Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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When the sun shines at Sam’s Place

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The sun rose quickly but was not seen, the smoke that filled the air that morning was suffocating and thick. The sun’s rays hit the sky and created a reddish glow and although the sun was there, you could only feel the heat in the air… the air… it was choking, burning and I felt weak… I thought “Am I sick?”

The AC had just been started a week earlier, and I can’t even imagine how it would have felt that day without the windows closed and AC on high. It’s an old building, I imaged how bad it would have been if the smoke had hit only a couple weeks earlier… The AC was heavenly.

The guys still ventured out from time to time but I noticed the front door squeaking less often that day. I heard one person say the air quality was the “worst recorded air quality in world history”… Was that true? I don’t know. What I do know is I was working outside all day and it was taking its toll… Buggars, I know, we don’t talk about body functions but I knew the mucus system was in overload that day, nasal passages swollen and smoke being filtered, still not enough…. It was a long day, but I was glad we had done so much to control the indoor air quality for our Guys at Sam’s Place… I will take that as a win in every way.

Thanks to some grants that helped ease the costs and made it possible: Blandin Foundation, IRRRB, Bigfork Valley Community Foundation, Spring Lake Heating and Air and more… we pooled together to make the lives of our guys safer, just in the nick of time.

I worked hard installing the 19 indoor mini-split heads, days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, the planning, research and finally the implementation…

Is it cool now? Yes.

Is the indoor air cleaner? Yes.

Are there BIG smiles from ear to ear? Yes.

Is it safer for our guys that use inhalers? YES!!

And so that story goes. A big win at Sam’s Place. Thanks to all our local supporters, grant opportunities and people that simply care, and show how much they care by HELPING Sam’s Place succeed! Making life a bit more bearable and allowing our guys to focus on getting life back on track, one cool bedroom at a time. 

In the service of the one that gave it all, C.

When sadness turns to joy

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Google says this: A lament is a passionate expression of grief, sorrow, or regret. It can be a deep emotional feeling, a spoken complaint, or a formal artistic work like a mournful poem or song.

A passionate expression: Vivid, heartfelt articulation of intense emotion. Deep love, Fiery anger, or Unwavering zeal. It transcends calm, everyday speech, using vibrant vocabulary, body language, or art to convey a sense of fervor and profound commitment. 

Grief, Sorrow or regret: Emotional response to loss and mistakes.

I think of this when I read the bible about the days of Noah, when God said 

Genesis 6: 6 The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.  

God’s Lament was not over his mistake, perhaps a loss?… The pain, the sorrow… His creation had turned away and due to man’s desire to sin, caused harm to self… The very creation that was given to man to steward! 

I see the world today through a different set of eyes than I did as a child, and rightfully so. I remember walking past “Venturas Gym” where Jesse “The Body” would pull in to park his 280 Z. A huge man in a tiny car… This reminds me of a cartoon where an oversized “Brutus” is squeezed into a micro car. The “MONSTERS” that worked out there as I shuffled over to Fritz Rubers bakeshop to wash the day’s baking trays. I remember “Marjorie” driving her AMC Pacer. I remember the day me and my “buddies” slipped into the basement window of that bakery on 44th, into the bathroom located in the basement, up the stairs and eating day-old doughnuts because we were stoned and  I was looking for trouble.  

I remember the unkind words we “kids” would yell out at Ventura whenever we saw him pull up in front of the gym he built. The stories of steroids, sweat and Iron… I believe it was a Domino pizza once, no clue what’s there now. Across the street was the Baskin robins, 31 flavors ice cream where I had the most profound experience with paranoia. The police stopped in and ignored the kid freaking out in the desk by the window, moments earlier this kid was almost hit by a car as he stumbled across 44th… my “friends” had given me something, without me knowing, I ignorantly smoked it.

I wish I could say that day started my road of Lament, but I had so many more years of struggles in front of me. 

That corner holds some of the most powerful memories in my life, most are filled with Lament, in-fact, I can not remember any that are not reasons for lament. 

But why do I bring up “Lament” today? I was talking to my brother about the repeal of a ban on “Bath Houses” in MPLS and I remembered as a young man of maybe 16-17, walking down Lake Street after taking the 5 Line from the northside… I was on my way to attend a drivers training course (pursuing a Drivers License). I walked past a “bath house” as a few men stumbled in and out… My naivety was rich and I strolled past as if all was well… one man asked if I wanted to join him inside, I thought it was odd but had no idea what it was about… I do now of course. 

