Tag: college

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Don’t Let Go of Your Single Opportunity

There was a lake not too far away from the college I attended. Some of the college’s classes either took place on the lake or took field trips here. I did some canoeing on the lake for one of the Outdoor Leadership Training courses. The college offered waterskiing during the first half of the fall semester, too.

I don’t remember what course it was; it must have been some kind of Biology or Ecology class that brought us to the Lake one September day. Our class was going to use the same speedboat that the college used for waterskiing to go out into the lake and take water samples at various depths.

There were too many students in the class to bring out in the boat all at once, so we split into two or three groups that took turns heading out to the middle of the lake. The driver, a student named Laura, spent a few minutes driving out to deeper water, a few minutes taking samples, a few minutes joyriding, and a few minutes heading back to the dock to switch out students.

I was in the last group of students to head out on the lake. In order to make room for more students, the professor stayed behind on the dock while the rest of us rode off to the middle of the lake. As we sped along, I looked around the boat. It was very similar to the one I had driven for a few summers and had enjoyed going kneeboarding behind. As providence would have it, on the floor of the boat sat a lifejacket, a kneeboard, and a ski rope.

We started collecting our samples or doing whatever experiments we were supposed to do. I wanted to say something about wanting to give kneeboarding a try, but thought it would be too crazy. As we wrapped up our tasks on the lake, I couldn’t help myself any longer. I forget how I did it, but I asked Laura if she’d be open to letting me jump in the lake to go kneeboarding. To my great surprise, she said “sure.”

I didn’t ask any other questions. I lost the shirt/shoes/socks, emptied my pockets, donned the life jacket, grabbed the board and rope, and jumped into the water. It was cold, but I didn’t care. We got lined up, Laura hit it, and we were off to the races. The water was a lot choppier from the wind than I was used to, but I was kneeboarding in a science class.

We were far enough away from the dock, or maybe around a bend in the lake so that the professor and my classmates on land couldn’t see us. We didn’t want to goof off too long and get in trouble, so after a bit of tooling around, Laura stopped the boat and I climbed back in. We stowed everything and headed back to shore. Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone on shore even knew what we’d done.

There will be key moments in your life where you only have a single opportunity to seize the chance to do something you want to do. There’ll be times when it simply will not happen unless you step out and make it happen. If you hem and haw, you’ll be stuck watching as the opportunity passes you by.

You might have to abandon the norms you’re accustomed to. I didn’t even have swim trunks, but when Laura said she was open to my request, I was in the water with no questions asked, wearing whatever clothes I already had on.

Many times in this blog I’ve written that God will place opportunities in your path to do something great. I’ll use this post to clarify: He will place the opportunity for you to do something great just off your path. God loves the timid, but He also has a special place in His heart for the bold.

If there’s something big, bold, and brash that you feel called to do on Christ’s behalf…don’t sit on it. God might bring an opportunity near your orbit, but you’re going to have to pursue that chance…you’ll need to run after it and chase it down. If you feel called to make it happen, live with abandon. You might even have to jump into the cold water with your regular clothes on.

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Some Days You’re the Dog, Other Days You’re the Hydrant

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.

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Why Not Give it a Shot?

If you look close, you can see the rope that I’m hooked into, going across the creek

I went to college in western New York, where there are tons of creeks, rivers, and waterfalls. We had a series of waterfalls on a creek not far from our school, and it was a great place to go just for the sake of appreciating the outdoors. It was fun to go swimming there at the start of the school year in August or September, but it was such a nice place that we came up with other stuff to do there that didn’t involve swimming.

I had some rock-climbing ropes and gear, and we decided to try to make a zipline across the creek. It would be so cool to stand at the top of one of the falls and jump off, then go sliding along the rope across the creek in front of the waterfall.

As it turns out, I only had enough gear to tease us into thinking it was possible. I was able to make anchors on both sides of the creek, but we couldn’t get the rope tight enough. If I had jumped off the ledge, I would’ve started zipping across the creek, only to have my weight make the rope sag, and I would’ve slid right into the water.

It wasn’t a bad idea to try out, but it wasn’t feasible with the equipment I had on hand. If the rope was longer, I could’ve anchored it higher on the uphill side and increased the descent slope. Alternatively, if I had some ascenders, we could’ve pulled the rope tighter and had less of a problem with sag. Either way, I likely would’ve ended up in the water anyway.

