God At The End Of My Driveway

I went for a walk looking for God…I found Him…at the end of my driveway. I love to take off walking when I am in the middle of one of life’s little complexities. I like to walk…cracked sidewalks…rocky trails…blacktop roads…areas with some character…some age…like around an old school…abandon buildings…over bridges.

Walking around football and baseball stadiums allows my mind to create hundreds of scenarios of games won and lost…dreams realized…and dreams slipping away…stadium seats where lovers meet…they sit close…knees brushing against each other…vibrations of romance…where a man sits alone…watching…as his child performs…his gut tense…praying they will not fail…life has momentum in stadium seats.

I like to walk down my driveway. It’s really long, as the house sets about two thirds of the way from the road on four and a half beautiful acres…lots of trees hanging over…the lawn is sweeping and inviting. On a clear night the stars seem almost reachable…millions of them blinking…a sliver of the moon stands almost heroic among them as it takes a slice out of the dark blue surroundings…amazing…some of Gods best work.

Recently, on one of these gorgeous nights, I was out on my deck…pondering…looking at the stars…my spirit was unsettled…talking to God…issues unresolved…I took off down the driveway…as I walked I began to realize that I was actually looking for God…I wanted to talk to Him…I laughed out loud and realized most of my walks in my life had been just that…looking for God…His intervention…His answers…His way…His confirmation…or just His presence.

I made it to the end of the driveway and stopped…I was looking up through the branches of the big trees…dark sky…bright stars…I am almost certain one of them winked at me…it was then I noticed that everything was very still and almost no sound…it was also cold…really cold…I was looking and listening…determined not to make a sound…and then I felt a light wind move over my head…it startled me a little…it had been so still…and then I sensed…felt... knew…He was there…I talked to Him...I know He listened…awesome.
Well, of course He was always there…He is everywhere all the time…its me…my many distractions that keep me from realizing what is always true…

“I will never leave you or forsake you” and “If you seek me…you will find me”
God
I found God…at the end of my driveway.

Luxurious Lounging

I have started the New Year with a bang. Since I got off work about 6 pm on New Years Eve, I have been involved in what I am calling Luxurious Lounging…sleeping, football, a little reading, a little writing, easily prepared foods, and good, but cheap, wine. I intentionally made no New Years resolutions. That would have produced unwanted stress. All that mapping out the next year stuff would have to wait. So I took on the words of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind and made them my own…”I’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

However, I do enter the year with some familiar wishes.
Work out consistently
Eat better
Use time wisely
All polar opposites of what I did my very first weekend.

I am thankful that I was able to have three days of Luxuriously Lounging. In some ways I feel bad that I did very little that was productive. I certainly have things that needed to be done and I could have visited with family, read more; written more, contacted more people on Face Book or I could have even exercised. And yes there a many social projects in which I could have been involved….the world needs help in so many ways. When I first realized that I had three whole days off I thought of doing all those things. But…I did not…a little selfish maybe…but…well…you just have to try it.

It was cold and windy outside so I did not even spend that much time on my beautiful deck. For the most part, I stayed inside wearing comfortable sweat pants and a big sweat shirt and sometimes wrapping up in a warm blanket. It gets really cold in my little cottage on the bayou. I did receive a few annoying text from employees that actually took time out of their New Years Day to complain about some things at work. I’m usually a pretty good listener but this weekend I was pretty bent on being non productive so they got very little response. I was not being rude but I was being selfish with my luxurious lounging!

I did bust out with martinis on Saturday afternoon where I officially toasted the New Year and I did make the early service for church on Sunday where I cleared things up with God for laying around for three days. Those two things required the most effort of my weekend. One required a vicious shaking of the drink and the other required a shower. Other than that…well I think you get the picture…

I know there are countless ways to use your New Years weekends more productively and its generally a good time to share with others…but for this New Year’s weekend...I think it was productive lounging complimented by some light meditation…God and I did discuss His plan for me for 2010…but I broke no sweat…I experienced no stress…I’m rested…my head is clear…I’m ready for 2010 and all the good things it is filled with. I am ready to do battle with its enemies and work through its struggles. In the words of Bob Seger…Turn the page…here’s to Luxurious Lounging.

My First Hearing…uhhhh….Device?

