but you don’t have to wait for those events to change in fact the best time to refocus is now!
6 years ago, my life changed completely; 6 years ago, I started chemo after a sudden stage 4 diagnosis. It would be an understatement to say that this kind of experience changes your focus on, and perspective about the world. I had been hurtling along thru life with work, ministry, and family obligations galore for years. I think I was pretty tired even before I hit this moment. This was a difficult forced moment of pause and a change of focus.
Maybe today you are hurtling forward with life. Busy with work, kids, spouse, ministry, school, Facebook updates đ, volunteering all over the place, but still feeling unquiet in your spirit as if you are missing something.
Are you tired? I donât mean that good kind of tired that says wow something really good was accomplished. I mean that weary, â I feel like I am doing a lot with very little at the end, but more to doâ tiredâ. There will always be seasons of the latter in life, but I hope that it is not all of your or my life.
⢠Can you see it or is your purpose remote or not well understood?
With this health event I started a journey, and in this journey I was confronted by the incredible need I have to focus on God.
Recently I have been given the âall clearâ from my oncologist. No more CT scans every 6 months, and no more trips to meet with the oncologist every 6 months. I have felt healthy for quit a while now in reality, but there is something about hearing that itâs been 5 years, and your blood work ,and scans look healthy. With the conclusion of one journey another journey has started, but the needs are the same. I am looking for God each day whether events are going great, or there is great struggle. Whether I have cancer or I have clean bill of health.
In past seasons God could too often became my âhelp me cryâ in moments of trouble, and not the God that I fall at the feet and worship. It takes time to be with God and time was not what I would give up in the past. In my recent relocation, and subsequent stay at home father role I have had to draw into God in a way that I probably have not engaged in since my early 20âs.
The only thing is, I am not in my early 20âs and a lot has happened since then. 22 years of marriage, 4 significant losses, 3 births, 4 jobs, 1 financial crisis, a health crisis, graduate school and seemingly innumerable smaller events both, amazing and joyful, and amazing and heartbreaking.
This year has been challenging. This school year my children have made some poor decisions which have required difficult correction. I have had struggles in this new role with being the husband, Father, and follower of Christ that is best. I have doubted the decision to move to a new town and take this new role. At the same time, I do not begrudge this season, or this decision for I am firmly convinced this has been a season of transition that was needed and God directed. My focus has changed and it needed to. I have a deeper desire for my first attentions to be oriented on God and His presence.
Brian Houston writes in âlive, Love, Leadâ, that when we worship God, God becomes bigger in our hearts, and âour problems donât have any room to growâ. I want to make that choice, not to avoid my problems, but to grow closer to my God.
As little as a year ago I would spend my weekends rushing along distracted from many things that would have renewed me for my weekly work, even fulfilling my church attendance âobligationâ as another check off on the to do list. I would then start the next week again, hoping that I could make a difference, but somehow feeling like âGround Hog Dayâ. I was repeating the same tough role with brief glimpses of success, but with lengthy periods of struggle.
I believe that a positive difference was made, but I frequently missed the most important part of my entire life, my focus on the one that calls me. I was doing, but not seeking, surviving, but not fully living with God. My life, my achievements, my education, my career, my surviving cancer, the struggles of my home life growing up, my losses, my children and on and on, â I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lordâ Philippians 3:8.
These are not the things that define me. They are part of my story, my goals pointing towards my values, but it is God revealed in these parts of my life that is the real person. It is the vision of Christ in those areas of life that are tough and beautiful, successful and full of struggle that is the real life.
I believe that my need for God and His presence is never more important than at this moment because this is the moment that I have. Out of that presence great things can happen. This is the vital life.
