I talk big about making changes and how change adds energy to life, but in truth I don’t make a lot of big ones. For example, my only change of note in 2013 might be my new MacBook.

But that doesn’t stop me from looking ahead, searching for the next change that’ll make me a better man. This translates into, of course, New Year’s Resolutions.

However, I understand how NYR can be scary for a lot of people. The very idea implies life-dissatisfaction, and who wants that.

But for me, I see NYR as hope that I can be better and stronger and smarter next year. Not that my previous years were unsatisfactory, but that next year can be my best ever. I see NYR as leaning forward into the future.

We used to have a Labrador named Lady, and she ran thousands of miles with Cyndi and me. Often during a run she would jump through the pond at C. J. Kelly Park to cool off. And as soon as she cleared the water she did what all dogs do after they get wet – she shook violently to sling off the water.

Once Lady shook off the water she was ready to move on down the trail, full of expectancy and joy. She had no interest in retrospection or analysis, all she cared about was the road ahead. She wanted to keep moving.

And so, entering a New Year should be like that for us. It’s a time to leave behind the sentiment of Christmas and move on to something fresh. It’s our opportunity to shake off the old stuff – the goals and projects and bad habits – even dissatisfaction – of last year.

You didn’t lose the extra ten pounds last year? Shake it off and start over. Didn’t break a three-hour marathon? Shake it off. Never got around to writing that novel? Shake it off. Didn’t get your own business started like you’d planned? Shake, shake, shake!

And then, after shaking off last year, it’s time to move on down the road to next year. Who cares that the trail ahead might be the same as last year’s? So what if our goals are the same old routines we’ve covered hundreds of time. It’s a new year and time to move on. Shake off the old and move into the new with expectant joy.

Here is my list for 2014. This is my most interactive list so far, which means I’m asking for assistance and advice with several of these. It turns out I can’t be the man God wants me to be entirely on my own efforts. I need your help.

Knees: Stop complaining about my knees. Everyone hurts somewhere, and as bad as my knees are they get me around better than many of my friends. And besides, I love movement more than I resent the discomfort, so I should just shut up about it. Here’s the deal: if you hear me complaining about sore knees, ask for all the loose change in my pocket and I’ll give it to you.

Draw: Last year I had the goal to draw or sketch every day, on the theory that learning to draw would improve my vision and make me a better writer. I did this for a few weeks, but it fell away. I don’t know why. Maybe I wasn’t committed to the project as much as I thought. Or maybe I just didn’t like drawing. I’m willing to take this on again, but I need some advice from someone who does this well.

Improvise: I finished 2013 reading the book Improv Wisdom, by Patricia Ryan Madison, and she convinced me that I need more improvisation in my life. “For many of us, age produces an increased tendency to rely on known patterns, if not an all-out petrifaction.” I’m not sure how to go about this yet, but the most obvious place to practice improvisation in my life is with music. Once again, I need advice and counsel.

Assume: I want to spend 2014 assuming the best intentions on the part of everyone. That includes family, friends, enemies, business, and politics. I’m sure I’ll be proved wrong occasionally and learn someone had bad intentions, but they are going to have to convince me before I buy into it.

Publish: Publish my fourth book. I used to dream of being a big-time writer with tons of cash and lots of chances to travel and speak. I would still enjoy that, I think, but the odds of that happening are close to zero. I’ve finally understood that isn’t why I write, anyway. The fact is, I believe God gives me things to say, and it is my obligation to repeat them. God gets to decide how many read them. But obligation is a key word for me. I believe if I don’t keep publishing, the insights and ideas will dry up, and I cannot fathom a life like that. As part of this goal I’m planning to use Schrivener to help structure the book. If you have any thoughts about that, I need to hear them.

Evernote: I’ve poked around the edges of Evernote for years, but never fully committed to making it part of my life. Some of the smartest and most creative people I know use it extensively, so I think it deserves a better attempt on my part. Any suggestions or examples?

Proactive: I want to take a more proactive approach to working out and stretching to prevent further injuries and extend my functional years. I have too many miles to go, yet.

Minimize I’m pretty good at cleaning my clothes closet, but I think I can do better. My plan for 2014 is to reverse the clothes hangers so that they point away from me, meaning it will be more difficult to pull them from the bar. I’ll put them back the right way after I hang up my laundry. By the end of the year I will know exactly which clothes I never wore all year long, and consider giving them away. So if you see something in my closet that you want, you know what to do. Just reverse the hanger whenever you see it.

