Faith, Not Fear

America woke up this morning to pictures on the news of Hurricane Sandy’s destruction along the East Coast.

People stand among homes devastated by fire, high wind, and pounding rains. An elderly woman is carried over flood waters by a firefighter. A flooded parking lot is full of taxi cabs in Hoboken. Twenty-eight people are dead.

What’s our response to this?

Certainly we need to work as if everything depended on us. We need to roll up our sleeves and fill sandbags, and climb power poles, and shelter people displaced by the storm.

But there’s more, something deeper.

Last night about 3 a.m. my 4-year-old son came into our bedroom and tapped me on the shoulder.
"Daddy,” he said, “I had a bad dream.”

I rose, like parents do the world over, and carried him back to bed. I tucked him in, kissed him on the forehead, then whispered in his ear the same words I recite whenever my kids have a bad dream: the first portion of Psalm 46.

God is our refuge and strength.

An ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear.

Think about that last line.

We will not fear.

I need to remind myself of that truth on a regular basis. How about you?

Here’s fact. The storms of life happen to us all. If you’re not battling some sort of storm right now, chances are you will be soon.

In response to these storms, we work like everything depends on us. But we’re also invited to trust like everything depends on God. That’s faith, not fear.

And faith can quiet any heart—no matter what the age—when you awake from a nightmare at 3 a.m.

Faith, not fear.

Faith, not fear.

Faith, not fear.

Drum those words--and the greater concept behind them--into your head, again and again.

Faith … not fear.

Question: how do you battle the storms of life?

How to Save Yourself a Heap of Frustration

A new frozen yogurt joint opened up in our city.

It’s called Menchie’s. Ever heard of it? It’s the veritable Disneyland of frozen yogurt experiences.

My kids, ages 9 and 4, love it. If a treat’s to be had, then the clamor is for Menchie’s. I want to be a good father and say yes to going, but therein lies the tension ….

 

I hate the place.

 

See, I watch what I eat, but Menchie’s isn’t conducive to careful eating. It’s set up buffet style. They hand you a tub as you walk in, and you dispense all the confectionary crack you can hold from a rack of soft swirl machines. They weigh your order at the cash register. You pay by the pound.

 

I like places where you can talk comfortably, but Menchie’s is “kid-friendly.” Translation: noisy as a grade school cafeteria at lunchtime.

 

I’m also a germophobe. The last time I went, the kid ahead of me stuck his boogered hand in the chocolate sauce on the extras rack, licked his fingers clean, then did it again. I know how kids work. He wasn’t the first.

 

My frustration surfaces a greater principle—one that affects us all in various areas, and one we can learn from if we examine it closely.

 

The principle is about how we evaluate.

 

The problem is that we’ve only ever been taught one way to evaluate—by personal preference. If something is liked, then all is well. But if something is disliked, then it stinks.

 

That method of evaluation, if it’s the only method of evaluation we know and use, causes problems. Why?

 

Because personal preferences conflict with other people’s personal preferences.

 

·         At your work. Your boss tells you to do things you don’t want to do. So you disagree, and tension flares.

 

·         At your church. You hate hymns, but that’s all your music director wants to sing. Or you hate the new jazzy stuff, but that’s all your church ever does. So you complain, and people complain back.

 

·         In your family. Your wife loves running but you don’t.

 

So what’s the solution?

 

Enter an additional method of evaluation:

 

Scrap evaluating only by preference.

 

Adopt evaluating also by purpose.

 

Evaluating by purpose doesn’t override the principle of evaluating based on preferences. But it gives you a larger and more empathetic perspective to see by.

 

Purpose means you ask questions like,

 

·         What’s this designed to do?

 

·         What’s the vision behind this?

 

·         What do a whole group of people need, (not just me)?

 

For instance, when you evaluate by purpose, you can see that your job is designed to bring value to your company, not just to make you feel good.

 

Or you see how your church’s music program is probably designed so a whole age range of people can worship, people with wildly varying personal preferences in music. Sure, there’s compromise involved.

 

Or you see how one function of your family is that everybody learns to love and serve others. And this function is modeled from the parents first.

 

That’s why the last time my kids hollered for Menchie’s, I said yes. And I went with a good attitude.

 

Sure, Menchie’s is not my personal preference. But I want to help facilitate a positive experience for my family, so in that sense, Menchie’s fulfills its purpose by bringing joy to my children. And for that purpose, I can put up with the place, at least for half an hour, and do so with a smile.

 

That’s the winning principle: learn to evaluate by purpose, not only by preference.

