I just downloaded the mailbox app for my iPad and have ended up going through a ton of old mail.

Old conversations, old scenarios and old friends.

I was reminded of pleasant times and not so pleasant times. I was reminded of failed opportunities, lost opportunities and lost friends.

All in all, not a great experience
It gets me thinking about how the past affects everyone of us. And even more so, how dwelling on the past is a really bad idea.
I’ve got to say that my trip down memory lane was not an uplifting experience overall. More disappointing than encouraging. Probably because I mostly stopped to read the emails that reminded me of past failures. Not good!

Now in my post old mail experience I suddenly remember why Paul (the apostle guy) encourages us to think about what we think about.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. (Philippians 4:8 NLT)

When you consider it that way, the past is just the past. It’s what we choose to think about (or read) that affects our present.

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” (Matthew 16:13, 14 NLT)

So I’m curious. Why did Jesus ask his disciples what other people were saying about him?
Was this some type of informal poll or executive 360 evaluation?
Had Jesus heard rumours and was trying to either confirm or quash them?

If he was just trying to find out what his disciples thought, he could have simply and directly asked them. Jesus never seemed to have difficulty being direct with those closest to him.

Maybe this was one more glimpse into Jesus humanity. His very human struggle with insecurities and the effects of others opinions.

“Are people talking about me?”
“What are they saying?”
“What do you think?”
“Do you agree with them?”

I’m just wondering, but if Jesus wrestled with some insecurity, then perhaps he can identify with me in more ways than I thought.
When I pour out my heart and wrestle with who I am, what others say about me and my purpose, He knows exactly what I mean. From experience.

Just a thought. What do you think?

Did you ever notice that it’s only the habits you don’t want that seem to create themselves with little intention on your part?

The habits you really want to have in your life seem to take serious intentions, concentration and a lot of work to show even a fragile existence in your lifestyle. And even then, you take your eyes off them for a minute and… they are gone!

Why is that?

Seriously, why is that? ‘Cause I don’t know.

I know that I started a writing habit a couple of weeks ago, then entirely forgot to write anything yesterday. It never entered my mind even though it was on my daily reminders list.

I know that creating new habits is hard. Usually you need to put into place some supporting structure to make it stay. New habits are fragile and need scaffolding. Even then they often fail to firm up and stay put.

A more effective way of creating new habits is to replace something else. Maybe we can only use just so many habits at one time. This seems to be especially true when it comes to getting rid of bad habits. You can’t just quit, you have to replace.

So here’s a challenge. What’s one habit you either want to start or you want to quit? What’s your game plan?  How will you make it work? Give me your ideas in the comments below.

I’m a big “Matrix” fan. Yeah I know it’s just a movie but it offers some challenging ideas. 

At least in the first move. In reality the rest of the franchise was highly disappointing but didn’t diminish the brilliance of the first movie.

Anyway, I’m not talking about that today.

I’m simply writing to apologize because my post yesterday morning didn’t get published on time. I had finished the post, but somehow there was a glitch and it didn’t get published. With all my technical know-how and ability it still didn’t work. I probably forgot to push the publish button.

EDIT: this post was supposed to go out on Wednesday and for some reason it didn’t either. Now I think there is a ‘conspiracy‘ going on.

Guess what?

That’s kinda how life it.

Sometimes you think you’ve got it all figured out but it still doesn’t work out right.

Life is more art than science. More experiment than formula. And no… there isn’t a glitch in the matrix.

It’s called living.

My oldest daughter sent me a text message this morning. Because I was in a meeting, and sometimes still consider it rude to ignore the person at the table with me so that I can send a text to someone who is not there, I didn’t reply to her text for about an hour.

In the meantime, she sent a second text. See image below.

Cheeky!

Especially if you read my post from yesterday.

But that’s kinda the way my kids are. They make fun of me when they can get away with it and even when they can’t.

I’m not talking about mean-spirited mockery or bullying. I’m talking about the good-natured love being together, having fun, doing life together teasing.

I always want to be the kind of guy who can laugh at himself. Even laugh with others at my humanities or was that humilities.

Don’t try so hard to be significant, instead work hard at being human. You’ll end up being significant to someone.

I know I shouldn’t be putting out such a bold, negative and unfortunately true statement. It goes against everything I truly believe about faith and declaring those things that are not as if they were.

The sad fact is, I sent someone a text message the other day and they didn’t reply.

To all of you out there doing a double take over that last statement. To those of you who don’t see the connection between the title and that last understated fact. Go ahead and skip the rest of this post, since it may not apply or make sense to you.

Yes I could pretend that it didn’t matter to me, but it did. I like so many people put a great deal of personal security (or insecurity) in the reactions, responses and text messages of other people. Come on people! Are you listening to this? It matters how you respond.

I’m guilty of reading things in to other people’s words and actions.

Sometimes I wish life could be lived with captions. You know what I mean. Underscoring every life event, interaction and conversation, there should be a caption. A simple explanation of what was really going on or meant.

Sadly, I don’t think it would help because I would still draw my own conclusions about it. Usually based on something I think, or thought before.

The other day, I was looking after my granddaughters. The second oldest came into the house crying uncontrollably. To my question of what was wrong she replied that her sister had hurt her feelings. Her request for help from her older sister had been ignored. She felt insulted and her feelings were hurt.

BOOM! That’s it. The reason for all my insecurity. Unmet expectations.

I sent a text and expected a positive response. Actually I would have been happy with just a response.

I give a gift but the person who receives it doesn’t jump up and down excitedly and thank God for the day I was born. I’m disappointed and feel insecure. Unmet expectations.

The key to dealing with insecurities isn’t to stop having expectations but to learn to manage your expectations.