Project:  I have a magazine article I promised a friend but I’ve been putting it off because I don’t think I’m very good telling other people’s story. It is time to do the right thing and finish this project.

Planning: I will work with Cyndi to finish our wills and estate plan. It’s become even more obvious to us these past months how important it is to do this right, and depend on people we can trust to do the right thing.

Pass it on: You probably know by now I’m not happy unless I drag a few other people along with me down the trail of life. So I hope you’ll join me in 2014. I’d love to hear your own goals for next year.

Don’t waste time over failures or shortcomings from last year, just shake them off. In fact, do it right now. Stand up and give a quick shake. Then point your nose toward next year and take off running. This is a new season and a fresh start. Good luck.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I need your help. If you like this, please share with your friends. You can find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

We will be at home in Midland for the Christmas holidays this year, a practice that’s become tradition these past five years. Before that, we traveled every year.

Cyndi and I were the first of our generation in either family to marry, and since we always lived hours away from both, we established a pattern of alternating holidays – Thanksgiving with one family, and Christmas with the other, and then flip flop the next year – from the very beginning. It was a pattern that we maintained, with only rare exceptions, since that first holiday season in 1979. As other cousins married they joined the same schedule, each family alternating a big Christmas with a small Christmas. Nowadays, however, since all our cousins have families of their own, the tradition has had to adapt. It has become harder to round up the entire tribe in one place.

However, location is no longer all that important to me. I’m happy whenever we’re all together no matter whose house we’re in. I don’t mind traveling for holidays unless the roads are icy, and I don’t mind having lots of family around (although I am usually the first to start looking for an escape to privacy after a day or two).

For Cyndi and I, Christmas is truly a season-long celebration. We start watching Christmas movies as soon after Halloween as possible. In fact, we may watch a different movie every night, which is unusual for us since we almost never have our TV on every night. The only other time we watch that much TV is during the Olympics.

Our favorite movie is The Muppet Christmas Carol, and it is always the first one we watch every year. We also enjoy Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) and Miracle on 34^th Street (2000), White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Elf, The Preacher’s Wife, Olive the Other Reindeer, The Polar Express, The Santa Clause, and Christmas With the Kranks. Lately we’ve added Four Christmases and Fred Claus.

One family tradition we missed this year, and I’m sad to write this, is Christmas caroling. And not only are we not going this year, we didn’t go caroling last year, either.

Not only do I miss singing the songs together, but it makes me nervous to miss. I’m afraid this time-honored tradition will fall away in modern times, and these young families God has entrusted to us will not have the joy of caroling with their children the way we did

Cyndi and I started caroling as a Sunday School class event 22 years ago, and we kept it up through at least three different Sunday School assignments. We have great memories that accompany each adventure … no, even better, we have great stories. I hope we find a place for it next year. My heart needs it.

One of our oldest family Christmas traditions is to read the book, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson. In the past years, Cyndi read it in the car whenever we drove from Midland to Hobbs for Thanksgiving, and it lasted almost perfectly from driveway to driveway. But now that my parents live in Midland and we don’t make the hour-and-a-half drive to Hobbs we lost that opportunity.

However, Cyndi also reads an abridged version of the book every year during one of our adult Bible study classes. Some of the couples may have heard this a dozen times.

Here’s the thing … there are so many ways to tell the Christmas story. We read the gospel accounts, we stage live nativity presentations, we give big choir and orchestra performances, we send Christmas cards, we decorate our houses and yards, we wear Christmas sweaters, we sing Christmas carols, and we give our dollar bills to the Salvation Army bell ringers. Maybe we do most of these because they have become warm traditions for us, but I believe the real motivation runs much deeper. We do all these things, because we’re telling the story of Jesus through our lives and actions, and that story changes both the teller and listeners in more ways than we can know.

It’s the tiny details of traditions that put heart and soul into family celebrations. And it’s the effort and expense and inconvenience that we go to that gives the holidays value and life. I’m amazed at how these details of life get repeated again and again and eventually become family traditions that we can’t live without. Those details are what add texture to our lives together, and working them out is one of the ways we love each other.

I hope this writing finds you with those you love the most. And I hope you take every opportunity these next few days to know and share the grace of Jesus, who is God with us, the breath of heaven. Merry Christmas.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I need your help. If you like this, please share with your friends. You can find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

My life has taken an unanticipated turn, and I’m happy about it. I’ve become, of all things, a people collector.