Gene is Husband to the amazing Daleasha, Father to the amazing Daisy, Nate, and Silas, lover of Christ, licensed counselor, ordained pastor, writer, and artist. Gene is originally from Veneta, Oregon and currently resides in Washougal, Washington. As Therapist in both local Eugene agencies, as well as private practice for 15 years, and as a Lead Pastor in Springfield Oregon for 5 years ( along with many other church based ministry roles thru the years) Gene has a heart for those that are both in the spiritual and mental healing professions. As an artist Gene focuses on sculpture and functional art items that take up space and have to be noticed.
Staring up at the slowly eroding wall of dirt it dawned on me that this was really turning into a colossal disaster. In fact, it was a masterpiece of a failure. Have you ever had a masterpiece failure? A masterpiece failure usually encompasses the perfect amount of bad decisions coupled with the perfect amount of mistakes and misjudgments and a dash of wicked happenstance for extra saltiness. This was one of those situations.
While I wouldnât wish a masterpiece failure on anyone and would not take lightly any such story that anyone has experienced or is experiencing I do not now regret one of my own. What came out of it produced many things of beauty, and dare I say……. growth.
It all started in early 2005 when I saw a small âfor sale by ownerâ sign in the bushes while driving my then 2-year-old son around at 10PM to get him to just go to sleep. It was a big piece of private wooded property in the City and it was very reasonably priced (maybe a little to reasonably).
The âpropertyâ was in one of the most beautiful and exclusive areas in our town. Nestled on the Southern wooded and hilly edges of the community we called home. The property felt like it was in country while literally being minutes from downtown. With the sun and wind in the trees it felt like a Northwest Paradise. What made it even better was that the homes in the area were all large beautiful custom homes with 2 acre lots. This added to the overall attraction.
We bought it âŚoh rapturous joy âŚwe were are on our way to building our dream home on a dream piece of property. The summer of 2006. We secured our building loan, drew our plans, and planned to General the job ourselves (as I had grown up in construction I had a general idea of the process). We broke ground in July of 2006 and slowly prepared our land for the foundation. Then it happened.
Have you ever been sideswiped, sucker punched, or just plain sickeningly surprised?
Well we were! After months of preparation and a very large sum of money and debt accrued we found upon excavation that the property was sitting on an âancient landslideâ.
By the way the Willamette Valley and most of western Oregon and Washington are full of them (just sayin). This of course changed everything.
We had to re-excavate, redesign a completely different house and the time that this took pushed us into the thick of the rainy season which brings me to standing in front of the rapidly eroding wall of dirt I started the story with.
Maybe you can relate to that feeling in your stomach, neck, chest, or back, when you realize wow this is really not good.
IN FACT, this is really awful and I canât fix this. This was late 2006 and early 2007 by this point and some other events were happening in the US relating to the collapse of the mortgage market. Our bank backed out on us at this point leaving us with most of the bills for the excavation and dozens of other asundry services in our lap.
After 12 months of no movement in the process of building I was sliding deep into an anxious depression. My chest hurt everyday to the point that I went to Dr., worried that I was having heart problems.
Turned out it was stress.
We prayed and prayed, but it felt like it was just one of those moments where the only way out was to trust and move thru. I thought maybe I could see the light at the end of tunnel and hoped that it wasnât an oncoming train. I slowly became consumed in the stress of trying to fix the problem while assuming all the bills with more debt. I lost all perspective.
One late night I sat out in the backyard and stared up at the sky, something that I started to do each night after this. I started to regain perspective thru looking at Godâs creation. I realized that this was a small part of my life in the years that I would be alive and that I was small part of what I was looking at in the sky. I had been caught up in the sense of failure, the shame, and seemingly impossibility of the situation. The situation or more importantly my reaction to it was robbing me of what was valuable in my life such as my relationship with God, my family and even my vocation as a counselor.
God started to draw me back to reality thru his immensity.
I started to turn my focus back to what really mattered, and it took time.
In my brokenness I wanted to truly follow Godâs design for our lives, but there were a lot of pieces to pick up. I felt stripped down and raw and that is where God met me.
Are you in the midst of a masterpiece failure situation?
Has a financial, relational, or vocational sure thing blown up in your face?
