Living in the past.

The subject of today's topic is going to be regret. We have all had a time or two, where we have done something we regret. Moreover, I'm sure we have all said something we regretted later.

Regret is defined as "to feel sorry, disappointed, or distressed about". Regret in my opinion is one of the worst feelings you can have. My reason for saying that is because as the definition says it is something that you feel sorry, disappointed or distressed about.

Those are never good things to live with. Being disappointed or distressed about something does not make a good day. That being said, I would like to make a suggestion.

I believe that regret is something you do not have to live with. You have heard it in movies people saying live with no regrets. I would like to say that is something we should do! Live with no regrets!!!

Now, you must be asking, how exactly is that possible? I believe that regret is a way of feeling bad for something said or did. Not just feeling bad for it but dwelling on it is what makes it what it is. That is what causes distress.

Try something new. When you do something that you may regret, replace that regret with learning. Do what you must to make it right and learn from it. Don't live life with regret, live life learning. They say you learn something new everyday. I say you can learn something new every action.

Have a blessed day all.

Where am I??

Good evening everyone. I hope you all had a great day. When I started this I felt that I would encounter a few problems. The biggest problem I felt I would come across was the difficulty of coming up with a topic to discuss. Well, here I am, three days in and I felt this morning like I had no where to go with this today. So, I started reading a book that I've been working on little by little, and the spark hit me. So, let's dive in!

I asked myself a few days ago, how did I get here? How did I get to this isolated place? What brought me to this place in my life? I look back a year ago, and I was sitting there thinking the world was closing in around me. I didn't know what I wanted, I didn't know where to go, and I didn't know where the path I was on was going to take me. I was looking down and seeing nothing but the rough path that I was on.

Then a couple months after, my road began to lead me a different way. Just when all seemed lost, my path began going in a better direction. I was looking up for inspiration for the first time in years. I never knew that I would be where I am now. In 10 months, I have met the love of my life, I have become a great worker, and I will be debt free in a couple months. Those are all goals I made when I came up here.

Looking back now, and wondering just how I made it to this place that I am makes me realize a couple things. First, I realize that I am where I wanted to be, not by my doing, by putting my faith in the One that takes care of me. When I felt most lost, he smoothed out my path and showed me a way. Second, being lost a year ago was rough, and I am sure that we all have been in a spot like that. It is a place where nothing seems right, where all seems lost, but there is hope. The hope I found was that, looking back, I was in a rough spot that lead me to this beautiful place I am now.

So to rap this up, take some time and think back about what lead you to where you are now. Maybe you were like me and in a rough spot a few years back, look at all the rough spots that lead you to where you are now. If you are in a rough spot now, take heart knowing that there is hope for a better path. You may not see it now, but rest assured, it is there. I take comfort when I look back knowing I had rough times and knowing that when I encounter them in the future, they will lead to great things. Good night and God bless.

Light for others.

Well, to begin I would like to apologize for how difficult it was to read yesterday's post. I'll post this one and see if changing the paragraphing and some spacing helps at all. Feel free to let me know what you think about the posts, whether it is something I wrote or maybe it was difficult to read for one reason or another, I'm always opened to suggestions. This is as much for you all as it is for me. So, let's get into it.

I would like to in a way continue with what I was talking about yesterday. I talked about not being willing to open our eyes to look for the light in the darkness. Once you do that where do we go? What do we do? What if we are looking for light and are just not able to see it?

Well, let me start by saying as long as your eyes are opened, just keep moving. If there isn't light in one spot continue looking. There is ALWAYS some light there. If you pop a breaker in your house do you sit in the same spot saying, "Oh, the power will come back on" or "I'll just sit here and the breaker will turn itself back on". No, you have to get up and search for what is wrong.

My advice would be when you find yourself in the dark, you must do 2 things. Open your eyes to look for the light, and keep moving. Eventually the you will find that light.

