Headed for Seattle Washington

I'm headed for Seattle Washington to meet with Jim Henderson, author of "aka lost". I had originally planned to see him at a workshop in Holland MI but the seminar was cancel. Fred Peatros is Jim's friend. Fred wrote Jim and asked him to meet with me. Thank you Fred!

Speaking at the Pike County Recovery Council

Last Friday I did another training for the counselors at the Pike County Recovery Council. This was my sixth training in Pike County Ohio. I am teaching counselors how to use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to treat addiction, mood disorders and a variety of emotional and behavioral problems in outpatient treatment. The counselors are doing great work, applying the principles of CBT. We are doing a year-long outcome study of treatment effectiveness using three standardized measures. I love working with them.

By the grace of God I now have four years of sobriety.

By the grace of God I now have four years of sobriety. My sobriety date is October 19, 2002. I thank God for saving my life. I am so thankful that Kim stayed with me. She loved me when I was unlovable. She stayed with me and I am so thankful and I love her. We have three wonderful daughters that are happy and healthy. I’m so thankful for them. I love them. I thank God for my mom and Jeanie and Susan and all my family. I so thankful to be serving as a minister at Norway Avenue. The Christians at Norway Avenue are wonderful. I thought I had totally disqualified myself but God’s grace covered me and people forgave me. God has opened many doors for me. If you could have seen me four years ago you wouldn’t believe it. God did a miracle in my life and I give him praise. God saved me. I thank God for AA and my sponsors and all my friends in AA. I am most thankful for my Lord Jesus Christ.

You Can’t Grill It Until You Kill It

I love to hunt. I grew up in the WV hills. When I was a kid I played in the mountains and creeks. Swinging on grape vines, riding down trees, building a cabin, and damming up a stream. Fishing in the summer time, hunting in the fall, me and family we all had a ball, in the country (I may put that to music some day). I learned to hunt when I was a boy. It's stayed with me. I love to be in the woods. It was my day off and I stayed in the woods all day. Well, I did come out to eat lunch but I went right back. I killed a deer today. I killed another deer two days ago (last Saturday). I killed one in September on a land damage permit. God gave me three deer and it's only the first two weeks of 2006 deer season. I thank God for the thrill of the hunt and the meat. I eat what I kill. Tonight I grilled deer tenderloins and deer hamburger. I read the two scriptures below with fresh eyes this evening. Genesis 9:1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. Acts 11:6 I [Peter] looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts … 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, 'Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.' As Ted Nugent says "You can't grill it until you kill it."

Dreams

I dreamed about deer hunting last night. It was so vivid and real. I was hunting that big buck I've been hunting for two years. I saw him in my dream last night. I’ve seen him twice while awake (in real life). He is huge, a monster moose of a deer. And now I’m dreaming about that buck. I can’t get out in the woods to hunt him because of my schedule. So I’m dreaming about hunting him. Weird, isn't it. In the Bible God spoke to people in dreams. God spoke to Abimelech, Jacob, Joseph, Gideon’s friend, Samuel, Solomon, Daniel, and Joseph in dreams. God can still speak to people in dreams but I don’t believe my dream is a message from God. It’s simply my desire to hunt deer. I think about it a lot. My feeder and bow are in my garage. Three hundred pounds of corn are in my trunk. I just can’t find the time to get out in the woods. So I think about it while I’m working and even while I’m sleeping. We dream every night. It’s one of five stages of sleep. We don’t always remember our dreams but we always dream (if we sleep well). I believe dreams are an attempt to resolve some thing i.e., a problem, a thought, a desire, a preoccupation. We think about it even when we are unconscious. That’s probably what happened to me last night. I’m preoccupied with a sport that I can’t enjoy right now. So I just think about it. This cooler weather makes me want to rub my head against a tree or something. I want to hunt and until I actually get out in the woods I’ll dream about it.

Worshiping God Under the Stars

I like to think about the size of the universe when I look up at the stars. It is so large that scientist have to measure space by the speed of light. The ruler of measurement is one light second. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. It’s 1.3 light seconds to the moon. It’s 500 light seconds to our sun. When you move beyond the sun to other stars you need a bigger ruler called a light year. A light year is 32 million times longer than a light second. It takes 10 light hours get from one side of our solar system to the other. There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way) and it takes 100,000 light years to get from one side of our galaxy to the other. That’s just our galaxy. Over 2 million galaxies have been counted and scientist estimate that there could be as many as 100 million galaxies. When I look up at the stars and think about the size of God’s creation I feel like singing with David - "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"