Are you in the position that feels Isolated, and alone?
The first and most important thing is that you should do is seek help! I stayed isolated and embarrassed way to long. Godâs people are there to help shoulder the burden.
Galatians 6:2 âBear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.â
The thing that you probably should not do is to isolate for long periods, stop doing healthy activities, or distract yourself with unhealthy activities that pull you away from what is important.
This may be professional help, it may be a church group, it may be a pastor. Most likely it will be a combination of people and groups that will help you regain your perspective and start to see how to move forward. In fact, God may open some doors in those relationships that you cannot imagine were possible.
It may seem a paradox, but I am glad to say that I canât end this story with a quick fix miracle. The truth is that we made these decisions, mistakes happened, and part of the story did not go well, there were tears and struggle, but that was not the end of our story.
Thru this experience God was present to help us learn a great deal about ourselves, His grace and provision, and compassion for others. The âothersâ that I am referring to are those that find themselves in the beginning, middle, or end of a masterpiece failure.
2 years after the triumphant breaking ground and after being for sale for 6 months the neighbor bought the bare ground for the mortgage owed on it. This was the only offer in the midst of the worst recession since the 1920âs. The neighbor was only in town for one month and it was a take it or leave it situation. God was gracious and we sold it. 10 years later we have finally paid off the rest of the money we accrued in our magnificent failure and I donât begrudge a dime of it. We struggled with the repercussions of the situation for years after and it took me over 5 years to even drive by the property without feeling horrible, but God is sovereign, and has created in me, and my family something special in spite of and because of this struggle.
God has revealed himself in ways that I may not have ever been open to sitting in my beautiful home on my beautiful property in my beautiful town.
I would not wish magnificent failure on anyone, but it seems that they can come whether we are prepared or not.
Sometimes it is someone else’s doing that has brought us there leaving us bitter and estranged feeling the weight of their failure impacting us! We are left to figure out those next steps.
Magnificent Failure can be the catalyst for transformation to have magnificent life. I do not say this lightly because there were many night, weeks, months, and years where I did not have the perspective to see living anything, but the failure. What it said about me, and my vision of the future was that I was a failure. I was not a failure….I was a person that had experienced a failure. That eroding wall of mud can be a metaphor for many things that happen to us as humans.
God has a desire for us to transcend even our most magnificent failures turning them into vehicles of newness and creativity. This is not a forced thing. I believe that God collaborates with us when we are willing to see a new perspective, experience pain, and move forward rather than avoid pain and stay stuck. Time will move forward and you can too.
Gene is Husband to the amazing Daleasha, Father to the amazing Daisy, Nate, and Silas, lover of Christ, licensed counselor, ordained pastor, writer, and artist. Gene is originally from Veneta, Oregon and currently resides in Washougal, Washington. As Therapist in both local Eugene agencies, as well as private practice for 15 years, and as a Lead Pastor in Springfield Oregon for 5 years ( along with many other church based ministry roles thru the years) Gene has a heart for those that are both in the spiritual and mental healing professions. As an artist Gene focuses on sculpture and functional art items that take up space and have to be noticed.
We live in world filled with the promotion of “moving on” as the key to emotional freedom. People are told to move on from one relationship to all sorts of new relationships: move on from loss, move on from a job, or just move on to a new place.
Moving on from something painful seems to have become equated to emotional health and strength. While staying still is equated with being stuck and ineffective at life.
Maybe no place is this more apparent than the concept of “moving on” from a broken intimate relationship or close friendship.
We are shown in media that “moving on” is healthy and “should” happen within a certain time frame. In seeming contradiction human observation sometimes tells us that after “moving on” many people seem to pick similar intimate partners, or friends (sometimes over and over), or repeat similar lifestyle choices leading to the same results again. One observable factor in these situations is the pressure from the broader culture to “move on” quickly. Sometimes this pressure can even come from those closest to us. All of this moving on without really moving forward with life.
