Journal Entries

Wednesday morning I got up with Cyndi at 5:00 AM, once again, to go to the gym and lift weights for one hour in Body Pump class. I can’t believe I got up so early – this is not who I am or who I hope to be or even my ideal of a perfect guy. I am, in my DNA, a night owl, and I would rather stay up all night reading than get up so early in the morning. The story I told myself when the alarm went off at 5:00 AM was that I wouldn’t be any happier getting up at 6:00 AM, or even 7:00 AM. And it’s impossible to make an impact on the adult world the way I want to if I sleep in to the double figures every day.

One reason I got up so early on Wednesday was because that’s the day Cyndi teaches and I wanted to go to her class, to support her and learn from her and watch her do something she’s very good at. But as supportive as that sounds, I’m not really so noble. Cyndi has been teaching early morning classes of one type or another for most of our marriage and I have almost never gone to any of them. Way back in the old days I stayed home because one of us had to get the kids up and ready for school. Then in later years, I didn’t go simply because I wanted to sleep instead.

But this past spring, and now summer, I’ve been trying to get fitter and build more muscle and lose a significant amount of weight, and I cannot fit in enough workouts using only the middle parts of the day. To reach my goal I’ve had to inconvenience myself.

As Erwin McManus wrote (in Wide Awake), “You can’t just sit back and hope that the life you long for will simply come to you.” Anything worthwhile is hard work and inconvenient.

This morning as we went through the warm-up sequence with light weights, all of me (back, shoulders, legs, arms, knees, neck, hair) was stiff and gripey for being called into action so early. I had the same thoughts I’ve had during the first few moments of many road races, and many heavy backpacking trips, and every marathon: Why am I doing this? Who thought this was a good idea? Why can’t I live a normal life that isn’t so hard?

But after working through squats and clean-and-presses and triceps and biceps, well, I eventually tossed aside my doubts - probably because those thoughts were displaced by other thoughts of proper technique and pain management. But also because, at some point, I started to feel strong and mighty and lean and hard, in my own way, and then I was proud of myself for working so hard when most of my friends were still asleep.

And then, after an hour, we were done. We’d finished with abs and even with our cool-down stretches. I was ready to go home for a hot shower (or maybe to crawl back into bed for 30 minutes).

The Apostle Paul wrote: “But I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” (I Cor. 9:27, NAS)

To be honest, I don’t know exactly what that means. I doubt Paul went to weight lifting classes. I think he probably was a runner at some point in his life because he referenced it so often in his writing.

But even more mysterious than Paul’s workout discipline is - what did he means that he would be disqualified? Disqualified from what? Preaching? Writing? Traveling? Mentoring? Who knows? We’ve all been influenced by teachers or preachers who weren’t the least bit concerned with physical discipline, who were decidedly unfit and didn’t care. They didn’t seem to have been disqualified, so what did Paul mean? I don’t know.

But I do know that working out and running and gives me a life with more choices. I can take a group of guys from my Bible study up Guadalupe Peak. I can join my band of brothers, the Iron Men, in an outdoor boot camp workout and share lives with them. I can walk 70 miles in one week with Cyndi and John in Karimoja, Uganda.

The most surprising thing is that I’m not good at any of this. I have no natural athletic skills; I run too slow, weigh too much, limp too often, and quit too soon.

Yet, I never take it for granted. I’m grateful to God for the opportunity. As John said while we were cooling down after a run at Aberdare, Kenya, “Working out is a luxury.”

I don’t know how long I will keep this 5:00 AM thing going, but I hope to always be doing whatever I can do, whatever it takes, to keep from being disqualified to teach and preach and influence. That would be too much to lose.

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

Cyndi and I spent last weekend in San Angelo. Cyndi was attending a fitness workshop and I was hanging out around town, a repeating pattern in our life together. We had a bit of trouble locating our hotel and the health club; not because they were so hard to find, but because I had a lousy map. The city map I had showed some minor roads in bold red, and major roads, like Loop 306, in faint skinny pink. The map gave a false perspective of what was important and what wasn’t, and it threw me off.

It was my own fault, of course. I normally print off a MapQuest map before I go anywhere, but I didn’t do it this time because I thought I already knew my way around and because I already had a map. My mistake.