I don’t share this story with you because the outing was a resounding success. In fact, at the end of the day, I didn’t have a whole lot to show for it, other than these pictures. This near-adventure, however, added to an expanding pool of experience from which I could draw during future adventures. As the saying goes, “good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.”

Some of you might be hesitant to give something a try, even if it’s something you’d ultimately like to do. Don’t let your fear of failure hold you back. Even if you’re not completely successful, it could add to your knowledge base for the next trial.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” –Thomas Edison, on making the first electric light bulb

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It’s Not Just About You (Part 2 of 2)

The guy in the back with the dorky pose…don’t know him

The sun came out for our second day on the whitewater. The rain and gloom had passed, and we were all much more relaxed now that we had survived the first day of paddling. The mood lifted once the gray skies, drizzle, and apprehension gave way to sunshine and confidence.

As far as the water level, this was a perfect scenario; it was an April weekend that followed a large amount of rainfall in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, but the warmer temperatures and rain helped melt a lot of the snow, which also ran into the river. The result was a river so swollen with churning whitewater that even many of the local guides had never seen it quite this big.

Our second day was a little different from the first. This time we linked up with one of the local outfits that knew the river pretty well, and we stuck close to them for a collective “safety in numbers” advantage. Laura was still our raft’s captain, and I was still paired with her to project the voice commands a bit further, but we rotated some of the paddlers around between boats.

In the afternoon, the local boat was in front of us, and then the next two rafts were ours. As we came around a sharp bend in the river, all the color drained from our faces. Spanning two thirds of the river was a gigantic standing wave that had a nasty rip curl at the top. It was a freak river feature that could only occur when extreme amounts of water shot through that section of the waterway. The guides didn’t know it was there, and none of us out-of-towners expected to see anything like it.

The local boat saw it too late, and all they could do was try to paddle through it head-on. It was too much for them; the boat got flipped right away and everybody got dumped in the chilly water. The rest of us paddled for all we were worth to get to the safer route. We safely made it past the wave, then surveyed the damage. Since we were the first boat on the scene, we made for the biggest group of helmets bobbing in the water. We started grabbing people by the life jackets and pulling them aboard. The raft behind us picked up the guide, but we got everyone else. Our kayakers started buzzing around the area picking up dropped paddles, disposable waterproof cameras, and even somebody’s bottle of Coke.

We were very near the capsized raft at that point. I thought back to all the raft-flipping I’d done in the pool during the dull winter months. I must’ve flipped a capsized raft at least 50 times in the pool. All that training was perfect for a moment like this; if I couldn’t use that knowledge and experience now, what was the point of doing it at all? I wanted to go after it…

I actually put my foot up on the rim of the raft to jump into the water. I turned back to tell Laura I was about to go after the raft, but that’s when I realized the state of complete disaster our own raft was in. It was pandemonium. Our raft was meant for eight people, but we only put six of us in it at the start of the day. Now our raft was bogged down with 14 people, only half of which had a paddle. Our raft was a self-bailer, meaning it had holes in the bottom so water that splashed in would drain out on its own. Instead of the normal inch or two of water on the floor, now it was midway up our calves. We were still flying down the river, but we were largely at the mercy of the current, headed towards God-only-knows what kind of waves, whirlpools, or strainers, and nobody knew the plan to meet up with the other rafts.

The people we just picked up were understandably chattering away about what just happened. They loudly thanked us for plucking them from the water, but all their excitement started causing a major communication breakdown for our crew and all we wanted was for them to stop talking! Laura’s tiny voice was yelling, trying to establish some sense of order, but it wasn’t doing much to get through to the newcomers. I was paired with her exactly for the purpose of echoing her commands loud enough for everyone to hear. I wanted so badly to go after the flipped raft, but it would’ve meant leaving them in an even more chaotic situation.

I turned my back on the capsized raft and started echoing Laura’s commands in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. Our guests quieted down and our crewmembers in the front of the raft, no longer distracted by excited yammering in their ears, were able to hear us and start pointing us in the right direction. Everyone with a paddle dug just about as hard as they could, and we sluggishly moved out of the main current into the calmer waters near the riverbank. In the middle of it all, our trip leader, Tim, paddled his kayak up to the flipped raft and jumped on. I was pretty distracted with the situation in our raft, but the last I saw of him, he was laying on the raft with a big grin, paddling hard and looking like he was having the time of his life. (I know you’ll read this at some point, Tim…you beat me to it!) Anyway, it took awhile, but we eventually gathered all three rafts to reunite the guide and crew with their boat.

