If he hadn’t died over a hundred years ago I would have sworn Charles was following me around for the last month and a half to be inspired to write that paragraph from “Tale”.

I write it this way: I have been a yoyo.

My blood pressure is finally levelling off now but over the course of the last month it shot up to just under 200 (but never back to 240/125) and then after a few minutes or hours, dropped to 145. Finally, just in this last week, it’s settling around 135/85 and though that’s borderline high my doctor is happy with it. I’m just happy that it’s becoming consistent. Well, mostly consistent.

My daily now includes medication for the high blood pressure, an aspirin, supplements for magnesium, omega 3 and multi-vitamin. I was hoping for Flintstone multi-vitamins but apparently, according to the pharmacist anyway, I need a vitamin for ‘big people’. I tried a med for the anxiety. For 3 days. Everything got worse for those 3 days plus a couple new problems. Stopped those meds. The pharmacist, when she gave me the Zoloft for the anxiety, assured me that she gives it to, and I quote, “a lot of little old ladies, so you shouldn’t have any problem with it.” Apparently I can’t even handle the ‘little old lady’ dose.

My doctor, to help me deal with my anxiety, reminded me that as Christians we don’t have to fear death. I told him I didn’t fear dying as much as I feared living with anxiety.

The truth is though, I do fear dying.

I don’t fear heaven. I don’t fear the afterlife or have any worries about where I’m headed after I’m finished with this body. Like C.S. Lewis say, and I’m paraphrasing, I’m not a body with a soul, I’m a soul that’s got the temporary use of a body.

But I fear dying the same way I fear not finishing a book I’m reading or a movie I’m watching or a great adventure I’ve started. Who wants to get halfway through the line to the giant rollercoaster only to be told the park is closed? I’ve been around enough tragedy to know that there are no guarantees for anyone but when anxiety makes me feel like I’m dying, think I’m dying, my pages are dog-eared but I’m nowhere near the end of the book.

And don’t even get me started about a body in a box.

Underground.

My panic attacks and anxiety are improving. I rarely get an ‘attack’ now. My anxiety comes and goes but doesn’t stay for the day anymore. When it starts to approach I can feel it and I can mentally beat it and the symptoms back so that I can carry on but it really wears me out to do that.

When it comes my pulse starts to go faster, my thoughts crank up into hyperdrive, I get really worked up inside over things that 2 months ago were just ‘no big deal’. If it gets the better of me, and sometimes it still does, I get chest pains, sweats, I can’t get a breath or I get so conscious of my breathing that I “over breath” from making myself breath and ultimately hyper-ventilate. I start to hurt all over, I have no energy or have way too much energy as adrenaline suddenly comes coursing through me and my natural “fight or flight” kicks into high gear with nothing to run from and no one to fight. Stomach acid goes crazy, shoulders and neck go uber-tense and when it goes totally out of control my heart feels like it will beat right out of my chest.

Good times.

But today is better than 3 weeks ago and so we take one day at a time. I’m still waiting for my doctor to get me in for my stress test to verify there’s no heart blockage, which runs in the family. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

If there aren’t any updates for a few months you’ll have to finish the story for me.

(insert smiley face here.)

A month and a half ago I would have said I wasn’t in any kind of good shape. Pear is a shape but not really a good one for anything but sitting or doing underwear commercials for fruitoftheloom. But even though I didn’t think I was in good shape I thought I was o.k. for a man at my age and stage.

That was then.

What I know now is that my blood pressure had been creeping up for a while, a couple years anyway. I think my problems were postponed about a year and a half ago when I was exercising regularly and watching what I was eating. Dropped some poundage and actually improved my fitness.

But that was then.

Over the last year I’ve gained every pound back that I lost and I’ve lost everything good that I’ve gained. I noticed things about how I was feeling but generally masked it all with copious amounts of caffeine through the newly opened St.Arbucks and by eating – grazing really – through my day.

