down and smacks their knee I tell them "Shake it off, walk it off, throw some dirt on it." Okay, not always the best thing but now when my kids fall down they get right back up and keep playing.

I hear it when trying to loose weight and exercise:

"Stop having so much dairy." (and I love this part) "No other animal above infants drinks milk after being weened like humans do. It's just a conspiracy by the diary companies"

or "So many people are anti fat and anti meat, you need more of that not less"

or "What you need to do is exercise in the morning because that's the best time you're bodies ready for it."

or "High reps low weights." or "high weights and low reps" or "split the routine."

You get where I'm going, right? These are all opinions. And if you, the reader, have told me one of these before and might be grumbling to yourself (you know who you are, right?) please don't take offense. You aren't the first nor the last to tell me as such.

Now, don't think I'm getting all wishywashy on health and stuff. There are some absolutes. 1)Lift with your knees, not your back 2)Low caloric intake with high exercise is the optimum way to loose weight 3)weight training is a vital exercise in improving muscle size and quality.

There are time tested medical and scientific absolutes. When working on being healthy, please keep these absolutes in mind. When being spiritually healthy, please keep the notion of an absolute truth in mind as well--God through Jesus Christ. Yes. I went there. You didn't see that coming? Sorry.

Opinions are out there and there are many. But there are also important absolutes you need to know. If being healthy mind, body and soul is important, then seek the great physician who is the great healer. Okay, I can go more into this and some might just be frustrated that I stopped there but this is a blog, not a book. More sometime down the road though, I promise.

Until then, stay healthy my friends, stay healthy.

Apologies, Out Sick

My apologies for not blogging this week. It appears that I will be out sick for this week. Thank you for your readership.
Josh

Don't Even Blink

What is fear? It's worrying about the unknown. It's not wanting to take steps forward because you don't know what will happen if you make the decision. It's being worried that as soon as you blink that angel in the corner who looks like it is weeping will attack you and steal all your potential life energy sending you decades into the past.

Okay, that last one is a reference to the totally freaky Weeping Angels from Dr. Who. The weeping angels are an alien race who only exist outside of recognition. If they are being looked at they do not exist. And so, they instead are stone statues who are non-existent. But as soon as you look away, as soon as you blink, the move and move quickly. This Dr. Who monster taps into that fear of what you see out of the corner of your eye. This monster taps into that fear of the unknown and the unseen.

Not only that, but this monster doesn't just take your life, it takes what you could have been. If you were to live for 80 more years, then this monster kills you by sending you back 80 years in the past and living off of what you would have been 80 years in the future. This monster taps into the fear we have about what we want to be and what we could be and eats it up.

Fear can make us do one of two things: 1) Runaway in abject terror trying to find your happy place or 2) use that fear to fuel you into action. The weeping angels forces you to focus. To focus on the fear and not let it over take you. To focus on what makes you want to flee in terror and instead stand firm, staring it down. With the weeping angels, you have to face your fears or die.

To be healthy, to be physically, emotionally and spiritually healthy, you need to face your fears. To stare them down and allow them to fuel you in moving forward.

You have a fear of failure and so you don't try to exercise. You have a fear of failure and so you don't pursue that relationship with someone you care about. You fear failure and don't even want to try to enter into God's presence. You fear rejection and don't want to even approach God through Christ. If everyone else has rejected you so will God you think. Or you fear rejection of family and friends as you step forward in faith to serve.

To run away from fear is to allow fear to win. You become a traitor to yourself, turning from what will benefit you and running away. Turn fear into a tool to allow you to step forward in faith, to step forward in making yourself healthier, to make yourself grow in the Spirit, to make yourself Grow in the knowledge of Jesus and God. To make yourself healthier mind, body and soul.