Man, when I was a kid,
the final few days before Christmas were an exciting time. We didn’t do Santa,
so we had the presents sitting out under the tree for days, or even weeks,
ahead of time. As Christmas got closer, the pile under the tree got bigger.
Normally I was pretty
good. Sure, I’d pick up the presents and give ‘em a shake every now and then,
but usually didn’t do anything too crazy. There was one year, though, where my
parents headed out for the evening, leaving my sister and I home alone with all
those presents under the tree.
I don’t remember what I
was looking for, I think I was just excited about the opportunity to try out an
idea I’d had earlier. Soon after the coast was clear, I brought out the
scissors and the tape. Using one of the scissor’s blades, I carefully sliced
the tape on one of the presents with my name on it. I was able to open up the
wrapping paper enough to see what was hidden inside, then fold everything back
up the way it was and put a new piece of tape right over the one I’d cut. Only
a very careful inspection would reveal what had happened.
I went through most of
my gifts this way. I learned what was waiting for me, then restored all the
wrapping jobs. My sister, meanwhile, only wanted to know about one of hers. For
the life of me, I can’t remember any of the things I snuck a peek at, but I
remember that my little sister, with the “keys to the kingdom” that her devious
older brother offered her, was perfectly content to know for sure that she was
going to be receiving the animated version of “Beauty and the Beast” and didn’t
care to find out about any more until it was actually the appropriate time to
open them.
This time of year, with
many new memories of time spent with loved ones, is generally thought of as one
of the happiest seasons. But then it’s all over. The gifts are exchanged,
everyone travels back home, and the decorations are all put away. There’s really
nothing wrong with celebrating with the special people in your life, but it’s
very important to realize that everything here in this life is temporary. Lower
your expectations for how happy this world will make you.
Even something that’s
bright, shiny, new, and sparkly on Christmas morning soon fades in either its
actual luster or the level of interest you have in it. That’s why it’s so
important for people seeking true happiness to place their hope and joy in
Jesus Christ, someone whose luster will never fade.
This is my last post of
the year. I hope you all enjoy special time celebrating Christ’s birth with
loved ones this week. Rest up and enjoy some downtime!
Thanks for reading; I
wish you all a Merry Christmas!
My wife is a wonderful woman. Not only does she take care of our kiddos and I, she also pours into the lives of many of the women she knows.
At any given time she
has at least one friend that’s going through heartbreaking circumstances or
challenges, and she tries to help them in various ways. One weekday at church
she was the lead for her class’s Bible study, which was a source of stress for
her in terms of preparation and delivering the material. Though the class
itself went well, another woman she knew sought her out afterward, and it
resulted in a conversation that required a lot of mental energy and focus. It
wasn’t a bad encounter, but it added to the stress of a particularly draining
day. By the time she left church with our preschool-aged daughter, she just
wanted to get home and do something that didn’t require any thought or energy,
but she knew our little girl would want to read some books or play pretend with
some of her toys.
Mentally exhausted and physically worn out, she arrived home to see that I had come home early for a dental appointment, and was just about to leave. Instead of driving right from work to the dentist, I came home first because I wanted to change clothes so I could run an errand after the dentist. My daughter got excited and wanted to go with me because the last time she went with me to the dentist, one of the assistants had allowed her to pick a toy out of the little treasure chest, just for tagging along. Well, that sounded good to everyone, so my little sidekick and I drove off.
My wife came inside to
a quiet house and collapsed on the couch. Before long she thought of something
she needed to do online. She picked up our laptop and went to turn it on, but
the battery was dead. Taking this as a sign, she put it back down and closed
her eyes for just a few moments. She ended up getting a half hour of
much-needed quiet…an opportunity that would not have happened if our daughter
stayed home and if the laptop’s battery had any life in it.
People often forget
this, but the God of the
big things is God of the little things, too. Foreseeing this need, God
laid the groundwork for that day. There were at least three separate things
that needed to happen in order for these conditions to exist for my wife. I
don’t remember what errand I intended to run after the dentist, but God worked
it out that instead of going right from work to the dentist, I first came home
to change clothes. In addition to that, I don’t know how long before that day
my daughter came with me to the dentist, but somehow God set up the
circumstances for that previous visit so that I was home and took my little
girl with me and she got a toy, conditioning her to want to go again the next
time. Similarly, however we used the laptop the day before (or the morning of)
the Bible study resulted in a dead battery by the time my wife arrived home.
