John Gunter

Thoughts on Life and Living

3 great Easter memories (both fun & significant)

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(left) Betsy, Becky, and I with Dad; just prior to THE Easter Bunny incident; (right) Nathan with my camera two years later
(left) Betsy, Becky, and I with Dad; just prior to THE Easter Bunny incident; (right) Nathan with my camera two years later

Thise week, I have enjoyed thinking about the Easter holiday and the significance in my life. In the process, three great memories have come to mind.

First, I remember being young, really young. I was in Glenville, Georgia at my Grandmother’s (Meme) house. I don’t remember how young I was, but I was young enough to still believe in the Easter bunny.

Glenville, Georgia, as you might guess, is a small town. It has produced the Great Kay Gunter and several NFL players. I love Kay (also known as “Mom” to me) and I really like the NFL, so I think the town is pretty cool.

Anyway, Meme had a large field behind her house. My sisters convinced me THE Easter Bunny had been seen jumping around back there. I completely believed them and went out in search of this holiday titian, second only to Santa in importance. To this day, I can picture “THE Easter Bunny” that I really thought I saw.

He was huge (maybe six feet tall), as white as untouched snow, and his ears were tall and pointy. I was CONVINCED I saw him, so much so that to this day I can remember the image I saw of him jumping in the back of the field and disappearing into the trees.

Of course, I didn’t see him. However, it was so real at the time that I can still remember the mirage my mind concocted on that Easter weekend. My sisters were pretty believable in fooling me at the time.

Second, I remember Easter Day 2005. My sister Betsy was pregnant with her 4th. “Big as a house” pregnant is probably a better, more apt

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The eternal value of my recent Thailand vacation

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Ryan and I heading out to a dive site. . .
Ryan and I heading out to a dive site. . .

As I wrote about earlier in the week, I just completed a much needed vacation.  If you have not already, you might want to read it first (CLICK HERE).  Since I wrote about the “superficial” reasons I loved my vacation in general, and Koh Lanta, Thailand specifically in my last post, I am going to more focus one some of the more “significant” elements for which I am grateful from this time.

I am grateful for my friends. . . I’ve written frequently about friendship and its absolute necessity in my life on this blog.  This vacation only further allowed me to appreciate my friends and the role they play in my life.

Ryan Sweeney and I graduated college together.  As the Lord would have it, both of us ended up in Asia as professionals.  Ryan runs a factory in Xiamen, China, so we live a long way from each other.  Close relative to my friends in America, but still a decent plane trip away from here.

I first asked Ryan if he wanted to join me at Koh Lanta, Thailand for a week of diving, beaches, and food.  He agreed, and we were off.  That is really all I NEEDED . . . one good friend with whom to travel.

Then Travis & Sonya Todd (along with their four girls) jumped in.  Followed by Rush and Meredith Stuart (and Baby Jack!).  Then some new friends, Ty Nash, Conner Norton, and Amanda Robinson came aboard.  All told, we ended up having 20+ people I knew from around Asia that all converge on this tiny island in the Andaman Sea for a week of R&R.

It was wonderful having so many people there to do everything from eat dinner on the beach to snorkel to play volleyball to everything in between.  It was a blessing having such a large community to vacation with these past 10 days, especially since I live alone I LOVE being with others.  Time with friends, both old and new, was a definite highlight of my vacation.

I am grateful for the change of pace. . .  Honestly, my life in Asia can be quite stressful.  I put in far too many hours, in conditions which are always dynamic and often challenging beyond my [Read more…]

A case for transparency in relationships

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A few weeks ago, I wrote “The poison of bitterness and the antidote of transparency. . .” This is a follow-up to that post, so you might want to read that one before this one.

Some of the men I have been friends with here in Asia (Hughes Lowman, Scott Littlepage, and Chris Musgrove (with Maddox)
Some of the men I have been friends with here in Asia (Hughes Lowman, Scott Littlepage, and Chris Musgrove (with Maddox)

Transparency with others is work. It is awkward and, in some senses, humiliating. We spend the bulk of our lives trying to eliminate weakness from our lives. I know I do.

However, as is often the case, the Bible points us in directions which are counter to our human nature, but towards ultimate purpose, joy, community, and fulfillment. This area of transparency in sin and internal bitterness is one such area.

We see this in James 5:16.

“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

In bringing your sin into the light with trusted friends, we are literally healed. I don’t understand everything about this, but I have found it to be true in every situation I have seen, both with me personally and in others around me.

Personally, I have found three immediate benefits to verbally expressing areas of sin and/or personal stress (like loneliness or anger) to those closest to me.

  1. Sin and bitterness, when confessed, loses its power/intensity, or at least is [Read more…]

James Bond, Istanbul, and the value of relationships

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John Gunter, Sonya and Travis Todd in Turkey
(L) Travis and Sonya Todd at a café in Istanbul; (R) Sonya and I shopping at the Grand Bazar, where there was a great chase scene in the Bond movie last night

There are many reasons we buy tickets to movies like Bond and others in the genre. As for me, I was initially attracted to these movies when I was a kid for one main reason . . . the exotic locations where 007 finds himself fighting bad guys. Thankfully really bad people always seem to hang out in really cool locations, at least in the world James Bond roams.

Would I have been drawn to the movies had they been in locals such as Tifton, GA and Provo, Utah instead of the likes of Prague and Rome, Italy? Absolutely not. My fascination with exotic locations was only stoked further by having parents that loved to travel.

I got my first passport in 7th grade, in preparation for our family trip to Europe. I was thrilled. In keeping with my love of spy movies, I actually posed for the picture looking like a “spy”. In my mind, a spy would naturally raise one eyebrow above the other and have a stern look on his face. I did the same. I don’t think that posed goofy passport pictures would float in our post-911 world, but at that time it was apparently kosher to pose any way you wanted. I looked like a buffoon, but it made for lots of laughs.

Back to last night’s Bond viewing. As I was sitting in the theater, I realized

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Life, Asia, friends, and family (pictorial highlights of 2012)

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My time with John Robert's "Flat Wolfie" at a local 1,200 year old city
My time with John Robert’s “Flat Wolfie” at a local 1,200 year old city

It is December 30, 2012.  Time to get contemplative about this past year and think more about what is to be accomplished this coming year. . . or at least that is what “they” tell us.

Well, I’m not going to do exactly that in this post.  However, I am going to look at a few of my favorite personal pictures of the year from four broad categories (life, Asia, friendship, and family) and talk a little about each.

The top picture is me with “Flat Wolfie” in one of the ancient cities that I frequently visit near where I live.  Who is “Flat Wolfie” you ask???  Well, this is Whitefield Academy’s version of the children’s story “Flat Stanley”.  One of the things I have enjoyed over the years has been helping my nieces and nephews DOMINATE in the [Read more…]

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