There is a serious sickness that’s poisoning our marriages, our families, our selves. It’s called unforgiveness.

Why is it so volatile? Because it’s the repository of all sorts of strong, negative emotions. Hurt. Anger. Bitterness. Revenge. Hatred.

Yet for some reason we’ve come to comfort ourselves with letting it into our lives, like some kind of non-paying houseguest. The role models of the world – the actors and politicians and businessmen and pop stars – they all seem to deal with it just fine. Heck, some even revel in their resentment half the time, teaching a whole new generation to stay firmly focused on the only thing that they say matters in this world: you.

But it’s not true.

Comfy, Chewy Centers

You are not the most important part of your relationships. Your all-consuming comfort? Your central happiness at all costs? Your obsessive longing for supreme satisfaction with all things, at all times? Not the primary plot point of your life’s story. At least, not if you want to live a life worth living.

Life is about people. Other people. It’s about engaging in and maintaining relationships. Period. Whether it’s your parents, your in-laws, your brothers or sisters, your friends or strangers, your employer or employees or your children or your spouse, the degree of your success in life is going to largely be gauged by how well you learn to play nicely with others.

And that means forgiving.

Forgiveness vs. The Future

Your ability to forgive is the key to your happiness in life. Forgiving when it’s deserved. Forgiving when it’s not. Forgiving when you’re hurt through a misunderstanding, or when it was done with sheer malice in mind. Forgiving when you’ve been beaten down physically, emotionally or mentally. Forgiving when you’ve been forgotten, or ignored, or insulted. No matter what anyone does to you in this life to upset or hurt you, the only way you’re going to heal… is to forgive.

Because when you choose not to forgive? You’re poisoning yourself. It’s a slow death, to be sure. Almost imperceptible. But it’s there, the aching wound inside you, and it will continue to fester just underneath your skin. You may think you’ve risen above or moved beyond the pain, but unless you actively extend an olive branch of peace? You’re only kidding yourself.

Here’s the kicker: Whatever you decide to do with your bitterness today will determine your happiness tomorrow. Your choice to nurture your unforgiveness will establish a habit in your life, so the next time someone offends you? Hurts you? Wounds you deeply? You’ll already know what to do, because it’ll come naturally to you.

You’ll choose not to forgive.

But the same is true if you choose to go down the wiser, more difficult road of forgiveness. The more you forgive those who offend you? The easier it becomes. Whether you’re forgiving a minor offense or the Mother of All Offenses, your deliberate decision to forgive the people in your life will have a dramatic and lasting impact on your life in the future.

Your comfort. Your happiness. Your satisfaction with all things.

The Now and Laters of Life

Walking through the temporary pain and discomfort now leads to lasting comfort later. Giving up your personal need for justification and retribution today will directly affect your personal peace tomorrow.

The seeds you’re planting deep in your heart today, regardless of whether they’re sour or sweet, will eventually explode into a harvest in your life. Roses or thorns, the choice can only be made by you.

What astounds me is the number of couples who think they can pursue a close, intimate relationship with God while they actively resent their spouses inside. It just doesn’t work that way. It can’t. Mark 11:25 makes this perfectly clear.

“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Catch that? Did you fully grasp what that’s saying? Your willful decision to not forgive is the same as a willful decision to sin. Jesus Himself explained that your hating your brother is the same as murdering him. Murdering him. So why in the world do you think a holy God is going to listen to and honor your heartfelt prayers when your heart is so full of hate?

Forgiveness Is A Choice

So let me underscore this message once again, because I think it’s the key to every relationship you’ve had, are currently in or will ever have in the future:

People are going to hurt you. Accidentally. Blatantly. Badly. Often.

Your choice to give in to bitterness will be immediately gratifying, and will have lasting, miserable results.

Your choice to forgive (even when forgiveness is undeserved) will have eternal, satisfying rewards.

You are the only one who can make this choice.

And it is a choice. Not a feeling or a notion or emotion.

Forgiveness Is A Choice.

It’s been an interesting month, weather-wise, and much of it affecting places I’ve lived (and the family and friends we love). So I thought I’d share my thoughts on it all.

First, there was the whole haboob (love that word) in Lubbock on October 17th.

Basically, a mile-high wall of dust and debris swept its way through Lubbock in a matter of minutes. It was enough to block out the sun in some places, I’ve been told. Pretty freaky stuff, without question.

Then there was the earthquake in Oklahoma last Saturday. And Sunday. And again on Monday night. Uncommon an unexpected are the words that come to mind. (As well as freaky, terrifying and earth-shaking…)

The ego-centric part of me look at all this and says “Huh. Two uncommon, natural disasters take place within weeks of each other, and both in places I used to live. What does it all mean?” But rather than conclude that my mere presence wards off natural disasters, I basically shrug it off and go my merry way.