It was an adventure, for sure. In the moment, it was absolutely crazy and scary, but even now, more than 15 years later, I bet everyone on our trip remembers that portion of it. The trip had so many fun details that I had to journal about the experience (which is where I looked for a refresher)!

I can’t even tell you how much time I spent practicing how to right a capsized raft while in the pool at college. Most of it was done just for fun, but each time I did it, it helped contribute to the overall muscle memory and cementing the automatic steps that would need to occur when a raft actually flipped over on the river. What better time to use this experience could there possibly be than this opportunity?

Here’s the crux of it all though: just because you’ve focused so much time and effort into training or preparing for a specific type of ministry or situation that you ignore things that are “outside your lane” when God drops them in your path. To truly be a player on God’s team, you need to be willing to do what needs to be done, whatever that may be. Even if you haven’t prepared for a given scenario, He’ll make sure you’re equipped with everything you need when He presents a new challenge to you. The only thing you might be missing is a willing heart, and that’s something only you have the power to control.

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It’s Not Just About You (Part 1 of 2)

During my senior year of college I went on a whitewater rafting/kayaking trip with a club at school. It was April, and the following month was graduation, so it was sort of an early celebration of finishing college.

At our pre-trip meeting, our faculty adviser, Tim, told us that we’d have some non-students joining us. Some were alumni from the club, others were people he knew from other endeavors. There was one guy, Joshua John, that joined us for the trip, but he didn’t really know anybody else other than Tim. I thought that was probably kind of an uncomfortable situation for him, and I was one of the club’s officers, so I made a mental note to go out of my way to make him feel welcomed. Turns out he was into some extreme physical fitness workout routines. He was a man of few words, but was definitely someone you’d want sitting in the front seat of your whitewater raft, getting doused by big water while setting the cadence for everyone else in the boat.

We had some crazy experiences on that two-day trip, and I’ll cover one in the next post. We drove to the Adirondacks in upstate New York, and went rafting on the Upper Hudson River. When we left school, everything was sunny and warm and everyone was in good spirits. Everybody started getting quiet as we arrived in the mountains to find that it was raining and some spots still had a good deal of snow on the ground. After some scouting around we set up camp in the rain and in the dark, split up camp chores, and took care of whatever we needed to do, then headed off to bed. Somewhere in here I made sure to track down Joshua John and told him we were glad to have him along with us.

The next morning it was still raining, but we hit the water anyway. The river was even higher than normal during the spring thaw, and everyone was a little jumpy. We had two rafts, and there’s usually a bit of competition among rafters when there are multiple boats. It helps build camaraderie and teamwork, so the competitive spirit is generally a good thing. The other raft was fun; they’d start spinning while going through rapids, or in calm water the crew all stood up on the edge and tried to run around the outside of the raft without falling into the water. Good stuff like this helps make a trip more fun.

Run around the raft rim

The captain of the other boat, Steve, was mischievous. He was out to get the two of us that were co-captains of our boat, an alumnus named Laura and I. Laura was physically on the shorter and smaller side. The other boat’s crew took it upon themselves to sneak up behind us during calm water, grab Laura, and pull her into their boat, essentially kidnapping one of the captains. It was funny, unless you were Laura, who helplessly became a temporary hood ornament for the other raft.

Over the course of the two days they tried sneaking up to try to get me too, but most of the time we were able to either get away or fend them off. On the second day they snuck up on us again and a couple of their goons jumped into our boat and grabbed me. They tried throwing me over the side, into the river. They caught me off guard and I knew they were too much for me, but I didn’t want to make it easy for them. I resolved to hang on as long as I could before they overpowered and dunked me.

While my jaw was clenched hard and my eyes were shut tight, there suddenly came a clamor from the front of my boat. Bodies got shoved out of the way as Joshua John jumped into the fray. He picked up one of the attackers and threw him straight down hard into the water. The other invaders bailed out of our boat and jumped back to their raft. As the first guy surfaced again, confused and gasping for air, he asked with wide eyes “what the heck was THAT?!” He looked up to see Joshua John standing in our raft, barely breathing hard. He resolutely said “I have to protect my captain.”

