Can You Dig It?

What first captured your heart and opened your eyes to the world of art, music, and transcendence? Who was the first to ignite your artist soul? For me it was a rock band: Chicago. Hearing their music literally changed my life in 1971. I would not be a musician today if they hadn’t happened to me. And this week I was fortunate to hear them play again, in Midland, at the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center.

I was 15-years-old when I discovered Chicago, and their Chicago Transit Authority album was one of the first things I bought with my own money. Within a couple of months I’d cobbled together enough cash to buy Chicago II and III. I was hooked. I was in deep.

If you’d’ve told me then those same guys would still be playing rock-and-roll when they were 70-years-old I would’ve laughed. How silly. And yet, now it’s my life goal to enjoy what I do as much as they enjoy performing, all the way to the end of my life, just like them.

The music we love reveals how old we are. It’s better than carbon dating; better than clothes, hairstyles, poetry, newspapers, or sports. Maybe because at that time in our life we were full of searching and exploration, and the first musical sounds we heard imprinted on our souls like a mother duck imprints on her ducklings. What we heard during that window of opportunity never leaves.

One March evening in 2001 my brother called me on the telephone and told me to turn the TV to VH-1. “Which channel is VH-1?” While he was laughing at my cultural ineptness, my teenaged daughter came to the rescue by calling out "channel 40." It was a "Behind the Music" special about Chicago. Carroll said, "My gift to you," and he hung up his phone.

I couldn’t believe it. I dragged my rocking chair in front of the TV and camped out for the next hour. Cyndi smiled at me because she knew I was gone for a while. Even Katie noticed the change. "Wow!” she said. “Dad put down his book just to watch TV."

I’m not a huge fan of Chicago’s power ballads from the 1980s. In my opinion, almost any other band could have recorded those same songs and had big hits. What I love most, and what makes Chicago unique, is their integration of horns with guitars, keyboards, and percussion … not as background accompaniment, but as primary drivers. Jimi Hendrix once said Chicago’s horns were like an “extra set of lungs.”

I have to say that the volume Tuesday night was too loud, excessively loud, even for a rock concert. So loud it masked the subtleties of the music, and I was sad I missed some of my favorite parts. But still, I loved it. I knew all the songs anyway.

Here’s the thing: I’m not really writing about Chicago; I’m writing about the power of music. I’m writing about how some things latch on to your soul so that you wallow in it for decades. Maybe for you it was soccer, or dance, or math, or mountains, or the beach. For me it was music, and Chicago made it happen.

Week after week I write about God, running, cycling, backpacking, spiritual growth, family, music, and loving Cyndi. And the truth is, I can’t separate those topics. They are woven together and I don’t care to cut them apart.

I went to the Tuesday concert, not just to hear the same songs I can listen to any time I want, but to reinforce a 44-year-old life-changing experience that still influences me every day. Music is one of our tightest family ties. Music is one of my deepest spiritual truths. I don’t want to let that slip away.

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Navigating a Deeper Life

Are you a good navigator? Or are you the sort who gets lost often? My wife, Cyndi, has a much better intuitive sense of direction than I do. I need more than intuition, I need maps. I am a map guy.

Which brings me to an article I read in Backpacker Magazine titled “Navigate Like a Pro.” The article contains tips to keep from getting lost in the wilderness, but their advice is more fundamental than mere backpacking. They tapped into deeper ideas that help us navigate closer to God.

The article, from the May 2015 issue, features advice from Liz Thomas, a long-distance backpacker who holds the women’s unsupported speed record on the Appalachian Trail (80 days). Here’s what she says we need to do to keep from getting lost.

(1) “Keep your mind and body sharp. It’s really hard to navigate if you’re hungry, thirsty, or cold. An unfueled brain is more likely to make poor decisions.”

We all make bad decisions when we’re exhausted. We speak when we shouldn’t, pick fights we should’ve left alone, and repeat the same mistakes over and over. Unfortunately, we live in a time when exhaustion is a point of pride. Too often we plan our days all the way to the edges, leaving no margin for change or adaptation, feeling like lazy slackers when we aren’t constantly busy and rushed.

But according to Dr. Christine Carter, author of “The Sweet Spot,” there is plenty of research to show that people who are able to sustain high performance don’t let themselves get busy. Moreover, their not-busyness makes them much more productive than average. Living full speed, 24/7, reduces our ability to make good decisions and increases the likelihood we’ll get lost.

