On The Road Again

I'm starting to feel like Willie Nelson...without the hair, voice, ability to play guitar, or marijuana. I am headed out again to spend some time in one of our stores with a new Store Manager. A few nights in a motel, some fast food meals, lots of coffee while driving and I'll be more than a little ready to be back home. I'm already wishing I was back and I still have to swing by the house to get my luggage.

After several days of attempted travel/actually going somewhere, I'm just a little too familiar with my suitcase.
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Someone mentioned the NBA playoffs have started. I haven't noticed.
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Scott Verplank won the Byron Nelson. For a tournament too short on the big names, it's neat to see a local guy win the prize.
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Now for real sports. The Yankees are coming to town. It's amazing to me to go watch a Rangers - Yankees game because it's hard to tell which team has more fans in the seats. It's loud. I was at a game last year and A-Rod was booed unmercifully each time at the plate. Then, between innings when they were doing the Kiss-cam on the big screen (they pan around the crowds finding husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend trying to get them to kiss each other while the crowd cheers or boos depending on the kiss) they showed A-Rod in the dugout next to one of his teammates. He finally noticed, grabbed the teammate next to him and kissed him on top of the head which brought a big round of cheers. A good sport about it all and then he comes to bat and gets booed again. It's tough making lots of money.
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I hope I get in tonight in time to see 24. The story is getting a bit goofy but I'm still enticed to watch just to see what will happen to the hardest working man in the world.
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To my children, if you are reading this, be nice to you mom and help her while I'm gone.

When Vacation and Baseball Collide

We have a situation on our hands. My son is playing select baseball and, if we win a few tournament games, has the chance to go the National Finals this summer. It's supposed to be a really neat deal with thousands of kids, fun events and great baseball. The same week the Nationals are held is the week we take our annual family vacation to a spot in the mountains. My daughter, who doesn't play baseball nor does she really care to watch anyone play baseball, isn't happy about the prospect of getting to watch a bunch of 10 year old boys and goofy parents for a week. It's quite the dilemma.

Have you been in one of these situations before? What did you do?

"In" or "Of" The World

Our youth minister gave a great lesson last night about being in the world but not of the world. It's a great conversation topic but I left asking myself how well I live it. Do people know I'm a Christian? Do people see that God is most important in my life? Do I seem very different from anyone else?

I keep coming back to the question of whether people really see a difference in my life because I am a child of God's but that might not be the question I need to ask. Maybe "Am I living my life so that when I sing 'I will give you all my worship, I will give you all my praise' or 'boundless love, unending joy' or 'Amazing Grace' I really live what I sing?" And if I am going to sing it, I better live it.

The class discussed hypocrites last night. I've found it so easy for people to tag Christians with the hypocrite label because a Christian does something wrong. I suggest calling them a sinner would be wholly more accurate because all the Christians I know mess up now and again. Yet, I'm not sure hypocrite is the wrong label for me when I profess to put God first, when I profess to be completely His, when I profess to honor and worship him and then don't set my mind, even my heart, to live this way.

I can beat myself up all day but I need to quit blogging and to starting living to what I have been called. I want only to live in the world but to be of God in my life. I hope I get better at it today and tomorrow and every day following. I hope someone will truly see God in me, in my actions and in my words, and they will fall in love with the Creator and the King and accept His matchless grace and love.

Grounded

Yesterday was fun...NOT. I was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas for a seminar. I got there early to check-in and found out I had been upgraded to a first class seat. Things were looking good. Then, the lady told me that my flight had changed from Terminal A to Terminal D. Oh well I thought, D is the newer, nicer terminal anyway. About an hour before our 3:00 flight was supposed to take off, it was cancelled. The lady at the desk booked me on a 8:50 flight but told me there was a 2:20 that I could try standby for in Terminal C so off I went. The flight was already booked and the weather blew in. Those people were stuck on the plane on the tarmac in some nasty stuff. Once it cleared up they pulled up and unloaded them. They also cancelled the 4:20 flight and we all headed to Terminal A to try and standby for the 5:45 flight. About 10 minutes after that plane was supposed to start boarding, they told us it was flying out of Terminal D. It was then pushed back to 6:30 to fly out of Terminal A (you're starting to see the pattern I bet). It as cancelled. The 8:50 flight was flying out of Terminal D so off we went. OK, frustrating but still not bad. There's a Railhead BBQ restaurant in D and I was looking forward to it only to find it closed. Dinner at Bennigan's and then watching the Heat-Bulls game in the terminal wasn't so bad. At 8:45, they finally announced that our 8:50 flight was leaving from Terminal A at 9:20. Around 10:00, the evacuated the flight tower and I decided I wasn't making it to Vegas and cancelled my ticket. At 10:20, they finally started boarding the plane and when I left the airport around 10:50 (without my luggage), the plane was still sitting on the ground. I was beat and thin on patience.

