"Don't Look Back"

"Ask me how good I used to be"

I remember it was reported that the figure skater, Scott Hamilton wore a T-shirt with this phrase on it when he was working as a commentator at a competition after he was 'past his prime' as a competitive skater (I'm unable to verify this through google, so you'll just have to trust my over 40 brain on this one!). I've quoted the phrase pretty often-I should get a t-shirt!--because it so often seems to fit. Having been pretty active trying to keep up with my husband and bro-in-law through the early years of my marriage, I got to be decent at kneeboarding and wakeboarding, snow skiing, and even did some pretty 'gnarly' mountain biking trips.

Now, when I say 'decent', I'm not talking "impress virile, adventurous young men with my amazing aerial 360's" decent. I'm talking, 'wow, you're a mom of 2 kids and you can get a foot of air when you jump the wake behind the boat' decent. (I actually was able to do 360's on the kneeboard, but if you've done any kneeboarding, you know that's not that hard). It was exciting pushing my limits, and the bros were usually pretty encouraging ("come on, don't be a wuss, it's only a black diamond run!"). In my high school years, the closest I got to being 'athletic' was being scorekeeper for the girls softball team. Yup, that pathetic. The team I had the most success with was the forensics team. As in, speech team--'prose & poetry' division. I rocked in the duet competitions. I was even asked to be on the local college team before I got married. Stop snickering. It is not becoming.

Anyway, as our kids grew up, they got to be gnarly, awesome snow skiiers/boarders and waterskiiers, even doing some mountain biking (oddly, more my daughter than my son, although he has his own great skills). I found myself falling into the "I used to be able to...." trap as my own skills were waning. Sometimes due to injuries and wrist issues, something I seem to be plagued with, and sometimes, though it pains me to admit it....due to just getting older.

As my husband says, "it's not that you can't do the same things, it's just that it takes longer to recover from doing the same things you did when you were younger". So you begin to count the cost, and somehow it's often just not worth it to be able to impress someone who already loves you anyway (your family) or someone who likes you for you (your friends AND family, if you're lucky).

(you can see here the hubby is reaaallly slowing down...)

I thought about this as I read an interview with Mick Jagger in today's Parade Magazine. He's now 65--waaaayy older than me--and has what appears to be washboard abs and great hair. His face shows a map of a lifetime of partying and rocking, but he's amazingly well preserved. He mentioned that he has to make choices now since he "can’t party as hard and go onstage the next day" and still do a good show.

How difficult for you, Mick!

I liked what he had to say about looking back though:

“My thing is, if I don’t constantly try to move forward, I’m afraid that I’ll just get lost in the welter of nostalgia. I’m not really much of a looking-back person. I mean, I don’t mind having a laugh talking about things, but I don’t really get into it. Otherwise you end up like one of these football players sitting in a bar, talking about how you made that play in the game in 1975. You don’t want to be there.”

So, don't ask me how good I used to be. I'd like to still be that person in some ways, but darn it, you can't always get what you want.

"I'm a Ranker"

Recently, while discussing a particularly bad movie, my daughter relayed a comment from a friend. They had been discussing movies, and the friend promptly rattled off her top 3 (Shawshank Redemption, Jaws,....). Her friend also offered up this comment: "I'm a ranker"--someone who likes to rank things in categories. I thought this was a very odd and interesting turn of phrase. Technically, "ranker" is a word meaning "a commissioned officer who has been promoted from enlisted status". But, to use the word as she did, haven't we become a nation of "rankers"?

Pop media is all about rating and judging and categorizing things. Google "top ten" on the internet and you'll get 68,900,000 entries (Top Ten most facinating urinals was one of the first listed and amazingly, very cool!) . Try to find a newspaper or magazine at the start of the year without a "year's best" listing. The three big shows on TV tonight are American Idol (which I am watching while I type this, I must admit), Dancing With the Stars, and The Biggest Loser (which I guess at least has a quantitative element, and is not just opinion) which in a way train us to rate various qualities in others. Now, I'm not saying that we don't already have this built in to our nature anyway. I was amazed how my children at an very young age could tell you who in their class was the "prettiest" or the "smartest". If I had asked, I'm sure they also could have told me who was the "ugliest" or the "meanest."

