Live From Michigan!!! It's 3am

Yeah - it's 3am and far from not having gone to bed i'm up after giving the baby her bottle and as often happens can't get back to sleep and so the ramblings that normally go through my head and get filtered out from sleep will probably now find a place here. So I race and I love it and many of you know the start of my racing came at a very dark time in my life and really these races helped saved my sanity and helped restore much of my self esteem. What some of you may not know is that at my third race during the swim I had a God experience - literally held in His hand. It took until a few miles on the bike to fully process what had happened, but when it did I was pretty much blown away. Basically it was not words but more of a mental awareness that the buoyancy was His hand and the knowledge that he literally has me and supports me - GOD TOLD ME TO GO FOR IT!!. It's been pretty powerful over the last couple years and it's easy to forget how much we are all loved. I try to be a good person, sometimes I slip, sometimes better than others, but I am aware that my girls are watching me so i'm quite motivated. Which brings me to last night, and a few other instances that amazingly, Chad has pointed out. When I get frustrated I may say Damn it or Jesus Christ. Chad brought up that this is in direct contrast to what i'm trying to do and maybe I should say Praise the Lord. Now I know he meant it as a joke, but for the next little bit when I get upset that's what he'll be hearing.

It's amazing sometimes when you start to notice a theme over the period of a few days or weeks, you'll come across some inspirational saying or just encounter a person who directly speaks to issues you may be working on. When I was in Jamaica my Dad sent me with a book on Lance Armstrong which was published back in 2000 before all of his wins and focused on his cancer and recovery (and directly pointed out something I had been mistaken on so I stand corrected). Lance points out he is agnostic but became spiritual at the point in his life when recovering - and more so after. He has a passage about how being human is the bravest thing we will ever do because we all know, ultimately, the result. Just getting up every day and keeping going in the face of our imminent death shows the power of hope. And then yesterday on the way to Connie and Gerry's I came across this:

"Courage is not easy to come by. Confronted with the brutality of the world around us, we need courage to even sustain hope, to believe that if humans can be cruel, we can also be noble, civilized and strong - that good is at least as powerful as evil."

Well, i'm smart enough to see a theme here - and I guess it's what i'm spiritually supposed to be working on right now. Joey, you are one of my favorite people when it comes to this, because you understand how important it is for all of us to fight evil (1House I love you). "Where 2 people gather in my name, there i AM".

And I know you all love me - which is the best that all of us can do. Saint John would drive his disciples nuts because he would constantly say "Love one another. Love one another." Frankly they grew tired of hearing it. And when asked by one of his disciples why he went on and on about loving one another he said: "It is the Lord's own commandment, and if you do nothing else, this one is enough."

So, for today, Love one Another. Know that I love you. Know that whatever spiritualty you hold dear we are all held in the creator's hand and that we are loved.

I'm going back to bed.