And then I had some issues that took me to Emergency to discover my BP was resting comfortably around 240/125. Blood pressure is more like golf than bowling and that’s not a score you ever, ever want to see. Over time I started on meds, a diet, daily walks and trips to Emergency and my family doctor. In the early days of this, a month or so ago, I had the worse back spasms that I’ve ever had and pain was pretty much 23/7 (usually one good hour of sleep each night or it would’ve been 24/7). Then came the anxiety/panic attacks.

If you’ve never had anxiety or panic attacks I would encourage you to be very happy about that and never aspire to having them. For a while it was all day, everyday, anytime and anyplace. Sometimes it’s like that nervousness you feel when you are about to be called on to give that big speech in front of the whole class, including that really cute girl you’re trying to impress, only you have no notes and can’t remember the topic you were assigned. All day. Without a break.

It can also be a sudden rush of adrenaline for no particular reason. Rapid heart beat, lungs feeling constricted and unable to draw a deep breath, dizziness, sweating, racing thoughts, trouble swallowing and an impending sense of doom. Or mix and match these and another half dozen symptoms/feelings that appear out of nowhere or sometimes in connection to a specific trigger.

One night I went to bed and woke up after an hour with a rush of adrenaline and pounding heart. I went in the other room to settle down and let my wife (who has been amazing) get some rest. At 1 a.m. I started getting anxious about getting to sleep so I could wake up rested in a few hours for an appointment. At 2 a.m. I started getting really anxious that I couldn’t fall asleep and I paced and prayed, needing to sleep. At 3 a.m. I started getting even more anxious but now I was anxious that I WOULD fall asleep and possibly oversleep and miss my appointment. At 4 a.m. I stopped caring and decided I was screwed either way. Around 4:30 a.m. I drifted off for one hour, waking at 5:30 a.m. I was wide awake.

On another evening I was out for a walk with the elusive Donna and we heard a siren in the distance, a little later we heard another and pretty soon we’d heard about 6 sirens in total. At that moment, from somewhere deep in my subconscious this little thought bubbled to the surface, “There won’t be any ambulances left if I need one.” I wasn’t even feeling too bad but I started getting anxious about the possible shortage of ambulances that I might just, on the off chance, suddenly have need.

I’ve been tested, poked, prodded.

On one late night visit to the ER the young nurse, she didn’t look as old as my 15 year old daughter, was supposed to take 3 vials of blood from my arm. As she tied on the elastic and looked for a vein I heard her say quietly to the older nurse beside her, “I haven’t actually done this before…” The machine monitoring my blood pressure started beeping loudly. The best part came when, with needle in arm but not in vein, she asked the older nurse, “Should I pull out?” “No,” the older nurse calmly said, “fish around for it.” Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

Another night and another nurse. Same drill. Only this time she complained about how hard my veins were to find. I’m pretty sure they were hiding at this point. She pulled my arm off the bed, then almost bent it backwards at the elbow trying to get some kind of crazy angle. Finally she practically crawled up on the bed with me, straddled my arm and drew blood like I was threatening to thrash around wildly. I probably should have.

3 times the doctors checking me out at the ER came in smiling and said, “Great news, it’s not your heart!” And they started to send me home. Once I said, “I never said I was having a heart attack. I told you how I’m feeling and that I want you to help me not feel like this anymore.”

“Well, it’s not a heart attack!”

“I didn’t think I was having a heart attack!”

And then he said, and I’m telling you the truth…

“How do you know your weren’t having a heart attack? Have you had one before?”

…to be continued…

Heavenly Father, you always amaze me
Let your kingdom come in my world and in my life
Give me the food I need to live through today
And forgive me as I forgive the people that wrong me
Lead me far from temptation
Deliver me from the evil one

I look out the window the birds are composing
Not a note is out of tune or out of place
I walk to the meadow and stare at the flowers
Better dressed than any girl on her wedding day

So why do I worry?
Why do I freak out?
God knows what I need
You know what I need

Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong
Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong
Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong

The kingdom of the heavens is now advancing
Invade my heart, invade this broken town
The kingdom of the Heavens is buried treasure
Would you sell yourself to buy the one you’ve found?

