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LET GO AND LET GOD.   I hate that cliché.  I suppose some might be offended by me and my revulsion toward a slogan they hold so dear.  It’s on bumper stickers; it’s on T-shirts.  I know a particular group of people who truly do their level best to live by that phrase.  They love it, and I love for them.  But I hate it for myself.   I hate it because it’s easy.  I hate it because it’s simple.  I hate it because it’s a trite truism that makes it sound easy and makes it sound si

It was one of those times when I couldn’t find the words to describe what was happening.  I hate those times because I love words and what they can describe.  Words are something of a strength of mine, but in this case they were a resolute failure.   And I hated it.   There were many ways in which his game was better than mine, but in other ways my game was tighter than his.  He was more athletic and physically inclined—I have a learning disability that makes me clumsy.  The

I was ten days out from my next fight and toward the end of a hard training camp.  For some reason I remember that it was a Wednesday.  I was a young fighter about to fight my fourth or fifth amateur match and I had been working hard to get ready.  I wanted to win this one.  My coach was a solid fighter who would later go on to fight on the highest of MMA stages.  But that night he was the only one near my weight class to show for practice.  So, his undivided attention was fo

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)  I’ve come to a point in my life where many of—if not most of—my friends have tried to legally murder me.  My friends have punched me in the face, choked me into unconsciousness, and double-legged me through walls.  My friends have hurt me, injured me, consoled me, corrected me, and shared with me through both success and failure. It’s impossible to do the things I love by myself.  I love fighting—I love comba

Sometimes the joy is in the chaos.  That’s probably one of the things that attracted me to combat sports.  There are so many things out of my control but there are many things within my control.  The challenge is learning the difference between the two, and that’s one of the things I love about it.  It’s a microcosm of life in a sort of way.   I find myself pressing for that submission, focused on that arm or on that choke.  I can feel myself getting close—there’s a sense we

I still remember my first Brazilian Jiu-jitsu class.  It wasn’t so easy to find in those days.  It took a little effort.  I was training Jeet Kwon Do, and my Guro (teacher) had met someone who’d opened a BJJ academy not too far away.  My Guro thought it would be a good idea for us to check it out, so we did.   It was a Saturday morning when I found my way to a giant warehouse in the industrial area of Portland to meet up with a few of my friends as well as a few that would be

God has a plan, and it’s a good one.  He has set a path before me (and you) and has developed an entire game plan.  He sees the past, the future, and He sees the now.  He knows where it is going and He knows exactly how long it’s going to take to get there.   A man's steps are established by the LORD, and He takes pleasure in his way. (Psalms 37:23)    It is my nature to resist God’s plan—it just is.  I don’t like His timing.  When things feed good, I want them to last foreve

It’s possible that I share too much on this blog.  I don’t even know who’s reading it, and that’s not the important thing.  This is still the place where I am processing myself to myself.  I’m just happy to have a couple of you along, because I think it encourages me to be honest with myself.   So, in all honesty, I’ll acknowledge the fact that I’m currently in therapy.  I’ve got some life stuff going on (a lot of it), and I work the sort of job that takes an emotional and sp

I wish that I could say I was the sort of person who had an unshakeable, steadfast kind of faith, but I’m not.  That might be one of the reasons I write this blog—because I’m trying to explain my faith to myself in a way that maybe the Spirit can use to communicate with my soul.  My faith is a battered and broken one, but it is the only faith that I have.  So I guess that makes it mine.   If you were to look at my face, you might see an appropriate visual representation of wh

Sometimes I need to make myself do difficult things.  I suppose that it’s a way to focus myself and gain perspective in difficult seasons of life.  So I decided to make myself do something difficult in my current difficult season.  I decided to compete.   I’m signed up and everything.  I’ve already paid for my admission, which I think pretty much obligates me to show up.   I went to my chiropractor yesterday and he asked me when the last time was I competed.  I think it’s alm

Sometimes the presence of hope is harder than the pain of no hope at all, and I immediately knew this was going to be one of those moments for me, again.  I could see just a little pinpoint of light, a small instant of possibility.  And then it was gone. I hit the mat in a disorganized pile, limbs akimbo. “Again,” he said, “let’s go.”  I have long prided myself on never being the first to quit.  My mentality has always been to embrace the grind—some just call it stubbornness.

It’s the “not yet” moments that drive me crazy.  They drive me crazy because I struggle to understand them.   I have never been a patient man, and that lack of patience often translates into the way I fight.  I tend to want to force the issue.  I like to set the pace.  I want to be the one to determine where the fight goes next.   I’m really bad at patience.   I’m really bad at waiting.   In fighting, we usually call them transitions.  They are the moments when we move from o

There are some who might argue that I am a bit too…overtly honest…in this text, but the truth is that I wright this for m own good and benefit, and I have made a recent commitment to myself to embrace honesty in my own self-assessments.  I write to process and the process requires honesty.   And in my honesty, especially of late, I have come to the uncomfortable realization that I truly struggle against feelings of self-worth.  There are thoughts, sometimes sneaky and often a

Everything burned.  It burned in a bad way.  In short, I was physically exhausted.  I’m not a biologist, but there was probably some sort of lactic acid involved. The opponent I faced was a pretty big dude, and maybe he seemed bigger because I was so spent.  I had competed earlier in a grappling exhibition, in front of a whole crowd of people.  It hadn’t been my best performance, but I consoled myself with the fact that the team I had competed against thought enough of my s

It was one of the first things I learned on the mats, and at the time it didn’t really seem that important.  Now, it’s one of the first things that I teach on the mats, even though some might not think it’s that important.  It is a necessary skill to any martial artist, and one of the skills that translates outside and off the mats. It's the ability to fall. In my experience, Gravity always wins. It’s the undisputed champion of the world.  Everything is trying to find a way t

I had screamed myself raw.  It’s what usually happens when I show up to corner my fighters.  I tell myself—every time—that I’m going to be careful.  But, inevitably, I had lied to myself.  I found myself leaning at the cage door once more and screaming my tonsils into oblivion. My fighter had been prepared.  He had trained for this moment—actually, he had trained for all potential 15 minutes of this moment.  We had worked game plans, escapes for when the game plan failed, sit