In fact, I have always been a map lover. I can stare at a map for a long time, studying the way things fit together, the geometry of roads and mountains and lakes. I like the big-picture-viewpoint of a map. I would rather have a map than written directions every time. Knowing how to get somewhere is never enough; I want to know more than the details, I want to know the grand scheme, the big picture, the epic story, the meta-narrative, the map view.

So I wondered: What if there was a MapQuest for life? What if we could type in a desired destination (talented and respected man of God) and our current location (marginal and irresponsible loser) and MapQuest would provide a map with step-by-step directions. Maybe we could zoom in for details so we’d know what decisions to make tomorrow, and then zoom out for perspective so we’d understand the broad trajectory of our life? Wouldn’t that be a handy thing?

A few weeks ago I was teaching a lesson from John 21:17-19, where Jesus told Peter what would happen to him in the remainder of his life. Jesus laid out a map before Peter. He said: (1) Feed my sheep (what Peter should do); (2) They will stretch out your hands (how Peter would die); and (3) Follow me (directions, the path, that Peter should follow).

Telling Peter to “feed my sheep” was not a small calling - Jesus took his sheep very seriously. And “Follow me” was not a throwaway instruction; it was a map to THE path. If Peter took another path – say, if he went back to fishing – he would not end up in the same place.

Peter’s eventual death might’ve been more peaceful had he gone back to fishing, but he wouldn’t have “fed the sheep,” and he wouldn’t have changed the world, and we might not be talking about him and his impact on our lives, 2,000 years later

But back to my story - my favorite part about being in San Angelo was running on the Concho River Trail, probably the best urban running trail in West Texas.

It turned out to be more adventure than I’d bargained for. It was Boy Scout Fishing Day, and the riverbank was lined with young boys fishing. I had to keep a close watch, since they were continually casting, which means fishhooks were flying back-and-forth across the trail.

I had plenty of time Saturday morning, so I made a point to run far enough east to cross the Bell Street bridge. I did it to remind myself of a deep spiritual experience I had back in 2000 when Cyndi and I spent a weekend in San Angelo at the Christ the King Retreat Center. We had a few high-impact life decisions ahead of us, both political and career, and we went searching for answers. Of course, that included running along the river. I remember I was listening to music while running that morning, and as I crossed the Bell Street Bridge on my way back to the retreat center I heard Russ Taff sing:

It’s hard to know which bridge to cross

And which bridge I should be burning

Now I’m standing on this road

Your hand has brought me to

Your faithful love will lead me

Farther on

The answers I heard that weekend in 2000 were profound and life-changing. I knew I had to venture back this time to the same bridge to restack my virtual rock cairns, my trail markers, my memory. Crossing the bridge this second time reminded me of so many other big turning points in my life. It was good to reminisce for a mile or two – helped me forget about my sore left knee.

But as I got closer to the parking lot and my pickup, it occurred to me that every day is a big turning point. Every day we decide how we’re going to live our lives going forward. Today, am I going to turn toward God, or turn away? Today, am I going to turn toward Cyndi, or turn away? Toward my dreams, or away? Toward the future, or away?

Would a personal MapQuest help with any of that? I’m not sure, but I know this – I’ll have a better map next time we go to San Angelo. I’ve learned that much.

The fact that I am becoming a dog person is a big surprise to me, too. Especially after all these years.

Not that I’m a cat person, either. I’ve never been a big fan of cats, which could also be a surprise, because my own personality is much more cat-like than dog-like. Like a cat, I like being left alone, I don’t need or want too much attention or pampering or tucking-in, I don’t have many needs beyond food and books and running shoes and dirt trails and pen and paper and affection and Diet Cokes. And like a cat, I may or may not come when you call my name.

Therefore, you might think I would be drawn to cats from solidarity of personality, but no, I’m not. I like dogs better than I like cats, and yet even at that I haven’t really been a dog person up until now. I have been more of a roommate than a lover of dogs.

We had dogs as I was growing up. I remember a white dog named Packy, but I don’t remember any details beyond name and color. I remember the stories my dad tells about Packy more than I remember the actual dog.

I also remember a Beagle named Pepper that lived with us at 1409 Shannon Drive in Kermit, Texas, in a house with a large back yard. The yard was not fenced, however, so we kept Pepper leashed up all the time. Sometimes he was attached to the clothesline so he could run up and down the length of the yard. The rest of the time he was leashed to an old detached bumper from a Volkswagen Beetle, the first heavy thing my dad found to keep Pepper at home.

