health

Swing Dancing And What I Learned From It

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astaire-rogers

I’ve improved a great deal in swing dancing. Ok, so I’m not Fred Astaire quite yet (aside from maybe in my own mind occasionally), but I’m definitely more confident in my own abilities than I was even two weeks ago. The Waltz? Not so much.

I’ve learned a few life lessons from my grand total of two times swing dancing.

1) Don’t give up. At first, I felt hopelessly lost and like I would never get it, but I found someone who knew what she was doing to talk me down from the ledge and help me figure out what I was doing wrong. It takes time and effort to learn anything worthwhile. At least anything that’s worth learning.

2) Step boldly. I discovered a secret. Even if you mess up, you can still keep going and pretend like it didn’t happen. The worst thing to do is to stop or become hesitant. You will mess up, so you might as well mess up royally by taking a chance and trying.

3) You never know unless you ask. I’m learning that I have to be the one to step up and ask the girl to dance. And that won’t happen with me standing across the room sending telepathic messages. My ESP isn’t all that good. I have to be willing to walk across the room and go up to her and ask. I might try and fail but I am guaranteed a 100% failure rate if I don’t try.

4) Don’t take yourself too seriously. I have a tendency to overthink and make things more complicated than they need to be. I’m learning with swing dancing to relax and have fun with it. It’s not like I’m in a competition getting marked off for every little mistake I make. It’s all about having a good time.

5) Fake confidence. A friend told me once that sometimes when you’re not sure of yourself and what you’re doing, to fake like you are. That way you can fool yourself into doing more than you think you can. It works. Trust me.

6) Give grace. You have to allow yourself and others the freedom to fail if you want to learn anything new. You won’t get it 100% right on the first try, no matter what you’re trying to learn. Plus, you will learn far more from your mistakes and failures than you ever will from success. So be kind to yourself and others. Practice forgiveness and second chances. You will inevitably need it yourself one day.

Wow. All that came from two lessons? Who knows what will happen after I’ve been at this swing dancing thing for a while? I don’t know yet, but you’ll be the first ones to find out.

Lucky you.

What If?

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I went running today for the first time in over two weeks after I tweaked my knee. I felt great. My knee felt great. And I found out that I’m not the world’s slowest runner after all. There’s at least one person out there slower than me, and I know because I passed her.

But then I got to thinking. What if my knee had been messed up to the point where I couldn’t ever run again? Would I still be thankful?

Or what if I lost my health? Would I still be able to wake up in the morning with gratitude for another day of being alive?

What if I lost my friends and family? Would I still be able to worship with a sincere heart and sing about the goodness of God?

What if God took away from me everything and everyone that I daily take for granted? What and who would I have left? Would I have anything at all left?

Would I still be able to praise Jesus for saving me if he never did one more thing for me?

Could I live a life of thanksgiving to my God for who he is if I never saw another visible sign of his presence?

Is God and God alone truly enough for me?

I wish I could say yes, but I find myself leaning on other crutches when I get tired or stressed or upset. I find myself thinking more about other things and people than about God. Sometimes God feels like a last resort after all my other planning has failed.

The truth I need to remember today (and maybe you do, too) is that God is the only one able to save me. He’s the only one strong enough to hold my life together and to hold me when I’m falling to pieces. He’s the only absolute constant that I can count on who won’t ever leave or forsake me.

So all of this to say that I need to be more thankful for what and who I have in my life. I need to remember where it all comes from, too.

I’m thankful most of all that God is still working on me, making me a better man, son, brother, friend, husband (possibly one day), father (also possibly one day), friend, and follower of Jesus.

A Prayer For All My Friends Who Run

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I may have mentioned this a time or two before, but I’ve gotten back into running. At least before I tweaked my knee. I’m probably the slowest runner ever and would probably get easily passed by power walkers, but I try. I can see how running could easily become an idolatrous obsession. At least for me, anyway. So here’s my prayer for all my friends who run, with the Country Music Marathon in mind.

Lord, I pray for my friends who will be running in the race this coming Saturday.

Give them a beautiful day to run in and may they feel Your pleasure over them as they run, knowing that the ability to run came solely for You. May they run only for Your glory.

Keep them from injuries and accidents and may their feet be swift and their hearts be overflowing and their joy be boundless.

May they be reminded every time they run about the Great Race that we’re all in, following in the footsteps of Jesus, who ran His race perfectly. May they keep their eyes on the Ultimate Prize, which is Jesus Himself.

Regardless of whether they have a chance of winning or not, may they finish well.

