Relationally-Based Life Change

I’ve noticed a number of significant changes that have happened in my life, and most of them revolved around significant relationships. Each change taught me something about God, life, and myself, and each change helped me to become less self-focused. Which is not to say I have it together, I know there are a lot more changes yet to come, but let me talk to you about two of them.

When I got married it was like I started a whole new life. Gone were the days of goofing off and late night video games. Now I was responsible not just for myself, but for my wife as well. I didn’t get to do whatever I wanted, but had to compromise on things. I am still learning to put my wife before myself, but this relationship brought me to a place where I could no longer only look out for number 1 because there was a new number 1 in my life.

If marriage was life 1.2, then having a child was like life 2.0. This change was much more drastic, and stretched me even farther. Now I have this child that is completely dependant on me for everything, and so now I’m finding myself at the bottom of the priority list to these two girls that live in my house.

These changes have been wonderful, and even though they stretched me and I had to sacrifice some of my own selfishness, I wouldn’t change any of it for an instant. I told my friend this week that I’ve learned more about God from my daughter than from any seminary class I’ve taken. It’s these relationships that cause me to turn my focus from myself to others that are growing me to be the man that God wants me to be.

Up Close with a Zebra

This week we took a mini-vacation to San Antonio. We met up with family, and Meghan had a conference. We ate on the River Walk, took the boat tour, saw the Alamo, went shopping, and of course had a Zebra in our car.

Ok, so maybe that last one’s not quite so obvious, let me explain. Just outside of San Antonio they have a drive through Safari park, where you stay in your car (because it’s way to hot this summer to be outside) and see the animals with no cages. They even give you some food pellets so you can feed the animals. We got to see African deer, giraffes, wildebeests, ostriches, llamas, but the most interesting was the Zebras. There were a bunch of them, and they had grown quite accustomed to their automobile-filled surroundings. They had learned that, despite the stern warning from the woman at the gate, some people would feed them right out of their hands. That is what one Zebra expected as he came close, and closer, and closer still until he stuck his big mouth into our car. I had to slowly roll up the window to get him out, making sure not to hurt him but to give him the message that he wasn’t welcome in our Toyota.

Sometimes people can be like that Zebra, they stick their noses right where they don’t belong. They have become so accustomed to people letting them get into their business that they don’t even know that what they are doing is wrong. I think this happens everywhere, but it’s especially noticeable in a small town. I mean, some people have really made it into an art, and they’ve been doing it so long that at this point they thrive on it. I think we need to treat those kinds of people the same way we would treat a Zebra, do our best not to hurt them but to let them know that they are not welcome in the middle of our lives. Often that is all people need, to be lovingly shown where the boundaries are. Most people will respect the boundaries, and they will respect you more for showing them where the boundaries are.

Mix Tape

I’m making a mix tape today. Well, I guess it’s not really a tape, nobody uses tapes anymore, but the nomenclature still works. It’s a collection of songs that have endeared themselves to me this past year. Each summer, my best friend from college and I exchange these mix tapes to get a feel for the music that has been influential in our lives. That’s the thing about music, it goes to an emotional place in our lives, sometimes into our souls, and sharing it opens us up to a kind of vulnerability.

But the thing about a mix tape is that, no matter how I try, there is always a track or two that my friend doesn’t really get. I pick things that appealed to me, but since we’re not the same person, he doesn’t like all the songs that I liked. And not every song he sends to me knocks me out either. And this kind of stinks because I work very hard, all year long, crafting our annual mix tape, sharing a piece of me and where I am in my life. I would like to think that he will just love every song I have placed on the playlist, but I know that’s not the case.

I think our lives are kind of like a mix tape. When we connect with another person and share our lives, sometimes we make a great connection but sometimes it’s less than perfect. The thing about life is that if we try to live our lives alone and never open up, we can’t have the kind of spiritual experience that God wants for us in this world. He designed us to do life together. And sometimes that means rejection or disappointment. But we can’t discover the good in people if we’re not willing to expose myself to the possibility of pain. God wants us to commit ourselves to His priorities and His people, and that’s only possible when we open ourselves up to the people around us.

Life is better with a mix tape, share yours with somebody today.

For more on commitment to Christ and others, check out OASIS this Wednesday night at Calvary.

Mowing the Dirt

The other day I mowed my lawn for the first time of the season, and for me what that means is that there were problems. Every year, the first mow of the season, something goes wrong, or at very least isn’t quite right. One year it was the air filter, another year it was the blade, and there’s always some lag from having sat idle in the garage for months. This year was no different. It took me two days just to get the beast started, and then when it got moving there was another problem. This is a normal problem around here, but it seemed worse than ever.

Dust. Piles and piles of dust. Flying everywhere. It was like I was mowing the dirt for about one third of my time outside. Because it doesn’t rain often, there was some grass that desperately needed cutting, but there was much of my lawn that was still dirt. Dust got in my face, it got in my hair, it got in my eyes, mouth, and everywhere else. It even got through my shoes, socks, and onto the bottoms of my feet. I think I kicked up more dust with my lawn mower than I have ever seen before.

I think a lot of our relationships with friends can be like mowing a lawn. Sometimes moments happen in a relationship where, just like a lawnmower to grass, we face some damage. The lawnmower comes through our relationship and starts to cut things down. But that lawnmower is there for the good of the lawn, just like the problems and situations that come into our lives are there to make us, and in turn our relationships, stronger. But if we haven’t taken care of our lawn, if it’s mostly dirt and a little grass, the lawnmower turns our lawn into a mess of dust. If our relationships are based on ourselves and we don’t put the effort in to make them the best, then when we face the problems that all friendships face, we end up kicking up dust rather than creating a beautiful lawn. Today, find a friend and invest something, selflessly, into that friendship, so that when the lawnmower comes, you will be ready.

Broccoli

It was like a title bout today in my office. Every once in a while I spend lunchtime with my daughter, one of the perks of working at the church where she has daycare. Most days that lunch is leftovers, but as I was rushing to get out of the door this morning, I realized that the only thing we had in the fridge was some rice and veggies. So that’s what she got.

Now don’t get me wrong, she usually is good about vegetables. She ate them pretty well today, at first. But then she got a mouthful of broccoli that she refused to swallow. Now, she had already downed several bites of broccoli so far today, but for some reason this was the broccoli that broke the camel’s back. She refused, and I pulled out every parenting trick in the book.

We started with the happy voice, mimicking the action of chewing and swallowing. Then there came the threats of a spanking. Then the actual spanking. Then we tried the lovey-dovey voice to get chewing out of sympathy. Then a time out. But she resisted at every turn, nothing I could say or do was getting through to her. By the end, she wouldn’t even look at me.

What worked was the classic “hide-the-yucky-food-in-something-good” trick, and we got the broccoli down with the help of some pears. But as we were in the middle of our twenty-minute ordeal over one bite I realized that we were approaching this situation from two opposite worlds with two opposite understandings and goals in mind. I think we do this a lot as grown ups in the way that we talk to people. We don’t try to put ourselves in their shoes, but we stubbornly push for what we want. Sometimes I think we need to step back from who we are and see things through the other person’s eyes, and then we will see more clearly what the issue really is, and often it’s no where close to what we really thought.

For more on communication issues, visit our OASIS service at 6:30 at Calvary