Priorities

Fridays are special days for my wife and I. When I started my career in church work I choose Fridays as my days off. Since Sundays are a work day in my profession you usually get another day during the week off. So Fridays are a fun day for my wife and I. We usually go to a movie, or out to lunch, but we spend time together and it has had a very positive impact on our relationship.

I attend a leadership development meeting once a month with a group of really cool guys that encourage one another and help each other with issues we are facing in the organizations we lead, and currently we are reading John Maxwell’s “Developing the Leader Within You.” I like John Maxwell, he makes the complexities of leadership simple. The thing that sticks out to me today is the “Pareto Principle” an idea also referred to as the 20/80 principle. This principle states that, “20 percent of your priorities will give you 80 percent of your production IF you spend your time, energy, money, and personnel on the top 20 percent of your priorities.” For example; 20% of your time produces 80% of the results, 20% of products bring in 80% of the profit, 20% of our work gives us 80% of our satisfaction, 20% of the book contains 80% of the information! You can see when we look at the 20% it can have a dramatic impact on the other 80%!

How does this relate to our lives? Take a look at your priorities and invest heavily in the 20% that makes the difference! We often get caught up in all the things that seem so important and it crowds out the things that will really make a difference! Stop doing the things that aren’t absolutely necessary, and do the things that bring results. The time you spend with significant people in your lives has a huge impact on the satisfaction you will feel in life, in relationship and in love. We often neglect the people closest to us because there is so much to get done, but in fact if we nurture the right priorities it will transform ourselves and those around us! Are you spending time on the right priorities? Take a look at your weekly schedule, then put the important things first, spend as much time on them as possible, and watch how the Pareto Principle works in your life!

I have to go, I get to spend time with my top priority now!

My Stuff in Storage

Last May my family and I packed all our belongings and left. I had a great job, at a great church, but it was clearly time for us to go. So we left Wylie Texas, near Dallas, and moved back to Colorado Springs, our home. Not really knowing what was next, we moved in with my In-Laws, and put all our stuff in storage. Then I began the tedious task of finding work – asking the question, “what’s next?” I had interviews with places from Buffalo New York, Chicago, Carlsbad CA, and even Ohio, but nothing seemed to be just right. After a couple months, a local opportunity opened up and it was a perfect match! So finally, this weekend, we are moving into a house here in the Springs!

I don’t know if you have ever been away for an extended period of time, but if you have you know the feeling you get. You begin to miss the things in your life that make it feel “homey.” A chair that you sit in every day, the dishes you use, your espresso machine, pictures on the wall of family, or artwork that you love. Those things that make you feel like you belong here. Not to mention the space that is your own! Living in someone else’s home, or in a place that is not yours makes you do things differently. From preparing meals, to relaxing in your favorite way, can all be put on hold while you are away. So you can imagine how excited we are to take possession of our things again and our own space again. Moving into a place we can call “home.”

It is so easy to take our stuff for granted! You get used to it, and maybe even tired of it. We are so blessed to live in a place where we have plenty! And if we want more, we save or borrow (thanks Visa!) and go get more. We have something we love, then we see something a little better, and we don’t love it so much anymore! We can be pretty fickle sometimes! Yet when you see how people in other places live, sometimes just down the street, you realize that our consumerism can easily become a sickness! We have grown accustomed to filling our lives with nice things, and yet most of the people in the world don’t even have a bed to sleep on. We buy our kids ipods, and others live in poverty. I am not suggesting that we sell all we own to give to the poor, merely that we reconsider how we appreciate the things that we do have. Instead of trying to “keep up with the Jones’s” I should be thankful for the things that I do have! If you need a new outlook on your stuff, pack it all up, put it in storage, and live with your In-Laws for 4 months!

I can’t wait to move in to our house!