I’m glad I found him early in the trip to say hi!

Just remember that as you go through life, the way you interact with people affects how they interact with (or on behalf of) you and others. It’s not always going to be quite this dramatic, but are you positively impacting others enough to make a difference?

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Wait For It…

Sometimes when you’re stuck in a waiting period, you just need to make the best of it.

In my senior year of college, I was the Vice President of the Paddle Sports club. This club was for people that wanted to try their hand at kayaking and whitewater rafting. The academic year is kind of tricky for paddling because school’s not in session during a huge chunk of the prime season, so we held pool sessions twice a week during the entire academic year. During those sessions, it was a great opportunity for newcomers to learn the basics of kayaking. The problem was…when there were no newcomers, or when the winter began dragging on, those pool sessions got kinda dull. If you already knew how to roll a kayak, you had to come up with other ways to keep it interesting.

In the pool, those of us that were regulars would try strange stuff: try to roll a capsized kayak without using a paddle; setting up a kayak on one of the diving boards and getting in, then sliding off the board into the pool; putting on a life jacket and trying to swim down to the bottom of the pool’s deep end to retrieve something from the floor. Out of all of it though, I think the nuttiest stuff we did involved practicing righting a capsized raft.

When you have a whitewater raft full of people, and you’re shooting through some big water, it can be a dangerous thing if the raft flips and people get scattered. It’s best to have at least a couple of people in each raft that know how to flip it back over. That way if a raft gets flipped in some whitewater, whoever’s closest can flip it back over and get on with the business of bringing everyone back into the boat.

Example of righting a capsized raft

Each raft used in whitewater rafting normally has a rope tied to at least one of the sides. If the raft flips upside-down, someone climbs up on top of it. While grabbing the rope and standing on the opposite edge of the raft, they lean backward while pulling on the rope, eventually falling into the water and flipping the capsized raft back over the right way.

Once you know how to do it, it’s not a difficult thing to do. It’s important to practice though, because it’s one thing to do it in the pool, but it’s something entirely different when you’re bobbing through whitewater, trying to climb up on the raft while wearing a wetsuit, helmet, and life jacket, all while holding a paddle and trying to count heads.

We did a lot of raft-flipping in the pool. The basic version gets boring quickly though. You start trying to make it more interesting. I tried dozens of times to flip the raft while timing the jump just right so that I landed in the righted raft without falling in the water. We paired up and had a guy swim under the capsized raft and hang onto a pontoon, so that when the other guy standing on top of the raft flipped it over, there was already a guy in the boat. We doubled the number and had two guys hanging onto pontoons while two other guys flipped the boat. We even had three guys on top of a capsized raft…as two guys flipped it, the third guy tried to get catapulted into the water (although he miscalculated and got flipped the wrong direction). It was goofy stuff that was just fun, didn’t hurt (much), and served no practical purpose other than helping to pass the time.

What am I getting at? Sometimes you’re going to be stuck waiting for awhile. Whether it’s a low-level job where you have to put your time in, maybe a military assignment that’s a terrible but necessary rung on the ladder, or maybe some season of life where you have to put your primary plans on hold for a bit, you’ll probably find that God put you in (or you got yourself into) a situation where the things you want to do are going to have to take a back seat for awhile. In Paddle Sports, we had the luxury of the season being predictable; we knew we wouldn’t do much outdoor paddling from November to February, but things were going to pick up with the spring thaw. A predictable season is the reality for some, but for others, they don’t know how long they’ll be waiting.

If you find yourself in the middle of your own version of the “winter months,” hang in there. Surround yourself with people that will keep your spirits up and keep spurring you on. There’s usually a lot you can do or learn even in those trying times. Spring’s coming, but for now, do your best to make the most of the time you’ve got.

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Built for Success

In 2002 a college buddy and I took a trip to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. We got to be spectators at a biathlon, short track speed skating, bobsledding, some downhill slalom, and cross-country skiing events. On top of the events themselves, one night we were able to attend a medal ceremony downtown. A lot of the other nights we’d go visit downtown, because that’s where a ton of stuff was going on. We were able to watch the jumbotron set up in the city to keep up to speed on whatever key events were going on that night. Overall, it was very cool stuff.

