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A few weeks ago, my 6 year old son and I were at the community pool for swimming lessons (for him, not me). It was the last session of the week, and they typically just play in the pool for the hour. I asked my son to go down the big slide, which has been a requirement in our family as a prerequisite to going to water parks during the summer. He looked at the slides and told me that he would do the little one, but not the big one because he was too scared to do the big one. Reaching into my parental toolbox, I went for the big hammer: bribery....
About 10 years ago, I started playing a Facebook game. It was one of those games where there’s almost no skill or thinking involved. A few of the guys I worked with started playing the same game, and before long we were discussing it at lunch and ducking away every hour or so to check on our status. We played it for months. Until one day, I realized that it was kind of pointless. I didn’t really find it challenging or fun. I wasn’t competing with anyone to try and win anything. It didn’t impact my life in any way. There was no way to win or...
This week, I have been married for 21 years, and I am happy. I thank God every day for my wife and the life we have shared, good and bad. This isn’t to say we never disagree or fight. Rather, that I love her dearly and she is my favorite person in the world. I’ve spent some time trying to come up with some sort of magical advice that would account for our marital success. I spend a bit of time doing this whenever I do premarital counseling or talk with married couples who are struggling. I don’t think there is a magic key. Instead, havin...
I am a procrastinator by nature. Though I’ve gotten better about it over the years, when I was in college, I turned it into an art. I began by waiting until a few days before an assignment was due to start working on it. Then as time went by, the starting point moved to the day before. Eventually, I began setting my alarm early on the due date and rushing through the work. There were times I would print up papers and run to class to turn them in with seconds to spare. As I have grown older and begun to look back at those days with a little m...
This morning, I read an interesting op-ed written by a woman who is a lawyer and mom. She talks at length about the difficulty she has in that role and the hard truth that she often chooses her work life over her family because it fits her priorities. She laments the fact that she skipped birthdays and phoned in her participation in her kids’ school activities because her work was more important. I disagreed with the author on several points, but found myself identifying with her perspective because the same struggle often plagues folks in m...
I am allergic to dandelions. Every spring, my lawn begins to grow, the dandelions show up, and I start to develop headaches and sinus problems. When it gets tiresome enough, I mow in an effort to beat them back. Every home owner knows that mowing won’t solve the problem. In fact, it can make the dandelion problem worse by spreading their seeds out. The new seeds take root and new dandelions sprout up. I could certainly solve the problem, but I don’t really want to put the effort in. The issue is the roots that sit under the surface. Cutting the...
When I was a kid, I knew a handful of guys who were rabid baseball fans. They could tell you any stat for any player on their team going back 10 years. They collected baseball cards religiously, stored them in little plastic sleeves and studied them daily. Over the course of my lifetime, I have seen this same phenomena play out for all sorts of different hobbies. Recently, I listened to a couple of car guys talk for an hour solid about engine specs for different model years of muscle cars. The thing that blew me away was that they could rattle...
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This quote, from motivational speaker Jim Rohn has made the rounds in the world of self-improvement for years, and it’s worth taking a moment to consider, because it has a great deal of truth imbedded in it. The way we think and view the world is shaped by what we read, hear, watch, and interact with. Our attitudes rise or sink to the level of the folks we associate with. This is an unconscious drift that is built into people as a byproduct of being social creatures. We na...
About 15 years ago, the church I was working for as a Youth Pastor made significant budget cuts that resulted in me taking a 50% pay cut. This meant being forced to start working a second job. The job I found was at a facility that worked with kids who had emotional problems. The program I started in was Emergency Shelter Care. We provided housing for kids that had nowhere else to go. My first week there, we took in a young lady who had been homeless since she was 8. She was 13, and the police picked her up sleeping on the side of the road....
Wabi-sabi is the Japanese word referring to their cultural understanding of beauty. It’s an interesting perspective that is very different from what we generally accept in the west. Whereas we tend to look at things that are perfect as beautiful, in wabi-sabi, beauty is based on the idea that all things are constantly changing and nothing is perfect. Wabi-sabi looks at the imperfections as the source of beauty. This doesn’t mean that Japanese craftsmen and artists don’t work to improve. In fact, Japanese craftsmen are often meticulous in their...
I recently read the Wizard of Oz and was surprised at some of the differences between the film and the novel. The most interesting difference related to the story of the Tin Man, who was originally just a regular woodsman. He was cutting wood to earn money to buy a home for his fiancé. While he was working one day, he accidentally cut off his own leg, which he has replaced with a mechanical one. The same kind of accident claims his other leg and his arms, all of which he replaces with mechanical limbs. He discovers that he is able to work...
“A man and a woman are walking up to a building. The man notices the woman and runs ahead to open and hold the door for her. As she walks in, she turns to the man and asks ‘Are you holding this door because I am a woman?’ He responds: ‘No. I am holding it because I am a gentleman.’” I’ve heard this anecdote hundreds of times from a good friend of mine who is a pastor. He tells it frequently to make the same point: It’s wise to act based on your identity, not based on the situation you find yourself in. In the story, the guy holds the door...