Lighten Your Load

I was worried I might not have anything good to write about this morning, but lucky for us there is plenty to write about if you just watch the news for a few minutes! My wife was flipping through the TV channels and sure enough what was all over the news? A semi truck for FedEx wrecked in Texas. It has shut down part of the highway, and if you have ever been in or around Dallas, it needs every lane open it can get to keep traffic from becoming more like a drive in movie (pull up, shut off your car to save gas, watch the entertainment for an hour, while listening to the soundtrack to your life,) than the usual drive through fast food lane (stop, go, stop, go, yell something out the window, go, stop, pay a toll, go) yes all this on a 6 lane highway! So here are these aerial shots on the news showing this truck ripped in half with all the packages scattered all over the median, and it seriously looks like it could take hours to clean up! At this point if you are waiting for a package from FedEx you may want to check your on-line tracking number! I am not sure if this was one of those double trailer semis, or not, but there is a pile of packages, a mile of backed up traffic, and this shipping company’s name is all over the news now.

So here we are, driving down the highway of life, and suddenly – Bam! And we go careening off the road! It has happened to all of us; maybe not in our cars, but for sure in our relationships with others. We think things are fine, then we have done something, or someone has done something to us and it seems like all of our insides and cargo goes splattering all over the median of our life! Conflict is hard, whether it is between a highway divider, another car, or when relationships collide. Friendship can be tried and banged around for a lot of different reasons and causes, but here is what we can learn from this FedEx problem…

The size of the mess is often determined by the size of the load we are carrying! If this had been an economy sized pick up truck, it would not nearly have caused the mess that a semi truck did. It wouldn’t have made the national news, and caused so many backups, it wouldn’t have the impact it did. Pick up a few boxes and everyone is on their way. But a semi full of cargo is a whole differnt story! We all know people that stow up problems and frustration and misunderstanding and they get movin’ down the road, and then, Bam! And all their cargo goes spewing all over the place! No one is safe that is near them, and it causes a backlash that is felt throughout all the people that had been impacted by the spewage! Their day is ruined, they tell someone, and it causes a ripple effect, so people that weren’t even close to it feel the effect! It is really uneasy for everyone when this happens… yet we have all been there.

Are you carrying a semi truck full of conflict, bitterness, frustration? I know how easy it is to have this stuff fill up. You start out with a mild infraction, maybe the size of one little box, but you toss it in the back of your mind and keep driving. Then another frustration is added, then another, then the next thing you know you are carrying an “Over-Sized-Load” that is unstable and could blow at any moment! What can we do to keep these things from piling up? Keep your baggage to a minimum! Sounds easy right – wrong! It is really hard to go to a person that you are close to and tell them that they have done something or said something that hurt you. It is really difficult to go to someone you know you have offended and ask for forgiveness. They probably deserved whatever you said and did anyway, right? It can be hard work to keep your load small, but the results can be catastrophic if we don’t! The load will eventually shift, and you will eventually be caught up in the clean up of conflict. The size of the load you are carrying will make the difference between a major “national news” worthy story that everyone knows about and can be completely embarrassing, or a couple friends meeting over coffee to talk, forgive, and forget. It can be scary to make the call, it can go completely against your feelings, but they dont call it the “high road” for nothing! Negotiating conflict in life is a necessary skill to develop if you want to keep the clean-up to a minimum. In this life we will have trouble, and if you are like me, we will probably cause a little trouble too! Keeping the messes to a minimum is in everyone’s best interest, so next time you get angry about someone, keep the FedEx image in your mind – how big of a mess are you willing to deal with?

Keep your load light, it is easier over the long haul, and you will feel so much better!

We All Need A Myrtle Tree

Sometimes my mind does funny things. I come across a word or idea that I have to learn more about, then I cannot stop thinking about it until I satisfy that curiosity that abounds. Same such thing happened this morning. I was reading in Isaiah 55:13 and came across a reference to a tree. Not just any tree, but a funny named tree – the Myrtle tree. Why does this reference so specifically mention this kind of tree? Well I just had to Google it to see… here is what I found…

There are several types of Myrtle trees… some in the Mediterranean, some in Oregon even some in Arizona. But they have some common features; the trees are used for spices, perfumes, milling and carved art and ornaments. They are slow growers and live a long time, it takes 80-120 years for them to reach their peak height. They are beautifully shaped and don’t need pruning to maintain their gumdrop appearance. They can bloom in the winter and they like a lot of sunlight and need deep soil to grow. Their wood can contain all kinds of variances based on the nutrients in the soil and one reference even said you can find a sunset variety of colors in the wood based on the nutrients the tree has been planted in!

