Don’t Be Balanced

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Life is often a crazy balancing act. Family, work, school, relationships, hobbies – finding balance somewhere in there is an arduous process.  More often it’s simply a reminder that there’s not enough time to do it all. When I was younger, I used to think that there’d be a time in my future when balance would naturally happen as a result of maturity and life experience. Not so much. The older I got, the more complex and complicated things became. As you’ve probably experienced in your life, along with age comes growth, maturity, and increased responsibility. Add in a spouse, children, a mortgage and, well, there you have it.  You might be able to manage more stuff because you’re all grown up but that doesn’t make life easier.

And so the search for that ever-elusive balance continues. When I’m out of balance, I tire easily. I snap. I lose my temper regularly with the people I love the most. I lose focus on the things that are most important. My priorities are out of whack and I usually start spinning my wheels. You get the idea.

I recently brought this struggle into my time with my spiritual director and as usual he turned it around on me in a very subtle, wise way. Try this one on: he said as far as he can see there’s no reference to “balance” in the scriptures. I had to stop and think about that. No mention. Not in the Gospels, Proverbs, anywhere.

He described that if I’m holding 50 lbs in my right hand and 150 lbs in my left then balance is shifting the excess weight from my left to my right hand. The problem with balance is that either way I adjust the weight, I’m still holding 200 lbs. Balance simply forces me to continue to bear whatever immense weight I’m holding, just in a different way. Balance might give me the illusion of rest as I shift weight from one set of muscles to the next but I’m really just using different muscles. The result is a subtle, growing fatigue as I choose to focus on whatever weight is demanding the most of my energy in the moment.

He went on to describe that while there’s no mention of balance there is a great deal of talk in the Bible about “rhythm.” In a super-short explanation of a massive Biblical theme, he outlined that we see God creating the earth in six days, resting on the seventh. Sabbath. Then, every seven years, the nation of Israel was to observe Shmita or a Sabbatical year where there was to be no planting, plowing, growing, or reaping. Rest for the land, rest for the workers. Then, every seven Sabbatical years (yes, that’s forty-nine years) no work was to be done, land borrowed and sold was returned to its original owners, and slaves were set free. The year of Jubilee. Rhythm. It’s all there in Leviticus.

Now, I’ve heard this Sabbath and Jubilee stuff before but never put in these terms: If rhythm is God’s process for restoring creation, his personal and preferred method for creativity, production, and work in the things that he made and the people that follow him then shouldn’t it exist in my own life? I know I’m supposed to take a Sabbath and I usually do. But beyond observing a day of rest, what is all this talk about rhythm in the Bible supposed to look like day to day, hour to hour?

Back to the metaphor. Rhythm is putting down all 200 lbs for a period of time so that you’re holding nothing. Put it down. Empty your hands. Hold nothing. Engaging your faith in this process means trusting that when it’s time to go back and pick up your 200 lbs that it’ll still be there waiting for you. Here are the personal applications I’m working on. It’s not rocket science:

1. Work hard when it’s time to work. Stop working when it’s time to stop working.
2. Grazing on technology at home takes away from family and real-life relationships.
3. Put everything down – One hour a day, one day a week, one weekend a quarter, one week a year.

I’m finding that rhythm is a discipline. But its rhythm, not balance, that restores the soul.

Turns out, I don’t want balance at all. I want rhythm.

Where in your life do you need to create rhythm rather than pursue balance? What rhythms do you have that restore your soul?

If rhythm is anything like physical exercise, you know what happens when you’re rested and recovered? You come back stronger. After putting everything down, when it comes time to go back and pick it up, you might just find you’ll be able to comfortably lift 300 lbs. Just remember to put it back down again.

Oh Life

Have you ever kept a journal or diary? If so, how’s that been going recently? I kept one (multiple actually, moleskine’s are my favorite) for a few years but the discipline of remembering to write on a regular basis proved less than consistent. I love going back and reading them occasionally but after reminiscing through thoughts, events, prayers, and whatever else I wrote, I usually wind up feeling a touch guilty about not keeping up with it. Enter Oh Life.

