Month: January 2024

Posted on

There’s no Business Like Snow Business

In the last week or so here in the DC area, we’ve had the most snow we’ve had in a couple of years. Though it’s just about completely gone by now, the snow and accompanying cold snap we’ve had has got me thinking of days gone by when I spent more time in the snow.

I took up the sport of cross-country skiing when I was in college. I took a half-credit class my Freshman year, and man, did I enjoy it. After I got bit by the bug, I got a job repairing/maintaining the school’s skis (which meant I could take them out whenever I wanted), I went out and bought my own skis, and I spent a lot of time skiing around the college’s cross-country running trails. I can only remember cutting class once in college, and it was to go out XC skiing on new fallen snow on a Friday afternoon.

One of the things I liked so much about cross-country skiing was the mobility I had in places I wouldn’t otherwise go. When you couple that freedom with the peacefulness that’s out there in nature, with sounds muffled by the snow, it was something I enjoyed very much.

Well, I need to tell you about a dopey move I made on skis. The college I attended had its own mini ski slope. It wasn’t anything major, but it was great for teaching people who have never gone downhill skiing before. For those that aren’t familiar, these are two very different types of skiing. Downhill skiing is the stuff you do when you get all bundled up and ride on chair lifts, and cross-country skiing is the stuff that NordicTrack tries to simulate. This ski slope had a green circle (bunny slope) to teach students the basics, a blue square to give students more room and a steeper slope to try out their skills, and a black diamond (more of a blue square plus) with a still steeper slope to let students pick up some greater speed.

One night a buddy and I wanted to go take advantage of the fresh powder that had just fallen. One of the best places to go was near the ski slope. The ski slope was closed and there were no lights in the area, but after being out in the dark for awhile my eyes adjusted, especially with the snow making things brighter.

Now cross-country skiing isn’t exactly the most relaxing sport. You’re doing a lot of work; you’re always either kicking with the skis or pushing with the poles. Since you’re the one providing the propulsion, the sound and cadence of skis and poles moving through the snow are ever present. That constant effort makes you really appreciate the free trip you get when going down hills, and it can seem almost otherworldly to glide down a hill without all the noise.

The powder on this occasion was deep enough that it prevented me from building up a lot of speed. It was just the right depth that I could go sailing straight down the main ski slope without bombing down the hill at a breakneck pace, something you don’t normally get to experience on cross-country skis. Only the front tips of the skis stuck out of the snow, and as they blazed trails through the unspoiled powder, snow the consistency of powdered sugar sprinkled with salt caved back in on the skis and covered them, all while I moved down the hill with no more than a gentle swishing sound. It was a delightfully serene moment I wanted to capture as best as I could.

I had my camera with me (back when people carried cameras but not phones), and even though I knew it wouldn’t do justice to the real thing, I wanted to try. I took out my camera and turned it on, and looked through the viewfinder (remember those?) to get the view of my skis that I wanted. I pressed the button, and a brilliant flash from the camera, which then reflected off a totally white surface, blinded my perfectly adjusted night vision as I continued straight down the hill.

Very quickly I realized there was a decision I had to make. There were trees, machinery, and other stuff at the bottom of the hill that I could crash into and get seriously hurt, but I figured I would probably miss it all. My vision might even come back early enough for me to make out any dangers before I got close to them. I could also start turning across the slope to buy myself some time for my vision to return, but then I would be heading toward some trees for sure. Cross-country skis don’t turn as easily as downhill skis, especially in powder, so that would also be an action that would benefit from being able to see.

Well, I probably could’ve made it to the bottom safely, but the choice seemed to be all risk and no reward, especially considering how soft it would be to fall down in that much powder. I intentionally fell over and waited until I stopped seeing stars. My serene moment was fun while it lasted, but it ended when I slumped down into a frozen white blanket until I could see again.

It’s a pretty unremarkable picture if there’s no context

Whatever the weather’s like where you are, I hope you’re healthy and well, that the first month of the new year has been treating you right, and that in the coming weeks you get some weather you enjoy.