In my previous life Cyndi and I had across-the-street neighbors, Frank and Carolyn, who as card-carrying people collectors, would never let me sneak from driveway to front door before they hollered out, “Hey Berry, how are you?” I would try to dash past, the same way I try to run into Office Depot or Walmart without the greeters saying “Hi,” but F&C were too true to their nature to let a mere introvert get the best of them. Sometimes they even walked halfway across the street to get my attention.

What made me think about all that was hearing Diana Krall sing these lyrics through my computer this afternoon: “Faithful friends, who are dear to us, draw near to us once more” (courtesy of Pandora’s Christmas Music station).

And just this morning I drew near to a dozen faithful friends for breakfast. We call our Cracker Barrel meals Relationship Labs, pretending that by calling it a lab we are doing something more constructive than eating and making fun of each other for an hour.

It’s a real-life application of Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds … encouraging one another.” In his book, Strengthening Your Grip, Charles Swindoll wrote: “We are to think about ways to stir up each other so that the result is a deeper love for one another and a greater involvement in doing good things for one another.”

The author of Hebrews did us a favor by beginning his admonition with the phrase “and let us consider how;” he left the details up to us. It’s our job to take care of each other. And not casually – but we’re supposed to consider the issue – think about what to do, and evaluate, and do it.

It took me over forty years to understand that I couldn’t change the world as a hermit. I spent too many years running away from people. They made me uncomfortable and I just didn’t want to bother being sociable. I was content to stay in my cave and read and write, coming out only occasionally to teach a class before retreating back inside. But one day it occurred to me that hermits have very little impact on the people around them regardless of writing skills or teaching insights. People’s lives are changed when they let someone live close to them, and I couldn’t be an agent of change unless I become one of those who got close.

And in fact, I’m giving myself too much credit. I wasn’t smart enough to figure this out on my own. I had several highly social friends who wouldn’t leave me alone. Such as Frank and Carolyn, that I already mentioned, and Mark, who wouldn’t let me eat lunch by myself, or Paul, who wouldn’t let me sneak off and pack boxes by myself, or even Darrell, who made me start publishing.

Well, leave it to a writer to over-intellectualize a simple breakfast with friends. Maybe I should just leave it alone – as in, sometimes food is just food.

But the fact is, my life is richer and deeper than it was a few years ago, and these guys are a big part of the reason for the change. Hanging with them is always fun, always strengthening, and always encouraging. I’m blessed to have so many quality men close to my life sharing the trail.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I need your help. If you like this, please share with your friends. You can find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

So I was reading Bone Games, by Rob Schultheis, when I found this: “When you go looking for God, be sure to pack a lunch.”

I liked this phrase immediately. It certainly speaks to my experiences. Sometimes it takes longer to find God than our perfect plan allows, and we might get hungry along the way. Better pack a lunch.

I’ve written about this before – recently, in fact – but one of the ways I look for God is by making changes in the patterns of my life. They don’t have to be giant changes. In fact, they’re usually small incremental changes.

For example, I might switch from running on dirt roads to running on city streets. Or change the route I ride. Or I might try writing on a plain-page journal instead of my regular graph-paper Moleskine. Maybe I’ll even go backpacking on a new trail, or eat in a different Whataburger, or stop wearing jeans for an entire year. And the truth is I’ve made all of these simple changes at one time or another, simply to mix up my patterns and open my eyes.

And I’ve learned to pack a lunch for the trip because I might have to live with my changed self a long time before I find any insight. And since the way or the place I find God usually surprises me completely, I’ve learned to keep moving. Keep expecting.

The most recent change I’ve made concerns my laptop computer. Just last weekend I bought my own MacBook Pro. While I was considering the purchase, Cyndi whispered to Ryan, the nice young man at Simply Mac (who was also one of Cyndi’s former 5^th-grade students), “Berry’s a big Windows guy.” She’s correct. In the context of me, this was a large change.

In the name of change I’m leaning into my new way of life. In fact, this is my first Journal Entry published from my Mac.

I don’t know how far I’ll dive into this experience, but Cyndi has started showing me an assortment of Apple decals to put on my Tacoma. I’m actually considering it. She has her little ways of persuading me to do almost anything.

Here’s the thing. I don’t expect God to reside in my Mac, but I expect God to show Himself to me whenever I go looking for Him, and changing patterns is one of my biggest personal search engines. I have my lunch packed. I am ready for the long haul.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I need your help. If you like this, please share with your friends. You can find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

Cyndi and I spent three nights last week in the Foghorn Harbor Inn in Marina Del Ray, California. It was a fun place to stay; it felt more like a mom-and-pop bed-and-breakfast than a big-time hotel. They even kept a basket full of free snacks in the lobby.