May we all run our race, not give up, and finish well.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Finding the Silver Lining

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Bradley-Cooper-and-Jennifer-Lawrence-in-Silver-Linings-Playbook

After seeing Silver Linings Playbook, I’m 4 down and 5 to go in my quest to see all the best picture nominees for 2013. Hopefully, I can accomplish this quest in 2013. So far, it’s looking good.

But that movie resonated with me at a deep level. It’s about mental illness and broken people trying to fit the pieces back together again. The reason I could relate to it so very well is because I recognize the brokenness inside of me. In fact, I believe that everybody is fundamentally broken at some level. Some are just better at hiding the cracks and appearing normal. But face it, we’re messed up in one way or another.

So many times, we approach relationships with the mentality of “fix me” and “save me.” Maybe instead, we should have the attitude of “how can I make you better?” or “how can I bring out the best in you?’

Too many romantic relationships fail because one person tries to make another their world. No one person can be another’s world. It’s simply too much pressure and expectation. But that person can make the other’s world better. That person can make the other’s world a little brighter.

I still love how God has a heart for broken people like you and me. I love how gently he can bring together all the scattered pieces and put them back together to where you can’t see the cracks anymore. I don’t know how that all works, but I know that it does.

There’s no one better at loving broken people than someone who has embraced their brokenness and the healing that comes with it. There’s no one better at helping to pick up someone else’s broken pieces than someone who’s had their broken pieces fitted back together.

My goal shouldn’t be for you to complete me or fix me, but to see you become a whole person in Jesus, to see the image of God restored in you. So I look for the best in you and you look for the best in me and we help each other see not who we are but what we could be and– by God’s grace– will be one day.

 

Your Normally Scheduled Blogs Will Resume Tomorrow (Hopefully)

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This is not your normal blog. If it were, there would be something witty or profound. But seeing as I have a migraine headache (or just a really nasty sinus headache), I’m taking the night off. So yeah, I just wrote a blog about how I’m not going to write a blog tonight. Go figure.

Hopefully, I will see you again tomorrow pain-free (both you and me) and with something interesting to say. If not, I’ll just steal someone else’s brilliant ideas and pass them off as my own.

Until then, keep living the dream.

Taking Your Medicine

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My niece was not having a good day. She’s teething and has a cold, among other things. My sister was trying to get her to take the medicine that would make her feel better and not be in as much pain, but she wanted no part of it.

It would be easy for me to scoff at a 17-month old who is refusing what is obviously good for her. But then I have to ask myself how many  times I’ve done the same thing.

I don’t mean when I was growing up and adamantly refused to take my cough medicine (namely, because it tasted like cherry-flavored death in a bottle). I mean now when I don’t want the disciplines from God that will make me more like Jesus and less like that selfish sinner I used to be.

I want every day to be sunny, but without constant sunshine without the occasional rainy days leads to a desert. If I never have bad days or days that don’t make sense, then I don’t appreciate the really good days.

I’m sure God looks at me like I looked at my niece today, smiling and shaking his head. He knows what’s best for me. I only think I do. I only see a limited part of the picture. He sees it all.

I think the lesson for me is to be thankful when things don’t go the way I wanted them to. I can’t count the times I look back at my life, grateful that I didn’t get some of the things I asked for and desperately wanted at the time, because I didn’t know what I wanted or how to ask for it. And most of the time I still don’t.

The story has a happy ending. Once my niece settled down and took her medicine, she felt a lot better. Once I stop fighting God and demanding my own way and finally agree to his way, I often feel a lot better. I have a peace that only comes with acceptance and surrender.

Now if I could figure a way to get my cat to take her medicine.

 

My Break From Facebook Update

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It’s been 5 days since I last logged on to facebook. That may not sound like much to some of you, but for me, it’s a big deal. I’ve been known to check in multiple times during the day, mostly to see who liked or responded to one of my posts. Not like in the past, where I lived or died by who liked my status updates, but I still like to see who’s keeping up with me.

I catch myself starting to go to the website out of habit and divert myself to msn.com or espn.com. You don’t realize how addicting something is until you go cold-turkey from it.

I find that I am less anxious for the most part. The only thing I worry about is the notion that when I get back to facebook after Easter, that I will have far fewer friends than I did before I took a break from it/gave it up for Lent/took an extended cyber-holiday (pick any of the three).

I’m committed to seeing this though. I’m committed to using the time I normally spend on facebook to spend time with God in his word and in prayer. If you ask, “How’s that workin’ out for ya so far?” I say, “Up to this point, not so much.”

I remember what a pastor said. Fasting is giving something up to in essence say no to its demands on you, because no one and nothing has the right to make demands on your life other than God. I’m not calling this a fast, but I am recognizing that facebook does tend to dominate my thoughts more than it should and periodically, it’s good to step away to regain proper perspective and right thinking.