Posted on

There’s No Getting Out of It; Primary Season is Here

Well, political primary season is here. Despite what it may seem, I don’t really like putting political posts on the blog, but sometimes I feel like it’s important to put information out there that doesn’t get much attention.

Here’s the bottom line up front: Primaries can be more important than general elections, so it’s very important that you study up on the candidates and participate in the process. It almost seems inevitable that we’re headed for a rematch on the Presidential ballot, but that’s only the most prominent part of a very large picture. It’s also important to consider the Representatives, Senators, and local officials you’re choosing to compete later in this cycle. If a district is solid red or solid blue, the November election is more or less a foregone conclusion. The actual decision point, where voter turnout matters, is going to be the primary election that selects which candidate subsequently appears in the general election. If you’re not voting in the primary, you’re really just letting someone else determine who gets into office. This is especially important for those of you that vote Democrat.

Here’s what I mean. The Democratic Party of today in almost no way resembles what it used to be. The values are different. Now it’s nonsensical and extreme. Don’t feel like you need to completely buy into what they’re putting into their national platform, which seems like it’s a contest to see who can be the craziest. Despite what you feel like you’ve been told, it’s perfectly acceptable to be a Democrat that wants secure borders. Even though the media doesn’t want you to think this way, it’s also totally fine to be a Pro-Life Democrat. Forget what the party platform says; I know there are plenty of Democratic voters out there that think “no, boys should not be able to compete in girls’ events by saying they’re girls.” They’ve become the party of sowing division, rather than unity. How is that good for Americans? What happened to this party? The state we’re in is a result of primaries selecting extremists whose views represent only a small percentage of the actual base. You didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left you during its leftward march. It’s up to you to take back your party.

While obviously there are problems on both sides of the aisle, the problems listed above are Democrat-owned. Republicans are trying to solve them but don’t have enough bipartisan support, either at the national level or at the local level (including school boards, in some cases). I’m not saying you have to vote Republican. Don’t worry, even if we find common ground on these few issues, there’s still plenty to distinguish the two parties!

If you’re not voting in the Democratic primary for candidates that are more centrist and less extremist, you’re probably going to find yourself stuck between voting for a Republican and voting for an extremist Democrat in November. Come November, there are a lot of people that vote only on the basis of whether the candidate has a “(D)” or an “(R)” next to their name and don’t know the actual positions of the candidate, and that’s dangerous.

There’s a lot of posturing politicians have to do with regard to taking hard-line stances against the opposing party when they’re in front of the cameras, and I understand that. Members of all parties are supposed to work together, though. They don’t have to be friends, they just have to work together. Right now the political atmosphere is one of tangible hatred, and that’s not going to get us to a better place than we are right now.

Do your homework. Find the primary candidates in your district’s election that align with your values and vote for them. Take back your party, and let’s hold our elected officials accountable.

Posted on

You Might Be Surprised To Hear This, But Men and Women are Different

(If you’ve got an extra minute or two, have a read over the diary entry below. If not, feel free to skip it.)

We’ve all got quirks. They start when we’re young, but they don’t always resolve themselves as we get older (sometimes they become magnified). I think this becomes most evident in long-term relationships.

My wife and I have been married for over 17 years now. We definitely have quirks of our own. Some of them are stereotypical for men and women, others are maybe more specific to us as individuals. By way of example, if I’m looking for something specific in the refrigerator, I can open the door and turn the fridge upside down trying to find it, even looking right at it multiple times, and still not see it. Then my wife comes along and with a “seriously?!” expression, homes in on it in under a second and a half. At the same time, she can have a song in mind, and it sounds just like the real thing inside her head, but when she tries to hum it, no matter what it is, it always comes out sounding like Smooth Criminal.

I’m blessed to have a spouse that’s pretty easy for me to be married to. Even so, we have to deal with differences of opinion, different perspectives, and quirks in general. She’s very patient and polite when I hear a random voice inflection or odd combination of words or music notes that somehow reminds me of a movie scene from my childhood, or some bizarre scenario reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, and then I take an unreasonable amount of time to provide the context and summary of that scene or comic, which ends up being pretty unremarkable.