(2) “Confirm your location on your map often. This sounds obvious, but this is the single best way to prevent wandering off course. I always hike with a map in my hand or in my pocket.”

The biggest and worst mistakes I’ve made in my life have happened when I moved on my own initiative without asking advice. I put too much confidence on my own intelligence and cleverness, took off on tangents, and ended up solving the wrong problem or missing the heart of the business deal. To be effective, to stay on the correct trail, to avoid getting lost, we have to check in often, tag up, ask opinions, show unfinished work to people we respect, listen to feedback, be willing to stop, reevaluate, and adapt.

(3) “Learn to read contour lines. GPS units are great, but you still need to be able to read a map. That means understanding how contour lines represent real-world terrain.”

The problem with using a GPS is you never see the big picture. They are great for taking you to a specific location, but not so great for learning the overall lay of the land, or what you can expect just past the edges of the screen.

Too often we live out our spiritual lives as if using a GPS. We read only books by Christian authors, listen only to Christian music, tune in only to sermons. We get excellent advice and directions for specific problems, but miss the opportunity to know and understand the bigger world that lies just beyond the edges.

In 1 Chronicles 12, the historian makes a list of all the tribes who were lining up behind King David. Verse 32 tells about the tribe of Issachar, who “understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” We want to be people like that. Learning to read the contour lines of our world gives us better knowledge of what to do and where to go.

(4) “Learn the difference between true north and magnetic north. The difference is called declination; it changes over time, and it varies according to your location.”

The best way to stay tuned to true north in life is to read your Bible on a consistent basis. Read it cover-to-cover, over and over. Reading other books is important, but opinions change over time and vary according to location. Keep returning to true north. Keep reading the source code. Stay in your Bible.

(5) “Think like a railroad engineer. When traveling cross country, observe the landscape and choose the path of least resistance.”

Sometimes we make following God too hard. We fret over signs and open doors when God wants us to follow our heart. Often, the path that feels right, is the right path.

(6) “Avoid shortcuts. Not only does cutting switchbacks or taking short cuts cause erosion, but it’s also an easy way to get lost.”

In the Guadalupe Mountains where I do most of my hiking, cutting switchbacks is a good way to lose your footing and slide 3,000’ down to the desert floor. Don’t do it.

When we start to get indications about our calling, we often want to jump before we’re ready. Take your time; let God train you; allow him to build the skillsets in your life; don’t rush ahead taking short cuts. You’ll most likely get lost, and might get hurt.

How about you? Are you a good navigator? Or are you the sort who gets lost often?

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

The Cost of Staying Safe

It’s not a simple question to ask which parts of ourselves we should hang on to and which parts we should leave behind. If we throw away the best parts of our core personality we risk becoming someone we hate, but if we hang on because “that’s just who I am,” we risk remaining jerks for the rest of our lives. I started thinking about this last week while reading from my Daily Chronological Bible, about a time when King David was nearly killed in a battle with the Philistines, and says, “Then David’s men swore to him, saying, “Never again will you go out with us to battle, so that the lamp of Israel will not be extinguished.” (2 Samuel 21:17)

The story reminded me of the movie, Air Force One, in which Harrison Ford plays President James Marshal. In the movie, the president’s airplane was hijacked while he and his family were on board, following a controversial speech where he vowed never again to negotiate with terrorists. The Secret Service tried to rescue the President by shoving him into an escape pod, but when the pod was located and opened, it was empty. The President, a former marine and Medal of Honor winner, had sneaked out of the pod just before it dropped, in order to protect his wife and daughter.

Back in The Situation room in Washington D.C. they were furious that the President wasted his opportunity to escape. The Vice President said, “He’s taking a terrible chance with his life. He has no right to take chances with his life.”

She believed he had a responsibility to the nation as a whole that superseded his wishes as a husband and a father. It was his obligation as President and his duty to the American people to stay safe and survive.

The Vice President’s desire was similar to that of King David’s men when they told him it was his duty to stay safe. “You are the lamp of Israel and you will not be extinguished. You owe it to us and to your country to stay home.”

But by insisting that David, a mighty warrior, take the safe route and stay home, they were asking him to give up a defining characteristic of his life.