Whenever we travel, Cyndi only books hotels that serve free breakfast, and sure enough this hotel fit her guidelines. We enjoyed our bagels, muffins, and yogurt each morning on the patio with nice view of the sweeping beach. Since we were tucked into a marina and removed from the ocean, the water was smooth and quiet. As was the beach itself. It was sandy and flat and smooth, with no rocks. I’ll admit I haven’t seen a lot of beaches, but this was the most stationary beach/water combination I’ve seen. It was named Mother’s Beach.

Mother’s Beach at Marina Del Ray, California

It was beautiful, and it was peaceful. But it was almost too quiet. I missed the sound of waves against sand and rocks. It wasn’t until I heard the silence that I understood how important the wave music was to my beach experience.

And so I wondered if it was possible for life to be too peaceful. Too static. Can there be real beauty without the energy of movement?

Maybe that’s the wrong question. Of course there can be beauty … as in the beauty of a snow-covered field. But the energy of movement is more important than I had given credit. I missed its presence.

Here is what I wrote about this during a summer vacation near the beaches of Kauai in 2012: The rhythm of the waves crashing into the beach was hypnotic – a cliché’, but true – every wave sounded different from those before and after, yet they all sounded just alike. The earth’s meditative breathing. Add the breeze blowing through palm trees and the result was captivating and peaceful. It’s easy to see how someone could get trapped all day listening to this song.

For fifty years I spent too much of my conscious thought trying to smooth the ripples in my life, trying to find equilibrium. I just knew there had to be an arrangement of career, ministry, relationships, and personal life that looked like Mother’s Beach. Calm, peaceful, and functional.

But while looking at this beach during breakfast I had to admit the water was not inviting me in. And that’s beside the fact that California ocean water is always too cold, even in summer, and this was November. But the very flatness of the water, well, who wants to simply stand in perfectly calm ocean water? Not me. I need waves for entertainment.

However, if I were here with my granddaughter I might see the beach differently. Kids probably love to be in this water, and their parents probably love it even more. (Maybe that’s why they named it Mother’s Beach … mothers love it.) There are no giant waves to knock kids over and pull them under. No rocks to avoid. What could be better than jumping and splashing all day?

Which makes me wonder, again, about my desire for choppier water and noisy waves. Where does that come from? Have I always wanted that, or is it something I’ve grown in to once I stopped being a kid?

My friend Clark introduced me to Edward Abbey’s poem, Benedicto, which begins with this line: “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.” Maybe that’s what I was missing … crooked dangerous views.

I don’t know. I’ve already pushed my observations of beaches further than I should. I’m not enough of a beach guy to have a legitimate opinion. I prefer mountains.

But I know this. I no longer ask God for a calm and peaceful life, the way I did when I was younger. My prayer nowadays is for a life that will pull me toward God, and for the courage and resources to live through the disturbances. I want a life full of energy.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I need your help. If you like this, please share with your friends. You can find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

Do you ever make changes in your life just to stir things up? I don’t mean leaving your spouse or anything goofy like that, but changes in your routine?

I used to resist that sort of crazy talk. I even prided myself for not needing change. But much to my surprise, the older I get, the more I pursue intentional change.

I recently attended a men’s weekend at Bear Trap Ranch near Colorado Springs, and I left there with this as one of my goals: Make some intentional changes in my life and in my routine, to open my ears to God, to make room for ministry expansion, and to have more creative and original thoughts.

I didn’t leave Colorado with a bullet-point list of possible changes, something you might expect, but I knew I needed something different in my life. Change adds energy.

Not changes like tattoos, shaving my head, leaving home to work for an NGO in Pakistan, or buying a Corvette. I don’t need that much. A tiny change in routine may be all it takes to alter my experience of life and move my point of perspective. They’re often the sort of changes no one would ever notice unless I tell them. Yet, even that small bit can open up my heart and eyes to new ideas.

I know from experience if I go somewhere different, away from my regular haunts, even some place familiar as Dallas, I will notice different things and think different thoughts. I learned a formula from Mark Batterson: Change in place plus change in pace equals change in perspective (?P_L + ?P_A = ?P_E), and it works for me even when the new place is not exotic or far away. The smallest change can trigger my imagination.

