Dorky Stuff Gets Cool With Age

As I get older, things I used to think were incredibly dorky are now incredibly cool (to me at least).

As a kid in southern California, I took pride in my soccer uniform, my baseball uniform, and even my green and white 4-H uniform. Apparently in California, you still have to wear these ridiculous outfits to show your livestock project in 4-H. Let’s make kids get dressed up in shiny white clothes right before they have to lead their “clean” show animals into a ring!  Great idea.  I think Clorox-funded the whole thing. It’s no surprise that there are surprisingly few images of these 4-H uniforms on the internet.   But I digress.

They will change clothes the minute they are out of the show ring.

In addition to the 4-H uniform, there was another uniform that I didn’t understand at all: the Boy Scout uniform.  As a grade school kid, I could not comprehend why you should have to dress up in an outfit with a scarf and patches to go camping.  It made no sense whatsoever.  My dad and I were into sports and 4-H, not Scouts.  I was never anti-Scout, just anti-dorky-Scout-Uniform.

Until my son Brody got his Tiger Cub Scout uniform today.

That's a proud Tiger Cub

As a father, it’s awesome to see your son excited and proud. To Brody, than new uniform represented something that big kids get to do.  Something special.  Something his younger brothers are too young for.  I’ll be ordering a matching hat and shirt for myself pretty soon.

My opinion on Scout uniforms shifting from extremely lame to supremely cool got me thinking… What other things in my life have made the lame-to-cool transition as I’ve gotten older?  Specifically, what would have been a complete waste of time to me as a child or teenager, but I now find increasingly valuable and enjoyable.

Here’s what made my “Dorky-to-Cool” List:

1. Rest

2. Gardening

3. Instrumental Music

4. Silence

5. Disco and Funk Music

6. Other People’s Ideas

7. Just Relaxing With God

What makes your “dorky-to-cool” list? Leave a comment here on my FB.

Fuzzy Resolution

I just checked my calendar and I made an astonishing discovery: there are only three days left in 2008. Seventy two hours. Not a lot of time left in this turn around the sun.

Because we don’t have much time left in this year, I’m not going to bother with one of the biggest time wasters known to mankind: New Year’s resolutions. I can hear you all collectively saying “Oh yeah” right now. Why do we all fail so miserably at resolutions? Let’s take a look at it.

Here’s the process behind every New Year’s resolution: We see the need for a change in our life and we resolve to make that change. We go out and buy gym memberships or we try to watch less TV, or we try to eat less cookies (I’m about to gibe into that one right now). What’s wrong with that process? There’s nothing wrong with introspection. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see change in our lives.

There are 2 behind-the-scenes factors that bring our resolutions crashing down: size and time. We try to make major changes overnight. This never works. At least it never has for me.

But I have found a way that results in change in my life. I take small steps with God. I trust that God will guide my steps in the right direction as I take the steps. I trust God with my whole self – not just the issues/areas I need changed – and I find that the issues/areas are being changed. Its a matter of the focus being on God and not on my steps.

Trust God with your self, your life, your thoughts, your intellect, your behavior. Let him figure out and work out the details. Trust Him. Stay close to Him. Its about Him, not you.

That’s the only thing that works for me. It’ll work for you too… way better than that new gym membership.

5 Things Worth Waiting For

My kids are waiting for Santa to show up.  People are waiting for Christmas carols to stop playing on the radio.  Here are the five things I’m waiting for in no particular order.

1. The season premier of Lost. They got off the island last season, now they have to get back?!  This show keeps me guessing every week.
2. Weather that lets you cut more firewood. It’s really cold and windy here right now.  Something happens when the temperature dips below “Holy-Cats-Its-Cold” that makes you instinctually want to get more firewood.  You could have three metric tons of wood stored up and still feel the need to get more when one of our cold winds catches you just right.
3. Quality moments with family. It seems like just about everyone hustles around to make it to every relative’s home within a 200 mile radius to get some good family time in.  We seem to amass a huge quantity of memories and polaroid snap-shots, but how many of those moments are quality moments?  How many of those memories will be rolling around in our heads in 20, 40, 60 years?   Take a little time for a quality conversation with a loved one this week.  Let someone know how much you appreciate them.  That’s a memory that will stick with them for 40 years.
4. Christmas cookies. There’s no need to expand on this one.  Let’s just say I’m glad I have an extra hole in my belt this time of the year.
5. Change. Change in myself.  Change in others.  Change in hearts.  All of these things take time.  I can’t force change in any of these things.  God won’t force us to do anything, but he is constantly working in us, constantly changing and growing us.  Most of the time, it’s at a very slow pace.  Much slower than my microwave-internet-everything-on-demand mindset is used to.  The important lessons I’ve begun to learn in the last several years have taken a long time to get to where they are now.  I’m sure it’s the same for you.  Here’s the funny part: change takes years in us, but when it doesn’t happen overnight in others, we get frustrated at them.  How crazy!

Fun at the Playground Before the Big Change

Jodi and the boys leave tomorrow for Denver. I’ll be joining them in Denver on Sunday afternoon. The gameplan is to hang with her parents until the baby is born and stay up there a few days after the little man arrives before heading back to Branson. I’ve let her and the boys go up north without me before, but this is different. This is harder.