So what? Why spend all this time looking at tree research? Let’s connect the dots…

The name Myrtle actually means “sweetness.” Probably coming from the scent and scenery that the tree blesses by it’s proximity. We all need “sweetness” in our lives. When we live in close proximity to a Myrtle our lives become flavored – they taste better! Our lives become aromatic – they smell better! Myrtles add color and variety to a sometimes mundane landscape. They bring a pleasantness in all of these areas to keep us in a state of awareness of our surroundings. They heighten our senses. If your life is boring and mundane, if you have lost the colors in your journey, you NEED a Myrtle!

Now, I am not talking about the actual tree here, I am talking about a person. You know someone that IS a Myrtle; bringing joy, pleasantness and fostering enjoyment in this life. But often we neglect this positive influence in our lives. We get too busy, and maybe don’t nourish or foster this kind of relationship. Maybe we were once a Myrtle to those around us, but life got busy and we don’t reach out to those around us as often. Maybe you have experienced a loss, or a disappointment that has caused your “sweetness” to wane. It takes time and effort to make a Myrtle grow, but don’t lose heart, they are hearty beings and easy to find.

The articles I read said that Myrtles grow best in rich soil with full sun and lots of water. Take a look around… what kind of soil are you planted in? What kind of soil do you find yourself walking through most often? If you walk the same path over and over again you kill the vegetation. The pathway becomes hard or sandy and nothing can grow in it! It may be time for you to take another path. It may be time for you to till your soil! Turn it over and over, and start new! Find places you can go to re-energize your life. Find people that are being Myrtles right now, and hang out with them. Myrtles need full sun – are you in a place that is bright and shiny, or are you in a dark place? You can get out of the darkness by looking for the people around that have Hope, Love, Joy and a desire to shine Light into your life. It may be time for you to join a group that has these things present in them… a group of people gathering together to do something good for the community; a Church group gathering to learn more, a dinner party group that you start – for the only purpose of providing flavor in life, a pleasant aroma to fill people’s lives. Is it time for you to step out of your ordinary average lifestyle and add some “sweetness” to it? Life is about living, not maintaining! Do that thing that you have been thinking about in the back of your mind for months. Bring someone along to do it with you! Break out of the ordinary and mundane! Just keep one more thing in mind… Myrtles can take a long time to grow. This may mean that you have several steps to take; step one, till the soil. Step two, water, water, water. Step three, find the Light… you get the picture. Just don’t give up. Find a Myrtle, be a Myrtle. Let’s change the landscape!

My First Blog

This morning I recieved a phone call from my wife while she was on her way to a meeting. she had just gotten off the phone with her friend that is on the Board of Directors for the charter school my kids attend. Apparently on Friday (today is Monday) a third grade student went home at the end of school not feeling well. The parents thought it was the Flu, and were horified later Friday to have their child die of a heart attack! This is one of the worst things a parent could ever imagine, and yet it is a reminder of how fragile life really is. We have no control over the things in life that can cause pain and suffering. We try, with excercise, eating right, saftey, to keep bad stuff away, but it can change in an instant. Are we living our lives in fear of these things, or are we living our lives in spite of these things? Living in fear means worrying about every little thing and trying to take extraordinary precautions against them. Bad things happen regardless of our planning and attempting to keep them away. Living in spite of them means we are thankful for the days that are good; we stand firm in the days that are not good; and we do not let fear keep us from reaching into our selves and being the best people we can be.

Surround yourself with people that can help you live in spite of all the bad things that can happen. No one expects you to do life on your own. We were created for community, friends, relationships, not for isolation and lonliness. Find people you can share your heart with. Find friends you can be yourself with. Celebrating ups in life and dealing with pain and hurt is not meant to be done alone. Hold on to your friendships, your family and your faith. These are the only things that will last, as life can change in the blink of an eye.