To be fair, I don’t know enough about the “emergent church” to sustain a viable argument against it. From what I do know, the “emergent church” is nothing more than a  collection of individual Christian thinkers with no single thread of ideas. These thinkers are not satisfied with the status-quo of western Christianity.

I will agree that our flavor has grown dull, but we should not “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” The only attraction the world will ever have to Christianity is if Christ Himself is living, active and moving in our lives. I believe our nation is on the cusp of another Great Awakening because the Church is unafraid of the consequences and will allow God to move. And He will move.

Anyway, here is my response. I’d love to hear what you think, so please comment after the blog.

Uncle,

It was so good seeing you guys again in. Jess and I love being able to be a part of your missionary family. We were extremely blessed to have you guys send us some kindergarten home schooling books. Our son got a new school desk this weekend and is already starting on one of the books. He loves learning and I’m glad he gets to do it at home where we can influence his education.

 Thanks for the question. I don’t have a standard response. You can find all sorts of junk on the internet by simply typing YWAM and negative word into Google and we can’t have a response for every argument that comes against us. I think, for the most part, YWAM tries to avoid conversations that distract us from the progress of the Gospel, which is the call that God has given us as a mission.  

To give you the facts.

YWAM is an International, inter-denominational Christian missions movement. (http://www.ywam.org/About-YWAM/Who-we-are/Statement-of-Faith) I think the key is that YWAM is a movement, not an organized denomination in the normal sense of the word. There are around 1500-2000 operating locations around the world with around 25,000 full time workers. This doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands that come through our doors for training every year. With all of this activity, each YWAM location operates as a “self governing entity,”( http://www.ywam.org/About-YWAM/Who-we-are/Governance) similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, with-in a set of boundaries (http://www.ywam.org/About-YWAM/Who-we-are/The-Foundational-Values-of-Youth-With-A-Mission) according to the Word of God, which have been set by International leadership over the last 50 years of YWAM’s existence.  Each one of us have our own Articles of Incorporation, bylaws, Board of Directors and leadership teams (Elders.) We are only liable to another YWAM location by inter-personal relationship, in no way is there any legal connection between a base in Denver and a base in New Delhi.

 We do have parameters as to how we must operate. And within those, our call as an organization is “To Know God and to Make Him Known”, this call is three-fold: Training, Mercy Ministries and Evangelism. So you may see one YWAM location, in a closed country operating a business and taking advantage of opportunities God gives them to share the Gospel, or another Latin America doing open air evangelism, while another location only works with aids orphans in Africa, and you have another location who simply trains workers to go into these ministries full-time. Each location serves as only one part of the three-fold call, but together you get a picture of the Gospel functioning as a whole body. Some locations, with many staff do all three. But we do not always know what God is doing through other ministries since we are continually working at the ministry God has given us, except through the relationships we have with individuals on that location.

 I cannot guarantee that some individuals within our organization are not claiming to be a part of the “emergent church.” But the very nature of our organization is to proclaim the Gospel to every nation, everywhere by every means. We are a dynamic group, but some people are just whacko’s. So I apologize for what you may have heard, we’re not interested in a “watered-down” version of the Gospel of Christ.

 Anyone can say anything and somebody is going to listen. But if I could say only one thing to the noise of detractors, they’re wrong. We’re just too busy trying to advance God’s Kingdom to earth to get caught up in that. If you want to see YWAMer’s doing the Gospel, (now that you’re on facebook) you can check this out (http://www.facebook.com/OCUprising2011). We have 250 young people, in Huntington Beach, CA proclaiming the gospel, seeing the sick be healed and people are coming to Christ in the old-fashioned, big tent revival way. We believe this is the beginning of a wave of revival that is going to be sweeping across our nation. God has America primed to reconnect with Him.

 Please let me know if you have any questions.

 Nathan

As is often the case for me, I will just continue to go about my life, hoping that some revelation will come to me, helping me to discover the great mysteries of life.  But there must be value in  placing effort into the “cause of myself.”

