Reality Reflection: Proud to be Patient

The name of today’s game is patience.  Yes, it is almost a game when you’re being patient, or trying to be sometimes. It can be really challenging sometimes to be patient when all you want to do is just do it yourself or force them to understand, since clearly they’re not doing it right or getting what needs to be done.  And when it’s their turn to be patient with us, we tend to forget the difficulty we had being patient with them.

So what’s the lesson in patience?  The first lesson of patience is that it’s a universal thing, it’s not like saying I have a president and you have a king, or I like spicy food and you don’t, or I live in a house in a small city and you live in an apartment in a big city.  It’s not something you can really pick and choose.

The other lesson is in having a lack of patience.  Taking quick action is helpful sometimes, without the quick action of our emergency and rescue personnel there would be many more injuries and casualties than there are.  But most situations that we deal with on a regular basis aren’t life and death, they’re things that can be given two extra minutes to really communicate things and work through confusion before taking decisive action or saying something that could bite you later.

Love is being patient with ourselves and with others because we know the rewards that come with that little extra hug, that extra minute and that extra care.  Are you avoiding love and patience for a reason or have you experienced the benefits of them in your life?

A Little Success Wisdom

This past week a company was out in the road working in the storm drain and they managed to cut through 900 phone lines. Of course I’m extremely thankful that they didn’t cut through something more serious like a gas pipe or electrical wire (which would put us back in the dark for many days and we’ve already done that this month thanks to a tropical storm), but it does mean lots of expense for the companies, and lots of work for both the police making sure everyone stays safe and the phone company fixing the lines. While we could easily just chalk it up to being another fantastic contribution to 2020, it also highlights one of those important rules of success: measure twice, cut once (because they cut before they called to make sure that there wasn’t anything vital where they were going to be working). So today I thought I’d share a few of my own success statements and some of the other classics that you’re probably familiar with and may benefit from a reminder.

Measure twice, cut once

Do your homework/research

Use pencil before committing to permanent marker

“Cutting the pieces into smaller ones never makes a jigsaw puzzle simpler.” Peter Huybers

If you think something is impossible, it’s simply waiting for someone who believes they can do it (“I’m possible!”)

Don’t believe everything you think

Design is in the details

Less is more

Never blame the tools

Work smarter

Work harder

Hire slow, fire fast

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes

Don’t put the cart before the horse

Haste makes waste

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again

What phrases and insights help keep you on the right track to victory and success?

Sacrifices and Gifts

This year has been an exercise in sacrifice for many of us. Some of us have put our lives on the line to try to help heal others, some of us have put our lives and energies out in great excess to keep essential services running, some of us have sacrificed what should be big milestones in our lives, some of us have sacrificed reliable income, some of us have lost what could have been many more years with family members had they not gotten sick. Sometimes sacrifice is necessary to get what you want next, for example the sacrifices that are involved with selling and moving from your current residence to a new, bigger/better one, or the sacrifices involved in starting up the business you’ve always wanted, or the sacrifices you make to have and raise kids and not just support you and your partner. But other times there isn’t much reward on the other end, it’s just something you have to do for the greater good.

Of course, that doesn’t take into account what God can do outside of or separate from the sacrifices that you’re making, or what can happen when you see the work as something other than painful and difficult. Luke 6:38 says: “Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”

While the year is far from over and there are several hurdles to get through for most of us, I don’t see why we can’t think and pray positively and ask God to bless and return in abundance the sacrifices (that we’re now going to look at as gifts) that we’ve given over the past 8 months. Do take note though that in this verse in Luke 6 it talks about how much activity may surround the returning of the gift, so be open to the blessings God sends your way to be wrapped in some unusual wrappings or that they may take a little work to uncover and incorporate all of the goodness.

We can all count up the challenges of this year, so what have been some gifts that you’ve received?

Reality Reflection: Contemporary Courtesy

This week I was watching a replay of a police/detective/investigation show episode, and they had just finished interviewing and arresting the individual who was believed to be guilty and the two officers were driving back to the station or jail having a conversation with this individual and he was one of the most polite and courteous people I’d seen in a very long time. He was referring to both the officers as Mr’s and was courteous to them and respectful of not only their position but almost humbly accepting of his capture and need to pay for his crime. Why don’t more people put forward that same respect and courtesy with others that they meet?

