In Progress Self

There are few experiences I've had over the past 34 years here on the 3rd rock from the Sun that have impacted me in such a way that it permanently alters how you see the world. Being on a ministry team in college, watching my bride walk down the aisle, the births of my children, and my divorce are a few. I don't know how many of these moments we get in life but I just had another one. Jon and Jessica North hosted their first annual Life Retreat this past weekend. Honestly I didn't know what to expect. All I knew was that it would be a bunch of gym rats hanging out and having adventures in the woods. A time of no cell phones and experiencing nature. Now it was definitely that but it was so much more. First off it was great meeting Jon and Jessica North. For those who don't know, Jon was a national champion weightlifter and they were both at California Strength during the Boom. I knew they would be awesome as I've stalked their podcast for the last 5 years...

Let me apologize upfront for this one. My first few posts were very Christian/religion focused. This one is just some musings. A general philosophical view on things that have been going on in my life and I'm sure other people's lives as well.  Since I've been divorced it's been very interesting. I've always been someone that did pretty well alone. I often joke that I would be a good hermit. There is something ingrained in us though that wants some kind of human interaction. A piece of us that wants to feel important to someone other than ourselves. Maybe that's family maybe it's friends. Maybe it's being famous on the interwebs with all our social media whoring. It's going to vary from person to person. But we are all seeking significance. We are all seeking belonging in some fashion or another.  I've been officially divorced since the beginning of December 2017. In that time I've experienced feelings of freedom, loneliness, contentmen...

So I had an interesting weekend last week. I was at church and after the service there was a sort of healing exhibition. Now again, I am a "logical" Christian, historically speaking. My knee jerk reaction was that this is the kind of thing you see on TV with the Church/Cult con man feel to it, but as I said with my last post I am keeping an open mind. The pastor started calling out a few physical symptoms. Pain under the right rib? Someone stood up. Pain in the left knee? Another person stood. Again the cynic in me was screaming PLANTS! He then said "pain in the left hip flexor." Whoah! Did he just say hip flexor? Oh never mind it was the right hip flexor that's been plaguing me. I'm talking shooting sharp pain every time I squatted anything over 500lbs. It's pretty much the reason my squat lags so far behind my deadlift. Shoot sometimes while walking it will flare up and I'll have to stop for a minute to let it stop searing before I contiune. But ...

So This is new for me. Not writing on a blog, but writing on a blog and not having it be about lifting weights. Anyway...here goes. After being essentially on a multi-year God hiatus resulting in general disgust with myself, an out of state move from my family, and crescendoing in a divorce, I have started going to church again. This isn't my first swaray into religiosity though. I was raised in the church and through college I would say I was very close to God. I was even a youth pastor for a while shortly after graduation. As I aged though, my relationship with God and the church slowly faded as it often does when the real world starts to drag you down into the abyss. I recently moved to Illinois and felt the urge to give church another go. I picked my church because it reminded me of the church my Ex wife and I went to when we first got married. It had the same feel. It was big, the music was excellent, and the atmosphere just seemed right. Little did I realize how different ...