We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
Sorted by date Results 1 - 12 of 12
Before coming to Big Sandy, I worked with kids in a mental health facility. Most of the kids were pretty ordinary but had abusive or difficult upbringings. The result of their terrible life experiences was often a great deal of anger and dysfunction. It was a difficult job because we worked with kids that lived at the facility. Their parents weren’t there to care for them, so we had to fill in the best we could. The hardest part of the job was that we had to deal with clients at their worst. It became very easy to shift our mindset from one whe...
I do about 30 chin-ups at the gym several times a week. I don’t like doing chin-ups, and I couldn’t do them for many years. I’d try and try and couldn’t quite get myself up over the bar. Then, a crazy thing happened one day: I did one. After doing one, I found that doing a second one was easier. In the space of a few weeks, I jumped from none to more than a dozen. I didn’t develop some supernatural strength or find a new training program. What changed was that I figured out that I could do chin-ups. Before I did my first one, I never believed I...
I am a procrastinator by nature. Though I’ve gotten better about it over the years, when I was in college, I turned it into an art. I began by waiting until a few days before an assignment was due to start working on it. Then as time went by, the starting point moved to the day before. Eventually, I began setting my alarm early on the due date and rushing through the work. There were times I would print up papers and run to class to turn them in with seconds to spare. As I have grown older and begun to look back at those days with a little m...
This morning, I read an interesting op-ed written by a woman who is a lawyer and mom. She talks at length about the difficulty she has in that role and the hard truth that she often chooses her work life over her family because it fits her priorities. She laments the fact that she skipped birthdays and phoned in her participation in her kids’ school activities because her work was more important. I disagreed with the author on several points, but found myself identifying with her perspective because the same struggle often plagues folks in m...
I am allergic to dandelions. Every spring, my lawn begins to grow, the dandelions show up, and I start to develop headaches and sinus problems. When it gets tiresome enough, I mow in an effort to beat them back. Every home owner knows that mowing won’t solve the problem. In fact, it can make the dandelion problem worse by spreading their seeds out. The new seeds take root and new dandelions sprout up. I could certainly solve the problem, but I don’t really want to put the effort in. The issue is the roots that sit under the surface. Cutting the...
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This quote, from motivational speaker Jim Rohn has made the rounds in the world of self-improvement for years, and it’s worth taking a moment to consider, because it has a great deal of truth imbedded in it. The way we think and view the world is shaped by what we read, hear, watch, and interact with. Our attitudes rise or sink to the level of the folks we associate with. This is an unconscious drift that is built into people as a byproduct of being social creatures. We na...
Wabi-sabi is the Japanese word referring to their cultural understanding of beauty. It’s an interesting perspective that is very different from what we generally accept in the west. Whereas we tend to look at things that are perfect as beautiful, in wabi-sabi, beauty is based on the idea that all things are constantly changing and nothing is perfect. Wabi-sabi looks at the imperfections as the source of beauty. This doesn’t mean that Japanese craftsmen and artists don’t work to improve. In fact, Japanese craftsmen are often meticulous in their...
“A man and a woman are walking up to a building. The man notices the woman and runs ahead to open and hold the door for her. As she walks in, she turns to the man and asks ‘Are you holding this door because I am a woman?’ He responds: ‘No. I am holding it because I am a gentleman.’” I’ve heard this anecdote hundreds of times from a good friend of mine who is a pastor. He tells it frequently to make the same point: It’s wise to act based on your identity, not based on the situation you find yourself in. In the story, the guy holds the door...
Mark Twain once said: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” The reason being that no-one wants to eat a frog. Putting off eating it until later in the day may seem tempting, but it will give you opportunity to put it off again and again until you don’t do it altogether. This is essentially the heart of all procrastination. We look at a task that we don’t want to do and come up with reasons to avoid it or we just don’t thin...
A few weeks ago, my 5-year old son was playing with a girl from his class. I gave them snacks, a plate of chips each. My boy eyed up the plates and went to grab the one that appeared to be larger. I stopped him and asked if he was forgetting something. He smiled sheepishly and replied: “Oh yeah, ladies first.” When I asked him why he was going to let his lady friend pick first he replied with a line we say every day: “Because that’s what gentlemen do.” We repeat that line several times a day as a part of him learning to hold doors for ladie...
I read a story about CS Lewis years ago in which a friend asked him if attending church is a necessary part of following Jesus. In response, Lewis answered “No” and pulled a coal from the fire and placed it on the hearth. In response, he asked his friend to describe the coal on the hearth. The answer was the sort of thing you’d expect: hot, glowing, etc. The conversation continued before Lewis turned the conversation back to the burning coal and asked again for a description. This time, the answer was different: cold, dark, etc. As the coal...
One of my favorite quotes from the boxer Muhammad Ali is about training: “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” I have a good friend who says it a bit differently: “Training is better than trying hard.” The idea behind this is simple: the key to becoming good at anything is training. Exerting effort every day over the course of months and years accumulates into excellence that cannot be matched by putting effort forward in the moment. When I worked with kids in...
