Tag: pain

Categories
Weekly Blog

Tragedy…What a Blessing

It’s said that we can all expect two things as part of life…death and taxes. I would adamantly argue that there’s a third…human tragedy, suffering. No one can escape it. Life is messy and it’s part of humanity, the human condition. 

It can strike as something global like war, terrorism, or a natural disaster. It can be something more personal like separation or divorce, death of a loved one, a major health issue, addiction, a rift in the family, a horrible personal failure, unresolved conflict with a friend, loss of property, or a financial crisis. 

If it sticks around long enough, it becomes personal. If it’s personal long enough, we often develop resentments. Not sure if you’ve heard the expression, “resenting someone else is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die”. I’ve tried it and believe me, it doesn’t work. 

Every single one of us can point to a tragedy, either personally or in the lives of those closest to us. Many ask the question, “how does an all-loving God allow pain and suffering in our lives?” Pointing to me as an example, in addition to most who I know on this journey…it’s to bring us closer to God, to create a greater good. A couple expressions come to mind: 

  • No pain, no gain
  • No Cross, no crown

I just recently heard that we have to be emptied out, i.e., tragedy and suffering, to be filled up. 

Think about it. When things are going tremendously well, you don’t have a need for anyone else, including God. But when things get tough, that’s when you can’t do it alone. If severe enough, it brings you to your knees, often leading to an encounter with Jesus Christ, internalizing His love, and experiencing conversion. That’s what happened to me and praise God. It rocked my world and changed my life forever. 

 

Don’t Miss the Opportunity to Grow

If we allow it, tragedy can be a wake-up call, an invitation to accept the reality of our limitations, to reject the things that leave us feeling overwhelmed and to start moving on the path to lasting fulfillment. The fact is that we can’t control the future or stop bad things from happening. What we can control is the way we live in the present, and the way we accept all the things that happen to us, good or bad. The healthy response is to live joyfully in the moment and to actively engage with others on the journey. 

Some sayings we hear are truer than we know. Examples are “What doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger” or “God only gives us what He knows we can handle.” It is in our tragedies, our defeats in life, that we learn our biggest lessons. My greatest tragedies have resulted in my greatest opportunities for growth.

This may come across as odd, but I’m thankful for the tragedies in my life. If you know my story, you know that they were dramatic. You see, I believe everything happens for a reason, according to God’s grand plan. We may not know why in the moment, but God helps us in making a ministry out of our meses. That’s true for me and true for most I know on this same faith journey. As such, I live in a place of gratitude, knowing I wouldn’t be who I am today without those experiences, albeit very difficult. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today, if not for my significant struggles.

Praise God…it’s never too late to be the person you want to be, the person God calls you to be. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com, with questions, comments, concerns, or prayer requests. 

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!

Remember….God made you for Greatness!

Mark Joseph

Categories
Weekly Blog

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Johnny Lee sings a song called, “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.” Viktor Frankl once wrote, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” Matthew Kelly has an expression I love: “We can never get enough of what we don’t really need.” All three quotes relate to us having false gods and chasing false happiness. I refer to them as the 4Ps…Prominence, Possessions, Pleasure, and People. 

Prominence 

We all want to do well, to succeed. Many want to stand out. That could mean business or career success. For others, it might be more about social standing or popularity. Still others want notoriety for excelling in a field or doing good deeds. Prominence makes us feel respected and admired, held in high esteem, and most importantly, loved. Social media plays into this as well, since most of us only put our best selves forward. 

The drive for prominence can also manifest itself in superficial relationships, where we’re really using other people instead of truly befriending them. Maybe we desire to be prominent to them individually, or to impress others by the relationship. 

 

Possessions 

Look at the houses we live in, the cars we drive, and the things we wear. It’s a universal issue, no matter our sex, race, religion, age, or socioeconomic position. No matter the income level or the neighborhood we live in, we value stuff. One indication of this is the amount of personal debt most people have in the U.S. Many live way beyond their means. Cars and trucks can now be financed over longer and longer periods of time. The amount of electronic gadgetry that most of us have is over the top. Then there are all our other physical possessions … the list is endless. 

I’m not suggesting that we should go without a house or a car, but instead understand why we buy what we do. Is it for functionality or status? 

Pleasure

When we don’t know that we’re made for greatness, we rely on distraction and entertainment, anything that provides us with pleasure. Far too many people equate pleasure with joy or happiness. They’re not the same. Joy is long lasting, independent of substance or circumstances. Pleasure, on the other hand, is only experienced in the moment. Once the act creating the pleasure is over, the pleasure is gone. It is fleeting. 

People

Whether we realize it or not, many of us turn other people into false gods. They may be professional athletes, actors, musicians, politicians, dignitaries, the wealthy, very successful, or those that hold prominent positions. But they can also be people in our own life. In my adult life, I didn’t look to the “rich and famous” as my false gods. For me, the people I looked up to (often with envy as well as admiration) were the local business owners and executives in my hometown. I wanted to be a successful business guy more than anything in the world because of what I thought it said about me, and the people I idolized most were those I could reach out and touch. 

There is hope! But we have to stop looking for fulfillment in prominence, possessions, pleasure, and people. Only one thing can fill the God-sized hole in the center of our chest…and that’s God Himself.

As always, please feel free to contact me at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.  

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

God made you for GREATNESS!!!

Mark Joseph

Categories
Weekly Blog

What We Can’t See

This April 25th, the Feast Day of St. Mark, it will be three years since I began doing this weekly blog. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve missed a week. Prior to launch, I did something like 20 blogs and had them in the “can” (my wife loves kidding me when I use that term). For the longest time now, I’ve been writing weekly. Each blog takes me 1-2 hours, followed by Mary Kate, my editor and designer, doing her thing prior to posting.