One particular summer evening the doorbell rang, and standing on our front porch was a young girl from down the street holding Pepper by his leash and her older teenaged brother standing behind her holding the chrome VW bumper. She said, “We brought your dog back.” Apparently Pepper had dragged that bumper down the length of the block, maybe down the middle of the street. It must have made a racket.

Our next dog was another Beagle, which I was allowed to name Ogden, in honor of the American poet Ogden Nash. Ogden is a stupid name for a dog, I’ll admit, and to this day I don’t know why the rest of the family allowed that name to stick. In fact, my brother and his wife Jenifer and son Evan just bought a home in Buda, Texas, and part of the deal was to buy a dog. As Carroll and I discussed what type of dog his family would get, it was obvious that growing up with a dog named Ogden (instead of something more conventional, like Spike, or Fido, or Fang, or … whatever) had left him badly traumatized. To this day, forty years later, he still carries a grudge. It’s probably the reason he took up playing the drums.

When Cyndi and I first married, someone gave us a pair of golden Cocker Spaniels, Beano and Keesha (we didn’t name them). Beano, the male, was very clever, and could scale a chain link fence and escape into the alley. In fact, he once followed me up a ladder to the roof of our house, but he didn’t know how to get down by himself. One time after going over the wall he was incarcerated at the dog pound, where Cyndi and her friend, Debbie, smuggled him out in the hatchback of our VW Rabbit – in effect, busting him out of jail like Billy the Kid.

In Midland, Katie once talked the family into a Shar Pei named Max who was the least-well-behaved dog, ever. He chewed up our water hose(s), ate our BBQ grill, would never do anything you asked, and was determined to unseat me from my position as alpha male. His last act before sneaking out through the back gate forever was to eat the cargo net in my Ford Ranger.

Then we adopted Lady, a golden Labrador, in 1998. She has been wonderful. She seldom barks, seldom digs in the yard, and doesn’t make messes in the house. She just wants to please us and hang out with us. She isn’t very good at traditional Labrador skills – she won’t go into the water and won’t fetch or retrieve. But she could run. Through the years she has run thousands of miles, mostly with Cyndi, but also with me and with Katie. She used to regularly run 12 or more miles at a time with Cyndi. Nowadays, she goes for walks; she’s too old and stiff to run. We don’t know exactly how old she is, but she’s lived with us for 11 years, and she was full-sized when we got her.

Still, I have always had an ambivalent coexistence with pets. I like them, but I have never had that deep bond that I often read about. But as I said, lately I am becoming more of a dog person. When I rub Lady’s ears, and she pushes her head into my hand, and we sit rubbing and pushing against each other with acceptance and affection, I feel my heart changing. It feels like I’m growing up.

Lady pushing against my hand with her head is such a tiny example, one of many stories, but like all dog stories, its really about me and Cyndi and us and family and life together and God. Dog stories just offer another way to describe it.

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

I started a new journal book this week; I filled up my old one with writing. My new journal is similar to my old one, of course. It’s a Moleskin (“the legendary notebook used by European artists and thinkers for the past two centuries, from Van Gogh to Picasso, from Ernest Hemingway to Bruce Chatwin”), which I have been using for several years now. The style I’ve used most often is called “Squared.” It has a yellow wrapper and the pages are like graph paper.

As we drove to church Sunday morning, I handed my new journal to Cyndi and asked if she would unwrap the plastic and remove the paper label for me. She unwrapped the journal and flipped it open and noticed the graph paper pages, and she looked at me and smiled. She said, “I like it best when you use graph paper.”

“Really – Why would you even care?”

“When you use a graph paper journal, I feel more grounded.”

My previous journal, the one I’d just filled up, was made up of blank pages – no lines or squares. I thought that writing on blank pages might open up my imagination and stretch my creativity. I was hoping I would think differently and write differently on blank pages instead of my traditional graph paper pages. Of course, for most people, using blank paper to write on is hardly a big leap into the risk pool, but for me, it is definitely a walk on the wild side. It is way out beyond where I am comfortable. I won’t do it often.

I have been writing in some form of hardbound journal since the late 1980s. I started trying to write every day in the early summer of 1998 after listening to an inspiring writer’s workshop taught by Natalie Goldberg. I did some writing before then, but not on a regular near-daily schedule.