It’s not about race or culture, it’s about treating each other as humans and believing that we’re all the same on one level or another. No, maybe you don’t run a 100 person company, haven’t killed anyone, or don’t like salmon, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find other points of commonality like having siblings, or an incredible grandmother, or knowing lots of baseball stats. And if that fails, you can always fall back on the standard of treating others as you would like to be treated.

I don’t think we should return back to decades and centuries past where the kings and other leaders were on some pedestal that the “common people” couldn’t touch, that’s not progress. But I do think it would benefit us if we retained or regained some of the manners that people had all those years ago, some of the courtesy of looking out for and protecting women and children, and being polite to others we meet. It has nothing to do with liking someone or knowing them, but about not letting our first instinct be hate, hurt, fear, displeasure, or distrust. As the TV episode I mentioned earlier showed, courtesy and respect can be extended even when there is something that doesn’t line up between you or when the other person has done something wrong. It’s all about choosing humanity over judgement.

Consistently Achieve Victories

I was talking this week with a couple of clients about their business, and we got to the end of our time together that day and the lady asked if she had it right that it was my recommendation to consistently x, y and z. And I told them that consistency is one of the biggest keys to growing their business because if they’re consistently doing x, y and z, their customers and potential customers will be in the loop with what’s going on and what they might be interested in buying/participating in, they’ll be building a relationship together, and the customers won’t have the opportunity to completely forget about the business with everything else going on in their life because the business will reliably be there for their community.

But consistency isn’t just one of the secrets to a successful business, it’s one of the biggest keys to life too. If you want to lose weight, you don’t diet or change your eating habits or exercise for one day, you do it consistently for a period of time and you’ll start to see the weight disappear. If you want a healthier relationship with your partner, you’ll consistently communicate (not yell/fight), have date nights (or whatever the pandemic stay-at-home version is), and you’ll work together at a team in as many aspects of your lives as possible. If you want to learn a new skill like cooking, you wouldn’t go to a grocery store, look around and become a world class chef, you have to practice different techniques and work with different foods over and over.

It’s rarely the case that you can do one big push and achieve your victory. Usually it takes many steps over a period of time to achieve a desired victory, and some are things that may never come to fruition in your live, but your consistent steps have helped set the necessary foundation for others to take over and achieve the victory. Monotony and boredom are definitely valid concerns, especially initially, but the good news is as consistent as your efforts need to be, that consistency doesn’t always have to be the same action (and therefore boredom-inducing). Take for example the example I used about the person wanting to become good at cooking. They don’t have to make gumbo each time, they have thousands of recipes they can make and many ingredients they can work with.

If you’ve been wanting to achieve something for a while but just haven’t been able to get there, I encourage you to map out consistent actions you can (and will) reasonably take each day for the next 30 days and see what kind of progress you can make on your goals. Even if you don’t totally achieve the victory, you’ll see some awesome progress that will encourage and motivate you to keep going.

Facing Challenges with God’s Love

We’ve talked a lot this year about how challenged we’ve been and how we’re relying on God for so much. It certainly has been a year unlike any that most of us have experienced. Every year comes with challenges, just like every life comes with challenges, and some years have more challenges in them than others. Sometimes God gives us challenges because they help us become stronger and wiser and more prepared to be the leader He has called us to be. Other times we experience challenges based on the choices we make in life. And sometimes, challenges are just part and parcel of the human experience.

We know that God goes with us through all the challenges we face, because He’s awesome like that and doesn’t leave us alone to fend for ourselves. Even if He’s not ready to provide answers or get us out of situations, He doesn’t leave us alone to work through them. Can you imagine being God and having to go through all those challenges with each of us? I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be when time and again we’re making the same mistakes or getting ourselves into the same challenges that He’s helped us through before. And then you add to that the pain and hurt of people who walk away from God, for however long or brief a time, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed at how much God manages on a regular basis all the while supporting and encouraging and doing miracles. And yet, He continues to be the God of love:

“God’s love is an extravagant love and God has an infinite amount of it to give. Hear God’s reassurance: I love you. I have plenty for everyone and I will give you the provision you need.” Br. Jim Woodrum

“O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.” Psalm 86:5

“The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.” Psalm 103:8

If God is able to love through all that we put Him through, surely each of us can find a little more love, patience, compassion and kindness to share with the world too. God doesn’t expect us to be Him, but He does hope that we learn from His example and from the experiences that we have, so that maybe the next time our tempers flash or we face a challenge, we’re able to handle it even just a little better.

