Do you have sacred places, thin
places, where God once spoke to you? Do you ever go back to reconnect?

One day last week I listened to a
Mosaic podcast by Hank Fortner, and he reminded me of one of my favorite Bible
stories – about the time when God stopped the Jordan River so the people could
walk across.

Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet
as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet
touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. (Joshua 3:15-16,
NIV)

Those priests were brave men, walking into a flooded river while
carrying the heavy ark. God didn’t stop the water until they took the
initial risk of stepping in. And if that wasn’t enough, they stayed in the
middle of the river to show the way.

The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord
stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel
passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing. (Joshua 3:17, NIV)

I’ve read that story, even taught
that story, many times through the years, but this time I couldn’t help but
imagine one of those priests sneaking back down to the same spot on the
riverbank, years later, after the conquest was over, and putting his feet in the
water to see if it would stop again.

Maybe he was a little sad that it
didn’t work a second time, but even happier to know it was God who did the
stopping and not his own magic feet. Wouldn’t you rather have God than magic
feet?

I imagine that priest returning
often to put his feet in the water, to feel the coolness, to remember the time
when the river stopped, to relive the moment of God’s power and authority and grace,
allowing the water to draw him closer to God once again. Spoiled to the
supernatural, he wanted more.

There’s more to the story: the
twelve stones.

 So the
Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the
middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites,
as the Lord
had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they
put them down. Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of
the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant
had stood. And they are there to this day…. Joshua said to the Israelites, “In
the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones
mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ (Joshua 4:8 – 22,
NIV)

And so, I imagine my priest starring
at that pile of rocks, a permanent reminder of God’s power. Maybe, when his
life was especially hard, he put his hands on them just to remind himself of
God’s goodness. Maybe he even sat on the ground with his back leaning against
the pile, letting the heat in the rocks soak into his exhausted body, like the
grace of God soaking onto his heart.

I don’t think I’m off base here. In
his phenomenal book, Wild Goose Chase,
Mark Batterson asked: I wonder if Peter ever rowed out to that spot where he
walked on water? Did Zacchaeus ever take his grandchildren back to climb the
sycamore tree? Did Lazarus ever revisit the tomb where he spent four days? Did
Paul ever ride out to the mile marker on the Damascus Road?

Every once in a while we need to go
back to the sacred places and celebrate what God has done. Reconnect to the
supernatural. I’ve done that a few times in my life. I think of it as anchoring
a memory.

One day in 1999 when I was driving back to Midland from a drilling
rig visit, I stopped in Brownfield and changed clothes in a fast food
restaurant parking lot (in the privacy of my car, that is) to run down Highway 137,
one of my first “adult” routes. It was in September 1980, while running down that
very road, the immense responsibility of being a brand new father washed over
me all at once. At the turnaround, I made a commitment to step into the role,
and I was a different man running back home. I returned to Highway 137 nineteen
years later because I wanted to smell the air and remember the texture of a
road that played an important part in my new life as a husband and father.

Another story: One morning in May
2008, at a Wild at Heart Advanced Camp at Crooked Creek Ranch, Colorado, I
returned to a concrete picnic table where God spoke to me in the deepest
emotional experience of my life. I wanted my friend Eric to take a photo so I
wouldn’t forget, or diminish, what happened there. I still look at that photo
often, to remind myself that I didn’t fanaticize the whole story.

How about you? Have you returned to
a sacred place where God once spoke? Have you leaned against the rocks to feel
the heat of God’s grace?

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

I’ll go ahead and say this right up
front: Email makes my life better, richer, and more efficient. It made my dream
of being a widely read writer a reality when I first started publishing weekly
journals back in 1998. But as with all good things, email can also become a
disaster in the wrong hands.

My story begins Monday last week
when I checked email on my phone. Something was amiss. All I saw was a long
string of messages saying, “Mail Delivery Failed.” I had fifty seemingly
identical messages. All day Monday, every time I checked it downloaded a new
set of fifty emails. Message after message, saying, “Mail Delivery Failed.”

It’s true, I’d sent out a group
email the night before, and I often get one or two messages like that because I
type the address wrong or someone changes addresses or whatever, but this was
something else. For one thing, I’ve never sent a group email large enough to
get this many returns. And another thing: when I looked closely at some of the
returns they had addresses I had never heard of. I was under attack.

I also knew it was different from
those email viruses going around that send junk to everyone on your contact
list. None of these returns were from anyone I ever knew. I was getting returns
in Japanese and German and Thai and Arabic. Not my contact list.

When I got home, I went to my laptop,
tagged the returns as junk mail, and deleted the rest of them in my inbox. Then
I went riding, to burn off some of the frustration.

