Graduation

If you have a senior in high school or college, you know darn well what time of year it is.

Graduation.

That magical time when young people turn the page on a specific portion of their lives and look eagerly toward whatever the next chapter may be. For high schoolers, it might be college. For collegians, it might be a job. For parents, it might be a nervous breakdown.

Huge life moments have that effect, you know.

Because I’ve lived through my fair share of such transitional moments (high school, college, first job change, marriage, moving, birth, more job changes, most recent job change – just off the top of my head) I thought I would offer some prosaic words of not-quite-wisdom but not-quite-humor. Let’s just call them musings.

* There will be more times in your life when you feel exactly as you do now: a mixture of nerves and satisfaction. This is the normal way a healthy, growing person should feel. Learn to be okay with it, instead of fearing it the way so many before you did.

* If you don’t know this by now, then remember: if you don’t decide who and what you want to be, someone else will come a long and assign you a role. Don’t let them.

* The first big lie of American adulthood is that more money makes you happy. The second big lie is that money doesn’t matter. Strive for the middle ground, where money is a tool you learn to use with wisdom and discretion.

* There will always be someone around to tell you that you can’t do something. Take some time to hear the voices who tell you that you can. (Unless what you’re wanting to do is patently stupid; in that case, listen to the can’t chorus.)

* A job is a job. A career is what you do with the jobs you have to make the world a better place.

* All things in moderation, including risk, caution and cologne.

* If the phone rings, answer it. If you don’t, respond to the voice mail. If you don’t, pretend you were in the hospital for an extended period of time.

* Every organization, no matter what its purpose, is an institution. And institutions are where they put crazy people. Including you. 

* Surprisingly, there are very few well-paid poets. Same is true of nuclear engineers.

* When it comes to getting a job, it’s not the degree, it’s the person who wields it. And whom the person who wields it knows.

* Those who can, do. Those who can do and explain how, teach. Those who can do neither, blog. And there are 10,690,000,000 Google search results for the word “blog”.

* At some point in your life, you might fall in love. Depending on whom you fall in love with, rest assured your family will have a lot of opinions on the matter. And so might the rest of the world. You decide which ones to listen to.

* It’s been said you can either be happy or right. That’s a false dichotomy. You can be both, if you’ll shut up when you need to, speak when you should, and say things with grace in the moment.

* And finally, this is a truth that few people heed: life is a series of endings, followed by beginnings. Don’t be afraid when an ending comes around. It means a beginning is just around the corner.

To the class of 2013 – all the best. Godspeed, good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Into The Deep Blue

Yesterday afternoon, I considered that my opening line for a talk to some at-risk students at Project LIFT might just be throwing up on the lovely blue carpet. It was a deep blue, like the far-out part of the ocean that people always warn you to avoid unless you’re an expert swimmer or have a boat. I’ve always been one to get nervous before speaking – and it’s probably more akin to anxious excitement than nervous dread – but I was especially amped up yesterday because it was a new experience for me. Sure, I’ve spoken to hundreds of youth over the past 15 years, but it was almost always within a church context, almost always on a passage of Scripture. This was different. This was me speaking to a theme, trying to inspire kids with tough backgrounds and even tougher realities to overcome the hardships before them and aspire for something more.

Sure, we were meeting in a church, but I was doing something new. And I knew I would either nail it or fail miserably.

I decided that nailing it was the preferable option. So I pushed my anxiety aside, kept my Whatchamacallit candy bar in my stomach where it belonged, and I started telling a simple story about a boy, his kinship with a pencil, and the journey of discovery they made together. (If you’re interested, here’s the PDF: Project LIFT – The Boy)

If you’ve ever spoken to teenagers before, you know they can be a tough sell. They’re smart, they’re savvy, and if they think for a second that you’re flim-flamming them, they’ll shut you out and move on. The students I spoke to yesterday were no exception. But as I went along with the story, trying my best to weave in humor and add in improvisational moments based on their responses to me, the most amazing thing happened.

They stayed with me.

Now, here’s where years of youth work comes in handy. To the average person, a teenager who is “staying with me” might seem a lot like a distracted, disinterested person. They rarely keep eye contact, they tend to shift in their seats, and every so often they’ll look up or down or around the room to see if maybe a magic fairy has flown in to grant wishes. It can take some getting used to. In fact, you really have to simultaneously speak to them and look for the cues that they’re with you: a smile, a subtle nod of agreement, leaning forward in their chair at a crucial point, tapping their neighbor on the shoulder and gesturing for them to pay closer attention. All of those signs were present yesterday afternoon, even as my talk soared past the fifteen minute mark.

I wrapped it up after 25 minutes, and the best thing in the world happened.