Two things you told me
That you are strong
And you love me
Yes, you love me

Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong
Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong
Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong
Your love is
Your love is
Your love is strong

Our God in Heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Above all names
Your kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us today our daily bread
Forgive us weary sinners
Keep us far away from our vices
And deliver us from these prisons

How much stress can a person who only works one day a week possibly be under?

There’s an interesting moment in one of the letter’s in the New Testament where Paul, apostle, church planter, follower of Jesus, is listing all the things he’s suffered as a result of his vocation. He’s not just being whiney. Hopefully I’m not either. The thing is that stress seems to be part of the package and it goes all the way back to the start: a history of 2000 years of stress. Nice.

Here’s what Paul was dealing with: The Corinthian church that he was writing to (contrary to modern perceptions of apostles, authority and the Church) were giving Paul a lot of stick. They questioned what he had already written to them and were even asking, basically, “Who do you think you are?”

So Paul does what a leader should do. Rather than puff up his chest and say things like, “Touch not the Lord’s anointed!” or claim some authority by virtue of “position” or title, he simply goes over a list, a story, of what he’s suffered, to say, “See how I’ve loved you?” And like Tevye’s wife in “Fiddler on the Roof”, he goes over all he’s done for them to prove that his stake in their lives is not for selfish, self-interests but for love. He loves them and his life proves it – which stands in sharp contrast to those who would tell them only what they wanted to hear or things they’ve never heard before only to get a following for themselves regardless of the welfare of the Church.

This whole thing comes up again and again in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians and here’s a taste of it from chapter 11, “…24 Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. 26 I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not.[c] 27 I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.
28 Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of my concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger?”

“…the daily burden of my concern for all the churches…” Right up there with stoning, shipwreck and starvation. We didn’t cover this in Bible College.

So what are the things I find stressful about what I do? I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now, working very hard to be honest with myself and not just write things off or stuff them and tell myself I’m just being a whiner. Being honest with myself, at least in this area, has proven to be very, very difficult. I’m realizing that I’ve been neck deep in denial as the bar for ‘normal’ kept moving to accommodate my reality. I also think this has something to do with my present but is just as much about an accumulation of my past. I may not remember every meal I’ve ever had but each one has made me who I am today.

I’m making a list, a reflective compilation of the stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. I get stressed out just writing them down so I’m pretty sure I’m on to something.

What about you? Do you have stressful job/life? Have you been moving the bar to unhealthy places and calling it the new ‘normal’?

One of the doctors I’ve seen recently asked me if I had a stressful job. To be honest, 3 doctors I’ve seen recently asked me that question. The first doctor who asked was answered, “Not really.” A week into my holiday/rest time and I can now safely say that was not true. I’m realizing that I’ve moved the bar for “normal” so far that I’ve failed to see the obvious. Denial is a powerful thing.

I’m writing this now, in part, because of a dream I just woke up from.

Supposedly, or at least I’ve heard and read that we only dream briefly in the seconds before we wake up. I’ve been told that our dreams aren’t really long but are actually brief and come in bursts that only seem like long, full experiences. I’ve got no evidence other than my own experience and my own experience tells me that’s just not so. The dream I just woke up from seemed to stretch on for the better part of the night.

In my dream I was living right where I am, doing what I do, only slight changes to my real world geography inside the dreamscape. The key change to my dream was that rather than working a job I was working 3 jobs. I was doing my main gig plus two part-time jobs that were really full-time in expectation. I ultimately woke up when, in the midst of my dream, I realized that I’d missed a very important appointment with one of my part-time jobs because I forgot what night I was on as I ran to pick up one of my kids from a sports program and prep for the next day of work at my other part-time job. Too late I realized I was supposed to be at a special event and meeting with my other part-time job. In my dream I was just about to face one of my bosses to try to explain myself and hopefully keep the job.

