Transparency

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We talk about a lot of things on this blog.

Ministry.  Parenthood.  Video games.  Bad haircuts.  Love.  In all of it, I have one goal, which is transparency.  If I’m going to run a blog about my daily life, where I share my opinions, tell stories, and expose my life to people, transparency is a necessity.  I struggle for it, and with it, each time I write something here.

I ask myself questions like, “How much is too much?”, and “Did I overshare?”.  The problem with transparency, to me, is that it is addictive.  When I come here and talk about something I’m dealing with, or tell a story about my family, the negative emotions associated with those things drift away.  Coming here helps me to process what i’m feeling and what is really going on beneath the surface of an issue.

A few months ago, one of the guys in my life that I really consider to be a mentor brought up this blog, and one of the first things he pointed out was the level of transparency that I’d been writing with.  Originally, I hadn’t noticed, and I’m being honest when I say that.  I was just writing whatever came into my head and out of my fingers as I typed.  But, as I tried to figure out what this blog would and wouldn’t be, telling stories about my own faults, failures, triumphs, and strengths just came naturally.  I was proud, then, that someone had noticed my transparency even when I hadn’t, because that meant that I was willing to share my life with people.

It’s risky to be transparent in our culture, especially in ministry, where a wrong step can see you crucified for something you’re still in process of figuring out.  That’s a risk I’m willing to take though, due to the fact that transparent people connect with their intended audience more.  Since I work daily with people, I want them to know that I’m approachable, that I’m friendly, and that I have faults too, just like them.  I never want to give off the impression that just because I’m called to ministry means I’m on top of some tall ivory tower and cannot be approached.

So, until something changes, I’ll continue to write about all my problems, my fears, my joys, my wins, my losses, and everything in between.  Because that’s what I want people to know about me: the whole story, nothing edited or censored.  Because, after all, don’t we all long for that?

For someone to really know us, as we truly are?

Lesson learned

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It all started with a haircut.

Isaac and Annaliese got their hair cut this weekend.  It happened in Lexington with a business we’ve used before, but not our regular stylist.  Isaac’s hair was shaggy and in his eyes and way too long in the back for my liking.  We asked for his hair to be shaped up and thinned out, keeping the basic hairstyle we had.  And she kept the hairstyle, shaggy, in his eyes, and way too long in the back for my liking.  You know, in the shop, it looked ok.  I think it’s whatever they use to clean their instruments, clouds our vision.  We even commented that he looked like Justin Bieber.

But he’s 4, not 16, so the Bieber look was not working for Mama.  I kept saying, I’m gonna trim it just a little bit more.  And never got  around to it.  Which is how this whole issue started, I usually cut his hair or send him to a barber.  I had looked at it for 3 days and by today it was just stressing me out.  I couldn’t look at him without getting upset, the hair hanging over his ears was driving me crazy!

So I got out my scissors, water bottle, and towel and went to work.  Here’s where I learned the lessons.

Number 1 – Don’t go to a stylist you don’t know well and expect not to be very specific in what you want.  I have taken him in the past and said the exact same thing and gotten a satisfactory (to me) hair cut.  I’m sure she does a great job, she did for Annaliese, she just didn’t know what his hair looks like normally.  Totally not her fault, I should have spoken up.  I have a hard time with that.  I sometimes sound really harsh when I don’t mean to, I get it from my Daddy.

Number 2 – Don’t attempt to cut his hair at home if he hasn’t had a nap.  I know a lot of his peers don’t take naps anymore, but he needs one.  If he doesn’t get one, he survives until about 6:00 p.m. and he becomes overly emotional, hyper, uncooperative.  If the hair hanging over his ears weren’t driving me mad (we can talk about my issues later) I would have never done it.  When he doesn’t get a nap, I try to have them headed towards bed at 7:00.  So at 6:15, we sat down on the floor and I began to hack,   I took about an inch off all the way around.  I think the stylist used razor scissors to cut instead of regular scissors.  We made it through with lots of tears, and promises I would never allow her to cut his hair again.  (He hates having his hair combed so 2 cuts in one week is too much for him!)  We went into the bath room to get Marty’s beard trimmer to shape it up.  Everything was going fine, he loves this part, it tickles.  So I’m shaping away, when he begins to prance.  I ask him to please stop, to settle down so I can finish.  Well, then you throw Annaliese into the mix, who is playing Mail Carrier, stuffing “letters” under the door.  He turns as I move in and this is what we got.

Lesson learned.

Thunder, Lightning, and….Tornadoes?

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I’m sleepy.  Very sleepy.  But, I was up huddling in a bathroom last night at midnight when I should’ve been sleeping.  So, if this post is a little disjointed and not very good, you’ll know why.