They wanted to ask me questions. Which means they had listened and heard something that piqued their interest. I even got asked two of my favorite questions: Have you ever thought about being a teacher? and Have you ever thought about doing stand up comedy?

(In case you’re wondering: yes to the first and no to the second.)

Afterwards, the folks who invited me to speak (without ever hearing me, might I add – brave folks) told me that it was the first time they could remember that the kids had ever sat through a presentation without having to be redirected.

“That never happens,” one worker said. “They actually listened to you.”

Yesterday, I took step beyond the familiar boundaries I’ve always known, and the ground beneath my feet was just as firm. I’ve always been told – and believed – that I was a good preacher; yesterday was the first time I’ve been told I was a good speaker. There may not seem to be much difference, but for me, there is. And since you might be asking yourself, “Self, what is the difference?”, I’ll tell you:

A preacher comes with a built in audience. A speaker has to earn one. God has always been gracious to me because He’s always provided me with a platform to speak from and people to speak to. I’ve never taken it for granted, but it’s always been built in for me because of my involvement with a church. Yesterday He showed me that he could open doors beyond a church (never mind that I was physically inside a church) and that I could earn the right to be heard. He showed me that He could do more with me than I’d imagined.

The best part of the day, however, the part that just made me fresh-from-the-oven-chocolate-chip cookie gooey inside, was when I got into the care with Rachel to leave. She silently grabbed my hand and said, “Good job.” I kissed her hand and said thanks. But then she added this, and I knew things were going to be okay:

“I loved hearing you speak like that. You really seemed to be in your element. It was awesome, and the kids really enjoyed it.”

One journey ending, another beginning. Into the deep blue we go.

30 Minutes to Change a Life

This afternoon, I’m going to speak to a group of at-risk students in Roswell. How I got the gig is through a friend of mine, Sarah P. Zacharias; Sarah is someone who also loves working with students, and she is involved with a mentoring program called Project LIFT. She recommended me as a guest speaker, and we worked out a date for me to come and address the kids.

Today’s the day.

And I’m scared. I’ve struggled with what to say. How do I start? Should I be funny? Is what I’m thinking of actually funny, or just a lame middle-aged man’s idea of what he thinks students find funny? What can I say that would be meaningful? What can I say that isn’t saturated with religious overtones (this is an after-school, non-religious program)? What do I wear? Do my sneakers smell? And why does Wile E. Coyote keep chasing after the Road Runner? Can’t he just go vegetarian and save himself some hassle?

Like I said – it’s been a struggle.

But another friend of mine gave me some advice recently. He referenced the TED Talks and said that the average TED presenter is told they have 18 minutes with which to change the world. So, my friend suggested, if you had just a few minutes to say something to change the world, what would you say?

I extrapolated that to my afternoon session: I’ve got 30 minutes to maybe change a life. What do I say?

Well, off the top of my head, I can tell you what I don’t want to say. I don’t want to talk about negative things. I mean seriously: if you only have 30 minutes to change the world, do you really want to burn 10-12 of them enumerating things that suck? Not that I’d cold open with a laundry list of things that are horrible about the world, but sometimes, when trying to motivate people, we drift into the negative because that’s kind of our default. We tend to see the hardships in life much more clearly (or at least it dominates more of our view) than the blessings.

People know the world sucks. What they need to know is how to fix it. So, in 30 minutes or less, how do you teach someone to fix the world?

I can’t even get my kids to sit still and eat dinner for thirty minutes.

But, if we eliminate the negative and stick with the positive – that is, if we focus on things that move us towards a better world – what are the essential things? Well, naturally, I’d say a relationship with Jesus Christ. I think the only hope we really have of ever changing the world begins and ends with Christ changing us. Until we have His heart, His Spirit, and His power, our best efforts will be dust in the wind. But, if we speak and write and act according to His will we can see the world tilt on its axis. The past 2000 years have shown us at least that much.

Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can be that overt. But if I can’t proselytize, I can certainly use Christ as an example. So what about the life of Jesus can I point to that suggests how we can change the world?

Well, there’s sacrifice. That’s always a good one. There’s leadership – He certainly knew how to train the absolutely worst candidates for the job to become the best in their field. There’s compassion. Honesty. Integrity. Courage. Solitude. Wisdom. Guts. Gentleness. Appropriate anger*. Friendship. Vision. Mission. Hope. Determination. Obedience. Intelligence. Critical thinking. Storytelling. Understanding. Creativity. The list could go on.

*My favorite thing I’ve seen recently was a t-shirt that read, “When asked, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’, always remember: flipping over tables and taking a whip to people is a viable option.

But what was the key thing? Something that can be reproduced in every human being, regardless of religious affiliation?

