Tag: prayers

Year of Reunions

Happy Friday dear friends! As I continue to run this crazy beautiful health journey, friendships continue to mean more to me than ever. I love when I am able to connect with the friends I have been blessed with over the decades.

As I have walked through this health battle, I have been to many funerals. It’s just part of the journey. At those funerals, many people gather to pay their respects, talk about how much the person meant to them and reflect on the good times. I often hear people share if they would have only had more time to share everything they wanted to share with their loved one or friend. Oh, do not forget about all the flowers. So many flowers.

As I thought about the above scenarios, it made me realize I do not want that to be my story. People gathering after I am gone and wishing they would have visited more or shared something with me. So here is my crazy idea for 2025. To everyone who calls me friend, let us all commit to getting together once a month to hang out and celebrate each other. Of course I realize some people would not be able to make every month, but if you could make it to a few gatherings throughout 2025, I would be forever grateful. For those that might not be able to make any of the gatherings based on geography, I propose we commit to meeting on Zoom once a month. No excuses for not being able to connect and share life together. We could even plan individual monthly phone calls if that works better for you. Based on my health, maybe we could do a few “Road Trips Reunions.”

As my health continues to decline and I deal with the new diagnosis of dementia, spending time with my friends becomes more important each day. So if you would be interested in making the “Year of Reunions” a reality, please let me know. We still have time in January to kick things off. Nothing fancy. Just friends getting together to celebrate friendships. Oh and no flowers required. Have a wonderful day. ~OC

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UnitedHealthcare

Today’s a new day! Like many, I was saddened and appalled by the senseless killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthCare. His family, friends and coworkers continue to be in my prayers.

As most of you know, I have been on a crazy beautiful health journey for the past twenty-two years and counting. For most of that time, UnitedHealthCare has been my insurance company. If you know my story, you know I have spent a lot of time at doctor’s appointments, receiving treatments and countless hospital visits. As I write this post, I am recovering at home from an outpatient surgery this morning.

For the most part, my enter actions with UnitedHealthCare have been a positive experience. They have covered most, if not all of my medical expenses over the years. The nurses at UnitedHealthCare have been wonderful to call and check up on me over the years. If there has been any dispute over a bill, the staff at UnitedHealthCare have been professional and very caring. Most have went the extra mile to help Laura and I over the years. Is UnitedHealthCare perfect? No. But is any insurance company or other business perfect all the time? Once again, no. But from someone who has dealt with multiple insurance companies over the years, UnitedHealthCare has been a blessing to Laura and I.

We all know healthcare issues and dealing with insurance companies can be overwhelming at times, but remember those who work in the healthcare industry are human beings. They have good days and bad days just like the rest of us. Most are doing their best to provide great customer service. So please, do not make the insurance industry the enemy because they are not. They’re good people trying to make a living like the rest of us. So be kind and respectful.

If you have had a poor or negative experience with any insurance company I am sorry. I would encourage you to speak with a supervisor or manager and voice your complaint. But please, do not make threats on social media or anywhere else. Violence is never the answer. Never! Like I shared earlier, be kind, respectful and please show some patience when dealing with any business. Thanks for reading. ~OC

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Life with Friends

Today’s a new day!

“This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” – John 15:12-13

The words from this gospel of John make me realize how blessed the bond of friendship are. However, I wonder how often we recognize how the love shared between friends reflects the love that God shares between each individual person. Additionally, I wonder if each of us realizes how difficult friendship can be.

It’s interesting to see that the gospels do not always paint a flattering picture of the friendship between Christ and his apostles. The Gospel of Mark consistently depicts Jesus struggling with the apostles, who fail to comprehend his message. In chapter 6 of Mark, Jesus calls these twelve men together to follow in his example of teaching God’s reign in the surrounding villages and gives them power over unclean spirits (6:6-7). However, Mark also writes that the apostles were unable to understand Jesus’ great power demonstrated in the miracle of feeding of the five thousand because “their hearts were hardened” (6:52). Additionally, the gospels of Matthew and Luke also depict the rocky and challenging moments in Jesus’ friendship with the apostles. Jesus chides Peter for trying to prevent Him from traveling to Jerusalem to enter into his Passion, saying, “get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block for me…” (Matthew 16:23). Finally, Luke shows that Jesus is exasperated with the disciples even after his Resurrection, when he calls Cleopas and the other disciple walking on the road to Emmaus “foolish” and “slow of heart” for failing to understand the meaning of His suffering and death, predicted first by the prophets (Luke 24:25).