What is a reasonable expectation? The more secure you are, the more reasonable your expectations.

Insecure people can be clingy, controlling and micromanagers. I know…. I’ve been one of those. You’ll have to figure out which one.

If you are secure in yourself you learn to manage expectations. If you learn to manage expectations, you’ll be more secure.

That’s my thoughts. What are your’s?

I don’t really hate technology. If fact I usually I love technology except of course when I don’t. I hate technology that takes more time than it saves, causes more frustration than it relieves or costs more than its worth. Fortunately for me those frustrations are relatively rare.

When I really love technology though are the times it simply makes life better.

You know, when the phone rings and you get to see the face of your distant loved one, not just hear their voice. Or a technology breakthrough brings a greater quality of life to someone who really deserves it.

Take my dad for instance. My dad has macular degeneration and has suffered significant sight loss since he was in his late sixties. And by significant, I mean he voluntarily chose to surrender his driver’s license and let my mom drive. He felt that his driving was a danger to others. Until then, I never ever ever saw my dad sit in the passenger seat of his own car. But now he does.

Looking at pictures of his great-grandchildren is a challenge as he strains to make out the details that are obvious to everyone else. And the last straw (or nail) was that he could no longer read.

That is until today!

Mom and Dad bought an iPad.

At first it was a FaceTime call courtesy of the nice man at iStation who kindly added my number to their new toy. Even I could tell Dad was not having a hard time recognizing my smiling face.

But today was the coup d’état.

I set up VoiceOver so Dad could read again. With the largest type setting on iBooks and the necessary three finger swipe. I watched my dad start to grin as he slowly at first then much quicker found his rhythm. Listening to the VoiceOver as he watched the words, anticipating the end of the page then a quick three finger swipe so the reading was not interrupted. I exchanged a quick smile with my mom as we both realized this was a big win. And I mean a BIG win! Instead of the constant frustration of limitations, Dad had found some freedom again.

Now loaded onto his iBooks shelf are dozens of classics. As he puts it, “those older books are the best” I know he’s read most of them before (although I managed to sneak one new classic onto the shelf alongside the King James Version of the Holy Bible). But that’s not what matters. What matters is that because of technology, my dad feels a little more human again. A little less deficient and a little more independent.

And me?

I just want to say thank you Mr Jobs.

I’m sure you’ve already heard of the five love languages first made popular and understandable by Dr Gary Chapman.

SO HAVE I.

For several years I talked about the love languages and even pretended I had some expertise on the subject. But up until a couple of weeks ago I had never read the book.

Guess what?

Now I almost wish I hadn’t.

Actually I think my wife is glad I did, even if she doesn’t realize it. I’m making a dedicated effort to communicate to her in her love languages. Which by the way are ‘acts of service‘ and ‘physical touch‘.

For her birthday I pre-planned breakfast and made crepes with strawberries and whipped cream. She loved it and has talked about it more than any gift I’ve ever given her in over thirty years. Why? Because I ‘did’ something for her!

So what’s the downside you ask?

At the moment I’m a little frustrated because now I know what my love languages are too. I’m understanding more clearly those things that I long for.

Eventually I know my wife will pick up on the cues as I talk about the love languages in an intelligible way. But in the mean time I’m acutely aware of the language barrier. I’m happy (quite thrilled actually) to be learning her language. Just more acutely aware of the desire to hear love spoken in my language.
It reminds me that to be successful in relationships it’s important to focus on meeting the other person’s needs over your own. It doesn’t mean you don’t have needs, just that you need to keep the focus on the other person.

At least those are my thoughts. What do you think?

I’m reading a book called “The Emotionally Healthy Church” by Peter Scazzero.

Challenging!

Not the part about the church being emotionally healthy but the part about me being emotionally healthy. Really!

I think I may have gotten a bit of a revelation on a part of my personality. At least the part where I really don’t like conflict.

I realized that the whole time I lived with my mom and dad, i never saw them fight or even disagree. Not once! I used to think that was a really great thing. I still do except that it set me up to avoid conflict rather than engage it. Mostly because I never saw it.

One of the side effects of never seeing conflict in marriage was marrying someone who saw conflict in marriage all the time. In my wife’s family, basically the loudest person in the argument was the winner. As you can imagine, some of our first disagreements were pretty devastating to me. I figured we were headed for divorce within the first six months of marriage. Thankfully, after nearly 32 years we are still passionately in love and strongly committed to each other.

You know I’m a strong believer that we have no reason to be chained to our past. Christ has set us free. But unfortunately, we need to at least understand or acknowledge our past in order to get free from it. I never saw conflict so I see conflict as an aberration. Something that should never happen in normal life experience.

Guess what? I was wrong! Conflict is healthy and necessary. I just never experienced it at home so I have to learn it now.

Like I said before, this is a challenging book for me. What do you think of conflict? Do you hate it like me or do you appreciate that it’s an important and necessary part of life?

When I started this blog back in 2007 I simply wanted to get better at writing. I remember being incredibly surprised when I got my first comment on a post I had written. Amazed that anyone would bother to read what I wrote. You early commenters were an amazing encouragement to me.

Over the years however, the priority to blog has significantly  dropped in my life. Other things have understandably gotten in the way. You know, life, grandkids, trips, church and so many other priorities. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get better at writing. I still do.

In fact I’ve been challenged again to write more regularly while reading “The Icarus Deception” by Seth Godin.  An interesting read, especially if you’ve read some of his earlier more pragmatic offerings.

The bottom line, I’m going to do my best to get a regular writing routine going once again. Maybe not everyday, although that’s my goal, but at least once a week.

So… here goes again!!