Except I can’t. My brain won’t let me. It keeps analyzing and over-analyzing and trying to decipher it all. When talking with a friend of mine this week, he insisted that we are, in fact, in “the end times.” I debated with him on this, explaining that there have always been “end times” events, and that people in general get spun up when 1) a new century or millennium comes around, or 2) a rash of unexpected natural calamities strike in close sequence.

He adamantly said that he’d been studying both scripture and weather patterns the past few years, and holds fast to his conclusions. When we hung up, I didn’t really give it any other thought. He had his opinion, and I had mine. But after reading a couple of articles this week I think I just might change my point of view.

Exhibit A – The Sudden Spikes in Extreme Outbursts

“The national economic toll for extreme weather so far this year is estimated at $35 billion, more than five times the average annual loss.”

“April spawned 875 tornado reports — the 30-year average for the month is 135.”

“Oklahoma typically had about 50 earthquakes annually until 2009. Last year, 1,047 quakes shook the state.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/24/nation/la-na-extreme-weather-20110824

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/07/3253578/another-oklahoma-earthquake-felt.html#ixzz1d5DRJDIg

Exhibit B – FEMA’s First-Ever Nationwide Emergency Alert Test Today

“Why now?

Here’s how FEMA explains it:

We need to know that the system will work as intended should public safety officials ever need to send an alert or warning to a large region of the United States. Only a complete test of the Emergency Alert System can help us identify any changes and improvements needed to modernize this system and make it fully accessible.

Although FEMA says there have been local emergency alert tests in the past, none has been broadcast to all regions of the USA at the same time.”

My Conclusions:

Wow. It’d be easy to dismiss my friend’s rants about the weather and end times if the statistics didn’t back up his point so well. Seems like things are 5x as bad as they have been on many fronts (20x as bad in Oklahoma earthquake terms). That’s some pretty steep rampage, people. It’s hard to ignore.

And FEMA? Suddenly conducting a nationwide test? Well, call me a skeptic, but I’m guessing there’s more of a reason to make sure things work than, well, just to make sure things work. Throw in the speculation on how the solar flares are gonna affect us the next year, and it kind of makes you wonder.

ARE we in the end times? What do you think? 2 years? 5? Another 20 or 50 before things go kablooey? What say thee?

As I’m processing the transition from Lubbock to Washington, I’ve decided to reread Stormie Omartain’s excellent book, “Just Enough Light for the Step I’m On: Trusting God in Tough Times.” I had read it years ago, and I remember it provided me with more encouragement than I expected. It’s a short book at 176 pages, but there are enough nuggets in there to make it worth while.

On section that stood out to me this weekend was when she described the Israelites leaving Egypt for The Promised Land. They followed God’s definite leading out of Egypt, and had seen Him perform numerous, incredible miracles. Yet instead of stepping directly into The Promised Land, they had to go through the wilderness.

And that’s when things got complicated.

Because despite what they knew, and what they had seen with their own eyes, they forgot God’s power. Instead of relying on His providence for where they were now, they continued to look back, at they life they had before. “What’s going on, Moses? You brought us all the way out there to die? In this desert? Life was better back in Egypt as a slave!”

Grumble, grumble, grumble, bitch, bitch bitch… it was an ugly time.

The problem was, they thought they were at the end of the story of their lives, that they had reached the final destination. It wasn’t true. They were just passing through it. As tourists. They just didn’t realize it, so they freaked out.

Sound familiar?

It did to me. Because here I am, a man who’s seen and experienced firsthand God’s incredible providence in my life. As a husband, father and businessman, God has come through time and time again. And yet, once I was stripped of all the comforts that I had come to depend on, losing the direction and focus that I once had? I was a bawling, bitching baby. (Yes, that’s the second time I used the word “bitch” in this post. And very accurately in both.)

Stormie writes:

The wilderness is where we are forced to leave behind the familiar, the comfortable, the past successes, the accomplishments and your bag of tricks that always worked before. The wilderness is where God takes us when He wants us to get Egypt out of our hearts. He wants to separate us from all that we crave, so that all we crave is Him. Just as he wanted to get the taste for Egypt out of the Israelites’ mouths, He wants to get our lust for certain comforts out of our appetites as well. It’s not that He doesn’t want us to be comfortable, He just doesn’t want us to depend on the comforts more than we depend on Him.

When God aims us in a new direction, we have to let go of what we’ve known and be willing to embrace the unfamiliar, trusting that He will sustain us. The wilderness is a place where God calls us to forsake what’s comfortable and move into the unknown so that He can direct us to where we ultimately need to arrive.

Translation: Lubbock is my Egypt. I’m in the Wilderness of Washington. And I have a choice to make: Faithless or Faithful.