From that point forward, Outlook did
a great job grabbing the incoming returns and stuffing them into junk. By the
time I went to bed Monday night, I had 7,340 messages in my junk folder. It
seemed like a lot. I deleted them all hoping my problems were over.

They weren’t.

For the next couple of days I got
page after page after page of the same “Mail Delivery Failed” messages. They
were all unique, with different bounced email addresses. Outlook sent them all
to my junk folder, but my server cache, wherever that is, filled up so that
friends could no longer send legitimate emails to me since my inbox was too
full.

By Friday morning, the return
message rate had decreased to the point I was once again receiving legitimate
messages from friends. Even my own predictable junk mail from catalogues and
political candidates found a way through. I had stopped deleting the emails in
my junk folder because I wanted to know how many I would receive. Why fight
through an adventure if you can’t quantify the damage, is what I always say.

So here is my diagnosis: Some
scammer, who knows who, who knows where, found my email address and password
and used it to send his spam so that it appeared to originate with me. When the
messages were rejected, either by a canny server or because the address was
stale, they bounced back to me.

My friend and computer go-to guy,
Frank, said it would probably be over in a few days after the spammer moved on
to someone else’s fresh address.

In the meantime, I had been tagged
as a spammer. I was receiving worldwide rejection from people (or, computers) I
would never meet. I only hoped Homeland Security didn’t get one and put me on
their comprehensive
suspicious-character-don’t-let-him-do-anything-especially-fly-on-an-airline
list. I also hoped al-Qaeda didn’t get one, or SPECTRE. Blofeld holds long
grudges.

Well, it’s now over. I didn’t have
to change my email address because of this attack, which made me happy because
I like my address. There are only three people using Stonefoot since we created
it ourselves using the name from one of the giants in The Last Battle from The
Chronicles of Narnia. I would hate to give that up without a fight. Other than
temporarily cluttering my hard drive there was no damage done.

By Friday evening, all I was
receiving was typical standard junk. No new “Mail Delivery Failed” messages.
The final count in my Outlook junk folder was 44,266 emails. Seems like a lot.
It was a reminder there are many things that make my life better that I cannot
control.

Sometimes life throws so much junk
at you, you might as well stop fighting it. Just wait until it tapers off,
delete the records, and start fresh.

QUESTION: What junk are you dealing
with this week? What is filling your inbox?

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

I was considering Sunday’s discussion about a man in the Bible named
Stephen. You can find his story in Acts 6-8.

Stephen’s story took place around A.D. 34-35, shortly after Jesus'
crucifixion. He was a powerful speaker, and go into trouble with the Jewish
authorities because he preached Jesus. He was also exceptionally brave, maybe
audacious.

When he was summoned before
the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court in the land, they asked him if the
charges against him were true. Stephen didn’t even acknowledge their question,
but launched on a 50-verse history lesson, reciting the long list of Jewish rejection
of God in front of the very men who knew this material best.

It would be like lecturing your physics professor about Isaac Newton,
or an Olympic athlete about training, or a Supreme Court Justice about the Bill
of Rights. How long could you go before they shut you down? “Young man, don’t
you dare lecture us on history.”

I don’t know why the proud men of the Sanhedrin let Stephen keep going,
except for this: “All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at
Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” (Acts 6:15,
NIV)

There was obviously
something strange and powerful about Stephen, both in his appearance and in the
way he spoke. People were drawn to him, and sensed an internal strength and
power. Even his enemies recognized his spiritual depth. Maybe that’s what kept
the Sanhedrin quiet during Stephen’s sermon.

However, Stephen isn’t
famous for his sermon, but because he was stoned to death after preaching it.
He was the first martyr recorded in the New Testament. And the narrative
implies one of the ringleaders of Stephen’s death was a man named Saul. He
later became a believer, and his name became Paul.

My real interest in Stephen is this: Was it Stephen’s purpose in life
to make one grand sermon and then die violently in front of Saul?

And the follow-up question: Was that enough?

I write and talk a lot about calling and purpose, and about living
intentionally, but I usually think of that as a life-long adventure. I never consider
it to a one-time flash.

I realize that Stephen did more in his short life than preach this one
sermon. The Bible tells us this about him: “Now Stephen, a man full of God’s
grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people.” (Acts
6:8, NIV)

So it isn’t fair to think his speech before the Sanhedrin was his only
shot at life’s purpose.

Still, the question remains: Was dying in front of Saul worth it? Was
it enough to score a life well lived?

