BENJI.ZIMMER.MN


Did you know I moved? Well I did. VISIT BENJI.ZIMMER.MN to stay in touch with Read more

Happy 1st Birthday Alexis Grace


Milestones define most of our lives: The moment I met Ashley. The day we got married. The day she walked into my work to surprise Read more

Lent Recap


By a show of hands, how many of you knew that Lent was 47 days? Okay you can put your hand down now & Read more

When It's Your Turn


A few weeks ago I posted about: what is the hardest thing you have endured? A few days later we watched and prayed Read more

Be encouraged.


In Paul's first letter to the church in Thessaloniki , he offers some closing words in chapter 5. "For God chose to save us Read more

Creating Doubt


Lately I have been thinking a lot about . . . DOUBT. Do you think it is healthy for churches, pastors or Christians in Read more

••••••

» Ashley Zimmerman

Lent Recap

Posted on 04/25/2011 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Honesty, Personal, Spiritual | Leave a comment

By a show of hands, how many of you knew that Lent was 47 days?

Okay you can put your hand down now & that goes for me too!

After about 30 days of participating in a Lenten fast, I started to do some math and realized I would be about a week short of Easter if I only fasted from sugar for 40 days. I was confused. I thought Lent was 40 days? Well as it turns out Lent is 40 days, but during a 47 day period in which you are supposed to “rest” on the sabbath. That means if you are fasting from something you can eat it every Sunday! I had no idea! I had been fasting including the Sundays for the first 30+ days. Just goes to show you how much I paid attention during certain Bible classes in college. In light of the new information I decided to fast for the full 47 days rather than change part way through.

THE PRACTICAL:

In 47 days I consumed 1,283 grams of sugar or 2.82 pounds of natural and artificial sugar. I am sure that my calculations are off slightly for each day, so it would be safe to assume that I consumed under 1350 grams of sugar or just short of 3 pounds of sugar. In the 6 days prior to Lent I consumed just over 1,200 grams of sugar! I went from terribly unhealthy to healthy & balanced. I was able to scale back from 200 grams of sugar a day to just 27.3!

The obvious side effect of my change in diet was a result in significant weight loss. I weighed 199.9 on the first day of Lent. I weighed 186.4 on the last morning. The total weight lost 13.5 pounds. With about 2 weeks to go my weight was actually 183.7 for a total of 16.2 pounds lost, but the last two weeks have been such whirlwind that I have not been able to workout and have been eating my stress.

THE PLAN:

The plan was to eat sugars differently. The goal was to find time to read 45 minutes per day. With better levels of energy and a depth to my reading, my personal hope was that I would develop my relationships and cultivate friendships around me in light of the newness of what God had done in my life.

THE RESULTS:

I succeeded in eating sugar differently and it made me feel a lot more energetic. As a result of the change in diet (the first few days were rough) my attitude improved as well as my outlook on life. I felt a passion and restlessness for the great things of life like I hadn’t felt in a long time. Things were looking up and was excited to see what God would do in my life during Lent.

I was able to finish two books, Love Wins by Rob Bell & Soulprint by Mark Batterson and I am most of the way through three other books: Running the Spiritual Path, Wooden, & King’s Cross. I have really enjoyed getting back to reading and devouring books like I did before Alexis was born.  Through the first 35 days I was right on target with reading 45 minutes a day during Lent.

THE CHANGE:

Lent was an amazing and encouraging journey until the last 12 days. I was drawing closer to God, my wife and my friends and enjoying the plan I had laid out; but our plans are not always God’s plans. On April 13, Sean Drozd, Ashley’s brother passed away and life took a different path. The sugar fast became harder to concentrate on and the reading plan fell off the to do list all together. Around the same time Alexis started teething and caught a cold. Sleep eluded me, diet didn’t matter anymore and surviving the ups and downs of each day became the only priority.

THE RECAP:

Lent started with a couple goals and I feel great that I was able to accomplish some of those goals by reading more, eating healthier and finding more positive energy. However, when Lent started one of the last things on my mind was what God sacrificed when He sent His son to the cross to die for our sin. I knew that was what Lent was about, but it was far from my goal to reflect upon. “Maybe around Easter I will think about that.” I said to myself.

