Making Sense Out of Life

By Patrick J. McGuffin

When your life has been shaken, what practical steps can you take to turn things around?

Unexplainable issues impact our lives from time to time. But making sense out of those things is only part of the solution. You need to have proven strategies in place to help you successfully navigate through these issues and move forward!

• Overcoming a job or career crisis.
• How to put your past in the past.
• Ready to improve your relationships?
• Winning over fears that incapacitate you.
• What to do when your health fails.
• Staying sane while raising children.
• Taking back the time in your life.
• Why is sex so complicated?
• Why can’t I hear from God clearly?
• Moving past divorce.
• When someone you love dies.
• Gaining true perspective.

If God is truly God, then everything changes.

How long has it been since you really moved forward in your life? Imagine your life FINALLY changing in a positive manner. If you are ready for such a change, then these proven answers are for you! This book is a fast and easy read filled with useful insights to help you start moving forward now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Certa Publishing
• Release date: Feb 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458198914

Patrick J. McGuffin

Author, pastor, business leader, journalist and missionary Patrick J. McGuffin brings his diverse background and experiences together in writing this insightful and highly practical book "Making Sense Out Of Life".McGuffin, a University of Florida journalism graduate, spent the first part of his professional career publishing newspapers, ending that part of his life as president and publisher of 19 newspapers. Although he owns two printing companies and a book publishing company, his passion is “advancing God’s kingdom by taking what is seen by the eyes of a few and make it known to many.” This little phrase God gave him years ago has propelled him in his efforts as an elder/pastor in his church and as a missionary to many nations.He is married to his lover and wife of 30 years Sheila, and they have two grown daughters, Stacy and Jennifer. Stacy and her husband Matthew and their sons Noah and Logan, and Jennifer and her husband Scott and their boys Reece and Talin have provided the McGuffins with a boatload of insight into life over the years.Among his many civic, business and Christian leadership activities, McGuffin has been an Eagle Scout, president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Florida and chairman of Florida Hospital Foundation/Apopka. He has started a Christian newspaper in Ecuador, published four family magazines throughout Florida, and kicked off a Christian newspaper in Iran, where it is illegal to publicize Christianity.McGuffin feels most humbled to have watched God perform so many amazing miracles of healing during his missionary trips to South America. “The first time you see God make a blind person see, or a deaf person hear or a lame person get up and walk, your jaw drops in amazement and gratefulness that our God would invade the hurting lives of individuals like us, and set us in a new place,” he says. “That is why I wrote this book – so that people would not only know there is hope, but also gain true confidence that God can change anything in their lives.”

Book preview

Making Sense Out Of Life

By Patrick J. McGuffin

Published by NewBookPublishing, a division of Reliance Media, Inc. at Smashwords.

Copyright © 2010 by Patrick J. McGuffin

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

PART I: Discovering What Happened

1. When your life has been shaken

2. Interpreting the issues of life

Jobs

Money

Friendships

Family

Sex

Past and Future

Recreation and Social Activities

Health

Time Investments

Fears and Hopes

Death

The God Factor

3. If God is truly God, then everything changes

How do things change?

An example from Scripture

You life’s backdrop has changed!

PART II: Accelerating Forward in Life

4. Gaining perspective when life doesn’t make sense

How big is the mess?

Bringing in the right resources and people

Pride, rebellion and sin – the big 3

5. Incidental, temporary, seasonal or forever?

6. God made things simpler than you think

Breaking free from the ties that bind

Focusing on the changeable

Simplicity of God: 6 successful steps

7. Where do you go from here?

Which values will you live your life by?

Predetermined decision-making when life seems to crash

How to hear from God

Scripture holds the key

The necessity of having good friends

8. A new lifestyle of success and fulfillment

Walking in the light

One thing leads to another

Final thoughts

9. Study Guide: Answers to live by

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Part I - Discovering What Happened

Chapter 1

When your life has been shaken

Has your life recently been shaken by an unexpected issue or event? Are you frustrated at being blown around by every adverse situation you encounter? Perhaps someone you trust let you down. Maybe a cherished relationship crumbled or a job you needed didn’t work out.

Whatever the unwelcome issue or event was, you were suddenly confronted with an outcome so different from what you had expected, that you could only think, This makes no sense at all! You know you need to pull back from the confusion and create a new strategy for moving forward in life, but how?

This book is intended to be a tool to help you make sense out of real-life issues and to assist you in discovering workable solutions that will put your life on track toward meaningful fulfillment. I wrote this book because I needed to make sense of the events and relationships I encountered, so I could begin to live my life to its fullest…nothing less. And I want to help you do the same.