Since then I have experimented with a wide variety of journals. Mostly, I like hardbound. Cyndi prefers spiral notebooks because they will lay flat on a table, but I like hardbound journals because they store better on a bookshelf. And I like to write on graph paper because it is more comforting.

My Sunday morning conversation with Cyndi reminded me of a movie I got from Byron called “The Legend of 1900.” It is the story of a man who was born aboard a cruise ship, the Virginian, January 1, 1900, and was raised by the working men on the ship – the coal stokers and engine mechanics. The story follows his life, past middle age, after the ship had served the war as a hospital ship, and until it was dynamited offshore. During those years the man, named “1900,” never left the ship and never stepped on dry land. He lived his entire life on the ship. During the years he played piano with the band, and he had a phenomenal talent – seemed able to play any style of jazz or folk or pop music. He became internationally famous as a musician.

In the end, his friend (a trumpet player named Guy) tried to get him off the ship but he wouldn’t leave, even though he knew the ship was destined to be destroyed. He couldn’t handle the wide-open infinity of land – too many streets, too many houses, too many women, too many choices. The big world frightened him so much he wouldn’t leave the ship.

1900 said he needed the finite world of the ship, from prow to stern. He needed those tight boundaries. He needed structure. He was afraid he would lose his music if he left the ship. Afraid he would have no identity. I can relate to him -  I need structure and boundaries.

However, I don’t use structure in pursuit of perfection. Perfection, as a goal, is too limiting and restrictive, and seldom leaves room to breath. Rather, I use structure in pursuit of creativity and improvisation. I’m afraid I’ll lose it if my life gets too loose.

And while I flourish under structure of my own choosing, I chafe under anyone else’s.

So Cyndi, still holding my new journal in her hand, said, “When you are standing on the edge, with your blank pages, it makes me want to be cautious. But when you use graph paper, I feel free to be as wild as I want to be. One of us has to stay grounded.”

Two of the things I love most about Cyndi are her energy and creativity. If using a graph-paper journal encourages that in her, I will try to stay as graphy as I can. And besides, I like it better. Who knew graph paper carried such a responsibility.

At 10:50 AM Thursday I was sitting against a significant pine tree at the junction of the Tejas and Juniper Trails, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and reading from my Daily Bible. It was a story about the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, and it took place following a mighty spiritual battle between Elijah and the pagan prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. After that intense and bloody encounter, the narrative says, “The power of the Lord came upon Elijah” and he tucked his cloak up into his belt to free his legs and outran King Ahab’s chariot back to Jezreel. It was quit amazing that he could outrun a chariot, after a full day, and in sandals. (I Kings 18)

And then, in the very next paragraph, after Queen Jezebel threatened to kill him because of the embarrassing event on Mount Carmel, in a sudden turn of events, it says, “Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.”

Apparently all of this happened in the same day. We wonder what happened to the “power of God” that helped him before. I guess it could still be working since he is still running, but how could his courage have melted so quickly?

Part of his problem was exhaustion. He needed food and sleep and God gave it to him.

But then he traveled forty days and nights to Horeb, the mountains of God, where he finally heard from God again, decisively and unmistakably.

What a long journey it was to hear form God. Do you think Elijah could have found God without all that foot work?

So Wednesday night in my tent at the Pine Top Campground, I read from a book about a time when the author needed to hear from God. She blocked out a day and retreated to her room with tea and Bible and journal and solitude and expectant heart and prayer and waited. And waited; one hour, two hours, all day. Nothing. She asked, “Why didn’t I hear from God?”

The problem I saw right away, in adapting her scenario for myself, was it was all too stationary. I need to be moving. I need to be running, or walking, or hiking, or backpacking. I don’t have to be actually moving to hear from God, but I will seldom hear him on a stationary sedentary day. If I am pursing a direct word from God, the best I can do is alternate moving and reading and writing and see what happens. It is never what I expected, never when I expect it, so it does no good to make specific plans to hear. But I must be moving.

Sunday night before my trip to the mountains we celebrated Pentecost Sunday in Axis, an evening worship service at my church. On most Sundays I am the speaker for this service, but this particular night we decided to worship in music only – no preaching. The band sang ten songs, and we did a piece with Danish and French and English to illustrate the many languages of Pentecost, and Caitlyn sang One Voice, from Hillsong, and it was all very cool. I think it was one of our most meaningful worship times, ever.