Last Sunday was Palm Sunday, the first day of was is often called Holy Week. In the account of Palm Sunday, Jesus is arriving in Jerusalem for passover. At this point in the story, he has amassed a large following and a huge reputation. As he approached the city, folks gathered and cut palm branches from the trees to lay in his path. They cheered and praised him as he went. In the ancient world, this was not an insignificant act. It was the sort of thing a city did when a conquering hero arrived. Often Roman generals would return from war on...
My younger brother sent me an article written by a prominent millionaire outlining the 12 things that folks need to attend to in order to live a fulfilled life. The interesting thing is that the individual went through a nasty divorce recently after scandals came out about his philandering. I read the article, thought it was interesting and the advice it contained was worth noting. He advised things like: “Do things your way” and “Take risks” and “Work hard your whole life” among other things. The interesting thing that my brother pointed out...
I do a bit of marriage counseling as a part of pastoring. Sometimes this is with individuals, other times it’s with couples. I’ve read dozens of books on the subject of marital harmony, taken classes on the subject, and worked hard to improve my own marriage. There are so many fantastic resources out there for improving relationships. However, I think the one bit of advice I would give to any individual who is trying to make things better at home is this: look at the teachings and example of Jesus and implement them in your own life. This may...
I had a friend in Indiana who competed in off-road bicycle racing. He and his wife owned a bicycle store, and he spent an absurd amount of time riding and training for races, many of which were on dangerous courses that required a high degree of skill to ride on safely. After riding competitively for several years, he had a terrible accident and broke his neck at one of the races he entered. I saw him not long after. He was wearing one of the neck cages to keep his head in place while he healed. I asked him about the accident, assuming he...
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…” This quote from Theodore Roosevelt came up in conversation between my brother and I regularly as we discuss our various endeavors and hobbies. Roosevelt essentially argues that the thing that matters most isn’t the response of others to the work you are doing, but rather that you endeavor to do great things. It’s far greater to try and fail...
Eight years ago, about a year after my daughter was born, I was working at a job I loved. I was the chaplain at a mental health facility for young people. The problem was, that the work was so demanding that I often would only see her first thing in the morning or after she had gone to bed when I came home from work. For years, my wife and I had conflict over the fact that I often came home from work later than planned or picked up extra shifts on holidays. I justified it to myself because my job was so important. When my daughter came along,...
Before ships had engines to power their forward movement, they relied on sails and wind to move across the large bodies of water. Occasionally, they would hit stretches where no wind blew to help them move. When this happened, they would employ a ‘kedge’ to move to windier stretches of water. A kedge is an anchor. Sailors would carry the kedge ahead of the ship, drop the anchor, then the sailors aboard the ship would pull it to the anchor. The process would be repeated over and over until they reached areas where the wind blew. Last fall, I r...
Over the last few weeks, I have read about several prominent pastors who lost their jobs after accusations of abuse of power and improper behavior were made and verified. As a guy who works in ministry, these sorts of things are disheartening to me. For starters, one of the pastors is a guy I really respect. Seeing fellow believers fall is heart-breaking as well because I believe it when the scriptures describe fellow believers as God’s family. If my brother ruined his life with a pattern of bad behavior, I’d be heartbroken as well. Fin...
Aesop, the great storyteller of ancient Greece, was once mocked by a fellow Athenian because he spent his life telling stories to children, which he called a waste of time. Aesop’s response was to un-string a bow, lay the bowstring at the man’s feet, and ask what the significance of unstrung bow was. The man considered it and couldn’t figure out the message. Aesop explained that the wooden bow would eventually wear out and break if it was strung tight for too long a time. Resting the wood was necessary to preserve the weapon. The same is true...
Mark Twain once said: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” The reason being that no-one wants to eat a frog. Putting off eating it until later in the day may seem tempting, but it will give you opportunity to put it off again and again until you don’t do it altogether. This is essentially the heart of all procrastination. We look at a task that we don’t want to do and come up with reasons to avoid it or we just don’t thin...
A few weeks ago, my 5-year old son was playing with a girl from his class. I gave them snacks, a plate of chips each. My boy eyed up the plates and went to grab the one that appeared to be larger. I stopped him and asked if he was forgetting something. He smiled sheepishly and replied: “Oh yeah, ladies first.” When I asked him why he was going to let his lady friend pick first he replied with a line we say every day: “Because that’s what gentlemen do.” We repeat that line several times a day as a part of him learning to hold doors for ladie...
On Monday, I had an early doctor’s appointment that required me to be in town early. As a result, I wasn’t able to get to the gym first thing in the morning. It’s the first time in 2 months that I haven’t exercised first thing in the morning. It is a habit that I have maintained most days of the week for nearly 18 months. Missing my morning gym time felt weird, like skipping my morning coffee or shower. It’s become a normal part of my routine. It’s a habit. Missing it felt awkward. I have been talking with my brother this month about his e...
Recently, I have been very focused on my health and have been working hard to lose weight, eat better, and exercise regularly. I’ve done well with the eating better and the daily exercise, but I am discovering that losing weight is very difficult. The reason for this is simple: Eating healthy is a good step, but how much you actually eat makes an enormous difference. I like to eat, and I do it way more than I should. I do pretty well for the majority of the day. My trouble comes when dinner arrives, and I eat 3 or 4 plates of whatever is a...