Yet, at the end of Lent God’s sacrifice is the only thing I can think about. Jesus death was illuminated by the loss of Ashley’s brother. Putting myself in Ashley’s shoes or her parent’s role was a difficult and emotional task. What would happen if I lost my brother? What would happen if I lost my child? How would I react? What emotions would I experience? I can’t even imagine if I was asked to sacrifice my only child: I couldn’t do it.

Yet God did. For you. For me. For everyone.

Lent has been an emotional journey with extreme highs and tremendous lows but when it drew to a close on Resurrection Day I was flooded with emotion. God’s sacrifice trumps all the pain and heartache, all the sin and suffering, all the ups and downs. God gave so that we could live. I am so thankful for the sacrifice and although I know that there will be plenty of hard days to come I can walk confidently into the future knowing that God loves me so much that he makes all things new!

When It’s Your Turn

Posted on 04/14/2011 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted about: what is the hardest thing you have endured? A few days later we watched and prayed for some friends who went through a horrible tragedy with the loss of their unborn daughter and the near death moments with the mother. Life is fragile and with any given day or any given moment the pendulum can swing in your direction.

Yesterday was our turn.

My father in law Frank has a older son from a previous marriage, Sean. Without expectation and without any warning at the age of 44, Sean Drozd passed away yesterday afternoon at his home in Venice Beach California.

Shock . . . Heartache . . . Sadness . . .

They charge in like a lion on the hunt. You never saw them coming and there is nothing you can do to stop them. Overwhelmed by the news my heart aches for my wife. During a period of Ashley’s life in Junior and High school her brother move out to Las Vegas and lived with them. Ashley and Sean built a special connection that will never be forgotten.

I will always remember the first time I met Sean when we went to Venice. He looked right at Ashley and said, “I really like this guy!” Sean’s positive attitude and energy were infectious! He always had a way of making you laugh and feel better about yourself. Although, Sean wasn’t always a great person and caused plenty of heartache for many that knew him in his past, but the Sean Drozd that I knew brought a smile to my face and will always be remember that way.

In January we were able to visit Sean and he was able to meet his niece for the first time. I am sad for Alexis that she will not ever get to know her Uncle Sean because he would have been a great friend and uncle to her.

We never know when it will be our turn to endure the hard stuff of life so in this time we are turning to God, our small group of friends, and our families to draw the strength we need to walk through the hard stuff of life. Over the next few days we will all be sorting through the pain and heartache, but I know that favorite memories and moments will emerge, however; right now it doesn’t take away the shock, the pain and the heartache for Ashley and her family. Sean was survived by his grandmother Gerda, his mother Angela, his father Frank, stepmother Pam and sister Ashley. Please keep each and every one of them in your prayers as the shock of what has happened settles in each of their lives differently. Pray that God’s peace will transcend all of the pain and heartache and comfort all of them in their time of loss and grief.

 

One Word – Part II

Posted on 02/28/2011 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Honesty | 3 Comments

This morning I introduced a question from Mark Batterson’s book, Soulprint: “If you could describe yourself in one word, what would it be?” I didn’t have an answer. Last week when I first started this journey one night lying in bed right before we were both about to drift off to sleep I unfolded the whole story of Mark in Soulprint to my wife and I asked her if she could describe me in one word. My wife, despite being nearly asleep shot up and basically went off. It went something like this:

“That question is so stupid. People can’t know people from one word. You can’t use one word to describe yourself because it has a different meaning for you and a different meaning for me. Plus you have different areas of your life so there is not one word that will capture a description of your spiritual life or your social life or your work life. These types of questions are just so dumb they should never be asked in an interview situation. I mean come on, really Benj, one word?”

Mind you I was paraphrasing but you get the point, my wife didn’t like the question nor did she want to give me a one word answer. At this point I rolled over and called it a night, I really didn’t want to engage the subject further. I would let life run its course over the next few days, maybe as I went through day-to-day routine I would have a revelation about what the true, honest and real one word was available to describe me. Guess what?

Nothing happened.

No revelation. No prophecy. No enlightenment. No answers.