As I traveled home from Colorado, writing in my journal while comfortably seated in the spacious cabin of Southwest Airlines, the first change I contemplated centered on my computer.

I do almost everything on my computer. You would find it hard to take a photo of me at home in my library that didn’t show me with hands on the keyboard publishing an essay, formatting a book, updating running or cycling logs, crunching family finances, composing lessons for Sunday or Iron Men, or keeping up with friends. So anything regarding my computer is a significant change for me.

The specific change I’m talking about is what type computer I should buy next. My current laptop has become so difficult to use it has lost its place in my heart and I’m ready for a change.

The surprising thing is that, unbelievably, after all my years of making fun of Cyndi and her coven of Apple lovers, I am considering buying a MacBook.

There. I wrote it. It’s on the record.

I’ve received lots of advice from both camps of computer users about whether to switch to a Mac or stay with a Windows machine, and curiously enough, the more certain and adamant the arguer the less likely I am to listen.

The only person who hasn’t weighed in on the discussion is Cyndi, who seldom offers me advice or correction unless I beg for it. Apparently, she’s learned that behavior after being married to me for 34 years. Apparently I’m often more resistant, maybe even stubbornly rebellious, than I intend to be.

One of my Colorado friends, Chuck, the man who talked me over the Mac ledge, might feel compelled to jump into the conversation at this point and say I’m making too much of this lifestyle change. He would say it is nothing but a simple hardware upgrade.

He would be correct. But so am I. I’m not looking primarily to improve computer performance; I’m thinking in terms of identity shift.

I know I’m loading lots of expectation on an operating system and hardware design, something that would hardly register as a huge change in most circles, but in my tiny circle of one, a circle filled with predictable behavior and established routine, even the subtlest of changes can be huge. I would say I’m 90/10 in favor of buying a MacBook Pro for Christmas. Cyndi can’t wait to teach me the secret handshake.

And so, now that I’ve announced my intentions and left the gate open for wild speculation, feel free to offer up what you think I should change next. It should be clear by now I’m up for anything (Neon-colored running shoes? Plant-based diet? Cutting my hair?).

What about you? Is there something in your life you could change just to stir things up? Erich Fromm wrote, “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” Give it a try. Take a small leap.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

If you like this, please share with your friends. Thanks.

Find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

Last Thursday about mid-morning, my right leg started hurting whenever I stood up. It was an overall ache the full length of my quad rather than a specific point like a tear or sprain. And since it only hurt when I stood up, I assumed it was a weight-bearing problem.

I missed yoga class Thursday night because I was delivering a couch to the Burmese church, so no opportunity to stretch out properly, but I was hurting so bad I probably wouldn’t have done much anyway.

Friday morning, Cyndi and I went to Body Pump class, where I quickly discovered the pain was caused by elongation rather than body weight. I could do rows, bicep curls, even squats, but when I tried to lift my hands over my head while standing, clean and press, my leg hurt so bad I almost threw up. Any movement that straightened my leg and extended the hip joint caused intense and immediate pain. Not good.

My personal diagnosis was this went back to my cycling crash last March, even though I’ve had no similar symptoms for five months. At the time of the crash, all the damage to my body seemed to be close to the surface. I never noticed any hip pain or leg pain the entire time off, so I assumed I’d escaped deep injury.

However, it was too coincidental that this new pain originated at the same spot on my hip where I hit the pavement. Maybe the damage spent all that time getting angry, waiting for a change to flare up. Hard to say.

So Friday morning, Cyndi set me up for a massage with Bill at Integrity Massage and he spent the entire hour on my right leg, and most of that on my hip. “Is this it?” he asked, as I came up off the table in a silent scream. “I guess it is.” I knew I would feel worse before I started feeling better. That’s often the nature of healing.

That same afternoon I left for a men’s retreat near Junction, Texas, with several other men from my church. My leg ached the entire three-hour drive down to the retreat center, but it was tolerable. However, I couldn’t walk more than a few steps without hobbling, without pain.

We spent two nights at the retreat center, and I slept little either night. I could never find a comfortable sweet spot for sleeping. It was exhausting. As I flipped side-to-side in my bed trying to find a tolerable position for sleep I prayed, “God, please give me a good night’s sleep since I have to teach tomorrow.”

During one of the long nights it occurred to me how wounds can lay unhealed for a long time. In the past three or four years I have seen God heal some deep heart wounds in my life, some personal, others professional, but all crippling.

