"What If You Didn't Matter, Part 2" By Michael Misja North Coast Family Foundation (northcoastfamily.com)   “There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are to yet to come will not be remembered”    Proverbs 1:11 NIV   In the previous blog I wondered if my life will matter to anyone a hundred years from now.  In this blog we are going to go farther, stretching the question to whether all my efforts … [Read more...]

One Of Us Is Crazy Charles Misja, Ph.D. Ever had the experience of listening to a loved one talk to you and something just didn’t make sense because you walked away feeling like you were crazy?  Or, maybe he/she was crazy?  Well, one of you is crazy but you’re not sure whom?   We can feel off-balance, even a bit psychologically disoriented because we’re just not sure what, or who, to believe.  It’s like someone coming to you and … [Read more...]

Managing Christmas and Holiday Stress Michael Misja, Ph.D.   A 2006 survey by the American Psychological Association found that 38% of Americans said their stress increased during the holiday season. Lack of time, money, and the pressure to buy presents and attend family gatherings were the main stressors. The good news was that 54% of those surveyed thought stress levels were about the same as always.  The better news was … [Read more...]

  What If You Didn’t Matter?  Part 1 By Michael Misja, NCFF   Did you ever have the experience of listening to a talk and having one statement jump out, causing you to not hear another word the speaker said?  That happened to me a few weeks back.   At a men’s breakfast a speaker who had just returned from a mission’s trip was lamenting the fact that so few men were involved in the challenging work of helping … [Read more...]

Do Men Need Counseling? By Michael Misja, Ph.D.   “I can handle it on my own.”   “I know what I need to do, what’s he going to tell me that I don’t already know?” Counseling men is different than counseling women. When I see a man for a first appointment, I know I’m being sized up.  Some guys are wondering who is going to be the Alpha Male in the office, me or him.  Others wonder if they are going to be lectured or … [Read more...]

WILL MY KIDS BE OK IF I GET A DIVORCE? By Michael Misja, Ph.D.   Most people struggling with whether or not to stay in a marriage wonder how a divorce will affect their children.  They ask if their kids will be better or worse off if they decide to divorce. Many come to the conclusion that their sons and daughters will be fine if their parents’ marriage ends. Their reasoning goes like this:   -I don’t want to teach … [Read more...]

One of my deepest life convictions is that pain must not be wasted. Pain is the rich, fertile soil for the growth of wisdom.  God wants us to reflect into our pain.  I once led a weekend retreat focusing on how God can help us “mine” our difficult life experiences in order to arrive at personal beliefs about life. Recently I have come to believe that I can also learn not only from my pain, but from my own stupidity. Let me walk you through … [Read more...]

  Sammy Davis sang “I gotta be me!”  Frank Sinatra crooned “I did it my way.”  In Hamlet Shakespeare wrote “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Was he right?   Contemporary culture tells you to become unbound from anyone who tells you how you should live, how you should think, or what standard you should conform to.  Nothing should … [Read more...]

Dad just lay in the hospital bed - a shell of a man. He had been rushed to the intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic. My brother, Chuck, and I watched as he emerged from his comatose state to discover he was strapped into a bed. His bewildered look revealed his confusion of having needles and tubes stuck into his body. Perhaps his largest frustration was the ventilator tube stuck into his mouth, preventing speech and intensifying his … [Read more...]

We live in a culture obsessed with success. Our kids, our jobs, our homes, our churches can’t be ordinary. To accept being average (not exceptional) is agreeing to give up on ourselves and God. I recently spoke to someone on a search committee for a new pastor. The pastor they were looking for had to demonstrate success. He told me his church would only contact pastors who had churches that had 20% growth in the last year. We’ve got to be … [Read more...]