You could argue, yes, it was enough, knowing that Saul would become
Paul, write most of the New Testament, and personally spread the gospel and
plant churches all around the Mediterranean. But at the time of Stephen’s
death, he wasn’t Paul. And he was just beginning as Saul, the great persecutor.
He didn’t become Paul until after Stephen died, so Stephen never saw the true
impact of his death.

How about you? What if your grand purpose in life was to make an impact
on one other person? Would that be enough?

We seldom know the true effect of our life. We may get glimpses, an
occasional Thank You, maybe even a story or two. But I believe we never see
most of the effect of our life beyond bits and pieces.

Is that enough? Can you give your life away with such little feedback?

The answer: Yes, it is enough. We are responsible for the depth of our
ministry; God is responsible for the width. We are responsible to bravely live
our calling in front of people, giving our lives away; God is responsible for
the results.

Living for God with little feedback, fulfilling our purpose anyway, is
the heart of faith. Faith that, if God gave it to us and prepared us for it,
God will also protect it and make it have long-lasting impact.

Stephen’s life and death mattered more than he could have known. We
still study him, 2,000 years later.

And so, your life matters more than you will ever know. Live it out,
boldly, audaciously, in faith.

QUESTION: Are you giving yourself away? Is it enough?

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

What does it take to change the
image you have of yourself? Would you even want to?

My self-image as a cyclist changed
significantly after my foot surgery last spring. I hobbled around on crutches
for seven weeks; when that was over, I was ready to move. Dr. Glass wouldn’t
let me run on my new foot yet, but he did approve cycling. I was so happy to be
doing something, anything, moving, I rode 16 miles every day. Not only was I
regaining fitness, I could feel my pace quickening and my comfort on my bike
improving. I felt like a real cyclist for the first time since I started riding
again.

Then, for some reason, I had an
inspiration to ride 56 miles on my 56^th birthday, which was June
23rd.

Actually, I’ve had a long-standing
dream to run my birthday, but there was no way I could run 56 miles, foot
surgery or not. And even if I could, running that far in Texas in the June heat
would be crazy. I’d have to do it all at night, and where would I go? At the
track – 224 laps?

But biking 56 miles seemed doable. Just
a small stretch.

The previous summer I rode 50 miles with
Todd, Kara, and David, my first big ride after buying my Specialized. But I
didn’t follow it up with any more long rides. Since then, my furthest rides had
all been in the 25-mile range.

So riding 56 miles was a significant
increase (124%), but once the idea rooted in my consciousness, I couldn’t shake
it off. What was the worst thing that could happen? My legs could crater and I’d
have to sit down beside the road and wait for a ride home. But I would have my
phone to call for help and my iPod for entertainment, so the risk seemed
minimal.

Friday morning, birthday-eve, I rode
out-and-back on 191, with one excursion up to Greentree, and another on Billy
Hext. I had to stop and fix one flat at Cornerstone Church, and I took a
well-deserved break at the Stripes Convenient Store. By the time I got home, I
had actually ridden 58 miles. Happy birthday to me.

My average speed for the day was
13.13 mph. Not fast, but not terrible, either.

The thing is, that ride changed me.
I realized the limits I’d set for myself were way too short. I was capable of
much more. I saw myself in an entirely different category. I had changed my
image.

Still full of myself, and confident
in my superhuman strength, I rode 45 miles the next Friday, this time averaging
14.6 mph. I know the average speed thing is not an exact measure of effort or
fitness since it depends on wind and temperature, but it is the only real
indicator I can measure and compare.

Again, the ride felt good, and I
wasn’t especially sore or tired when I got home. I learned I could work very
hard for three hours straight, pushing my legs, lungs, and heart, and still
feel good the rest of the day.

Since then, through the summer, I
rode another five or six rides in the fifty-mile range, some with friends
(Cory, and Todd), but mostly by myself. And my average speeds have crept above
15 mph, which used to be my major goal for much shorter rides. I am looking
forward to more giant leaps forward in the months/years to come. If I can ride
50, I can ride 100. If I can ride 100, I can ride around the world.

So what’s the point in writing about
all this?

Because we all get stuck in our
present selves, afraid to move forward, afraid to take risks, afraid to change.
It happens to me all the time. I only wrote about cycling because that was an easy
change. I’m afraid to write about things that are hard. Things like changing my
image as a husband, a parent, a teacher, a follower of Jesus.

How about you? What image do you
need to change? Maybe all it would take is a 124% step up. It’s risky. You
might fail. But failing isn’t so bad … just keep your phone nearby so you can
call for help

QUESTION: Which image do you need to
change? How can you make a big step forward?

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

I have been reading a book (I know,
big surprise), a father-son memoir by Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez titled, Along
the Way.

