Attitude

I always hear people say "Attitude is everything." When I hear that I usually just think, yeah yeah whatever. Probably because at those times my attitude is a bad one and I don't really want to hear what that person is saying. In church today, my pastor told a story of three bricklayers working on rebuilding Christopher Wren's St. Paul Cathedral. The first bricklayer was asked what he was doing and replied "I'm laying brick for 10 hours a day." The second bricklayer was asked the same question and replied "I'm laying brick to make money." Then the third bricklayer was asked the same question, to which he replied "I'm building one of the great structures in this world for the Almighty." So what does this mean? The one bricklayer that had a good attitude was enjoying his work, even though he was doing the same thing as the other bricklayers. His attitude made life more enjoyable and he was able to have fun when he was at work. This made me think about all the things that I do each day. There are so many tasks that I "have-to" do during the day. What if I changed my attitude and made these "have-to" tasks into "get-to" tasks? What would my life look like if I just changed my attitude? I wonder what my impact would be on those around me. This is one goal that I want to try to achieve in the next few weeks and continue on into the future. I challenge everyone to look at their own attitudes and determine what tasks are ones that we take for granted each day. Try to change one of these tasks from a "have-to" into a "get-to" and see what happens.

modern day parable

The past week I spent in Baltimore and had plenty of time at night to read and think about different things. One of the books I read made an interesting inquiry. In the Bible, the first Christians were labeled that by outsiders as the outsiders saw them following Christ and labeled them as Christians. Now days, people label themselves as Christians, but would outsiders still label many of these people as Christians by watching their actions and hearing them speak? This makes me think about how I live my life and if I label myself as a Christian or if others would label me as a Christian that didn't know me.

I also heard a couple analogies that really intrigued me. They almost seem to me to be like a modern day parable. When someome enters the military, they must follow all kinds of rules and are not allowed to say what you want and don't want to do. Why is Christianity not like this? Why can Christians determine which of God's commandments we want to follow and which ones we don't. We don't question the rules of the military so why do we question the commandments of Christianity?

The second analogy I heard was following God is like going the opposite direction on an escalator. If we just stand still, we are going to drift further away from our destination. In order to get to our destination, we must pursue it and walk in the opposite direction that a lot of people are going. It probably won't be easy and we may get a lot off weird looks, but we must continue to pursue the destination in order to get there. In no way am I perfect, in fact I would say that I'm standing still most of the time, but I think this gives Christians something to think about each day as we go through our daily lives.

Wedding Weekend

This past weekend, I drove across the most boring place on Earth (western Nebraska) to get to a small little Nebraska town. The reason, going to a good friend's wedding. I got there and was really hoping to have a good time. I needed a good break away from everything that was going on at home. So I got there and met up with Justin and all the other groomsman. It was wonderful catching up with everyone. Then we went to rehearsal and met Jill (his new wife), her bridesmaids, and all the family that was there. Everyone was very friendly and made me feel completely at home. We listened to some really bad jokes by the pastor and enjoyed a beautiful night outside. On the way to the rehearsal dinner, we may have gotten a little lost, drove around town and even watched a marching band getting ready to enter a Friday night high school football game. The dinner was awesome with some great food and a lot of fun conversation with old friends and people that would become new friends. We went back to Justin's place and 'the guys' hung out and had a great time together. Although sleep was at a minimum that night! I woke up early the next morning, too early, and we proceeded to make a wonderful breakfast! The rest of the morning was pretty laid back as we got checked into the hotel, ate lunch, and got ready for the rest of the day.

We then got to Jill's house (the location of the wedding) and got ready for pictures. This is when I became known as "the green guy." I had a green vest on and so for pictures the picture lady called me by the color of my vest. I didn't mind at all though :) Although I normally hate taking pictures, I actually didn't mind taking pictures this time. The group of people made it fun to be taking the pictures! The wedding itself followed and was a beautiful ceremony. After the ceremony, and after being attacked by a swarm of gnats, we took a ride into town on a big green tractor and hayride. Although the driver of the tractor was pretty bad (thanks Justin ;)) it was a pretty fun ride into town. I can't remember the last time people stared at me like I was a complete fool :) The food at the wedding reception was amazing, especially the potatoes!! Some more fun followed as we ate and talked. Then came the wedding dance. For anyone that knows me, I'm a white guy, therefore a terrible dancer! Luckily the first dance was a slow one so i could ease my way into the dancing for the night!! :) I got to dance with my awesome new friend...aka "the green girl." After this I proceeded to dance a little more and probably got some really bad pictures of me!! The dance got over and it was finally time for bed! Good thing cause I was really tired and even though I only slept for 5 hours before getting up and heading home, it was really needed. Even though I barely slept the whole weekend, it was a great weekend and I really wish I could have stayed and hung out with everyone a lot more!!

