carbonated joy

Have you ever seen a plate spinner? Maybe on late night TV or at a circus? His act is pretty simple, yet really stressful. He spins plates, just average glass dinner plates, lots and lots of plates. His job is to keep them in motion. He comes out on stage, he clears his throat, cracks his knuckles (this is called creating tension) and grabs a plate and starts spinning it on top of a long pole. Then he spins ANOTHER and ANOTHER until he has a plethora of plates spinning around. He has to pay attention to see if a plate starts to wobble. If it does, he has to dash over and spin it again. To me it seems like really stressful stuff.
Here’s a question, do YOU ever feel like this dude? Do you find yourself frantically doing 75 things at once, you have all your plates spinning. And, you are petrified that you are going to drop a plate (or 6).
There’s no rest for you, you gotta keep things going! Keep spinning those plates. It’s more rush than rhythm .
Life has a way of throwing plates at you
You gotta…
do this, be there, pick up, drop off, fix, decide, complete, learn, relearn, move, move faster, perform, work, work harder…
spin…spin…spin.
It never stops or slows down.
You have all these plates spinning.
Keep it going as fast as you can and pray that it all doesn’t crash and break.
Our world spins out of control.
Maybe it’s time to turn some of your plates into frisbees. Realize that some plates were never yours to spin and hurl them as far as you can! Fling them!
Here’s another thought: why in the WORLD would you spin a plate when you can fill it! Fill your plate with cool, interesting stories smothered in awesome sauce.
Why not fill your plate with some promises that you can remember when the temptation to spin is strong.
Here are a couple of really cool promises to get you started:

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

Give God your plates. Don’t spin, surrender! He’s much better at keeping things in the air than we are!

Here’s an invitation from Jesus to dance..
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

You can’t dance and spin plates at the same time. Slow down, wait a minute, don’t rush, learn the rhythm of grace.

We find a grace that calms our spinning world when we sit in the presence of the Prince of peace.

Stop spinning! surrender and sit a while.

Jesus was a trouble maker

We think we know Jesus.
We think of him as that hometown boy that everyone loves, you know like Tim Tebow in sandals. The kind of guy that all the Grandmas loved and the little boys looked up to. He was nice…right?
The religious leaders didn’t think he was nice, he made it tough on them. He caused a lot of trouble, so much that they wanted to kill him.
The money changers in the church didn’t think he was nice. He marched in, turned their tables over, scattered their money and called them names.
Nice guys usually don’t make trouble.
Jesus did.
He wasn’t the hometown hero! People in his hometown had a problem seeing him for who he was. They looked at him and saw Joseph and Mary’s boy, nothing more than a carpenter.
Mark 6.3 says: “they tripped over what little they knew about him and fell sprawling. And they never got any further.”
We trip over what we think we know.
We have to get to know Jesus…the real Jesus. Strip away the preconceived notions and nice sentiment and see what you find.
Be warned, it might get you into trouble!
Jesus redefined the rules. He turned law into love.
“I lay down my life for you because I love you, so love me and love each other.”
That kind of thinking stirs up trouble!
Then he actually, in true trouble maker form, did what he said.
He laid down his life.
The trouble maker became the trouble taker.
“Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.” (Isaiah 53.4)
Get to know Jesus, not just know about him, but truly know him.
The Son of God came to make and take trouble.
My rebel heart likes that.

I get asked a lot if I’m a biker.
I think it might be the weird beard.
I have a chullet (a chin mullet).
When you have crazy facial hair, you get asked a lot of crazy questions.
I also get asked…
Are you homeless?
Are you Santa Claus?
Are you the Travelocity Gnome?
But mostly, I get asked, are you a biker?
I get that a lot.
I’m alright with that.
Some of the coolest people I know are bikers.
I want to be a biker!
I have huge biker dreams!
I get a Harley Davidson shirt (or 2) anytime we travel.
I want to be a biker. I like the style and swagger.
I now have a bunch of Harley shirts, hats and do-rags.
I dream of jumping on a hog and riding to Sturgis, popping wheelies and making some noise. I long to feel the wind in my chullet.
I dream of getting my motor running and heading out to the highway. To look for adventure in whatever comes my way.
There’s something so wild, free and beautiful about that!!
I have the clothes, I have the attitude, I just don’t have the skills.
There are some things that prevent me from being the easy rider…
For starters, my legs are like 14 inches long, seriously! That complicates things and makes it hard to reach the pedals and keep a motorcycle upright. I would need a booster seat and possibly training wheels.
I’m also blind in one eye. I have no depth perception and I usually can’t see things on my left side. That might be a problem on the open road.
And on an annoying side note, I have a freakishly huge noggin. This makes it hard to find a cool helmet. I would have to wear a colander or possibly a large bucket with one eyehole…not the renegade vibe I’m going for!
I’m an unapologetic wannabe biker.
I do want to point out that a wannabe is totally different from a poser.
Here’s the difference, in my heart I WANNABE a biker, in my brain I know it’s probably not gonna happen. BUT, I follow my heart and I look the part. But I’m honest about it and so I’m not a poser.