I picked it up because of their
movie, The Way, the story of a father walking the Camino de Santiago
in Spain to connect with his deceased son. They wrote the book a couple of
years after making the movie, and I read it because I wanted to go deeper

This sort of thing happens to me a
lot. I’ll see a movie, hear an interview, or listen to a podcast, and then go
hunting for more information. I don’t think it’s more detail or more history
that I want, just more insight and understanding. If something causes my heart
to vibrate or my brain to ruminate, I naturally want to go deeper. Who doesn’t?

So, back to the movie. After their
visit to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the traditional end of the Camino,
the story follows our pilgrims into an office next door. They are entitled to
receive a diploma certifying they have completed the 500-mile hike, joining
other pilgrims who’ve been making this journey for more than 1,000 years. One
of the requirements is to answer a question for the official record: “What is
your reason for walking the Camino?”

This, by the way, is not the same as
asking, “What is your quest?” That’s a destination question. “What is your
reason?” is a motivation question.

In the movie, Tom, played by Martin
Sheen, stammered a bit before saying something like, “I needed to travel more.”
He was a bit embarrassed that his answer was so trivial and that he couldn’t
articulate his real reasons. Sheen later wrote that he was personally confronted
with the same question once he got back home to Malibu, after the movie was
finished. “What is your reason …?”

I think it was the most important
question of the entire memoir. Maybe THE QUESTION of all memoirs. Of all
writing.

Well, as it turns out, I cannot read
a memoir without putting myself into every story. Maybe that’s too self-serving
to think about myself while reading someone else’s book, but isn’t that the
point of all memoir writing? An author tells his personal stories hoping the
reader will connect with their own stories, and so author and reader learn
together?

That’s certainly why I write.

When I read the question in Along
the Way, I knew that for me it was about life and loving and God, my
journey with Cyndi, my changing relationship with my dad and my mom, my years
as a writer and a teacher, my decades as an engineer, my role as father and
father-in-law and grandfather, and even my current stint as Uncle Hub. Those
are all parts of my own personal pilgrimage, my Camino.

And my immediate answer to the
question, without thinking or blinking, an answer that surprised me in its
simplicity and clarity, yet made complete sense as the words rolled through my
brain, was this: Further up and further in. It’s a phrase from The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis’s final book
in The Chronicles of Narnia.

I don’t know how Lewis intended the
phrase to be interpreted, but I think of further up in regards to knowledge and
wisdom, and further in in regards to relationships. I want to go further up –
learn more, know more, experience more, live more, and study more. I want to go
further in – love more, feel more, and understand more. I want more of both.
That’s why I’m walking.

But that can’t be the end of it. As
Erwin McManus wrote, “Your life can never be simply about you.”

So, my real reason? To bring a crowd
as we go further up and further in together. To pull back the curtain and show
a bigger, wider, deeper, and longer view of God’s world. To enjoy the
companionship of fellow travelers.

As the movie tagline says, “Life is
too big to walk it alone.” It make me happy to know many of you are walking
alongside.

QUESTION: What is your reason? What
is your Camino?

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

by Berry Simpson

“To give anything less than your best
is to sacrifice the gift.” Legendary American track star and Olympian, Steve
Prefontaine, said this about running, but the sentiment applies to anything we
are called to do.

I’m sorry to admit, I doubt I’ve
ever committed my absolute best to anything. In fact, maybe I don’t even know
my best when I see it. I hope I will, someday, when I finally grow up.

On the other hand, it is part of my
personality to learn as much as I can digest about anything I undertake,
whether writing, teaching, running, cycling, marriage, or theology. In fact,
knowing that about me is one reason I hesitate before taking on a new project;
I know how much time and effort it will cost. It usually surprises me when
other people don’t feel the same way.

For example, I once served twelve
years as an elected city official, and I was continually baffled that not all
my fellow councilmembers would make time to go to conferences and training to
hear what the most innovative cities were doing. How could they hope to serve
people if their only government wisdom came from what they already knew? No
wonder we often ended up with small-minded solutions. To be uninterested about
learning seemed lazy, at best, arrogant and self-serving, at worst. It’s
sacrificing the gift.

Sorry. I started this by writing
about calling.

God's calling (or assignment, or gifting, or special talent) is not a
ticket for a free ride, but an obligation to go to work. But when we work hard
to develop the calling God has given us, it isn’t onerous. It might be hard,
but it comes with joy and fullness.

To have a special gift as a teacher,
for example, doesn’t mean teaching will be easy, it means we have more to live
up to. It isn’t a free ride; it’s a noble obligation. Not because God needs our
help to make sure he gets the results he wants, but because we owe God our
best. How dare we toss something out there half-baked and expect it to be OK
because “it is for God.”