Today I received my first of two hearing devices…(Sshhh not hearing aid). I’m still way to vain to call it that. Besides when you say hearing device people are not even sure what you are talking about.
The young lady, Shanna, that assisted me in my hearing test and the selection of my device was very helpful, polite, and even sensitive to my obvious…vanity…thought I was going to say hearing didn’t you? Nope hearing was not the big issue today…today’s issue was…vanity. It was obvious to Shanna and eventually to me that the hearing loss did not bother me that much…while the wearing of a hearing device was causing me great anxiety. She ask what style I wanted and I said I want the style that no one can see. She smiled and said “Of course.”
However, this was not young Shanna’s first rodeo. She proceeded to show me the stylish devices that you wear behind your ear, she told me all the advantages, she told me how much more comfortable they were etc etc. personally, being in sales, I believe she showed me the ones that had the most mark up in them...unfair... maybe... anyway... I just looked at her…like you must not have heard what I said…this was not my first rodeo either (at being totally vain). She had apparently seen this same face before and began to demonstrate how the one in the ear would look and feel. I still did not like it but it seemed the better choice.
So, almost three grand and a week later I am hearing sounds…lots of crazy sounds…some I had forgotten. Small rocks crunching under your feet as you walk across the pavement…cool…my leather jacket makes a sound when the sleeve rubs against the front…I did not know that…how loud heels sound on our marble floor at work…and this one...my blinkers in my car sound like I hooked up speakers to them!...outrageous... and, I can hear the conversations even at other tables in a restaurant…okay that one is not always a blessing…also, my cell phone actually makes a sound when it vibrates…very surprising… I know this will get old soon but I am having a blast hearing all the sounds that have been going on around me that I knew nothing about.
With all that I am still most concerned with what people will think when they see it. Okay, you have to be at just the right angle and on my right side to actually see it but I feel like its this big thing in my ear that surely everyone can see. Yet I cannot see it in a mirror! But…I know someone will!
I want to say to everyone that walks by…I’m not old! I’m totally cool...I lost my hearing playing rock music….I am not old…I’m cool damn it! But actually I have been at work with it for four hours and no one has noticed it….yet!
I know…I know…ridiculous…vain…I should just appreciate the sheer genius of this device. It is so technologically advanced that it even talks to me…it gives me warnings like…”battery low” or “shutting down” it says that when you ignore the battery low warning. Very moody.
Also, I can set the tones higher or lower and for different environments…crowds, phone, restaurants etc….all from my cell phone! Amazing!
But hey, I do have the option of going back to my old device of constantly saying…”What…What…I’m sorry but could you repeat that?” And vanity has me seriously considering it.
Vanity won over good hearing for a long time…it just became such hard work to keep up in conversations. And now hearing is struggling to win over vanity…I must admit…hearing is pretty cool…may the best device win!

People are Doing the Best They Can

Sometimes more than the work of living out the life you have been handed is the living through the mud of others opinions. You put out your best effort and can almost always count on someone to tell you that you “could have” or worse, “should have”, done better.

I have a friend, TJ,that has been teaching me something about seeing people who appear to be, in some way, failing at life. TJ often says of people “They are just doing the best they can”. She gives most everyone the benefit of her believing that they are truly getting through life the best way they can. The angry customer, the sour clerk at the register, the arrogant manager at the office, the rude and difficult client, the mom that is not doing that well at parenting, the dad that seems indifferent to his family, the juvenile delinquent, the criminal on his way to jail. Everyone.
I see TJ as a powerful and successful person. And yet when she says “they are just doing the best they can” it is spoken in such an earnest empathy. It seems to come from a place in her that makes you feel it. You just know she is looking hard at life and considering her own faults, failures, inconsistencies, all of her life choices. You can almost feel the pain. It seems she is saying to herself in the deepest way. “I know I am doing the best I can.” It’s as though she senses the pain in others when their eyes can’t make contact with hers or in body movements that display a weariness that life has not been easy. I have never known anyone who so clearly does not judge outward appearance.