I feel at the moment like the runner who’s a mile or two into a marathon and thinks that there’s no way in the world he’ll finish. I don’t know how I can possibly hold out for the next few weeks. But if I take it one day at a time, one mile at a time, one step at a time, it doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Kind of like most things in life.

So pray for me that I put the new-found free time to better use. Pray that I am open to what God has to say to me during this time and the humility and bravery to not only listen to what he says, but to put it into practice.

I’ll keep you updated periodically as to how I’m doing with this. In the mean time, may you find freedom in giving up those things you thought you couldn’t live without to find more of abundant Life.

 

In Everything Give Thanks

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Four little words say it all. In everything give thanks.

Notice it doesn’t say to give thanks FOR everything, but IN everything.

When you’re not sure if you will ever find another job, give thanks.

When you see loved ones getting older and weaker and more frail, give thanks.

When you wonder if the dreams God put in your heart will ever come to fruition and you’re hanging on by the most slender of threads, give thanks.

When you want to stomp and rage and cuss like a sailor at the way that person treated you, give thanks.

Give thanks that God is the same through it all. Give thanks that he has not forgotten you. Give thanks that he’s working through your pain and problems. Give thanks that God has been, is, and will always be God.

Give thanks that God works all things together for good. Give thanks that he will complete the good work he started in you. Give thanks that everything will be fine in the end, and if everything’s not fine, it’s not the end (borrowed from a really good movie).

In other words, in everything give thanks.

 

A Smorgasbord of Thoughts

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I went to Golden Corral once. It was overwhelming. For the uninformed, Golden Corral is a buffet-style restaurant with every imaginable kind of food you could possibly want. You can have sample a little bit of a lot of different kinds of foods (and even fill your plate with nothing but greasy fried foods if that’s your heart’s desire). It’s up to you.

That’s how my thoughts are tonight. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, and they don’t necessarily go together. And you might or might not need some Tums tablets after reading them. But here they are.

1 John 4:7 says that God is love. Not the mushy, touchy-feely kind of love that gets pushed around in books and movies. Not the needy, grabby kind that is just lust in disguise. Not warm sentiments and Hallmark lyrics.

God is the love that does everything possible to bring out the best in the beloved. That’s you. That’s me. God is the ultimate pursuer of hearts who longs for his people to know him more than anything.

I keep pinching myself lately and wondering how I got so blessed. I am around some amazing people all day long, from family to friends who inspire me on a daily basis to strive after Jesus. I don’t think I’d be nearly as mature in the faith without them. In fact, I probably would have quit on the faith a long time ago without them.

It’s amazing that when you set your mind to look for the blessings in your life, you find them everywhere. When you stop concentrating on what you don’t have and focus on what you do have, you realize you have a lot. And those things you don’t have don’t seem as important anymore.

If you only remember one thing out of all this, remember that God loves you and is for you and wants you and won’t ever give up on you. Okay, that’s like four things, but they’re all in one sentence, so that counts as one thought, right? It’s never too late and you’re never too far gone for God to find and rescue and redeem.

I told you my thoughts were all over the map. They should probably make pills for this, but hey, at least I make life interesting.

 

 

Reminders That Life Really Is Good

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I woke up today to snow on the ground. To those living above the Mason-Dixon line, that may not be a big deal, but it is for this guy living way down in Tennessee. It may not have lasted, but it was pretty.

I may not have everything I want in life, but I do have everything I need. I am still so very blessed.

One of my friends is getting re-baptized at her church. I plan on being there to celebrate and rejoice in this brave step of obedience on her part. I love seeing how God has been working in the lives of family and friends lately. It’s a good reminder for me that those prayers of mine really are getting past the ceiling. James writes that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective. I do know that they work.

I’ve learned over time that real maturity is seeing God bless someone else and being happy. Even if that person gets something you’ve wanted but not received, you can still choose to be happy for him or her. I’ve been envious and bitter in the past about such people, but I’m learning to rejoice for them. I think there’s hope for me yet.

I keep thinking that one day this little blog of mine will explode and start raking in thousands of readers. Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m thankful for those who take the time to read my ramblings when there are so many other things competing for their time and attention.

God is good, all the time. Not just when I feel that he is good. Not when I feel he’s doing right by me. All the time. That’s 24/7.

Just so you know, if you ask me to pray for you about something, I do. If you ask me to pray for a loved one, I will. Keep reminding me that life is good and that God is good, because I forget early and often. I’ll try to do the same for you. Deal?