Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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The Haze

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I am sitting looking out the window at a wall of white, it’s not smoke this time but rather a wall of haze that fills the air. The humidity is “rainforest like”. I search my weather app and look at where my kids and grandbabies are…. Jacob is the worst off of all and Alex has it the best. But not far behind the worst is Chris. 

This got me thinking about how we live our lives, in a haze… ya, we are so blessed in the USA, I think of my many friends and readers in China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hongkong, Belgium, Oman, UAE, Israel, Brazil, Peru, France, UK, Canada and about 50 more. I wonder how they find my blog, what they think when they read it and how a world of HAZE can still show the light. The truth and honesty of a God that loves us so much he gave the ultimate gift so that he may spend eternity with us…. We are all going to be somewhere for eternity, I’m glad I know I will be with a good, loving GOD. 

The haze is so thick, I can’t see across the field today. I wonder what is beyond the edge of the haze… is it a bear looking for some rotten smelly snack? Is there a fox trying to sneak up on one of our hens? Is there a skunk that is wandering the woods looking for a big juicy grub? 

I think of my life, I wandered so long, looking for significance, value and meaning… I see our Guys at Sam’s Place, looking for the same thing I was in search of… wanding around looking for something to fill our cravings, never finding the food that satisfies forever, but finding a quick grub or skinny chicken, or a forgotten road kill… never satisfied for more than a day, and back at it, on the search again…

I see the growth of some of our guys and the desire of others to destroy the lives of themselves and anyone around them. I was once that rotten soul, bringing anyone around me down with me. I sold drugs and I supplied enough “ill-repute” to destroy many folks that struggled… but I was not the first, this chain of destruction that ended with me came from a long line of people “hell bent” on destruction. 

We get guys like that every so often, perhaps a lie from them or perhaps the facility where they currently reside in.. They want him gone so badly that they are willing to “leave out certain information” in order to get them out of their care and make this guy “someone else’s problem”… But the truth be told? We have a fantastic group of guys now! Believe it or not, the influence is not from within Sam’s Place but from outside Sam’s Place. Just because we have a zero tolerance for alcohol, marijuana and other drugs, this doesn’t mean our guys are strong enough to resist the forces that are lurking in the back yard. 

As soon as we get one “source” dried up and secured, there comes another. It’s almost like the world wants our guys challenged daily, tempted always and I cant even tell you how many outside of Sam’s Place remind us “BUT ITS LEGAL” … legal does not mean healthy, safe or good…. When you are in the battle for mental health, one joint can mean the difference between getting a job or getting a bed in Anoka state hospital. There is no safe level of substance use. Only zero!

The haze might make it hard to see the truth but listening to God’s voice is never skewed by the Haze. Don’t get me wrong, you can be “tricked” to thinking what you hear is truth. But if you listen long enough, intently enough and don’t believe the lies, it gets easier every day to hear the truth of God. For some of us, it’s just harder. We have listened to so many voices and so many lies that it becomes hard to know the truth from the one in the next bedroom that is tempting you every minute, every day and every way… “Hey man, I see you are having a bad day, I can help, take a hit!”

To know the truth is to love the truth, to listen to a lie is to live life in a haze. In the haze it’s harder to know what is really going on. The smokey haze of life is like the smokey haze of substance use.

We all have a haze in our life, some is from the drugs we use and some is from the life we choose.

Today? Surrender to truth, but HOW?? Well, if you don’t know Jesus, ask him in the quiet of your heart for him to reveal the truth to you. He is there and he is GOOD. Why are you fighting his goodness? And if you “know” Jesus, what are you doing for the guy living in the haze? Have you done everything you can to help another person? Does that other person know who Jesus is? Go for a walk, beyond the limits of this hazy world and find another that is alone in that haze and help them hear the truth of God’s Love. 

In service of the one that clears the haze, C.

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.

but its legal, everyone is smoking it now

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Have you ever tried to help someone get on track and it turns into you doing all the work? Have you ever thought “If I can only get them to (make up your own personal goal and insert here), then they would surely want to continue to get life back on track!”

Perhaps you know a drunk? An addict? A worthless fella? A homeless mess?

