Bobbing for Brackets

When I was in the army I worked for a bridging unit, building bridges and rafts to get tanks and stuff from one side of a river to another.

It sounds cool until you realize the enemy can see a long way on the water and can shoot you. So you only get to build bridges in the middle of the night when everyone else is sleeping.

On one such nighttime excursion, someone dropped a bracket we used to connect the boat with our giant metal raft. The bracket sank quickly to the bottom. As the lowest ranking person close by I quickly “volunteered” to go into the water after it.

Army regulations stated that if I was going to get into the water, I had to do it in a lifejacket. The U.S. government had invested too much money in me and they were not going to let their investment drowned.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dive under the water in a lifejacket but it’s kind of like trying to jump after nailing your shoes to the floor.

I tried desperately to get my head underwater, looking like an inept bobbing duck. It soon became clear to everyone that I needed to unhook myself from my safety vest if I was going to get anything done.

Only after that was I able to plunge into the black water, fumble around the slimy bottom and find the bracket.

I think if we truly want to experience life and all God has for us we need to take off our lifejackets. Yes there is comfort and safety in living a life without risk, but it’s hard to get stuff done.

We wear lifejackets at church, work, in our relationships with each other and with God because we don’t want to get hurt.

As a result, we never get the adventure of diving fully into each other’s lives or probing around in the depths of God’s wonder. We miss experiencing the joy of finding all that he has for us.

I’ll be honest, it’s risky. Sometimes you just come away cold and wet, smelling like pond scum and maybe even bitten by something. Engaging fully and loving deeply leaves us vulnerable. I also know if you don’t take a risk, on whatever God is asking, you’ll never get anything done. You’ll bob around in safety, but never truly live.

Wandering Eyes

Nothing tells a story better than country music, so I decided to write this song for Nancy. Feel free to sing it to whatever melody you'd like. 

I married my sweet darling over 20 years ago
and we headed off together on life’s narrow road.
And she’s always been faithful, and stood right by my side,
but there’s just been nothin’ I can do about her wanderin’ eyes.

She’s been such a good mamma to the two boys that we've raised;
She’s awesome in the kitchen and each night she will pray.
But every time we leave the house, her wandrin’ eyes do find
and make me stop along the road at every yard sale sign.

Chorus:
Wanderin’ eyes! There’s nothing I can do.
Wanderin’ eyes! They spot the thrift stores too.
Wanderin’ eyes! Find every second hand store.
Wanderin’ eyes! They’re always finding more.

Each and every summer, as morning starts to dawn,
People take their junky stuff and spread it cross the lawn.
And through some freakish gift from God, each one she does spy;
No matter what I try to do, or just how fast I drive.

She said, “Let’s take vacation. It’ll be a heap of fun.”
So we loaded up the car, and took off with our sons.
But it wasn’t long, down the road, that I knew it was a trap,
She had each Goodwill in the state, plotted on the map.

Chorus:

Then one day it happened, on a family drive,
She said those three words that I’d grown, to loath and despise.
“Stop the car!” She shouted, and I thought that I would scream,
Until I realized what she saw, was a Krispy Kreme,

Wanderin’ eyes, Oh how I love them true,
Wanderin’ eyes, They find me donuts too!
Wanderin’ eyes, they've saved me lots of money,
Wanderin’ eyes, I really love you honey,
Wanderin’ eyes…

Digging Trenches

Behind our office is a pretty formidable drainage ditch. It’s made from concrete, about 10 feet deep, with wide sloping sides that reach about 15 feet across at the top. 

We live on the east side of the Rockies, and are protected by Pike’s Peak. We get so little rain, keeping grass alive in our yard was impossible. We replaced it with rocks.  

Every day I look into that ditch and see a small trickle of water, that doesn't even cover the bottom. Why the heck is it so big?

Then one day, black clouds poured over the mountains and dumped everything they had on us.

I glanced out my window and the big ditch brimming with water. It was raging. It was awesome… and a little bit scary.

Most of the time life can be pretty mundane. Get up, go to work, help the kids with homework and go to bed.

There may be some general struggles but for the most part, it’s routine. But every now and then, dark clouds come, unleash suffering and we find our lives raging.

It’s in those moments we find out how deep our ditches are. We find out how wide they are. We find out what they are made of.

Without a depth of relationship with Christ or breadth of understanding of who God is and who we are our lives are easily flooded. Without the concrete base of the Word, our faith is easily eroded.

The thing about ditches is, once the rains come, it’s too late to start digging. You’re flooded and rushing out of control downstream.

The Bible is clear that we are going to experience trials. The question is, are we preparing ourselves?

With last year’s fires, here, there’s not a lot of vegetation on the mountainside. City officials have warned that if we get too much rain, even our big ditch may be overwhelmed.

That’s true for us as well. Sometimes we get hit with too much. We've done the right things. Our faith is strong. Yet we find ourselves flooded and hurling, out of control, down the raging river.

When those times happen, cry for help. Reach out to people on the bank. It’s what the church is for. It’s why we have been given to each other.

And trust that Christ meant it when he said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Rain or shine, he is our hope.

Alzheimer's God and Blogging

My mom has Alzheimer’s. All she ever did was love Jesus and she’ll spend the rest of her life, in a nursing home, babbling incoherently with someone feeding and changing her.

If that sounds bitter, it’s because I am. She has been relentlessly robed of her wit and wisdom, displayed in the hands of a servant. Is this really how God treats the ones who love him?

Though she was diagnosed 11 years ago, God and I are still working through some issues. He came to die for her, so I know he loves her, but I don’t think I will ever understand.

As the son of someone with Early Onset Alzheimer’s my sister and I have a 50-50 shot to develop the disease.  That means I may have 15 years before I start losing my mind. Last fall, that reality hit me about the same time I was reading Love Does. I started to wonder, “With 15 years or less, what should I do?”