 

You’ll save yourself a heap of frustration.

 

You might even learn to like Menchie’s.

 

Question: in what other areas have you learned how to evaluate by PURPOSE, not only by PREFERENCE?

You’ve Actually got a Great Marriage

I bet you’ve experienced something less than perfect in your marriage.

So distant from happily ever after.

Your spouse has been sick, or gross, or hasn’t understood you, or selfish, or demanding, or whiny, or depressed, or has fallen far short of the ideal mate you imagined this person would be.

But you’ve been there anyway.

You’ve been there no matter what.

And your act of sticking, you both know, has gone way beyond simply being duty bound.

After Miss Mary and I had been hitched for about two years, we worked for a short while in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

The village where we stayed, Tricotte, is too remote to be found on a map. A potholed highway led to a dirt road, which led to two tire tracks beside a riverbed, which led to a goat path. And that’s how we travelled there—the 4WD’s wheels spinning and lurching until we reached the top of a mountain.

Far, far, up in that remote village, hours from any phone, miles from any help, I got sick.

 

Really sick.

Picture the worst case of uncontrollable diarrhea you’ve ever had. Add to that the worst case of nonstop vomiting that’s ever racked your body. Then go roll around in the dirt. For three days and nights I lay near a hole in a cement floor while putrid liquid gushed from all vital bodily orifices.

I needed to go home, to the airport, to America, to a doctor. Finally we drove out of the bush, me reeling in the Mitsubishi as we inched our way down the goat path, and headed for home.  

I remember sitting on the floor of the Haitian airport as our bags were inspected on route to America, and feeling an absolute low. I was completely worn out.

Yet--and this was key--Miss Mary wasn’t freaking out, and her cool hand stayed pressed against my forehead.

“We’re going to get through this together,” she said. And I knew she meant it. She wasn’t going to abandon me, even though I was a gross, stinking bag of incapacitated bones.

That’s what an authentic marriage is like.

She for you.

You for her.

That exact moment. In all its literalness. In all its metaphoricalness.

I bet you’ve had moments like that too—or something similar.

At your core, you know what it means to take that vow, for better or worse. You know you really like this person, most days, and deeply care for this person, always, this person lying on the floor of a Haitian airport right now.

That’s why your marriage is better than you think.

Oh sure, you can have your romantic comedies, your evenings out with wine and roses. Those happy, blissful, perfect moments do exist in a marriage from time to time.

But most days your marriage is about basic day-by-day living. It’s the TV and the couch, the dishes in the sink, and the bills that need to be paid.

And the simple knowledge that when you fly back to America and go to the doctor, you won’t be travelling alone.

Will you do something highly practical about this, you married folks?

Will you, tonight, before you go to bed, take your spouse in your arms and whisper, “You are the absolute love of my life.”?

It’s the truth, you with your spouse, although it might have been a while since it’s been said.

You’ve actually got a great marriage.

You do.

 

Question: How else do you know your marriage is good?

 

When Ed Tipper Came Home From War ( ... and what's important about that for today)

Carentan crawled with Nazis.

After the Allied invasion on D-Day, the enemy was fighting hard to keep their clutches on the cities they had stolen.

PFC Ed Tipper’s job was to go street by street in the strategic occupied French town and clear houses. That meant throwing a grenade through a doorway or window, rushing in, and ferreting out the enemy. Civilians had long since left the area.

At the very first house, on the very first doorstep, Tipper was poised on the front stoop when a rogue mortar shell whistled in and exploded. The blast knocked him back in a fury of dirt and broken brick building.

Tipper felt no pain immediately, he said in a recent interview with me, although his right eye was destroyed, and both legs were broken.

Remarkably, Tipper, a paratrooper with E Co., 506 PIR, 101^st, the elite unit that eventually became known as the Band of Brothers, stayed standing and didn’t drop his weapon. His good friend, Joe Liebgott, sprinted over and helped him sit.

“I reached up,” Tipper said. “My helmet had been blown off. My head felt like a watermelon, swollen and mushy, and blood was everywhere. I was in shock, and my muscles had all tensed—that’s the reason I was still able to still stand.”

With mortar fire still pounding the street, Liebgott and Lt. Harry Welsh carried Tipper a block and a half to an aid station. Tipper was evacuated to England and eventually the States. His fighting days were over.

For months, Tipper was in bad shape, but eventually his broken legs knitted back together. The Army fitted Tipper with an artificial eye. In 1945, Tipper was pronounced well and discharged from the military.