Simply making a joyful noise is not
enough. I want to play the right notes, in tune, with joy in my heart. I want
to write the best books and essays that I can. I don’t want to meet God someday
only to find him holding one of my books, saying, “I gave you those great insights
and the desire to write them out and publish them, but you blew it with bad
grammar and tacky typesetting. What were you thinking?”

There is a Bible story about the aging King David, who was giving advice
his successors. He told his son, Solomon, "Be strong and courageous, and
do the work. Do not be afraid … He will not fail you." (1 Chronicles
28:20 NIV) The phrase that stopped me in my tracks was "Do the work."
Just like Solomon, we have to do the work, take the training, practice the
craft, risk rejection, and cultivate expert opinions, every day.

Social researcher Brene’ Brown
wrote, “It was clear to me that living a wholehearted life included engaging in
what many people I interviewed called meaningful work. Others spoke of
having a calling. We all have gifts and talents. When we cultivate those gifts
and share them with the world, we create a sense of meaning and purpose in our
lives.” (The Gifts of Imperfection)

She also wrote, “Squandering our
gifts brings distress to our lives. If we don’t use the gifts that we’ve been given,
we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our
talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and
weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame,
disappointment, fear, and even grief.”

Here’s another thought, from Wide Awake, by Erwin McManus: “The world
desperately needs the power of your life fully lived. You have no greater
responsibility than to live the life God created you to live … your life can
never be simply about you.”

So in the spirit of vulnerability, here
is what I believe in my heart. I believe I have books in me that will change lives,
which will draw readers into a closer relationship with God, and encourage
readers to pursue their love. What I don’t know is which book will do all of
that. Maybe I have to publish a dozen books, clearing the slate and opening my
mind, before I’m smart enough and skilled enough to get down to the book God
will use.

Therefore, I feel obligated to read
the clever writers, study the best writing advice, learn about publishing and
marketing, and recruit professionals to help me. To do anything less would be
to sacrifice the gift.

How about you? Using your gifts and
talents to create meaningful work takes a tremendous amount of commitment,
because in most cases the meaningful work is not what pays the bills. Most of
us have to piece it together. But we all have to do the work.

QUESTION: What skills or projects do
you feel compelled to improve? Do they add meaning to your life? Does improving
them bring you joy?

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

by Berry Simpson

“To give anything less than your best
is to sacrifice the gift.” Legendary American track star and Olympian, Steve
Prefontaine, said this about running, but the sentiment applies to anything we
are called to do.

I’m sorry to admit, I doubt I’ve
ever committed my absolute best to anything. In fact, maybe I don’t even know
my best when I see it. I hope I will, someday, when I finally grow up.

On the other hand, it is part of my
personality to learn as much as I can digest about anything I undertake,
whether writing, teaching, running, cycling, marriage, or theology. In fact,
knowing that about me is one reason I hesitate before taking on a new project;
I know how much time and effort it will cost. It usually surprises me when
other people don’t feel the same way.

For example, I once served twelve
years as an elected city official, and I was continually baffled that not all
my fellow councilmembers would make time to go to conferences and training to
hear what the most innovative cities were doing. How could they hope to serve
people if their only government wisdom came from what they already knew? No
wonder we often ended up with small-minded solutions. To be uninterested about
learning seemed lazy, at best, arrogant and self-serving, at worst. It’s
sacrificing the gift.

Sorry. I started this by writing
about calling.

God's calling (or assignment, or gifting, or special talent) is not a
ticket for a free ride, but an obligation to go to work. But when we work hard
to develop the calling God has given us, it isn’t onerous. It might be hard,
but it comes with joy and fullness.

To have a special gift as a teacher,
for example, doesn’t mean teaching will be easy, it means we have more to live
up to. It isn’t a free ride; it’s a noble obligation. Not because God needs our
help to make sure he gets the results he wants, but because we owe God our
best. How dare we toss something out there half-baked and expect it to be OK
because “it is for God.”

Simply making a joyful noise is not
enough. I want to play the right notes, in tune, with joy in my heart. I want
to write the best books and essays that I can. I don’t want to meet God someday
only to find him holding one of my books, saying, “I gave you those great insights
and the desire to write them out and publish them, but you blew it with bad
grammar and tacky typesetting. What were you thinking?”

There is a Bible story about the aging King David, who was giving advice
his successors. He told his son, Solomon, "Be strong and courageous, and
do the work. Do not be afraid … He will not fail you." (1 Chronicles
28:20 NIV) The phrase that stopped me in my tracks was "Do the work."
Just like Solomon, we have to do the work, take the training, practice the
craft, risk rejection, and cultivate expert opinions, every day.