I remember I was sitting in the back of the room in a chair beside Cyndi, who was running video computer and audio board, hoping for some of her attention, when I realized I could no longer sit still. I moved over to the back of the room, the furthest corner from the band, to sing along and lift my arms, and surprisingly, to pace back and forth while they sang.

I think that is Cyndi’s influence on me, to keep moving. My path to spiritual understanding has increasingly become more physical.

Cyndi, of course, experiences the world through movement, and I think she has been rubbing off on me. Sunday night, I found I had to keep moving, if only pacing back and forth, to get a grip on the songs.

I am still a reader and writer and teacher and mostly a stationary guy. I am a visual learner (not kinesthetic learner, like Cyndi). But increasingly, movement has to be a part of my digestion of information or the spiritual lessons won’t stick – won’t find a place to land. It isn’t usually pacing; it is usually running or hiking or backpacking or working out, but it seems, I just have to move it.

(To see photos from my trip into the mountains: http://www.flickr.com/photos/berrysimpson/sets/72157619341836862/ )

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

Saturday morning I enjoyed a bowl of nutty whole-grained cereal while solving the newspaper Sudoku puzzle and listening to a Weekend Edition interview with Stuart Davis, musician and writer and comic. Davis mentioned during the interview that he was a Buddhist practitioner. He said, “I have followed that path for 15 years.”

I wondered why we don’t use language like that about following Jesus. Why don’t I say “I am a Christian practitioner – I have been following the path of Jesus for 45 years?” I am comfortable to say, I believe in Jesus; why is it uncomfortable to say, I practice Jesus?

If I say I am a practitioner, it implies a couple of things: (1) my practices matter, and (2) I am still learning. Saying I am a practitioner of Christianity puts the emphasis on my practices rather than on my words.

In a well-known Bible story, Jesus asked Peter, one of his closest friends and disciples, “Do you love me?” following with the specific command, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17) In other words, don’t just say you love me, do something about it. Don’t just love, act. In other words, be a practitioner.

I live so much of my life inside my own head it is easy for me to fall into the trap of believing that thinking about stuff has the same value as doing something. But my actual practices matter.

If I say I love you but don’t put you foremost in my life, I’m wrong … or lying. I cannot say I want to help you if all I do is talk talk talk. If my explanations smell more like excuses and justifications, it smells. Jesus said, if you love me, talk care of my people, love who I love.

And being a practitioner of Christianity means I am still learning. It means I don’t yet know all the answers and I’m still searching for truth and still learning to walk like Jesus walked and growing better and deeper every day.

One of my core beliefs is that you should grow closer to God every day. Another is that we should be lifelong students. Both of those beg for practice.

I read this: “The essence of Christianity is practicing the art of being His obedient children. A medical doctor, psychologist, teacher, professor, artist, and violinist, are all considered practitioners of their occupation, vocation, and gift. Christ intends for us to be practitioners in action, service, and heart. The practice of the faith is truly from the heart and motivated by the love of Christ.”

In Romans 12:1-2, Paul writes: “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (The Message)

Good words. Living that way takes a lot of practice.

“The most powerful evidence that our souls crave God is that within us there is a longing for love,” wrote Erwin McManus in his book, Soul Cravings.

Our longing for love does not seem to have an evolutionary advantage. It makes us vulnerable, makes us take risks not necessary for survival. The more we love someone, the more we are at risk, and the people we love most have the greatest opportunity to hurt us the most. Love means giving your heart away – a great risk. Like ET, whose heart glowed red and showed through his skin when he was emotional, making his physical heart an easy target for anyone who’d cause him harm, our hearts are our weakest most vulnerable assets when full of love. But also our strongest.

Last Sunday morning in my church I played my trombone with the 9:50 Praise Band. The service started with five baptisms, including four adult members of one family. Because of where I was standing on the platform I had an angled view into the baptistery, so I could see the father of the family step to the side of the baptistery to stay in the water yet out of sight to watch the rest of his family be baptized. After his wife was baptized she stepped over beside him. They were both hidden from the view of everyone in the worship center except for me.

What caught my attention, and the reason I am writing about this, is while the husband and wife stood beside each other in the water watching the rest of their family, I saw him reach over and rub his wife’s shoulder and stroke her wet hair. It was in the way he did it that caught my notice; it seemed practiced and comfortable and habitual and gracious and loving and tender. As I stood watching I felt honored to be a witness of a gesture that represented a long love.