As you know, I often base the content on current events, then tying it back to our faith. Or I might write on a topic specific to my book or something on my heart based on what’s going on in my life.

Well, I started thinking about a topic for this blog mid-week, wrestled with some ideas this past Saturday, then spent 4 hours on Sunday…before scrapping what I had done.

I felt called to write about the Trump rally and events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. I included commentary on CNN trying to get FOX News thrown off the air and Apple, Amazon, and Google shutting down Parler, one of the very few politically agnostic social media platforms, where they allow for free expression, without risk of being “deplatformed” or censored.

Lastly, I wrote a piece on an excellent book I just read, where Dr. Ralph Martin did an incredible job of laying out many challenges of our modern-day Church in, “A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward”. I highly recommend it…you can get it at  https://stpaulcenter.com/product/a-church-in-crisis-pathways-forward/. My plan was to tie all of the above to the concept of “truth”, in the secular world, then noting the required albeit not always achieved, leadership role of the Church.

 

Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels

Then it blew up on me. Sickened by the vitriol that exists on social media (I shut it down several weeks ago), from our politicians, and on the news (I watch much less than I used to), I couldn’t figure out how to address the real issues without offending some. And I guess that’s the point of this blog. We used to live in a country where there was a free exchange of ideas, where we debated the issues as opposed to attacking one another’s character. You may have heard, “hate the sin, not the sinner”.

The above doesn’t exist today. Instead, we have “cancel culture” and censorship. To be honest, I’m mad and I’m sad. I can’t believe we are the country we have become. Why are we so divided? I’ve been paying close attention to Presidential politics since Ronald Reagan and we’ve never seen anything like this. It all seems to center around Donald Trump.

I know why our political elite hate Donald Trump. He’s gotten in the way of their power and greed. He was disrupting the welfare (Democrat) and warfare (Republican) states. I just don’t understand why the hate by so many others. Even if you strongly disagree with all his policies, why all the tremendous hate? The absolute disgust…that has resulted in the most toxic of environments? I had a lot of hate in me at one time in my life. It’s not a healthy place to be.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

It’s been amazing and sad to watch. I don’t know how we’re going to recover. I do know this. My faith has never been more important to me. I’m committed to clinging to the Cross, the teachings of the Church and that in Holy Scripture. I’m going to double down on my prayer life, continuing to include those who disagree with me. I’m going to concentrate on living my faith the best I can, which means loving my wife and kids and all those who Jesus puts in my path.

I hope you’ll do what I just described above. Let’s all pray for our country and its leaders. They certainly need it.

As always, please feel free to contact me at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com with comments, questions, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!!
Always remember…you were made for GREATNESS!!!

Mark Joseph

 

Categories
Weekly Blog

Week #7 – Wounds and Resentments

This is the 7th of our 14-week program, where we provide Lesson #7, on our wounds and the resentments they create. So, here are some questions to consider:

  • Have you ever been hurt by someone in your life?
  • Have you experienced tragedy, that has left you wounded?
  • If either of the two above, how has it impacted your life?

As discussed last week, tragedy is universal. It happens to all of us. The same is true for people hurting us. We’re all sinners. Sometimes it’s done with malice. Most often not, but the pain is none the less.

If hurts or wounds stay with us long enough, they become personal. If personal long enough, we often build up resentments. Have you ever heard the expression, “resenting someone is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die”? It doesn’t work. Believe me. I’ve tried…it doesn’t work.

Here’s the thing….when I harbor resentment, the only person it really hurts is me. Even if the other person knows of the situation and feels its repercussions, the impact pales in comparison to the impact on me.

My Wounds and Resentments

For quite a while, I was overwhelmed by my wounds and resentments, almost in disbelief that these seeming “injustices” could have happened to me.

  • My first wife’s long struggle with alcoholism
  • The dramatic impact the addiction had on our family
  • The loss of my business
Photo by Matthias Zomer from Pexels

I experienced a range of emotions — sadness, despair, doubt, fear — and I remember being angry and bitter almost on a constant basis. It was real. It was penetrating. And it hurt. I felt very isolated, embarrassed to share the details with anyone. It was the most depressing time of my life.

Solving for the Pain

There is at least partial truth to the saying that time heals all wounds. It was true for me. As time went on, the pain did diminish, and healing did begin to set in. That said, time alone would not have moved me past my many hurts.

It was critical that I take ownership of my role in each of the painful circumstances, recognizing that I bore real responsibility for what had happened to me. And that difficult realization took time. My old wounds of low self-esteem and low self-worth added to the pain of these wounds and fostered a lot of resentment. It wasn’t until I started the challenging process of fixing myself, and yes, forgiving myself, that I could humbly acknowledge my role in my circumstances.

Suggested Actions

So, what do we do about it? As indicated, there are no “quick” fixes to anything in life, including overcoming your wounds and resentments. That said, I would suggest:

  • Think about the following questions. Ponder (think/pray) the following:
    • What was your role in what took place?
    • Were there lessons learned that you can take into other circumstances?
    • Beginning to understand that everything takes place for a reason, is there an element of gratitude you can find in what transpired?
  • During your morning prayer routine this week:
    • In meditating on what occurred, try to forgive the other person, recognizing that resentment only hurts you.
    • Try to forgive yourself too, mindful of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness for you
  • Watch this Friday’s video on this same subject….it will be emailed to you.

Please join us next Wednesday for Week #8 when we talk about DISCOVERING GOD’S LOVE. As always, please feel free to get to me with questions, comments, or concerns at Mark@MarkJosephMinistries.com.

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

Mark Joseph