Because I don’t feel like wandering around aimlessly for the next 17 months while I’m here? I’m choosing Faithful, thank you very much.

No, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here, what I’m supposed to be working on or why He brought us here. But I have no doubt that He did, and I will choose not to doubt that He has good things in store for us. For me. I choose to believe that God has good things in store for Kevin Mills in Washington, D.C.

We’ll just have to wait and see what they are.

In the meantime, I’ve composed a short love letter to Lubbock. It’s a kind of farewell, a way to break the emotional ties a bit more, acknowledging all the good that was there, but not being so focused on them that I’m blind to what God’s doing here. (Which is why I’m following up my Love Letter to Lubbock with a Pledge to Washington).

Enjoy!

 

What I’ll Miss About Lubbock:

• The fact that everything was 20 minutes away

• I knew where everything was

• The comfort

• The dry weather (dust and all)

• eLife (Chris Galanos’ fine-tuned preaching, Brandon Gwinn’s incredible worship leading, being able to serve regularly)

• The cheap prices

• Bodyworks (1 hour of sweating, 1 hour of reading = 2 hours of “free” childcare)

• A backyard for the kids to run around in

• Carpet that you could walk on with shoes on. That wasn’t white.

• The nannies (Rhonda & Charla, you are missed dearly)

• The friends (too many to mention)

• The weekly lunches at Spanky’s

• Movie nights with the guys

• Bahama Buck’s delicious Frosts (Island Tart was divine)

• Avocado Cheeseburgers at Anna’s Mexican Restaurant

I’d better stop there… or this list is gonna defeat its purpose. Heh.

And now, for Washington, D.C., I pledge:

• To not scream or cuss when I suddenly miss my turn and find myself driving across the river for a 30-minute detour.

• To be thankful for the condo that God provided us (and the perfect location that it is)

• To be thankful for the childcare for Kaleb and Kara

• To appreciate that all three kids have adjusted well here

• To try new things, even things that make me uncomfortable.

• To be thankful for the new church home we found (www.dcmetro.org)

• To spend as much time as possible with my brother and his family while we’re all here for the next 17 months

• To take the time to listen to God’s quiet whispers in my life, rather than complain that I don’t hear Him over the din and activity around me.

• To eat at the bonafide Indonesian restaurant Kim and I found often. (I’m tellin’ ya, Indo MKs, it tastes just like Mickey’s in Sentani…)

• To praise God when I find a parking space (free or not)

• To accept the fact that I might take the wrong Metro from time to time.

• To embrace the fact that I’m in my own wilderness, and instead of wishing I was elsewhere in my life, I will accept that God’s called me here and wants to teach me something in the midst of it all. I promise to open my eyes to see what He’s doing, my ears to hear when He speaks, and my hands to receive whatever He wants to give me during my time here.

I have to be honest: I’ve received some truly sucktacular gifts in my lifetime.

Growing up on comic books, music and action-adventure novels, I’m a relatively easy guy to buy for. An Amazon gift certificate pretty much rocks my world, while giving me more than enough funds to restock my music library (with the LEGAL versions of songs that I deleted years ago. Note: Just because a cheap music site is legal in Russia and accessible to you in America DOESN’T make it right).

One vivid memory was a birthday shortly after college. My parents had helped Kim and I as we moved to Lexington, Kentucky, and after unpacking our stuff and going out to dinner, it was time to do the birthday thing. So my parents wheeled in some of their luggage (you know, since they didn’t have time to wrap the stuff), and I began unzipping the suitcases with thinly veiled zeal. What could possibly be inside these things, I wondered? That’s gotta be a pretty huge action figure to fit in here! And so on went my thoughts…

Until I reached the final piece of the Russian doll luggage set, all fitting snugly into the other, and found… nothing.

I was sadly perplexed. Where was the gift, I wondered aloud. My parents simply smiled and informed me that the luggage WAS the gift.

At which point two things happened: 1) my heart sank swiftly and 2) Kim started snickering.

The first reaction is pretty obvious. Being a self-centric birthday brat, I was sad I didn’t get “anything I wanted.” But why would Kim start yukking it up in the corner? Why indeed…

That would be because a month earlier? When my mother had called her to ask what I wanted for my birthday? Kim thought for a moment, considered what we could use “as a couple” and said without a second thought, “Luggage.”

So to this day the word “luggage” has a special meaning to me. It means sadness. Disappointment. Maybe egocentric snottiness. But whenever anyone now asks me what Kim wants for a gift? I’m ready with a quick answer: she wants a MacBook Pro. (Or an iPad… or a Kindle Fire…)

To be honest, though, the luggage wasn’t the suckiest gift I was ever given. That honor goes to my in-laws, Dave and Sue Linton. Way back in 2005, I believe, I unwrapped a Christmas gift to find myself staring at… a Black and Decker Rechargeable Hand Vac. I thought it was one of the most bizarre gifts I’d ever received. ‘Cause giving Kevin a tool – ANY tool – is like giving a handyman a free license for Scrivener, the best writing software EVER. The potential is simply wasted.

