1. Those who live.

2. Those who watch others live.

It seems to me, it is very easy for life to get stagnate and stale.  We can point fingers at tech and the world's advancements but there have often been people through the years who have sought fit to just watch.  Let life pass by. Blame others for things not working out. Wallowing in self-pity is something I can hear.

And I know I’ve done it.

But I wasn’t built to sit still.  If you are a bit like me, there are dreams and plans you are thinking about.  For me, taking action is key. Acting on my ideas has opened up more doors than ever before, and now I can create the life that I envision for myself. Whether it's traveling, learning a new skill, or building something extraordinary - if it's worth doing, then it needs to get done by me.

As I write, I realize my words may sound a bit odd coming from a pastor of nearly 30 years, and they may sound weird coming from a Realtor as well…I mean, what is the point of this blog after all?  And that is what I think I am coming to figure out more and more as I create video content and take on the second part of life.

Through the years, I have been more transparent than maybe I have been especially since Heather died.  There were people who I looked up to who guided me and friends I could count on then.  That all changed when Heather died.  

There were no mentors for being a widower.  I was betrayed by some of my closest friends.  My chronic anxiety took over and ran my life and caused hypertension.  

I am looking with new eyes on my life.  I am examining the second half of life with a new partner in Lauren and our family has grown.  I need new rules, new boundaries, and new guides and I need to become one myself.  I need to step into it and be both learner and mentor.

This past summer, Ron Geisler helped coach me through the changes in my life and what I was facing, what our family is facing, and what many are facing.  I had to really get to the button of what made a difference.  Now I’m not saying I’ve got it down, I still am making a mess out of too much, but I’m not giving up.  What Ron helped me with is my three focuses:

1. Stay in Love with Jesus.

2. Be a Kick-a$$ husband (and dad)

3. Help people enhance life and home

So, I’m thinking that this blog and my content is going to be focused on sharing and guiding about enhancing life.  And it starts here:

OWN YOUR CRAP

For the past few days, I know my anxiety has gotten the better of me. It has played havoc on my heart rate and kept my mind running too fast. I have to own that and make sure my to-do list is done.  I can’t put off the chores but I can schedule them out.  I have to be sure I am walking to get my heart stronger.  

And you: Just out of curiosity, what is your crap that you aren’t dealing with that is causing you to get screwed up and things get out of hand? Work or home doesn’t matter - you are you and no when else is you and the people in your circle have to put up with you so what have you let get out of hand?  You can live or watch others live but if your only watching then you got no one to blame but yourself.

Here are four questions to get you off of your butt and moving to enhance life:

1. What has to get done now?

2. What should get done this week?

3. What could get done this week?

4. What can wait?

Live life where you are.  You can’t get where you want to be till you know where you are now.

Start enhancing your life, your home and our world!

I found that out.

When I look at it I think there are two kinds of people: those who fight change and those that accept change when it comes.  I don’t think either take it lightly or easily, accepting doesn’t mean it won’t happen, its perspective.  I remember vividly when Heather’s contractions started and our rush to the hospital.  Logan, our son, was coming into the world.  Fighting against this wasn’t even in the cards.  And years later, at her bedside, none of us could stop the moment from coming when Heather would take her last breath.

So, again, I came to accept change would come again.  Not a damn thing we can do except fight it or accept it, and I tend to be the latter.  This time, I have prepared, though that doesn’t mean it was easy.  Like packing for a camping trip…it takes A LOT of work to have that fun!  Though, I can’t say this change is fun.  It is change nonetheless and how I face it, well, that I have some say about now.

This has become the case for me now. I am writing this to share that I will be leaving the appointment of Anchor Park UMC at the beginning of June 2023.  After prayerful consideration and much conversation our lives have made a turn that allows my wife and me to continue to call Alaska home but that means, I will set aside my stole, full-time, as a pastor.

Together, as pastor and church; we navigated a pandemic and the process of reimagining and reopening our church to ministry.  I like to think my gifts were used, like Esther, “For such a time as this.”  Now, by stepping aside, it will allow a new clergy and church, to cast a vision for the future and ministry to the Airport Heights/Anchorage Community.

Our new home will be a cabin in the Alaska wilderness.  I will be on call as pulpit supply as needed for Jesus’ church but will be fulfilling my calling full-time to help people enhance life and enhance home as a Realtor with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Dream Makers in Wasilla.  You’ll see some changes regarding content but I will continue to encourage and enhance life and soul, even as I help enhance homes and home life.  

Remember:

Do no harm.

Do good.

Stay in love with God.

Jedi Pastor Ken

-Jacob Armstrong

Hallmark holiday movies…mark another year that I survived them.  I am really impressed with the actors and how they work the roles, but we all know there is a formula.  Our superhero movies have a formula.  Our news articles have a formula.

A good friend reminisced about the 80s recently. This got me thinking…so much of those movies had a formula.  Teenagers, with no jobs but seemingly endless resources (parents/guardians) took on their “world” of high school - fighting the adults/the “man” or bullies - and in the end, they emerge at 18 with a happy-ever-after story.  

Only, that is a formula - and it only gets you to graduation…if you are lucky.  But what about the next 70 years after that?  Hmmmmm…

I’ll be the first to say that while not always easy, I felt the “formula” was fine until I got diagnosed with cancer, then natural disaster, mental illness diagnoses in my family, then would come vision loss, then cancer and death of my wife and the struggles of being an only parent and trying to piece it all back together.  

This has been my story.  No Hollywood screen writer could write this.  There was no formula. It was the premise of my first book: “Life Sucks Seek God.”  It didn’t have a formula.  I just wrote my story - my journey - my faith.  I was SOLD that there was a formula to faith.

It is a lie.  There is no formula to our faith. 

You can go back 2000 years to the story of the early church and Paul’s writings to the Corinthians (2 Cor 11:1-4) where he writes how false teachers had taught the people a false faith about Jesus - a different Jesus entirely.  A formula should have prevented this - but there isn’t a formula.  There is life.  There is faith.  We live it out or we don’t and there is no promise that living by faith sets your path in a formula of happy ever-after, rainbows and unicorn sparkle path.  

What faith does do is give purpose to the story.  It helped me understand that I was, and am, in a story I didn’t know existed at my birth: The God Story.  And God is part of this story, not out of it - this is what Advent reminds us: This God is Immanuel = God with us.

I don’t know how your story will end.  I don’t know how mine will end.  In a moment, this blog will end.  It has followed a formula to this point but typically, there would some great call to action, some formula of guidance to follow…but screw that…

What are you going to do with your story? I don’t buy the idea of some Christians that your whole life is mapped out and you have no choices.  I don’t think many of the Bible folks would agree with that either.  They made a mess of things.  And the early disciples mostly died as martyrs…are any of us following that formua?  We think we are being “persecuted” when people don’t want prayers at football games.  That isn’t persecution - that is opinion.