It’s as if God says “if you follow me and work for me, you’re
going to have hard times, but I’m going to take care of you.” Never forget that God is sovereign; there is
nothing He can’t control. When you’re living in His will, He goes before you
and “plows the road” ahead of you to get you where He wants you to be. On the
flip side, if you’re not living in His will, there will probably be times when
it seems like there hasn’t been one particularly difficult challenge, but you
feel like you’re expending a lot of energy just to accomplish something minor.
So, especially during
this busy season, remember: the God of the big things is God of the little
things, too.
When Americans think of
Australia, one of the things they think about is the wildlife. Some of the
things that might come to mind are kangaroos, crocodiles, koala bears, etc. The
tour company I traveled with recognized that, so one of the things they built
into the itinerary of our Australian trip was a stop at a zoo that had a lot of
these animals.
I’ve been to some zoos here in the states. Things are usually set up so that you can’t get too close, but you usually have an unobstructed view of whatever animal is present. Not this place. It was kind of a cross between a petting zoo and a crocodile kennel. You could hand-feed the kangaroos (maybe they were wallabies), handle snakes, and get close to the emu.
I think the main
attraction was probably the crocodiles. The owner was a colorful character.
Think of him as an older version of Crocodile Dundee that put on a bit of
weight and wasn’t quite so light on his feet anymore. He was fun to be around
and took us on a tour of the sights.
I’d guess that this guy
had anywhere from six to 12 crocodiles in various chain-link pens throughout
the zoo. He brought us around to the various pens, sometimes teaching us about
crocs from outside the pen, other times going inside and feeding the crocs a
chicken or two.
I was a little
surprised by this guy’s willingness to go right into the various pens, and even
more surprised at how close he was willing to get to the various animals. He
would be within a few feet of the gaping jaws of these enormous monsters, and
he’d toss meat into their mouths. He was actually missing a few fingers because
he had gotten too close in the past and eager crocs had snapped down quicker
than expected.
He seemed so laid back
about being in such close proximity to reptiles that could kill him. The only
thing he kept nearby was a rake. He used it to scratch the back of some of the
crocs to help them relax, but he kept it with him for another purpose. When a
croc is getting a little too aggressive and you need to move him back, you can
flip the rake around and push on a sensitive spot on their head, and it will
back up. We got to see this first-hand when one of the crocs started coming out
of its pen. Farmer Dundee here flipped the rake around and pushed the croc back
far enough to close the door.
One of the things that
struck me the most about this guy was how confident he was in knowing when it
was safe and when it was not safe to approach one of the beasts. Again, he was
so casual about being in extreme close proximity to crocs that I didn’t know
what to think. He actually sat on one of them when he was tired and wanted to
take a break.
This guy’s behavior is
an example of how we can become so comfortable around danger that we let our
guard down and get careless. By the time I met him, this guy had been around
crocs for years, but for all I know, he could have been attacked and killed by
one of them the next week. You can go for years flirting with danger or
something you shouldn’t be around and everything turns out fine; until it doesn’t.
You won’t always see it coming, either. That’s why it’s best to simply avoid
such situations if at all possible. A few examples might help. If you’re a
recovering alcoholic, don’t go meet friends at a bar. Avoid situations where
you’re alone with that attractive co-worker. Each of us is more susceptible to
certain mistakes than others, but we’re better than we might think when it
comes to predicting where things can go south. Let’s assume you’ve got a good
head on your shoulders; just because you’re not looking at a guy sitting on a
crocodile doesn’t mean you can’t recognize a situation that’s a bad idea.
I don’t blame my
crocodile farmer friend for doing what he does, but he has to constantly be on high
alert for trouble. Even though he’s had a lot of successful crocodile feedings,
he’s still missing some fingers. The lesson here: if you’re perfectly aware of the danger but you
intentionally stay near it anyway, don’t expect to come out of it unscathed.