It’s not a simple question to ask which parts of ourselves we should hang on to and which parts we should leave behind. Both stories speak to the conflict between two of the primary needs in a man’s life. Men need a battle to fight and they need to be part of a larger story.

Both President Marshal and King David knew their place: their importance to their countries, to the future and wellbeing of their people, and to the message and mission that had carried them into leadership. Risking their life was a needless threat to their important roles in their big world stories, but to sit down and expect other men to risk death and injury on their behalf ran counter to their own personal need to be in the battle.

Unfortunately, King David followed his soldier’s advice and stayed home during the next season of war. The Bible says, “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war … David remained in Jerusalem.” (2 Samuel 11:1, (which appears in the text before the other story, but probably took place later in time))

This is a prelude to the tragic story of David’s affair with Bathsheba, which resulted in the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, the death of their baby, and the near spiritual destruction of David.

I wonder if his adultery with Bathsheba was an attempt to fill the hole in his heart left when he stayed safe and stayed home. Did he exchange one real adventure with another pathetic one?

I’m not making excuses for David’s adultery and murder. I’m calling him out. He should have told his army he would go to battle anyway, even if dangerous, because he was called by God as a warrior king. But he caved. He took the safe way. He took the easy way. And both David and the nation paid a heavy price because of it.

We can force men out of the battle, but we lose more than we gain. To make a man remove all risk from his life is to carve away part of his heart, and we’ll end up with less of a man. We’ll lose much more than we know.

QUESTION: Are you staying so safe that you’ve lost important relationships, habits, dreams, or moral direction?

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

A High Tolerance

“The good news is, you obviously have a high tolerance for pain,” said the orthopedic surgeon last Friday. I was happy he said it in front of my wife, Cyndi; anything that makes me look strong and manly in her eyes is a winner. He said it while analyzing my X-rays and calculating the angles of displacement in my knees. “The bad news is, also, that you have a high tolerance for pain. You’ve let this go on long enough.”

“Your left knee needs replacing; your right knee needed replacing now, as soon as possible, before the angle worsens and the ligament is stretched beyond easy repair.”

It’s comforting, actually, to get an authentic diagnosis from a professional based on real data, even when the result is surgery. It answers the questions in my head: Am I making this up? Do everyone’s knees feel like this and I’m just being a wuss about it?

The doctor gave his practiced speech with all the reasons why I should consider total knee replacement until he figured out I was already on board. In fact, I wouldn’t have been in his office if I hadn’t already committed to that plan. My worst case scenario heading into Friday was that he would send me home to come back next year.

We set an appointment for right knee replacement on June 24, and left knee replacement on July 22. Before then I have to see a physical therapist for a couple of times, and also get a CT scan so they can build a custom 3-D printed knee. How cool is that!

Needless to say, I won’t be riding the MS150 this summer. I don’t know about cycling in Ft. Davis for Cyclefest. I have no idea how quickly I can be back on my bike or putting in real miles.

However, don’t take that as a complaint. I’m ready for this next phase of life (knowing full well none of us are ever as ready as we think). I’m ready to discard what isn’t working and replace with something new. Living life means constantly shedding what we don’t need and accumulating what’s next. We learn new things and unlearn old things, embrace ideas for the future and shed artifacts from the past. We are constantly churning, usually ideas and practices, but occasionally body parts.

Here’s the thing: What haunted me after the doctor visit actually had nothing to do with knees. I wondered how often my “high tolerance for pain” caused problems. Maybe when I pretend to be tolerating pain I am simply avoiding confrontation, or glossing over serious problems. How often do I wait too long to fix something, hoping it will get better on its own?

There is more to tolerating than I first thought. At least I’ll have several weeks of recovering from surgery to think more about it.

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Hope Dwells in Chaos

How many times have you heard or said, “I only wish things could return to normal.” As if there was such a time. As if there is such a thing as normal.

Yesterday I mistimed my elevator ride from the 19^th-floor to the basement, meaning instead of a peaceful quiet solitary ride all the way down we stopped four times to take on people. And to be honest, there was one gentleman already inside the elevator when I got in, so he had to stop five times. I interrupted his day.