I have an employee that smiles…all the time. He is a faithful employee…there everyday…on time…with a good attitude…good performer but never the top. I would have pegged him as better than average…but not really living up to his potential. He’s one of those people that seem to move about under the radar. I never thought much about him until one day a coworker told me his story. It turns out that just a few years ago his son was playing video games at home with a friend. While they were playing video games a man fired a gun, two apartments over, and the bullet traveled through several apartment walls and directly into the head of his son. The man who fired the gun is in prison today and my smiling under the radar employee communicates regularly with him. His heart is full of forgiveness and empathy for the man who is responsible for the death of his teenage son.

We have all known people that have given up on life for far less troubles. And to drive the point home for me, I was at lunch with this man one day and we were talking about how hard life is for some people. He used a phrase that we have all heard many times. He said “I don’t have to look far to see someone who is worse off than me.” The weight of those words…coming from a man that had so unbelievably lost his son…a man that has a right to say that life isn’t fair…is still counting his blessings. Average? Hardly…I now describe him as exceptional…rare…maybe even heroic.
But like me, you would not get that from a casual glance of this man. He is a living reminder to me that I have no way of knowing the story behind the people I see everyday and of whom I am in a habit of passing judgment.
Maybe we should all, like TJ, take a more forgiving approach to the people in our world and give them the benefit of the doubt. Imagine the compassion you would feel and the kindness you would share on a daily basis if you looked at most people and said in your heart…
“They are doing the best they can.”

Sometimes people truly are doing the best they can with what they know or what they have but it comes up short in the eyes of those around them. The results in their life are often graded by unrealistic standards and the effort they have put forth to just be where they are today goes completely unnoticed.

Let’s decide to stop contributing to the “mud” of negative opinions that cause the struggle of others to be even more difficult. Instead, maybe we could start believing that those around us are doing “the best they can”. Maybe then we would look more closely at the person, where they have come from, what their life struggles have been, the long road they have traveled to be where they are today, and then, compared to that…what do their efforts look like? Probably a lot like yours and mine.

"Iron sharpens iron"

Thanks TJ

“Love your brother as yourself”
Jesus

Men of God in Sin City

This past week I had a chance to share with a group of incredible men out of Las Vegas. We met up at a beautiful lodge that is a couple of miles from the entrance of Mt Zion National Park. I was captured by the magnificent scenery. The sheerness of the red cliffs, the breathtaking sunsets, and the magnificence of morning as the sun rose and created red lines in the sky. You could actually sense how the finger tips of God must have carved out this incredible place. Amazing sight…absolutely beautiful!
But…I saw something even more amazing…Something that gives you hope for this world…something that reminds you that God has an army…that it defies the standards and circumstances of this world…
I saw the finger prints of God on over one hundred men.
I watched as these men…right out of what has come to be known as “Sin City”…sought an audience with God himself! Men, from all types of occupations, all types of families, all types of life struggles…all stretching…reaching…calling out for God. Men…listening…contemplating…praying…considering…struggling…desiring to negotiate this life in a way that would honor God.
Men that left no subjects uncovered...family struggles…sex…business decisions…unforgiveness…the need to be forgiven…how they have ignored God…their need for spiritual disciplines…
Men…that discussed their sincere desires to be good husbands and fathers…to be good stewards of the gifts and blessings God has given them…to be “light” in a world of darkness…to be “more than conquerors”.
Men…that are physical…they love to hunt and fish and drive tractors and work with saws and hammers. They are attracted to sometimes violent and definitely demanding sports…they love things that challenge them physically and mentally.
Men…that are spiritual…they support their churches with their money and their abilities…they hold their daughters and play with their sons…they are seekers of the truth and warriors of the kingdom.
Men…that have strengths and weaknesses…they have good and sometimes not so good desires…they have recognized their limitations as simply being flesh and blood humans…and their need for His supernatural strength…
Men…for three days they sought Him…kneeling at the foot of a cross…bringing a sacrifice of praise to the Prince of Peace…the King of Kings.
Men…they are His warriors…clothed in humility.
Men…they have given Him their lives...their devotion.
Men...making a difference in the world…with hands raised in surrender…with silent prayers that fire through the heavens like heat seeking missiles and God in His excitement guides those humbly spoken words to impossible targets and causes the impossible to occur.
Men…as long as there are men like these…there is more than hope…there is a certainty that God is in control and that He has a very determined and well armored army.
Men…Godly men…in the midst...of Sin City…awesome.

