Category: Life

What is in a name?

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

This past week at Lifechurch.TV, pastor Craig Groeshel started a new series called Getting Past your Past. I will be totally honest here. When we sat down at church I just wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t in the mood to sing. I wasn’t in the mood to listen. I have no good reason for this. I was just in a funk. That usually is the case when a good message is about to be given. Fortunately the fog lifted and what followed was awesome.

Pastor Craig asked this question near the beginning of the message: What negative label follows your name? This could be anything. Do you know what yours are? Mine started to pop up in a hurry. Granted, I know them well so it didn’t take much thinking. I have two that have bugged me for years: fat boy and quitter.

When I was a teenager I had a fat boy complex. I used self depreciating humor quite often to get a laugh. Looking back I see a huge problem though…I wasn’t fat. I was a husky kid, but when I hit my growth spurt I spent several years skinnier than I ever knew I was. See below. What did this view of myself get me? I promptly gained 40 pounds after high school. I graduated at 190 and weighed 230 the next year. (The freshman 15 is one thing, but 40 pounds..good grief.) I have lived with this false label for a long time. I wasn’t a fat boy. I am bigger than I want to be right now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. This label doesn’t own me. God created me for more than that.

Summer 1995

I have also lived with the label Quitter. There isn’t a sport that I have played that I haven’t quit. I played basketball in high school and when it was time to pass out the jersey’s I was one of two guys that didn’t get one. I saw no future with it and I quit. I signed up for the football team my sophomore year and made it through 3 a days and quit. I played a season and a half of baseball and wasn’t happy with it so I quit. From the paragraph I just wrote it seems that label would be true…but it isn’t either. I am not a quitter. Looking back I realize I chose other things over the sports. I chose to sing in the choir and had some success at it. (Went to college with all tuition paid for two years singing.) That label doesn’t own me either. There are several more important things that I have not quit at all. I have been married to the same beautiful woman for 12 years. There is no quit in my game. I am, however, more selective about what I start these days. Had I chosen choir in the beginning back in those days there would have been no need to play the sports. Singing was what I enjoyed doing.

Through the message I have been encourage to go back and look at many of those negative labels that have attached themselves to me over the years. As I look at each one and examine them closely I am finding that they are inconsistent with what I know to be true. As a follower of Christ I am a new creation. I have been made new. Labels that may have defined me at one time no longer have to. God has purpose for my life. Holding on to the past and being crippled by it is not it.

Are there any labels that have defined you in the past? What are you doing to overcome them? Were they valid in the first place? The service was eye opening. I am so glad I shook the funk and really heard what was being said.

Thoughts from 25000 feet.

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I am 25000 feet above the ground right now, on a flight headed for Houston. It has been 9 years since I have flown and there are several things I have forgotten since or am just experiencing.

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One. Going to the airport to get on the plane isn’t as bad as many people make it out to be. Sure, you have to show up a couple of hours early and go through a rigorous bag and belongings check, but the airport personnel do an admirable job. Especially considering it was 4 am when I got there.

Two. I am headed down here for a conference, so this trip is for business. Most of the other passengers on the plane appear to be on the flight headed for vacation. There was a general sense of excitement and relaxation at the terminal this morning. I am thankful for this. Long travel days aren’t fun, but the smiles around me are helping. It is amazing what a smile can do.

Three. It is easy to forget how beautiful the world looks from up here. The clouds are spread out like a floor under the plane. The sun is shining bright. You can see for miles and miles. God is the original creative. I am in awe of his work.

Four. Though, I will be back home late this evening I miss my darling wife and my boy already. This is the furthest I have been from home without them. It is going to be a great day and when it is done I look forward to getting home and curling up next to them.

Name your adversity.

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

There are times in life we encounter adversity. Some of us come up against it in some form every day. It comes with being human. It is not something that can be avoided even though we all try. I have heard that there are only three phases in life. You are either headed into a storm, you are in the storm, or  you are coming out of the storm. I think there is a fourth stage as well. There are times of peace. Make no mistake though, those times can go in an instant.

When I was 25 life was good. I had been married for 5 years. I had a steady job. I was enjoying myself. There wasn’t much that time with my wife, a good nap, and a good meal wouldn’t fix. Then, came the lump.