Two things. One, I wasn’t working 3 jobs in my dream to get rich or because of the money. I was working to work. Second, I woke up literally distraught over the situation, chastising myself for missing the appointment and though now awake and realizing it was a dream I was completely stressed out over it. I was upset with myself that I could be that irresponsible even in a dream.

I’ve got issues.

The light just changed as we stepped out onto the corner and Josh led the way across. I was only vaguely aware of a large, black man standing at the corner turning slightly right and then left as he stood saying the same thing over and over and over. I was halfway through the crosswalk when his softly spoken words registered on my conscious brain, “Can someone please tell me what corner I’m on? Can someone please tell me what corner I’m on?” I stopped right in the middle and turned back and this time actually saw the man at the corner. He was about 6 feet two inches tall, wide as a ‘fridge and he wore dark glasses and carried a thin, white cane with a red tip.

I hesitated. It’s amazing how a million thoughts can cross your mind in less than a second. Josh was unaware of what was happening and had reached the other side of the street. In the span of that second I recognized that people were just all walking past this man, dozens of them, as if they couldn’t see him standing there. And I thought to myself, “I wonder if this is how people get mugged in L.A.?” In just a second I considered an entire scenario where the large, “blind man” suddenly grabbed the unsuspecting, weak, old white guy and pulled him in an alley to take what he had and beat the crap out of him with that white cane. And then I thought, “You know, he just might be Jesus in disguise.” All of that and time to run back to him before the light change and traffic cut me off from Josh on the next block up.

I stood in front of the man who was still asking calmly and softly, almost like a chant, “Can someone please tell me what corner I’m on?” “Sir,” I said, and looked up at the signs on the corner, “you’re on …” and read the signs off to him. He smiled, held his hand out, we shook and he said, “Thank you, I appreciate it!” And then turned and headed off perpendicular to the direction I was headed. I turned back to the corner and the crosswalk and saw Josh looking at me from the other side, past the traffic, with a look on his face like he was trying to figure out how his old man hadn’t been able to get himself across a street. Finally traffic stopped and the light said ‘walk’ and we started off again across the names of the famous under our feet.

A few blocks up we spotted some souvenir shops across the street, selling t-shirts and trinkets on the cheap so we crossed over there. Over on that side we also found Marilyn Monroe, looking hot and Josh wanted a picture. I told him his mother was definitely going to be thrilled with that. So Josh walked up, introduced himself and the two got cozy. After I snapped the picture he offered to take one of me but I laughed and told him his mother would be even more thrilled with a picture of me and Marilyn. I stopped long enough to tell her she was aging well and then retreated to the souvenir shops.

These shops, several in a row, all open to the street and blasting air conditioning, all boasted of having the lowest price t-shirts in Hollywood. Almost anything you can think of that can printed on was there with Beverly Hills, Hollywood, L.A., Surf City and more silk screened in a range of fonts, colours and graphics. Ashtrays, belt buckles, shot glasses, coffee cups, key chains – keeping Chinese orphans busy and tourists excited about the great deal they got on 3 t-shirts for only $10. Each shop we stopped in, and there were quite a few, seemed to all be operated by folks whose relatives the U.S. was either fighting or liberating in the Gulf. Josh and I both picked up a couples bags of gifts to for family and friends back home. We were tourists, that’s what tourists do.

Back on the sidewalk we realized we were only a short distance from our goal and the sidewalk transformed before us into a carnival.

…continued…

We bought our tickets for the tour bus. It was a red, double decker made to look like a bus you might hop on in London. The top was open which was perfect for the sunny day we found ourselves enjoying. At a little shop on the Pier we bought a funnel cake for a nutritional boost after our big surf outing and we carried the messy confection onto the bus and munched while we waited for the rest of the passengers to arrive. After a few more minutes the driver left on schedule but along with three women we were the only passengers. Immediately we were welcomed aboard by a cheery, English voice who launched into an explanation of what we were seeing, block by block, along our route.