We are only given a limited amount of time to which we may work, play, worship and mature in our life. The length of a mans life is 70-80 years. Within that we have 365 days of which are 24 hours long. At an average of 75 years, we only have 657,000 hours to live. I think it would be better if we could reach one million hours, but that is beside the point. That much time doesn’t seem to be that much time. So not only do I not have a lot of time, I don’t have time to waste. I can only do so much.

Recently I concluded that, within all of the things I place effort into, I have four major portions which I am investing all of my time into. (In no order of importance)

Work

Family

Friendships

Personal Development

I believe each portion has a tremendous amount of say in how “well” I am doing in my life. If work is going really well, my family is connecting and growing, I have close, caring friendships, but I am not growing personally and the things that should inspire me to live are stagnant, then I will not be doing well and my “lack” of personal growth will invade the areas that are flourishing.

With all of this said:

I am going to put in a little effort and do an experiment with my time. Because I feel like my life is “out-of-control”, I am going try to figure out why I feel that way.

I recently have downloaded an app for my computer and iPod touch called Toggl. The application is designed for independent contract workers to keep track of their time in order to bill companies for their work. The interface is fairly simple to work with as long as you don’t mind putting a little work in at the front-end.

I have set up the four portions of my life as the “clients I am working for” and everything I do during the day, from eating breakfast to making a work memo, to reading The Count of Monte Christo has to fit into one of those categories. As I type, I am tracking this time as Client: Personal,  Project: Writing,  Job: Blogging.

My hope in all of this, is that I will be able to look back at my report and see what I am investing my time in. I am three days into the project and I’ve given myself a month to complete the experiment.

I will let you know how it goes. I encourage you to look at Toggl and see if it will be worth the effort for the cause of yourself.

This makes me wonder…

A few days ago, I was in my boys bedroom getting pajamas for bedtime. This itself can be quite a task since the drawers we keep Asher’s clothing is do not slide. Because of this, we have to keep the top drawer open about half way and we have taken out the middle drawer in order to reach the bottom one, forcing us to reach into the dresser to get something out of the drawer.

But I noticed a diaper sitting on his dresser, and I thought I would put it in the diaper pail. As I pushed the diaper into the pail, I realized that the contraption that keeps the “stinky” in the pail was stuck open. It happens more often than it should, and I have to take the whole thing apart to fix it.

Now I cannot say I was completely overwhelmed with frustration at this moment, but I was alone. It was just me and the diaper pale. All I could hear was him laughing at me, telling me he was broken again and that it didn’t care what I thought. A stand off for the ages… Kinda.

I did what anyone in an irrational state of mind would do. I kicked the diaper pail.

For just a brief moment in time, I was satisfied, justified and happy that the pail got what it deserved. If what I know to be correct is, then I instinctively decided instead of fleeing the situation, I fought back! I was like a hero being attacked by the villain! Batman vs. Joker, Frodo vs. Mordor, the cop lady vs. Hannibal, Nacho vs. Ramses… Me vs. the diaper pail!

Looking back now, I think I probably overreacted. It was an inanimate object and I was projecting frustrations from my life onto it. If what Dr. Patten says is true, stresses from life can cause us to be in a constantly prepared state ready to launch into fight or flight. I think if I had dealt with some problems earlier in the day, week and months coming up to this moment, I might have been in a better position to blow it off.

At least I won the battle...

But I wasn’t…

Moments after kicking the diaper pail, I was left with a mess of shattered glass and plastic to clean up, wondering how I got there. What had happened  after “the kick” makes me laugh at myself still. The diaper pail took the velocity of the kick and transferred it to the lamp behind it. The plastic lampshade slammed against the wall, giving… cracking and finally breaking apart directly followed by the light bulb which, I am assuming, had a much easier time shattering than the lampshade. There I was, staring at the the lampshade and the light bulb hanging out together on the floor.

I tell you this because I think we often take conflict a little too seriously. Things in life don’t go the way we want them to very often and we will escalate a conflict at home or a challenge of a coworker or boss as the “critical moment” of life that will change everything. Often the reality is, when you step up to the battle, you are about to kick a diaper pale…

My little brother plays on the high school tennis team in Boise, Idaho. I recently went to one of his matches and as I was standing there watching I overheard two girls behind me speaking a language that was not English! My first reaction was “that sounds like Bosnian.” (Some time before this, I had spent 10 days in Bosnia and a week in Croatia and learned some Bosnian before those trips) I wasn’t positive though, so I didn’t address them.