How often do we find ourselves angry or frustrated at our friends because we want them to understand us in our words and actions? These brief scripture passages illustrate that sense of frustration. The Son of God enters into a world that struggles to recognize God at all, let alone when God is immanently present in the person of Jesus. Yet God loves this world so much that God freely gives God’s self to us in friendship through Jesus, despite the risk of being misunderstood, mistreated, and maligned. That is the blessing, and the risk, of friendship. We give ourselves in vulnerability to one another without knowing whether or not we will be loved and accepted as who we are.

However, friendship highlights our own vulnerabilities within ourselves and reveals our inherent desire for one another. My friends and I are not always laughing and joking; we meet each other in our brokenness and reach out for each other in our tears. They challenge me to consider new perspectives that de-center me from my own perspectives. Sometimes we get frustrated and do not understand each other. But our friendships exude love for one another because we recognize how incredible it is to simply find someone else. When we discover one another in truth and love through friendship, we choose to give of ourselves to that person.

Which leads me back to the quote from John above. I believe what Christ is trying to tell us is that friendship is the unspoken commitment of two people who recognize each other’s vulnerable, imperfect humanity and choose to love anyway. Jesus commands us to love each other as he loved us because he continued loving the world amidst rejection, sin, and death. He laid down his life to show us that the bond of friendship is at its strongest when we pour ourselves out to another. When we give of ourselves to each other, we glimpse into the eternal love that Christ promises us through his life, ministry, death, and resurrection.

This understanding of friendship creates friends who, like Jesus and the apostles, are unafraid to continue loving and challenging us. These friends will always reach out to us in our happiness and our sadness. These types of friends will always be there to take us down from our cross and lay us to rest, and wait for us to rise to new life, even if they don’t always believe it’s going to happen. And these friends will continue to believe in us, long after we have moved on from this world. ~OC

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Remembering 9/11: A Collection of Stories

Today’s a new day! This morning as I reflect back on Tuesday September 11, 2001, many thoughts come flushing in. I literally could write a book about that day that changed America in so many ways. But instead of writing another book, I thought I would share a collection of stories about that day that America stood still.

On this 23rd anniversary of 9/11, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the two planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, another one into the Pentagon and a plane of heroes crashed in Pennsylvania. I watched the events unfold on a TV at work with my co-workers at a secure building close to Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida. I immediately called family and friends to make sure everyone was okay. I remember thinking how surreal it was, “Is this truly happening?” while watching the twin towers collapse. In that moment I thought America had lost its infallibility. Since that day 23 years ago, I don’t think that either our worst fears or our highest hopes have been realized. But the memory of that day serves as a constant reminder that we cannot take anything for granted. Life is to be cherished. We honor those we love. We honor those we have lost. We need to embrace every moment. We can Never Forget. ~OC

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Prayer

Today’s a new day! Prayer has been a major part of my life. Especially, as I have walked through this crazy beautiful health journey. I have learned a lot about prayer during this time. I thought I would share a few things I have learned about prayer over the years.

I believe prayer is an act of listening to God, not just talking. Prayer begins with listening, or being still as the Psalmist says. Without this, I believe prayer can be downgraded to transactional communication.

Prayer was not designed to be transactional. Prayer is relational. I believe we must learn to listen to God before prayer will have the true meaning He desires for each of us to experience.

During this crazy beautiful health journey, I have learned a lot about just listening to God. Being still.

As I shared earlier, I believe prayer begins with listening. But it eventually becomes a way of life. I believe prayer is a divine attentiveness to the things of God in our everyday lives. It’s an increased awareness of God’s movement in the world. I believe this explains why Paul tells us to “pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17)

Over the years as I have learned to sit still and just listen to God, I have found peace in my health journey and in every area of my life. What a beautiful gift.

When prayer truly becomes a way of life, nothing happens by chance. No moment stands alone. Everything is connected. Good or bad, nothing is wasted. Every circumstance is an opportunity to see God, a realization of his movement in the world.

Prayer, the transformative kind, cannot be rushed. Short little pop up prayers are not wrong. God can use those prayers in powerful ways. There is also nothing wrong with scheduling a time for prayer. But I believe to truly experience God and the Spirit’s fruits (love, joy, peace, etc.), prayer must become something our day revolves around rather than something crammed into an already busy schedule.

