My Favorite Commercial Revisited...

Last year I wrote about how I had found a commercial that is engraved in my mind, mainly the song. I love that song and it pains me to think that those days are gone. Anyways, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately on memories and how they can drag you down and cause you to miss today. And I've been watching Rob Bell's Nooma video "Today," and I'm trying to come to grips that tomorrow is over, and that today is here and now and should not be ignored or missed.

So here is the post I made last Christmas, and below is the Nooma clip. I love that last line..."Our arms arn't free to embrace today." How true it is!




If I don't get back on here before Christmas, enjoy the holidays with your loved ones. Embrace them today; do not wait until you can only embrace them in yesterday. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

And Go Gators!!!

Well...

Long time no talk...

Been busy with school and trips and life.

Oh and Go Gators!!!

The Glass Has Come Out!!!

EDITED:

For those of you who were not aware, I had a piece of glass in my ear lobe from the accident. But finally, after a year and a half, it came out. This happened a few weeks ago. I was going to post it on here, but I got so busy with school that I hadnt found the time to do it. Well, now I have because I wrote a paper about it for one of my classes. So read below for the full story, and yes its pretty long. In the picture above, I am holding the piece in my hand. Hopefully you can see it. Its pretty big.


A Season Of Change

There I sat on my knees, with my head lying in Laura's lap, my arms wrapped tightly around her waist. As she is manipulating and squeezing my ear lobe, she suddenly screams, “I can see it!” I respond in the calmest voice as I could muster, “I know, go ahead.” She tells me to hold on and not to move. She takes the tweezers and begins to work, and I can hear the sound of metal scraping glass. I know that in a few seconds, I will come to grips with a certain reality of the accident, all the while moving past and letting go of another.
A year and a half earlier, I had been driving to Lakeland Regional Medical Center, where I worked as a patient transporter. That day, I had plenty of time to get to work, and so I decided to slow down and actually go the speed limit. Seconds later a car pulled out in front of me. I slammed on my breaks, and started to swerve to avoid hitting him. It was too late. After everything had settled, and I regained my bearings, I quickly realized there was something visibly wrong with my wrist and leg. Also in the process, my elbow had knocked out my windshield and had shattered glass into my face. So there I sat with blood streaming down my face and collecting into a pool in my lap. After a few minutes, an ambulance arrived and I was rushed to the hospital as a trauma alert.
In the Emergency Room, the doctor put my dislocated wrist back in place, and made sure everything else was stable. The doctor told me that I had a broken left radius and a dislocation of that wrist, and that I had broken my right femur in two places. That night, I was taken to surgery to fix my leg. The surgeon did the best he could to piece the bone back together and fortified it with a rod and fixed it in place with screws. A few days later, while lying in my hospital bed, I thought to myself about just how fortunate I was. I came to this conclusion in two ways. First, I realized that I had many friends, many more than I even really realized. This was something that I had taken for granted, and it brought me to tears on many occasions to know that they were there to support me. The other way was by realizing just how close I came to being a whole lot worse off than I was. Working in the hospital, you see and learn lots of things. Just a week prior to my accident, I had taken a 20 year old to the morgue. He had been in an accident and had broken his femur as well. Unfortunately he also severed the femoral artery and died from internal bleeding. I thought to myself how that easily could have been me.
I had many dark days and nights in the weeks and months of recovery that followed. Seven months into my recovery process, I regained the ability to walk. A few months later I started to drive again, and so I started taking myself to counseling to help move past the event. I realized that I had an issue, and it was much more complex than just being nervous to drive. As I dealt with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, things began to get back to normal for me. I started going out with friends, returned to my church and started helping out there, and went back to work. Amidst all this change, I even met a woman who I became romantically interested in. We began talking and having lunch together, and after a few weeks, we began dating. As months passed, we grew closer and began to fall in love. She began to help me considerably during this time. She would love me tenderly at times when I needed it, and in other times, she would be fierce in pushing me to better understand myself. I still often thought to myself, “I’m not the vibrant active guy I used to be. I can’t run. I can’t even walk straight or without a limp. My back hurts every night after I go home from walking uneven all day. There is a lot wrong with me. Why is she with me; what could she possibly see in me?” I began viewing myself as a victim, and that I would be one for as long as I lived. I struggled between seeking affirmation from Laura and others in one minute, and then doubting that the affirmation I received was even sincere in the next minute. The accident and the recovery were bringing to light my insecurities, many of which I did not want to face. But I became excited to be able to continue in my journey with someone who could love me and see through my insecurities and help me work on them.
Over a year after the accident, I noticed that there was something hard and painful in my ear lobe. After playing around with it, testing to see what hurt and what didn’t hurt, I came to the conclusion that there must be a piece of glass from the accident remaining in my ear. In the coming months I monitored the fragment, and at times, it would break through the skin, bleed and then re-heal itself again. One day, it cut through the skin again, but this time it didn’t heal back up. I knew that, unlike the permanent rod in my leg, it was just a matter of time before the glass would work its way out. But I had come to realize over the few months of dealing with this shard, that this glass meant more to me than just a painful piece of foreign body. And it was more than just a symbol of the accident. It represented something much bigger and was more personal to me than that. To me, the glass had come to represent my life since the accident; a progression of learning who I am, coming to grips with myself and how I function, and also the direction of where I was now headed. I realized that I wasn’t quite ready to part with my friend. I needed to realize where I had been, what had happened and what had changed, and where I was going. Before I let this piece of glass come out of my ear, I had to be ready to move on with my life, and to pursue what was ahead of me.
So there my head lay, my arms squeezing Laura's waist. I knew that this was much bigger than it seemed to the outside world. I knew that it meant so much more to me, and I knew that Lover knew this as well. I had been very cautious in dealing with my ear. But in that moment sitting there with her, I knew that it was time for the glass to come out. If anyone was going to take out this symbol in my ear, it was going to be the woman who had pushed me forward and had loved me through it. It was going to be her to take it out because she was just as much of a part of that symbol as I was. As she poked and prodded at my ear, I poked and prodded my mind in an attempt to understand what was going on inside it. After a few minutes, I said to myself, “Let her take it out.” My future, I realized, was undefined without her being in it. She had helped me over the months to focus and move forward, and to know myself better. And now it was time to take that next step, and she was going to do it with me. I realized that I no longer needed that symbol in my ear because I was no longer a victim. I was someone who had progressed past that stage of recovery, and I had someone who had seen me and helped me through it; someone who was connected to me and what I went through.
After a few more minutes, she said, “Hold on, don’t move!” I could hear the excitement in her voice, and I could feel the glass start to give way. And in that second it took for the glass to give way and come out, I thought to myself, “This is it, this is where I am now.” And then it was over. That chapter was closed and another was started. I was moving in a new direction with the repercussions of the accident in mind, and she was coming with me.
The feeling I had afterwards was one of blissful contentment. I did not run around shouting and screaming my joy. I did not go and call everyone I knew and tell them of the event. I just got up, went to the sink until the bleeding stopped, and let the full realization of what had just happened set in. A slight smile can upon my face. Laura was looking at the glass in her hand. It was quite a big piece. She cleaned it off and found something safe to put it in. She knew that I would want to keep that as a reminder of what had happened. Not of an accident, quite the contrary. Some would even say an act of God. No, what it represents is an event, a major life change. A series of lessons learned over a season of change. And the thing about seasons is that they keep coming. They do not stop; they persist year after year, life after life, and generation after generation. “Shawn, it’s out!” “I know,” I said. And then the next chapter started with a hug. One of promise, and of joy, and of anticipation.