It felt like I had been kicked hard in a way that hurts a man most. I blew it off for a short time, because after all I was invincible. After the pain persisted I made a visit to the doctor. I was referred to a specialist. Within 5 minutes of meeting with the specialist I was being scheduled for surgery. There was no time to think. There was hardly time to plan. I just knew I had a tumor and they were going in after it. Enter adversity.

Chemo took my hair away. I didn't care. The cancer was no more.

Cancer is not one of those things that you can stand up to by yourself and beat. If you could I wouldn’t have gone through surgery or chemotherapy. I needed help. I had just named what was wrong in my body and measures could be taken to combat it. I listened to the doctors, weighed what they had to say, and then picked the best treatment plan for me. Thank the Lord it worked.  It has been six years and I am cancer free.

What is it you are going through? Call it by name. Don’t beat around the bush. Is it an addiction? Are  you in debt? Are you overweight? Whatever the adversity is, name it. Only then can you start to take steps to overcome it. It may take time to overcome. You may need help getting it done, but now is the time to start. There is a lot of life to live on the other side.

You deserve better than that.

~ David Willis ~ 2 Comments

Today on my lunch break I took a few minutes and flipped through my Facebook app on my iPhone. There wasn’t much going on, but one post grabbed my attention. A lady I knew from high school posted the video link to “Stay” by Sugarland. I made a note to watch it when I got home. I knew the song, but had never seen the video. Whoa. That one rips your heart when you watch it.

I had a whole bunch of thoughts after I watched this one:

One, no woman needs to go through this. You deserve much better. You may not see it, but you do. If you are in this situation, there is very little chance it will get better. Men who do this to women are not worth the tears or the heartbreak. You were created in the image of a God who loves you. Living like this is beneath your dignity.

Two, I love the portion of the song where she decides to get up and stand up for herself. The look on her face when she makes the choice is awesome. It is heart wrenching, but it awesome. You see the fire ignite in her mind. Though the pain of it would crush her, she stands up and declares that she doesn’t have to live that way. There is a long journey ahead, but that was a great first step.

Three, any man who does this to a woman needs to grow up. Man up, make a choice, and take care of the one you choose. Real men don’t cheat. I have been in love with my wife for almost 13 years now. I don’t want another woman. I would be stupid to throw away everything I have built for something as dumb. I told my wife before we were married that I was all in. No games. She has my heart completely.

Lastly, this song is a reminder to cherish the woman I love, who loves me in return. I am forever grateful.

I am thankful for the rain.

~ David Willis ~ 6 Comments

I woke this morning to the sound of thunder. I almost didn’t know what it was. It has been a few months since it has rained in this part of Oklahoma. It has been dry and dusty for weeks. So, I lay there in bed listening to the rain come down. It was a peaceful moment.

Aside from enjoying the sound, I am thankful it rained because my yard and my garden needed it. It amazes me how differently things grow when they are watered by rain water. I can water my yard and it greens up a little. It can rain and the whole yard explodes into life. We also noticed last year that our tomato plants responded really well to the rain. It left everything outside my house looking clean and fresh.

Though I know that the rain is a good thing (or can be), why do I almost always think of it in a bad way? I am usually frustrated when it rains. There is something I wanted to do that the rain has interfered with. Or, the electricity goes out in the house because of a lightning strike (not fond of this one) and we are left in the dark for a while. Despite all of the good things that the rain brings, we focus on the inconveniences or troubles.

Maybe this is why we call the hard times in life the storms. We all face times of life when it feels like the wind is howling around us. Thunder and lightning are crashing from all sides. The water is pouring down, cold and hard. We feel battered and are in desperate need of shelter. Anyone who has ever been caught out in an Oklahoma thunder storm knows exactly why this metaphor is used. The storms are hard, but many times good comes from them.

Have you ever had a storm in your life that caused you to reevaluate the way you did things? I have had many. Cancer, financial hardship, and lost friendships just to name a few. After these storms blew over I had a different perspective on things. Many things that I thought were important no longer were and that is OK. I needed the priority change. The storms left some wreckage, but they also washed a lot of things clean. There was a chance to start over at the storm’s end. The yard had been watered, so to speak.

I try to keep this perspective when it rains (in life and for real). I welcomed the rain today because the ground needed it very much. I welcome the rain in my life because it helps shape my character. I may not always like it when it is going on, but I know that it serves a purpose. Even if I can’t see it immediately.