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!!
It’s almost Independence Day!
I love the 4th of July.
I love what it stands for!
Freedom is one of my favorite things!!
I love how we celebrate it…family, food, firecrackers!
It’s awesome.
But, there is one particular July 4th weekend that is forever etched into my psyche.
We had gone to the lake with some good friends.
It is a memory made memorable by several moments…
We stayed in an aluminum pop-up camper that smelled like a combination of bug spray and mayonnaise.
We lived on delicious camp dietary staples like pork and beans and Vienna sausages (which are NOT made in Vienna, but somewhere in Minnesota…shocking, huh?!)
During our time there, I got a huge sun blister on my nose, it seriously looked like there was a flesh colored balloon growing out of my nose! That was pretty gross.
And, in the interest of toilet transparency (and a little sibling ribbing), It should also be noted that on this particular trip my brother deliberately defiled the water, he pooped in the lake because he was scared of the sketchy lake bathrooms…oh, it’s true!
BUT, the craziest story from this trip involved a styrofoam blob and some angry fireworks.
Me, my brother and some buddies were just hanging out on this huge chunk of styrofoam in the middle of the lake. We had swam out there and we were just sitting, talking and watching the day go by. It was a good time.
We could hear an Eagles song wafting through the air from someone’s campsite…
“I got a peaceful easy feeling,
And I know you won’t let me down
’cause I’m already standing on the ground.”
It was just that, a peaceful easy day on the lake.
BUT, SUDDENLY THE PEACE WAS BROKEN!
I heard a weird sound buzz past my sunburnt ear…PHIZZZPUTH.
Then It felt like something bit my leg.
I looked down.
It was a pop bottle rocket!
It burnt my portly thigh.
I screamed like a 7 year old girl and flung the firework out of my lap into the lake.
Suddenly we were under fire.
There were a couple of muscle shirt wearing rednecks sitting on the tailgate of a shortbed ford truck, laughing and shooting pop bottle rockets at us!
ZIP…ZIP…ZIP..
It was horrifying!!!
We ran around in little spastic circles trying to dodge the projectile pop rockets.
Fortunately none of the fireworks exploded. Because of an angsty adrenaline rush, we were able to fling or kick them all into the brown water.
Finally, we came to our senses and jumped into the lake.
We frantically swam to shore.
By the time we got there, the hillbilly bullies had taken off.
It took us a while to settle down and regain the peaceful easy feeling.
We couldn’t eat Vienna sausages for almost 15 minutes.
Life is like that sometimes.
You are minding your own business and SUDDENLY something comes out of nowhere and bites you.
People can hurl a lot of things at you.
Words.
Accusations.
Hurt.
Hate.
Lies.
There are always going to be haters, bullies and jerks trying to disturb your peaceful easy feeling.
And when they do, the pain is real.
It stings.
It burns.
But, it doesn’t have to blow up in your face
The secret is to get it out of your lap as quick as you can!
Hurl it away!!
Sometimes, that looks like forgiveness.
Forgive as fast as you can.
Practice competitive forgiveness.
The offense hurts.
It stings.
It burns.
But it doesn’t have to blow up in your face!
Get it out of your lap as quick as you can.
Don’t let it explode!
Hurl it!!
Forgive!!
THEN…jump in the lake.
Get away from the blob of pain!
Don’t let them hurt you again!
Forgiveness is not forgetting.
Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean that you have to trust them again.
Nobody should have to live on the blob of pain.
Forgiveness is declaring your personal independence from the hurt.
You refuse to let it have power over you.
The freedom that comes from forgiveness is one of my favorite things.
BOOM.
carbonated joy 