J. Michael McDade

Honest, open and sometimes courageous conversations about freedom, life, love and God.

Downsizing Again

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My youngest is headed to Nebraska to go to college. My wife and I have had a dream about traveling for years. The intersection of these two events has allowed us to make the choice to follow a dream. Both of my sons will be over 16 hours away from home. Time for a change. That is why we chose to buy a camper and capture the moments and memories in our new blog Traveling RV Fools.

So here we go again.

We had a huge house in Colorado: three stories, five bedrooms and four full baths. The last year I never even went in the basement. Consumerism at its best. We sold a ton of stuff before we moved into a 1400 square foot house back in Clinton, Mississippi. We were still packed in like sardines. After two more garage sales over the last two years we actually fit pretty comfortably in our house now.

Now we are doing it again.

We are scaling back to a 180 square foot camper. I would love to tell you it is going to be easy. We went through about 30 boxes of files, books and keepsakes yesterday. We threw away five garbage bags of stuff. I found a file of keepsakes from my men’s ministry days while in the middle of this process. I read letter after letter from people who’s lives had been toughed by something I did or said. The tears rolling down my cheeks let me know I needed this downsizing exercise. It is helping me to realize what is really important to me, and it is not the accumulation of 34 years of crap. It is the people I love, the memories we share and being close to my boys.

Downsizing is both painful and rewarding. It is how you react that is really important. You have to have a new theme for your life, mine is Freedom.

Below is a book that helped me immensely with this process.

Content or Disenchanted?

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I was sitting with a good friend a couple of weeks back when he asked me this question, “are you ever content?” I didn’t have time to sit with the question for long that night, so I scribbled it down on a napkin and stuffed it in my pocket for a later date.

That napkin has haunted me ever since he asked me the question!

Fast forward a few weeks, and I am sitting in one of my favorite hole-in-the wall restaurants on a chilly Friday afternoon eating lunch alone; I decided to bring the napkin. When I wrestle with questions like this one I have to be in a place I can be alone and watch people.

Nobody is smiling today as I write, but I bet if you asked the people within my view if they were content most would say yes. The problem is they don’t look content; they look disenchanted. They look hollow, like an old dead tree that just hasn’t fallen yet, but serves as a hole for others to live in.

I am content at this particular moment. I am enjoying good music, good food and doing something that brings me artistic joy, writing.

Am I content?

Hell no, I am not content, and until they throw dirt over the box they lower me in the ground with I will not be content.

What I have found when people tell me they are content they have either given up, or don’t know how to change.

Being content is overrated!

Thanks for reading my stuff!

What Do You Want?

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What do you want?

Sit with that question just a minute; did you immediately dismiss it as not being important? I am sure some of my more materialistic readers might have said a boat or a car, but I think it boils down to one thing, most of us desire to be loved. So how do we solve the problem of not feeling worthy of love itself. Imagination and dreaming are two of the best elixirs in learning how to love you. Without them self-pity and codependency reign in your life. We must have dreams. Attaching yourself to someone else’s dreams only deepen the roots of unhappiness and unworthiness. We have to dig deeper into the question, “what do you want?”

Music is a huge part of my life and one of the things that helps open my mind to dreaming and desires. One day while listening to the song Watch Over You by Alterbridge, a haunting lyric caught me off guard. The lyric goes like this, “How can you love someone, and not yourself?” You can’t!

So what are the answers to these questions for you?

What do you want from your spouse?

What do you want from your children? Your family?

What do you want from your career?

What is the meaning of your life?

What do you want from God?

Quit asking everyone what they need from you. This may sound selfish, but I promise if you are running on an empty tank and only loving others from a heart of obligation than you are not really loving them at all.

To truly begin to receive from life you must take the time to wrestle with these questions. You see love is an action, and the best action you can do to show yourself love is to act on your dreams and desires. There will be times that are tough, and you will hit roadblocks and failures, but they are just a part of the process of loving yourself. If you can love yourself through failure you can love yourself through anything.

So, what do you want?

Caretaker-A Lonely Life

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Were you taught to be a dreamer?

Were you taught you were special?