I've heard it said that the true consequence of eating the fruit from the tree "of the knowledge of good and evil" is that we are unable to just love someone unconditionally as God does. Instead, we can't help but judge others. If you don't believe me, try to sit in a mall, watch people go by and not attach a descriptive label to them in your head. (credits to my pastor for this concept). What it boils down to is that it's easier to put people in categories than it is to get to know them. Easier to rank them than to understand where they're coming from. Easier to judge them than to help them.

Even the disciples were "rankers"! A select group had been on a mountain where they had just seen Jesus as He really was/is--transfigured and displaying His glory. It was a moment where God visibly and unequivocally showed and told them who was "numero uno". Almost the very next thing they do? Argue over "who among them was greatest"! (Text message "2" for Peter..."3" for James....) Don't you just wonder how deeply Jesus must have sighed before his reply? "He sat down and summoned the Twelve." Notice, he gathers ALL of them together. I'm thinking the ones that had been arguing about it must have felt like they were suddenly "in the bottom 3". He then said to them, "So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all." (Mark 9:35, The Message)

In God's kingdom, ranking is turned on it's head. God doesn't say, "good job, you made the top 10 (or 10 million)", he says, "the first will be last, and the last will be first", in what Eugene Petersen calls "the Great Reversal". Later, James puts this concept into very practical terms:

"For example, suppose someone comes into your meeting dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes. If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, “You can stand over there, or else sit on the floor”—well, doesn’t this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives? Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters. Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren’t they the ones who will inherit the Kingdom he promised to those who love him?" (James 2:2-5)

If the whole point is to not seek to be 'first', then don't you think there's something wrong when all we do is try to place people in first through last, most to least important categories? At the very least, aren't we training our minds to think in patterns opposite of the way we should react? Instead of of thinking, "pretty", "too tall", "overweight", "rich", or "poor", shouldn't we be thinking "lost", "hurting", or "searching for meaning"? In a way, that's still categorizing, but these are labels we can only use if we know someone, and have some degree of empathy and compassion for them. One of the results of maturity should be the ability to accept others as having worth and merit just for being God created (and loved) individuals. My desire should be to grow into "the servant of all"--regardless of how unlovely, how undeserving they may be be in my own eyes.

So the competition is on! What will you do this week to try to end up in last place?

Happy Wife, Happy Life

Overheard in the office:

At a recent wedding, there was one of those dances where they dismiss couples married the shortest amount of time, and gradually longer until only a couple that had been married over 45 years remained. The mc asked the husband, "what's your secret-what advice can you give?" The man said 2 phrases: "Yes, dear." and "What else can I do for you?" When the woman was asked the same, she simply said, "He said it all!"

An Ode to Ear Piercing

"You don't need another hole in your head",
Said my mother when I was a kid.
And asked- no pleaded -"can I get my ears pierced?"
In what I hoped was an irresistable bid.

Made to wait until the more responsible fourteen,
which was deemed the acceptable age ,
and though I don't even remember it now,
I know it was entrance to the current teen rage.

Young married, I remember my brother-in-law,
growing up in a home quite conservative,
coming home one day with a stud in his ear,
his parents annoyed reaction was superlative.

My young daughter next pleaded, though of needles afraid,
that "everyone had them", she'd seen!
"You have to be able to take care of them", I entoned,
And I made her wait until she was a teen.

Fast forward, and she is now married and grown,
and showed up with an extra hoop on the side,
From a tattoo shop with a needle no less
she'd been woosy, but somehow not cried.

And her husband! Our Favorite son-in-law,
had opted for both ears, which is now in,
And we rejoiced that he had stopped short with that,
and didn't go with ink under the skin.

And so here I am the latest example,
of answering a strange kind of call,
But one more piercing was the cry,
and I ran with it down at the mall.

It hurt, and still hurts, and I chose the pain,
(I can't even sleep on that side!)
But, it wasn't for cool, or trendy, or angst,
Or a mistaken type of rebellious pride.