In some of the venues we were able to get super close to the athletes or tracks. At the biathlon we actually had to be careful, because we were close enough to get hit in the face with ski poles. Same thing with bobsledding…we could get close enough to reach out and touch the sled as it raced past.

I didn’t really think about it at the time, but athletes from across the globe that participated in the same sport had similar builds or strengths. Hockey players and bobsledders tended to be large and muscular, while short track competitors tended to be a little shorter with more slender builds. Cross-country skiing competitors seemed to be consistently above average height, and figure skaters cultivated grace and agility rather than a muscular physique.

I’m over 6 feet tall, but under 200 pounds. A little bit on the lanky side, I’m physically better suited to play first base or quarterback more than I am to be a catcher or an offensive lineman. I’ve got more potential in the sports of basketball, volleyball, or tennis than I do in the sports of wrestling, powerlifting, or marathon-running.

If I were bent on becoming a professional athlete, I could lament the fact that I’m not built for success in certain areas, or I could try my best to be successful in the areas where I could excel.

It’s the same thing with serving Christ. There are some functions in Christianity where the role has a higher (or more desirable) profile than others. If you’re built and equipped for one function though, don’t lament the fact that you’re not set up for success in another. There’s a reason you have certain tendencies, attitudes, instincts, spiritual gifts, and interests. You were designed and intended to fill a certain role; by focusing on fulfilling a different role, you’re actually detracting from the one you want to escape and the one you want to attain.

Don’t run away from the role you were born to fill. Embrace it, then watch God work through you.

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Refuse To Be Left Behind

I’m gonna skip ahead a little bit on our Olympic adventure.

My buddy and I woke up at a rest stop on our first day in Utah after snoozing in sleeping bags in the car. Our breath had condensed and frozen on the windows overnight. We were only about an hour away from Salt Lake City. After all the driving of the past two days, we were excited to be so close, so we got ready for the day and headed out.

Our breath condensed and froze on the car’s windows overnight

Just arriving in the area was thrilling. Olympic signs and venues were all over the place. Ski jumps, the Olympic rings, extra decorations, it was great. As we drove on the highway through the city, a lot of the buildings were decorated with massive posters of winter sports. We drove into the city, parked, and walked around downtown, happy to be done driving long distances for a bit. The weather was gorgeous; sunny and warm. We saw the Mormon Temple, some of the other local sights, got some donuts, and toured the State Capitol, where there was a traveling exhibit of the Declaration of Independence.

We were super excited to finally be at our destination, but we still had to figure out where we were going to sleep that night. A little after noon we drove out of the city and toward some public land. As it turns out, the public land in that area is much higher in elevation. Added elevation brings lower temperatures and more snow.

As we drew near the place we intended to camp, we stopped at a ranger station to get some more info. Following their directions, we drove until reaching the end of the line; past a certain point they stopped plowing the road. Snowmobiles were all over the place. The only other way in was on foot.

It’s on foot from here

My buddy parked the car in the parking lot and the two of us broke out our cross-country skis. Between the weather and the time of day, visibility was starting to drop and it was going to start getting dark soon. We needed to find a campsite quickly, and we didn’t have time to be too choosy about what spot to use. The two of us skied in, found a spot, then skied back out to the car to grab our gear. We were both decent skiers at the time, but neither of us had ever skied with heavy packs before. They throw off your balance and make it much trickier!

We returned to our site and stomped down the snow to make a spot for the tent. We set up the tent, broke out the stove, and started heating up dinner while unpacking and arranging the rest of our gear for the night. Between not having much to do after dark and still being accustomed to East Coast time, we cracked open and tossed some footwarmers into the sleeping bags and were in for the night a little after 7:30 pm.

Just as a refresher, up until this point in my life the only other time I remember sleeping outside was in a tent in a neighbor’s backyard in the summer as a kid. Now I’m sleeping in a tent in the Wasatch Mountains in February as the snow/sleet falls around us. After sleeping in a car for the past two nights, it was a nice change to be able to stretch out all the way. I slept pretty well until the coyotes started howling later at night. For anyone accustomed to hearing them, you know that there’s nothing to worry about, but if you’re not used to them, you start wondering just how long it will take for a determined coyote to rip through a flimsy tent.