In talking about this I think back to many years ago when I was watching the Superbowl with my youth group. A very wise bald man gave the lesson, at halftime. It was already dark outside and he turned out the light. He started talking about being in the dark. Toward the end of the talk he lights a candle and he says that one small candle can bring light to a whole room.

I would like to issue a challenge. As we go through our lives, look for those times where you can be the light in someone else's life. When you see an opportunity, take it a go with it. If it is something so small as a nice comment or compliment that may be all it takes. But strive to be the candle that lights someone else's room .

Have a great day and God bless!!!

All Blind

When I joined the Coast Guard, me and others (who weren't joining the best branch of the armed forces, but hey, no one is perfect) had to go through various test that involved everything from duck walks in our underwear to needles in our arm (eh...for those who don't know me too well, I HATE needles, and it is perfectly ok to hate an inanimate object). I know many of you have done physical exams before so you know the basics of it. What I am getting at is that I get into this room with 2 or 3 stands for you to look in and they put a card up and ask what number is in the middle of the card. Some were easy to decipher, others it seemed like all you were looking at was a bunch of colored dots all mashed together in an attempt to confuse you and hurt your eyes. I'm sure you all remember those, they were the ones you thought you saw a number in and yet you weren't quite sure so you just took a guess at it. Well after that and the whole cover one eye and read the bottom row from across the room, I found that I still have 20/20 vision. I'll try to explain what 20/20 means. It means I can see from 20 feet away what a person with normal vision sees from 20 feet away. I remember I have always been blessed with great vision. When I was in elementary school I actually had 20/16 vision (I could see from 16 feet away what a person with normal vision saw from 20 feet away). Just to put it into a little better perspective though, humans are only said to have as good of eye sight as 20/10, but some birds and hawks can have vision as good as 20/2.

Now for many many years I have taken my eyesight very seriously. I find my ability to see normally as a precious gift and I try to do all I can to keep it that way. I'll give you a little example of just how important my eye sight is to me. I was stationed on a boat about 2 years ago and we were doing training for our boarding team members. This particular training involves (as I may have told some of you already) Oleoresin Capsicum, more commonly known as pepper spray. Now for those of you lucky people who have had the wonderful opportunity to take a shot of that to the face, you probably see where I am going with this. For those who have yet to experience this great pleasure, pepper spray of any kind is mainly used to disable a person temporarily so that they can be either subdued or to allow a person an opportunity to get away. It is an inflammatory used to cause immediate (and I mean IMMEDIATE) closure of the eyes, difficulty breathing, runny nose, and coughing. Pending on the strength of the spray, full effects can last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, but the diminishing effects can last for hours after. Just to give you an idea, the European Parliament Scientific and Technological Options Assessment published "An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control" in 1998 with extensive information about pepper spray and tear gas. They say, "The effects of pepper spray is far more severe, including temporary blindness which lasts from 15-30 minutes, a burning sensation of the skin which lasts 45-60 minutes , upper body spasms which force a person to bend forward and uncontrollable coughing making it difficult to breathe or speak for between 3-15 minutes". Well in the Coast Guard as well as many other forms of law enforcement, this pepper spray is known as a "non-lethal" means of restraining an aggressive person. Now, that you have a basic idea of pepper spray, we can get back to this amazing experience. During this training there is plenty of preparation that foes into making sure it is as safe as it can be (and if you are like me, you will wonder just how safe it is to temporarily blind someone on a pier, with deep sea water all around and no fence to block that person from falling in). So they make sure we knew all the hazards that go into this training so we aren't going into it "blind" (haha). They had me stand about 10 feet away from the guy who is going to spray me, I close my eyes, and then I felt it hit. They were suppose to spray me across my forehead just above my eyes, but since I volunteered to go first, the guy spraying me didn't have a chance to get his aim down and the first spray hit right across my closed eyes and the second one hit it's mark on my forehead. For 15 seconds we have to protect our weapon without drawing it, all while following the "aggressor". After that 15 seconds, we were told to draw our weapon and continue following this person with our eye opened. I was fortunate not to have an immediate reaction to the spray so I made it through the first 15 seconds just fine, then when I drew down on the "aggressor", my eyes started closing. I had to keep my weapon pointed with one hand while the other hand held my eye opened in hopes that I could see him through the numerous tears streaming out of it. I made it through that part as well without feeling the sting (you have to love adrenaline). When they told me I was finished and I began to take off the gun belt, it slammed me like one of those little smart cars being smashed between two speeding semi-trucks. I realized that my eyes were shut and there was nothing I could do to open normally, my nose was running like the winner of the New York City Marathon, and my skin was on fire (I grew up eating spicy foods so it didn't really my mouth or my breathing). I made it to the cooler of water we used to wash our eyes out and our faces off, which helped about as much as eating a habanero pepper would help to get rid of the sting of a mouthful of cayenne pepper. I begin to wash my face and that's when I realize my eyes are completely shut. I could not open them, and I began to have a minor panic attack. I thought that i was blind for good. After a few minutes, the EMT that was there told me to calm my breathing and keep flushing out my eyes, and I realized it was only temporary. Well, all that being said leads into today's topic.