Are there any
unnecessary risks in your life you need to stop accepting?
Your
decisions have consequences, but don’t let those consequences put limits on
you.
In college I majored in
Biology, but I went the first three semesters without identifying what I wanted
to focus my studies on.
You can get through your
college experience that way, but I wouldn’t advise it. The best part about this
route was the blissful ignorance of those first three semesters. I attended a Christian
liberal arts college, where as a part of the degree requirements, each student
had to complete courses from a wide array of educational topics to round out
his or her knowledge base. In those early semesters in college I took courses
in anything from Biblical Literature to Psychology to Math to Spanish to Ethics
to Macroeconomics to Tennis.
I’m not sure why it
took me so long to realize it, but after awhile I figured out that I was
running out of these “Gen Eds” to take. I needed to figure out how to fill the
remaining five semesters. In an epiphany, I began to understand that I needed
to figure out what I wanted to declare for my major. I ended up selecting
Biology with an Environmental Emphasis.
As you can imagine, if
you want to major in a science, it means you’ll need to take lots of science courses.
That’s not a bad thing as long as you start on them right away, but if you wait
to get started on them, like I did, it means you’re living, eating, and
breathing science classes later on.
After my realization I
worked with my faculty adviser to figure out how to make it work. I was a Bio
major, but didn’t get signed up for the most basic of biology classes until
halfway through my second year. Then I signed up for a four-week summer Bio
course with class all morning and lab work all afternoon, Monday through
Friday. (My brain nearly melted during that class. I was an average student
that just finished my Sophomore year, and most of the other students in the
course were Freshmen honors students that had spent a semester abroad and now just
needed to catch up.)
Junior year was also
packed with science classes, but I still managed to “kick the can down the
road” with one of the key requirements for a Biology major: two semesters’
worth of Chemistry. By the time I began Senior year and started getting into
Chemistry, I realized that I was in over my head. I couldn’t stand Chemistry.
The professors were great, but I had a terrible time grasping a lot of the
material. I had waited until my last two semesters to take two semesters of
Chemistry. There would be no withdrawing from the class to arrange a more
convenient courseload.
It was already a busy
year…I had a Senior Seminar to deliver, I was the Vice President of the Paddle
Sports club, I had a few work/study jobs, a buddy and I were getting ready to
drive out to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, I had a weekly workout
routine at the gym, and there was general fun to be had (after all, it was
Senior year!).
Even with all I had
going on, my whole senior year began to revolve around how I could pass
Chemistry. I skipped out on some pranks or outings that would have been fun to
be a part of. There was a study group that I started attending each time it
met. I linked up with one of the Chemistry Majors, who never seemed to sleep,
for help on my homework when I was frustrated and at the end of my rope. With
plenty of patience he walked me through each problem. Joel, if you’re out
there, thanks for all your help! You saved my bacon!
After all of the
craziness and mental anguish, I finally passed both semesters of Chemistry.
Never was I so happy to complete two classes.
I whine about it, but this
was a crisis of my own making. Because of the choices I made, I backed myself
into a corner and made my path to success much more difficult. Here’s the
tie-in: even when you become a Christian, your problems don’t go away. God
loves you and forgives you if you’re truly sorry, but you must still live with
the consequences of your past actions.
Becoming a Christian
does not remove all the pain and agony you face. In some ways it makes things
more difficult. The good news is that a relationship with Christ gives you hope
and strength to face each day, even when each day has repercussions of your
previous actions.
As one of God’s chosen,
He provides what you need to overcome each obstacle. You may have made your
circumstances more complex, but He’s the one that is able to supply for all of
your needs. Christianity
is not an escape from your problems; it is an opportunity to have hope when
facing them. Consider that as you work toward becoming the person He
wants you to be.
I used to love going kneeboarding. You kneel on a board
and get pulled behind a boat, skimming across the top of the water. It’s not as
popular as waterskiing or wakeboarding, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
When I was new to it, it was really cool just to get
going and go back and forth across the wake. Then you start doing little
tricks, like 360s or riding backwards. Then you start hitting the wake a little
harder to get some air. Then you start hitting it really hard to see how far
you can jump.