The next day, at another match I asked my mom where those girls were from and she said that they were from Bosnia! I went to my little brother and told him to say to one of the girls “sta ima” which means “whats up?” in Bosnian. After practicing a couple times he was confident to say it. As one of the girls walked by he asked her “Sta ima?” and her reaction was priceless!

“Wh wh…where did you, how do you, how do you know that?” so surprised, she could barely gets the words out of her mouth.

Her face lit up like a menorah. It was such a beautiful thing to behold, that little reaction. With two words, her language, culture, and heritage were validated by someone in the middle of Boise, Idaho. It is as if you are saying to them “Your language is worth me taking the time to learn and remember.”

I learned Spanish several years ago during my travels to South America and I’m currently learning Chinese in China. Just today, in China, I was in a taxi with a couple of guys from Spain. We had only just met, but it was so great to hear their reactions when I began to ask them questions in Spanish.

Once again- validation.

Not everyone has the desire to travel like I do, and some that do don’t necessarily have the resources. But most people have a handful of other cultures and languages within a few mile radius of them, and that gives us a great opportunity.

What culture or language are you curious about?

What language have you always wanted to learn?

Maybe you’ve been deflated and discouraged like many others by the way many of our education systems teach foreign language. The point of learning another language is not simply to be able to get around Paris on vacation but to develop friendship with people that you will meet during your lifetime. So who can you befriend and how can you start learning their language?

For example, I have an Egyptian friend named Hany, from Cairo. In order for me to get to know him better, we would sit down for lunch once a week and I would ask him how to say certain phrases in Arabic. In the process of learning Arabic, I was also able to learn about him and his culture. I absolutely loved it, and he actually didn’t mind either.

Here is a method that you might be willing to try:

Find someone from another culture. Offer to buy them a meal once a week or twice a month in exchange for an hour of language and culture lessons (which can happen during that meal). Find out how to ask “how do you say ______?” in their language, and go nuts. (Tip: Bring a little notebook or this brilliant pen.)

People love when others take an interest in where they are from, and it probably helps them feel less homesick too. Plus, its a lot cheaper than a semester at a university or a trip overseas.

The community will hopefully look like an electron

Because of my dream for this community, it is important to have others (besides myself) be involved with Reconstruction and be willing to submit their craft to this community. I have several friends who are regular, or sometimes irregular bloggers.  All of whom have shown genuine interest in creating this community with me.

The first of these friends to put their life into words is my friend Chris.

Chris is an astute verbal communicator, a thinker and very passionate about language and culture. He is one of the most traveled people I know, having traveled to dozens of countries (37 to be exact) around the world and is willing to take his family with him, everywhere.

Currently, Chris and his family live in China where he is learning the Mandarin Chinese language.

The following blog post was written by Chris and, to me is a great lesson in engaging the world around us in a very simple and human manner. The idea that we should learn to speak the languages of others is not new, but what is exciting to me is that we have a chance to make friends with others and, how Chris says, to validate them.

It all started one night when I was more interested in reading a dictionary than I was in reading the same story books that Shane wants to read. The stories are all about Thomas the Train, Micky Mouse, Lightning McQueen or even Thomas the Train… It was really the same 4 story books, over and over and over again. We had read those stories so often that my three-year old son knew the stories by heart and could quote them as though he were reading the book.

As cute as it is for my son to pretend to read, I could not stand to hear the same stories anymore! I decided to tell him a story instead. I do not know what I was thinking because I did not know any stories to tell him.

So I made one up.

For the next 5 nights, I told an epic story of Shrek and Donkey traveling from Shreks home to the Island of Sodor (Thomas the Train) to a beach where the plug holding the water in the lake was pulled, to finding treasure that belonged to Buzz Lightyear’s family. Shrek and Donkey met friends along the way and in the end, everyone received a great reward for finding the treasure. The story sounds pretty interesting looking back on it, and I’m sure my son enjoyed every moment of it, but at the time of telling it, I had no idea what was going to happen from one moment to the next. But I guess the unknown is what make the story worth listening to.