My wife told me about it and I was captured by it’s simplicity. Oh Life is an free online service that sends you an email once a day, at whatever time you choose. Simply respond to the email and your journal entry is logged. It’s all private, encrypted, confidential, etc, etc and all you have to do is log in whenever you want to read back. Here are a few entries from this past year:

Sometimes I’ll recount a story from the day. Other times, just a word, thought, or phrase. I’ve been trying to journal my prayers recently, remembering to go back and see how God’s been faithful to the things I’ve been bringing before him.

The best part is that it’s as simple as responding to an email – I’m usually doing that on a regular basis so it’s simple to remember.

You can sign up for your own online journal at Oh Life HERE.

A Thought on Stanford-USC: Who’s in Your Corner?

Last Saturday, my family and I rode our beach cruisers over to Stanford Stadium to see the Cardinal take on USC. I had a BIG dilemma: we lived for many years in the town affectionately known as South Troy but recently moved to Stanford country. The Barkley’s are old family friends. We’ve had Stanford players as high school Small Group leaders here. Needless to say, “Who are you pulling for” by friends on both sides was a loaded question in the weeks leading up to the game.

As with every passionately contested sporting event, apathy is the one thing that doesn’t exist in a stadium but it’s always amazing to see that many people going crazy for one thing. It was an absolute madhouse for 4 hours.  I happened to shoot this quick video during a key moment of the game, with the SC side pulling for a big stop from their defense. I love the momentary hush right before the explosion of cheers at the end of the play…

The final outcome of the game aside, I was reminded how important it is for all of us to have fans in our corners. Granted, you don’t have a killer marching band following you around the office playing the Star Wars Imperial march or 50,000 people hanging on your every step. But you do have fans in your corner that are just as unyielding in their support of you.Ministry is full of difficult leadership decisions and often we’re called upon to make a gut decision based on too limited information in too short a time window.  If you’re like me, the creep of self-doubt can erode confidence. Fear of mistakes or failure can keep me from moving forward. I forget that making mistakes and learning from those mistakes is actually part of growth and progress. When I remember that I have fans in my corner, I’m encouraged and move forward with more confidence even when the ball doesn’t bounce my way.

What could you do this week if you pictured your fans in your corner waving their hands and yelling at the tops of their lungs in support of you?

Who are your fans that you can rely on for words of encouragement, that believe in you, during these times? You know who they are – go ahead and shoot ’em an email or FB message today to say “hi” or “thanks.”

Finally, if it’s worth asking who’s in your corner then it’s also worth asking who’s corner are you in? What can you do today to encourage and support someone who’s corner you’re in?

Mustached Glory

When I was in college, I had a crush on the teaching assistant in my Introduction to Macroeconomics class.  I had crushes on teachers before – Ms. Roskowski, 11^th grade English; Ms. Anderson, 9^th grade Math; Mr. Fujitani, 10^th grade Gym (more admiration than crush actually, he could do 100 pull-ups) – but this was different.  I think it was the way she made aggregate market behavior and employment models come alive to the class.   To be sure, Macroeconomics isn’t particularly interesting to me but somehow I came to view this class as downright gorgeous.  I became convinced that if I was punctual, participated in class, turned work in on time, and bought her dinner that she would be mine.

About that time, a friend informed me that women really like guys with facial hair.  It had something to do with the perception of men with facial hair as being overtly masculine.  I had to agree.  Some of the world’s most identifiable hunks on stage, screen, and magazine covers have facial hair.  I recalled observing a few local gals drooling over a magazine cover in the check out line at the grocery store, staring at two of those types of uber-men who seemed to incite riots among females wherever they’re seen.  In fact, some mens’ facial hair has come to symbolize not only their manhood but also their dominance in the human species to attract the opposite sex, separating them from the rest of the facially-hairless pack.  For these men, their facial hair virtually illustrates that they are harboring such an abundance of testosterone that their bodies can no longer hold it all in and it, like a great primeval pheromone, has no alternative but to ooze out all over their face in a wild, aphrodisiac-laced dance from which no woman is immune.  I had stumbled upon a solution, the solution, to one of the greatest mysteries of time.  This was the key to not just my certain, expected courtship with my teaching assistant but to my destiny-soaked relationships with all future beauties that would grace my arm.  I grew a mustache.