After hitting the wake hard and getting a decent
amount of air, somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to pull off a barrel
roll. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that we just didn’t have the right
setup to make this trick work, but back then I didn’t know it was impossible. I
was willing to try it as many times as I could. Each time I wanted to get just
a little closer to making it happen, but there was always a point in the
rotation past which I couldn’t go.
I tried dozens of times, but always ended up falling into the water without the board rotating around nearly enough. I even bought a video camera (when such things existed) and had someone in the boat film what was going on so I could try to learn from my mistakes. I have film somewhere of me rolling between 180 and 270 degrees over and over again. I’d land on my head or I’d land on my side, the kneeboard would go flying up into the air, and it never once worked out for me.
What none of us knew at the time is that I couldn’t
pull off the roll without mounting the rope at a higher point on the boat. The
boat’s pylon – the point where the rope I hung onto was connected to the boat –
was fine for waterskiing and even basic kneeboarding, but it simply was not
going to allow me to achieve what I wanted to do. The professionals that
successfully do these tricks use boats with elevated mounts. That way when the
kneeboarders hit the wake and make it into the air, the boat is not only
pulling them forward, but slightly upward as well. It’s not a lot, but it helps
provide just a little bit of extra hang time that makes a huge difference in
the person’s overall ability to perform tricks.
People are like that too. Each person is unique in
their own story, but there’s usually a ceiling of some kind that everyone hits.
It could be trying to find contentment, get past guilt, grant forgiveness, or
even trying to establish a ministry. Whatever it is, people need to be
connected to something higher than just the basic level. You hit your limit a
lot sooner when you’re doing it on your own, and you need that extra boost that
only comes from God.
Work diligently and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, but remember to ask God for help and to guide your steps in any effort that glorifies Him. When you work hard to complete the assignment God’s given you, He provides that little boost that makes all the difference. He may not provide it exactly when you want it or exactly how you anticipate it, but He gives it to you. It’s the thing that makes a huge difference in your overall ability to perform His work.
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I sat in the van, more
than a little worried. Remnants of a hurricane had swollen the river to a level
that wasn’t safe for recreational canoe usage, which became painfully obvious
on our last canoe run. Earlier in the afternoon another lifeguard and I had
accompanied a group of canoers on our standard trip, but one pair of boaters
somehow managed to broadside a bridge pillar. The current was so strong that it
dumped the boaters and bent the canoe around the pillar. My boss, Allen, and I were
on our way to retrieve the “shipwrecked” canoe, and I was a teenager
that was getting less and less comfortable.
Herb, the director of
the Christian conference center where I worked, was driving us upriver. The
plan was that we’d get into a single canoe, paddle over to the spot where the bent
canoe was still pinned against the bridge pillar, and break it loose. If it was
in good enough shape, one of us would transfer to it and we’d each paddle a
canoe back home. If it was too damaged for that, we’d both remain in the same
canoe and tow the damaged one behind us.
We could see the pinned
canoe from the boat ramp. I buckled my life jacket and climbed into the front
of our canoe. Allen skipped a life jacket, but had a rescue tube (one of those
big red floats that you see pool lifeguards standing around with) wedged under
his seat. We shoved off and right away got swept into the bright brown water’s
swift current.
The river moved so
quickly that we barely had to paddle. As we approached the bridge, we started
paddling backwards to slow ourselves down. We slowed down perfectly, turned so
we were parallel with the pinned canoe, and gently bumped up against it. A
perfect docking.
The problem was the current
was moving so quickly that when it crashed against the bridge pillar and the two
canoes, it pillowed up and created undercurrents that we couldn’t see or
anticipate. Even though we sat completely still in relation to the shore, the
water churned and frothed angrily beneath us as the river pounded the keel
relentlessly. Our boat shuddered, then flipped over, dumping us both upstream.
That water was flowing hard. I didn’t even have time to be
pinned against the canoe; I got dumped in and immediately got swept under the
boat. I was able to get a hand onto the side of the boat, and hung onto it with
one hand, and held the paddle in the other. I was laid out horizontally,
completely underwater, flapping in the current like a flag on a windy day.