I was still left searching, asking and wondering if it was possible to describe myself with one word that would best encapsulate who I am to the core. Honestly my wife’s comments had rattled me and I was left wondering after a couple days if this was even a worthwhile exercise? Do I really need to know how to describe myself in one word? Is that even what I am searching for anymore or is this something deeper?

Do you agree or disagree with my wife? Is this a trivial pursuit of some question that is not important or is this a worthy hunt to know oneself?

 

Language of the Jackass

Posted on 01/19/2011 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Honesty, Personal | 8 Comments

When I was growing up I attended Spring Lake Wesleyan Church. The first sermon of every new year, our senior Pastor Dennis Jackson would preach a very familiar sermon. The premise of the sermon was that we should pick a word for that year. We should ask God to give us a word to study, to learn about, and a word to apply to our life. I never took much stock in this practice when I was younger, but as I get older and think more about resolutions and life change I recall back to those familiar sermons often.

After spending the last week of December and the first week of January praying about what I should make my word for the year, I landed on one very difficult word: surrender. 2011 is the year of surrender. Surrendering my pride, my way, my hurts, my habits and my hang-ups. I have been working on this process for a few years now, but I finally feel like I am in a place where I need to let it all go and step fully into freedom.

Funny thing about the word surrender, it is kind of like patience. God doesn’t just give you patience, he gives you the opportunity to practice patience. God doesn’t give you surrender, but rather he gives you the opportunity to practice surrendering yourself. 2011 started out with a lot of hope and promise. I was going to surrender myself and rely on God. I was going to give up the need to be right and learn from others. I was going to . . . but the more I think about the surrender, the more closely I clutch the practice to my heart and become increasingly stubborn.

My wife is sick and very contagious. Since I am on baby duty this week I am doing the best I can to avoid my wife. But the only thing that has happened is that we have created a void. I miss my wife. I miss holding her hand, kissing her and sleeping next to her. I miss her touch. Because of this void that we have created my wife and I had the following conversation:

Ashley: “Looks like your love language is changing to physical touch.”

Benji: “My love language will never change, my love language is that I need to be right.”

Ashley: “Sounds like the love language of a jackass”

Benji: “Exactly. It is the love language of all men. The need to be right”

A raw but truthful moment in the Zimmerman household. Being right is the language of the jackass. The language of surrender, giving up the need to be right, is the language of someone who is growing, learning and healthy. I would rather be the latter than the former, problem is that God has given me the opportunities time and again this year to surrender my old self, my old pride and my old ways for a new and better life, but I keep clinging to the old me. I know that I am really hard on myself because I want the best life I can have, but it all comes with the surrendering of the self that is worthless, negative and fighting to be right.

Surrender isn’t easy, but it still the word for 2011. How about you? Do you struggle surrendering things? What would be your world for 2011?

The Drip

Posted on 04/08/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Honesty, Personal | 1 Comment

Last week my wife started having contractions. At a future time in the pregnancy this could be an exciting sign of things to come, however, last week was too early to have contractions. Slightly panicked we rushed off to the hospital. After an initial check-up from our doctor it was decided that we needed to spend two days there under observation. During the first day my wife was hooked up to an IV to make sure she was getting enough fluids. The first night as I laid in the pullout chair-bed while we both drifted asleep I remember looking up and watching the slow steady drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . and on and on it went.

All of us are addicted to something . . .

. . . I like to call it the drip.

All of us have a drip in our life. The drip can make you feel numb, happy, safe, tolerable, comfortable, intoxicated, out of control, in control, apathetic, lethargic, anxious, insecure, secure, sad, up and down all in the matter of a few minutes or a few hours. The drip is different for everyone: your drip might be the weekend shopping you do to mask your insecurities, it might be the five dollars you spend everyday in my coffee shop to get the caffeine you need to make it through another day, or maybe it is something with even deeper roots like gambling, drugs use, drunkenness or extra-marital affairs.

We all have hang ups, hurts and habits and that includes the people who heap the hot coals on our heads when we have stumbled along the road of life. No matter who we are we all are going to face something we don’t know how to deal with: unfortunately that is the moment when most of us choose the drip. When life is at a crossroads it isn’t always obvious which way leads to the drip and which way leads to life.