My friend John Njoroge, of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, shared it with me a while back when telling me about a message he had to deliver. It’s found in John 13:

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.

Put simply, Jesus knew who he was and what he was meant to do.

Maybe this resonates with me because it’s my reality right now. I’m discovering at 37 that knowing who you are (your talents, passions, likes, dislikes) and what you’re meant to do (the things that you feel you must do in order to truly live) is the core of being able to effect change. Too many of us waste away, not knowing ourselves, not knowing what we are supposed to be doing with our lives, not even daring to ask ourselves the questions. We succumb to the idea that a life of domesticity – that is, a life where we simply work, pay bills, do a few fun things, then die – is the life we’re meant to live.

But even a life like that begs to be lived fully. Sure, you may never quit your job and move to Nepal to serve as a sherpa, but that doesn’t mean your life should be devoid of growth and change. That doesn’t mean you should see yourself as a person who doesn’t matter.

And this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky, we-are-all-precious-little-snowflakes garbage either; I’m not encouraging the pursuit of some stupid fantasy life. I’m encouraging the living of life to the fullest. To do that, though, you have to know yourself. You have to know what you can do, want to do, and where to find the meaning in between. You also have to know if you’re willing to live with the risks that come from embracing that future.

So that’s where I’m going to go this afternoon. I would rather teach a group of kids that pursuing their dreams of being whatever they think they can be matters, rather than stand up there and encourage them to be good little boys and girls. It’s like C.S. Lewis said: “Aim for heaven and you’ll get earth thrown in; aim for earth and you’ll get neither.” By knowing who we are and what we’re meant to do, we can avoid getting caught up in the expectations and demands others would place on us. We can choose wisely where to invest our lives in order to make the most impact.

Thirty minutes. Not a lot of time. But knowing who I am and what I’m supposed to do, it’s time enough.

God is Good, Life is Hard

“I heard something not too long ago,” my friend, Dawn Hood, said one day while we were chatting in her office over coffee. “God is good, life is hard. Don’t get the two confused.”

If anyone would understand the power and wisdom in that statement, it would be Dawn; diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant, she not only survived the surgeries, treatment and pregnancy, she came away with a fantastic son and a heck of story. The words, obviously, stuck in my head.

And now I’m living them.

After much prayer and consideration, I resigned from my position as the Youth Pastor of Chestnut Grove Baptist Church on May 2. It was hard. I was graciously offered a three-month severance to help my family through my time of transition because I’m leaving with nowhere to go. No job offers. Nothing immediate on the horizon. Just the overwhelming sense that God wanted me to stop and listen for His direction.

I know it will involve writing. That much has become clear over the last three years. It’s a passion I’ve had forever, one that I almost followed but turned away from because I wasn’t ready. I am, I think, ready now. What that will look like, what that will mean, I don’t know. But I can only do what I know God has directed me to do, and that is put my life completely in His hands and wait on His timing.

And that’s hard.

Not because He’s unfaithful. Not because He won’t deliver. It’s because I’m so used to having things lined up – so used to “helping” Him move me from place to place that being completely out of the loop on this round is a bit unnerving.

It’s also hard because of the people it affects. I spent a bit of time on the phone this evening with a wonderful, sweet woman who was just in tears over my resignation. It’s hard – or it should be – to break good people’s hearts. It should never be easy; at least, not to my mind.

And so I come back to Dawn’s words: “God is good. Life is hard. Don’t get the two confused.”

I haven’t.

I’m hoping I can still say the same tomorrow.

If you try to m…

If you try to make people happy all the time, then you’re not a leader – you’re a clown. – John Maxwell

I had the privilege of being part of the live event Chick-fil-A Leadercast 2013 today. Not only did I get to hear some amazing speakers (Andy Stanely, Dr. Henry Cloud, John Maxwell, Mike Krzyzewski, and more) I was inspired about my future. I came away feeling much better about what God has for me, and what I can do with the talents and gifts He’s given me.

On a personal note, the quote from Maxwell really speaks to some of the things that I’ve been learning about myself; I have always been someone who tried to take responsibility for the feelings of others. I wouldn’t say I was a people pleaser, but for the people I most love and care for, I usually go out of my way to help them as best I can. It sounds admirable until you realize that you are living your life at the mercy of other people’s emotions.

And that’s no way to live.

So I’m learning to let go of things that aren’t mine to begin with. I’m learning that people being disappointed that I didn’t fix their problem(s) doesn’t make me a bad person. I’m discovering that when I live for God and His will above all else, I am happier, healthier and above all else, free.

Maybe you’ve felt the same way in your life. If so, please know that there is freedom.

You don’t have to be the clown.