I encourage everyone not to hurry through prayer. You just can’t. In America, everything is built on speed. We’re an on-demand, right this minute culture. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s toxic when we try to impose these cultural values onto prayer.

A few more thing I believe we sometimes miss about prayer.

Prayer is intensely personal and extremely intimate. When it comes to intimacy, how you approach it with God is how you approach it with everything in your life. If you struggle to find intimacy with God, it will impact intimacy with your spouse, family, friends, and everyone else you connect with in life.

Prayer shapes our capacity for relational intimacy. It’s hard to be intimate with another divinely-created person when you’re not intimate with the divine Creator.

My health issues continue to be a battle, but I strive to be still and listen to God throughout my day. By doing this, I feel more connected to God and I am more grateful for my life and relationships. I am also more concerned about the wellbeing of others. This journey is not all about me.

Coincidence? No. I believe my increased intimacy with God has given me a different lens in the way I look at people and the world.

So, as I continue to walk out this health journey, focused and intimate prayer will continue to be a major part of my life. I pray as you walk out your own journey, prayer will guide your steps and become a special and life changing time in your daily life. ~OC

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Total Freedom

Today’s a new day! There is complete and total freedom in Jesus. We will never experience true freedom in our finances or social status. No, true freedom and joy comes from surrendering our entire lives to Jesus.
We will still have aching questions and burning disappointments that we will bring to God. We still do not understand all the mysteries of life. Our future is still full of questions and imperfections.

But that doesn’t have to hold us back from continuing to lean into the promises of Jesus. When we have faith that He is working, even now, we are filled with peace. It’s out of our hands and it’s in the hands that were pierced for each of us. In the midst of the storms of life, our Jesus continues to work. He is focused on our now and walking with us through the storms. Do not miss the lessons He has for you in the valley moments. Jesus is focused on the big picture. The results are going to be glorious. Keep leaning in. ~OC

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The Dance

As I travel this journey, my life has been blessed with meeting people walking through the same dance. A dance no one ever wants to experience. A dance filled with pain and many days sitting in a chair while you experience the drip, drip from your IV. Days filled with tears, but also filled with sweet memories as you laugh with other conquerors doing the same dance. Oh the memories we shared. Our bodies fighting to enjoy another dance. How could we have known the music would end for some and they would say their goodbyes. Oh the memories of the dance. We never thought we would say goodbye. As I continue to walk through this journey, I will think about those that have taken a bow and completed their dance. I will embrace the memories we shared and continue to dance. ~OC

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The Run

Looking back on the memory of a run, all was right in my little part of the world. Lacing up my shoes and heading out the door. Most of my runs took place in the early morning. The moon still shining. Usually not another soul in sight. I could hear the sound of my breath and God speaking in my ear.
Oh, the runs we shared.
How could I have known this run would only last for a season and we would have to say goodbye. I could choose to look at the end of a beautiful season and what I have lost. But no, I will choose to look back and see all we accomplished along the run. The pain and the victories along the way. The thrill of being in a corral with others excited about the run ahead. My life is better off for taking a chance and being part of the run. ~OC

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America, Come Together

At 3:41 a.m. on January 7, 2021, Vice-President Michael Pence officially certified Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris the winners of the 2020 Presidential election. This should have been a pretty boring proceeding. But we know that was not the case. Instead, we saw a few politicians and many protesters try to hijack the election results. Thankfully some leaders who actually believe in the constitution prevailed.

A time honored proceeding that should have only taken a few minutes on Wednesday 1/6/21, ended up lasting until 3:41 a.m. on Thursday 1/7/21. Why? Because some sore losers did not like the results of a fair election. So those individuals decided to take things into their own hands. Instead of peacefully protesting the election results which is their right, this group was encouraged to march on the Capital. We all watched with sadness and horror as this group decided violence was better than peace. At last count, four people died during this senseless uprising. Yes, in America four people died and several more were injured because a group of people did not like the results of a fair election. I know some will disagree that the election was legal and fair, but court after court has thrown out every challenge. Why? Because no real evidence was ever presented to show any fraud. So on January 7, 2021 at 3:41 a.m. President-Elect Joseph Biden was officially certified as the next President of the United States of America. I encourage everyone to pray for President-Elect Biden and Vice-President-Elect Harris. They have a tough job ahead. They need our prayers and support. America needs our prayers. It’s time to come together and actually be the United States of America. ~OC

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