If you hear someone joke that “no one in elevators talks to each other they just stare at the numbers” you are listening to a refugee from the 1990s. Nowadays everyone looks at their phone. Or, in the case of my building, they look out the elevator window to see what sort of weather awaits us outside.

But yesterday was different. For some reason, the elevator passengers started talking about how much they could’ve accomplished during the day if it weren’t for the interruptions. It was true for me as well. I had a long term study I hoped to make progress with, a temporary gas compressor installation south of Ozona and were we really making any money on the project, but I received a couple of emails from the home office that changed my day and my priority list. I didn’t get any work done on my original project.

But as I listened to the playful complaining on the elevator it occurred to me that the disruptions I worked on were more important, and solving them was more fruitful to the company. On my long trek to the parking garage I wondered: If it weren’t for interruptions would I even accomplish anything of significance?

Leonard Sweet wrote, “We should prize chaos more than order. Only chaos brings forth new ideas, new experiences, and new energies, because only chaos is open and receiving, ready for change.” (What Matters Most)

One of my favorite chapters from the Bible is Mark 5, and it tells about a series of interruptions woven together that made up Jesus’ day. Reading that chapter is a reminder that if it weren’t for interruptions we wouldn’t know much about Jesus actual ministry with people. The gospel writers didn’t write about day-to-day teaching, but wrote about the chaos that followed Jesus everywhere he went.

It has become a favorite phrase of mine, that “change adds energy,” and I rattle it off as if I have always known the truth of it, but it has taken most of my life to learn to stop resisting sudden changes to my perfect life plans.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t wallow in chaos. I don’t seek messes and I certainly don’t plan my life that way. In fact, I am always trying to sort through the chaos and find meaning, beat down the mess to find the true story, untangle the situations to locate the lesson that will help us all find our way through.

I also know that constant chaos is debilitating and draining. Even deadening. So we should find places and times for peace and rest if we want our lives to be effective.

It is in those moments of change, the transitions, the chaos, when the danger of making a mistake is the greatest, that we depend, finally, on God. During normal times, whatever that really means, there is no future. There is only more of the same old thing. The future hides in transition. Hopes dwells in the chaos.

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

What Stories Do You Choose?

Last week I rode my bike on the White Rock Creek Trail located northeast of downtown Dallas, Texas. It was my first time to ride this entire trail, and my first time to circle the lake on a bike rather than on foot. After lunch on Friday I parked in the parking lot of Anderson Bonner Park, just south of 635, the northern trailhead, and changed into my cycling kit in the backseat of my Toyota Tacoma. Changing clothes in the car is something of a family identifier for us. Cyndi and I have changed into running gear in the parking lots of some very classy places. However, I must add, changing into cycling bibs and jersey was much harder than running shorts and T-shirt. There were several moments when I could have been arrested had anyone cared to look inside the tinted window.

My usual purpose for squeezing a run (or a ride) into a busy day is to reinforce an old memory. Memory is so fragile, and it changes over time in ways we aren’t aware, so I like to retrace old routes to reestablish the details.

It’s like rebuilding rock cairns on a mountain trail. They deteriorate over time, victims of weather, gravity, and animals, and they must be maintained to remain effective and mark the trail. It is the same with deep personal spiritual experiences. We have to reinforce them, remind ourselves they were real and not our imagination. If we don’t, they will deteriorate just like the rock cairns, victims of time, memory, and spiritual attack.

There are certain trails that I visit again and again, simply to rebuild the memories of a significant insight I had years ago. There are crossroads where I always stop and breathe the air and take in the view simply because God once spoke to me in that exact spot. There is even one trail in Prospect Park in Wheat Ridge Colorado where I once ran to reinforce my understanding of a friend; in this case, it was his spiritual encounter on the trial I was working on, not my own.

Penelope Lively wrote, “The memory that we live with is the moth-eaten version of our own past that each of us carries around, depends on. It is our ID; this is how we know who we are and where we have been.”

As a writer and as a teacher I often worry that I fall back on the same old stores time and time again. Surely I must be boring people in my repetition. Even worse, I find myself telling the same old stores to Cyndi, most often stores of our early days when we first fell in love with each other. And when I read back through old journals I am surprised how often I write about running at White Rock Lake or Lady Bird Trail, or about trips up the same old trails in the Guadalupe Mountains, or even the same stores from my Daily Bible. And, well, here I am, writing about those same things, again.

