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July 19, 2019

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It was one of those steamy 3-H summer days - you know...hazy, hot, and humid. I was just finishing doing about, oh, eight miles on my bike, feeling like Mr. Fatness - I mean, Fitness. Then I passed Tim - and he was doing all 10 1/2 miles around the lake - running, not riding. Well, I later learned he did that every day. Now that year Tim was in the sports headlines at home a lot. He was, as always, one of the county's champion track stars. But that sweaty day at the lake, there were no coaches, no reporters, no spectators watching. I said, "Hey, no time off for vacation, Tim?" He reminded me that running is a 12-month sport. See, champions aren't made the day of the race with the crowd applauding - they're made on a thousand invisible mornings.

July 18, 2019

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Commercial flying can be a real adventure. Like the day I booked a last-minute flight to the Northwest to support some Native American friends of ours who had just lost their young son. I was supposed to fly into Spokane, Washington, but fog shut it down and we were diverted to another airport for the night. So, the airline put us up in a hotel overnight and promised us they would do their best to get us to Spokane the next morning. I knew if I didn't get to the reservation that next day, I would have missed what I was going for. I really needed the real scoop on whether or not our plane was going to get into Spokane.

July 17, 2019

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Sometimes you'll hear someone called a "Renaissance man." That means he's a man of many interests, and gifts and pursuits, and skilled in many areas. Now, if there is such a thing as a "Renaissance boy," well, I used to like to think our grandson was one. Interested in a lot of things - and he was pretty good at a lot of them. To round out the other areas of his life, he got involved in a soccer league for kids his age. Which would make his mother a "soccer mom," I guess. Which means everybody wants her vote. Right, in elections? Well, our grandson didn't have the benefit of having an older sibling to learn from as some of the other members of his little team did. The soccer learning curve for him was a little steep, but he was doing well. But something really special happened in one of the last games of the season. The team's two little stars came late - players who the others tend to lean on. But they weren't there to lean on. Well, now it was clearly up to kids who were usually in the shadow of those stars, including our favorite soccer player who really stepped up. Suddenly, he was more focused, more aggressive than we'd seen him all season. And right away he scored two goals for his team. Oh, and of course, they won that night.

July 16, 2019

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I had to laugh as my friend Cathy told me about an experience she had at a former job, because it tells so much about how my half of the human race thinks - like men, I mean. Cathy and her boss had rented a car at the airport for a relatively short trip from the Dallas/Fort Worth airport to a nearby city. We're talking like a few minutes' drive, but not for Cathy and her boss. No, they just kept driving in circles, retracing their steps, turning around. I mean, her boss obviously did not know where he was going. So Cathy kept suggesting that he stop for directions, but, "No, I know where I'm going." Of course men always know where they're going, right? Well, she said she got to the point where she was ready to punch him if she saw this particular restaurant one more time! (Good thing she didn't!) Well, finally, four hours later, they got to their destination. Was this man lost? Uh-huh! Could he admit he didn't know where he was going? No! He's a man!

July 15, 2019

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Okay, here is one of my un-favorite sentences: "I guess we have to go to the emergency room!" Well, I mean, I'm glad the emergency room is there, but I hate to go there. I remember one time our son had a mild stomach disorder and we knew it had to be checked out. Well, we went late at night when it really gets really busy. I guess it was rush hour for sure that day when we were there. We'd already waited for a while and finally they noticed us. They began to give some attention to our son, and then suddenly all the doctors and nurses vanished. I'll tell you why. There was a word that had been sounded across that emergency room - "STAT" - and everybody came running to an accident victim. It was a severe situation. It was life-or-death. Stat means it's time to drop everything.

July 12, 2019

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Eight wedding showers in a month! Six hundred guests scheduled to be at the wedding where 14 bridesmaids and 14 groomsmen would attend the bride and groom. Four days before the wedding, the bride went missing after she went out for a jog. The American news channels were dominated by the all-out search and the investigation into the case of the vanishing bride, and then we learned what happened. The bride turned up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, claiming she had been kidnapped - a story which she later changed to tell the real story of what happened. She said that the stress leading up to her wedding had given her cold feet, and she just kept running with those cold feet. In retrospect, I'm sure folks must be saying, "Girl, why didn't you just tell someone what you were feeling?" Instead she ran from her family, her community, her wedding, and even from the truth. Tens of thousands of dollars and countless man-hours were spent looking for her. Now she faced the additional stress of negative national notoriety and even the possibility of legal or financial penalties. Pretty simple here: running solved nothing. It never does.

July 10, 2019

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Some say it's legend. Some say it's history, but it's one of the most inspiring stories from America's past. The scene: a tiny mission near San Antonio, Texas. You know, a small band of Texas Freedom Fighters is taking their stand against the invading Mexican Army, and they're vastly outnumbered. There's a brief window during which the men of the Alamo have a choice between leaving or staying to fight. Col. William Travis is in command of the garrison, and according to some accounts, he gathered the defenders in the courtyard of the Alamo. With his sword, he drew a line in the sand and he called his men to a destiny choice: cross the line as your pledge to fight or stay where you are as an announcement that you are leaving. They all crossed the line to heroism, to immortality, and to honor that has endured some 200 years.

July 9, 2019

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Our friend Joy became an expert on moving, I think, you'd say. Her husband was a career Air Force officer, and that means seeing a lot of different places, having a lot of different addresses, and seeing a lot of moving vans in your life. Well, we were talking some time ago about what was their last move in the military and what she considered one of the greatest gifts she's ever been given. It didn't have beautiful wrapping paper or bows on it. In fact, it was a dumpster! That might not sound all that exciting to you, but it was to her! She and her family had so much stuff to move, and everything they could get rid of, they didn't have to move. Someone said to her, "I've got this dumpster I'd like to loan to you for your move." Joy said she was overjoyed! She said there was something so exciting about the first thud of the first thing they threw into that dumpster. Then it was all about lots of thuds as they threw away mountains of stuff. They couldn't wait to go get more.

July 8, 2019

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It was a beautiful morning for a walk. I was on an Indian reservation in Arizona where you don't see much water, so my eyes were drawn immediately to this sparkling little pond down a short little pathway just off the road. Well, you know, I've got an explorer in me. I couldn't just walk by, so I started down that little path to enjoy that sun-sparkling water up close. Then, I... Well, I got closer and I saw the sign. The only word I really remember was "sewage." Yeah, I was about to enthusiastically explore a facility with a sewage pond. You'd be surprised how fast I can retreat when I need to.

July 5, 2019

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Rwanda. A lot of Americans had never heard of that African country until a few years ago, and then it became the scene of horrific bloodshed and a tribal war that left thousands of Rwandans brutally slaughtered. With this awful season of attempted genocide, Rwanda became a word that was written in blood. And then the challenge became to try to heal the nation. Leaders who helped South Africa reconcile its years of apartheid violence came to Rwanda to help them find a healing road like they have. Out of that struggle came a story I'm not going to soon forget.

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