From the Other Side

For those of you who know me only remedially and those who know me well, you undoubtedly know that as a preteen and a teen I led a rather assorted life. I won't go into detail, but ultimately it left me far from home questioning the things I had been taught, the beliefs that I held, the people that I know, and completely re-cultivated who I am as a person.

Many people go through heartache at different times in their lives and usually it comes in the most unexpected ways, which contributes to the pain associated with those events. My case is no different and there are a few things that I have learned along the way that may or may not help you.

1) In order for things to improve in your life you need to hash out all the "evils" first
This is a difficult process to go through and one that I learned from many professionals in the business of helping people. Generally people refer to it as "rock bottom" and other euphemisms, however I am not a believer that you need to consistently be hitting rock bottom. Life is a process of erasing and hashing out the evils in your own life so that you can move past them and improve. As we introduce more and new evils in our life to learn from we hash them out and learn to become a better person. I've mentioned it before with simple posts on my FaceBook, but success is not gained easily. It is a road pock marked with failure, mistakes, embarrassment and the defining line between those that do and those that do not succeed is very thin. It's as simple as learning a lesson from your mistakes so you can avoid them in the future.

2) People remember how others react when they are in peril
I don't remember every little detail of the things that have happened in my lifetime. I am twenty-seven years old as I write this. Nobody could remember all of that. What does stick out distinctly to me are the memories of who was present during a very tragic time in my life and who seemed to simply fall off or lose concern. As humans we are designed for interaction and companionship whether it be a married couple, brothers, or close friends. When those people closest to you back out in your time of need you question your own morality, your self, and in my personal life I had at one point even prayed that God simply kill me. If you know someone who is suffering or in great distress you will never know the volumes it can speak to feel the warmth of someone reaching out to you. Without that touch our souls are left on their own to suffer.

3) Respect is something everyone deserves regardless of opinions or beliefs
I met a lot of people along my journey to becoming a better person, and I'm not finished yet, but I have learned that cultures and people develop for the same causes no matter the beliefs. People hold their families and their relationships dear and have a morality that they keep. This is true among all cultures. I have had close friends from gangs, Native Americans, wealthy families, poor families, drug dealers, Africans, people with mental/emotional and personality disorders, Wiccans, Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, Homosexuals, and violent criminals. They are all different in their own right and while the collective conscious of America agrees that some of these groups crimes are wrong, it doesn't change the fact that everyone wants respect and all cultures serve the same purpose. As a Christian I certainly do not believe that all cultures lead down the same path, but that isn't necessary for respect. People are intelligent. If they choose a culture or lifestyle you can respect them while disagreeing.

4) Prayer is a powerful action (Regardless of whom you pray to)
As a Christian, I already feel eyes burning into me for saying that, but it's true. More studies show that people who pray (regardless of whom to) have a more positive outlook on life and are successful than those that do not. I personally have had interactions in my life that I attribute to Jesus Christ and to God. Specifically at one point in my life I needed to pass a polygraph test, however getting back to #2, I simply had done so many things that were evil at a certain point that I simply didn't remember them all. I was given several chances to pass this lie detector test and ultimately I failed the first and the second was "inconclusive." What that meant is that I had another try and if I didn't pass clearly then I would simply be locked away. Essentially it was a last chance. The thing for me is that I quite honestly couldn't tell you why I didn't pass the first time around. All of my answers to the questions remained exactly between the first and second test, but as I walked to the third polygraph I simply prayed that if Jesus had a plan for me that I would pass. In general polygraphs they will ask you a set of control questions to gauge your reply to any question that they know to be true (ie. is your name Jonathan Rademacher, yes or no? Are you a male, yes or no? etc.) These all seemed to be incredibly simple. On the third test I was given I was no longer given general questions as to the entirety of my past, but scoped down to a very specific time frame where I was beyond confident in my answers. I was not told this would happen and others when I asked have denied that this happened including the professionals administering the testing but nonetheless I passed without any doubts. I attribute that to Jesus Christ giving a clear reply to my prayer.