Social researcher Brene’ Brown
wrote, “It was clear to me that living a wholehearted life included engaging in
what many people I interviewed called meaningful work. Others spoke of
having a calling. We all have gifts and talents. When we cultivate those gifts
and share them with the world, we create a sense of meaning and purpose in our
lives.” (The Gifts of Imperfection)

She also wrote, “Squandering our
gifts brings distress to our lives. If we don’t use the gifts that we’ve been given,
we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our
talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and
weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame,
disappointment, fear, and even grief.”

Here’s another thought, from Wide Awake, by Erwin McManus: “The world
desperately needs the power of your life fully lived. You have no greater
responsibility than to live the life God created you to live … your life can
never be simply about you.”

So in the spirit of vulnerability, here
is what I believe in my heart. I believe I have books in me that will change lives,
which will draw readers into a closer relationship with God, and encourage
readers to pursue their love. What I don’t know is which book will do all of
that. Maybe I have to publish a dozen books, clearing the slate and opening my
mind, before I’m smart enough and skilled enough to get down to the book God
will use.

Therefore, I feel obligated to read
the clever writers, study the best writing advice, learn about publishing and
marketing, and recruit professionals to help me. To do anything less would be
to sacrifice the gift.

How about you? Using your gifts and
talents to create meaningful work takes a tremendous amount of commitment,
because in most cases the meaningful work is not what pays the bills. Most of
us have to piece it together. But we all have to do the work.

QUESTION: What skills or projects do
you feel compelled to improve? Do they add meaning to your life? Does improving
them bring you joy?

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

As runners, “We never know what is
going to be our Last Best Day. The race that turns out to be our Last Best Day
can’t be recognized in the moment, it can be seen only in retrospect.” That’s
what I read last weekend from John
Bingham’s most recent book, Accidental
Athlete. It probably applies to more than running.

My Last Best Race was a race I
didn’t actually finish. I dropped out. In fact, it’s more accurate to say the
race director pulled me off the course because it was obvious I couldn’t finish
before the time cutoff. It was the Rockledge
Rumble 50K; a trail run in Grapevine that I did with Chad in November 2010.
I made it about twenty-two miles before being encouraged to stop.

Why would I say a race I couldn’t
finish was my Last Best Race? Because it was so much fun. I loved running
through the trees and on the uneven dirt trails, the uphills and downhills, and
winding in and out. I simply loved it. Other than the discomfort from running
so far, I was happy every step of the way. It made my heart happy and I wanted
more. Even though I didn’t finish, I ended the day invigorated.

As a man firmly entrenched in my
50s, I’ve come to grips with the fact that, at least as a runner, my
improvement days are behind me. Oh, maybe I could do something to make my knees
work better, like replace them with a bionic pair, but I doubt it would get me
another 3:52 marathon, my personal best from twenty-five years ago.

I’m not complaining. I don’t mind
the limitations of age. I’m happy to be running and moving as well as I do.
And, in fact, getting older takes some of the pressure off. Now I can simply
take the miles as they come and enjoy myself, settle in and have fun moving
down the road.

So back to the Rockledge Rumble. I
didn’t resent being pulled off the course that day. The race director did the
right thing. But what bothered me on the drive home was the possibility that I’d
waited too many years to try running a 50K trail run, waited until both knees
hurt from arthritis, and that I wasted all those younger years because I was unprepared,
too slow, or too heavy. In my 20s, 30s, and 40s I was afraid of the wrong
things. I should have been more worried about not squandering my youth.

Of course, I can’t get any of that
back, but neither do I have to accept that my best days are behind me. I can still
do better. I can go further. And I have one big strategy to make my knees feel
better that will cost me nothing. Lose weight down to 175 pounds.

I don’t know if that is even
possible. I haven’t weighed 175 since 1974, but that’s where the height and
weight charts point me for maximum performance, so I think I should try.

The reason I think it will help is
that I feel the added strain on my knees whenever I walk across the training
room at Gold’s Gym with weights in my hand. I can feel it with every step. That
tells me I should reduce the strain even more by losing twenty-five pounds.

There is no way to know if losing
twenty-five pounds will translate into further or faster, or even less pain,
but it would be a shame to look back twenty years from now and wonder why I
never tried and why I squandered the youth of my 50s.

I should mention the reason I am
writing about this. Normally, if I have a goal as un-hide-able as losing
twenty-five pounds, I’ll keep it to myself. I would rather no one know what I
was doing until I have successfully completed the goal instead of everyone
watching my progress, or lack of progress.

