Attitude

 “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes (Chuck Swindoll).”

            Our attitude is huge in the way we live our life and the way we are perceived. As Christians even in the worst of times we should be able to look someone in the face when they ask us how we are doing and we should be able to tell them that we are blessed. That doesn’t mean that we are having a good or bad day that you aren’t feeling sick, or depressed, it just means that you have God in your life and you understand that with each passing day you are truly blessed. I am reminded of the story of Joseph. Joseph was loved by his father, he was loved so much that his brothers were very jealous of him. They became so jealous that they sold him into slavery.  The brothers keep Joseph's coat of many colors, kill a goat, and dip the coat in the goat's blood. They then explain to Jacob how they found the bloodied and torn coat and ask him if he recognizes it. Meanwhile, the Ishmaelites (or Midianites) travel to Egypt and sell Joseph to the household of Potiphar "one of Pharaoh's eunuchs, the captain of the guard." (Gen.37: 36) The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered. (Gen.39: 2) Eventually, "thus Joseph found favor with his master, and he became his personal servant. Indeed, his master put him in charge of his household and entrusted him with all that he had." (Gen. 39: 4)

Even though Potiphar was a Eunuch, he had a wife. The wife kept trying to lure Joseph to bed. Joseph was an honorable man and did not betray his master. Potiphar's wife tries one last time to get Joseph to bed by grabbing his cloak; he runs away, leaving his cloak in her hands. She falsely accuses Joseph of trying to sleep with her and Joseph is thrown in prison. Even in prison "The Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in everything." (Gen.39: 23) Joseph became a supervisor of other prisoners.

While in the prison, the pharaoh's butler and baker offended the king and they were thrown in jail. Joseph was responsible for them and helped them to interpret their dreams. The baker was hanged and the butler got his job back, just as in the interpretation that Joseph had given them. The butler forgot all about Joseph until about two years later.

Pharaoh had dreamed and no one in his court could interpret the dream. Then the butler remembered Joseph's interpretations in jail and informed the Pharaoh who summoned Joseph. Joseph interpreted the dream as a vision of the future where there would be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Joseph recommended that Pharaoh put someone in charge of food management. Joseph got the job. Joseph became second only to Pharaoh as he began laying aside crops for the famine.

When the famine came "the whole world came to Egypt to buy corn from Joseph"¦" (Gen.41: 57) Eventually Joseph's brothers come to buy corn too. They do not recognize Joseph and he makes them go back to Israel to get their brother Benjamin, Joseph's closest brother, also born of Rachel. After an emotional meeting Joseph reveals his identity and there is a tearful reunion.

The sons return to Israel to get Jacob. After Jacob meets Pharaoh, the land in the area of Rameses is given to the Hebrews. Joseph continued to monitor the food during the famine. After the famine "Israel settled in Egypt, in Goshen; there they acquired land, and were fruitful and increased greatly." (Gen.47: 27) This was how the Jews came to be in Egypt until Moses would lead them out hundreds of years later.

He was loved and hated, favored and abused, tempted and trusted, exalted and abased. Yet at no point in the one-hundred-and-ten-year life of Joseph did he ever seem to get his eyes off God or cease to trust him. Adversity did not harden his character. Prosperity did not ruin him. He was the same in private as in public. He was a truly great man.

Joseph could have easily entered each of these tough situations with an attitude that was full of defeat, or loneliness, or anger, but instead he put his eyes on God. With his eyes on God joseph understood that while glorifying God continually through all of his struggles that God would guide and protect him. His attitude was so fixed on glorifying God that when given the opportunity to completely give payback to his brothers who were so cruel to him he chose not to but to instead give them the mercy and grace that was given to him from God.

Apply this to your life, are there times when life sucks and you totally let it affect the rest of your day, week, or even month? Are there times where you lose sight of the great plans God has for you because you are too busy worrying about the tiny road blocks that Satan puts in front of you? Take the time today to find the attitude of worship that can view the road ahead of you and can look at all the ups and downs of life and be able to exude the life and words of being a truly blessed child of God. If Joseph could do it with all of the hardships that were thrown at him then we too should be able to take the life we have and make it a glorifying statement of faith for our savior!