It's a beautiful day today and hopefully my luggage will resurface so I can go back to the airport to pick it up. I've often seen these stories on the news and wondered how people cope in those situations. Some handle it pretty well, others do not. I thought two women were going to get in a fight at one point, others were very rude to the airline attendants who didn't have anything to do with the weather or the decisions. The only thing that would have helped is if they would have kept everyone a little bit better informed but I suppose they did what they could.

It will be nice to be here a few days before leaving again next week for Salado.

Have you ever been caught up in a situation like that? What happened? Did you flip?

It's Been a Patsy Cline Kind of Week

I think Cline sang the song "Crazy" originally but I'm not good with history so I could be wrong. It was a busy week leading to busier weeks for me so I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging. For most of you, it is probably a welcome relief but then again, if you are checking here very often it is self-induced torture so I can't help you much.

I've got a crazy travel schedule coming up over the next two weeks - all work related - and if you know me, you know travel isn't my bag.

The problems with our baseball team parents seems to be working out. I hope it will get better but am of the mind that it will fall apart at some point. I suppose it depends on our record as much as anything. If we win some games, all will be better. I remember the cliche that says something to the affect that you can tell more about a person when they are down rather than when they are up. Sadly, it seems to be true in this experience.

What are you most thankful for? When asked this question, I most often think of some possession but today my answer would be "grace." I heard a beautiful sermon this morning about grace and I realized it is my most prized gift. What a blessing to be a child of God, a God who extends grace to me. Realizing what I have through God, I certainly look at my small troubles such as travel, baseball parents and anything else and see that they are truly meaningless when compared with what God has lovingly given me.

I hope you have a great week and you too revel in the gift of grace that you and I have been given.

Anger

Anger is an emotion I wrestle with too often. Generally I do a good job of keeping it in check but too often for me, I don't and I am wrestling with it today. I'm wrestling with it because in the course of trying to help boys enjoy playing baseball, I have to deal with parents who's ego and single-mindedness has them dampening the spirit of the team. If you've coached or are close to someone who has coached, you probably know the drill. We're not playing their little angel enough, pitching him enough, using him the right way. Their little angel hit better, ran better and caught better before he was on our team. Now there are some parents holding the rest of the team hostage until they decide if they want to play with us any longer. Part of me wants to throw in the towel but I have a little angel too and he wants to play baseball. He will overlook the problems if he can put on the uniform and get in the field. His passion and desire to play the game are the only things that keep me from walking away. So, we have to have a big meeting tomorrow and talk through it all and I'm worried my anger will come through. It's the devil's hook into me, one of the places he can really operate on me and pull me away from what I need to be.

Tomorrow night I have two battles. One is with a bunch of silly parents, the other with Satan. I hope I overcome both obstacles tomorrow but in the end, I've got to put my focus on the bigger one, the battle to control my anger and hope the other one will take care of itself.

Senseless Actions

It was saddening and sickening to hear about the murders in Virginia yesterday. What makes people do such heinous things? I have no ability to make sense of it or say anything that can make anyone feel any better at this time other than to pray that God will be sought out in this tragedy.

Saying that, what does get under my skin is listening to the talking heads on TV second guess the decisions the school administration and police officers made. I have a feeling that if a gunman walked into CNN or ABC today and started spraying bullets around, many of these arm-chair quarterbacks would be ducking for cover and not have a clue how to handle themselves. I trust that if mistakes were made, all of that will be considered by those involved in the near future and used to help so I can't understand why these know-it-alls feel the need to pontificate on something they know little about.
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I'm enjoying the rain today. I hope we can avoid the bad stuff and just enjoy the wet stuff.

Blog Addict to Bible Addict? I Hope So.

How many of your check this or some other blog daily (or more than once if it isn't up at the normal time)? I've found myself falling into that routine, checking some blogs that I read daily or less frequently. A friend recently posted that he may quit daily blogging and some of us did some combination of encouraging him to keep posting, telling him why we enjoyed it or threatening physical harm to his golf equipment.

This whole blog thing came across my mind last night at church while we were celebrating the successes of our kids at LTC (Leadership Training for Christ). One young lady participated in Daily Devotional where she was challenged to read her Bible for 15 minutes every day, pray and keep a journal of what she studied and prayed about. One. Just one participated in an event and I must say I was ashamed of myself. I can read blogs everyday, I can scan web pages for sports updates, I can watch the news or read a good thriller, I can find time to eat and do all sorts of things that appeal to me but I'm not making time to read the Bible a measly 15 minutes a day.

Today I am going to work on changing that. I'm also going to make a point to thank that young lady for helping me remember what my priorities should be.

