Turning Points

A Tale of Two Restaurants

by Andy Wood on November 28, 2008

in Turning Points

(A Turning Point Story)

A few years ago I was Birmingham, Alabama at lunch time, so I decided to eat at a favorite restaurant there.  I had been to this place quite a few times, and had always enjoyed the food and service there.

Until this time.

The host (a new guy) sat me at the table, and informed me that my server would soon be there to take my “quick lunch” order.  So I looked over the menu.

No server.

I closed the menu (a popular hint).

No server.

I thought about memorizing the menu before the server got there.  I could have succeeded.

I was sitting close enough to the front door to see the host who seated me.  I looked plaintively at him, and he returned to ask if my server had come.  Gasp!  He hadn’t?  He’ll be here in a couple of minutes. [click to continue…]

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Temples, Doll Houses, and Other Unfinished Business

by Andy Wood on September 30, 2008

in Executing Your Plan, LV Cycle, Turning Points

This is about a talking doll house.

No, I’m not referring to a cartoon, and no, I don’t need a trip to the you-know-what.  This doll house didn’t come with audible voices.  It was a symbol for about six months – an imposing, silent, unfinished structure that would sit in front of me and remind me of unfinished business.  Here’s the story:

Somewhere around Carrie’s eighth- or ninth-grade year, she became really interested in doll houses and all things miniature.  So we loaded her up one Christmas with the house, furniture, shingles for the roof, and other assorted stuff.  Over time, she lost interest, and needed space in her bedroom for other pursuits.  The unfinished doll house wound up in a room we used as both study/office and a family room of sorts.  It was en route to the attic, but was apparently on the scenic route to get there.

For months the doll house sat there, looking like the result of a tornado that ripped through Dollville.  (Truth is, Joel had knocked it over one day, and just crammed everything back into it.  So the bathtub sat, along with the bed, in the living room near the toilet.)

Children have passing interests that they outgrow; that’s part of living.  What haunted and taunted me was what the doll house didn’t have. [click to continue…]

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The Popcorn Tree

by Andy Wood on September 5, 2008

in Enlarging Your Capacity, LV Cycle, Turning Points

The LifeVesting Cycle

1. Allocate your resources.
2. Explore the possibilities.
3. Follow your passion
4. Execute your plan.
5. Protect your investment.

6. Enlarge your capacity

When I was still a kid, my dad built a flower box for my mom. We got some nice, rich soil from a place behind our house where we had a lot of mulch and trees. She planted some flowers in the box, and we were excited to see what would come out.

What came out was something that at first looked like a weed. But this was no weed. It was a tree. A popcorn tree, my dad said.

I was entranced. It was my first sense of fatherhood and stewardship, all rolled into one.

If you aren’t familiar with them, popcorn trees, or Chinese tallows, grow in moist climates. They grow rapidly, and can get pretty big. They make great shade and ornamental trees, and in the fall, their seeds split open to appear like popcorn.

I watched this little tree take off, and soon we transplanted it from the flower box to the front yard. We got more and more into trees, and soon found four more popcorn trees – then some redbuds and dogwoods. I had this sense of pride and ownership in all of them, but none more than the original – the queen of the yard – as she quickly grew taller than the eaves of our house.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. I came up the street to my house, and found the most horrific sight. Someone (my dad) had taken shears and whacked my tree off at about six feet. The queen of the yard now had a crew cut.

It was ugly.

Shameful.

Hideous.

“Pruning,” he called it.

“Disaster” was what I called it.

Of course, my dad knew a whole lot more about trees and all things agricultural than I ever will. (I once asked him, “How’d you get so smart?” He said, “I keep my ears open and my mouth shut.”)

Anyway, the queen began to reshape. To spread. To grow, not just taller, but shapelier, even more beautiful.

This life lesson became even more applicable to me as I grew spiritually. [click to continue…]

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Open Doors and Dreams Come True

by Andy Wood on August 22, 2008

in Following Your Passion, LV Cycle, Turning Points, Waiting

John W. Drakeford

John W. Drakeford

Dr. John Drakeford had an open-door policy.  Yes, the counseling icon, who pioneered a Christ-centered approach to psychology and counseling, had a rule that whenever his office door was open, any student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary could walk in.

But that’s not the open door policy to which I refer.

Dr. Drakeford also had this thing about the door to his classroom.  He saw to it that it remained open at all times, propped so by a chair.  Without fail, when a student arrived a bit late to class, he/she would grab that available chair, and the classroom door would swing shut.