But maybe he wasn’t completely well. Inside, for a while, he may have teetered. As a returning vet, Tipper faced choices. He could have become bitter and dropped out, he admitted, but instead he chose to go the other direction, and certain acts of others helped him do that.

Despite battling reoccurring nightmares, post-traumatic stress, and the limitations caused by his wounds, Tipper went on to lead a highly productive life. He returned to university, earned his undergraduate degree, credentials, and master’s degree, and became a high school teacher.

He pursued his career with vigor and won awards, including a year-long fellowship study at UC Berkley where he temporarily became a member of the university’s faculty. Ever industrious, he bought a small apartment building as an investment and ran it on the side. He enjoyed hobbies including travelling and snow skiing. Later in life he married and fathered one daughter, Kerry, an attorney today.

What caused Tipper to flourish?

Certainly his own drive to succeed. His own smarts, positive outlook, and persistence.

Yet Tipper also factored in the support he received from a grateful nation. Small gestures had a way of adding up to become part of the overall structure that undergirded his success, he said.

Here’s the part of Tipper’s story I never tire of hearing.

When Tipper first got out of the Army, he walked with a cane and wore an eye patch. He remembers how everybody wanted to do everything possible to show support for the veterans returning home.

“If I ate at a restaurant,” Tipper said, “when I went to the cashier, there was never a bill. Or the waitress motioned with her head and said, ‘A gentleman over at that table has paid.’ Of course I was home almost a year ahead of everybody else. But that sort of thing happened to me a lot.”

That image is what I want to burn into the collective brain of North America today—and of people from every other nation that has seen their sons and daughters fighting the global war against terror. Let that image motivate us to gratitude and self-sacrifice. And let it help collectively heal and restore.

If we see a veteran in a restaurant, let’s pay his bill.

If we see a veteran flying standby, needing a seat in an airplane, let’s give him ours.

May we—as countries and as individuals—do everything we can to show support to our returning troops.

As Ed Tipper’s story shows, even a small gesture of kindness can be important to the transitioning process.

 

Question: What other ways can we say thanks?

 

 

How to Accomplish Absolutely Anything

We hear all the time in leadership circles that to succeed you need to set the bar high. Dream big, plan hard, and swing for the fences.

For the most part, I agree.

Yet a big goal can be daunting, and when we set the bar too high, the goal often doesn’t get accomplished, or doesn’t even get started. Procrastination sets in. Or the feeling of being overwhelmed.

So maybe there’s a different way.

Years ago when Miss Mary and I moved into our first house, we looked around at all the work needed and made an 8-page list.

We didn’t have the time, money, or expertise to do everything all at once. So, we went the other direction. Instead of setting the bar high …

We set the bar low.

That first day in our new house we simply unpacked our boxes and ate a pizza dinner. The next morning we went to our respective jobs.

Then, slowly, almost unnoticeably, we started working on the house.

Some items were easy to cross off. Like renting a pressure washer and cleaning the driveway.

Some items were more involved. Months went by before we tackled them. Like rotor-tilling the backyard, rolling and raking the soil, and planting new lawn.

For some items, we needed to save up and hire professionals. Like ripping away the old, rotting siding and having new siding installed.

And some items we never did get to. Like replacing the windows.

We lived in that house for 7 years. Little by little, we crossed off three-quarters of our list. We ended up selling that house for almost twice what we paid for it.

Setting the bar low means you tackle your goal in bite-sized chunks. You don’t do a lot, not right away at least. What you do might even seem inconsequential at first. But the “little” that you do is achievable. It actually gets done.

For instance …

·        Want better upper body strength?

Set a goal of doing 1 pull-up today. That’s right. Only 1. If you can, do 12 reps of 1 pull-up today, and you’ll be well on your way to being a pull-up machine.

·        Want a better marriage?

Kiss your wife for 15 seconds when you come home from work this evening. That’s right, 15 solid seconds on the lips, and see what good things happen from there.

·        Want to save for retirement?

Phone up your local investment office, and put $25 this month into a mutual fund. Forget the lofty goal of saving 15 percent of your income. Start with $25.

·        Want to be a better spiritual leader for your family?

Read 1 Bible verse after dinner, or when you tuck your kids into bed. 1 verse. Any man can do that.

·        Want to hone your mind?

Read 1 chapter from a classic book during your lunch break. Or maybe only 3 pages.

 

Whatever your goal is, start small. Start doable. Then slowly and surely watch your goal be achieved.

It’s an old joke, but it holds forth an extremely practical principle … How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

 

Question: how are you succeeding at a big goal by breaking it down into bite-sized chunks?