Not knowing what is out there, makes the story worth hearing

Every night since the end of the tale, he asks me to “read me a story about Shrek” and I have to come up with a new adventure for him to follow along with.

Story telling is fresh on my mind. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what elements are required to tell a great story. I think the standards may be higher for me as an adult than they are for my three-year old son but none-the-less, the main element in every story will reach to anyone of any age no matter what the topic is.

A story works because it is told in a way that is believable, the characters in the story are worth hearing about and the quest that story takes you on is one that you desire to go on. Hollywood is very good at telling us stories because they talk about things that we already talk or think about.

Why else are there so many romance novels, movies and love songs? We all want to be loved and to “fall” in love. There are millions of stories that we tell that prove it.  An action movie is the same. So is fantasy, thrillers, adventure and comedy. These stories tell of another character and their quest, but they tell of a greater story with our own lives.

That is why we are drawn to story! Movies, books, video games and music tell us things about our lives that we already know. We learn about our life through story as we empathize with certain characters, and we can learn from their mistakes.

Sometimes, we can over-dose on stories. I think this is evidenced by how encapsulated some people can get by certain media. A culturally relevant story today is Twilight! More or less, the Twilight-saga is a love story within the context of the “underworld”. I don’t buy the whole thing about vampires, but the story itself is based on falling in love and the tragedies involved with it. The issue that comes up is that people will take the story about love and say that it is about vampires. Then become obsessed about vampires and learn all about that “world”.

Look at video games like World of Warcraft and Second-life. These games are designed to give the player a character of their own, in a world full of unknown possibilities and pursue gaining knowledge and experience in the world to become the most experienced. This game is not at all unlike the real world, except there are no consequences for any actions in the video game world. You can fight and kill another character in World of Warcraft, walk away and not think again of that battle. The other person will just have to start over. In the real world, it is of course, illegal to kill someone and  unnatural for us to take the life of another person. You go to prison, and they don’t get a second chance to start over.

I think games like this feed our inner-desire to a sense of adventure and the hope that what we are doing is in the name of justice, and the greater good!

If the story is inside me, why is it so hard for me to tell a story about Shrek that maintains that sense of “real life”? It has to be done without telling my son that Shrek went to work on Monday morning, had a cup of coffee, went to several meetings that day and after doing some paperwork, went home to relax with Sportscenter on the TV.

There is no love story, no adventure, no science fiction, no tragedy or thrilling end!

But the story that we tell has to come from the desire we have for these things, not our experience of them. A story tell of the possibilities and the best ones should change us! Story telling is an ancient art that I am beginning to see is still playing a role in my life. Hopefully, my son is willing to bear the burden of having to hear my stories as I learn to tell them.

*read Chris Brogans Blog http://www.chrisbrogan.com/importance-of-story for more ideas on how to integrate “Story” into our lives

We all know of those pages from activity/coloring books that show a seemingly random layout of black colored dots.  I believe the term for these activities are called “connect the dots.” The instructions are in the title! All you must do to complete this page is using a crayon, connect one dot to the next dot, creating a linking chain of dots. As you continue and finally reach the last final dot, connecting it with dot you began with, you are suddenly without the page of random laid-out dots, but a page with a picture.

I can look at a connect the dots page and, with confidence plow from dot to dot and finish it within 30 seconds… easily. At 28 years of age I  have a lot of experience connecting dots. I am really good at it! (not to brag)  Too bad it wasn’t made for me. These types of games are created for children to help them learn to draw and can improve their cognitive skills in understanding completion of a task.  It is a simple, but beneficial tool for kids.

There may be an underlying message in connect the dots though. What if children are learning to, more than just to draw, to create a work of art. Often, I find in writing that I don’t know what the final product will look like. More than often, actually. I would say that it is a rare case that I finish with the same topic I began with. You have heard it said that the most difficult sentence to write is the first sentence. The reason is that you are setting the standard for the entirety of the text.