Watch What You Say

I'm sick of the Don Imus discussion. Maybe because of my age, my race, my beliefs I have no reason to weigh in or offer an opinion but it seems everybody else with a microphone is.

Imus said a bad thing that was offensive to certain people. He should be embarrased and apologize and so far he has admitted to his humiliation and has apologized. I think it is important for his employers to decide what punishment is right and whether it be a suspension or termination, it is their decision to make.

What irritates me the most about the whole thing is hearing the mouthpieces say it's OK for one group to use certain terminology but others are not allowed to because it then becomes offensive. If it is offensive, it is offensive. That's it. If I call my kids "nit-wits" should I be surprised if someone else calls them "nit-wits" or should I expect it? If people of color (I don't know the PC term of the day) can use the "n-word" then why would anyone be surprised if everyone uses the same word?

In the infamous words of Rodney King, can't we just all get along? What if (this is a crazy idea), what if we all treated people with respect? What if we never used derogatory words of any type to describe someone? I don't know...just a thought.

Amazing

The question in the youth group class last night was "what's the most amazing thing you've seen?" Being the only parent in the room, I was thinking my answer was the birth of my children. It's an amazing time filled with so many emotions. As my children have grown, it has been a continued state of amazement, worry, joy, fear - so many things that every parent goes through with children.

I couldn't help but think about how God feels when we decide to accept the grace He has given us and whether he goes through the roller-coaster of emotions that we do. I cannot comprehend God and I cannot begin to imagine all that He thinks and feels but I can't help but think that He shares some of our same feelings as we look at our children.

One of the scriptures shared last night was Jesus saying he was amazed by the people's lack of faith. I hope I am less often causing God to be amazed by my lack of faith and more often creating joy in Him by my faith and through my faith serving Him.

Blogging Blank

I played catch-up with "24" last night having missed the last two episodes. I wonder if anything like this really happens in the course of a day, a week or a month. This poor guy hasn't had any sleep, he's battling terrorists with nuclear weapons and one bad thing follows every good thing. It's a miserable 24 hours, that's for sure. Realizing the show is fiction, I still wonder what goes on sometimes. We know there have been and likely are people living in our country who want or plan to do something very damaging to us. Who is watching them? What are the stakes?
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On a happier note, what was thought to be lice in our county courthouse now only be mites. It's great when your town makes the news because the courthouse is shut down due to lice (or "crabs" as known by some). I don't know much about mites but it sounds better than crabs.
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It's Wednesday. I feel like I've been blessed over the past few months getting to spend some time with the youth group at church on Wednesday nights. There are some really, really neat kids that are part of our church group and they bring a number of friends with them each week. I've enjoyed getting to know them and miss not being there when I'm traveling.

It's also Casa Torres night with our friends. Good food, good friends...a good night.

Found

In case you didn't happen to see the update in yesterday's post, one dog (the yellow lab) has been found. She was close by at someone's house who took care of her and fed her prime rib. It was good to see her when I pulled up and she is now home and locks have been put on the gate latches.

Someone called saying they thought they saw the other dog but when I went looking there was no dog around. We'll see.

As I went to pick up Bea, I couldn't help put think about the shepherd who searches for a lost sheep. He knows it could be lost to wolves but he still looks, hoping. I'm thankful for a shepherd who searches for me when I am lost and who desires to find me and bring me back safe to where I should be.

Starting Over

Another Monday, another list of things that need to be done, another mountain growing in front of me. It seems like it happens more often than not and I have pretty well survived those times in the past and I trust this week will be the same.

We were gone for the weekend and came home to our dogs being gone. A couple of our neighbors and relatives looked for them Saturday to no avail. We went out looking and calling for them last night when we got home but no luck. We've had some trouble with animals over the past few years. It's odd looking out the back door and not seeing them running around or waiting for something to eat. ***UPDATE*** We have found one of the dogs. A man just a few miles away caught our lab (Bea) and kept her over the weekend. He said she really loves prime rib.

The weekend was great. LTC was incredible again with bunches of kids doing what they have been practicing for weeks and months. It was fun to see them perform their activity and it was fun seeing them get to fellowship and spend time with each other. I always enjoy watching the activity even though I hate being in crowds in confined spaces.

Have a great week conquering your mountains.

Excitement Around The Corner

Tomorrow is the home opener for the Rangers. Even though they are coming off a horrific outing in Anaheim, they return to the Ballpark with history being just that and hope for a turnaround that gets them kickstarted to a great year. I love opening days. It's a day game, the best way to watch a game when the temperature is below 90. Fireworks, fresh-cut grass, bands, a flyover...and hope for a winning season. I can't wait.