I had no idea where
Allen was or what his status was. He had probably safely cleared everything and
was downstream by now, but maybe he had managed to hang on somehow. In the
event that he was still there somewhere, I needed to get into a position where
we could make something happen. I needed to breathe, but if I let go, not only
would I be unable to help Allen with recovering the canoe, but the attempt
would be over because he’d have to abandon the recovery effort and come after
me. Still horizontal underwater, I tried to do a chin-up so I could get my face
out of the water enough to catch a breath and maybe see where Allen was, but
the current was so strong I couldn’t do it. I think I tried again, probably
with both hands this time, but it still wasn’t working. With no choice (and not
knowing how long it would be before the river let me get to the surface), I let
go and got flung into the current, now at the whim of the river.
Honestly, when I
surfaced, I expected to see Allen downriver. When I came up though, I didn’t
see him. I turned and looked upriver, but didn’t see him there, either. I couldn’t
see him anywhere. The only place he could be was still with the canoe, somewhere
underwater.
The current pushed me
into the eddy behind the pillar, but I was about to be carried out of it. Once
I left the eddy, there would be no chance of getting back upstream. Allen was
in the process of drowning about 20 feet away from me; I swam with everything I
had, but I barely got anywhere.
While I was still
fighting to get upstream, he popped through the surface. I found out later that
the strap to the rescue tube wedged under his seat had somehow wrapped around
his leg, so even though he wasn’t hanging onto the canoe at all, the canoe was
hanging onto him. He had been dangling by his knee at the end of a strap,
batted around underwater without any way of getting air. It must’ve been his
guardian angel that shook the rescue tube loose from under his seat.
Just relieved that we
were both alive, my sense of humor returned. While we were still drifting
downstream, I asked him “well, do you want to try again?” Thankfully
he said “uh, no.” We were able to swim to shore and get out of the
water, but we were down another
canoe.
What would’ve happened
if Allen’s rescue tube hadn’t come loose? Could I have made it far enough
upstream to be able to help him at all? If it meant I would exhaust myself, what
should I have done, considering I’d probably still need a good reserve of strength
if we both needed to rely on me to get out of the jam we were still in? Thankfully,
I didn’t have the chance to think of any of this at the time. Allen bobbed to
the surface before I had time to think about it.
This event helped put
things in perspective for me. In this life, there are things you can control
and there are things you can’t. When you can’t handle it, God will take care of
it. If the only way out of a situation is via something that’s beyond you, there’s
only so much you can bring to the table, and you have to rely on Him for the
rest. Life has countless opportunities for you to bear witness to the fact that
you’re not in control as much as you like to think you are. Every day brings
new challenges, and a lot of them need God-sized help to overcome.
It’s important to remember that if God hands you an
assignment that you’re totally confident that you’ll be able to accomplish, the
task just might be too small. By all means do
it, but recognize that if it’s something you can handle on your own, there’s
not much room for God to be glorified. On the other hand, if you get to be part
of something that you could in no way have accomplished on your own, it’s
harder to take the credit for it. I give all the credit to God for shaking
Allen loose and granting us overall safety that day, and pray that recounting
this story glorifies Him further.
(Also, hypothetically,
if you ever find yourself in a similar situation with shipwrecked canoes, don’t
forget to call the local fire/rescue folks and let them know that everyone’s
safe and accounted for. Otherwise, someone will eventually report two canoes
pinned against a bridge, the rescue team will get all kinds of excited, and
then they’ll let you have an earful when they find out what actually happened
and that you didn’t fill them in.)
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My old college laptop: before wireless capability, with a battery that lasted about 20 minutes
I’m not exactly the most technologically savvy
person out there. I’d probably still have a flip phone if the one I used to
have didn’t quit working. Up until a few months ago, I had a Blackberry. I’m
not yet to the point where I’ll have to ask my kids for help adding a new
contact, but I can see that happening some day. I had to get my wife’s help emailing
these pictures from my phone to the computer.