In the end it was simply, "I thought it would be cute"
And "I'm a grown up" to husband I said!
I called my mom to admit and of course she remarked,
"Like you really needed another hole in your head!"

How I Wish I Could View My Stretch Marks...

"....over the stretch marks that were like inlaid streaks of mother-of-pearl that would never fade, whose brilliance spoke only for the body's decay."

From "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahira, a book I have not read and therefore am not recommending. I just like anyone that can make stretch marks sound like a gift!

Acceptance is a Bathingsuit Thing

"But part of being over 40 is accepting the fact that certain doors are closing--and growing up enough to notice that other doors are open." (Kelly Corrigan, 40, author of "The Middle Place" in an interview in More magazine)

I went bathing suit shopping this weekend. This was not as completely torturous as a friend pointed out it usually is due to two things. One, I'm buying it in anticipation of a week long trip to Cancun with my husband coming up in mere weeks, and secondly, I have lost over 15 pounds since the last time I bought one. But, alas, as I told my shopping buddy, even at a smaller size there are still difficulties. No matter what the size on the tag, they each fit differently, and as you wrestle one after another over your head or up your hips, the large store security tag pokes you under the armpit and you end up doing this weird hopping dance to get your feet through the holes! There also seems to be no rhyme or reason to the size match ups for tops and bottoms, neccesitating several trips back out to the racks for a "slightly larger or smaller" bottom to go with the "just a little bigger or smaller" top. And as you know, this means re-dressing and undressing yet again. The whole thing is just exhausting! I needed a nap when I got home, and hubby was only mildly enthused about my selection. "Why didn't you get a bikini?", he asked totally straight faced.

He doesn't get that I am willing to accept that certain doors--bikinis being one--are closed to me. But I am growing up enough to know that others doors are open. And that's why I bought the new jeans. On clearance. 2 sizes smaller than last year.

Six Word Memoirs

Gore Vidal, defines a memoir as "how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked." As Wikipedia goes on to state, "It is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one's life than about the outcome of the life as a whole."
About a year ago, the online "storytelling community" called Smith magazine, challenged their readers to write their life story in only six words. After receiving more than 15,000 entries, they put 832 into a new book called "Not Quite What I Was Planning. " After reading many of the entries, you just can't help trying to come up with your own. I came up with a few:

"Fully loved, able to love unconditionally."

"Country girl embraced city, then lake."

"Drama Queen meets Prince of Peace."

"True love found early lasts long."

My husband could borrow one from the book: "Would settle for a bad hair day."

I don't think anyone's life can really be summed up in six words, but like a snapshot, a six word memoir captures a part of your life, that though not fleshed out, can be revealing.

I also had a lot of fun writing six words for Biblical figures:

Paul: "I have fought the good fight."

Moses: "Knew the Lord face to face."

Solomon: "Gift of wisdom brought no peace."

Saul: "Impressive young man without equal, rejected."

Jezebel: "Killed the prophets, devoured by dogs."

Peter: "If all fall away, I won't."

Jacob: "Wrestled God and birthed a nation."

This was a good exercise and could even be a good tool for remembering biblical characters. So, admit it...you're doing one in your head as you read this, aren't you? Share yours!

Free Rice

"They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away." Psalm 107:5

"According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children." FreeRice.com wants to change that and improve our language skills at the same time.

According to the site, FreeRice has two goals:

#1: Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.

#2: Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

How does this generate money? Through corporate sponsors, who advertise on the site.

How do you get involved? Go to the site and play the interactive vocabulary game. There is a word given, followed by 4 other words. Click on the answer that best defines the word given. If you get it right, you get a harder one. If you get it wrong, you get an easier one. For each word you get right, FreeRice will donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. There is a cool graphic of rice filling up a bowl as you answer correctly, and if you answer enough of them correctly you start to get, or rather, give, little piles of rice! Myanmar, Nepal, and Cambodia are in the top 10 recepient countries that receive donations. The rice is also purchased from "developing countries, keeping the cost of reaching the hungry to a minimum and boosting farmers’ efforts to grow their own food." (quote from www.wfp.com)

How big an issue is world hunger? For those of us who might have guessed that world hunger is declining, consider the following sobering statistic from the site:

"Since the second half of the 1990s, the number of chronically hungry in developing countries has been increasing at a rate of almost four million per year.Today, one in nearly seven people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life, making hunger and malnutrition the number one risk to health worldwide -- greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined."

