Caveat
I understand that the focus in these first three posts has been on my personal story, however, I felt it was necessary as background to what follows in this series.
Over the years, I have continued to write here and there. Primarily for personal growth.
One of the subjects I have been most interested in, particularly from the Biblical perspective, is personal transformation.
How do we go from where we are to where we want to be? Depending on our age, is it even still possible?
These are kinds of questions that have fueled my desire to know more about the process of life transformation.
The first two parts of this series addressed the Comfortable Misery Trap created by Conformity Creep.
You can read those here:
Part Three will address how restlessness can change everything.
Restlessness - Learn From It
With so much societal and cultural upheaval and change, I was one restless teenager. I yearned for more.
Eking my way through high school, I failed at a one-semester attempt at college. Formal schooling was not for me at that particular time in my life.
Something had awakened in me that I could not clearly identify or fully understand.
Whatever it was, I knew I wanted more of it.
With the draft still claiming bodies for Vietnam, I made what some called a rash decision to join the Navy.
It was actually one of my better choices, for a couple of reasons: I got to travel and I fell in love with reading.
Because of my career choice, I spend nearly four out of my six-year enlistment on bases in Turkey, Germany, and Spain.
I never once set foot on a ship. My older brother, who had been a Machinist Mate in the depths of a destroyer, called me a “Country Club sailor”.
Traveling to Europe was a total game changer. Before that, I had only been beyond the SC state line twice in my life.
Books Changed My Life
As my reading habit grew, two authors fueled my imagination.
I dreamed of being one of the carefree characters in James Michener’s, The Drifters, as they bummed around Europe and Morrocco. My time in Germany and Spain actually allowed me to do that very thing.
John D. MacDonald wrote the Travis McGee mystery series about a self-described “Salvage Consultant”, who lived and operated out of a houseboat in Ft. Lauderdale.
I romanticized this life of nonconformity for years afterward.
Transitions
While the Navy brought many adventures, it also had its limitations. So, when my enlistment was up, it was time to move on.
Skaggs Island, CA near Vallejo and Napa, was my last active duty assignment (Full disclosure — a few years later, I rejoined the reserves until retirement).
A close cousin, who lived in Eugene, OR at the time, invited me to move there. So, with a truck full of all my worldly goods, I headed North.
Seeking Answers
A love affair with writing began when I enrolled in a creative writing course at the local community college.
What I had not anticipated, though, was the spiritual longing that descended upon me as I got settled.
Questions such as “What is my purpose in life?” and “Why am I here?”
Those questions led me to take another course, The Bible as Literature, in which we had to study the various writing genres contained in the Bible.
This fueled an even more heightened hunger for truth.
Eugene was known as a magnet for New Age philosophy. “Enlightened” free-birds from all over the country constantly flocked to the city, looking for random crumbs of spiritual food.
I was very open to spiritual influences at this point and actively pursued the questions that plagued my heart and mind.
My writing at that time (songs, short fiction, poetry, and human interest stories) reflected the direction of my thoughts.
This quest, however, had not brought the answers I sought. Just more questions.
I quickly realized that while New Agers loved to pursue truth, no one actually wanted to find it.
Except me.
Truth represented absolutes. Absolutes were heresy in New Age philosophy.
The Road To Damascus Goes Through Omaha
Before I left Eugene, several other encounters prepared my heart for what came next.
After two years, my hunger for answers was raging. Restlessness, once again, reared its head.
My “spidey-sense” told me something big was just over the horizon. Something I still could not see.
This triggered another “Providentially” rash decision. One that came with eternal consequences.
At the end of the Spring semester, I shipped the few items I wanted to keep back to South Carolina. The rest of my “stuff” was either sold or given away.
A few days later, I began a four day trip, courtesy of Greyhound, to Charleston, South Carolina with a backpack of clothes, my guitar, and a bicycle stored in the belly of the bus. That was all that remained of my worldly possessions.
This began a series of extraordinary events, the telling of which would take more words than can be adequately expressed in this post.
You can listen to a radio drama of my story, produced by Unshackled ministry of the Pacific Garden mission in Chicago. - Programs #3345 and #3346.
For the sake of this post, let’s boil it down to the fact that a Divinely appointed street encounter in Omaha, NE led me to become a follower of Jesus Christ.
In a brochure I was handed , Christ explained this process to the Rabbi, Nicodemus.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again. (John 3:6–7)
As it went on to give an analogy of the two births, my blindness fell away, just as the scales fell from the eyes of the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.
Unexpected Blessings
Life is full of surprises.
Within two weeks of arriving home, I met the girl of my dreams. A year later, we married. That was 40 years, five children, and nine grands ago.
*Interesting side note here — She was pushing her mid-twenties and was convinced that Mr. Right would never show up. Just weeks before my arrival from Oregon, her Mom had encouraged her that God could bring someone “even from the West coast”.
Providence? You be the judge.
Crucible of Time
After four decades, a boat full of experience has flowed under that bridge, cultivating fertile ground for some rich writing material.
During these years, however, my dream of becoming a writer & author was slowly buried under the mound of responsibilities as a husband and father.
At first, I felt I was being pulled back into a life of conformity.
In hindsight, I see the blessing of that. I simply was not ready.
As gold is refined and steel is tempered in a fiery furnace, our greatest growth is born out of trials and adversity.
The learning crucible is different. I had been awakened spiritually and also to a greater sense of purpose and wonder it needed time to mature. I would not go back.
Earthly and Eternally Consequential
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians,
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:2)
The transformation Paul speaks of is spiritual in nature which, in my estimation, is the most important, as apart from that nothing has any meaning in light of eternity.
Humanly speaking, however, the same principle of the renewing of our minds, can be applied to transforming all aspects of our lives.
It is a very simple process that many miss due to being caught in the Comfortable Misery trap.
Beginning next week, we’ll dive into how the process of Transformation is accomplished.
We’ll look at a simple equation that forms the moving parts of the Transformation acronym - TEAM
T (Transformation) =
E (Education) +
A (Action) +
M (Motivation)
Missing one of these parts will slow or even stop the process.
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Thank you so much for your support and encouragement by subscribing and reading the Life UnCorked newsletter. I truly want this to be a discussion and greatly value your input and comments concerning your own experience with transformation.
If you’ve noticed my “likes” progressing through your articles today, you’ll realize what I’m doing today. Just reading.
It was a dream of mine to have the chunks of time to do what I WANTED to do and at this point I can say that dream has come true. I’m still busy ( probably a bit too much) , still working (closing in on retirement), but a couple of years ago I came across a program that has effectively changed my everyday life completely and for the better. It involves habit building and setting of routines to basically automate large swaths of the I-gotta-do-this aspects of my life. It’s called S.T.E.P. (Steps To Everyday Productivity) at a website called LearnDoBecome (yep, shameless plug there). So many of the habits (good) that I’ve built for myself over the last two years utilize what I learned from that program. I was tempted to share that at another point in my reading but thought I’d do it here.
All of this to say that the building of these habits has allowed me to freely do things I have always wished I had time to do. It bubbled over into other areas: daily meditation and bible reading among others. The Action has provided great Motivation, and the fruit of the vine really is transformation. It’s a process, and the most exciting part is that it feeds itself like a snowball effect; getting bigger as it goes, branching out into other areas of my life where there exists the “I wish I had time to do that “ stuff.
Like write.
Well that part scares me to pieces, but I do some for that very reason. It’s way outside my comfort zone.
Transformation is a really great byproduct of the process. It’s not a finite end result.
It’s transformation!
Thanks for your writing and indulging me a bit of sharing!