The deal was that you could get on or off and back on or off of the bus whenever you liked, wherever you liked and for 24 hours, while the buses were running, you could keep riding. It was really a cheap way to see the city if you had no idea where anything was. We took it all in, pointing things out to each other and keeping our eyes open for celebrities in their natural habitat.

Eventually our route terminated in Beverly Hills and we had to transfer to the Hollywood line. The place we stopped was right by the Beverly Hills city hall. As our disembodied English friend told us as our bus pulled up, it was used for scenes in the Eddie Murphy movie, Beverly Hills Cop. Once we got off the bus I went over to check it out. I looked. And I looked again. And again. It was, well, small. Smaller than what I remembered from the movie. And that started my re-education about Hollywood. Things may appear larger and more important than they actually are.

The street was smaller than I remembered from the movie, the building was nothing like what I would have expected and yet, here it was, reality. Josh was talking to our bus driver who was going on break. “Are you married?” The bus driver asked Josh in a thick, European accent. “No.” Josh said. “Good,” the driver replied, “Women, they are like…” and he makes fangs out of two fingers on his left hand, “Wampires! I’ve been married 35 years…work, work, work, make money, money, money…that’s all she says but I never have any money, she spends all my money, take it from me, never get married.” “Um, well, o.k…” I could tell Josh wanted to laugh but didn’t want to offend. “Where you from?” the driver asked us. “Canada,” I said, “Prince Edward Island.” “Why you don’t sound Canadian?” he challenged me. “I’m not sure what Canadian sounds like but I can promise you that’s where we’re from.”

Soon our bus arrived and we jumped on and headed to Hollywood. The voice was back and he told us all about the magical land we were entering and how it had originally been called, Hollywoodland. The movie studies that had originally settled in Santa Monica had moved further in land to beat the fog that would roll in and ruin shooting. Barns became studios and soon the most disturbed people in North America were all migrating to one, very small geographical area in California. We drove by TV studios, movie studios and cemeteries. It turns out that celebrities still die like the rest of us.

Our bus pulled around a city block where the La Brea tar pits bubble. Again I’m suddenly confronted by reality as I realize a scene from a movie that I distinctly couldn’t have happened the way it did in the scene supposedly set here. I’m getting depressed but Josh, without my 40 years of movie history isn’t really bothered by it all. And then finally, we are there, the strip, the heart of Hollywoodland and it’s time to get serious about taking pictures. The bus makes a scheduled stop and we jump off. We jump off and jump right onto the Walk of Fame. And at first I’m looking at the square where Billy Joel once knelt down and got his picture taken as they added his star to the walk and I’m excited…until I see the guy wrapped in newspaper lying a few feet away. And the gum on Billy’s star. And that everyone is just walking by, over the stars of the famous. There’s no reverence here, no honour, just pavement to walk on, to ignore, to scrape off the crap we’d gotten onto our soles. Only here in Hollywoodland.

…to be continued…

The Church is one of those Sesame Street deals where “one of these things is not like the others…” There are some similarities, even overlap, with a lot of institutions – ie. government, business, education, medicine and farming, among others. But despite the similarities, the Church is supposed to be the same but different – in some cases, very different.

I used to believe the Bible actually had a blueprint for the Church. That there was, literally, a prescribed form for any and everything Church and especially leadership in the Church. I don’t believe that anymore. I’ve come to believe that God gives us more room to participate than that and our culture should, in some part, inform what our local expression of the Kingdom looks like.

But there are character things, personality of Jesus things that are non-negotiable and I think even non-compatible with a great deal of what we’ve developed or adopted and called leadership in the Church.

