Paul Masek's blog

Is anyone interested in seeing me with pink hair?  Yeah, I thought you might be.

Well, this is your chance.

If a certain task is accomplished within a certain time frame by the good people of Cyberspace, I will not only dye my hair pink, but I will appear in public…with pink hair.  Some of my friends are already having way too much fun with this, and have manipulated a picture of me to illustrate what this might look like; scroll down for that disturbing image…

Do you plan on getting high this summer?

My question actually has to do with God and your spiritual life, though if you plan on doing drugs this summer, we need to talk…seriously…send me an email, OK?

I want to repeat the question.  Do you plan on getting high - on God - this summer?

The experience of getting “high on God” or experiencing a ‘spiritual high’ is a common experience for those who are trying to grow closer to God, and if you are reading this, I suspect you know what I mean.  Someone attends a retreat like a Luke 18, Timothy 4, Steubenville, Christpower, Project Life, ACTS, CHRP, or even a REAP retreat, and experiences God’s love in a fresh and exciting way.  They feel “high” on life, love, and God.  Everything is new, everything is different, and everything is exciting.  I’m not gonna lie; I've had the feeling, and it is an awesome feeling indeed.

Yesterday was the weirdest retreat that I have been a part of in a long time.

I woke at 4 a.m., left my house at 4:30 a.m., drove through constant rain, and arrived in Cape Girardeau, MO at 6:45 a.m.  After a quick Mickey-Dees breakfast with the rest of the REAP Team members, we arrived at Notre Dame High School at 7:15 a.m., set up, and prayed.  We then began a retreat for 250 freshmen and sophomores at 8:15 a.m.

OK, so there is this song that I just can’t get out of my head ever since the first time I heard it.  It’s called “I’m Just a Kid” by the band Simple Plan.  If you’ve never heard it nor read the lyrics, please stop reading right now and give the song a listen while viewing the music video here (you need to scroll to the end) and check out the lyrics here. 

Whenever I introduce myself, whether in my personal or professional life, I always tell people that I am married to my wife Lisa (which is a very good thing!) and that we have four children – Jacob, Audrey, Kyle and Dominic.

But, what most people do not know about me is that I am the father of another child – and, don’t be scandalized, it is not by another woman. My other child is our oldest, from our first pregnancy. In what was certainly the biggest hurt of our early marriage, my wife Lisa had a miscarriage after being pregnant for just a couple of months.


We had been extremely excited, and so full of hope and enthusiasm for this new life, for our first child. And then suddenly and without warning, the doctor took an ultrasound and could not find a heartbeat. Our child’s life was over, way too soon. We were hurt and confused, with many questions, and no immediate answers.

I am sad, and I am mad.  But I have not lost hope.

I am mad at the insanity that is happening in our world, and I am sad because of the trail of broken hearts that is resulting from the madness.  I’ll tell you later about my hope.

I’m not gonna lie; I tend to think that getting a tattoo is a bad idea.  I would never get one - not only because of the expense, but because of their permanence.  I know people who have gotten tattooed when they were younger (or not in the right state of mind) and then deeply regretted it – only to find out that both the pain and the expense of tattoo removal are excruciating.  So if anyone, especially a teen, ever mentions to me the idea of getting tattooed, I’ll highly discourage it.

Keeping that in mind, I want to tell you about an article I read recently that simply rocked me.

     Here at the REAP Team International Headquarters we regularly receive email and Facebook messages from teenagers who are seeking advice.  Sometimes they desire this advice for themselves, but just as often they are seeking some wisdom as to how to help out a friend – a friend who is having a hard time and is perhaps having problems with parents, friendships, eating disorders, forgiveness, drugs, cutting, depression, unhealthy relationships, sexual activity, masks, or a variety of other things.  We have even posted some of these questions and our responses to them on our website here. 
     Even though specific advice can vary based upon the unique situation someone is in, the best and most foundational advice I can possibly give to anyone who wants to help a friend is to bring their concern - and their friend - to God in prayer. 
     In today’s world, I know that some might gloss over this advice, finding it kind of lame or old-fashioned.  Others might think that I advise them to pray because I work for the church and that’s just what churchy people do.  But that’s not it.  Not at all.  There are two important reasons I encourage everyone to pray for their friends who are troubled.
     The first reason is explained in this very powerful quote from Peter Kreeft -

Several years ago, I was leading a retreat for high school students and it was time for us to take a break.  I told the students to be back by 4:20 - and suddenly the room erupted into laughter.  Hmm…

Well, inquiring minds like mine need to know, so during the break I asked a couple of students why so many people had laughed.  They readily told that it was because “420” is a slang term for smoking marijuana.

Here is the one of the definitions for 420 posted on urbandictionary.com -

420 was thought of years ago as the time of day some people got together to smoke pot. Now it is used as code for "Let's go get high." Also, some people consider April 20th "National Pot Smoking Day."

I’m not gonna lie; I have my critics.  And, while very few people are critical of the serious stuff I talk about on retreats, what seems to really bother some people is the silly stuff.  The critics are very rarely teens, either.  It’s a small handful of adult leaders that I have worked with who think that my sense of humor is simply inappropriate.

I understand where they are coming from, too.  I happen to be a fan of adolescent humor, and some people are not.  I happen to believe, for example, that the fact that there is a planet named Uranus is extremely funny, and I love to joke around with teens on retreats about this fact.  Others are of the opinion that joking around about a topic like Uranus is not only gross-out humor, but that it is stooping to the level of teens when in fact we should be raising them up to a higher standard;  and therefore humor like this has no place in ministry.  I have been told exactly that, and consequently I have been asked by some adult leaders not to employ adolescent humor on some retreats.