7 Things That Tugged On My Heart This Week

What are the things that make you tear up?  Not sad tears, but good tears?  The kind of tears made by the realization that you’re seeing something special.  Here’s my list of things that have made me tear up this past week.

1.  This picture.

2.  Will, my 5 week old son, as he slept in my arms.

3.  Brock telling me unprompted “Daddy, I love you,  and I love Mommy, and I love Will, and I love Brody” at the end of bedtime tonight.

4.  Brody lying on my chest this morning, like he did when he was a baby.

5.  Seeing my wife this morning. She was getting ready to visit her parents.  I was outside loading up the car or something.  She came outside.  Her hair was mostly dry, but it looked much like it did on our honeymoon.  It took my breath away.

6.  This video… particularly the kids dancing around with huge smiles on their faces.

7.  Hugging my dogs on a hike.  I got them just weeks before my dad died almost 2 years ago.

There is so much to life that is meant to move our hearts.  God wired us that way.  There is so much wonderful emotion in the simple ways that everyday unfold.  I’m finding that life is so much more full the more I am open to those depths.

But before I go too far off the toughy-feely deep end, there are several interesting paradoxes to this (to me at least):

• I’m trying to teach my oldest son that crying gets you nothing.  That’s OK for a 4 year old that needs to learn that crying when you don’t get to carry your 2nd favorite lightsaber to the toybox is unacceptable.
• Society has de-masculinized men to a degree that men today are a little too in-touch with their feelings.  I think the theme song for teen guy ministry will be Brad Paisley’s “I’m Still a Guy.”
• I’m discovering in my own challenges and in the challenges of the teen guys I mentor that the solution to overcoming the challenge is to “man up”… put the emotion aside and do what needs to be done.

What has touched your heart lately?  What’s made you tear up?  Leave a comment.

You can call me emotional, I’m okay with that.

Missing The Now

Goals can great. They help us stay motivated as we trudge through the difficult/mundane/miniscule parts of life. The next big vacation… the next promotion… retirement… your kid’s graduation… a better future. We all have different goals for different reasons. Some of them are very long term, and some of them are things we’re trying to achieve by next week. Goals can be team-based or solo missions. Business, ministries, and even families use goals to motivate people to buck up and work together to achieve something significant.

As good as goals can be, they can cause us to miss out on something wonderful: now.

How many wonderful moments in life do we miss because we are trying to achieve a goal? How much of today is missed because we’re looking towards the future?

I’m incredibly guilty of this. I’m a dreamer, a vision guy. There are about three thousand really cool ideas running around my head about my family, our community, ministry, our local economy… you name it. If they all happened, life would be great, wouldn’t it?

I find that as I’m planning a better tomorrow, I often find myself missing moments right now . Moments to ask people how they’re doing today. Moments watching my boys throw rocks. Moments teaching them how to swing a baseball bat (although Brock is really pretty good swinging a bat like a club Bam Bam style). Moments just soaking in the beauty of my wife.

Jesus told a bunch of people to stop focusing on some future event, and start being excited about the now. Specifically he was talking to some people waiting for the kingdom of heaven as a future political upheaval, and he wanted them to know that the kingdom was, in fact, himself right there with them. The thing they were supposed to be focused on was right in front of them, not somewhere off in the future. (I spoke on this last Sunday. Give it a listen if you have a few minutes — http://bransonchurch.org/sermons/Kingdom 2 – Near.mp3).

Don’t get me wrong, goals are good things. However, once in a while we need to take an inventory of the things we’re missing. Maybe the now moments should outweigh pursuing the goals for a change.

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Junior High Buddies Bringing Me Back

Think back to the people you knew in junior high. Hopefully you smile as you do. Who would you have picked to turn out as a doctor? A stay at home mom? A lawyer? A pastor?

I continually search for friends from my past on MySpace and Facebook. When I find them, or when they find me, I’m fascinated by where life has taken them. I’m especially entertained by my friends from junior high.

Twenty years ago, I was a band geek. A blond kid (I had hair back then – lotsa curly blond hair) living in a south Texas border town. I joined the school band because I was afraid a tiny white kid would killed there. Although I made that choice in fear (and never once came close to getting killed – the people were awesome), it led to some incredible friendships. I had friends in several different cliques: a few jocks, some cheerleaders, some nerds (there’s a surprise).

As any of those friends could testify, I was a good kid that liked to laugh and chase girls. I would bet serious money that none of them would have guessed I would become a pastor. They could have guessed I’d be a businessman, lawyer, doctor, or perhaps a professional wrestler. Pastor would not have been on the radar.

My junior high buddies have ended up in some interesting places. Their paths are as unique as they are. I smile as I think about how different and how similar our lives have been since junior high. I’m sure they’ve all loved, lost a loved one or two, failed at something, and done something amazing.

Surely God has touched them and tugged on their hearts. He’s molded them into who they are… and he’s still working on them just as intimately as he’s working on me. That makes me smile.

Who were you in junior high? A jock, a band geek… maybe just a face in the crowd. How have you changed in 20 years? What big lessons about life, God, and yourself have you learned? What would you have never expected with the journey you’ve been on?

Leave a comment and share a little bit about your journey.

Creek Beds, Dirt Slides, and Four Little Boys

This is the last week of school.

It’s a busy week.  Our last youth group of the school year is tonight… and you have to finish strong.  I’m putting together the senior slideshow for graduation… and its gonna look extra sharp.  There are school board meetings and community functions happening this week that I need to be a part of.  All of that’s fine, but it is not the most important thing right now.

We have some very special friends visiting right now, and we took the morning and went to play in the creek near my grandparents’ home.  This is the creek that I spent countless summer days in with my sisters and cousins.  Today was the day to introduce my boys and our buddies to the creek.

The creek cuts through a hill made mostly of shale.  As the creek winds through the shale, the  water warms up and is just the right temperature for playing in.  There aren’t any deep spots, so it’s pretty safe.  The shale hillside make for a great climbing up and sliding down.

Our two little buddies from Denver had a blast once they figured out it was okay (even encouraged by Uncle Brad) to get muddy and messy.  We all built a dam, which made a perfect sitting pool for Brock.  We had a wonderful picnic of PB&J sandwiches, baby carrots and apple slices.  It was perfect.

There will always be things to get done.  There will always be battles to fight, jobs to do, sermons to write, lessons to plan….  There won’t always be 4 little boys and memories to be made at the creek.  The day had to be seized, and it was.

Hopefully as we look back at this week as a family years from now, this day is what we’ll remember.

What do you want to remember about your day today?  Go out and make that memory.