Are you tired of the mundane? Are you fed up with living a cluttered existence in a settled-for life? Are you frustrated at being blown around by every circumstance that comes your way? If so, then it’s time to pull back from the confusion and create a workable strategy to move yourself forward in life, with a new vision.

Take the first step toward building your new life by visualizing yourself wandering in a dense, dark forest that appears to go on forever. No matter where you turn, paths look similar, the scenery is the same, and rustling sounds echo through the tightly packed trees. Choosing a direction in which to go seems like an insurmountable task, and so you wander aimlessly, trying to make sense of your journey.

Finally, you happen upon a clearing. There you find a helicopter with a pilot who invites you on board. As the helicopter takes off straight up, you glance at the ground, astounded at how clear everything suddenly appears. Looking down, you see that the forest is not nearly as large as you thought. In fact, it’s nothing but a heavily wooded area in the middle of a flat, open meadow stretching from horizon to horizon. What’s more, you can now see all the trails winding through the forest.

Prior to attaining your new perspective, you’d always believed that the forest was endless, filled with narrow paths that led nowhere. But by pulling back and viewing the forest from a different perspective, you can see clearly which paths are right for you to follow and which paths are wrong. At last, you can make sense out of the forest and out of your life.

This book is designed to put you temporarily into a helicopter, to give you a new perspective on your life by allowing you to pull away far enough to see the big picture. Its purpose is to help you design and construct a life that truly makes sense for you… a life that is full and complete, and which, when you look back upon it, will cause you to smile in true satisfaction.

But before you step into the helicopter, I want to introduce myself and explain how I have dealt with some of my own issues. I believe that you will discover, as I have, that we are all a lot more alike than we ever would have imagined. Sure, there are differences in our ages, cultures, careers and so forth. But at the core, we are remarkably similar.

I grew up in the mid-1960s, in the small Central Florida town of Apopka, where we moved when I was eight. Red-haired, freckled and skinny, I not only looked different from most of the other kids, but I felt different, too. This was because most of them had lived in Apopka all of their lives, while I moved in as an outsider. In today’s highly mobile society, many of you can identify, I am sure.

Eventually, my family started and ran a small weekly newspaper. My dad would take very tough stands in his paper, sometimes alienating the parents of my friends, which naturally came back on me. So some of my friends (and their parents) loved me, and some of them (and their parents) didn’t. To me, it didn’t make much sense that a kid wouldn’t like me because his parents disagreed with a strong editorial my dad wrote. But, in reality, I had to live with the consequences. My point is that sometimes we have issues affecting us in life that are beyond our control, and so we have to do the best we can under the circumstances. And, although the issues affecting your life may be very different from the ones affecting mine, the chances are that your ability to control or influence some of those issues is pretty much the same as mine.

As it turned out, I loved working for a newspaper and decided to follow in my dad’s footsteps. So I went to the University of Florida and earned a degree in journalism with a minor in business. Upon graduation, I came back to work at my father’s newspaper, imagining that someday I would take over the family business.

One year later, he sold the newspaper. Talk about a shock!

But it turned out to be one of the best things for me. I had a chance over the next several years to work at other leading newspapers and really learn the business from some excellent newspaper owners throughout the state. My purpose in relating this story is to ask you, Have you ever felt secure in your career, and then suddenly it’s gone?

Several years later, I was president and publisher of 19 community newspapers, a job I really loved. Then one day, the owner of the company walked into the corporate offices and ordered me to shut it all down and let everyone go!

Beyond the loss of my own job, I felt terrible for the many people who had come to work for me from all over the southeastern United States. Although I felt an intense loyalty toward these people, I was forced to reward them by turning their lives upside down due to circumstances beyond my control. In addition, losing my job turned out to be a setback from which it took me years to recover financially. How in the world does anyone go about making sense of such a thing?

Trying to put my professional life back together, I started a company that I was convinced would both succeed and provide opportunities for me to be involved in non-business activities that could make a positive difference in other people’s lives. My wife Sheila and I agreed upon an amount of money we were willing to invest, and lose if necessary, in launching this endeavor. We set a firm limit on the amount of debt we felt we could incur and then, against her firm request, I pushed past it. (Now would be a good time for all wives to elbow their husbands and tell them not to be as foolish as Pat McGuffin was in ignoring the counsel of his wife!) That company didn’t make it, leaving me saddled with a very heavy debt. Needless to say, Sheila had to share in the consequences of my misplaced confidence and my ignoring her level-headed advice.