In his book, What Matters Most, Leonard Sweet wrote, “Just as the kinds of friends we choose decide the kind of person we become and the direction life takes, the stores we relate to most closely structure our identities. Some of the most important choices we make are our companion stories – the stories we choose to live with. It takes only a few basic stories, or what scholars call “deep structures,’ to organize human experiences.”

I suppose that’s why I love to write family stories. The more time I spend in them the more I see God at work in our lives. Each time I forage around in my old stories I reinforce the memory that God has been rescuing us all along.

What about you? What stories have you chosen to live with?

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Who Would You Be If You Never Failed?

There are surprising advantages to growing older; each year is a slightly higher platform for viewing the past. And so, just last week, from my current vantage point on the threshold of turning 59, I captured a new picture of life. While listening to a Mosaic Podcast in which Hank Fortner spoke about faith and wisdom, I pondered a question he asked, one often used by motivational speakers and goal-setters: What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail?

I thought about how personal failure has changed me and shaped our family’s life. I started making a list of what would have been different if I’d gone through life never failing.

Who would I be if I never failed? I …

…would be braver, knowing I couldn’t fail, but without the risk of failure what is the meaning of courage?

…would’ve never learned humility from having to start over being laid off so many times

…would believe our family destiny, safety, and success, depended solely on my economic decisions

…would’ve never experienced the restless heart that’s pulled me toward God

...wouldn’t have needed all those time-consuming and often painful training runs before each marathon

…would’ve succeeded in my first attempt at the Golden Yucca Marathon, never fully appreciating how difficult it was

…would’ve missed the deep spiritual meditations that came from those long training runs

…would have the same self-sufficiency I had when I was 20

…would’ve never experienced the strengthening, maturing, and seasoning, that comes from a failure-laden journey

…wouldn’t have sought out sages for wisdom and advice

…would still think success was all about me

…would have no patience with those who are suffering, for those who fail

…would have leaped up the corporate ladder moving to California, missing so many ministries and relationships in Midland

…wouldn’t know what it means to prepare

…would’ve jumped into teaching opportunities way too soon

…would’ve never needed, understood, or experienced forgiveness

…wouldn’t have learned to listen to advice

…would be worthless to anyone asking my advice

…would’ve never learned to give credit to others

…would’ve never learned to recognize bad advice

…would’ve never learned the details of why success happens

…would not understand or know risk; without risk there is no room for love, only conquest

…would’ve never learned that contingency plans are often better than original plans

…would’ve never learned how to learn

…would’ve never known anyone smarter than me

…would’ve never learned the joy of spontaneous improvisation in sticky situations

…would’ve never known how much I needed grace; never learned how to give grace away

We love to quote the movie, Apollo 13, “Failure is not an option,” but it’s wrong. Failure is not only a live option, it is a certainty. And if the oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 Service Module hadn’t failed, turning a moon landing into a rescue mission, NASA would never have had their “finest moment.”

But embracing the value of failure isn’t enough. Hank Fortner followed up his original question with this idea – that as Christ Followers safe in God’s embrace, failure shouldn’t scare us. A better question to ask ourselves would be: What would you do if you knew failure didn’t matter?

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Reawakened

I wasn’t sold on skiing again; not even sure I wanted to try; afraid my arthritic knees would give out. And besides, our last ski trip was 15 years ago. I’d assumed skiing was behind me, something I used to do. But I couldn’t let the rest of my family go to Santa Fe without me, and our five-year-old granddaughter, Madden, was joining us for her first ski trip. How could I not be part of that? Everyone else including Madden skied three days, but I skied only the first day. I knew at the end of Saturday I was finished, and any further attempts would likely end in serious injury.

But what happened to Cyndi and me was surprising: this trip reawakened our love for skiing, and as we rode the lift together we started planning more family trips.

The reason for the surprise, at least for me, was how soon this reawakening followed a recent and pivotal conversation we had one noon at Rosa’s. The observation and question I usually hear is, “Why are you limping?” However, this time Cyndi’s sister, Tanya, asked, “Are you a candidate for knee replacement?”

“Yes.”

“When are you going to get it done? Why are you waiting?”