Part of the change of perspective for me has happened as I read the Bible for what it said to the time and culture of the first readers rather than reading my time and culture into it.

Here’s an example. Today we tend to talk about Apostles being the top of the leadership pyramid. I can give you some books from my library (seriously, take them, please) that insist that that’s exactly how it is and it’s what God is ‘restoring’ to the Church today – people who will tell us what to do and we, if we love Jesus, will do what they say. But even a casual reading of the New Testament, one that reads forward from rather than back into, will see that Apostle was closer to the bottom than the top and churches that received letters from an apostle sometimes did and sometimes did not take to heart what they were told. These were people who had authority because they were literally dying for the Church but even then they weren’t CEO or Kings, they took Jesus to heart and sought to be servants to all.

Another part of the change in perspective for me occurred when I became part of a band. Being the leader of the band was a point of influence that God used to help me understand myself and how I function best as a leader within the Church/church.

The lessons I learned from the band have stuck with me and formed my view of leadership that continues to grow and evolve today. I’ll repost some of those lessons and here’s one for today:

EVERYONE PLAYS AN IMPORTANT PART

As the Partridge family once sang, “Something always happens whenever we’re together…” and Three Dog Night was right that “one is the loneliest number.” Each person in the band/team/staff is vital and while I might not notice how they’re doing if it’s going well, if someone gets out of tune, plays a different rhythm or overplays then we all notice. Everyone notices. Each part needs to be honored, resourced and on the same page musically and relationally. The lead singer is only as good as the rest of the band makes them look. And the sound guy at the back may not get many applause but he can turn up the “suck button” and make the band sound terrible any time he wants.

Being a leader is more about helping each person in the band excel in their area of influence and making room for everyone to add their bit. Musicians are like everyone else, they know when they are valued and when their just playing role anyone could fill, like the drummer for “Spinal Tap”. Collectively we are greater than we are on our own. When I played on my own it would easily resemble a single vehicle accident but when we played together we could support each other, inspire each other, cover for each other and fill the gaps.

Jesus said, simply, that they will know we are following Him by our love for one another. I recently heard a pastor say to a conference of leaders that if “feeling loved” is the chief criteria for the Church then we’ll always have people questioning whether they’re loved by the leadership. He insisted that that was a faulty metric. “Is Jesus who he says he is.” Was his preferred standard – whether you or I feel loved by leadership is immaterial. After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to go with Jesus on this one.

There may be some truth to that. Even more true, and maybe more to the point, is that many people have been hurt deeply by what people called “leadership” at the time they were hurting.

In the church that I’m a part of we’ve been trying an experiment. Some of us know it, some of us are just unsuspecting test subjects.

I’ve seen leaders who have been so hurt in the Church that they become extremely controlling in an effort to make sure that neither they nor anyone else, gets hurt that way again. But unfortunately, what we fear we tend to attract.

I’ve seen leaders who are so full of themselves they have turned a question, a challenge or a confrontation about their own actions and behavior into a “spiritual authority” matter. To challenge them is to reject God, the Father, Himself and His “ordained” structure of “headship”.

I’ve seen leaders, so eager to be listened to and followed that they answered everyone’s cry for a “king” like all the other churches have only to find themselves socially and employment-wise torn down when the winds of whims shifted. Friends lost, job lost, heart lost.

I’ve seen leaders who made the equation very simple: like me = liking Jesus, dislike me = disliking Jesus.

I’ve seen people in the Church say they want “strong leadership” but really mean “someone who will tell us exactly what we want to hear.”

I’ve seen people in the Church say they want a leader who can grow their church, as if we’re some kind of manufacturing enterprise that pops out disciples like widgets. And we happily reject the greatest joy in life, sharing Jesus through our lives with the people around us, in favour of hiring a professional to create programs that will make us grow.

Here’s a video by Peter Rollins that says a little about what I think about Christian Leadership…

I’m grateful to be part of a community, a family of followers who are willing to try this a different way.