“Suh, suh!” Dr. Drakeford would say in his beautiful Australian accent.  “Could you choose another seat?  I like to keep the door propped open in case of fire or something.”

I don’t think anybody else in the room believed that propping two swinging doors open would stop any of us from getting the heck outta’ there if the building was burning down.  But who wants to argue with the author of Psychology in Search of the Soul?

One day, right in the middle of one of Drakeford’s fascinating lectures, somebody nabbed the empty chair and took off down the hall.  I believe to this day it was a prank. [click to continue…]

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Don’t Go Gently: How an Alcoholic Friend’s Death Taught Me How to Live

by Andy Wood on August 19, 2008

in Five LV Laws, Life Currency, Love, Principle of Freedom, Principle of Legacy, Turning Points

(A Turning Point Story)

“Hi, I’m Butch, and I’m an alcoholic.”

He didn’t say it exactly like that the first time I talked to him.  But two minutes into my first conversation with Butch Lowrey, I knew he had been visiting my church, he was a recovering alcoholic, and that he liked what I was preaching.  Butch introduced me to a spiritual program that had changed his life and stopped his drinking forever.  I attended his second A.A. birthday party, and eventually became his sponsor.  No doubt about it, though.  I learned more from him than he ever learned from me.

“Nothing in God’s world happens by mistake.”

Butch believed that, and said it often.  As part of his recovery, there were many other spiritual truths he stood on, and repeated.  Truths such as:  “If all your problems could solved by money, you don’t have a problem,” and, “You’ve just got to let go and let God.”

He also learned a rare and refreshing kind of honesty.  On one occasion he said, “People in [this] county are committed to making everyone else just as miserable as they are.”  Later he told me, “Andy, you preach long because you like to hear yourself talk.  You’re just on an ego trip.”  He was smiling, of course. [click to continue…]

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Guess I Won’t Do That Again

by Andy Wood on August 12, 2008

in Gamblers, LV Alter-egos, Turning Points

(A Turning Point Story)

Pam was 15 and pregnant.  Somehow, in the wake of some poor choices, however, she made a good one.  Pam decided not to get an abortion, and a young man – an all-star outfielder in his high school – lives today because of that decision.  But Pam’s decision was costly, because her family didn’t approve.  Pam needed a place to go.  So at a time when our own children were four and two, Pregnant Pam came to live with us.

We helped arrange a private adoption, and the time came for Pam’s baby to be born.  Robin was committed to walking with Pam through all of this, so she stayed at the hospital with her, and I kept the little ones at home.  Having been through all of this together, the kids and I were excited about seeing Pam’s baby.  So we planned a little trek up to Medical Center East in Birmingham.

Being something of a hospital veteran, I decided on this Saturday to go in through the Emergency Room.  I herded my little brood through the waiting room, through the double doors, and into the elevator.  After a delightful visit, we reversed the process – into the elevator, back through the double doors, breezing through the ER waiting room.  The kids were walking ahead of me, self-assured and chattering away.  They marched through the exit doors and started down the sidewalk toward the car.

[click to continue…]

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The Stepmother

by Andy Wood on July 28, 2008

in Turning Points

 (A Turning Point Story)

Stepmother“Reverend Wood?”

I always know two things when somebody starts a conversation with that.  First, something interesting is sure to follow.  Second, whoever it is doesn’t know me very well.

It always feels a little awkward when somebody asks, “What should I call you?”  I never have liked the “reverend” thing; the only time I put it in front of my name is when I’m signing a funeral book.  I once had a reason for that; now it’s just habit.

My Baptist heritage made me “Brother Andy” to most people.  To me, that’s a higher life form than “reverend,” but still felt a bit, I don’t know, dated or preachy or something.

Whenever my wife hears the Abraham-Sarah story, she enjoys calling me, “My lord.”  “What would you like for dinner, my lord?”  She thinks it’s really funny.  I haven’t a clue why.

Since my move to Texas, I’ve been “Pastor Andy” to most people in church.  That’s OK.  “Andy” is even better.  I’ve always liked the simplicity of just being me.  But after watching people stumble over all that title biz for a while, I finally took a cue from one of my college professors:  a simple “Your Majesty” will do.

Anyway, “Reverend Wood” is at the bottom of the list.  And on this day the conversation that followed was interesting, to be sure.