Take for instance this chair

Why Can't It Be You?

When I was working on this article, I found this picture and I was going to use it as a really inspiring image to challenge you. Now,  I am five hundred words into this blog and I can’t remember what I was going to say about it.  (I might use the picture in a little bit)  The dots served no purpose on the page until you put your crayon down and began to move from dot-to-dot. You followed the instructions and in complete trust of the creator of the activity, you created art.

“Three longings we all have are to believe, belong and become” – Mclaren

Each of us have deep areas in our life that we feel an intrinsic need to connect to something.  I suggest that we might all have a desire to believe in, or have Someone greater than ourselves that might help, teach, care for and simply show us how to live this life we were given. That we all have a desire to belong to an idea that will drive us to do great and world changing things and also to believe that we can become someone who is better than who we know that we are. Someone that can actually love others without wanting anything in return.

What if we could learn from connect the dots as adults and connect peoples longing with their passion? Each person could be an individual work of art. What if I knew how to connect the dots on your “page of life” (cheezy!) to the ability to fulfill the desires you were given? I have to trust that your Creator knew what was happening when you were thought of, and I was able to help you get to the next dot. Maybe it isn’t me who will show you the dot after that but I can send you along the way.  Eventually, the picture would begin to form and I would be making art! I would be making you!

I think we are all capable of this type of creation. It would mean that you would have to get out of your chair (ref. the picture!) and start showing people where to draw their lines.

‘The distance between someone’s despair and God’s dreams for them, might be the length of your arms.’ -My Friend Chris

Finally, I would like to give mention to and congratulate my MSU Spartans for making the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. I hope they play up to their potential and I’m looking forward to a possible match-up game with my wife’s team Maryland Terrapins. Should be fun to watch!

I’m writing you this letter because I have to confess to something. I have been taught that when I do wrong to someone, I need to humbly apologize. It is supposed to help me feel better. You will feel better too, and then we can move on. Is that fair to you? I hope so because this is really hard for me to talk about.

Really… That is why I’m writing it in a letter. So I can say what I’m supposed to say and not mess it up.

We were having a conversation a while ago. Remember? You came to me because you wanted to talk about something that seemed really important. I knew that having someone to talk to right then was a big deal, so I made myself available. You told me some things about what you were thinking and about something else with your phone bill. I remember because I that was when I was texting another friend of mine. (Gosh, he is hilarious! He texts the funniest things.)

Yeah… You said something like “just needing a little help” right? I totally know what you mean! I was installing my new “46 plasma over the fireplace and I needed some help getting the mount put up on the wall. Tough, tough job man! Tough job… especially after a long week of work! Hey, by the way, have you gotten a job yet? I’m sure you have, you are a good guy and I think you could get any job you wanted. Sucks that you got laid-off last fall man!

The talk we had was really good!  I am so ticked that couldn’t beat my buddies doodle-jump record that afternoon. This is what I wanted to apologize for. I am so sorry that I didn’t give you a chance to play right then. I didn’t realize it until I walked away. So, will you forgive me?

Anyway… I have got to go. “Lost” is on you know, cannot miss a moment of that show! It is CRAZY man!

Peace,

Nate

Yeah.. Uh hu!... I'm sorry, what did you say?

I am actually sorry about the lame letter. I think you get the point.

Sometimes we miss it. The opportunity to hear someone or hear something at all. I am so guilty of filling my ears with noise and my eyes with light and mouth with taste that I have a difficult time facing the absence of it. We are going to call this technologicalthrosis! I am saying that this is a medical condition of a new kind. If you go back 100 years ago, the medical issues being faced where yellow fever, the flu, the cold! Our generation does have deadly diseases that are killing us too, but perhaps technologicalthrosis is killing us too! You can see the symptoms of the disease everywhere! Look around! Bluetooth, earbuds, ipod touch and ipad (netbooks for the average person)! There is an entire industry built around keeping people distracted from one another and slowing killing our ability to relate.

Count how many people you see today, with something sticking in their ears. It is astounding to see! There are those people who will only have one headphone in their ear, leaving the other to hear what is going on around them. WTG (Way to go)! Problem solved, only half listen to what is going in your ears! I know that is a problem of mine. Habits like these have trained me to not really pay attention at all. How many conversations have you held that go something like this:

“Hey man” you say.