To be honest, the mustache did not work very well.  Just a tip to those of you considering this tactic – I know that fashion is generally cyclical with certain styles coming back around every few generations but there are certain trends which, though they may have held a great deal of power in their day, should never return.  I do not have an abundance of testosterone billowing out of my face and as such it took longer than expected to begin sprouting the most minor of whiskers.  Hoping that time would allow my inner manhood to materialize beneath my nose, I skipped class for two weeks.  By the time I reemerged into the world of Macroeconomics, I possessed a mane of darkened peach fuzz on my upper lip.  Much to my dismay, my poor excuse for a mustache did not have the desired effect.

Fast forward a few years, I eventually found my soul-mate in Katie.  One of the beautiful things about marriage is that I realized Katie would love me regardless of my lack of facial hair and even sometimes in spite of my weak attempts at growing a man-mane.  Also, honesty rules in any good relationship and so when I occasionally emerge from the bathroom with a cleanly shaven face except for a stripe beneath my nose, she is able to lovingly, tenderly say, “You look stupid.  Go shave that ferret off your lip or I’m not going out with you in public.”

Beauty of a Duck: Sacred Ordinary

Do you have any idea how many times you duck-dive during a single surf session? Ten, twenty, a hundred? Depends a lot on wave size, shape, conditions – but who counts? Counting the number of times you duck-dive would be like counting the steps it takes to walk from the green to the next tee box or pedal strokes on a long bike ride. Whatever the number, it’s higher than your wave count. It’s all “in-between” and “on-the-way” time that gets you to where you want to go. Except that with the duck-dive, I can’t think of another recreational activity with “on-the-way” time that comes close to such grace and beauty.

Yes, a well-timed, perfectly executed duck-dive is an act of grace and beauty. The power of a breaking wave with thousands of miles of ocean travel built up in its collapsing rotation is hurtling towards you in thundering, disorganized turmoil. You’re not yet into the line-up where everything makes sense and waves peel with a recognizable orderliness, you’re on your way there. The dive may be shallow and quick, if it’s a small day, and water dances over your back. If it’s a big day, the threat of thousands of gallons-per-square-inch detonating on your head necessitates a deeper, more prolonged dive with seconds of weightlessness before floating to the surface again. Either way, the act of pushing your board and body to the bottom of a wave’s vortex and using the existing energy to propel you through the chaos and out the back to the calm on the other side is a hydrodynamic magical act. For a moment, there’s no resistance – you’re not a human anymore but a dolphin fully immersed and connected to the ocean’s energy, not fighting against it. It’s poetry. Especially when the wind is off-shore. You’re out the back and beads of water shower you with gentle reminders of the thrashing you just escaped.

I’m surprised there have been so few words written dedicated to this simple, underrated but highly significant aspect of surfing. I guess that’s because the most obvious and compelling aspect of riding waves has to do with what happens on top of the water. What really matters when you surf is how much fun you’re having while actually on a wave, right? But if you consider all the time invested in simply going for a surf, you spend relatively little time actually riding a wave. The majority of time is spent waiting…paddling, duck-diving…then more waiting.

It seems that life is made up mostly of “in-between” and “on-the-way” time. Getting ready in the morning, dressing your kids, helping with homework, coffee with a friend, preparing dinner, and helping your spouse with the dishes are not the things we normally think of as life events. And compared to the big moments, they’re not. But the big events are fewer and shorter. Life is made up of infinite smaller moments punctuated by the occasional larger happening. Think about your daily life and schedule – what do you spend most of your time doing? I’ll bet the majority of minutes you spend everyday are small and commonplace.

