Oh I know, the title of this blog entry sounds very dramatic, but the mountain is my struggles in trying to get better combined now with all the work I have been avoiding while here on my medical leave. It is piling up and the mountain is getting high I tell you! And I have to say, it is starting to bother me in a way that is NOT helpful!

So, I am intending to begin to do a little “excavation” today! After all, the idea of this medical leave is to not stress myself out. And getting at a bit of this mountain not only will give me something to do, but it makes the horizon a little more level and lots less threatening for me.

Of course this is certainly not the first time I have had challenges in my life. In my mind I have had many more challenges than I should have had. But I cannot sit around complaining about all that, I believe it only wastes time. I instead want to move ahead and meet the current ones head on!

In the past, I used music as one of the things to help me do that. I had a list of songs I would listen to and sing over and over that helped me through some very rough times. Of course like so many other things lately, I didn’t remember this until recently. Some things however are just of God. I was driving along a few days ago listening to the radio when one those songs from my list came on, and it was on a particularly bad day for me. There probably could have been no better song for me to hear then either, it was FFH’s “Lord move, or move me” The song is one of my favorites, and the chorus goes,

“Lord move in a way, that I’ve never seen before
Cause there’s a mountain in the way and a lock on the door
I’m drifting away, waves are crashing on the shore
So Lord move (move), or move me.”

I sang it at the top of my lungs (with the windows up so as to not traumatize wildlife or people) but as it finished a few thoughts went right through my stroke infested mind……..

You know, too often the happenings of our lives, especially when they are traumatic, suck us in to the point that those happenings become all that we can see. The hills can suddenly look like or become mountains, and the valleys just seem to get deeper and deeper. But if we look around us our path out of this scary environment is always there, for the Lord will always help us if we let Him. That help just often begins with the admission first that we need Him.

You see, in truth, the Lord wants to help us and no one should know that more than me. He is the One constant in my life who has never let me down. And with Him, any hill, any valley, any mountain, any obstacle can be overcome. We just need to see these things from His perspective, not our own. Because He can take us over the mountains or even move them out of our way….after all, they are nothing to Him. He has the key to every lock. He can calm the seas, He can do anything…..and with Him, so can we.

So all this is to say I am attempting to do a little excavation in my life……beginning today!! Keep me in your prayers. There’s a mountain in my way, and I am asking the Lord to help me move it. But if experience is a good teacher, I just have the feeling He may instead just change my point of view!

God bless all of you!! I am looking forward to seeing you soon!

Fr. Tom+