My review of the book: "Holding On Loosely" by Pablo Giacopelli

It seems when someone writes a book about how we relate to God and to each other, they tend to get real preachy or they write a fictional story to demonstrate their point.  Rarely do you come across one where the author lays out his life for all to see the way they relate to God and to rest of us.  I have just finished reading a book by Professional Tennis Coach Pablo Giacopelli.  It is an autobiographical account of his relationship with God and I give my highest recommendation for everyone to read.

I am not going into detail about Pablo's life, but here is a link if anyone wants to read what his bio says:
http://www.holdingonloosely.com/author/

Now, I will say that what Pablo has written is close to what I currently believe and have shared.  He had the courage to express his heart in a matter that is very vulnerable.  As I read his story, I could feel the tugs  within my own heart.  As I read the last chapter, I found tears welling in my eyes.  It was that good and I felt it that deeply.

There is a second time that I should have died.

It was New Year's Day and I was planning on spending it like I had celebrated it for last few years.  So, i headed out the door and was driving down Hwy 175.  I was meeting a friend at Kings Creek Country Club for a round or two of golf.  I switched lanes as my exit drew near.  I remember that I could see the exit just on the other side of a cross over.  Then all of a sudden a 18 year old driving a pickup pulled out right in front of me.  I turned my wheels to the right as I tried to avoid a direct hit.  The right front of his pickup hit the left front of my pickup.  The collision was so hard that the left headlight was smashed in to the firewall of my cab.  This locked up the front wheels and forced me into an uncontrolled slide.  I ended up sliding between the legs of one of those green traffic signs.  There were about 2 inches of clearance for my pickup to go between the legs and fortunately I made it through the sign without hitting the sign.  The shoulder harness had wrapped around my neck instead of across my shoulder.  I received a whiplash and the retina of my left eye had a small tear in it.  The pickup that had pulled out in front of me was one of those GM pickups that had the exploding gas tanks on the side of the pickup.  So, a split second either way would have killed me.  I would have either hit his gas tank or he would have hit me in the drivers door which would have also killed me.

Even though I did not die, I still received some damage.  Instead of playing golf in Kemp, I received a ride in an ambulance back to Kaufman to the ER of the Presbyterian Hospital there.  Instead of looking for golf balls, I was worrying about what was happening to my eye.  The eyesight in my left eye was affected.  After a week the eye healed but I still had trouble seeing.   I had trouble judging distance.  I ended up being off work for 5 months because of it.

My last thought before hitting that I remember was that I was going to die. To be more specific, "I'm coming home" was the exact thought.  I understand the physics of why I did not die, but I am still in wonder of how everything happened so exactly in a way so that neither one of us died.  

That happened 11 years ago.  It was a life changing incident.  I used to be a guy that made long range plans and focused my life on reaching those plans.  (That had been caused by an inferiority complex that had me believing that I had to be better than everyone else in order to be equal with everyone else).  I have been a lot more a "day to day" guy since then.

Actually those 5 months that I was off work, were a time that I spent improving my relationship with God.  That time of fellowship with God would be very important in my life, because just a few years later, I would be having my encounter with the Seminary Graduates.  The same ones who tried to destroy my will, my emotions, & my soul.  They tried to turn everyone close to me against me.  The 5 months off strengthened my relationship with God, so their theological babbling could not turn me against God in order to worship them.  The friends that I lost because of them, have been replaced with alumni friends.  

I do not know what will happen to me in the future.   I have always had an inkling that whenever I die, it would not be a natural death, so any of you who out live me will know if I'm right or wrong about this.  It will not matter much to me because I am not afraid of what lies on the other side of death (however dying is a different matter, because I do not do pain well). 

So why did I not die?  I don't have a good answer to that question, but I do know that if that had not happened, I would not have been prepared for these past 11+ years of emotional pain.  I still have plans, but I am no longer controlled by those plans.  I have learned to treasure the relationships that I have now, because there is no guarantee that they will last either.

Anger Issues

I remember being in Mrs. Clements' class which would mean that I was either in the 3rd or 4th grade.  One of my close friends back then was a kid named Sammy.  Sammy came over to my house almost everyday as my Mom would pick him up after school with me and he would stay at my house until his Mom got off work and came by to get him.

Then one day while on the playground during recess at school, I was walking around the playground just looking at things.  I heard someone running up behind me.  I turned and Sammy was there with a large rock in his hands and had it over his head as he was swinging down to bash me in the head and possibly kill me.  I jumped and the rock hit the back of my shoulder and back instead of my head.  As I laid on the ground, I remember this feeling coming over me.  Rage started pouring out through my body like a volcano had gone off within me.  I jumped up and the ensuing fight that started with Sammy trying to kill me ended with me almost killing Sammy.

It was that day that caused me to realize that the monster that had inhabited my grandfather, Llewellyn Swint was also within me.  Even though I had never met him, I had heard stories about my grandfather.  I have been told that before he started drinking, he was the kindest man you would ever meet.  He was the type of person that would give the shirt off his back, if it would help someone else.  Then he started drinking and when he drank, he had a Mr. Hyde  type of anger come out of him toward everyone else.  Then he became an alcoholic.  So, this monster side of him is all that people saw of him until the end of his life.