When I was in college, the school I attended was
pretty advanced as far as how “connected” the campus was. I don’t know what the
actual ranking was, but I think it was in the “Top 100 Most-Wired Campuses in
America” or something like that. Our class was the second or third that the
school mandated purchase a specific model of laptop. All our dorm rooms, classrooms,
and hangouts had Ethernet connections. It was horrible and clunky by today’s
standards, but it was pretty cutting-edge at the time. (Anybody else remember
something called a “dongle?”)
A dongle…let’s take the most fragile piece of equipment and put it where it’s most likely to break.
Some aspects of living on a wired campus were nice,
but back when this was all very new, we had a lot of network outages. Sometimes
it was only for a short time, but every now and then they’d last for an hour or
more, and it always seemed to happen exactly when you needed connectivity the
most. One afternoon I was in my room, trying to get something done online
before my next class. The network lost connectivity, and I wasn’t able to do
whatever I was trying to do.
For whatever reason, this outage was particularly
frustrating for me. Normally I’d just do something else for awhile and check
back later to see if the network was back up. This time I figured I’d go in and
mess with my computer’s settings; I thought I’d heard some tech-smart friends
talking about getting their laptops to work during outages sometimes by
changing some of their computers’ settings, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I
don’t even remember what I did…I think I changed some ports or something in a
tab somewhere. I couldn’t figure anything out and I had to get to class, so I
left my computer running on my desk and left for class, frustrated.
When I came back about an hour later, our dorm’s
Director and the college’s head IT guy were standing at my door, about to head
in. Apparently the network started to come back up, but the settings I changed
impacted not just my laptop, but the school’s whole network. Nobody on the
college’s IT staff could bring it back up until my computer was either
disconnected from the network or the proper settings were restored. It turns
out I was an accidental cyberterrorist, and the dorm’s Director had to vouch
for me so they didn’t get security involved. “Honest, I’m not a hacker…I just don’t
know what I’m doing!” I’m pretty sure they made it so net-wide settings like
that couldn’t be changed by unauthorized personnel after that. To all the
students that came after me and didn’t have to deal with outages due to fellow
students’ actions…you’re welcome.
(Not too long after that we had a weekend where
parents came to visit. We were having lunch on Saturday with some of the
parents, along with some faculty/staff. The professor that sat with us was one
of my teachers, and he was complaining about a recent time when a student
actually took down the whole network. He wasn’t laughing at the absurdity of
it, he was actually still kind of mad about it. I’m sitting right next to the
guy, having a hard time in his class. “Oh really, THAT’S what happened? Man,
that’s a shame.”)
Sometimes you make decisions that have an impact on
what you’re doing. Sometimes you make decisions that have an impact on what other people are doing. Even worse, with
some of these latter decisions, you don’t even realize the ramifications of what you’ve done until it’s after the
fact. I crippled the ability of the whole student body to do anything online,
and I did it without even knowing it. In order to set things right, an expert
in the subject area had to step into the situation and fix it.
There will be times when you’re the goober that gums
everything up, and there’ll be times when you’re the one in a position to help make
things right. The goal is to minimize the number of times you’re in the first
category and to not take it out on the goobers too bad when you’re in the
second category.
People make mistakes, and people let you down. We’ve
all done it. Some people are extraordinarily talented at holding grudges for
even the slightest of mistakes. While it’s true that you should take notice of
trends in a person’s “mistake history,” it’s also worth thinking about giving
them another chance, especially if you’ve already kept them in the doghouse for
awhile. If it were you that messed up, wouldn’t you want another chance?
I’m thinking of getting a t-shirt that says “I was a hacker before it was cool,” but because some people know I can’t even find what I’m looking for on Netflix, I’d probably have to tell this story every time I wore it.
In honor of the
upcoming Memorial Day holiday, I’ll share a military-themed post. When I was
younger I really enjoyed the movie “Saving Private Ryan.” It’s a story that
took place during World War II in Europe, and starred Tom Hanks as Army Captain
John Miller.
Throughout the movie
Miller had led men against formidable obstacles; he was always able to get his
team past the obstacle, but each time someone paid for it with their life. There’s
a lot more to the story than this, but at the end of the movie, Captain Miller
and a small group of soldiers find themselves vastly outnumbered and outgunned
while defending an important bridge from an enemy onslaught.