While not true in all cases, by and large, men tend to have a more compartmentalized mental arrangement as they go about their day. If you could peek inside our brains, you might see our conscious focus addressing only one thing at a time. There’s the wakeup routine. Then comes the commute. Then he’s at work, thinking about work stuff. Afterwards he has to run errands on the way home. All of those things tend to stay within their respective zones without much bleedover unless some sort of unusual circumstance affects things. My mind works this way most of the time, and is very helpful when it’s time to put certain things on hold. When I leave work, it’s time to stop thinking about work. When it’s time to sleep, I stop thinking about stuff and I’m usually out within two minutes of closing my eyes.

Women, on the other hand (again, not in every case, but more often than not), have “spaghetti brains.” There are no different sections of the brain that conscious thought is split into. It is literally everything, everywhere, all at the same time. There are individual lines of thought that touch on wildly vacillating topics. One may lead to the next, but they may just as easily have nothing to do with each other. All of the following thoughts can occur within the same minute: “Where did I put that thingy I don’t need anymore?” “I can’t believe Charlotte thought I took her yellow sweater in 7th grade; I should look her up and see if she’s sorry.” “Puppies!” “Don’t forget to pick up snacks for the kids’ soccer team.” “LAUNDRY.” “I’d eat a bug if they let me sleep in tomorrow.” “My bra hates me.” “Lose weight, lose wei…CANDY!” “Children are a gift of joy wrapped in toil.” “Organize 1,087,017 pictures into a slide show.” “The check engine light came on.” It’s a constant barrage of swirling and churning thoughts that would bring me to my knees. My wife and I can go to bed at the same time, but she’ll be awake much longer than I am because a lot of those thoughts need to fizzle out before sleep comes.

You can imagine that the communication styles of these two vastly different brain structures also require some give and take. I can do some multitasking, but I prefer to focus on one thing at a time. If I have an idea about something else while I’m working on my main task, I write down the other thing or email it to myself, so that I can focus harder on it when I have an opportunity. In conversations, I look for transitions to help prompt me that we’re moving on from one topic to a different one. I find that sometimes I’m ill-equipped to handle my wife’s communication needs. She can unleash a conversational stream of consciousness that I can’t possibly follow along with, covering a myriad of topics in a single breath. I struggle to see the connection between the different topics we’re zooming through. If I had a video of myself trying to keep up, I think I’d see myself listening with one eye squinted shut tight and the other bugging out of my head as I try to hang on just a little bit longer. Yet this conversational style is effortless when she’s among her sisters or close friends, while us brothers-in-law/husbands use about a fifth of the words they do (on a good day) and just kind of nod periodically.

These are some fun examples, but they’re meant to help illustrate the following point. We are different, and while sometimes those differences are great, other times those differences drive us nuts. Humans in general are hard to get along with, much less live with. Even so, God put a whole bunch of us here. A lot of the Bible is about how to get along with other people. Marriages are the basics for family life. I understand that not everyone is blessed to have two parents married to one another, but that’s what God intended. Those marriages require work, and they often require grace.

Our culture today says that you should be you-focused. “Do what makes you happy! You deserve it!” In reality, marriages are “we-focused.” You’re a team, and teams need to work together to move forward. You’re not perfect, and your spouse isn’t perfect. That’s why you both need to extend some grace and flexibility. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it in the long run.

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:2

Posted on

Looking Back Can Encourage You To Look Ahead

About a month ago I mentioned that I’d do something of a “year in review” for this blog. At the time I was discussing the importance of following through with the remaining opportunities the Lord gives you to do His work in this life. During lengthier endeavors I think it’s good now and then to stop and reflect on how far you’ve come, recognizing that God is heavily involved and deserves credit for any success.

A little over five years ago God laid on my heart an absurd task: start a blog that honors Him. I say “absurd” because: 1. I don’t really use social media anymore, which seems like it would be kind of an important element of trying to gain attention for a website; 2. I’m an introvert and don’t relish the idea of trying to connect with nameless, faceless people out there in the electronic ether; 3. I’ve had little or no classroom writing training, so a writing-centric effort doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Despite those misgivings, I decided to obey and let God do whatever He wanted with this whole endeavor.