God Forgets

“Just got a new life…but I can’t shake the old”
(Danny Painter and Meggie Wiggins)

Your sins are forgotten...I can’t even wrap my mind around that.

God said this to the children of Israel after a time of doing just about everything opposite of what He had taught, ask, and commanded them to do. "Forgotten"…when I read this recently, I kept saying it out loud over and over…forgotten…forgotten…forgotten. I know He forgives and have been taught my whole life that he forgets…he tosses my sins as far as the east is from the west…but really…forgotten?

I don’t know how that works because I am certainly not built that way. I have an ever present always running video in my brain that is always showing my life’s greatest stupid moments. All those things I wish I had never said…all those things I wish I had never done. After a lot of practice and determination I am better at not allowing that video to play…but forget…totally forget…not happening.

Gods’ ability to see me as whole and complete and pure is completely beyond me. He is not stuck in my past regardless of how ugly I or anyone else thinks it might be. That He has completely forgotten the sins that are haunting my memory is almost impossible for me to bring to a place of reality in my mind. But just like so many other things, when it comes to God, I don’t have to get it for it to be true.
I mean I don’t even understand some of the most basic things in life. For instance, I don’t understand how millions of cell phones can be sending signals to other cell phones all over the world at the same time. With all those voices traveling through the air; how come I don’t hear any of them? I don’t understand how the average teenager can play a video game online, text his true love on his cell phone, chat with other friends on his computer, listen to blaringly loud music on the same computer, and do his homework. But it happens everyday! I don’t get gravity, can’t comprehend the true size and depth of the Atlantic, or how my socks can still disappear when I am living alone! So how much more difficult the mysteries of God…the creator of the universe! But I know that God forgives and forgets…because He supplies me with just enough faith to know. Thankfully, complete comprehension of this is not a prerequisite. He just loves me and continues to allow me to live in this river of continual grace and forgiveness.

The crazy thing is that if I did forget everything then I would do some of those regrettable things again. I need some of that stuff to come up at the right times to keep me from repeating my own history. He allows these memories to become warning signs…in some instances warning billboards…to help keep me on the right track. So I am thankful for that. It’s the guilt thing that gets to me. When they hang heavy over my heart and tell me that I can do no better…that’s when I need the awareness of how God sees it. And the beauty is...He doesn’t. He forgot it…remember?

Whitney is 29 today. She is a beautiful and incredible person and I am one of the most blessed people on the planet because I get to call her…daughter! Her name is Whitney Layne and I have always sung the Beatles song to her, Penny Lane, using her name instead. “Whitney Layne is in my ears and in my eyes”.

Here is a link if you would like a reminder of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FETWNBbwy9Q

Come with me for a stroll down “Whitney Layne”.

When I think of my beautiful Whitney there are a couple of things that come to mind immediately. Her sweet voice is soothing and warm and it makes her easy to be with. The lucky kiddos that get to spend their days at her beautiful daycare are especially blessed by this. And the Whitney laugh is like no other…its big…it’s an expression of uninhibited joy…it’s unmistakably Whitney! Another thing that stands out is her level of contentment… she has a contentment that is enticing.

It just was not that long ago that she was only a few months old, sitting in her carrier next to me, watching football. Well, I always like to think she was watching football. I know this…she was very content to just be there beside me and it’s one of those memories that still defines her sweet spirit. Never in a hurry and always willing to just "be' with you. She has always been quiet and introspective…never pushing her way into a conversation or a crowd. I have always loved that.
She has lived her life with much grace and I think using the “fruits of the spirit” as listed in Galatians 5:22 is a good way to describe my girl.
Love... she has an abundance of it to share…
Joy…if you spend a day watching her operate with a house full of children...its amazing
Peace…We called her “angel baby” from the day we brought here home for a reason…
Patience…She has been patient with me…her Dad…”thank you baby”
Kindness…I have never known anyone in my life that has a more “kind” spirit.
Goodness…absolutely…
Faithfulness…she is a faithful friend…a faithful wife…a faithful mother
Gentleness…I don’t know anyone with a more gentle spirit…
Self Control…She is just not one to let her emotions dictate what she is going to be…

My “Angel Baby”
Whitney Layne, you are still in my eyes and in my ears and in my heart. Thanks for bringing us little Gracie...she has the same angel qualities as you. I love you much.
Happy Birthday!

Dad