So the vacuum sat in its wrapping for a good month after Christmas, gathering dust until I could decide whether I was going to sell it on eBay or Craigslist. At least, that was the plan until… THAT DAY.

That would be the day Kyler spilled his bowl of cereal all over the kitchen floor. I believe it was dry and completely milk-free, but I’m honestly not sure. All I remember is looking at the pieces of Cheerios spread across the tiles and thinking to myself, “Now, what’s the best way to clean THIS up?” And then I remembered: I had the perfect tool! Right in the other room!

The room was sucked clean in minutes. And I was impressed. Strongly so.

And now? Now I can say that getting that bizarre, seemingly pointless gift was the BEST gift I’ve ever been given. (Next to my wife presenting me with a MacBook, I suppose…) Why? Because I use that vacuum EVERY SINGLE DAY. Now that we have three clones instead of just one? That’s three times the crumbs, crusts and crispy stuff strewn around the house. And having a strong handy vac on hand? A lifesaver.

Sometimes God gives us something that looks a lot like luggage. We’re praying and hoping hard for something else, something we think would be cool or that we desperately need, and He gives us the exact opposite. And we frown and whine and think there must be some mistake. “Surely, God, you didn’t mean to give me THIS? Did you? Because I’m pretty sure there was a mix-up in heaven or something…”

But God doesn’t make mistakes.

Matthew 6:8 says that God “knows what you need before you ask Him.” While we might accept that part, that God’s omniscient, we have a harder time believing the bigger picture: God Loves Us.

So if we believe that 1) God loves us and 2) that He knows what our needs are, then why do we freak out so much? Why do we question what in the world He’s giving us when we know that He’s only going to give us what’s for our good?

You might not see it today, buried under everything that’s on top of you. But one day? You’ll be in a position to actually thank God for the empty luggage He’s giving you right now.

(Insert your own “fill your empty luggage with your life experiences” analogy here)

- Kevin

It’s true.

I’ve been away for quite some time. What with the introduction to Facebook, Twitter and Ping.fm, I find my desire to communicate with the world at large to be pretty satiated. But there’s one problem: a lot of what I have to say doesn’t fit into 140 characters or less.

Sure, the summaries might, but sometimes we need more than a verbal soundbite to get the message across. And I have some messages I’d like to get across to you. Strong convictions that need to be expressed, if only to attempt to have an impact on the small sliver of the sphere God’s given me access to.

Plus, I need to work on my writing skills anyway, and writing at a regular pace is a great way to do that. Stay sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be…

(Anyone beside my wife able to identify that quote? Anyone…?)

So this is really a pre-entry. I’ll figure out a regular time to write soon, and then I’ll be updating this on weekly, or (gasp) bi-weekly basis. And be sure to tune  in on Fridays, ’cause that’s when I plan to give away free music.

Ahh…. it’ll be good to be back. Hope you feel the same way.

- Kevin

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Feed My Inbox > Date: September 28, 2011 7:05:27 AM EDT > To: kevin@thekmills.com > Subject: 9/28 Kevin’s phlog > >   >   >   >

>

>

> > >   >   > Kevin’s phlog >   >   > > > > > >

>

>

> > >   >   > Audio Post Test > > September 26, 2011 at 3:13 PM >   > Testing, testing, testing 1 2 3. There’s a bottle of water on my desk if this works. It means I can audio blog directly to the Kay(?) mails dot com and it will transcribe everything I say. So you will know so you will read so you will hear everything it’s on my mind. It’ll be fantastic. > Media Files > 99578_20110926201308.mp3 (MP3 Audio) > > > >   >  

>

>

>

>

>

> >   >   >   >  

>

>

>

> > This email was sent to kevin@thekmills.com. > Delivered by Feed My Inbox > PO Box 682532 Franklin, TN 37068 > Create Account > Unsubscribe Here

>

>

>

>

> >   >   >   >  

Memo.m4a

Sent from my iPhone. And its dinky keyboard (so all mistakes were intentional.)

Now I’m testing the photo attachment capabilities of the WordPress plug-in, Postie.

If this works, I’ll be able to post photos in my blog entires with ease. It’ll make me smile. Like, a LOT.

Even moreso if it allows me to place the photos BETWEEN the text, as it appears here in the draft window.

Maybe I’ll try TWO photos next. Or a video. Or an Mp3!!!

The possibilities… they stagger the mind…

- Kevin

Hot dog!!! If this works, I’ll be writing deep thoughts on my blog again!!! Yowza!

Sent from my iPhone. And its dinky keyboard (so all mistakes were intentional.)