When people are always “moving on” without examination, or learning, they can remain stuck in the same feedback loop of thinking, behavior, and choices without any change. They are in fact “moving on” without moving forward!
“Wherever you go, there you are” is an old-time saying with a great deal of reality based wisdom. The idea of the saying is that whatever is with you; the joys and/or internal struggles, will be there in some way even if you change your geography. This is not to say that geographical changes are unhealthy, or even unneeded (issues of safety, or leaving toxic relationships sometimes necessitates quick moves), but generally if those issues are not present, running to something is frequently better than just running away from something.
The difference is important, “Moving On” is often equated to leaving one place/situation and moving to the next. Moving forward can be likened to a struggle in one place that teaches us about moving to the next. Back in the day just âmoving on” was often referred to as the idea of the “grass being greener on the other side”.
Yea, that sounds amazing. It has been a great day of snowboarding. A triumphant return after nearly 5 years of not riding. There were miles of beautiful runs with fresh powder to ride and then, ” we should go to the massive bowl at the top of mountain?” The sun was shining, the snow was light and fluffy, the air cold and crisp. As we got off the lift at the top of the mountain, my companions said, “we have to hike to the bowl and traverse a double black diamond chute to get to the bowl”.
As I slowly slid across a double black diamond run on a narrow traverse I should have listened to the small voice whisperingâŚThis was probably not a good idea.
âFive- years off….. really old equipmentâŚout of shape muscles, out of practice body…. snowboarding across an ice covered double black diamond run. But all I heard was untouched slopes await⌠the snow is so much better⌠let’s move on⌠or at least keep moving.
We strapped into our boards at the top of the double black diamond chute (a very steep snow run between two towering rocks). We set out on our traverse (crossing the chute). It was a narrow snow path beat thru the solid ice on the slope. The chute was probably 50 yards wide, but it felt like 100.
There was no hint of the soft powdered glory of the rest of the mountain here. Half way across the ice sheet, headed towards the rumored glorious powder of the “bowl”⌠it happened. From up above I heard “look out”. A snowboarder had fallen further up the chute, and he happened to be headed right for me.
PauseâŚ
So what did I do?
Was this about that time that I cheated in chemistry in High School?…
Un-pause.
The chute was so steep that I was almost standing straight up and laying against the hill side. The fallen rider was now tumbling towards me rapidly, and his board hit me in the back of the head (never went again without a helmet).
My board came off our little traverse path, and I slid 3 feet down the chute fallen rider in tow, or maybe he was towing me. He let go and fell/slid 500 or so yards to the bottom, a distant tumbling mass. I think he was fine, but I did not see him again. I was now in a precarious place. Every move I made just made me slide further, and I couldn’t get my snowboard edge to hold in the ice. Moving on down the chute wasn’t looking good at all, but I still had to move on, across the chute, to my friends, and to perceived safety.
I couldn’t really move though, without sliding, and the only thing that was really holding me there was my fists punching holes in the ice, and my snowboard’s very ineffective edge.
Ski patrol had seen what was happening from the top, and apparently had been rescuing people all day from this chute.
I came to find out they were rescuing people from theâ amazing bowl” as well. Patrol slid down next to me, and asked me if I needed help. I could have let my pride take over and said “no”. I wasn’t feeling really prideful about my “moving on” decision to ride the bowl that day so I said “yes, of course”. Patrol slowly made his way down to me, and assisted me by helping me to unstrap, and punching stairs with his ski boots into the ice and snow. We walked an ice stairway up and out of the chute. 15 minutes later I stood at the top looking out at Central Oregon and nursing my sore head.
I later learned from my companions that had went on to the “amazing bowl” that the entire “amazing bowl” (basically most of the top of the mountain) was a solid sheet of ice.
The messages seem to be telling you that moving on is the healthy thing to do, the beautiful thing to do. Maybe it looked greener, and you leaped to soon into something with disastrous results. Now, you find that you are in a desert or a spotty grass field? Maybe it is starting to look like the very field that you just left?