Reality Reflection: What Should God Fix?

This week I read an interesting comment: don’t ask God to fix the pandemic. It’s a tough statement to make because so many people have died from/because of this virus and the complications it causes, it’s damaged many industries that employ a lot of people, and caused many families a great amount of stress. But at the same time it’s done some good things because it’s forced us to reconsider some things that we were just allowing and things we were putting off and helped motivate many people in smarter, healthier and stronger directions.

We don’t always know what is best, or what God’s plans are, but we do know that God doesn’t like to hurt people unnecessarily. As much as He is willing to be part of necessary violence He constantly shares a message of love and peace. There is the fact that God allows us to make decisions, and yes, some of our decisions could have led to the severity of this virus. But getting back to the question, is it best that this pandemic happens, or what would be the reasoning behind this pandemic being allowed by God?

I don’t think it’s wrong for us to ask for peace and to be eased of this burden that has been placed on us, as long as we understand that God’s plan may include this virus and related happenings. As I’ve said in this post and in the past there have been some benefits to and advances from this virus experience, and there will probably be more. But at the same time, you have to see the cost that has and will continue to happen in the following days and months. There’s no way to heal the loss of a family member seemingly years before their time. How can you not ask God to take away that pain, especially if Jesus asked the same thing in the Garden before He went to the cross?

Maybe it just comes down to always looking for a better solution, a better way of life, but always being willing to work with what you’ve been given and accept that things are as they must be for the time being, and of course trusting that God does hold each of us in His hands and will work everything out for our good and His plans.

Starting with a Commitment

As I’ve been thinking about how we can learn from this whole experience of 2020 and the experiences that people have had in the past, of course one individual that came to mind was Job, who experienced some spectacular challenges and experienced more loss in a short time than most of us do in a lifetime. I’ve lately been reading through the book of Jeremiah, and he was given some less-than-awesome tasks to do as part of getting the word out about God and getting people to take an honest look at their lives. But one of the verses that came to my inbox today was about the individual and story of Ruth. I’ve shared about her before many times during our spiritual posts, but she’s a worthy figure to look at for our victory post today as well.

If you haven’t read her story lately or ever, you can go do that here, it’s just 4 chapters long. But the short version is that the story starts with a famine in the land, Ruth gets married, doesn’t have any kids before her husband dies, she chooses to go with her mother-in-law back to where her mother-in-law is from (and she herself knows no one), does hard work at a farm type place, gets sent on a rather risky blind date of sorts, ends up married to the guy and has kids (she’s part of the genealogy of Jesus), and they all live happily ever after.

It’s a lot like the story that many of us are facing with losing our family members unexpectedly to the virus, facing unprecedented job loss and industry closures, and facing illnesses that we’ve never dealt with before. There have been some positives throughout the year, but most of them happened because we were able to work through or overcome the challenges we were experiencing. Some of us have discovered through this year’s challenges exactly how capable we really are, some of us have been extremely challenged by the loss of control and normalcy and have struggled to even keep up with the basics of life, and others of us have been able to rely on the strong foundation of hope, support, community, and commitment that we’ve made over the years both to others and to ourselves.

The commitment we make to ourselves and to others can often be the key that helps victories happen. Most victories aren’t the smooth, straightforward journey we would like them to be, rather they’re full of twists, turns, failures, delays and confusion. I don’t know anyone who would really like to live the challenges that Ruth, Job or Jeremiah experienced. No one chooses to lose family members they love or face what seem like insurmountable losses. But Job chose to be committed and faithful to himself and God, and Ruth committed to God and her mother-in-law and herself. It’s those commitments that gave them the courage and strength to make some really tough choices and push through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff.