It’s a losing battle. During
the clash we repeatedly witness the demise of characters we’ve known for most
of the movie, all while valiantly trying to defend either the bridge or each
other. The enemy forces continue advancing, and the bridge appears as though
it’s about to fall to the enemy.
As a last resort, the
Americans have wired explosives to the bridge to prevent the enemy from using
it. When it became apparent that the Americans couldn’t hold the bridge, they
decided to destroy it. Retreating across the river, Miller prepared to activate
the detonator, but in the process was mortally wounded and unable to set off
the explosives. With an enemy tank about to begin moving across the bridge,
Miller, unable to stand, leaned himself up against some debris and pulled out
his sidearm. With nothing left to do, he began firing a pistol at an advancing
tank.
CAPT Miller in “Saving Private Ryan”
CAPT Miller in “Saving Private Ryan”
I don’t want to spoil
the ending if you haven’t seen it, but how do you get to the point where you’re
trying to stop a tank with a pistol? Miller was a man that simply did not give
up once he had made up his mind about an objective. There was no quit in him. He
fought the way he could make the maximum impact, and once that method failed or
circumstances changed, he switched to the next most effective method. He
adjusted his approach as his men and resources dwindled. As he sat on a bridge
bleeding out, the only option available to him, his last-ditch effort, was to
pull out his pistol and start firing at a tank. This was all he had left.
This man was
determined, and makes me reflect on my own life. Do I have determination like
that? Am I giving my all, even if I don’t have much left? If I can’t run, am I
at least walking toward where I need to go? When I can’t walk, am I crawling?
There’s much work to be
done. We’ll have setbacks. Our resources and assets will change, reducing or increasing
our capability to do things at a given point in time. Are we letting the loss
of those things, or a self-defeating attitude get in the way from us making
progress toward where we need to go? Don’t stop. Keep pushing forward, even if
it’s at a crawl.
This Monday is Memorial
Day. There are a whole lot of men and women who gave their all for us; some didn’t
make it back, while others are no longer what they used to be. Thank a vet
today.
Just a reminder…after Memorial Day, I’ll be
switching to a once-a-week posting format. Have a happy and safe holiday
weekend!
I took a class one time
that required me to read a book about traffic. Living in the DC area, I have
plenty of opportunities to observe traffic firsthand, so the book helped
explain some of the things I see regularly.
One of the concepts
that stuck with me is the notion that many car accidents happen when people
fixate on the bad situation they’re heading into. If you see that you’re about
to impact something, and it’s all you focus on, it’s all but certain that it
will happen. You go where your eyes look.
On the flip side, drivers
avoid many accidents by focusing on the way out. If you can’t stop the vehicle
in time, the only way to avoid an impact is to find another way out. Again, you
go where your eyes look.
Reading this book may
have helped me avoid an accident once. I was driving our family somewhere, and
I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have. We came around a downhill
curve, approaching traffic that was slowing to stop at a traffic light. The gap
between us and the car in front of us closed quicker than I anticipated. I
stomped on the brakes, but we weren’t going to stop in time. As crazy as it
sounds, in a flash I remembered that lesson from the book, and my eyes looked
left and right instead of fixating on the looming bumper. I swerved to avoid
the car, spilling over into the next lane. Thankfully the spot in the lane
right next to us was empty and the vehicle in whose way we just jumped stopped
in time.
I’m glad I did my
reading assignments for that class.
Sin is a lot like that.
We all struggle with it in some way. Some sins are recurring, while others you
didn’t even see coming. It could be an addiction, or it could be the result of
a heart that’s bitter or holds grudges. Whatever it is, it seems like all it takes
is the blink of an eye before you’ve messed up again.
Take heart, though.
There’s some good news in the book of 1 Corinthians:
The temptations in your life are no different from
what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation
to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out
so that you can endure. -1 Corinthians
10:13
You haven’t been tempted beyond what you can bear, but there’s another round of temptation coming your way. When it does, instead of fixating on the impact, look for the way out, because there’s going to be one.