Moving forward admits that there were some things that were tough and challenging and accepts that those issues can influence future decisions. Moving forward is sometimes slow and sometimes fast.
Moving forward is not a knee jerk reaction, running from something with no clear objective, and it doesn’t lack purpose.
Moving forward doesn’t mean you have all the answers, but it does have sense of purpose to the next step.
Sometimes we need another person to step in and help us move forward in a healthy way, and sometimes we might even need them to guide us forward!
I was stuck in that chute headed for another stuck place! My life was not being held in the balance at that point, but in my mind, it was.
In my mind there was no way out (without much pain). It took someone else with a different perspective and set of appropriate skills to come along to help me see another way to move forward. “Moving on” was at the bottom of the shoot or on across to more of the same in the giant bowl.
By the way, both of my companions made it across the chute only to spend the next 2 hours slipping, sliding, and falling down the middle of the mountain top, which was covered in ice!
I could have said, “no, I got this”, and tried to get across only to find that it was probably worse. More of the same from here! I needed help and I needed to get real about where my ability and equipment level was at. Moving forward is an evaluative process. This means we have to think about what has happened, how it happened, and ways we want for our next steps; however, small to be meaningful and vital.
This could be seen as a funny campfire story and maybe seems disconnected from the more painful situations that you or I may face today. It wasn’t funny then though, and I actually stopped snowboarding for a while because of that situation. I started again though and now I enjoy it even more. How much more has serious painful loss, or other tough situations stopped people from moving forward with life?
I have lived thru many losses in life both deaths, some painful relationships, and poor decisions. I have “moved onâ on my own, and the grass wasn’t greener. It took unnecessary time to learn that in those moments that “moving on” wasn’t moving forward with my life. I could’ve used “a person” to punch that stair thru the ice of my life to help me move forward, but for whatever reason I didn’t seek it.
I repeated some of the same mistakes and lived in struggle when I could have moved forward into a more vital life. If you are tempted to “just move on” from your situation think about what moving forward looks like, how it could be different, and who could help you do that.
Gene is Husband to the amazing Daleasha, Father to the amazing Daisy, Nate, and Silas, lover of Christ, licensed counselor, ordained pastor, writer, and artist. Gene is originally from Veneta, Oregon and currently resides in Washougal, Washington. As Therapist in both local Eugene agencies, as well as private practice for 15 years, and as a Lead Pastor in Springfield Oregon for 5 years ( along with many other church based ministry roles thru the years) Gene has a heart for those that are both in the spiritual and mental healing professions. As an artist Gene focuses on sculpture and functional art items that take up space and have to be noticed.
So here we are 6 years and 3 months from the first one! When I talk to most people who are getting one it seems that there is always more than a little apprehension at the unknown. What will it mean if it is back? What will I do? What will we do? It’s okay there aren’t any symptoms, this time …right? These thoughts grow more remote as time passes, but these thoughts are many times a part of the road of survivorship of the diseases of cancer. You go days, maybe even weeks, and months without thinking about it, but then there is this scan to just check and make sure. For me this was my last one in this season of my life. I have reached the cure mark of 5 years.
I am excited and blessed by this information:
Guess what? Life still has other unknowns!
What is it about the unknown that gets to us human beings? It’s as if 1000s of years of biology tell us that something horrible is waiting around the corner about to eat us, and if we worry enough about it we can prevent it. The truth is something will eventually eat us (metaphorically I hope), take our current physical life, and usher us into a new plane of life. Nevertheless; we are afraid, concerned, and spend some serious energy grasping at keeping what it is that we think we can control. The truth is (unlike in the past) I was not overly concerned this time about the scan. It now less of journey and more of a conclusion and beginning. I also got to drink this delicious berry flavored drink with low-level radioactive materials so the machine can map my insides. This marks number 25 of CAT scans and 17 of PET scans so I think I am glowing. God is closing some doors and opening new ones. Yes there are unknowns, things are challenging, hard, joyous , difficult , and beautiful. Just like they are supposed to be.