In one case, God showed me the answer as I was talking about it to a class of men, even as I told the story from twenty years ago, and He healed it by showing me how two puzzle pieces fit together precisely. Another time, God healed me after 35 years of haunting, first through journaling, and finally by sharing my wounded heart with a friend.

In both cases I thought I was over those wounds years before, and I also felt like I was old enough and mature enough they shouldn’t have bothered me anyway. But they would reawaken and leap into my life at inopportune times.

Friday morning before the retreat, as the massage therapist dug into my hip, I could tell he’d found the damage. Bill kept telling me to relax so he could do his work. I thought I was relaxed until he mentioned it, then I noticed how much tension I was still holding in my leg. You can’t heal without relaxing, but relaxing is harder than it seems. It takes intentional focus to relax a muscle that’s been hurting all day. Our mind keeps it tense to protect it from further damage.

It’s the same with our heart. Our mind keeps it tense to prevent further damage, but to heal we must relax our hurting heart into Jesus. It isn’t easy. It isn’t natural. We have to work at it.

So once I got back home Sunday afternoon I found my bottle of 800mg ibuprofen tablets. I took one of those, and then slept for five hours. It was amazing.

Later, Cyndi asked why I thought I was hurting so bad. I told her my theory about awakening an old unhealed wound that had spent five months laying low and getting angrier.

She smiled and said, “Well, when you started back, you ran and biked TWICE A DAY for the first two weeks. Maybe you overdid it.”

“I don’t think that had much to do with it.”

“I think that had EVERYTHING to do with it,” she said with her eyes if not her voice.

Bummer.

Maybe she’s right, that my original accident had little to do with this present condition. Maybe this is one-hundred percent self-induced, brought on because I refused to listen to advice from the people who love me most.

So many of my sad stories end with the same conclusion … my own failure to follow advice. I wonder if I can do better next time.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

If you like this, please share with your friends. Thanks.

Find me at www.berrysimpson.com, or www.twitter.com/berrysimpson, or http://www.facebook.com/berry.simpson

Last Sunday morning I was at Bear Trap Ranch, near Colorado Springs, waiting for the breakfast line to begin, when I read from my Daily Chronological Bible. I already knew what it would say. I’d been looking forward to that day’s reading for a month. In my Bible, October 20 is the day we get to read about the birth of Jesus. All month long I found myself flipping through the pages to see how much longer I had to wait.

Why was I so anxious? Partly because the language and stories from the Gospels breathe fresh after the hard prophecies from the end of the Old Testament era; partly because I love the Christmas season, love the music, love the movies, love the friendliness and grace that mysteriously overtakes us all, and love the fact that we’re concerned more about what we should give rather what we hope to get; and partly because the cooler air and shorter days bring fresh energy to my daily reading. By October 20 I am more than ready.

So sitting at the couch near one of the few reading lamps in Bear Trap’s dining hall, reading, I stopped on this phrase. It was from what we call The Song of Mary, or The Magnificat:

My soul glorifies the Lord

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior

For He has been mindful of the humble

State of His servant

(Luke 1:46, NIV)

Being the heart-opening nature of the weekend, I was already a little emotionally soft, so I started to tear up as I read those words. I was at a men’s retreat so I didn’t really want to cry before breakfast and give the guys an opportunity to earn their counseling badges on me, but there it was. And as I read the words, what I heard in my heart was the phrase I remembered from long ago, as introduced to me by 14-year-old Adriana in about 1992, when she was singing the role of Mary in a church choir presentation. She sang:

My soul magnifies the Lord

I’ll be honest; this song always breaks me down, no matter who sings is. But that particular morning, the reason I stumbled over those lines was that I realized they described who I want to be.

For all my writing and teaching and talking about journey and calling and purpose and meaning, and if you are around me much you know I talk about those all the time, but the person I want to be, who I want my life and legacy to be, is a man to magnifies the Lord.

Not magnify, as in making the Lord bigger. That’s impossible.

But I want to magnify the Lord, making Him easier to see, making His grace more comfortable to accept, opening His comfort for healing, illustrating His huge strong hands that have a firm grip on me. I want my life and my writing and my teaching to be a continuous stream of, “Hey, take a look at this,” and point directly toward Jesus. I want to describe and reframe and illustrate and illuminate the grace of God through my own experience and my stories.

I will be singing the song in my head for the next week or so, so don’t be surprised if I look a little distant yet surprisingly happy.

It is almost Christmas. Let us all magnify the Lord as we give ourselves away to each other. I am more than ready.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

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