Regret

I always hear people say "Live in the present, don't regret things from the past." I don't think it's good to carry regrets, but I have a hard time not regretting things in my past. There are things that I still think about and regret from when I was in high school, as well as regrets from just the following week. How do I learn to not regret things I have done or haven't done? Most of my regrets are not things that I've done, but things that I haven't done. All of my life I've been afraid of not being good at something or being rejected, and therefore haven't taken many risks. I've always lived on the safe side. I thought of this as I was listening to a song by my favorite artist Chris Cagle called "The Safe Side"

Have you ever wondered what life would be like
If you'd only went left instead of taking that right
If you had waited just ten more minutes to leave the house
Would it all be different
Every decision everything we choose has a consequence whether we win or lose
Nobody knows that any better than me
I left her standing at the station with a ticket and a dream

She's the train that I didn't take
The big commitment I just couldn't make
For fear of breaking my heart, I didn't risk the ride
She's the lesson I learned the hard way
Now being lonely is the price I pay
The river of regret runs deep and wide
Here on the safe side

I still remember the night she left
She said she didn't want to lose me, but she had to find herself
I could've stopped her or got on board with her
But now it's too late to reconsider
She's the train that I didn't take
The big commitment I just couldn't make
For fear of breaking my heart, I didn't risk the ride
She's the lesson I learned the hard way
Now being lonely is the price I pay
The river of regret runs deep and wide
Here on the safe side
Sometimes the greatest risk of all
Is never taking one at all
She's the train that I didn't take
The big commitment I just couldn't make
For fear of breaking my heart, I didn't risk the ride
She's the lesson I learned the hard way
Now being lonely is the price I pay
The river of regret runs deep and wide
Here on the safe side
Oh I don't want to be alone
Here on the safe side


The one thing I really hope to learn is how to use my regrets to better myself. If I regret not doing something, maybe I will learn to do it next time. If I regret not telling someone something, maybe I will tell them the next time. I just hope that I learn and not let these past regrets just haunt me and not help me to change.

Broken

A little over a week ago, I was completely broken. I was at Lifelight and felt that God was really speaking to me. There was not one particular moment, but over the weekend I just felt a constant presence. For the past year I have barely picked up my bible and basically only prayed every once in awhile when someone asked me to pray for them. Its been a rough time lately and I guess I was just trying to do everything on my own. I don't like letting other people help me and I guess I was not letting God help me either. So when I got home on Sunday night,I turned to Job and started reading and there was a verse that said "shall we accept good from God and not trouble?" I guess that is what I really needed to hear and I just totally broke down before God. This past weekend I spent the weekend in Minneapolis and spent a lot of time in prayer and reading my Bible. I think this really helped me and I'm hoping that this will start me back down the right path. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I'm working on letting other people help me with stuff and taking suggestions. As hard as that is for me, I'm really trying to improve myself and I believe listening to other people may help me to do this!

Strength or Weakness??

There is one thing about me that I know is different than some people. While I am a pretty shy person, I am also very blunt. I am not afraid to say what is on my mind. I think honesty is a great trait to have and have always been proud to say i'm an honest person. I'm starting to wonder though if sometimes being blunt and honest isn't always a good thing. There have been relationships in my life that have ended due to my blunt honesty. There are certain things people don't like to hear and by tellling them these things, they felt the need not to be friends anymore. I know that most of these people were probably not true friends if they couldn't handle me telling them the truth, but it is still hard losing friends. I'm now just trying to figure out where the line is with when and how honest to be with friends. Do I not say something and keep their friendship, or say something and risk losing everything? I just really don't know anymore.

My Week

This week was a vacation week for me. I thought it would be perfect to get away from work, rest and relax my mind, and spend time with old friends. I went down to Des Moines and spent the week there with family and friends. Normally I have a lot of fun and this is extremely relaxing! For some reason, this time wasn't relaxing at all. It didn't seem any different, but I didn't sleep much at all and my mind was racing the whole time. Not on any one thing in particular, but a little bit of everything. I got home today and I now feel both mentally and physically exhausted. Now I'm off again tomorrow to start another week of work. I don't know how to recover from being exhausted like this as I don't know that I've ever been both mentally and physically exhausted like this.