Breathe

[Thoughts from Waterlemon Cay]

 

Sometimes God floods your minds with so many thoughts, ideas, stories and memories that you feel like you could sit down and write novel-length books for days on end.  But today was not one of those days.  Today it was one word:

 

Breathe.

 

Here’s the back story: Scott, John and I visited the ruins of the Annaberg Sugar Mill today on the north side of the island and then hiked in to Leinster Bay where we decided to snorkel around a tiny island called Waterlemon Cay.  The water was crystal clear, the temperature perfect, and the setting breathtaking.  What I wasn’t prepared for was the strength of the current as we came around the backside of the island.  I’m an okay swimmer and up to this point I had been confident of my ability to make this swim.  But for a moment, I panicked.  I occurred to me we were at least 500 yards away from shore.  It was about forty feet down.  Scott and John were far ahead of me, chasing sea turtles.  My goggles fogged up, the current was pushing me out fast than I could make my flippers work, and my muscles tensed up.  My brain went into overdrive playing out the “what if” scenarios.  And did I mention that I had spotted a wicked looking barracuda about 20 yards in front of me?  Like the shipwrecks that are scattered on the ocean floor between those islands, I thought – for just a split second – I’m going down.  I’m barracuda meat.  Tell my wife and my girls I love them. 

 

And then the simplest thought flooded my mind: “Jay, breathe.” 

 

Now I know that might not seem like a profound thought, since breathing is what we call an “involuntary” action – there’s this place at the base of our brain that controls these things so the rest of our brain is free to think about more important things: like what out-of-fashion put-downs we want to bring back (Scott and I cast our vote for “dill weed” – the little used and underappreciated cooking spice -  this week) or why grown men STILL find passing gas funny, or why our politicians want to be rock stars and our rock stars want to be politicians.  But I digress.  So for these moments in time, the frontal lobe of my brain was overpowering the base of my brain, and it had occurred to me that I as I was stressing I was also not breathing.  My cheeks looked like a puffer fish on steroids and the CO2 was building up in my airway.  My head started to pound.  “Just breathe” was a pretty important message for my brain to send to the rest of me right about then.

 

Once I just relaxed and focused on taking long, deep, full breaths everything came into perspective again: the incredible beauty of the coral reefs and the kaleidoscope of fish darting in and out of this forest on the ocean floor; the warm breeze and hot sun toasting my back.  I don’t think they give out medals of heroism for saving yourself from drowning, but I felt strangely more alive anyway, enjoying the moment.

 

Bottom line: stress less, breathe more.  Breathe in the little moments I am given in a day.  Slow down and breathe when I am frustrated, overwhelmed or burdened.  Breathe deep in the wonder and mystery of this life.  After all, breathing apparently has its place in God’s world…

 

“Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being…”

 

“Let everything that breathes praise the Lord…”

 

“After saying this, He [Jesus] breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…’”

 

So when you feel all alone, caught in the current and going down: remember to just breathe.

 

[Unless your like my friend Flat Stanley, who is trapped in that little diving bag; in which case, you're just out of luck.]

 

Thoughts from the Front Porch

Yes, this is the view from Scott Drennen’s front porch.

Yes, this is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been on earth.

And yes, you can dispense with the “suffering for Jesus” jokes already. 

I’m in St. John this week with our college ministry team leader John Cook.  But today it isn’t the white beaches or the crystal blue water or the gorgeous sunset (see the header above) I witnessed today that left an impression on me, it was the conversations with people today that I won’t forget.  The governer’s assistant who was blown away by the offer of our students serving the community - no strings attached.  A secretary whose son was baptized in Hawksnest Bay by John last summer.  The pastor who was skeptical at first who after six summers trusts our team to lead the only Vacation Bible School on the island all summer…and told John (the “Mr. Ask me what I do for a living John Cook”) that he was always welcome to preach and say “whatever God lays on your heart.”  The community center worker who our group tried to reach out to for the first five years who finally gave us a shot last year for one day, and is now bringing 50 kids to Vacation Bible School.  And there were several more moments today when I could tell that the consistent, hard-working, loving example of six years of our college students investing in this community had earned them a respect and a hearing for the truth of the gospel that doesn’t come any other way.

It was a beautiful day…and I’m not talking about the weather, but from seeing the hearts of the people of this island open to our students, our church, and our hope.

Of blogs and bottoms

I apologize to all of you who have visited this blog in the past three months only to see nothing new.  I received the following Facebook message from the one and only Clint Alwahab the other day:

“wellington, i’m not sure if you’re aware of this… but you have a blog. updating one’s blog is typical of a blog owner. much like wiping one’s butt is typical of a butt owner. just don’t confuse the blog and the butt. that could get messy.”