In fact I don’t know the family and I certainly don’t know their history or their relationship and I may have interpreted what I saw completely wrong, but what I saw Sunday morning, in such a simple way, looked like settled love to me. It looked like a lifetime of affection. I thought to myself, I hope people see and feel that sort love and commitment in my private actions when I think no one is watching.

Awhile back I was reading “Walking with God” by John Eldredge, and he wrote about his lifelong struggle with love, and the deep-seated fear that, for him, love never lasts. I read that to Cyndi and said, “For all my own anxieties and fears, this isn’t one of them. I believe true love can stay a long time. Every one who has ever loved me still does.”

It was Mother’s Day and I’d been thinking about family all weekend. I said, “I don’t come from a huggy or openly affectionate family, as you may’ve noticed; as a group we’re not touchy or vocally expressive. Yet, I have always – always – felt loved, and always knew my family was proud of me.” Somehow they communicated that to me – gave that to me. It’s one of the biggest grace gifts of my life.

McManus wrote, “Love is not a limited commodity. Love expands as we give it away. Love dies when we do not.”

It’s as if love only exists when it is in motion. Once it stops moving it fades away. Like some species of sharks that have to swim continuously to breath. They cannot push water past their gills without constantly moving, so if they stop moving they die from lack of oxygen. Love is like that. It has to be moving all the time, from person to person, or it dies from lack of oxygen.

As I stood waiting to play my trombone, I thought about a song recorded by Michael Martin Murphy. It’s about a young man who was about to get married and was afraid it might not last. His father told him, “You come from a long line of love; When the times get hard we don’t give up; Forever is in your heart and in your blood; Son you come from a long line of love.”

That’s me. I come from a long line of love, and that line has been given to me by my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. I am grateful, and I do not take it for granted.

I was reading Psalm 139, one of my favorites. The psalmist began with, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me,” and ended with, “Search me, O God, and know my heart …” He asked God to keep peeling back the layers, to keep stripping away the fears and wounds and bad habits, as if in multiple passes. It occurred to me – this is an iterative process.So my prayer that day was the same as the psalmist: “Thank you, God, for what you have shown me and how you have healed me. Now, search me again and know me deeper and show me more.”

I crawled into bed on Sunday night with my current bedside book, Walking with God, a journal by John Eldredge. I was reading page 96, where Eldredge wrestled with the question, “What do I believe about love?” And then, he heard in his mind, “That it never stays.”

The answer surprised him. However, he knew it was God telling him of an old agreement that effected his relationships with his wife and friends, even all these years later.

When I read that phrase, “that it never stays,” I read it with my eyes, but I heard a voice in my own head say, “I am always second-string. I am never anyone’s first choice.” I read one phrase, but my mind spoke another.

Just like Eldredge, I was quit surprised. I knew it was from God because it made complete sense as soon as I heard it. It explained so many things; for example, my curious reluctance to step up into leadership roles – waiting to be asked, waiting to be polite, or waiting until they want me. I tell myself I am being humble, but maybe I’ve been living in fear of being a second-stringer all these years.

It explained my fears of publishing and writing – why should I expect people to read their second choice? Who do I think I am, a first-stringer?

I sensed this was a significant moment, so I went outside to my pickup and retrieved my journal from my backpack, and came back to the kitchen to write down my thoughts. I prayed: “OK, Lord, keep speaking to me about this. Tell me what to do with it.”

Then three days later, I’d just finished my afternoon workout on a recumbent exercise bike and doing sit-ups and push-ups at Gold’s Gym, and I wanted to wash off the sweat before meeting Cyndi for pizza, so I got in the shower.

Having nothing else to do while in the shower I prayed silently, “What should I do with what you’ve told me? “

Immediately I heard a phrase in my mind – very clear but very fast: “I deserve better than I’m getting.” I knew instantly it was another gift from God, another insight, the next part of what he told me on Sunday night. I can’t explain how I knew, but I knew.

My thoughts flashed back to junior high band in Kermit when I was in the 8^th grade and sat last-chair trombone all year long, knowing in my heart I was a much better player than most of the guys sitting above me. All year I watched as the trumpets and saxophones and everyone else, section after section, had chair tests. I watched my friends move up as they improved their playing. I kept waiting for a trombone chair test which never came. Toward the end of the year, in the last few weeks of school, we had our section tryouts for high school band, and I played very well. I aced it.

