Took a trip past Oprah a couple of years ago. She was interviewing Russian figure skater Tatiana Totmianina and her partner, Maxim Marinin. Oprah showed a tape of the world-renowned skating champions in which Maxim, as he lifted Tatiana into the air, lost his grip. Tatiana crashed face-first on the ice. It was horrific – all three times I saw it.
In case you missed it, here’s a video montage of her career, including the face plant in Pittsburgh:
Tatiana suffered a concussion but amazingly was back on the ice 12 days later.
“How hard was it for you to get back on the ice just 12 days after that?” Oprah asked her.
“Well, it was very hard,” Tatiana replied. “In the hospital when I woke up, I just realized how serious it was because all my life and career could be over… I wanted to get back on the ice right away because I have been skating since 4 years old. It’s my life.”
Amazing story, but when I heard that last statement, I must confess, I kicked into “preacher mode.” [click to continue…]
Here’s a little exercise we actually take worship service time to practice occasionally. Follow the instructions carefully (yes, I mean I want you to actually do this):
Take a deep breath
Let out half of it.
Hold
Smile
Repeat the following out loud, in a calm soothing voice:
“No.”
Repeat this exercise regularly, just for practice, and as needed in live game situations.
Not, “No because…”
Not, “Maybe later…”
Not, “Let me pray about it…”
Certainly not, “See if you can find somebody else, and if you can’t, I’ll see what I can do.”
Learning to graciously, kindly refuse is one of eight steps to building or rebuilding margin in your life. Margin has to do with creating gaps – cushions of time, money, energy, or spiritual strength that act as living shock absorbers for those who have them.
Imagine how it could revolutionize your attitude, relationships, productivity, and health if the next time somebody says, “Got a minute?” you actually do! [click to continue…]
We pass a word around our office that my associate once used to describe me, and it stuck: Crispy.
He used it a few years ago when he and our office manager decided they’d seen enough of me in the state I was in and informed me that I was taking my wife on an R & R trip to the mountains. My reservations had been made, and they weren’t taking “no” for an answer.
I hope to God you have somebody who looks out for you like that. I wasn’t aware of how emotionally and physically fried I was. The sad truth about stress, crispiness, and burnout is that often others see their effects on us before we do.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been crispy, and it probably won’t be the last. But there’s a further step that can be devastating. Burnout, in a clinical sense, means you have completely exhausted every form of energy necessary to continue. More than just losing interest (“I’m sort of burned out on jazz these days”), I’m talking about those times people go to their wells and find them completely dry. Times when people shock those who know them best by walking away from relationships, careers, or wisdom.
“Stress makes people stupid,” a management consultant once told Daniel Goldman. Burnout reveals it to the world.
So how do people get in such a state – past stress, past crispy, all the way to emotionally nuked? Let me suggest three quick and easy recipes for complete emotional, mental, or spiritual exhaustion: [click to continue…]
You were born naked, longing to be warmed and dressed.
You were born penniless, and learned fairly quickly that this was not good.
Even of you’re a twin or other multiple, you were born completely alone, but wired to be relational.
You were born on purpose. And your purpose may still lie in front of you. (What DO you want to be when you grow up?)
To get from here to there, you will most likely pass through a series of completely lame, boring, and maddeningly time-consuming stages. Yes, you’ll experience a few leaps. For the rest, you’d better get used to celebrating some baby steps.
God called it the Day of Small Things.
The Day of Small Things is the crawl that comes before the walk. The work that comes before the reward. The doing-something-anything that comes before doing something awesome. It’s boot camp and kindergarten, school and internships, and progress-before-perfection. [click to continue…]
So you want to design a life, not just make a living? You want to experience the sensation of victory, or spiritual power? You want to build something, not just take up space on the planet? You want to say you’ve run your race, won your prize, fulfilled your calling or purpose?
If that doesn’t describe you, don’t waste your time reading any further. Go back to the Food Network or CNN or something.
But if that does describe you, and you believe you were put on this earth to do more than recycle gases and other organic stuff, read on.
In any meaningful endeavor, but particularly in one that involves the fulfillment of a spiritual vision, people (and leaders in particular) are faced with three inescapable questions.
1. Do your actions demonstrate a commitment to that which is most important?
2. Will you continue to move forward, even when surrounded by a hostile or apathetic majority?
3. Where will you look for the internal power to finish the job?[click to continue…]
In spite of all her lamentable weaknesses, appalling failures and indefensible shortcomings, the Church is the mightiest force for civilization and enlightened social consciousness in the world today. The only force in the world that is contesting Satan’s total rule in human affairs is the church of the living God. -Paul Billheimer
What does it take to rouse a sleeping giant?
Whatever it takes, I think now is the time.
One of the biggest clichés and repeated experiences in history is that of unrealized potential. It’s one of the reasons I believe heaven will be a place in which God wipes every tear from our eyes. When we see what was in light of what could have been – with our lives, and with our corporate potential – we will have no alternative but to weep.
For years, as a global body, the Western church has been asleep at the wheel or, worse, awakened to fight the wrong battles, the wrong enemy, or with the wrong weapons of warfare. We’ve made an art form of “trivial pursuit,” and the world is worse off because of it.
The first Century Church didn’t keep up with its time, didn’t spend its energy keeping up with its time. The first Century Church changed time. It rewrote history. It radically impacted culture. The church was the forerunner, not the runner up. – Erwin McManus
If you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I’m referring to you. I’m referring to me. But the news isn’t all bad. We serve a God who is wonderfully capable of waking sleeping giants. He did it on a national scale, both with His own nation and at times even with foreign, pagan countries. And I believe He’s doing it today. [click to continue…]
I was going to write a piece about words today; guess I’ll have to do that next week. Today it’s more about a wordsmith, and a great sense of loss.
It’s hard to put into words the significance of losing a public figure whose work or life has touched yours – an individual who became something of a fixture in your life.
That’s who Skip Caray was to me. He was a legend and an institution, and legetutions aren’t supposed to die. But people do.
I never met the legendary broadcaster for the Atlanta Braves. But he met me – again and again, first through radio, then through a cable channel humbly self-named The Superstation. Skip became a companion who, like so many other broadcasters in the 20th century, made the national pastime interesting, fun, and so incredibly human.
It’s one of the most amazing transformation stories in history.
From dufus to discerner.
Pathetic to prophetic.
Simon, the wishy-washy to Peter, the Rock.
This fisher became a fisher of men. And the guy who was nearly always getting it wrong ended up writing two books of the New Testament under the most powerful level of inspiration there is.
“He who has ears, let him hear,” Jesus said (Matthew 13:9). Peter learned to listen to God. And if that guy did, you can, too.
I want to show you three ways Peter learned to hear God’s voice. [click to continue…]
Okay, first take a look at the following 60-second video. SPOILER ALERT BELOW! Then click on “Read the rest of this entry” if you’re on the home page and let’s talk about it.
I hate maintenance. This is in defiance to everything my fatherfaithfully tried to instill in me. I want the dishes to morph into the dishwasher, the oil to change itself, and the lawn to live, but not grow. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to get a reminder in the mail that I had an appointment with a treadmill, about 11 electrodes, and a sadistic nurse with a razor and sandpaper. “Stress EKG.” Ha! I don’ need no stinkin’ treadmill to tell me I got stress.
It’s not about the treadmill, mind you. I get on one about five times a year, whether I need to or not. It’s about getting on the treadmill at the doctor’s office when I haven’t been on one at the gym in a while. I needed some time to work out before the exam so the exam wouldn’t make me look like I hadn’t been working out. Sort of like cleaning the house before the house cleaner comes.