In July of 2012 we bought a house and moved. In the process of moving we finally let go of a bunch of stuff that we had inherited from our now deceased parents. We decided at that point that it was time to conclude a chapter and begin another. I was very ill from salvage chemo at the time, but we had this huge garage sale, and my friend John came to check in. John had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 2-3 years before and had gone thru just about every type of brutally wild treatment there seemed to be. He had been told conflicting timelines for his life span, and he had outlived all of them. He told very funny stories about his treatments such as being put into a chamber and exposed to Gamma radiation while the technicians stared at him thru a window. He made a joke about turning into the Hulk.
John was now on a medication to keep the cancer at bay , and he was working part-time and caring for his family. He was a well liked man and a loving involved father. We talked on the porch about the future, and how his family was dealing with his illness as well as how my family was dealing with mine. Looking over our giant sale he joked about the unimportance of stuff, and talked of his love for God and the fact that you can’t take it with you. I thought, ” if I have to take this with me, I’ll just stay here”. He then said something that has stuck with me, and was a key to my acceptance of the “unknown” what was happening in that moment.
In response to the anxiety over all the “unknowns” and the anxiety of his own friends and family he said, “in the end it will be okay, for all of us, nobody gets out alive”. You are probably thinking, “that’s a buzz kill”, but as with so many things, it was about timing. It fit that moment and that context brilliantly. What John was saying was that he was at peace with the bigger picture. Even though he was accepting treatment he wasn’t focused on the disease, dying, or even trying to live forever. He was focusing on the things that mattered to him which were his relationship with God, and his family. It was not fatalistic, it was freeing.
In that moment I was calmed. The acceptance of life and death by this man who maintained humor and love for the people around him thru all of his pain and struggle was freeing to me. I knew I would still feel sorrow and joy, and the cycle of it all was inevitable, and I needed to put myself into what really mattered, just being alive right now. The life that God gives me. There is a difference between avoiding death and living life. One is surviving, clinging, and anxiety filled, and the other is living (even with pain) into what is important and valuable.
Here we are close to 6 years later, and I am still thinking about that day, and I thank the Lord that He helped me thru. I still deal with reminders each day that things are a bit different now. Much better in some ways and challenging in others. I am glad to be alive, and I believe that there is more life to be lived, big and little things to do, and more people to reach out to in this world. I am also glad that John said that me in that moment because it has increased my ability to be calm about this life when I feel like things are too difficult, and too unknown. I know that there is more beyond this.
With this scan there is an end and a beginning. There is an end to this season and beginning to a new one. I am sitting at Mt Hood Meadows today writing most of this with a fractured foot ( another story), and my son and his friend are snowboarding. I am glad to be alive, and see him enjoy his life. I am glad that I get to go drink radioactive juice, and I am glad I get to eat ribs with my family tonight. I am glad that my daughter is going to college next year, and I accept that I’m not sure how to pay for some of it. I am glad that my truck needs a new water pump. I am glad that my wife planted flowers in the front yard, and talked about it for 1/2 and hour with a big smile. I am glad …. Do I hurt, worry, or struggle with unknowns? Of course, but I know that I am alive, and I know that no one gets out alive, and I am free to live thru acceptance!
Gene is Husband to the amazing Daleasha, Father to the amazing Daisy, Nate, and Silas, lover of Christ, licensed counselor, ordained pastor, writer, and artist. Gene is originally from Veneta, Oregon and currently resides in Washougal, Washington. As Therapist in both local Eugene agencies, as well as private practice for 15 years, and as a Lead Pastor in Springfield Oregon for 5 years ( along with many other church based ministry roles thru the years) Gene has a heart for those that are both in the spiritual and mental healing professions. As an artist Gene focuses on sculpture and functional art items that take up space and have to be noticed.
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