“I don’t know. I’m not ready to give up running, yet.” What I didn’t say, but knew, was that I’d only run six times since Thanksgiving, and none of those were pleasant. In truth, I’d given up running already.

Minimizing knee pain has informed almost every decision I’ve made in the past ten years. It’s kept me from doing fun things with Cyndi, like hiking in Verana or the Kalalau Trail. It’s pushed back too many of the dreams that once energized my life, and I want those dreams back.

I want to dream again of long dirt trails, of backpacking the Appalachian Trail or Continental Divide Trail, and as of this weekend, of family ski trips.

I’m fully aware that I may never run again after knee replacement, but I’m not completely convinced of that. We’ll see what happens. As Cyndi has noted, what I currently call running is “hardly running at all,” more like power walking, and surely I could keep doing that. My consistent prayer has been to ask God to remove the love of running from my heart whenever He thinks it is time. He hasn’t done that yet.

Thinking about knees and dreams has reminded me how important cycling has become. Not just as a form of vigorous exercise, which I love, but also as a vehicle for ambition and creativity. I need something in my life that pushes my own expectations. Carroll and Mark did me a big favor when they talked me into cycling, long before it was all I could do.

During one of my Santa Fe non-skiing days I was flipping through Penelope Lively’s excellent memoir, Dancing Fish and Ammonites, when I saw this comment about gardening: “The miraculous power of gardening: it evokes tomorrow, it is eternally forward-looking, it invites plans and ambitions, creativity, expectation.”

Her description of gardening is exactly how I want to live my life: forward-looking adventures, ambitions, creativity, and expectations. I want the important things in my life - work, sports, hobbies, ministries, and writing - to be forward-looking. I want to be engaged in things that make the future bigger, brighter, bolder, and smarter.

I want a life that spills over onto people and pushes them deeper into life. I know such a life can exist even with bad cranky knees, but thinking about new knees has reawakened me. It has leaned me forward. I can once again see on my horizon epic dreams of long distances and endurance adventures and moving on dirt with my guys.

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

 I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Knowing When to Turn Back

Let’s just say that being a grandparent and being a grownup do not always have the same goals. Our plan for last Friday was to drive to Dallas, to DFW Airport, for an interview with Homeland Security for Trusted Traveler Program approval, and then on to Mansfield for the weekend to be part of our granddaughter Madden’s 5^th birthday party.

We left Midland at 6:30 AM, driving on slightly slick snowy roads, and made it around Loop 250 to I-20 feeling bold and confident. The road conditions were not excellent, but they were passable, and I drove 40 mph hoping for clear traveling ahead. Maybe we would catch up to the edge of this slow-moving storm which hadn’t yet reached Dallas or Ft. Worth.

Traffic was very light, and the right hand lane of I-20 was mostly clear. However, the wipers and defrosters wouldn’t keep up with ice on the windshield and we had to stop a couple of times to scrape if off. Luckily we had two ice scrapers, so Cyndi and I would jump out and scrape each sides of the windshield and then jump back in, like a NASCAR pit crew.

After we left Big Spring the road conditions quickly deteriorated. Apparently the snow plow driver that had cleared the lane from Midland stopped in Big Spring for breakfast. Even worse, the traffic volume doubled, mostly big trucks driving entirely too fast since they didn’t have their family on board and thought they were invulnerable.

Our son Byron texted that snow had started to fall in north Dallas, so our hopes of clear driving were over. We phoned daughter Katie who had driven to work on clear roads but was now watching it snow outside her office window.

At Coahoma we decided the appropriate grownup decision was to turn around and go back home. It had taken us 1-1/2 hours to drive 50 miles, and traffic was slowing down even more. We’d have to tell our little girl happy birthday on FaceTime.

The drive home gave me plenty of time to think about our decision to turn around and how it mirrored so many other decisions we make in life.

How do we know when to turn back or when to move forward in faith in spite of the circumstances? How do we know how far to push into adversity and keep going, or when the grownup decision is to cut our losses, minimize future risk, turn back and go home? Do we keep moving in the same direction until receiving a specific word, or sign, from God? What is the difference between acting in faith and simply being stubborn? Or stupid?

The movie Searching for Bobby Fischer has a famous line about winning at chess, “Don’t move until you see it.” That theory of decision making works well with my engineer mind, which never wants to start a project until I can see the entire path.