5) Everything in life is a choice
One of the most common problems that people have is that they simply do not take responsibility over their own lives. People say things like, "you made me mad," and "I am a product of my environment." While there is a lot to be said about the power of environmental factors to sway your decision making, the thing to remember is that EVERYTHING in life is a choice. If you are unhappy with your life, it's because you are CHOOSING to be unhappy. You could just as well be content with your situation if you chose so. If you are angry, you are choosing to remain angry. If you are poor, you are choosing to be poor. Many people feel offended by statements like that but reality is that if you are poor you simply aren't taking the actions to not be poor any longer. If you want to be rich, choose to do the things that will make you rich, but realize that everything you choose comes at a cost, whether good or bad. Becoming rich will more than likely cost you your close friends and family or time with them at least.

6) Emotions are not something that we should trust in
Our culture is so conditioned to respond with what "feels" good and what "feels" right. The problem? Our emotions lie to us regularly. Imagine that I gave you a cookie. You probably feel great if you like cookies and are appreciative. Now imagine I gave you one cookie and your sibling two cookies and I say that I did so because "I like them better." You are deceived into frustration and anger and you rationalize it because you believe my actions to be unfair. That's not reality. Reality is that you feel hurt because my actions evoked a feeling of inferiority in you and as a creation of God we are not meant to feel that way, but your feelings lie to you. Anger is simply a secondary emotion that disguises a primary emotion. Primary emotions are things like fear, hurt, sadness, and other things that take our pride and adjust it to a lower level . Even those emotions are liars though because the reality is that if I give you a cookie, my interactions with someone else have nothing to do with OUR relationship unless I have made a covenant with you that OUR relationship means exclusivity (i.e. marriage, dating, etc.).

7) What people do and say regarding you will have as much power as you allow it
I have also posted on this topic on my FaceBook, however it's a loaded topic. To keep it simple, how you receive something defines what it is, not how it is given. If someone says to me, "Your'e a smart one," I can choose how I want to take that REGARDLESS of the intent of the giver. I can take it as a compliment to my intelligence and feel empowered. I can take it as a sarcastic euphemism and feel hurt because they made me feel inferior. I can take it as a joke and simply laugh it off so that it is inconsequential. I was once told a story by a guy that I always felt thought he was better than me, and yet the story sticks with me to this day:

Once upon a time there was a village. In this village there was a seer who could see the future and he served the purpose to help his village prosper. Every year each person in the village could ask one question of the man and he would answer them. They would ask questions like, "How will my crops fair this year?" If the seer told them they would be tall, they grew tall. If he said they would suffer they suffered. One man became jealous of the seer and wanted to defraud him. So he devised a plan. He walked up to the seer with a bird in his hands but held behind his back and asked a simple question, "Is the bird in my hand alive or dead?" If the seer said the bird was dead, he would let it fly away and prove the seer a fraud. If the seer said it was alive he would break the neck of the bird and show it to be dead, also proving the seer a fraud. The seer looked at the man and sat patiently for a moment. Then he replied, "If you choose for this bird to live, it will live. If you choose for it to die, it will die. THE POWER IS IN YOUR HAND."

Moral of the story? If you want people to have power over you, you will let them. If you do not, you will not. As someone once told me, "If someone says or does something to you and you choose to be angry, you give their words and actions a lot of power." I generally like to live by this principle because it took a while for me to understand, but ultimately if someone calls me a name and I brew about it, they will likely have forgotten by the time they reach home, meanwhile their words had the power to upset my whole day. Imagine this person KNOWS their words carry such power. I have given them an awful amount of power for any one person to have. Only Jesus Christ or God should have such power in my life.

There is more than I could ever speak about on a blog in my experiences to the other side of tragedy, and I would like to write them all down, and maybe one day I will write a book about it. As of right know, I leave you with the sentiments above and encourage you to hash out your evils, reach out to those in need, respect everyone equally, pray, choose wisely, and only submit power to those who earn/deserve it.

Thanks for reading and God Bless

The power is in your hand.