Is is effective? Consider that according to Wikipedia, “One month after the inception of the viral marketing program, users had earned enough points for one billion grains of rice. The United Nation's World Food Programme stated that this amount could feed 50,000 people for one day. Thus, approximately 20,000 grains of rice provide enough caloric intake to sustain an adult for one day. Using this calculation, enough rice is donated to feed 7,019.15 people daily per the totals for December 28, 2007.

Is it addictive? I'm just getting started, but a fun interactive game that improves your vocabulary and helps feed the hungry? Sounds better than doing one more "Can you name this Disney villan?" quiz on Facebook. Challenge yourself to spend a few minutes a day making a difference.

"...and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. (Isaiah 58:10 NIV)

You Might Be A Redneck If....

Overheard at my hair salon:

Guy: "I had a weird dream last night."
Girl: "Really?"
Guy: "I dreamed Robert Plant died, and Jeff Foxworthy replaced him as the lead singer in Led Zepplin."
Girl: "Was he any good?"
Guy: "Actually, he could hit the high notes better than Plant!"

I swear I'm not making it up.

I Swear to Tell the Truth

This entry was written by a guest blogger, my husband, Dale. He served in the Air Force in 1983 going through Officer Training in San Antonio, Texas, and Flight Training in Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, TX before leaving shortly before we were married. While I've heard these stories many times (as he begins to tell one of them, I will often tease him by saying something like "story #47), he has written a few of them down with some great application at the end. Be sure to give the man some feedback!

"The US military is still one of our most conservative institutions. You see very little tolerance for personal expression when it comes to appearance while in uniform. During my time in the USAF, I did encounter one occasion though, where exercise of personal expression, and an improbable truth collided. Our morning briefing included a discussion about taking pride in personal appearance, shoe shine, hair cuts, facial hair and all those things that could diminish what the military uniform and the person wearing it represented. A few men pushed that fashion envelope at the time and entered the military with pierced ears. The message was short and simple. Ear rings, for men, while in uniform, were not appropriate. Period. Additionally, if your ears were not already pierced, now was not the time to exercise that option. While this was not presented as an order, we all had a common understanding on this issue.

As one of 2 guys in a 2 bedroom apartment the math worked out fine, but one day a friend approached us with his own housing dilemma. No local apartment openings, he didn’t want to live on base, and no room at the inn with other friends. Seeing this as a financial opportunity the two became three with the understanding that as the last guy in, he would essentially spend an entire year sleeping on a couch. A couple weeks later, in a move which now seems to reflect questionable judgment, we added two ferrets to the already cramped family.

The two little rats were friendly enough and quickly adapted to their new freedom as we frequently gave them extended time outside the cage, to roam the apartment. One day our sleeping and unsuspecting couch dweller surprised the others with a sharp yelp and a few, as Mr. Spock would say, colorful metaphors. Seems one of the ferrets climbed up on the sofa and bit him, on (drum roll please) the ear lobe. Needless to say, two of the three of us found this pretty funny. We were also quick to point out that this was clearly a flagrant violation of the no new ear piercing rule, and that at the next morning briefing, we felt compelled to share this with the other pilots on the flight line. “If you guys do that, I’ll just tell’em the truth” Chuck insisted. Met with a snickering reply of “Let us know how that works out”. The next day played out perfectly, as we quietly shared our roommate's indiscretion with the other pilots. It was fun to watch a grown man trying to explain away a freshly punctured earlobe with the line. “No really, I swear, a ferret bit me.”

I guess one of the things I took away from that day is that sometimes the truth can seem improbable but still be truth; you just have to tell it anyway. With God all things are possible and sometimes even hysterical."