Now, the thought for the day is blindness. A vast majority of Americans are blessed to still have their eyesight. Let's throw out some numbers. According to a CDC study in 2010 that was about 300 million people in the U.S. and 1.3 million of which are legally blind. That's about 0.3% of the United States that don't have their eyesight. There is about 3.4 million Americans that are visually impaired or legally blind. Now, about 10% of all Americans cannot distinguish certain colors from others. Meaning about 33 million people are visually impaired in one way or another. Some of you may be reading this and thinking that this isn't brightening your day at all. You have some sort of vision impairment and are maybe getting a little disheartened. Well, legal blindness isn't really my point in all this. My point in all this is that we are all blind. We need to take the time out of our day to actually open our eyes to the beauty around us. I understand that we all have bad days and that we aren't always in the mood to look on the bright side. I want you to remember this. I have a friend of mine that is legally blind. He seems to find more joy in life than any other person I know. He can see better than any other person I have met. We walk around in the darkness and are meant to find the light. Well let me ask this, how can you look for light in the darkness when you have your eyes closed. Opening your eyes in the darkness is the most important thing you can do. That is what will get you through a rough day. I have had plenty of rough days but I always take joy in the fact that there are those around me who love me and there is always One how is watching out for me. He will always be there for me to talk to. I know He won't respond to me in voice, but how often do we have problems that there aren't really any solutions to but the best solution is to just get it out, He will always be there to listen. If you need someone who will respond immediately then please come talk to me. There is ALWAYS light in the darkness, just keep your eyes opened and you will see it. God bless and until tomorrow have a light day.

The Beginning

Well, this is officially the first of what I hope to be many inspiring blogs. In this first one I'll just explain a little about myself and what my goal is for this blog.

To begin, My name is Garrett Holloman. I'm currently in the US Coast Guard. I love my job, but my current location is not as thrilling. I grew up in the church and have learned many things, unfortunately most of them the hard way.

My current goal in writing this blog will be to reach out to those that are searching for something. Whether you think you have found that one thing or not isn't the question. I believe we are all constantly searching. My plan is to place my thoughts into motion here and allow for others to respond. I believe that the best way to learn things is to work together to accomplish our search. They alway say that two heads are better than one, so why don't we all work together in our daily search. My prayer is that you will all be inspired in your daily lives, that you will read this on a particularly rough day and be uplifted, and finally that you will read this on a good day and it will be a great day.

Well, I'll end this first post by saying that anyone is welcome to read and provide input. I welcome anyone who wants a good read or needs lifting up (which I think we all could use). Pass this on to friends and family or even anyone you wish. God bless!