I’d be lying if I told you that I wasn’t afraid of doing what we were doing. It’s one thing to talk like you’re going to do something that stretches you, but it’s something else entirely to do it. Driving from New York to Utah is an adventure in itself, but at least during that whole time, you’ve got a car…with heat, a roof, and a trunk full of stuff. Now we had a tent, sleeping bags, and whatever we could carry in our packs, and we set up camp in a spot that, for all we knew, was at the bottom of a mountain that was ready to trigger an avalanche. And it was snowing.

Why on earth would I do this?

I was willing to do it because this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I refused to be left behind. I was in college with few or no other responsibilities, the Winter Olympics were happening in my country, I had the opportunity to go see them, and I had a friend that was willing to do the same crazy thing. In the 17 years since that trip, no similar opportunity has come around again for me.

For just a moment, think about your life and the choices you regret. Often the things that come to mind first are the things you did not do. For everyone, even Christ-followers, there are things you wish you would’ve done differently. Think about the choices that lie before you now, or that you’ll have to address soon. One day you might pause to reflect on them, too. At different times in our lives, everyone’s got a “thing,” an idea that nags at them even when they try to shake it. Many times this is God’s nudge, saying “hey, I want you to do this.” You probably don’t know what will happen if you do it. Maybe you do. Some day you might be in Heaven, talking face to face with the creator of the universe. “Remember when I prompted you to do that thing?” If you have regrets about not doing something now, imagine what it will be like then.

Don’t feel bad about being scared; everybody’s scared of something. Letting fear stop you from doing or being a part of big things is where you start missing out. Don’t let a fear of being fearful paralyze you and prevent you from taking the next step that God’s called you to take.

Refuse to be left behind.

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Will it Always be This Exciting?

Ready to drive across the country to watch the Winter Olympics

This entry took place almost exactly 17 years ago (just two days off).

It had finally arrived. February of 2002 was here, and the Winter Olympics had finally begun. My college roommate and I had been working on a plot to head out to see some of the Olympics in Utah for about a year and a half, and now everyone in our house was watching the opening ceremonies on TV.

All the gear was bought and (mostly) tested. We had our tickets in hand. The numerous little pieces were all falling into place, and in a week or so we would embark on a great adventure.

We made final preparations for the trip and filled our professors in on what we were about to do. We checked and re-checked details about the trip. In those last days before heading out, we watched all kinds of Olympic coverage; it didn’t matter what was on. The guys in our house, getting into the spirit of things, would even watch Curling, which none of us understood. (“YES! Wait…so was that good or bad?”)

As our departure date drew near, we assembled all our gear, packing and re-packing it to see how to maximize use of the space we had. Some of our stuff would be nice to have, but if we couldn’t fit it, it wasn’t going with us.

The day finally arrived. We loaded up my little car with all of the supplies we were bringing. There was barely room for the two of us to fit. We left before dawn.

The initial drive took us from Western New York State to Pittsburgh, where we switched to a larger rental car. From there it was pretty much a straight shot out West along Route 80 to Salt Lake City. We were excited. This was really happening; we were really doing this!

Twelve hours later, we were bored out of our minds.

It was over 2,000 miles and more than 30 hours of driving to our destination. America is a beautiful place, but it’s kinda drab in February. Ohio wasn’t much to look at. Indiana wasn’t much different. It got dark when we were somewhere in Illinois, and we weren’t going to stop for another few hours. We kept going until we hit Iowa after 16 hours of driving on day one, where we eventually found a rest stop and slept in the car overnight.

It seemed like the most beautiful part of some states was a higher speed limit

The excitement had worn off. A day that began with such immense promise and electricity became dull and mundane. All the different radio stations seemed to play the same songs. There wasn’t much scenery to enjoy as we drove. You didn’t need to eat much if all you did was sit in a car all day. We snacked on stuff, but it was as much for having something to do as it was for being hungry. The highlight of the drive that first day was stopping at a Wendy’s for dinner. “Will that be for the dining room, or would you like it to go?”

“NO! The dining room, please!“

The Christian life can be exciting. When you see yourself being used to fulfill God’s purposes, there’s nothing quite like it. It’s thrilling to go on missions trips, start learning about a Bible study topic that hits close to home, read a book about a subject you’ve been wanting to learn more about, or go so far as to start a new project or effort that’s been tugging at your heart. There are going to be times in those journeys, though, where it gets dull, boring, or even becomes downright drudgery.