My wife probably thinks I’m crazy.  In fact, last night, she pretty much confirmed it when she said, “I can’t ever remember going to the bathroom or a closet when I was growing up.”  She was referring to the fact that when bad weather strikes our area, I make my family load up in the car and go to our church, where we can be safer.  We don’t have a basement, and if you know our house, there are no interior rooms, so we have to go somewhere else.

The storm last night fooled us.  Lulled us into a false sense of security.  So, we went to bed.  I had just settled down and Erin was brushing her teeth when we heard it.  Sirens started to go off.  I immediately got up, got dressed, and grabbed a few things while Erin woke up the children.  We carried them to the car and took off for the church.  By the time we got there, the sirens were off.  Not sure what was going on, we got inside, made them a small bed in the bathroom, and waited.  Checking the weather, I saw early on that the tornado warning was cancelled, but the wind was still bad, very bad.  We stayed for about an hour, then returned home, exhausted, and collapsed into bed in order to be woken up at what seemed like just 5 minutes later.

Am I crazy for heading to the church?  Possibly.  I do have a fear of storms.  It started with the movie Twister when I was 16.  Am I crazy for protecting my family?  Absolutely not.  They are the things that mean most to me on this earth.  To that end, I will always do what I have to do in order to make sure they are safe.  In the end, tornado or not, we were where we were supposed to be, and are better for it.

Now, if I can just get some sleep today.

 

Good news In Our Community

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I can’t tell you how proud I am of our church.

Last night we saw 50 children show up for our yearly Midnite Madness event.  About half of them are connected with our church either as members or regular attenders to Pioneer Club, but that means that half of them had been invited.  That means our children are being good news in our community.  They believe the church is important and want their friends to be there.  This is huge!  I hope we adults appreciate this and encourage it!  That is how the gospel is spread, telling people as we go, being the good news!

We had about 15 youth both from our leadership team and extra who signed up to be helpers come to facilitate the event.  Our leadership team plans it from start to finish.  They get the activities together, they tell us what supplies we need, they are in charge of the show when the kids show up.  Marty and I and the other adults just step back to jump in if needed.  Then we asked the entire youth group, any that would like to help to stay and be trained, and they did a phenomenal job of interacting with and ministering to the children.  They played games, gave piggy back rides, sat with them during worship, ate dinner, and decorated cupcakes like champs.  We couldn’t have done it without them.  I am so proud to be blessed to work with these teenagers.

And last but not least, Ms. Kathy Davis and Ms. Marla Ernest were invaluable last night.  They are faithful to use the gifts God has given them whenever they can.  Ms. Kathy helped with our crafts and loved on some children with the best of them.  Marla helps us kick things into next gear.  She believes everything should be done with excellence and encourages us in that direction.   Without these 2 ladies I would have been lost last night.

Thank you parents for sending your children, you should be proud of them.  Thank you Reach 1 for continuing to surpass my expectations for you.  Thank you church for supporting us always.  We love you and thank you!  Let us all be good news in our community!

Who Is Lying to These People?

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We watch American Idol, well, we do now after a few years off.  Wednesday night was the first night back for season 11 and of course the first couple of episodes show some people with real talent and people whose talents definitely do not lie in the singing spectrum.

Invariably, every person with lackluster vocal talents said, “Well, everyone says I can sing!”  ”They say I’m a cross between Brad Paisley and Chris Daughtry,” or “I’ve sung the National Anthem at lots of ballgames!”  And every time I say, “bless their heart!”  Marty says that they bring it on themselves, but some of them have friends and family who have travelled with them across miles to support them in this endeavor, and they have lied to them!  Lied!  Anyone hearing some of these people would know that there is no talent.  Some of the friends are grinning as they console them because they knew what was going to happen!

When I was younger I wanted nothing more than to be an actress on a Soap Opera.  I know, shocking right?  I’m not the least bit overdramatic!  I wanted to be on General Hospital, to be exact.  I wanted to be a nurse, right beside Bobbi and marry Lucky Spencer (son of the soap opera super couple Luke and Laura).  I wanted to sit right beside Susan Lucci and wait for my Daytime Emmy (forget the Oscars!), and hopefully it wasn’t going to take me 19 years.  I loved to act.  I was in small productions in Lexington as a 3rd-4th grader, I ate up church Christmas productions (even as a Kindergartener I longed to be Mary but was stuck as an angel because of my blonde hair.)   I did some theater in high school, I was an avid reader and often acted books out in my head/room (overshare?  Is it any wonder I didn’t have a lot of friends?).  I guess somewhere along the way someone filled me in that there were not a lot of roles for fat, pimple ridden girls in daytime drama.  I also realized at some point, I’m not that talented.  You should hear my performances of the nightly Bible readings.  I try to give different accents but they all come out sounding a little southern cockney.

The point I’m trying to make is, someone told me the truth.  Hard as it may have been, I wouldn’t trade the way my life turned out for anything.  But someone had to tell me, so that I didn’t get up on national television and make an idiot of myself.