Clint is right.  It’s lame to have a blog and never post.  New posts to come…soon.

Amateur Carpentry & Ancient Wisdom

Behold, our new kitchen floor.  After two weekends of sweat and sawdust, I am proud to say that this home improvement project is in the books.  For most folks, this isn’t a big deal.  But for me, a guy who usually works more with his head than his hands, this is my best Tim-the-toolman-Taylor achievement to date.  Since so much of what I do can’t be easily quantified or defined or even explained in simple terms, it’s nice every now and then to do a project, look at it, and say “I finished that.”  Of course, I had some great help from my friend Jim-Bob Giers & Al “Tsuami Theologian” Alwahab, to whom I am forever grateful for giving up a Saturday of their life to help Mr. Barely Passed 7th Grade Shop Class.  So I was pondering the satisfaction of completing my humble wood-laminate masterpiece when I ran across the following bit of wisdom from the wisest man who ever lived: “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.  That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil - this is the gift of God.” (Ecc. 3:12-13).

Stranger Than Fiction

“Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies…we must remember that all these things - the nuances, the anomalies, the subtlies, which we assume only accessorize our days are, in fact, here for a much larger and nobler cause.”- a quote from my favorite movie of 2007 (OK, I think it actually came out in 2006, but I didn’t see it until this year…so indulge me.)

New Year’s Eve on the Oregon Trail

No I have not decided to pack my family inside a wagon and ”go west, young man.” The other night while consuming a “Happy Family” (pizza, not people) at Pie in the Sky with my entire extended family my brother spots a guy sporting a blue “You have died of dysentery” t-shirt.  We laughed for about 30 minutes about the 8-bit 2-D computer game that inspired that bit of fashion.  At our junior high, it didn’t matter what class you were in (algebra, science, shop), if you finished your work early, your “reward” was to go to the computer lab, where you had only ONE choice of game to play.  And that game was “Oregon Trail.”  You had to ford rivers, you had to hunt for food, and you had to get across the Continental Divide or face eating your Donner-Party-friends in order to survive.  And of course, the greatest threat to your cross-country land speed record for driving a team of oxen: that you would mysteriously acquire “dysentery”…and die.  Pretty morbid, I know.  But there’s something about an obscure reference to your past that takes you by surprise and keeps you laughing for hours.  It was good to have family here for the Holidays.

So the connection between New Year’s Eve and the Oregon Trail?  We had to cancel our plans because 3/5 of my clan has um, dysentery.  More than you needed to know.  But it’s not the kind that will kill anyone.  So for that and millions of other things, I am thankful for a good year that now has only 38 minutes left. 

Happy New Year, friends.  May 2008 find you more fully alive and awake to the adventure than ever before. 

Chuck Loves Huck

 

First, Chuck Norris makes the list of “most influential conservative Americans,” ranking number 71.  (Of course, he would have been number 1, but felt 71 was more impressive since it prefaces #1 with the number 7, the biblical number for perfection and completeness.)

Then, Walker, Texas Ranger simulateously makes the greatest presidential campaign commercial in history and single-handedly propels Mike Huckabee to the forefront of the Republican primary race.  Watch that video here.

It’s ironic that I am very interested in politics but, up to this point, have been very uninterested in this entire presidential race.  I think I’ve just become a bit jaded over the past few years, that I feel like the political system has broken down to the point that candidates have to “sell their soul” to their respective parties in order to get elected.  If you’ve really got convictions, or fresh ideas, or any hint of being a person that is even somewhat human, you don’t fit “the mold.”  I read a brilliant article in a British newspaper (yes, they are more interested and informed about our politics than we are…) while in England this summer that explained why the candidates in both parties that were the most likely to get nominated were not electable and the candidates who were the most electable were not likely to get nominated.  But my cynicism weakened a bit this week.  I like Mike.  I like his intelligent answers to unintelligent CNN questions.  I think he’s got convictions but is smart and careful with how he uses his words.  The fact that he’s been a bit under the radar up to this point is probably a good thing, meaning people won’t be tired of him. 

And that when it comes to national security, he’s got two words: Chuck.  Norris.

In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day

This is what I am reading right now.  It’s telling me what I need to hear, not what I just want to hear. 