My motorcycle driving career was short lived, it was about 7 minutes long. I was in middle school at my friend’s house. He had a new dirt bike. I was watching him ride in his pasture. He asked me if I wanted to ride. I said ummm…YES! He gave me a quick lesson in gears and clutches, most of which went in one ear and out the other. I just wanted to go fast. I hopped on and gunned it. I drove straight through the side of his barn. That was embarrassing and painful. His stepdad was not a happy man.
I haven’t ridden a motorbike since then.
But, I WANT to be a biker.
I have this unhinged sense of adventure and curiosity.
The good news is that I wed wild.
My wife is an amazing lady with a sense of adventure and some serious skills.
She is a much better driver than me and I am man enough to boldly admit that!
So we might have a solution…
She will drive the bike and I will be her biker babe.
I will sit on the back and hold onto her, or I could ride in a sidecar.
I think we all need to find our own ways to be wild and free, even if it’s in a sidecar.
Work together to achieve independence!
So if you see a chubby dude with a chullet riding on the back of a Harley being driven by a beautiful blonde, make sure and honk and wave, and find your own way to be wild and free.

I’ve seen some pretty scary movies, but nothing that comes close to capturing the feeling of gut wrenching horror that I would feel as a chubby kid when it was announced that we were playing shirts and skins.

This might sound sappy, but I want a faith like maple syrup.

I want a faith that is thick, sweet and sticky.

I want a faith that is thick.

I don’t want a thin faith. Thin is easily broken.

I don’t want watered down or shallow.
I want substance. I want weight. I want thick.
Maple syrup, the real stuff, is thick, it’s slow. It moves in sugary slow motion. It doesn’t instantly cover your pancakes. It slowly oozes down and covers. True goodness doesn’t just happen. It’s slow, it’s thick. Thick can’t be hurried, It takes time. But, it’s worth the wait.
We live in a frantic, hurried world. We want instant. We don’t like to wait. We take shortcuts and rush through our days like life is a competitive sprint.
Thick faith forces us to slow down and savor, to stop and pay attention and listen for the whisper of the Spirit. Thick faith allows me the space to wait upon the Lord so that He can renew my strength.
I want a faith that is thick.

I want a faith that is sweet.
A faith that invites me to taste and see that the Lord is good…so incredibly good!
It’s not a faith for spectators, it’s for those who want to taste and experience.
It’s a faith with flavor. And that flavor is sweet. That’s good because we, often, live in a sour world. Things can get salty. In the midst of the sour, salty times we need something to sweeten our life. We need a faith that says you are loved and there is hope. Life can be hard, but there is a sweetness to be discovered.
Maple syrup is it’s own special kind of sweet.
There’s nothing like it. The flavor is totally distinctive. It also has a scent that makes you pay attention. It draws you in.
I want a fragrant faith that grabs the attention of others for all the right reasons.
I want a faith that spreads seeds of sweetness.
I want a faith that is sweet.

I want a faith that is sticky.
I need a faith that I can’t outgrow or outrun.
I need something to believe that I can’t shake off.
I need a full bodied faith that sticks with me through the good times and the bad times. It is even there during the inconvenient times when it would be easy to set it aside, the times when faith asks more than it offers. I can’t shake it. Sometimes faith is hard. You have more questions than answers. But, if I have a sticky faith I can stick it out through the dark nights until the light shines through.
True story: I’m a sloppy eater and sometimes when I eat pancakes, maple syrup gets in my beard. It’s super sticky. It clumps my facial follicles together like a glue.
Sticky faith clumps our life together. It permeates every part of me.
I want a faith that is sticky.

I want a faith like maple syrup.

here is a random list of things that I DON’T want to experience:

• get tackled by an angry NFL linebacker.
• eat liver pudding, Lima beans, tofu or blue tortilla chips.
• be beige.
• play tennis while wearing a used Mickey Mouse costume.
• shoot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
• be seen shirtless on the TV show COPS.
• spend the night in Central Park.
• Go bungee jumping – I’m afraid I might get mistaken for a piñata.
• run through a dog park wearing a fanny pack full of raw meat.
• wear skinny jeans.
• take life, or the ones who make my life so sweet, for granted.

Snow White,
You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is Doc…
…and Grumpy…
…and Happy…
…and Sleepy…
…and Bashful…
…and Dopey…
Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours,

the Original Breakfast Club.

The latest in a long line of really BIG things is Pokémon GO.

It has swept across our heat dazed nation faster than you can hurl a Rubik’s cube at Tickle Me Elmo.

People are running around public places frantically trying to catch Pokémon with their smart phones. My wife, Diana, watched a middle aged lady in scrubs suddenly stop her car in the middle of a parking lot, jump out and run around with her phone in the air trying to catch Jiggly Puff. It is Pokémon fever all over again…a refried fad!! People are seriously loving it!