As a missionary, I've been writing letters to people for years, telling stories of how God is working in the world and in me. I never started a blog because I couldn't imagine having something worthwhile to say each week.

But the looming prospect of the disease compelled me to start sharing some things that are on my heart. So if anything I write encourages, challenges or provokes you, you can thank Alzheimer’s.

I've decided bucket lists are stupid. We need “to do” lists. If you knew you had a fixed number of years left what would you do? The clock really is ticking. Don’t wait… go do it. 

My Love Language Sucks

If you aren't familiar with the five love languages, you can check them out here. Understanding them, helps couples understand and hopefully engage with each other better.

But mine are stupid. Physical touch and words of affirmation. Seriously? Can you get any that are less manly? “Hold me and tell me how great I am.” Seriously?

Why can’t sarcasm be a love language? Then people could say, “Jeff sure is needy, but I love his snappy comebacks.”

Like it or not, that’s how I’m wired. I think a lot of times we don’t like stuff about ourselves. We look at other people and the stuff they can do and think, “Why can’t I talk like that guy? Lead like her? Be as smart as that person?”

For some reason, we downplay our skills and elevate others. How we are created is not a character flaw.

In his book Strength Finder Tom Rath explains that we should figure out where we excel and focus on those things. 

If you’re a good bean counter, figure out how to be the best bean counter you can be. Let someone else handle personnel issues and keep counting those beans. No one wants me in charge of the beans, I'd lose them. 

Even the Bible talks about the church working like a body with many parts. When you have everyone working in their gifting the church functions more effectively.

So learn who you are and grow it. You have been uniquely and wonderfully gifted. Embrace it. And the next time you see me, please give me a hug and tell me I’m awesome. 

Dissonance

Have you ever been to a piano recital? You know where kids show off their talents after three months of lessons.

Marcus took piano for a few years and I went to a LOT of piano recitals. Some kids could play very well, but others should have played something else… like Monopoly.

Some would freeze and try to remember which note to play, others would peck around and try to find it. And they always seemed to get stuck on a dissonant chord. If you’re musical at all, it created this unease in you that made you want to run up on stage to resolve it for them.

Dictionary.com describes dissonance as: a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion.

Sounds like life doesn't it?  We live in a world filled with dissonance. A world in a state of unrest and in need of completion. A quick check on the news and you’ll see it. We experience it personally too, through a broken relationship, loss of work, illness or losing someone we care about.

Nancy and I have seen it in some of the places we visit. We saw children living in the city dump in Ecuador, others prostituted in Thailand. Stuff that made you want to run up and resolve the issues.

One of the reasons I believe in the Biblical story is because somehow we all realize that this isn’t how things should be. We intuitively sense that something has gone is terribly wrong. We were created for something different.  

There are great organizations filled with great people trying to help resolve the dissonances issues all around the world.  I work with many of them. And I long for the day when the final chord is played and Christ brings his perfect resolution.

Flu Season

It’s flu season and the media is hysterical. There are maps, articles and stories, about its scope, dangers and scarcity of treatment.

Last night a reporter described the severity of the strain, the speed of the outbreak and the shortage of treatment options. Then, with a sense of bewilderment, she said hospitals are overcrowded with people who don’t really need a doctor.

Seriously?

It’s like announcing to a crowded theater that an explosive device has been found, then wondering why everyone is trampling each other to escape a firecracker.

Sensationalizing the news has been around since the penny press. The need to attract an audience has always tempted reporters to juice up a story. But the introduction of the 24 hour news cycle seems to have turned it into an addiction.

But it’s not all their fault. We feed on it. Day after day, checking on line, turning it on at night, listening on the radio, consuming hours of hysteria laden stories about the economy, the debt ceiling, the fiscal cliff, and the FLU!

I think we all need to detox. Turn it off. Take a deep breath. And calm down.

We shouldn't bury our heads in the sand. Things happen in the world we need to be aware of, things we should care about and even respond to.

We should also have the sense to know when to turn it off and go for a walk. After all, a health body helps you fight off the flu. 

Garbage men & Osama bin Laden

When Andrew, was graduating from eighth grade, his school had a thing called “Blastoff” instead of eighth grade graduation.

It was a chance for parents to publicly say something nice about their children before they entered high school. The idea was, the encouragement would help “launch” them into a successful four years.

It makes for an awkward evening when the love language spoken in your home is sarcasm.

We listened to parent after parent talk about how wonderful their child was. Some made us wonder if they actually lived together, due to the discrepancy between what they were saying and their kid’s behavior at school.

As a woman droned on about how awesome her princess was, she said, “I love you and you can be anything you want to be. Anything in the world you want to be, you can be.”

I couldn't take it anymore, leaned over to Andrew and whispered, “I want to be a garbage man.” Drew whispered back, “I want to be Osama bin Laden.”

What our sarcasm was trying to expose was; mom was sweet and well intentioned, but, she would not be OK if her daughter became a garbage man. She had bigger hopes and dreams for her.

It made me wonder what God’s hopes and dreams are for me. Would he be proud of me if I was a garbage man?

Maybe.

We seem to place emphasis on what people do. Some occupations are more “prestigious” some more “spiritual.” But I don’t think God really sees it that way. I think the question he is more likely concerned with is, “Are you loving the people I put in front of you every day?”

Because we elevate jobs we minimize our ability to have an impact in the world. Statements like, “I’m just a garbage man,” or “I’m no Mother Theresa” free us from the responsibility to engage the world as God would have us engage it.

So, while your Mom may want you to be a doctor some day, God just wants you to be his. Ask him what it means to love the people in your community, in your neighborhood, in your home.

Jesus said, “Love God and love others.” You can even do that when you’re unemployed.