Limitless

Limitless

SO in my blog writing I hit heavily on the scripture at first, today I will start with one powerful scripture, and then share a story of inspiration. The scripture is Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” I wanted to talk with you about being limitless. We as people will put a limit to what we can do before we even try something, why is that? Is it because if we set our expectations to a lower standard anything above that will make us feel good about ourselves? It reminds me of the story of a fish that is kept in a very small aquarium will only grow to the limits of that aquarium, but a fish that is out in the open waters has no boundaries and that fish has the potential to grow in full. Our limits are only what we make them to be.  In my own life I have been inspired by someone that is not even three years old yet, about how to persevere and push yourself beyond what the world thinks you can do. The year was 2008; my lovely wife and I decided to try to have a baby. With relatively no trouble we conceived and became pregnant. Later into the pregnancy we had our first ultrasound, we were so excited for the whole experience, to see the baby, maybe find out what its gender was going to be Etc... While we were there we noticed that the demeanor of the ultrasound tech changed, he became really quiet and focused on trying to find something.  He left us there to wait for what seemed to be an eternity and went to get a doctor, we figured something was wrong. Later the doctor came in and said he would like us to get a second level ultrasound to see if there was anything wrong. This put so much stress and strain on our lives at a time where we wanted to celebrate and be excited about the newness of life we were bringing into the world.  Later through all the tests and procedures that had to be done on my wife we were told our baby was going to have trisomy 21 or what most of us know as Down syndrome. The worst part of all of this was that when meeting with the genetics department and our doctors they all wanted to ensure us that it was still early enough to terminate the pregnancy if we wanted to. It was almost as they felt they were trying to save us the burden of raising this “kind” of child. It was as if they had already put a limit on what my child was going to be able to do. I remember them saying so many things that put a negative spin on what we were in for. After all the tears and fears of what to expect my wife and I knew we would never terminate the pregnancy and I knew we were the BEST people to give this child a “normal” chance on living.  January 27, 2009 Makaiya Grace Crutcher came into this world, and was absolutely beautiful! However, she had some problems and was going to need to spend time in the NICU. Turns out that our daughter had heart impairments; she had two holes in her heart and a faulty valve. This is a common issue with many infants with Down syndrome.  She also had a hard time with eating and we had to supplement food through her NG tube (feeding tube that goes through her nose to stomach). After 16 days we were able to finally take our precious baby home, and couldn’t wait to show her the world! What we did not know is that we would be getting very familiar with Kaiser'e Women and Children's Hospital in Roseville. In our daughters first six months of life it seemed as if we spent two weeks of every month in the hospital.  Makaiya would aspirate on her bottle or because of reflux and would go into heart failure and we would become nurse mommy and daddy, never leaving her side while at the hospital, we even learned how to use their machines and everything. It was pretty intense, and then the biggest challenge came into our lives, heart surgery. We opted to have Makaiya's heart surgery at UC Davis because we wanted family to be close and we really trusted and respected our heart surgeon there. What we weren’t expecting is that we would come seconds away from losing our daughter because of (in my opinion) poor after care by the UC Davis nurses.  Like always I spent every minute, maybe even second by my daughter’s hospital bed. It was hard to see her with wires and tubes all over her, and I felt so helpless when all I wanted to do was to fix everything. One day the nurses and doctors decided it was time to remover her breathing tube and have her start breathing all on her own, even though they spent all night removing plugs (Mucus from her aspirations) from her lungs. The next morning as we were in there I was checking on my daughter holding her hand and I noticed she was turning blue and I told the nurse who shrugged it off at first, then I said NO she is turning blue…. They called a code blue within seconds it felt as if over 100 people were in our room shoving us out. My heart sank and I broke down crying, I thought I was going to lose my baby girl, my wife and I were devastated. We found out that they had to do compression for 15 minutes; we immediately thought that even if she made it she was going to be so brain damaged that she would be a vegetable. My wife was destroyed but we prayed and prayed for God to intervene. We put limits on what she was going to do if she made it but God had bigger plans. They got her stabilized and after an hour had past we were able to go in. she looked so out of it from all the medications her eyes were all over the placed and she looked like the lights were on but no one was home. My wife couldn’t take it so I asked her to go home and spend time with Micah our son.  I didn’t trust the staff enough to leave my daughter for a second so I wasn’t going anywhere. The next day Makaiya was in a better state she was a bit more alert and the staff there couldn’t believe she was the same girl that hours earlier they were giving compressions to. She was our miracle, already breaking down limits of what people thought of her, she was not only a survivor but a thriver. Makaiya was going to be ok and not just that she would amaze us daily, with her fun personality to her vocabulary. Just when we would think she may never get something she does and goes even further. Makaiya is been not using her feeding tube for almost half a year, she was hundreds of words she knows and she working harder and harder on walking. She throws balls across the house while playing catch and she loves being around other kids especially in Sunday bible school. This girl is incredible and she will soon be in the school system where she can once again take what someone tells her she won’t be able to do and blow their mind with her perseverance and tenacity.  What can we say we push her like she is a “regular” kid and she is, no matter, her diagnosis or title our daughter would be special, not in a bad way in a way that all amazing people are. She has the twinkle in her eye the face that says meet me and I’ll turn any bad day around. I wanted to share this story with you to think about your life, put it in perspective with the many gifts and blessing you are given, how are you using them. Are you putting all your effort into things that are bringing you down or that are uplifting? God has great plans for you if you rely on his wisdom and guidance he will remove the limits we set on ourselves and make our potential limitless.

Here is a video of my daughters first year of life and another video of her fun personality now at age 2 ½ please enjoy and be inspired like we are every day.