It’s an amazing concept. The technology that makes it possible for a game to interact with the real world is called augmented reality. It is a live view of a physical, real world environment that is augmented or supplemented by computer generated fun. Your view of reality is modified by a computer using GPS data. Your reality is digitally manipulated and objects is overlaid on the real world. It is SUPER fascinating and SUPER fun!

As I was pondering all this Pokemania, it dawned on me that in the REALLY real world, sometimes we live augmented lives.

Our reality is augmented by the lies that we have been told.

Lies about who we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do.

Lies that our future is determined by our past.

Lies that we are limited by our history or environment.

We look at ourselves, others, our situations and we see things that aren’t really there.

I’m ugly…too short…too tall..,too young…too old.

I’m not enough…never enough…

I don’t look like that super model…

I’m not as talented as my brother…

I will never measure up…

I’ve screwed up too much…

None of my family ever…

My dream is dead…

Augmented reality…

False perceptions are overlaid on our real world.

We begin to believe them.

We don’t see things the way they really are.

It affects our self image, our relationships, our future.

Our lives are deceitfully manipulated by false ideas about beauty, acceptance and achievement. We end up chasing after acceptance, success and popularity like they were super elusive and rare Pokémon.
The lies make me want to pukeman.

(Did you see what I just did there?)

We need to fix our gaze on a reality that won’t change or need to be recharged.

But reality becomes redemption when we realize that the One who made us has been chasing us with HIS truth.

Jesus came to show and tell us who we are MEANT to be…HIS beloved treasure.

REALITY is that we are loved, accepted, wanted, unique and beautiful.

That’s not a fad, just a fact.

As I write this, it’s July 11…7-11.
That takes me back to Euless, Texas.
Euless is suburb of Fort Worth, it’s a cool little town where we lived for a few years.
We lived near a 7-Eleven.
That became part of an awesome afternoon ritual.
My daughter, Delanie, was in kindergarten.
I had a very cool boss who would let me go pick her up after school. I would wait in the congested pickup line with a bunch of soccer moms and Delanie would come out chugging her powerpuff girls backpack. She would climb up into the cab of my red Toyota truck. We would crank up some country music (99.5 the WOLF!) and we would head to 7-Eleven. We would go inside and get a couple of red slurpees, sometimes we would also get a bag of Cheetos or some Sour patch kids, depending on how the day had gone.
But, we ALWAYS got a slurpee…everyday.
This became our thing.
When other Dads were climbing corporate ladders, changing the world, and doing grownup alpha male things, I was sitting in a truck drinking slurpees with my kid. We talked about important matters like what happened in the lunchroom and on the playground.
I got to be honest, there were times when I THOUGHT I didn’t have time to pick up my kid. I had important things to do and a world to change, I didn’t realize that I was changing the world that mattered the most to me.
There were times when I blew it, Del would spill her slurpee all over the dashboard creating a red sticky mess. My resentment would bubble up, I would yell, her tears would flow. I would feel like a father failure.
This usually resulted in another trip inside to get a replacement slurpee to calm her nerves and ease my conscience. During these times, She was smart enough to ask for the special twisty plastic straws.
Slurpees became both a love language and a happy place for Delanie.
Sometime, something incredibly simple like a Slurpee can become a strong part of your story.
NOW, 15 years later, I wouldn’t trade ANYthing for those daily slurpee trips! You can keep your corporate contests, I had sugar fueled conversations with my kid, THAT is a win. Something strong and valuable was forged over frozen beverages. I think my daughter realized that I prioritized and valued her. She discovered that I found her incredibly interesting. Every kid needs to be interesting to someone. And even though, she is all growed up and married now, I still have an amazing relationship with her. She is STILL one of the most interesting people I know.
Some of the best memories are the cheapest. We made some sweet stories for the price of a red slurpee.
They were extraordinary stories that grew out of ordinary life.
My 7-Eleven memories are sticky, kinda like a spilt slurpee on a polyurethane dashboard!!
The sticky memories are the ones that stay with you for a lifetime, AND they get sweeter.

My fatherly advice: Slow down Dad and snag a slurpee with your kid every time you get a chance.

The summertime roller coaster of unathletic emotions…

The mind twitching resentment of having to play when you could be drawing or reading a book…
The embarrassment driven apathy of spending the whole season on the bench…
The insecure confusion when someone tells you “a lot of chubby guys play baseball”…
The crippling fear during the final game when, because of some stupid rule, you have to leave the bench, grab a bat and actually play…
The breathless, slow motion anticipation as you stand on the plate, and watch a ball come towards you as you do your best to grasp a bat with your sweaty hands…
The unparalleled thrill of hearing a distinctive crack as you, miraculously, actually hit the ball…
The moment crushing disappointment of hearing a dull thud and the red faced umpire shouting “FOUL BALL!!”…
The soulful relief when you realize that means you don’t have to actually run…
The joyful ecstasy of being told that, even though your team lost by an embarrassing margin, you STILL get to go to Dairy Queen!!