But my friend Gene Abel once called me out on that when I hesitated to take a teaching opportunity at Midland College. He said, “Berry you always want to be certain of the whole path before you take your first step. Sometimes you have to start moving in faith and see what happens.”

Knowing when to go and when to stay is never easy and never clear.

Cyndi and I made the correct decision to turn around and drive back home last Friday. We’ll have plenty of opportunities to make that trip when the weather gets better. However, most of life’s decisions are not so obvious.

I believe the more we know and understand God the clearer the answer will be, but I also suspect we’ll have to step out on many plans and issues before seeing the path. The good news is, God doesn’t leave us alone to decide. If we’re seeking His will and pursuing our relationship with Him daily, then I think our default reaction to a tough decision is to trust our own hearts, where God dwells and where He most often speaks.

When a straight path appears ahead of us, we should take it. Make the move. But be prepared to stop and turn around if necessary. It may be that little out-and-back jaunt was what God wanted from us all along.

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

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How Do You Play?

Do you do anything that you consider play? As adults, it’s difficult to find time for playing, but it is critical for long term happiness. I think playing is spiritual, also. So does one of my favorite writers, Leonard Sweet. In his book, The Well-Played Life, he wrote, “Some people fulfill themselves. Some people are full of themselves. Some people are just full of it. Disciples of Jesus are full of Christ. But we are mostly fully Christ when we are at play.”

Of course, it’s possible to play too much so that we ignore all our responsibilities, but that isn’t usually a problem … at least, not for the adults I know. For most of us it’s more likely we don’t play enough.

Today, Thursday, I played at noon. You may have heard reports of a crazy man cycling in the cold and wind on Mockingbird Street. Yes, that was me. I know, it was too cold for cycling, but being the stubborn guy that I am, I went anyway.

Here are the stats: 17.5 miles, 32*F, 23 mph wind from NNE (which means a head wind all the way home). It wasn’t my coldest ride of record. That was the Bike Club time trials in February 2012, when it was 28*F. But 32* is colder than I plan to ride again for a while. At least, until my fingers warm up.

And, I will admit, it wasn’t all about play. The only reason I rode today was so I could write about it. It follows in a long string of things I’ve done just so I could understand them better and write about them.

But that’s not all. Last Saturday I rode 51 miles, the furthest I’ve ridden in five months, and I felt great afterwards. I felt so strong and manly all I’ve wanted to do is get back on my bike and be even manlier.

I didn’t feel very manly riding east into the cold wind today at noon. And it didn’t feel like I was playing. It felt more like I didn’t have a choice but to keep spinning so I could get home and warm up.

However, for me cycling outside is play, no matter how harsh the conditions; cycling indoors on a trainer in a controlled environment is merely working out. One is play, the other is exercise. One feeds my heart and soul, the other strengthens my body.

A few years ago, when Cyndi was still teaching 5-th grade, she was working on a “Meet-the-Faculty” bulletin board in the front hallway of her school. She asked each teacher to list three dreams – as in, three places they dreamed of going someday, or three things they wanted to do, or people they wanted to meet, if time and money were no object.

Cyndi and I love these sorts of exercises. Not only do we get to dream and play together, we learn about each other all over again. But it was surprising to us that some of the teachers wouldn’t play along. They weren’t interested in having three dreams. They gave up dreaming years ago. It’s too bad they’ve forgotten how to play.

In his book This Running Life, Dr. George Sheehan wrote: “I discovered that play is an attitude as well as an action. That action is, of course, essential. Play must be a total activity, a purifying discipline that uses the body with passion and intensity and absorption. Without a playful attitude, work is labor, sex is lust, and religion is rules. But with play, work become craft, sex become love, and religion becomes the freedom to be a child in the kingdom.”

I believe finding time in our busy lives for play is crucial for our spiritual health. It doesn’t have to by cycling or running. It doesn’t have to be sports or games or adventures. It might be reading, or watching movies. It might be wrestling with your kids.

Having play time is one of the ways we leave room in our schedule for God to show up. It’s one of the few times our brains are relaxed enough to enjoy new ideas and hear new insights.

How about you? What do you do for play? How long has it been?

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

I need your help. If you enjoyed reading this, please share with your friends. You can find more of my writing on my weekly blog, read insights on Tumblr, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.