Do you realize or recognize that your desires are important?

I never was taught this by my parents, the education system, our current form of government or my church body. I was taught to be a cog in the wheel; I was taught to be a caretaker.

One of the parts of unraveling my life that I have despised the most was the realization I was a caretaker. John Eldredge said it best, “The worst thing that can happen to us as men is when the false self is successful”. My caretaking made me a successful manager, and has helped me rise to the top of almost every organization that I have ever been involved with.

It really is easier to take care of everyone else’s needs isn’t it? The internal psyche of a caretaker says, “If I am focused on them, I don’t have to focus on myself”. If you are a caretaker, you know how hard it is to ask for someone to take care of your needs. I know it is for me; uncovering my own dreams and aspirations has been even harder. I was never taught how to dream, how to aspire to be more, or how to reach for something I desire. Even as I write these words, I can feel the churning of anxiety in my stomach. “What do you want?” is a question that shames most of us more than we can handle, so we would rather ask others, “What do you need me to do for you?” That is much easier, isn’t it?

There are two aspects of being a caretaker that really end up harming others: being controlling and being critical. The biggest issue with being a caretaker is that what you are really doing is controlling others. You are getting what you want (avoiding your own needs) by actually doing for others, but this leads to a shallow existence because you never reach deep into your on soul to uncover your desires. You can become important to others because they can’t make it without you, but is the real purpose of life importance?

The second thing that being a caretaker does is it turns loving people (caretakers) into critics. It is easy to become critical of others if you are doing everything for everyone. It allows others to be less responsible and you to be more responsible, which leads to bitterness and contempt. Criticism becomes our release valve for the bitterness and contempt that grows in our souls, but it never releases enough pressure. Just below the surface bitterness and contempt brew, and the caretaker wrestles with the pressure to please everyone. I have noticed this is a place that many women find themselves when they have a husband, a career and a couple of kids to take care of. Many women that I have counseled have used this line in my office: “I don’t even know who I am anymore.” This is not life; this is existence.

The next few blogs are going to be committed to helping my fellow caretakers become better leaders, fathers, mothers and spouses, but more importantly, to help unlock the life that you may have never tasted, a life of desire.

If you know someone who is a caretaker share this blog with them. It may change their life.

Thanks for reading my stuff! Hope you have a great day!

 

Just Listen Son

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For some reason prayer has become something I am very interested in understanding over the last year. I have had the privilege of being taught by some people who I would consider prayer warriors. These people have taught me a lot about prayer, but I have begun to wonder at a deeper level what is actually heard by God, and how really should we be doing this thing we call prayer.

The real question I have in my mind that I can’t grasp the significance of is corporate prayer. Every weekend tons of people are involved in corporate prayer. I meet with two groups each week to pray, but I am beginning to wonder about how effective it really is for what we pray about. We seem to use God like an eternal slot machine that is there to provide us with requests for whatever we deem necessary for our lives. Jesus doesn’t seem to address this message but once in scripture; actually, He seems to discount the corporate prayer thing. So is it just for show when a preacher prays on TV, radio or within his own congregation? For some of them I am sure their hearts are in the right place, but for others not so much, so are we doing what Jesus actually instructed us to do?

I am not just bashing the establishment. People ask me to pray for them all of the time. Sometimes I remember, but many times I have forgotten to do it. Then I lie to them when they ask have you been praying for me. Oh Yea! Every day I have been praying for you. Sound familiar?  I hate to admit that part, but it is true. I am not doing this anymore.

I have also seen a prayer chain of people (locked hands) with super strong faith heal someone who was really sick. It was amazing, but most people don’t believe it can happen, so it doesn’t happen much. They accuse you of being psycho to keep you in line. This part is sad because it seems to be something that we have the power to do if we just believe in it.

Prayer is really confusing. How do you do it? What is really effective?

I decided to go to the source.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth; they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This then is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”-Jesus

Why in the room (closet)? Why such few words? If God already knows, why bother?

Because he wants a relationship with you, He wants you to listen to Him. He wants your trust. I get it now God, “Just listen, Son”! Trust my will for your life.

I would love to hear your feedback on prayer!