But John Bingham’s book wasn’t the
only book I read last weekend. I also finished The
Gifts of Imperfection, by Brene’ Brown, and her
call for living vulnerably made sense to me. The first vulnerable action I
could think of was to make my goal public and risk the scrutiny and judgment
from the outside world. So, here I am.

Two last quotes, one from each book:

“Running has become an act of faith.
Running allows me to believe that there is something better out there for me.
Running allows me to believe that I can be not just a better runner but a
better person.” (Accidental Athlete)

“Recognizing and leaning into the
discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude, and grace.”
(The Gifts of Imperfection)

So that is my plan. To be a leaner,
lighter, and better person who lives with joy, gratitude, and grace. Care to
join me? Maybe we can run out Last Best Race together.

QUESTION: When was your Last Best
Race? What goals are you nervous to make public?

PS: Check out Brene’ Brown’s TED
talks, from June
2010 and March 2012.
They are life changing.

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

by Berry D Simpson

Is it always bad to worry about
stuff? People say that 90% of what we worry about never happens, but isn’t that
an argument in favor of worry? As for me, I worry about things all the time.
It’s just that I do my worrying on the inside, to myself, so it isn’t obvious
to everyone else.

I recently attended Pantego Bible
Church with my daughter and son-in-law, Katie and Drew, and in their Community Group
(I would call it Sunday School), we talked about our tendency to worry, and
about Jesus’ admonition from Matthew 6.

 “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about
your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more
than clothes? Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry
about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (from Matthew 6:25 and
34, NIV)

The problem I have with this verse
is that I don’t know how to stop worrying on command. To tell me to stop
worrying is like Cyndi telling me to “just relax” when we’re dancing. If I
could relax on purpose I would be relaxed already. Likewise, if I could simply
stop worrying, I would. I need a strategy, an activity to do, in place of
worry. Maybe it’s the same for you.

So the very next Monday morning I
read a great follow-up to our Sunday discussion about worry, from

Jesus
Calling, by Sarah Young: “Sit quietly
in My presence while I bless you. Make your mind like a still pool of water,
ready to receive whatever thoughts I drop into it. Calmly bring matters to me …
then simply do the next thing.”

Sarah Young gave two good strategies
for handling worry, the first was contemplative meditation. She said that instead
of trying to solve all the problems and work it out myself, I should settle my
mind and let God drop his thoughts inside. Wait for him to speak.

Here’s how it works for me. When I’m
buried by worries I often find myself praying, “Lord I don’t know what to do
with this, my attitude stinks, so I’m asking you to speak to me.” Then I start
writing in my journal, creating a dialogue, even argument, with myself, going
over all the worries I’ve had, and listing my own crazy solutions.

It’s important for me to physically
write these down on paper. Just thinking about them, or even talking about
them, doesn’t do the same thing. Over and over God speaks to me while I am
writing, while I have my pen in my hand scratching on paper. When I finish I’ve
written out ideas and solutions that had never occurred to me before I started
writing.

Another thing that happens: Sometimes
I hear from God directly. I would say I hear an audible voice but that’s too spooky
to put into print. But it happens in the most unlikely of places, such as in
the stairwell at my office, or cycling down Highway 191, or running on the dirt
roads near my house, or even in the shower at Gold’s Gym. It never comes all at
once and the solution is never what I expected, but there is no mistaking God
as the source.

Those two scenarios (writing in my
journal or hearing God’s voice) have happened so often I’ve grown to expect
them. Instead of worrying on my own, I’ve learned to relax into the process and
trust that God will indeed, speak to me again.

Curiously, this reminds me of when I
started reading Tom Clancy. With the first book, Hunt for Red October, I fell
into a predictable pattern: (1) I struggled through the first third of the book
trying to learn the characters and keep up with the threads; until (2) I
realized Clancy would remember the characters I needed to know so I relaxed and
enjoyed the middle third of the book; but (3) I would lay awake in bed half the
night trying to solve the rest of the puzzle and save the world. Eventually I
reminded myself that Clancy was better at figuring out the solution than I was,
and besides, he had already written the book. So I got out of bed and finished
the last third of the book that night. I let the expert tell me his story
instead of trying to figure it out myself. Instead of losing sleep worrying, I
lost sleep reading, which was much better.

And while you might think I would
remember this solution with the next Clancy book and avoid the sleepless nights,
I never did. I repeated the same entire sequence of trying to do it myself before
letting the expert handle it. At least a dozen times.