Lessons in Life...

I am learning that sometimes you serve by leading, and other times, you lead by serving. There are seasons and situations for both, and to realize when to do the right one is crucial. Just something I was thinking about tonight. Hope it can help.

We Are Clean...

I was reading the passage today for our life journals and it was John 13. I noticed something in this chapter that I had never paid much attention to. Jesus is washing his disciples' feet and He speaks these words while teaching them, "And you are clean, but not every one of you.” (vs. 10.) He is referring here to Judas who will soon betray Him. And this one point stuck out at me. A few verses later, Jesus will predict Peter's denial of Him. Yet you have here, Jesus knowing what both men (Peter and Judas) will do to Him, but He calls Peter clean and Judas not. And this is what I know. Jesus saw their hearts, and knew that Peter had a pure heart, a heart that wanted to seek Jesus, but at times was weak or ill-hearted. But Judas was doing everything out of bad intentions. He had no desire to pursue Christ, only to take advantage of the situation. I know I have a pure heart in my desires to pursue Christ, and I must just learn how to cling to that fact. I will falter at times, and I will deny Christ at times, as Peter did. But I am following Him with a heart that longs to only bring Him glory, and that is what separates me from Judas. That is what separates Judas and Peter, the heart. And Jesus can see straight through ours and He knows who is sold out to Him. Jesus, may You strengthen me, and will you help me in those times when I falter to see that Your blood has made me clean, even in that moment. And may I live in that grace afforded to me, and out of that, give you glory in all that I do. Amen.

For The Record...

I enjoy knowing that some of my rhetoric might get read by other people, but I do not hang my hat on it. I post my thoughts, most of the time unedited or reviewed, on here as a way to get my thoughts out. The idea is that it might help others in some way. Maybe not, but maybe. So if anyone gets tired of my mood swings or political rants (which I'm not doing anymore,) then please feel free to stop reading my blog. It will not hurt my feelings, and I do not seek attention or get pleasure from any of my post on here. (With the exception of any post about the Indians or Gators.) So anyways, now that that is clear.

Post # 200...

I can't think of a better post for my 200th post than the lyrics to one of my favorite songs ever.
Download it and let it strengthen you.

"Dig" - Incubus

We All Have A Weakness
But Some Of Ours Are Easier To Identify. Look Me In The Eye
And Ask For Forgiveness;
We'll Make A Pact To Never Speak That Word Again
Yes You Are My Friend.
We All Have Something That Digs At Us,
At Least We Dig Each Other
So When Weakness Turns My Ego Up
I Know You'll Count On The Me From Yesterday
If I Turn Into Another
Dig Me Up From Under What Is Covering
The Better Part Of Me
Sing This Song
Remind Me That We'll Always Have Each Other
When Everything Else Is Gone.
We All Have A Sickness
That Cleverly Attaches And Multiplies
No Matter How Hard We Try.
We All Have Something That Digs At Us,
At Least We Dig Each Other
So When Sickness Turns My Ego Up
I Know You'll Act As A Clever Medicine.
If I Turn Into Another
Dig Me Up From Under What Is Covering
The Better Part Of Me.
Sing This Song!
Remind Me That We'll Always Have Each Other
When Everything Else Is Gone.
Oh Each Other....
When Everything
Else Is Gone.