In a previous post I includede the phrase “go until you get a no.” The drudgery isn’t a “no,” it’s just a way for you to get worn down and an excuse for you to give up. If you give up on a herculean effort because you lose interest or get discouraged, you’re not giving God the opportunity to move mountains. God’s sense of timing tends to be different from our own. If you felt sure that He called you to take on a task, and you went so far as to get started on it, shouldn’t you see it through? Shouldn’t you go until you get a “no?”

Hang in there at least a little longer. God has a way of showing up at just the right time.

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Blind As a Bear

When I was in college I majored in biology. It wasn’t pre-med biology though; the program was geared more for a career in wildlife management or forestry. As a result, I had a lot of courses that had interesting field trips. We radio-tracked deer, did forest surveys, went behind the scenes at a zoo, toured a fish hatchery, visited botanical gardens, and generally spent a lot of time in the fields of western New York during all parts of the school year.

One of our professors knew a guy that worked for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which opened the door for us to do some neat stuff. As it turns out, a farmer probably an hour away had discovered a black bear hibernating in one of the big round hay bales in his field. The farmer invited the DEQ to come and survey the situation, which would add data to the organization’s knowledge of the bear population in the area. Our class got to go along and observe.

We arrived at the farm and waited a safe distance away while the DEQ folks tranquilized the bear. (When bears hibernate, they’re not in a solid, deep sleep the whole time; they wake up and move around on warm days, so they had to make sure it wasn’t going to do anything unexpected.) I’m not sure what method they used to do it, but after they stuck the bear, it got scared and took off running. It probably made it 100 yards before it stopped running and laid down. The farmer and DEQ folks then gently loaded it into the bucket of a tractor and brought it back to the area right in front of the den, where they weighed it, checked its teeth, determined its age, and collected some other information.

It’s a tricky thing to tranquilize something when you don’t know how much it weighs. If you use too little tranquilizer, the bear’s going to start moving sooner than you’d like, but if you use too much, you’ll have a hard time reviving the bear. Whoever was responsible for this part did a good job, but you’re never quite sure if the estimate is going to be good enough. As a precaution, they used a bandana to cover the bear’s eyes after they had laid it down on the ground. The thinking was that as the bear began regaining consciousness, it would stay a little more calm if it couldn’t see how close all these people were. Keeping it more calm would hopefully prevent it from trying to lash out without even having regained full control of its body, which could be harmful for both us and the bear.

It didn’t take very long for the DEQ folks to collect all the desired information, so after they finished they pretty much just needed to monitor the bear until the tranquilizer wore off. In the mean time they let people take pictures with the bear. After a bit, they shooed us all away because they didn’t know how much longer the drugs would last. We left to head back to school, and we found out later that as the last DEQ employees were getting ready to depart, the bear started growling. (If that’s not a “time to go!” signal, I’m not sure what is.)

Have you ever asked God to let you know what’s going to happen if you proceed in a certain direction, only to be met with increased murkiness? He might just do that on purpose. A lot of times it’s because we can’t handle knowing what’s on the other side. You don’t know what will happen if you obey, but if you did, you might not follow through with what you know you’re supposed to do. That might be because you believe the personal cost of the outcome will be too great, or it might be because you’d be overwhelmed with seeing just how far beyond you your actions will go and it just seems too daunting to begin. Either way, the result is the same: you’re not setting out on the calling God has laid before you. In many cases, we’re better off being kept “blindfolded,” like the bear, because too much information will actually be detrimental.

Instead try this. Think of your obedience to God’s calling in terms of chapters, rather than as a pamphlet. You need to find out what happens in one chapter before moving on to the next. By the end of the book, you’ll have the whole picture, but if you had started out knowing what happens in the end, some of the important stuff that happened in the middle would lose its significance or change the outcome.

It might feel as though you know what God’s prodding you to do, but it seems insignificant. Well, that might be true, but part of the reason for that is because you might just be starting a new book. You’re blindfolded right now, but don’t just lay there growling. Step out in obedience and faith; chapter two is waiting for you, but you can’t start it until you finish chapter one.

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