The really big event for us and for many in our church family is LTC. Watching these kids finally do what they have been working on and practicing for over months is a blessing. I don't know how many kids we have participating from our church (along with a number of kids who don't regularly attend our church but come to participate in LTC) but there are a bunch of them along with thousands from other churches who will be there. They all come to celebrate Christ, to learn and grow in their knowledge of him and their ability to share that knowledge - not just knowledge but the hope and joy we have through Christ. I know this year, just like others, I will have chills because of some performances, tears of joy because of others and moments of reflection from others. I can't wait.

The really, really big event is the commemoration of the resurrection. I want to soak it in this year, to feel closer to a Savior who died for me, to be humbled and thankful for a love I cannot measure and that I really can't comprehend. What a beautiful event. Even more, what a beautiful love my God has for me.

Recovery

It seem the ink disaster has been somewhat averted. Thanks for the ink removal tips. It sounds like I'm not the only one who forgets to check their pockets now and again.
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I was reminded yesterday that there are people around us suffering emotionally and spiritually that we often are not aware of. They are going through pain, fear, worry, maybe even regret. When I was told about a situation yesterday, all I could think to do was pray that God would intervene, that He would be able to reach in and help even if those involved weren't turned to Him at that moment. The people directly involved and many who may be hurt indirectly will all need to recover from what has happened and I just don't know how a true recovery can work without God.

I've been there and would guess you may have too. I've said things or done things that have hurt people deeply and recovery could not happen without God. The only joy I have is knowing that God will forgive me, that He will cover me with mercy, with the blood of the Lamb and my relationship with Him can be made new. I hope when someone hurts me that I will extend the forgiveness that I have received from my Creator, my Lord and my Savior. I hope we can all fill that power when we hurt or have been hurt. I hope we will all know the joy of forgiveness and forgiving.

I've never really thought about forgiveness from me requires a sacrifice on my part. It's a simple sacrifice really, just giving up my pride, my idea of justification, my self-pity. Those things are such an insignificant price to pay when I realize my God gave up His son for my forgiveness. When I frame it in that context, that I don't have to give up my son, just my own thoughts and ideas, it becomes very easy for me to forgive.

I may have wandered off a bit from where I started but as I think about it, our recovery from anything is sped up or slowed down by forgiveness. The ability to forgive ourselves, the forgiveness we give or get and our grasp of the forgiveness we have received from God all play a role in recovering from anything.

Some Days

My morning started with an early recognition that a pen and papers I had left in a shirt pocket had been washed. Ink had stained many of the clothes and possibly ruined some from wearing them at normal times. The papers I had ended up as little, wrinkled rolled-up balls that were useless.

I didn't get much sleep last night but still felt pretty good when I woke up this morning and then, when finding out about the pen explosion, it was like everything went downhill in the blink of an eye. I didn't feel good. I was disappointed, upset, mad. The day was already ruined. I messed up my clothes, my wife's clothes, my kid's clothes.

It is far too easy for something so insignificant, so little, a nuisance, to rule my day, to distract me, to change my focus and my thoughts. Yet, it only happens because I allow it to happen. I allow the insignificant to become significant, to grab my attention and thoughts.

Where will I focus today? Will I focus on the life-changing power of God or will I focus on material things ruined in the wash? Will I focus on being led to be a servant or being led to self-pity?

I apologize for the mental lapse and for the new Texas shorts that have an ink stain on them and whatever else was in the wash. It happened and will not change so the rest of the day, I will work to stay focused on what I have received, the love and mercy of my Savior, and I will try to glorify my Lord in all I do. That's what I'm deciding will be my focus today.

April Fools

I made it through the first day of April without being fooled. I still remember the biggest bite I ever took on April Fools. It was when I was still dating my wife. I had gone over to her apartment for a late dinner (I was still in public accounting and working late during tax season). We watched the news and I left right after the beginning of sports to the news that the Mavericks had traded for David Robinson. The sportscaster said to watch the end of the segment for all the details but I left to head home happy the Admiral was coming to town. When I got home the phone was ringing (pre-cell phone days) and it was my wife-to-be telling me it was an April Fools joke. I was trapped wondering if the trade was the joke or if she was pulling the joke by making me think there wasn't a trade. I turned on ESPN as fast as I could and after watching for some time realized there was no trade in the works for Robinson. What could have been...
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Tonight is the big night for college hoops junkies like me. I'm pulling for Florida just because those five guys chose to come back and try to do something hard to do. I hope they pull it off.
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Our Bible class is studying the names of Jesus. Yesterday we talked about "shepherd" as a name for Jesus and the discussion turned to the 23rd Psalm. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want..." Oh, how I wish I would live my life that way. I wish I would remember every second that He will guide me, I don't need to find my own paths. I wish I would remember every minute that I have all that I need instead of wanting more.

I can only imagine the peace I would enjoy if I learn to live knowing the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.