“Hey” said the other.

You ask “What do you think about what is going on in Haiti? It’s crazy huh?”

“It is…” the other responds. “I think it is so great that th……”

{enter: your brain- “I know what I think about Haiti. I’m going to let them continue to talk about it and I will nod my head in agreement. After they stop, or maybe even pause for a moment, I will make my statement about Haiti. Then, after they hear me, they will respect me and my opinion. Yeah… that is a great thing to say too, I’ll say that.}

“…and that is why! You know?”

{now is my chance}

“I know!” You reply “I think Haiti…”

I think I have a lot of these conversations. I am not listening to one thing they have to tell me. There are 100 other things going on in my brain at the same time and I need to make sure that I have a good statement for them. I think the amount of input we allow into our life could help to cause this problem. I might be alone with this. If so, then you are a much better person then I.

It’s easy for me to complain about this epidemic. But here I sit, typing on my laptop, with the TV on in the background and John Mayer singing the “blues.”

I think, there is a grinding, depth filled, intensely raw, highly saturated world today. Ignoring it may not change me at all, but facing it in all its “hard to deal with” reality might just affect me. And I might become someone who actually cares about what others have to say. I might discover a little about what the world is really like instead of just relying on all of the media in my ears and face telling me what it is like.

I do not want or expect people to divert to something different. I have to wonder though, how long can we go on like this?

I’m going to go a week with out music as background. I’ll listen if that is all I’m doing, but I am going to do just one thing at a time for a whole week. It could be a hard step for me but I am kinda looking forward to it.

  Z6QPV8GRYSS7

“Head’s up! Stand up!” is the final call of the game Seven-up. A mere glance at a pair of shoes could be the difference between you going up front to play the game and being stuck in your seat for another turn with your “eyes closed.” So I cheated at seven-up! Who didn’t? That’s not the point of the game. The point of the game is for people to get ahead at any cost. And that is what I did! It is not wrong.

I was always curious about the name of the game. Why did they call it seven-up? The only thing that goes through a child’s mind is 7-up, the soda-pop. Is that the kind of thing that elementary schools should be talking to students about? High-fructose corn syrup… c’mon!  No! It should have been called water, or Vitamin-Water.  How about calling the game “Heathly Things.” That way, students aren’t thinking about high-fructose corn syrup for 1/2 hour.

Ahh.. healing AND refreshing.

7-up soda is an interesting animal in our culture.

My three-year old son came down with the stomach flu yesterday. Being a parent of a sick child is one of the most vulnerable and heart wrenching experiences I have ever had. The problem lays with the power to protect your child and keep them safe from harm has been surpassed. I think I know what it means when my parents would say to me “life is fragile.” It sure is. My children can be ripped from my hands and I have no say as to what happens.

But I have a solution that has been passed from generation to generation. As a parent, we know what works and we do what works. When I was sick as a child, my mother would give me (follow the link for something funny) 7-up to drink. I can’t recall speaking to many people who haven’t shared this, or a similar experience. You know what I’m talking about.

I’m not a doctor {0h, that’s obvious} but I would guess that there is nothing in 7-up soda that helps the body heal. It’s “lemon-lime” flavored, carbonated sugar-water. How could my mom think that this was the solution to what ails me?

In a society that what I believe to be founded on logic and the scientific method, how we have traditions like this is beyond my understanding. But there I was, staring at the soda today, wondering if Sprite would do the trick, or maybe Sierra Mist. There is Cherry 7-up… Ginger Ale? What about sparkling or mineral water?

As I looked back and forth across the “Pop”  aisle {I’m from the midwest}, the only proven method, the one that has held its own time and time again, the logical choice is 7-up. So here I am, giving my child sugar-water while he is sick to his stomach.

The only thing I can think is that, with age you might begin to understand that life IS fragile. It doesn’t make sense to have my son drink 7-up but it works! It might not heal his body, but it heals him. I have to imagine laying on the couch, having fallen in and out of sleep for hours and hours.  He has seen the same cartoon episodes over and over again, body is sore, throat hurts, weak and feeling incapable of movement.