So after the fight I knew that I was capable of having the same thing happen to me.  It was at this point that I made my decision not to drink, because the only way of not becoming that type of monster was not to drink the elixir that turned him into that monster.

That decision was important because I knew that I could not unleash that monster except for cases like the fight where it came out in self defense.  So not drinking was one step but I needed others also.  One thing that I have done that has caused misunderstandings is that I would walk away whenever I felt it trying to come out.  I would go off by myself until I calmed down, then I would return and talk and be social.  I have had this thrown in my face several times as others have said that this need to go off and settle down just shows that I was an evil person and not to be trusted.  This accusation really hurt, because I never unleashed my rage towards another person and the very thing that I would do to insure that would never happen was used against me.

Another thing that I did was to get into football.  You may have heard Coaches as well as other players say that I played with a lot of heart.  While it is true that I had a love of the game, it was my anger that made me a better player than what my genes had provided for me to be.  Football was a funnel for me to channel my emotions into.

So doing these two things kept my anger issues from coming out, but they did not cure me.  The healing process has come over years of time and started with my belief in God.  Although the healing did not take place over night, it did take place.

It started a few years after the fight when I had a Paul like conversion to Christianity.  That is why the next time that I really had a face to face meeting with Sammy during my sister's 8th grade year at Sunnyvale (which was also my Senior year at NMHS), I was able to offer him my hand of friendship and forgiveness.  An offer to make things back to where they were before the fight.  He would not accept my offer, but I had a peace within me because I knew that I did not hold any more grudges against him.

My healing really took of when I got married.  Even before we got married I told Virginia everything about me.  I told her things that I had never been able to tell anyone else.  I wanted her to know all the baggage that I was bringing and that I was trusting God to help me with it.

Over time, I gained the ability to forgive some people for things that was done against me that I had previously thought were unforgivable.  As the Love of God grew within me, my love for others began to grow.  And lastly I began to love and forgive myself for not living up to the expectations that I had placed upon myself, for not being perfect.

One good thing that has come out of the those Seminary graduates who have sought to destroy my family and to isolate me from all my friends, has shown me that my rage is no longer there.  Oh, I still get mad and get hurt, because they are a part of love.  As long as you love, you will get mad when the object of your love is threatened and will get hurt when the object of your love turns on you.

I hope this helps someone to overcome their rage by accepting God's love, because anything that works on me will work for you also.

"If God really does exist Why did He desert me"

So many of us have been there.  something happens and we think this same thought that was penned in the Gilbert O' Sullivan's song,  "Alone Again" which goes like this:  "Talk about God and His mercy 
Or if He really does exist 
Why did He desert me in my hour of need"

This is a common thought and I will not try to minimize anybody's pain that they have or are now going through.  I can really only say how I got through this myself.  

There have been times in my life that I have felt abandoned by those who I thought loved me most including God.  The pain was immense.  It was not something that I could just shake off and go on, but I did get through it with me still believing in God.  The first helpful thought that I remember having was thinking about the brutality of that day we refer to as Good Friday as well as Thursday night.  As I thought on that, I realized that my pain was only a glimpse of what Jesus went through.  As I began to realize what that 24 hour period was like for Him, I began to see Him as someone who could identify with me and I with Him.  There is a feeling of brotherhood among people who have gone through something and my pain created that scenario between me and God.   

So the question became, did that happen just so I could identify with Him?  I don't think so.  I do not think God created this world to be this way.  We did that.  I believe that God created a  Tropical like Paradise and placed a naked man and a naked woman there to live in perfect harmony with each other and nature and with Him.  It was and still is our rebellion that causes the hurts and evil that is done in the world today.  That includes the evil done against each and every one of us.  

I am not totally there yet, but I can see where God became the cure for my hurt and that He is healing me. For me, Easter is not only a time of Spiritual healing that gives me hope of seeing my loved ones who have passed on before me, but also a time of remembering the healing of my soul and the hurts suffered here.  As my soul heals, I am able to love friends, God, and even the ones who have hurt me in the past. 

Why we wear masks?

I am rereading the book "The Cure" by John Lynch.  I highly recommend this book and if possible also read Dr. Brene' Brown's book, "The Gifts Of Imperfection" in tandem with it.  For me reading both of the books this way was a real eye opener.

In "The Cure", John Lynch lists reasons that he thinks that we wear masks and I wanted to share that list with you.

We want to prove to others that we're worthy of their love.


We want to prove to ourselves that we're worthy of being loved.


We want others not to feel sorry for us.


We fear if others see us truly, they won't want to know us.


We want to be seen as great.


Believers in Christ additionally are tempted to wear a mask when:


Our failures tell us the experiment of grace didn't work.


We want to prove to God that we're worth His choice to love us.


We believe that God wants us to fake it too so He looks good.


We want God to make our life work and our behavior seems like the price tag.


We think God cares more about right behaviors than our trust and dependence.


We think we're in competition with others, graded on a spiritual curve.


Our shame makes us believe we must assuage God's disgust in us.




It has been my experience, both as someone who has worn a mask and as one who deals with people wearing masks, that the pretending thing that we do to find acceptance, actually keeps us from being loved and having friends.  As Dr. Brown points out in her book, it takes courage to be honest and vulnerable, but when we do we open the door for compassion to come from others.

I am thinking that it is through this honesty that we are truly accepted and from this we are healed from our hurts, our past, and our failures.