J. Michael McDade

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

I’m Still Alive

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I went to another funeral today. I only seem to write after funerals. It’s like the only thing worth writing about these days for me, life or death. Everything else seems shallow; I don’t do shallow well anymore. Unfortunately, most things in life are shallow. Jobs are shallow, false community is shallow and even existence in our culture is shallow.

Everyone is afraid of the deep.

Deep is when I am at my best!

The only thing deep lately in my life is death. Death forces you to experience life.

Our society is so messed up. This really isn’t how we are supposed to live.

At the funeral today, a very young pastor who really got to know Jennifer during her illness preached her eulogy. He talked about her smile. He was a witness. He got to experience her last days over a years time. The love in his voice was genuine for my friend. He truly loved and knew Jennifer. It was heart warming.

I have to be honest I was jealous. I would have loved to held her hand, or sung to her like he did. I was at work. He was living. I was busy dying. To experience this love death had to be involved. I hate that about this thing we call life. None of us really live until it is too late.

Today I am writing; today I feel alive. When I got in my truck the first song on the radio was from the group Pearl Jam. The chorus, “I’m still alive” is ringing in my head as I write. My soul aches for those who lost their friend, a mother and a wife, and Jennifer was all of these things, but today she makes me feel alive. Her soul is present!

I love you Jennifer Robinson and always will.

Rest in peace, Mike

Please pray for her family, they will need it.

 

Only at Funerals

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I was sitting with a wise sage friend of mine not to long ago and he said something profound to me, “Mike, you will get to a point when God takes more than He gives in your life.” Now before you religious fanatics have a chance to throw your two cents in please wait and think. Be self-aware. I have lost a lot in the last three months. I think I may be stepping into that stage. I have lost three friends in the last few months. My youngest has moved 15 hours from home, and I am in the middle of another big transition in my life.

Can you relate?

Lost a parent lately? Loved One?

Health Deteriorated?

I know I am not alone, and I hate funerals, but something really special has happened at the last three I have been too. I have reconnected with people from my past I love. I don’t mean people who tell me they love me, or people who love me for what I do for them. I have tons of them; I mean people I have loved and they have loved me most of my life. It has been heart warming. I hope people tell stories and drink beer and laugh at my funeral. I hope someone preaches my funeral that really knows me. I hope others experience what I have lately when I pass away.

I hate the loss we experience when someone dies, but I love the love that transpires between those who are left to mourn. It gives me peace knowing death is coming for all of us, and knowing I am loved by these people.

To those who I have reconnected to, and you know who you are, I hope we find the time to spend with each other. I don’t want to be reminded ONLY AT FUNERALS.

Love you guys!

 

RIP Terry Scott

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?