Insight

The Circle’s End

by Andy Wood on March 29, 2011

in Insight, Life Currency, Tense Truths

Phillip’s down, and he thinks he’s out.

Life hasn’t been kind to the 33-year-old; in fact, life has been brutally unfair.  In just one calendar year, Phillip left his friends due to a job transfer, lost the job that transferred him due to downsizing, suffered an excruciating ankle break in a pick-up basketball game, and separated from his wife of seven years, though they are working on things.

Phillip tries to be hopeful when everything around him feels fatal.  But he can’t mask the confusion.  How can a year that started with such promise and confidence leave him feeling so lost and broken?  How can a life driven with such expectancy just a few months ago feel so aimless now?

But what Phillip can’t see because he’s in too deep is how close he is to the Circle’s End.

Karen can’t believe her eyes, but there’s no mistaking that little “plus” sign.  After months and months of futility, what she has dreamed of all her life is finally happening.  She’s going to have a baby.   That’s a much better explanation for that morning nausea than “stomach flu.”

The enchantment she and her husband are feeling is surely a precursor of things to come.  The family they both have dreamed of.  The joy and delights of holding that little one for the first time.  The expectancy that life has made a turn for the better, and there is nowhere to go but forward.

And she’s right… to a point.  But just as tides ebb and flow, Karen will eventually reach the Circle’s End.

However you would classify your circumstances, one thing is certain – they’re anything but still. [click to continue…]

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The Search Engine

by Andy Wood on March 14, 2011

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase

Constantly in motion, ever-aware, always alert both night and day, an unseen force is shaping your life in ways you can’t imagine.

Ever-learning.

Ever-revealing.

The algorithms behind this crawler make Google look, in comparison, like a nearsighted man searching for a haystack in a needle factory.

He sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake.  But I’m not referring to the jolly old elf.  I’m talking about the Ultimate Search Engine.  But it’s not an “it” – it’s a Person. [click to continue…]

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How God Comforts a Grieving Heart

by Andy Wood on February 9, 2011

in Five LV Laws, Insight, Life Currency, Principle of Legacy

It was a year ago today.  

In one sense, as my Dad said yesterday, it has flown by.  In another, it felt like a thousand years.

But if one thing has emerged from the past 365 days, it’s that when people or Bible writers talk about the “God of All Comfort,” I can say “Amen” and turn the pages with credibility.

But it didn’t start – or end – with the events surrounding my mother’s sudden death.  In fact, the biggest lesson of all was that healing of the heart is a journey through time.

Translation:  Don’t tell me how much comfort or encouragement you’re feeling in the funeral home.  You have no clue yet about comfort.  You’re still being buoyed and insulated by kind people and the truths of your faith.

Comfort – the real kind – comes later.

In the last year, I have been blessed to live what I have preached for years – that the words we use about a Heavenly Father who is who is able to empathize with our weaknesses and invites us to boldly approach a throne of grace are all true.  And believe me, other than the promise of eternal life, I can’t think of a promise that is more vital.

How does He do it?  If you’re the one just leaving the cemetery or the courthouse or the hospital, what can you expect?  How does the Lord put the pieces back together?  While every experience of loss – whether it is through death, rejection, forced job termination, or the death of a dream – is unique, I think I have found some common elements in the way our Heavenly Father brings about His healing. [click to continue…]

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31 Things It’s Good to Know (But May Wish You Didn’t Have to Discover)

by Andy Wood on December 29, 2010

in Half-baked Ideas, Insight, Life Currency

(Something of a “life lessons year in review,” in no certain order.  I’d love to hear yours.  Feel free to add your own in the comments section.)

1.  How awesome your cancer surgeon is. 

2.  How nice people can be, even when you wish they would just hate you. 

3.  How God provides, even sometimes for fools. 

4.  The sun really does come out tomorrow. 

5.  How to spell “aneurysm.” 

6.  Life goes on, with you or without you. 

7.  Contrary to the words to the MASH theme, suicide is NOT painless. 

8.  Failure doesn’t stop people from loving you. 

9.  Rejection does not come with a cocoon to wrap you away for a while. 

10.  Nobody is more committed to your success than you are. [click to continue…]

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Time to Deal With the Elephant in Your Head

by Andy Wood on December 27, 2010

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Photos, Principle of Abundance

Can we talk about The Elephant in the Room? 

Most of the time we use the phrase to describe the unspoken but obvious thing between two or more people that no one is talking about.  There’s a different elephant, however, that I want to explore. 

It’s the one in your head.

I don’t know what yours is doing, but the elephant my head likes to dance.  Badly.

The Elephant in Your Head is the one or two things that appear in every mental photo.  The two or three things that interrupt – albeit silently – any patterns of forward thinking.