Allow me to pause for a second, I just want to say:  I am not trying to cause your blood pressure to skyrocket. I am not insulting you for trying. I am not even saying it’s “not worth trying” to help another human… or that this has even the slightest thing to do with your specific situation. So before your fuse pops. Before you flip your lid. Before you think I need to be canceled. Hear me out… I’m not saying this is a “one size fits all” I’m not even saying this fits any other situation, I’m just asking you to stop for a minute and ask “Does Charlie have any validity? Does Charlie have anything worth reading about? Does Charlie just speak out of ignorance? YOU DECIDE!!

Back to that person that has a messed up life: Is he the reason? Almost every time it’s because they have made bad choices… perhaps those bad choices are stimulated or “first cause” from situations that are not in their control? Perhaps a marriage failed due to infidelity? A parent died? A child was killed? Or life was too much?? I am not talking about excuses to make bad choices, I am however talking about what we do with bad situations. 

The Choices We’ve Made. (Choose this day the god you shall serve)

But even so, they made a bad choice along the way… every death by overdose I have ever heard of started with a bad choice. Sure, we can find a situation that can be used to counter this… But the cold reality is this: I know a lot of addicts, drunks and folks that are dead because they made that choice to smoke weed, drink that drink and eventually, it got so bad that they died in a crash, overdosed, or used so long that their bodies couldn’t keep going. 

Persistent mental illness, substance use disorder… These are the new PC terms. So many kids are dead, and would not be dead if they had never smoked that first joint… THERE…. I SAID IT. It started with weed.

I ruined years of my life with drinking and smoking and drugs… I could have retired multiple times by now if I had never gone to that one party in 6th grade… I would have been sober that day, I would not have crashed my bicycle into the back of that parked car, I would not have been flirting with that girl. 

I have often thought about how my life would have been if the buddy I smoked my first joint with wasn’t dead in JR High, while he was stoned. 

I wonder about the few people we had “honored” at my high school reunion. 

Somedays I weep, because God preserved my life from the times I drove home and didn’t remember the trip… I remember crossing the river underneath camden bridge and the ice cracking, water coming up onto my shoes and somehow I survived. 

Do you think of the brilliant minds that are now entombed in a world of delusion from drugs? I know so many guys that don’t have control in life because of “Persistent Mental Illness”, but the root cause is doing drugs… AKA “Substance Use Disorder”. Or perhaps you also have the profound memory of the funeral of your 18 year old niece?  Do you think about this type of thing?

All because “The first time someone smoked the harmless devil’s lettuce, a simple joint, it’s legal so it’s not bad for you, weed” or maybe it was a wine cooler? A beer? I challenge you today to find one person who’s stuck in addiction, a drunk, a drugie or whatever term you prefer, just one, that doesn’t have a story that starts something like this : “I smoked weed/drank the first time ….”

Imagine a world where we could stop “the first time”…  But humans are sick, it’s called sin, and everyone has this sickness… We already have the cure! Why not start healing before “SUD”.

Imagine a world where your son or daughter, friend or cousin, stranger or neighbor didn’t smoke that joint or have that drink. Where he didn’t talk to that man on the bus, where he was NOT given that foil pack to “try” later. 

Imagine a world where anyone caught giving drugs to kids or vulnerable adults were actually arrested and charged! Imagine a world where political correctness didn’t rule the courts and feelings did not overwrite the laws on the books. Image a world that the deputy doesn’t say “We wont pursue criminal trespass because the county “prosecutor” won’t prosecute any trespass crimes”

Imagine a world that trusted God? God said “I created you”. 

Yes, the world is sin filled, all have sinned, but that’s not the end of the book. The rest of it is simple, God already has a way for you and everyone to find freedom from addiction… YES, FREEDOM! You don’t need to be enslaved to addiction, there is freedom. Just ask, be sincere, ask God today to set you free from the sin that traps your heart. 

You cant save that person in addiction, sometimes the best thing is to “not help”. Get out of the way and let God do his job. Enabling is actually the hardest form of addiction to “kick”. Enabling never saves, its always hurting the addict. Enabling is a form of addiction.

No prayer will save you, no mantra will save you, no doing good things will save you, in fact, the harder I have tried, the harder it gets… It’s called surrender, surrender to GOD. Only GOD can provide that freedom you need. 

Thanks for reading my blog today, C.