This is how I’ve learned to trust
God. When I find myself paralyzed with worry over an upcoming choice or
conversation or confrontation, I have to remind myself to trust the expert. God
has already worked out the story. Just let him tell me the details in his own
good time.

I wish I could say I remember this whenever
a new problem comes up, but I don’t. I repeat the same sorry sequence of trying
to do it myself before, finally, writing and listening and letting the expert
handled it.

Back to Sarah Young’s advice,
“Calmly bring matters to me (God) … then simply do the next thing.”

This is the tricky part. If I ask
God to speak to me, and I ask him to change my heart, I’m obligated to step
gingerly through the next opening, next idea, next pattern, or next attitude.
Seeking God only works if I’m willing to step through his openings into his
solutions.

QUESTION: How about you, how do you
cope with worry?

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

by Berry D Simpson

Not sure if you’ve noticed this, but I don’t need a lot of change in my
life. For example, I just bought a pickup and gave my old one to my son. The
new truck is a red Toyota Tacoma, exactly like my first one except newer and
with fewer miles. My pens and books and tie-down ropes and fleece jackets (for
Cyndi) all fit in exactly the same places. A new truck exactly like my old
truck … made me very happy. Like I said, I don’t need a lot of change.

Another example? I tend to leave things alone. I’ve never done much
remodeling in the places where I live. I might become obsessive while designing
a space, going over the details and options for way too long, but once the
space is built and I’ve moved in, I’ happy to leave it as it is from now on. That’s
true for houses, my work space and desk, my closet, my pickup, and true for my
yard and landscaping.

It isn’t that I am afraid of the process. I built a wall in our garage
in Brownfield, creating a nice utility room, and I built a wall and changed
closets in our house on Whittle Way, providing more useful space for both Byron
and Katie. But that’s about it for home remodeling. I haven’t needed or wanted
to change anything else.

Regarding landscaping, I’ve only changed our yard once, when we replaced
turf grass with ground cover in 1998. I suppose I did recreate our back yard
once, but that was more recovery than remodeling since our pet rabbits ate all
the grass down to the dirt and we had to start over.

All that is to say, I like things, in general, the way they are. Which
is usually the same as the way they were.

However, I’ve also learned to embrace the energy that change brings.
For me, one of the joys of aging is that I don’t resist change as much as I
used to. I may not initiate it, but I look forward to it. I’ve finally grown up
enough that I like to try new things and learn new skills and new ideas. I
don’t want to become that cranky “you kids get off my lawn” guy.

Granted, my personal vision of life change is mostly made up of
slightly newer versions of what I am already doing. Nothing radical. I’m hardly
an early-adopter. And certainly, I don’t make changes simply for the purpose of
changing. I need a better reason than that.

But even the few things I’ve changed aren’t such a big deal. Living
space is just wood and concrete, landscaping is just plants and trees, new
exercise programs are just more opportunities to sweat and buy new gear.

The reason I’m writing about something I don’t do much of, is, the
title of my next book, which should be out this fall, will be Remodeled: Stories from a Changed Heart.
Because of the title, I have been playing around with the notion of remodeling.
And the remodeling I’m most concerned with is the reshaping of my heart.

Each time I tell my story to the guys, something I do a half dozen
times a year, I’m more aware of how Jesus has remodeled my heart, making it
into his home. Not with hammer, nails, or sheetrock and paint, but with
adventures and tragedies and writing and teaching. And with Cyndi. The biggest
tool Jesus has for remodeling my heart into his image is the influence of Cyndi
living alongside me.

In fact, I’ve changed more than I thought I needed to. Having grown up
in church among a devout and faithful Christian family, I assumed if my heart
needed changing it would be only small increments. I never figured I’d need serious
remodeling.

This week I noticed the remodeling project going on at the Burger King restaurant on
Andrews Highway
in Midland. Have you seen it? The sign out front says “Closed
for remodel,” but all that is left of the original structure is a pile of
broken concrete. They are remodeling the building all the way down to the dirt,
stretching the word “remodel” way beyond its original meaning.

Is that how Jesus remodels our hearts? While we are cruising along
through life thinking all we need is a small touch-up, does Jesus notice our
foundation is shot and he has to start over from scratch? I don’t know if it
always has to be that severe, but I’m sure I wouldn’t change at all if Jesus
didn’t make it happen.

So here is my challenge. Ask Jesus to remodel your heart into his
image. Give him access to all your hidden closets and attic space and
landscaping. Know that it will be messy and dusty and, like all remodeling
projects, take longer than you expected. Trust that in the process of being
changed his grace will flow through you into the lives of your family and
friends. Be brave. Embrace the change.

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

Journal Entry 083012: Remodeled