What do you do when you’re the elephant in the room? [click to continue…]

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Changing Seasons, Changing Lives

by Andy Wood on November 27, 2010

in Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Waiting

Years ago a Persian king wanted to discourage his sons from making rash judgments.  He sent the oldest son on a winter journey to see a mango tree.  Spring came and the second oldest went on the same trip.  Summer followed and the third son went.  When the youngest boy returned from his autumn visit, the king called them together to describe the tree. 

The first said, “It looks like a burnt old stump.”  The second described it as lovely and green; the third declared its blossoms as beautiful as the rose.  The fourth said all were wrong.  “Its fruit is like a pear.” 

“Each is right,” the king said.  “You just saw the same tree in a different season.”  

Before you evaluate other people, make sure you have seen them in all their seasons.  No one is always anything.  [click to continue…]

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Bobo Brown Saves Thanksgiving

by Andy Wood on November 22, 2010

in Insight, Spoofs

If you know my oldest-by-five-minutes daughter at all, you will eventually have the ex-Thanksgiving Conversation (XTC for short).  Carrie’s growing frustration is that in the rush to jump from Halloween to Christmas, the world has turned on Thanksgiving 

If you decide to hang your holly before you’ve baked your turkey, it may be a good idea to keep it to yourself.  Otherwise, if “Baby A” finds out about it, you may get The Look.  Or worse, execution-by-XTC.

So when we caravanned from Texas to Alabama this weekend for Thanksgiving, to Carrie, it was all about giving thanks.  And when we attended the Baptist church in Millry Sunday morning, Carrie became a shouting Baptist when Brother Billy talked about Thanksgiving being the Forgotten Holiday.

“Amen!  It’s about time!” she shouted.

Yes, I mean shouted (though she may take issue with my choice of terms).

Still a bit edgy and armed for early-Christmas bear, this led to more conversation.  How can we teach people to value Thanksgiving?  How can we turn the tide of obscene Christmas shopping, at least until the cranberry sauce is back in the fridge?  What can we do to capture the true meaning of what may be America’s most important holiday?

Deep stuff, friends.  Insight needed beyond my little pea brain.  This calls for the wisdom of Solomon, the intelligence of Einstein, and the people skills of Bill Clinton. 

“You’re in luck,” I proclaimed to the fam.  “It’s time to go over the river and through the woods!”

“But we’re already at Grandmother’s house,” said Cassie.

“Different river, different woods!” I exclaimed triumphantly.  “It’s time you met Bobo Brown.”  [click to continue…]

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Demands and Desires

by Andy Wood on October 6, 2010

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase

(The Squeeze, Part 2)

In the previous post I introduced the idea of the squeeze – that when life comes calling or the world comes knocking and we get squeezed, whatever is on the inside comes flying out.  Specifically, when life or the world squeezes, two things quickly become evident – what’s in your character (your decisions) and what’s in your heart (your desires).

That why Peter addresses this encouragement to a group of Christ followers who were living life in The Squeeze:

Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2:1-3, NIV).

When Our Flesh Demands Relief

People who are hurting instinctively crave relief.

NOW!

Like Job, the tendency is to move from “Lord I’m trusting you for deliverance” to “Lord stop it now or explain yourself!

When we stubbornly hold onto the demand for God to change things, five kinds of behavior emerge. [click to continue…]

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Do You See What He Sees?

by Andy Wood on October 1, 2010

in Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Eternity

“There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”(Milan Kundera) 

+++++++

Ever read about the double-pump miracle Jesus performed?  Fascinating story, about a blind man in Bethsaida.  Jesus led him outside the village and spit on his eyes.

“Do you see anything”? He asked.

He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

So Jesus double-clutched.  Once more, he put his hands on the man’s eyes. This time he saw everything clearly.

It doesn’t bother me that it took two rounds with the Son of God for a blind man to see clearly again.  It does bother me that many believers, myself included, have gone many rounds with Jesus, and we still don’t see clearly at times.

He saw people that looked like trees.  We see people that look like other things – jobs, economic status, social labels, racial stereotypes, gender.  Jesus saw something else entirely.  You can too, but it doesn’t come naturally. 

“I see people; they look like trees.” 

What do you see?  Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?  Hot babe, geek, hero, freak? 

They may as well be Klingons, unless we learn to see from Jesus’ perspective.  We talk a lot about pursuing our own passions, but you can never fulfill your deepest passion unless you first embrace his.  Take a look: [click to continue…]

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Graduate Level Problem Solving

by Andy Wood on July 27, 2010

in Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Protecting Your Investment

In the 2004 version of The Alamo, there’s this scene where Billy Bob Thornton, as Davy Crockett, looks over the fort wall at Santa Anna’s approaching horde.  There, standing next to Colonel Travis, Crockett mutters grimly… “We’re gonna need a lot more men.” 

Sam Houston… we’ve got a problem.

Problems come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Oh, to have the impossible-looking situations we faced in third or seventh grade!  But every now and then, you and I are faced with circumstances that go beyond a headache or a flat tire.

We’re in grad school, friends.  And we’re getting the third degree. [click to continue…]

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