Many seasoned Christians want to put the crossroads in a nice little box and say that the choice is easy, but for someone like me who wasn’t taught what to do when life gets hard it makes the choices seem all that more blurred. Many of you are in the same boat. High school, college and life in general did not teach you how to deal with the hurts, habits and hang-ups. Right and wrong are easy to teach but pain and brokenness are hard lessons to deal with and can only be learned through experience. Do you find that the drip rarely shows its ugly head in the right and wrong but is almost always present in the pain and brokenness?

What does the drip look like in your life? What is the drip covering up? The root of the drip is the hardest place to go to emotionally but if you do the work you will be rewarded. The drip seized my life for years but with hard work it makes unplugging the IV so much easier.

Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . the drip can go on and on until we unplug it.

What about you? Is it time to unplug the IV?

I’ve Got a Feeling

Posted on 03/04/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Personal | 1 Comment

Most men fail when it comes to sharing their feelings. Even women who we astutely stereotype to be the “feelers” of society may struggle with sharing their feelings. However, every coin has two sides. On the opposite side of that coin for most men is the side where men are awesome at sharing their anger. Anger is not something you want to be awesome at sharing. Anger is an emotional response to something that is brewing below the surface. Maybe we don’t like how something is happening or maybe we are being challenged, neglected, or controlled. Anger can boil up in any situation and on any given day.  I am 99% sure that on most days I am awesome at getting angry and I fail miserably when I try to share my feelings.

I could make all kinds of excuses and honestly I really want to. I want to show off, inflate the truth and embellish a bit. It isn’t going to do you or I any good, so here is the truth: I would rather stuff all my hurts, frustrations, joys and blessings deep away where no one will know about them or touch them. I don’t want to share my feelings with you, because then you can’t hurt me. This is especially true when it comes to my marriage.

Feel free to ask my wife, she will confirm that I spend most of my days stuffing my feelings from her and from everyone in fact. Because I would rather fill my trunk of troubles than communicate my feelings we decided last week to start a journey of self discovery. With my wife’s help I have begun to realize that by stuffing my anger, feelings and joys deep down inside I am only creating more work in the future. I am learning from past pains and happiness that it takes a really long time to unpack the trunk of troubles. I would rather live life with a lighter load than drag this trunk of troubles around.

My wife and I picked up a copy of Gary Smalley & Ted Cunningham’s study From Anger to Intimacy. It has been a phenomenal help to us both already. Getting back into God’s word together, studying our anger issues and learning about my feelings has been some of the most helpful input I have received outside of counseling sessions. Yesterday morning my wife and I focused on what it meant to share my feelings and how over the next week I would try an experiment of sorts. Each day I will try to take time and write down ten things I felt throughout the day. I will try to identify what made me feel that way and how I acted upon my feelings. Sounds simple enough. I plan on posting next Thursday about how it goes.

I can hear you say, “Really Benji? Do you really need to do something as silly as that?”

Why would you say that? Now you have hurt my feelings…

My Baby

Posted on 02/21/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Other | 1 Comment

Although the ultrasound did not quite turn out as we had planned (our session was cut short, we didn’t get what was advertised and our baby wouldn’t cooperate) we were able to get some new pictures in 4-d of our baby Alexis Grace due the first week of May. Amazing what technology can do now that it couldn’t do just 20 years ago:

Amazing! I absolutely love that little face. If you don’t know my wife, the bottom two pictures are exact replica expressions that she makes when she is sleeping and has her eyes closed, which is a great sign because my wife is gorgeous. I am so blessed to become a dad and I can’t wait for Alexis to get here.

My wife is 29 weeks pregnant and has somewhere between 10-11 weeks to go. Truth be told my daughter Alexis is a very big baby and she is making life very uncomfortable for my wife Ashley.  If you have a moment to pray for my wife and Alexis I would appreciate it.

In Case You Missed It

Posted on 02/15/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Other | Leave a comment

On Friday I announced that Down Write Honest celebrated it’s 1st birthday. In honor of all those who have stopped by during the first year I am giving away 3 books:

Primal by Mark Batterson
Guerrilla Lovers by Vince Antonucci
A Million Miles in A Thousand Years by Donald Miller

All you have to do is comment on any post during the next week and you will be entered to win!