1D TV

So on a rare Friday evening at home in the even more rare moment for me of channel surfing, I run across Fox and think I see a familiar face.  I turn back, only to realize it really is a familiar face.  The new “reality soap” titled “Nashville” (clever marketing!) is featuring a twentysomething guy who at one time went to our church.  I’ve had an interesting run of people I know making it onto TV in the past couple of years.  It started with a girl from Alabama who occasionally attended our church there turning up on “Temptation Island,”  (let’s just say that she apparently didn’t remember much of what we taught), proceeded to a current college student in our ministry ending up on the very last Bob-Barker-hosted episode of “The Price is Right” (her sister was the bigger fan, but she is the more outgoing one and did a “backflip for Bob”…I think she won some jewelry) and then a youth minister friend of mine was spotted in an airport by a producer who noted that he was a “big boy.”  So Shane Sisk, whose great big heart was on display for the cameras that somehow also missed his amazing sense of humor, was voted off at the end of the very first episode of “Fat March” that aired about a month ago.  Maybe the end result of all these near-connections to stardom will mean that I’m getting closer to my dream of being on Jeopardy!  Tanya says that bringing home some serious cash is the only constructive use for all the useless trivia that I have floating around in my head.  I just want the chance to talk to Alex like the Sean-Connery-impersonator from Saturday Night Live.  But I digress…

 So I watch all of fifteen minutes of this episode and it may be one of the worst TV shows ever.  It’s a reality show that totally looks and feels scripted.  And since these people aren’t professional actors, it feels even more fake.  It’s so predictable that I watched the sixty-second “This season on Nashville…” teaser at the end and I could accurately tell you the entire story arch for the season because it’s nothing more than your usual cliches about a group of good-looking twentysomethings trying to “make it” in more ways than one.  And two thoughts occured to me.  First, I’m going to meet even more waiters and waitresses at the Waffle House in coming years who tell me that they came to Nashville to try to make it in the music business.  There are great teenagers out there who live in perfectly fine communities who will watch this and think “hey, that looks like fun, I’m going to go to Nashville someday and hang out with incredibly good-looking people and record company executives.”  And a chase for fifteen minutes of fleeting fame will lead them down a road of broken dreams that weren’t the right dreams for their life to begin with. 

Thought #2.  I know Clint.  He’s the guy I know on the show.  He’s a guy that I’ve taken to lunch, met with in my office, even been on a mission trip to Chicago with.  His life has a story.  A story that includes some very real human themes - insecurity, struggle, pain, God, hope.  And what the producers of “Nashville” have reduced him to is a one-dimensional rich playboy who flirts with all the girls and is considered a schmuck by the rest of the guys.  I wanted to scream at the TV, “I know Clint and he’s so much more than this!”  Whether he set himself up for this or was edited by producers looking to fill a stale stereotype is not my point.  The fact that our world tries to reduce us to “less” than we truly are does.  I maybe be hopelessly old school, but I believe in my bones that we were created to constantly become more, not less in life.  As we go, our story should become richer, deeper, more layered, even more dramatic as we discover who we truly are and the role we are to play and have to confront all the forces in this life that try to keep us from those very things. 

If you are reading this, please do me the favor of turning off your television because this is not “reality.”  But your spouse who would rather know the story of your day instead of watching a fake version of someone else’s day, is.  And your kids sitting next to you who need a parent who plays with them and tells them crazy bedtime stories and takes them to the park, are.  And your neighbor that you keep thinking you haven’t had the time to meet yet, is.

I’ve been reading some G.K. Chesterton recently, a guy known as the “prophet of mirth.”  And he came to the point of being so amazed by the beauty of even the most average aspects of everyday life that he penned this:

Here dies another day

During which I have had eyes, ears, hands

And the great world round me;

And with tomorrow I begin another.

Why am I allowed two?

County Fair

 

Saturday night we take the annual family outing to the Williamson County Fair.  Eliza & Lexi are impervious to the triple-digit-temperatures because they are basking in the glow of little-kid-sensory-overload: rides, $4 snow-cones, more rides, watching a guy get shot out of a cannon, yet more rides, ponies, and even more rides.  And there’s this moment when pig-tailed Lexi, my ambitious little four-and-a-half year old looks out over this glorious scene, all illuminated by cheap twinkling colored bulbs and turns to me.  I wait for something out of her little mouth like, “thank you Daddy, for bringing me to the fair,” or “this is so much fun,” or “you’re the best dad ever for throwing all sense of economic reason to the wind and paying $3 for some cheap ride that lasts 20 seconds.” 

Instead, she says these words: “You see all this.  When I grow up, I want to be the girl who sets it ALL up!”  It’s the what no parent ever wants to hear.  Last week, she wanted to be a doctor.  This week, she wants to be a “carnie.”  I’m all about kids following their dream, but if she is that easily persuaded about her future vocation, forget the fair - next weekend it’s off to the courthouse or an operating room!