I guess, as a parent, that’s the struggle, how much truth do we tell them.  Do we tell the clumsy one that they’ll never be the star of the basketball team?  Do we tell the ugly girl she’ll never be prom queen?  Do we  tell the 12 y/o with the cracking voice he’ll never sing?  I think it’s my job to encourage, and please hear me say my parents did that (they sat through a whole season of basketball where I rode the bench, played for a total of 30 seconds I believe).  But, I also have to guide, point them in directions where they can succeed, encourage them in new endeavors (thanks for that season of basketball by the way), and speak truth when it’s just not going as it should.

If the first 4 years have been any clue, my children are destined for Daytime Emmys.  Watch out Susan Lucci!

On Lolcats, Fails, Bronies, and More…

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PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

In visiting our site here yesterday, you may have noticed that we went dark for 24 hours to protest and raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, two bills that are currently before Congress and will be voted on January 24.  We’re back to normal today, obviously, though I’m not quite sure what normal is for us.

If you haven’t been living under a rock the last few months, you know about these bills and how they could potentially cripple the internet as we know it.  If you have been, here’s the quick run down: major organizations in the United States, mainly the MPAA and RIAA (those who make movies and music) have pushed legislation into Congress to stop pirating from offshore websites, thus keeping American property ours.  This keeps foreign websites from hosting torrents or files that are illegal downloads.  Under SOPA and PIPA, these websites could be shut down permanently, with no warning, and no due process.

I like this.  Sure, protect your stuff, whatever.

But that’s not all SOPA and PIPA could do.  In the interest of protecting intellectual property, ANY website would then be able to be shut down even due to just one small image or piece of text.  Companies within our borders will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep their websites free of any user posted material which could cause a copyright infraction, which would cause them to be immediately shut down.  No warning.  No due process.

I don’t like this.

That means that my favorite webcomic artist can’t draw a Batman joke anymore, or he might lose his job.  That means that your favorite Lolcats, or Brony pictures can’t be made, or those websites could be shut down.

No Cheezburger Network.  No Failblog.  No Reddit.  And it gets worse.

Under this act, the law would extend even to Facebook or Twitter.  Imagine this: those social networking sites that you love to waste time on so much….gone.  Loss of contact from family and friends, loss of connection to the world, all because someone posted a picture of Angry Birds with a caption on it.

What really burns me up about this is that these acts don’t create jobs like the MPAA and RIAA says, they just continue to allow them to line their pockets.  These laws would actually cause unemployment, as thousands of creatives in our country would lose their jobs.  Again, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. We are spending our time and money fighting for stupid legislation like this while thousands of people in our country don’t have a job.  Where are the bills that all of us are fighting about to create jobs?  Where is the push for that?  Why are we even CONSIDERING a bill that would cause even more Americans to become jobless?

Greed.  That’s it, plain and simple.  The Hollywood Juggernaut is hungry, and it doesn’t want to slow down, even though the world is clearly moving in an opposite direction from it’s archaic means of distribution and creation.  The power is in the hands of the people, not just in the hands of a select few, and they hate it.

So, what can you do?  Do you want to see all your favorite YouTube funnies go away, or do you want to continue to enjoy the internet as it is, a tool that has broadened the world we live in and made it, dare I say it, a better place?

Go here, sign the petition, get educated, call your Senators, black out your site, do something.  It really could make a difference.

Accountable?

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All my life, I’ve need someone to tell me what to do.

From my earliest memories, I have always worked best from a list.  If you write down what I need to do, then I can usually look somewhat successful.  I’m constantly writing myself reminders and lists, leaving them where I can find them. I verbally process in lists, which greatly annoys my wife, as she feels like it’s me telling her what to do, which I”m not.  I just need to say it out loud.

Recently, I’ve noticed that this isn’t just true for my professional life, but it’s also true for my faith.  I’ve told the teenagers that I minister to many times that following Jesus isn’t just a list of rules or checkboxes that you must fill to be in standings with Him, but oh, how I wish it was.  I wish it was just something that I could go through each and every day, merrily checking boxes until I achieve the ultimate relationship with God.  But, that can’t happen.  What can happen, however, is that I can find someone that will get into my life and talk with me about the things that are going on there.  What I need is an accountability partner, which regretfully, I don’t have right now.

So, this week, I’m going to try and fix that.  I’m looking for an accountability partner.  I need someone who is going to walk with me through my highs and lows, through the best times and worst times.  I can’t be my family.  It can’t be my wife.  It can’t be a member of the opposite sex.  I need a man who will guide, teach, mentor, correct, and love me through all the stuff I think, say, and do each day.

Do you have an accountability partner?  If so, how did you find them?  And now that you have one, how do you maintain that relationship?

Sunday Quote

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“And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”

 

 

 

~ Abraham Lincoln on instituting the first National Day of Prayer and Fasting