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In the Air Force I
spent about four or five weeks preparing to pass a screening course for
survival instructor candidates. As the time drew near for us to move from
preparation to test time, the tone of training got more serious. Up until now
we had been building our bodies and learning skills, but there was plenty of
goofing off, too. The culmination of our time at Indoc was a nine-day course
that was split between rigorous assignments on base and in the barracks for the
first half, followed by a period of being out in the field for the second half.
On the last Friday
before the course began, it was tradition for instructors to run students through
“The Swamp.” The Swamp was a nasty section of Lackland Air Force Base that was
just what it sounds like. Making it through the event was not a prerequisite for
the course, but it was a way for students to begin making the transition from
head knowledge to experience. (It was also fun for the instructors to do.)
A large portion of Air
Force Basic Training was focused on professional appearance, making the uniform
look good, and establishing a proper demeanor for recruits now living in one of
the armed services. While that’s important and has its time and place,
preparing to be a survival instructor carried with it a totally different set
of objectives. The goal in a survival situation is to do just about whatever it
takes to survive and return to friendly territory. A survival instructor goes
through grueling circumstances so they better understand how to convey that
crucial information to the students they’ll later teach. The Swamp helped students further
overcome their reluctance to take actions they might not otherwise take.
Our outing started with
some laps up and down a steep hill while wearing heavy rucksacks. We then made
our way to the edge of the water. As we got near, we could smell the nasty,
stinky, stagnant swamp. It was muddy, had some gross stuff floating in it, and
we could only imagine what lived there.
We made our way to
where the instructor indicated, then set down our rucks. We weren’t dirty
enough yet, so he had us start low crawling through some of the muddiest channels.
Naturally, you try to keep your head out of the mud when doing something like
that, but that’s exactly what our instructor wanted to break us out of doing.
“C’mon, get some mud on your face!”
All of us got herded into an area on the bank of the water, where we started taking turns leading exercises in soaked, muddy uniforms and heavy, waterlogged boots. Pushups, crunches, flutter kicks, eight-count bodybuilders, all sorts of calisthenics made more difficult or tricky by our environment. During flutter kicks, while our soaked boots were up in the air, water would run out of our boots and down our legs. On another occasion I remember that the ground was so soft, while I was in the pushup position my hands sunk down past my elbows into the mud. I couldn’t even bend my elbows to do pushups anymore! We alternately laid on our backs, then on our stomachs, all of us covered in mud except for our necks and heads.
Finally the instructor flat out told us to get every inch
of ourselves covered in mud. Then, for his
idea of a fun photo-op (which I think is fun too, in retrospect), he had us
find some kind of plant to put somewhere on ourselves. By this time, you could hardly even distinguish
between the students.
It’s tough to see, but yours truly is the fifth from the left
After awhile, our
instructor called an end to the experience. We all headed back toward the bus.
Since we couldn’t just walk onto the bus in our current condition, though, we
had to get all the mud off. The stinky, dirty, nasty water that once seemed to
stink so badly now washed us clean. We walked waist-deep into the water, bent
down so the water was up to our neck, and in some cases even went all the way
under. Considering how clean we looked when we came up, you wouldn’t know the
water was so disgusting and swampy. It later took a few trips through the
washing machine for those uniforms to become free of the swamp stink, but they
eventually recovered.
This was a crazy
experience. It was challenging, certainly, but it was very valuable. All the
physical training we’d suffered through for weeks, or even months in some cases,
and now this situation, demonstrated something very interesting to all of us:
if we try pushing ourselves to the limit, we’ll arrive at our self-imposed
mental blocks much sooner than we reach our actual limits. Maybe it’s been
awhile since someone asked you: “Are you giving it everything you’ve got?”
Maybe nobody’s ever asked you the follow-on question: “Yeah, but, are you really giving it your all?”
It’s also valuable to
understand that when you’re confronted by difficult (or even miserable)
circumstances, it’s a lot more tolerable when you have others there with you. If
you’re headed toward something tough, link up with a few others so you can encourage
each other along the way. Alternatively, keep your eyes peeled for someone who’s
alone in the mud right now. It could be more encouraging than you’ll ever know
for them to see someone wading into the mess to come alongside them.
(To see other posts related to the survival instructor indoctrination course, click here.)