Nameless, faceless, strangers… desperately,  lust driven adults attempting to coerce a young boy for one purpose, ignorant to the world’s desire to destroy my life… I strolled on and gave it not a second of thought until years later when the memory flashed back during my days of driving a garbage truck serving the south side… I can still see that building with windows boarded over and a neon sign saying “open”

I lament now but I wonder what could have happened if I was stoned or drunk that day… God brought me through and I was never inside that dark building, but years later I had to fix an AC system in a different building, a building that was also locked up, boarded up and only entrance by escort of a BIG DUDE!! I went to the basement and it was an easy fix, all went well… but I never forgot the faces I saw, the sounds I heard and the feeling I got in that place.

I lament over much more these days but I also feel God’s hand on my life.

I know I have seen more than most. But I have also know God preserved more than most. My Life is filled with God’s protections and the prayers of many, including my mother. 

Needless to say, I am saddened by the city of Minneapolis moving forward to bring back the bath houses in the city I grew up in. This is not an improvement. As Joe Soucheray said on his podcast “I don’t know why any young person would stay in Minnesota” 

When the founders came to this land, they were not looking to displace anyone, they were not looking to take advantage of anything there was available, they were escaping the tyranny of an oppressive and persecuting Government. They escaped looking for freedom, now years later, that same freedom is soaked up in the sewer of lust, in a land that despises the creator and worships the creation. 

Although I have little hope I will see a revival and a submission to the Lord of our nation in my lifetime, I feel blessed in knowing that every knee will bend in humble submission to the King of Kings. 

Lamenting the loss of truth in our nation, hope is found in Christ alone and He will reign in the end over everything… For he created all there is that has been created.

Hope and joy to you. God Bless, C.

The ONE star review.

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Far too often I write only about the struggles we face with our farm, the Heating and AC Business and with Sam’s Place. Far too often I fail to write about the goodness of GOD.

Today I want to write about the GOODness we see! Unfortunately, I can’t always write about the success stories and positive things without violating the privacy of our guys. You see, to write about the successes at Sam’s Place we first need to identify just where in life a guy was at when he first moved in. It can be a challenge to write a generic accounting of the history of a person when the details are so easily identifiable.

 I can try to write in a generic format, but that completely eliminates the power of the story and it sounds like this: “We have a person, they succeeded in doing chores for the first time” when it should sound more like : “We have a gentleman that came to us a year ago, he struggles with self care & remembered to shower on his own. He has lived this way for years & without consistent reminders and prompts, he would likely still have no progress in this area of life. But today he is doing dishes without any reminders and takes a shower at least twice a week, cleans his own room, changes his clothes and bedding, and we never give a reminder to do them.” 

Or another story might sound like this: Yesterday in my morning group on “Wisdom studies” (currently we are looking into the book of proverbs) we closed with a song… “This little Light of mine”! It’s a great group and we all learn so much. We talk about the personification of wisdom and folly. We discuss how wisdom looks in this modern culture, how to apply it to choices we make today, and what we need to do to carry wisdom into our futures. 

You see? It’s not the kind of report that sounds “awesome”… its the little things we might take for granted, its daily reminders for months, its not “glamorous”… its basics, monotonous, dreaded daily reminders to make the right choices, make positive changes and become a person that can meet their own basic needs…

But not everyone has the same challenges. Some guys do great at staying clean, some guys are perhaps overly meticulous at cleaning, perhaps to the point of “obsession”… perhaps so obsessed they can’t do anything that is outside the “normal” and then change happens! They don’t know exactly how to handle this “randomness”…  being tempted to fall back into a more destructive behavior like drugs in order to cope with the change.  

I don’t want to write anything too specific as the guys might read my blog post or somebody else reads it and mentions the post. I guess in plain language, I want our guys to always feel like the specifics of their lives are protected. I never want to reveal something personal in a public setting like a blog.

I guess what I am saying is, I love helping guys out and being part of them getting life on track. We have double the wins than setbacks.

But then there is that one day, the day that you just want to say “ENOUGH”! That “one star google review that comes in a month after they move out. A month after you do everything to help a guy get on his feet? A month after you take a financial hit from him not paying for his services?… I fed him, gave him a comfortable place to sleep, shower and met all his needs in the house. He stiffed us on payment, wreck our stuff and then a one star review? Today I struggle with why he hates us? Why after all we did to help him, met his needs and went way above what we are required to do, and then this? 

Even though I struggle with the “why” today, I know our LORD is bigger than this. I know this is a spiritual battle and not one of flesh and bone… This seems like a proverb is being written “NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU HELP A SELFISH MAN, IT IS NEVER ENOUGH, AND IN THE END HE WILL DESPISE YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID NOT DO” 

Keep Strong in the LORD and remember, OUR REWARD IS IN HEAVEN (and that’s a good thing, because there ain’t much reward in what we are doing on earth)

In service, C.