I can’t claim that I’m some kind of massive Christian influencer. In fact, some of my posts here don’t even mention God or religion. What I can say, though, is that my blog’s reach has extended beyond what I initially expected it to. The intent behind this post is not to say “look at me and how cool I am” or anything like that at all. By sharing this information what I’m really hoping to do is drive home to you the importance of taking small steps of obedience to Christ, because over time they add up and serve as opportunities God can use to work in other peoples’ lives. Even more than that, I’d like to show how a pattern of faithful consistency builds into a cumulative body of something larger. You don’t have to do one huge, mind-blowing thing, it’s probably more beneficial to do a lot of smaller things regularly. To help prove my point, here are a few interesting 2023 stats for the blog and what I take away from them.

During the year the blog hosted 51 new posts, once a week for almost the whole year. While it’s no surprise that IP addresses from the United States score the most number of hits on the blog, the U.S. is far from the only country that had someone stop in for a visit. Besides the U.S., DareGreatlyNow.com had hits from over 50 countries during 2023. Most of those countries accounted for only one, two, or three hits during the whole year. Of course, it’s impossible to claim any of those hits resulted in bringing anyone to Christ, and I have no actual insight into what people do with the posts they read on the blog. Many times God uses conversations, songs, articles, and myriad other things to speak into a person’s life, and I hope God uses my work here to do that very thing in others’ lives. For now I have to trust that God brings the right posts to the right person at the right time, and I have to be okay with knowing that I won’t get filled in on just about any of the details until after Jesus comes back or calls me home.

Of the website’s top 10 visiting countries from 2023, it’s not a shock that most of them are either English-speaking or have large percentages of English-speakers in their populations. Aside from the U.S., the rest of the website’s top 10 patron nations are, in descending order, Canada, China, Ireland, Germany, Norway, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.

Broken down by region, I see seven countries/islands from North America and the Caribbean, three from Central and South America, 20 from Europe, 14 from Asia, seven from Africa, two in Australia (Australia and New Zealand), and four in the Middle East.

Few or none of these stats are a result of my own personal work to promote the blog. I simply don’t have the time to work on drawing more attention to it. I write and post stuff, and God guides people to the site to bring them to see whatever He wants them to see. I have no idea what individual concepts He’s guiding them to. Sure I would love more people to come and read, but if I’m honest, that’s the flesh talking. I’d say that all these posts were worth it if one person decided to trust in Christ as a result of reading one of them. I believe that’s true, but I also know that the blog isn’t really geared toward non-believers, it’s geared more toward Christians that aren’t fully stepping out in what they’ve been called to do for the Lord. What truly needs to happen is that the right person sees the right post at the right time. While some posts are very time-sensitive and lose relevance quickly (current events, especially), many posts on the site age pretty well, and hold true from year to year. In fact, of the five most-viewed posts in 2023, three of them were posted prior to the start of 2023. I sit here reviewing some of these stats and get confused about why posts from 2019 or 2020 are doing so well, but just accept that God’s still using some of my older submissions to work in people.

Often you are the determining factor in whether or not a post has reach. Facebook is the top referrer of people to the site, and that’s not me doing that, that’s because of readers like you liking and sharing individual posts, which then sometimes take on a life of their own (that wouldn’t happen without you, so thank you!). After Facebook, search engines are the next-highest referrers bringing people to posts. Then there are a handful of other blogs that link directly to portions of the website, so thanks to other bloggers out there!

There are other insights to glean from last year’s numbers, but it’s time to wrap this up. If I had waited these last five years to follow God’s lead, these kinds of stats would probably still be five years away. Please keep this perspective in mind when God calls you to pursue different “absurd” tasks in your life. I want this post to serve as encouragement to take up the challenge He’s extending to you, and to do it without delay. Your tasks on their own, whatever they are, may not move mountains or get your name in history books, but if God’s placing the assignment in your path, it will add to the collective effort of other saints He’s got working on various projects and could very well lead to you someday hearing the wonderful words “well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.” Zechariah 4:10