The next morning in band, the director moved me from last chair up to 2^nd chair, past 12 or 13 other guys. It was amazing. I gathered up my stuff and walked to the front while everyone else had to scoot down a chair, one at a time. It was noisy and disruptive and no one could have missed it. Those who thought I was a last-chair loser couldn’t believe it, but all the trombone players knew I deserved the promotion. It was my finest moment in Junior High (there weren’t many of those) and kept me in band for a few more years.

So, standing in the shower at Gold’s, I was a bit shocked to remember a story so clearly that I hadn’t thought about in 39 years. I was surprised how that one phrase – I deserve better than I’m getting – came to me so suddenly. It was scary and weird. I prayed again, “What else do I need to know?”

And then, again catching me by surprise, I heard: “If I don’t have a chance to win, I won’t play the game.”

Whoa; where did that come from? Was that really true? I thought about our opportunity for transfer and promotion to California in 1986, and how it was my assignment to suck up to the CEO, John Hess, at a hamburger dinner, so he would trust me with the promotion. I got my turn with him, and I did my best and I was smart and insightful and clever, yet I eventually got slammed by the company. I realized that I have never worked as hard at engineering since that day. When I realized my best stuff didn’t have a chance to succeed, I relaxed and quit playing along with corporate suits.

All these memories raced through my head as I stood in the tiny shower at Gold’s Gym. It all happened much faster than it has taken me to write it down. In fact, I remembered many more stories, most were very recent, but I’m not brave enough to write about them yet.

Well, I don’t know what to with all of this. I don’t know what to fix. I don’t actually believe any of those phrases from a logical or rational viewpoint, but I must believe them in my subconscious because they explain a lot of goofy behavior and deep haunting that has plagued me for decades. It actually feels a little childish and whiney to even write about it.

But I will be on the lookout for those old agreements when they attack me next time and try to keep me from being brave. And I will keep praying, “Search me again; show me more.”

Today is day four of my second 40-Day Challenge. The first was so successful I couldn’t wait to start again.

The 40-Day Challenge is something I made up because I needed a behavioral change. I was tired of hauling my heavy body up and down the running trails. I have weighed more than 200 pounds for so long my body found equilibrium, and I doubted small changes in diet would help. And I realized that, as I am approaching 53 years, it will be harder every year to lose the weight. I knew that I had carried this weight for so long if I didn’t take it off now I might never get it done.

I also wondered how many of my physical problems – left knee, right foot, and high blood pressure – were caused by excessive weight. I didn’t know, but I was certain I wasn’t helping my situation.

But the biggest reason I wanted to slim down is this - I want Cyndi to be hot for me.

I know, I know, she has already promised to love me forever no matter what, but I don’t want to be the guy she has to settle for. I want to be the guy she is hot for. Being in love with someone and being hot for someone are not the same things, you can be either one without being the other, and I want both.

I had finally come to the conclusion that my life pattern of incremental change, normally a good method for me, was not going to work in this case.

I read an article about The Biggest Loser TV program, which, by the way, I’ve never watched, and it said the secret for their great success with huge weight losses was exercise. The article suggested that working out hard for two hours every day was more important than a drastic reduction in calories. When I first read that I thought, “Who can work out two hours every day?”

Well, I’ve also been reading Erwin McManus’ book, Wide Awake, and he wrote: “You can’t just sit back and hope that the life you long for will simply come to you.” So I decided I would try two-a-day workouts for a month and see what happened. I figured I could do anything for one month.

I carefully planned my one-month challenge. I would workout twice each day and cut back to 1800 calories per day for six days a week. (I would take Sundays off.) Then I decided 40 days sounded more Biblical, more epic, than one month, so my one-month challenge became my 40-Day Challenge.

My ultimate goal is to weigh 175 pounds. That should get my BMI down to 24, down to the recommended weight. I haven’t weighed 175 since high school, so I don’t know if I can do it, but I knew I had to try.

I am stronger and, in most ways, more fit than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m not running as well as I used to, but I’ve been lifting weights now for three years and doing yoga for a couple of years and spinning hard on an exercise bike, so I decided I was primed and ready for this 40-day Challenge to work.

My first 40 Days, begun March 2^nd, were easier than I expected. I was able to get in my two workouts a day by running at noon three days a week, going to Body Pump weight lifting class three days a week, going to yoga once a week, and filling in the rest of the gaps by riding an exercise bike at the gym. I did some walking as well, but for me walking does little for weight loss or cardiovascular fitness – I used it mostly as a placeholder to get my two hours a day.

