“Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining - it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn’t solve any problems.” Zig Ziglar

When I began research on the No Parking Zone of Grumbling and Complaining, I had no idea I would find out so many people had written on the subject. There is a difference in pointing out your pain and constantly harping on it to anyone who will listen. Grumbling and complaining have futile and negative impacts. It, in no way, solves your problem and tends to ruin one's own as well as the days of others. It is a sign of negativity and a lack of agency; of taking responsibility for yourself; of owning what is causing you to grumble and complain.

For so many years I grumbled and complained to God (privately) to ask Him to change my sexual orientation. I’m sure He must not have enjoyed it at all, but was patient with me through it all. What changed my attitude and led me away from grumbling and complaining about it? I realized my sexual orientation had been based on choices I had made - whether consciously or sub-consciously. Guess when my orientation began to change? When I began to take responsibility for my choices and began to make different choices. It’s called maturity.

“Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses in your life; you realize everything that happens in life is a result of the previous choice you’ve made and start making new choices to change your life.” Roy Bennett

On November 7, 1981, I had decided Jesus loved me and that He had given mankind a free will; that mankind had brought sin into the world, not God. I walked out of a homosexual identity and straight (no pun intended) into the identity of a new creation in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV, says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” I literally changed my mind that night and walk out of my old identity and into my new.

Did the temptations stop? No. But with every temptation I had a choice to make. Would I listen to it or would I listen to and speak the truth of Who God says I am? Just as I chose to not allow PD to define me, I choose not to allow my temptations to define me. Temptations simply became a launching point for my faith in Christ and I CHOSE to see and think new and different thoughts about who I was and to stop groveling and compiling that PD was not fair to someone who had given their whole adult life to Christ. But wait a minute!

After all was said and done, Jesus - God - came to earth. Fully man and fully God. He was God whose name means “God With Us” and He came to suffer, and to be tempted just as we are (yet without sin). In fact, He bore the entirety of sin for all mankind - past, present, future - to pay the sin debt that separated us from God the Father. Once I understood that, I placed homosexual sin on Jesus and received a new way of thinking in its place. God’s Word calls such a thing renewing the mind. I became so adept at this that eventually my feelings changed. Change the mind and we change the way we feel. If we change the way we feel we can change the way we act. Even modern science finds this ‘renewing of the mind’ as very helpful in treating depression, anxiety, PTSD, and even TBI. The world calls this cognitive behavioral therapy.

"Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in

complaining.” Mason Cooley

Still, I found myself grumbling and complaining to one friend in particular who, I KNOW, was fed up with me always saying things like, “Why did I have to deal with same sex attraction,” or “I have an excuse to whine about people who treat me as if I was still homosexual even after marrying a woman (Melinda) and fathering 9 (It’s true) children.” The reason I know how he felt was because he had gone with me on a ministry trip where I shared my story and I had begun to complain about a perceived ‘slight’ I had detected from a certain man while on our way back to where we were staying. Without warning, he saw a cemetery and told me to ‘pull in’. I was very confused at this request…until he said, “OK. I’ve heard this enough! Pick out a tombstone!” I asked, “Why?” He simply said, “You’e going to pick out a tombstone and then leave the old you buried there. And I never want to hear you complain again about your past! You can’t change it now! Own it! Leave it here…then move on down the road!”

This was somewhere around 1997, some 16 years after I had made my initial decision to walk with Christ. And it dawned on me in that moment how much of a burden and weight I had placed on all those who loved me…and how fed up with my constant grumbling and complaining about this matter must have worn on them. That is why I found it much easier to deal with PD (after going through the stages of grief!). As a friend once told me when dealing with my one of my first panic attacks when I thought I was dying, “So what if you die? Where will you be?” That question pierced my soul, causing me to calm right down because it forced me to face my fear with faith. I said, “I’ll be with Jesus.” She then asked, “And that would be a bad thing?”

"Complaining is a vain way of explaining pain without gaining relief.” Israelmore Ayivor

The deal with PD is that it caused me to withdraw from many family and social gatherings. I say ‘it caused’ but reality is I had to choose to withdraw from family and friends. By not facing my fears of what they might think of me I was choosing not only for myself more pain and anxiety, but I was effectively causing them more pain and anxiety, my pulling away being another way of silently grumbling and complaining. What was I going to do to get out of this no parking zone?

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” William Arthur Wards

As I have already shared, we are people of choice. We may not get to choose our circumstance - or even what tempts us - but we can always choose how we will respond to said circumstances. PD can drive a man or woman to withdraw into themselves, but that is the sure-fire way to kill a relationship. Life requires that we give life and that we receive life in return - and life exchanged always leads to MORE life. That is when I decided the no parking fee for grumbling and complaining was not worth the cost of family and friends. Life with my family and friends is the one of the rewards of facing PD head-on. In a sense, getting the DBS procedure was a way of ‘adjusting my sails’. I saw it as a viable way - even if the surgery killed me - of making the effort to gain the best quality of life, not just for me, but for my family and friends…and that, my friend, was another tombstone moment in my life.

I want to share one more thing with you about how I adjusted my sails in the way I relate to PD. I and writing a fantasy series for my grandchildren in which I share how to face life and it’s circumstances with from a different point of view. In the third book of the series called The Bairns of Bren: Book Three: The Puzzle, I (the old king), have been placed under a spell by an evil sorcerer named Sepeleo Parkinson. It was intended to show my children and grandchildren how my life is still worth living and still enriched even though I find myself under the ‘spell’ of Parkinson’s. The next book is called Winifred and the Watcher in the Woods (will not be available until sometime in 2026) and is intended to help the family see that, no matter what we go through, caring for a family member is never a burden.You’ll have to read them to find out how we resolved the issue of PD! Don’t grumble and complain. Just go buy the dang books and see what I mean!

Dennis Jernigan

The above info is from a book I am currently working on called “Parkinson’s & Recreation 3 - The No Parkinson’s Zone”. It is unedited and may have additions made in the final manuscript. Dennis Jernigan

Photo courtesy of https://pixabay.com/photos/panel-logo-road-sign-man-prison-2091805/