I can then imagine what a cup of cold 7-up would do. The slight sweetness, the bubbles. This is the most refreshing thing he has had in days! As it goes down his throat, tickling him the entire way down, life begins to fill him once again! Perhaps he is able to move and play for a while. Bedtime will only be a short time from now and with that comes more sleep. But for now, maybe he isn’t sick at all.

I go through my days, feeling dried out and incapable. I know better than to think that food is going to help me escape. Food at my age only aids the size of my body. This is a problem that we are all seeking a solution for. We need 7-up once in a while and I think in that moment, we might be drinking life. You can read that Jesus says “… If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink…”  What if He is saying that he’s like 7-up? I think sugar-water works for a child, but as we age and we try every item on earth to quench this thirst, we find nothing is working. Maybe things work, but not in the way that we want them to. I want “stuff” to make me feel better, but that doesn’t work. I think it is the thought behind the act that is healing us.

As I have been writing this blog, there have been headphones sitting on my head blasting Future of Forestry, one of my current faves. With each note, I have been drinking life. I have spoken before of hope, and I think the hope that says there is a plan for you is the same Hope that tells you that you are going to be okay. The music heals me… As does writing. Some things don’t heal me because they are not my “7-up.” It’s like I’m trying to give my son Sprite. It isn’t the thing that works. 7-up is the only suitable solution to my problem.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, drink 7-up when you are sick because healing and refreshment might be the same thing.

I remember hearing a speaker talk about the human experience with time. His suggestion to the us was that our interaction with time changes with age. To explain the phenomenon of the experience that a year at age 5 is much longer than it is at 10, which is longer than it is at 20, which is longer than it is at 40, which is longer than it is at 80 years of age, he told us that our concept of time has a direct relation to how much of it we have experienced. You must remember summer vacation from school at an early age. It was an epic experience!

Think about the movie The Sandlot and the entirety of the experience they boys went through. Didn’t it feel like the journey represented a long lasting age of time? It represents every summer of my childhood with every dramatic up and down, the fear of the old lady next door, long days of baseball in the tee-ball field.

Long summer days brings long summers.

By the time school was back in session, you were ready, because you had an adventure and now it was time to go play with the kids at school. At age 8, three months of summer vacation is over 2.5% of their life. It may not seem like a lot but if you compare it to a 16-year-old  and the same three-month summer break, its only 1.25% of their life. At age 32, a three-month span of time (unless you’re a teacher, you don’t have summer break anymore) it consists of about .65% of their life span. That same experience of an eight year old summer break that is three months long, for the 32-year-old only feels like 3 weeks!  The percentage of life experience to compared the time to is much greater for the 32-year-old than it is for the 8-year-old. (I butchered the explanation. I’m sorry. If you’re confused then bring it up in the comments and I’ll try to explain it.)

What’s the point?

Someone recently challenged me to write down what I want on my gravestone…

What will I be remembered for?

Donald Miller speaks of our need to remain responsible for the areas within our influence, in his blog yesterday. “If you have a family…” he says

“… your family comes first.” He’s right, of course. Your first responsibility must always remain to the one whose life is directly effected by your hands. I, being a husband and father of two must remain on my farm. My boys are my crop and I must tend to them if I want them to grow up well. My wife is my helper and in order for us to work together, I must remain unified with her.

I want to be remembered as someone who cared for his family. My body is selfish and therefore I do not want to give my time and effort towards that cause, but I must for the sake of love, sacrifice myself and be the husband and father that I need to be.

In the reflection of how I would like to be remembered, I wrote a haiku. This is what I would hope to have on my gravestone.

___________________________________________________

Reflected Christ

Loving Father, Husband

Followed His Dreams

___________________________________________________

It is really deep… I know! Of course, I do not think this is me, but it is an incredible goal. If we give ourselves a target, then we are able to aim at something. If our life has but one purpose, every decision becomes focused on completing that goal.

Give yourself a chance today to tinker with what you are going to be remembered for and then tomorrow, start doing it.