Archive | June, 2011

Someone asked me to describe our marriage.

I stumbled and stammered looking for the right words.

How do you find the right words?

Just one word came to mind right away: covenant.

There are situations when the only thing you have to give is time.

It may be that’s the only right thing to give.

Have discerning eyes. Know those times well.

I’d rather intentionally define my priorities today

than have my kids reflectively describe my priorities

years from now

on a therapist’s couch

or in some oft-echoed conversation about what was missing.

A stagnant heart is just as unappealing as a stagnant water source.

Keep your heart stirred with things that are

big

beautiful

mysterious

right

paradoxical

broken

wrong

artistic

pure

good

holy

Pain always tells you that something is happening.

You either do all you can to get out of it, like grief.

Or you leverage it for your own good, like exercise.

They say the brain processes loss in the same place it processes mortal danger.

It’s natural when you lose someone or something to hold tighter to the ones you have left.

I expect growth to be immediate and visible.

I want to see and know that things are growing.

But it’s slow accumulation. An inch at a time.

Slowly they grow.

I can never wrap my brain around it when people say, “Failure is not an option.”

Sure it is.

Maybe not the one we’re aiming for, but it’s definitely an option.

I’ve had plenty of imaginary, worst case conversations as I’ve worried about things happening. Failure. Confrontation. Humiliation.

Usually those things never happen. So all that time and stress? For nothing.

I don’t know the difference between “good art” and “bad art” but I know that art is about emotion and the Mona Lisa doesn’t stir up any of my emotions whatsoever.