The "After Bucket List"

This morning I was thinking about the movie “The Bucket List”. I didn’t see the movie, but I know from the previews that a bucket list is a record of all the things you want to be sure to do before you kick the bucket. This is a cool idea, and I want to start working on mine, right after I finish reading “1,000 Places to See Before You Die”. I should probably hold off on “1,000 Ways to Decorate with Fabric” and first get a copy of “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself”. But I digress. What I was thinking about the bucket list concept is that we as Christians sometimes have an “After Bucket List". We make a list, in our heads anyway, of all the things we want to do when we get to heaven. Now, I get that our questions and desires will be surpassed by everything that we will experience with/in/through God that we can’t even begin to imagine. Even so, I don’t think God would have given us some of the biblical descriptions of heaven He does if He didn’t want us to longingly use our imagination.

Some things on my list:

• Fly


• Go to other places in the universe


• See my grandparents, relatives, and friends who have already died


• Talk to biblical saints. High on the list:
  Deborah, Priscilla, Mary, Sarah, David, Daniel, Paul, Luke, John, Peter and the angels—Michael and Gabriel(note: I love the idea that I could talk to all of the above in perfect conversation for as long as we want…because the ‘not enough time’ factor just won’t be…a factor!)


• Check out the "living creatures" (not trying to be sacrilegious here-I mean, come on, all those eyes?)


• Ask the triune God- “Why”:
  The big stuff: flood, circumcision, covenant, temple
  The hard stuff: fully man/fully God, sacrifice, resurrection, suffering, pain…what were you doing during ________ in my life?

Do any of these sound like something you’ve said in your head? I bet you have an “After Bucket” list too. Please share!

Another Day, Another Pie

As I was driving home from work on Friday, I heard an slightly annoying TV/radio personality saying something to the effect: "In honor of the leap day, more people should take advantage of February 29, as it provides an extra 24 hours in the calendar to catch up on miscellaneous errands." An extra 24 hours! Having been sick with a stomach bug for about 36 hours during the week (thus the lack of blog entries!), the thought struck me as a good one.

Except...the day had already passed. I had hurried off to work, completed my regular end of the week tasks, had several nice exchanges with visitors to the office (Friday seems to be 'drop by and say hello day' at our church), and then left a little early to make it to a physical therapy appointment for my current malady--tennis elbow (another reason for the lack of recent entries). It didn't feel "extra". It didn't feel special. As a matter of fact, due to a lingering "punky" feeling physically, and feeling emotionally let down by a couple of people, it felt pretty lousy. Even the good things seemed to backfire. Physical therapy felt great, but seemed to trigger every sore nerve in my arm making sleep nearly impossible. So as a far as "Leap day" goes, I am in agreement with my hubby who says "why don't they add the day to June?"

Now fortunately, there were bright spots to the evening. My hubby, sensing my mood (maybe it was the long litany of complaints on the phone?) brought me flowers. And a pie! Ok, the pie was more for him, but since I have a sweet tooth I inherited from my grandfather, it didn't hurt. We went out to a nice dinner at Pizza Coco. We also watched our DVR'ed episode of Lost, where I actually caught a reference by the character "C. (Charlotte) S. Lewis" that time moves slower on the island than in the real world--a blatant reference to Narnia, I think (for way deeper connections check here).

Yet despite the nice evening, as I weigh my feelings about the whole day, if given the choice I'd probably be willing to give the day back. In reality, it was an extra day. It was really added to the calendar and consisted of an extra 24 hours. But I had treated it like any other day. I didn't see it as a gift. I didn't even use the time to"catch up on miscellaneous errands" as pitifully insignificant as that would have been.

At around 1 am, the start of a new day technically, I tried to chase sleep by catching up on the daily scripture readings from last week's sermon. They included this verse:

"Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. " (Eph. 5:15-17)

The Message puts the first part of verse 17, "Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly."

What if I had remembered that morning that it was an "extra" day? If I had treated it not like a "Hallmark holiday", but like a special day that really mattered? Shouldn't I live every day that way? Each 24 hours here on earth may only be a moment in eternity, but it's up to me "make the most of every opportunity" .... to show love, to give encouragement, and to give thanks for each day. I don't need to wait another 4 years to start doing that.

Quote of the weekend

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." ~Henry Ford