And a popular writing exercise is to find a random question and start writing the answer. It's a way of getting words flowing and getting your brain out of its own way.
And I don't share much of the personal stuff I write because I mostly use social media to be positive and share stuff that encourages me or makes me laugh.
Even when I feel like the world is falling apart, I'm not too likely to mention that on Twitter or Facebook. The idea of several people feeling sad or sorry for me isn't comforting.
Of course in my real life I have a handful of people that I can share anything with, and I often do lean on them in that way. And I'm surrounded by people who will pray for me at any time.
So having gotten that disclaimer out of the way, let me tackle the three questions that I often go back to get my brain out of second gear.
I will answer them honestly, and beyond that, all bets are off.
1. What are you afraid of? 2. What do you love? 3. What have you lost?
And I'm answering these questions for ME for TODAY for RIGHT NOW. I could answer any one of these tomorrow and have an entirely different answer. So don't take these to the bank :D.
What are you afraid of?
I'm afraid of our culture. Not in a way that makes me want to hide under my bed. At least not mostly.
But I'm afraid about how obsessed we seem to be with things that don't matter. We sit in restaurants and stare at social media instead of across the table at whoever we're with. We get so caught up in whatever cause seems to be the media's chosen distraction of the moment. (Mid-August of 2017 it's confederate statues, and I'd be hard pressed to believe that those statues are the biggest thing going on in the life of 99% of the folks losing their minds about them on Twitter or Facebook). We spend more time thinking about what other people think of us than what God thinks. We get less sleep and exercise than we need so we can devote time to things that don't give us anything healthy back.
I'm also afraid that I've missed chances I'll never get back to share God's love with people. To tell them how much I appreciate their presence in my life. To apologize to people that I'm not even aware I hurt. And to forgive those who have hurt me.
What do you love?
I love God. I love my Bible. I love to sit on our back porch while it storms. I love playing with our dog. I love cheeseburgers. I love making new friends. I love sitting with a friend and solving all the problems of the world over a cup of coffee. I love early morning walks with my headphones plugged into Pandora. I love getting out of bed in the morning waiting to see what God's going to do today.
Specifically I love the woman I married. I have never once felt like I wasn't good enough for her (although I most likely am not!), and I've never once felt like she's regretted choosing to spend her life with me (and we all know I've handed her several chances to do just that).
What have you lost?
Time. I'll never again have yesterday, to avoid mistakes and the mismanagement of my time, or to say the things I was afraid to, or to unsay the things that hurt people.
This summer I lost a job I wasn't ready to say goodbye to, and with that I lost several relationships that were important to my wife and I. It's hard to hurt when one of the things that's hurting you is an inability to spend time with those you would reflexively run to when life is hurting.
I've lost patience with people who are so focused on how things should be that they're refusing to acknowledge how things really are. (I think of this mostly in a ministry setting. While it's true that things are getting worse in the 'real world', time spent whining about the fact that we're not living in Mayberry anymore isn't helping us live where we are RIGHT NOW.)
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