Have you ever been so confident about something that you bet almost everything on its success? Perhaps it was a relationship or a business, or something else you just knew was a sure thing. Then, when it failed, you had to face and live with the fact that life certainly did not turn out as you had so confidently expected it would…just another instance of life’s not making sense.

Not so very long after my company failed, I was dealt another blow, one from which I will never fully recover. I was fortunate to have parents who loved me and whom I loved. One day, my parents met Sheila and me at an open house at Florida Hospital College, where our oldest daughter Stacy wanted to learn about the nursing program.

I noticed right away that Mom appeared quite ill, which was very unusual for her, so Dad took her home. He called from the emergency room the next day, saying that Mom couldn’t stop shivering. Within two days, the doctors discovered she had advanced leukemia. She died, five days later, on February 29, 2000. Suddenly and with very little warning, my vibrant, energetic mom was gone, G-O-N-E, forever.

I have had friends and acquaintances die, and other relatives as well… but nothing I have ever experienced was anywhere near like having my mom die. During her last few days, I prayed and poured my heart out to God. I felt convinced that I had heard from God in my prayers, that He said she would be restored to life while she lay sick in the hospital. I was so confident on the day I thought I heard those assurances from God, that I became certain Mom’s strength would return. From that moment, it never crossed my mind that she might die. But she did. One week she appeared completely healthy; the next week, she was gone.

My belief system was rocked to the core. I have had the incredible privilege of talking to and hearing from God all of my adult life, and felt that our relationship and connection was special. I don’t mean that I am some unique super-human, but I do mean that He allowed me to hear from Him in my heart, both through prayer and through understanding what I read in the Bible.

So when I thought I clearly heard from Him that my mother would be restored to health, I was stunned when she died! I couldn’t make any sense out of it. Never in my life had I been thrown for more of a loop than on that day. It was only later, when God had enlightened my understanding a bit, that I realized the restoration of life that He had spoken about to me was the restoration of complete health and healing found only in His heaven.

You see, I’m sure God knew that if Mom had lived, the effects of the leukemia that had settled in her brain would have left her mentally incapacitated in a way that wouldn’t have allowed her to maintain her dignity and continue the incredible life she had led. So out of love for Mom, God chose to take her home. And out of love for her family, He chose to allow the sweet memories we have of her complete mental capacities to be stored in our hearts forever.

As you can see, I had to come face-to-face with the fact that all our days truly are numbered. And I have now come to realize that, for whatever length of time we are here on this planet, it is absolutely necessary for us to pursue making sense of our lives and living it to the fullest.

From my Mom’s death, I learned:

1. Life is short and death is final

2. We all possess the ability to misunderstand God

3. Radical twists in the road of life constantly affect us

A couple of years after my mom died, my work relationship blew apart. I had been working with a dear friend who was incredibly supportive in helping me get my start in the printing business. He was there for me, I was there for him and our families enjoyed great social times together. Then, over the course of six months or so, things began to change. For whatever reason, he began to alter the way he did business, resulting in operational support shifts and financial changes for me. It was his right; it was his business. But our business and friendship had become so intertwined, that there was no easy solution to solving our differences. So I opted to leave. And when I left, unfortunately, our valued friendship also blew apart.

The list of examples could go on, but the crucial point for all of us to realize is that the circumstances we face in life have a much more common thread than we might have thought. And, in our efforts to make sense out of the issues and events in our lives, it is important to understand that there are answers waiting to be discovered by each of us.

I have found that living in an information age helps us learn about things and analyze things, but it doesn’t help us truly change anything. It is my hope that in these pages, you will not only find understanding of some key issues of life, but also develop effective application-driven responses designed to propel your life past a settled-for existence.

However, insight and true answers are not good enough. You have to be willing and determined that you will push out of your comfort zone. Any real change and growth requires us to move through discomfort, into the unknown, and exercise persistence in the uncomfortable areas of life. Although this doesn’t sound like fun, it will be highly rewarding! Decide now that you will initiate change in your life. Don’t settle for mere increased understanding of your circumstances.

So grab a pen and mark up this book. Underline my words, add your own words and do whatever else it takes to make the book a game plan that will serve you well in the coming years of your life!

Chapter 2

Interpreting the issues of life

If there is one thing you can gather from reviewing a snapshot of part of my life in Chapter One, it would be that my life has many issues in common with the lives of other people. These cross cultural lines, racial lines, gender lines, and belief lines. But