I encourage you to choose to commit to yourself, as well as those in your life that matter most to you like God and some/all of your family/friends. It may be the difference maker that helps you get to your victories this week, or at least helps you get a strong step or two closer.

“But Ruth said, “Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”” Ruth 1:16

Seeing What God Sees

This year has been challenging for many reasons, one of the biggest being the way it has both divided and united us. We can be our biggest asset or greatest source of destruction. We have to choose if we’re going to pick sides or work together to give everyone a chance to have home, happiness, and health. Sometimes we can do a really good job of deceiving others into believing what is truly hatred or racism (think about the Rwandan genocide and the Nazis). There had to be a significant enough number of people that supported those causes or they would not have turned into the issues that they were. Fortunately there were more people who realized that those people were in the wrong and stepped up to stop them.

But for the most part when issues pop up between people it’s because positions or understandings haven’t been explained or truly discussed, or because people are unwilling to accept the differences that others are born with (i.e. the color of their skin) or choose (their religion or sexual orientation). Accepting the differences of others doesn’t mean that you have to adopt those preferences, nor does it mean you can’t share your feelings or preferences with them. It just means that you’re willing to look at the person and see them as more than just that one outstanding aspect. It means you’re willing to invest more in a relationship with someone God created simply because He took the time to create them exactly as they are at this moment in time.

One thing this year has done is raise our concern level over interacting with and being with each other, and rightly so given how unpredictable this virus has been and violent some people have been over issues of race and leadership. Yet during this month alone I’ve met more kind, supportive, friendly people than I’ve met in a long time. I’ve been reminded of how we can and do support each other when push comes to shove, and that even though we may have to keep 6 feet apart, doesn’t mean we can’t meet people and say hi and get to know them some. It’s not the same as sitting down at the table together and sharing a meal, but it’s better than having phone and computer screens and countless miles between us.

I don’t know what the rest of the year holds, but I do believe that God put us all here on earth for this time and this experience, and only by working and talking together will we get through this in the best way that we can. People can’t understand, let alone know about, your issues and challenges if you don’t speak up. Maybe you have a lot more in common with them than you expected, or the issues you thought you had don’t really exist at all now that you’ve taken the time to talk with them. Trust that God will put the right people in your life, and be open enough to hear them (and God) out.

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”” 1 Samuel 16:7

Reality Reflection: What is Essential?

One of the terms we’ve been using in record numbers over the past almost six months is essential. We’ve been talking about essential businesses and essential workers, and yes, these conversations have reminded us exactly how important these people are to our lives and to the movement of society as we know it. But with the damage that hurricane Isaias has caused over the past week, I’ve been revisiting that word and thinking about what in our lives is essential anyway.

For those of us living in the US and other developed nations around the world, we live the way we do because we have electricity and most of us have reliable access to internet. It would not be possible to live in an Amazon/Ebay/online shopping world without those things. If we’re going to be without power for an extended period of time we have to revisit our very way of life because we rely on the power for the stove and the refrigerator, both of which are truly essential to helping us not have to stop at the store every day for food and buying things in small quantities because we can’t store them for longer than ice stays frozen (which in the summer months isn’t very long).

We also can’t do our jobs virtually or run virtual businesses without internet (which requires electricity or power of some form), and we’d see even more people out of work than currently are because of the virus. Entire industries that have helped propel many parts of the world into financial success would be gone overnight if we’re not able to have reliable internet and power.

I think we’ve learned over the past few months that it’s essential to have income coming in to be able to keep roofs over our heads and food on our tables, plus how important it is to make an effort to be clean and not spread germs around. But being without power again has reminded me how essential power is, even if we don’t have internet that’s quite as reliable (although it is essential if you want business to continue growing as it has over the past few decades).

We may be able to work only during the daylight hours; or hold off on reading some of our emails and doing some communications every day, but we can’t hold off on having a reliable means of communication to talk with family and friends, especially with everything else that’s going on in the world; and I don’t want to be without the ability to keep food cold reliably for a long period of time which means our revived definition of essential also has to include power and internet, or we have to rethink the world as we know it. We may need to make a few changes to our world, but I think most of the changes that have happened over the past few decades have brought us to a better place, including our usually reliable power.