[click to continue…]

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Prosper

by Andy Wood on July 8, 2008

in Insight, Life Currency, Turning Points

(A Turning Point Story)

About 20 miles east of Denton, Texas a small ridge runs north and south along what people in Dallas know as Preston Road.  Visible from 10 miles away, all along the top and slope of that ridge rest the homes, churches, and schools of Prosper – a community of farmers and commuters to Dallas.  I had the first of what would be many of these picturesque views in September 1981, when I virtually limped there for a job interview.  Little did I know the significance that town would have in my life, family, and ministry to this day.  This is about the roads that led into, out of, and back into an unforgettable town nobody had ever heard of.

Four months earlier, I had loaded up all my earthly belongings in a Hertz rental truck, put my gorgeous Irish Setter puppy, Dixie, in the cab, and left Mississippi for Texas.  I was to start seminary in the fall, and thought I’d get a head start on a job and hopefully a church to serve.  I was so happy, so optimistic, I literally sang my own version of a Swaggert song:

On my way to heaven,

Stoppin’ off by Texas on the way!

I got a sales job representing the prestigious Ft. Worth Chamber of Commerce.  Rented a really nice house.  Was leaving a wonderfully successful youth ministry.  God was good!  Life surely would be good, too.

It didn’t turn out that way.  [click to continue…]

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The Watermelon Thieves

by Andy Wood on July 2, 2008

in Five LV Laws, Principle of Abundance, Turning Points

(A Turning Point Story)

Watermelon 2“Boys, if you want a watermelon, all you have to do is come knock on my door and ask.  I’ll give you all the watermelons you want.  But please, don’t steal my watermelons.”

You know where this is going, right?

I couldn’t help but laugh. A lot.  I was on the bus with a group of men from our church coming back from a meeting, and we were discussing one of my favorite subjects: watermelon.

I suppose as long as there have been watermelon farmers, there have been watermelon thieves, and Lloyd was describing how he and his friends had done it in their younger years in Indiana. They smiled and said “yes sir” to the farmer’s request.

Later that night, they went to work.

Lloyd and his friends weren’t content just to sneak into the patch and dash away with a big, fat prize. They added insult to injury! Under the cover of darkness, they would take long, sharp knives and carefully cut a plug out of the end of the melon attached to the vine. Then they would eat the heart – the sweetest part – out of the melon and replace the plug.

The next day they’d return to the scene of the crime, climb a tree near the patch, and watch as the farmer came to check his melons. He would carefully thump the watermelon and listen for just the right sound that told him the fruit was ready. The climax came when the farmer picked up a hollow melon and discovered the plug. He would throw his cap on the ground, shake his fist in the air, and vow to kill whoever did it. Not only had he been robbed, he had been deceived as well.

Oh, we laughed.

The image of sitting in a tree trying to hold in the hilarity while someone below is losing it was very amusing. But what was funny to me one day soon became very sobering. God has a way of doing that.

[click to continue…]

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Sticks and Stones

by Andy Wood on June 16, 2008

in Life Currency, Turning Points, Words

(A Turning Point Story) 

Angry teenager“I never thought the doors of a church would be locked,” said Danny Kincaid.  But locked they were.  So Danny spent the night on the church bus.  It was the only place he could find to put a roof over his head.

Danny was in his early 20s; I was in my early college years.  I met Danny after some other people (who weren’t exactly thrilled about his accommodations) met him first.  They introduced him to our youth pastor, who led Danny to faith in Christ.  He also offered Danny a place to stay – his own home – until he could get on his feet.  That’s where I came in. I was a youth ministry intern, and got to know Danny as he hung out with Willard and the rest of us.  Way too old for the youth group, Danny was a fixture around the youth staff as we practiced a version of “discipleship by hanging out.”

One day Danny and I were driving around town looking for him a job and place to live, and he told me a story that haunts me to this day.  When he was very young, through a series of circumstances beyond his control, he came to live with his grandparents.  I don’t remember why.  Maybe it was a divorce.  Maybe his parents died.  At any rate, Danny wound up growing up in South Carolina with a grandmother he still referred to as “Mommy.”

As Danny became a teenager, he went through the typical rebellious stages that most adolescents encounter – made all the more extreme because his generation gap was times-two.  He had a temper.  And a mouth.  And he knew how to flex both.

One day Danny and Mommy got into an argument, and it got pretty heated.  She said some things.  He said some things.  They got madder and madder.  Finally, Danny screamed out, “I wish you were dead!”  And he stormed out of their mobile home and slammed the door.

[click to continue…]

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