One fun thing I did this past weekend was log into my Google Analytics account to see what kind of stats happened over the last year. I rarely if ever check my overall stats because I am not defined by the number of comments I get or readers I have. Although I do have to admit it was fun to see what posts got the most traffic over the last twelve months. Here are the top 10 posts from the first year of Down Write Honest:

10. My review of Eyes Wide Open by Jud Wilhite

9. My summary of Francis Chan speaking at the Catalyst West Conference

8. What Bubble? Consumer Christianity flipped in Vegas

7. Top 10 Reasons to Attend a Smaller Church

6. Part 1 a post about my Bride

5. Sometimes we have Not So Great Expectations

4. A heartfelt response to Drunk Driving

3. Central Staff on Twitter

2. Baptism Celebration weekend at Central Christian Church

1. My review of Drops Like Stars by Rob Bell

Those are the top 10 according to stats, sometime this week I will post a list of my favorites, until then. Re-read or read for the first time, comment and WIN!

Paralyzed By Fear

Posted on 02/09/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Personal | Leave a comment

A German proverb says, “Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.”

Fear is an elusive emotion that shows up when we don’t want it to and haunts us in our weakest moments. I have been afraid of many things through the course of my life but I have never been afraid of snowboarding. That is until this week.

In December of 2006 I had an accident in the terrain park of The Canyons Resort in Park City Utah. I was hauled off the mountain by ski patrol and eventually underwent surgery that added two protein screws and a ligament from a cadaver to my shoulder as well as removing one inch of my clavicle bone. The picture from surgery is quite intense.

The first winter after the injury is when I finally had my surgery. The second winter after the injury things were not good on the home front so I never made it out to the snow. Finally this winter after a bit of bugging and begging I was able to get out & go snowboarding. This past week we headed out to Brian Head Utah for a quick two day trip. The plan was for me to go snowboarding for back to back days at the highest resort in Utah while my wife enjoyed some extra sleep.

The drive went fast but along the way somewhere we picked up a hitchhiker named FEAR. He was a very unwelcome guest.

On Wednesday morning when I walked out of our hotel and over to the lifts my heart began to race. Actually my heart pounded so hard I could swear people were looking at me funny because they could hear it. Why was my heart racing? I was overwhelmed with fear. Strapped in I loaded the chair lift for my first run of the day. The whole ride up the mountain my heart began to pound harder and I was on the verge of tears. I know what you are thinking, “Come on Benji, tears? It is just snowboarding!” I agree completely. I don’t know how it happened but fear overcame me and I was paralyzed.

To be completely honest: I wanted off the lift. I wanted to go home.

In his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years author Donald Miller says, “The greatest stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.” Honestly, I want to have great stories, but even more than that, I want to live a great life. Riding up the chair lift I knew I was giving in to my fears. I needed to kick this hitchhiker out of my life.

As I crested the top of the mountain and readied myself to get off the chair lift the two people in front of me slid off their seats and fell down. Without time to think, I reacted and road off the lift and around the fallen riders. Just like that my fear was gone. “I can still do this” I said to myself out loud without regard to who might hear me. I strapped in my other foot and road down the mountain with a smile on my face and an excitement in my heart that reminded me of days gone by.

Fear can leave us paralyzed, but getting beyond our fears can bring us to a place of absolute sweetness. What fear do you need to overcome to find your sweet spot?


Dear Alexis

Posted on 02/08/2010 by Benji Zimmerman Posted in Other | 2 Comments

I love you more than I will ever be able to put into words. I am so excited to be your dad and you are not even born yet! Your expected birthday is three months from today. I don’t know if you will arrive early or not, but no matter what your mom and I will be ready and celebrating your birth.

We love you so much for the incredible little girl you are and the amazing woman you will become.

I can’t wait to spend daddy time with you and have play dates. I can’t wait for all the manicures and pedicures, dress-up and dolls. I am so excited to see you grow into an incredible child of God.

I promise to always be there for you, to love you when you are happy or when you are hurting. To hold you when your heart is broken or overjoyed. To celebrate with you in the good times and persevere with you in the hard times. I promise to be the best dad I can be for you. I will love you no matter what you do right or what you do wrong. I will love you because you are my daughter and a child of God.

I love you with all my heart.

Always and forever your daddy,

Benjamin

1 2   Next »