The reason I’m writing about this, besides making myself accountable to anyone who reads it, is that I wonder how many other things in my life would benefit from a radical change. Maybe incrementalism isn’t always the best approach for significant change.

It’s my standard operating procedure to make small incremental sustainable changes rather than big radical changes.

Incremental change is not a bad approach; small changes are often more doable and sustainable, and small changes now can result in huge changes later on down the path. But I’m becoming increasingly aware that sometimes I need a bold drastic change to capture my full attention.

I wonder how often I’ve used my tendency for incremental change as an excuse to minimize risk, not because I wanted to improve, but because I was afraid. Afraid I wouldn’t stick to it; afraid I’d fail; afraid my changes wouldn’t change anything.

McManus wrote: “Many of us need reinvented lives. We are living a rerun, and we need fresh stories.” That was me. I needed a fresh story, a new plan, a bigger challenge. And now, only 36 days to go.

I have been reading a book titled, “One Month to Live,” and on page 16 the authors ask this question: “If you were certain your life as you know it would end in a few weeks, what would be your biggest regret?” I wrote in my book: “No books published yet.”

The premise of the (OMTL) book is the bigger question, “If you had one month to live, what would you do with the time remaining?” My very first thoughts, when I heard this question about two months ago, were: (1) eat more chili cheese dogs, and (2) write down everything I know.

Then a friend reminded me that I probably wouldn’t want to spend my last month with heartburn and chili breath. So, putting that one aside, I am left with my second response, write down everything I know.

The problem with writing down what you know is that most of us tend to wait until we actually have a significant thought before writing. We don’t want to waste journal pages on the goofy day-to-day mundane drivel that runs through our minds. We just want to record the important stuff.

But what I’ve learned about the creative process is that ideas come into our consciousness as through a pipeline. We can’t get to the next idea until we handle the one at hand, and we have to deal with both of them before we get to the next one. Some people may have a bigger pipeline than most, and they might get five great ideas simultaneously, but even for them there is still a sequential nature to creativity. Until you acknowledge the ideas that are bouncing around your mind, God won’t sent you the next ones.

For me, that means I am at my best when I write every day, every idea, every insight, almost as if I am taking that idea and recording it and setting it aside ready to receive the next.

The other part of creativity is that we seldom know the difference between a good idea and a lame idea on the fly. It is usually in retrospect that we know the best insights. We are not good judges of what is best, in the moment.

So back to my “biggest regret” question … I would be sad and disappointed to reach my last days never having published a book. One of my life goals is to publish 25 books; but since I’m almost 53 years old and I haven’t published even one book yet, I should get started.

Well, in fact, I already have. My friend Darrell has been holding my hand while leading me down the self-publishing pathway. We are working on my first book, “Running with God.”

And not only that, I received my galleys last week from Xulon Press, the prototype of  “Running With God.” It was exciting to get this since it is a big step toward publication. It was a bit anti-climactic when compared to some writer’s accounts I have read, since my copy of my galleys came by email as a pdf document instead of in a box and printed on paper. Yet, still, I am pleased and excited about this next step into this next phase of my life.

Here is what I believe in my heart. I believe I have books in me that will change lives, that will draw readers into a closer relationship with God, and encourage readers to pursue their love. I believe in all that because of the words I’ve received from God through the past many months and years, and because of the investment God has made into this specific set of strengths and skills and experiences.

What I don’t know is – if this is that book. This may be the book I have to publish before clearing the slate and opening my mind to the better book. Or this may be the first book in a long strong of books that I have to publish before I am smart enough and skilled enough to get down to the book God will use. I cannot know how this book will do, but I have to move forward and let God handle the results.

My problem is seldom about dreaming big, but about getting started. Just this week I read a story from the Bible when Kind David gave his son, Solomon, marching orders to build a temple. He said, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work.” (I Chron. 28:20) Like Solomon, I have to man-up and do the work.

If I believe one of God’s calls on my life is to write, then I cannot wait to see how something is received before starting. I have to start today, work the ideas I have, exhaust my ideas, no holding back and saving stuff for later, and then when that is done, start the next one. I have to do the work God has given me, live the call he has graced me, and let the results fall on him. I don’t want any last-day regrets.