Beauty, grace, and sacredness can often be found in unexpected places, abundantly in the small and ordinary if we’re open to seeing them. What we do “on-the-way” and “in-between” matters just as much as what we do when we get there. What if the commonplace, ordinary moments are actually the most sacred? What are the most commonplace activities or interactions in your life? What if you started to view them not as distractions or necessary agitations in order to get where you’re going but as the actual stuff of which life is made? Psychologists and Spiritual Directors talk about awareness, being fully present, not being consumed with what happened in the past or what’s going to happen in the future – open to the energy of the moment rather than fighting against it. Kind of like a duck-dive.

Here are some areas where I’m learning to recognize the sacred in the ordinary:

1. Putting on my son’s shoes and socks.
2. Household chores.
3. Saying “I love you.”
4. Walking the dog.
5. Changing a diaper.
6. Coffee with a friend.
7. Doing the dishes.
8. Seeing distractions as opportunities.

How can you find the beauty, grace, sacredness, and poetry in the ordinary moments of life?

I’d love to hear what commonplace moments in your life hold beauty and grace…

Broken and Growing Hearts

There’s no stress in life like when something goes wrong with your kids.  It’s heart-breaking.  I don’t know how this works but when my heart breaks it also grows.

Our son, Greyson, was born just over a month before his due date, necessitating a week stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.  Standard fare for a premie but initial blood tests came up positive for Galactosemia.  Of all the luck.  Galactosemia affects 1 in 60,000 births and was found in only 7 babies born in California in all of last year.  More than just a food allergy, this disease causes a body to store undigested milk proteins in the liver and it can kill quickly.  Before it was discovered, doctors chalked up infant deaths now attributed to these types of metabolic diseases to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.  It’s very treatable now that the medical community can diagnose it but it necessitates extreme, life-long dietary restrictions.

It amazes me that the State of California includes tests for such rare diseases but as one angelic doctor at CHOC told us, “If we catch one a year and save a baby’s life, it’s worth it.”  It took a month of blood and DNA tests to confirm that he’s only a carrier, only possesses 1 recessive gene, not both that determine the full disease.  So after all that, a month of NICU’s, tests, driving to different hospitals, meeting with the most compassionate, caring, and genius doctors I’ve ever met…he’s all good.  If by chance as an adult he happens to have his own child with someone who is also a carrier then they’ll have a 1 in 4 chance of producing a child with the full-blown disease.  Remember the fruit fly experiment in 9th grade Biology class?

After extensive DNA testing of Katie and I, it was confirmed that I’m the carrier that passed the gene to my son.  Hospitals have only started to test for it along with other metabolic diseases recently (as in, not back when I was born) so it’s assumed that we’ve had the recessive gene in our family for who knows how long without knowing it.  Sorry son, my bad.  I’ll buy you an ice cream.

Today, my son had a febrile seizure in the parking lot of Costco in Mountain View.  He developed a fever last night and we did the usual: ibuprofen, cool wash cloth, etc.  He still had a slight fever this morning and we continued with the same treatment.  Around noon, the fever broke and my wife took him to run errands.  Febrile seizures happen when there is a sudden rise in body temperature, often taking an hour or more in adults, but can occur in children in less than 10 minutes.  We think at the time of the seizure, his morning dose of ibuprofen must have worn off and the fever returned quickly.

He was in the shopping cart when the episode started and as Katie was heading back to the car she noticed listlessness and glassy eyes.  She ran the cart back to the front door of Costco and yelled for help.  At this point, Greyson seemed unconscious or very unaware of his surroundings.  The Costco manager called 911 because Grey seemed to be not breathing.  Apparently, as the ER doctor later informed us, immediately following a seizure it’s common to breathe only 3-5 times a minute for a few minutes, making it seem as if the victim has stopped breathing all together.  The ambulance arrived quickly and they loaded Katie and Grey on board.  The Costco manager took Katie’s keys, loaded all the groceries in the truck and reparked it next to the front door.  We never got the guy’s name, his shift was over by the time we went to retrieve the truck, but what a saint.  Give that guy a medal and promotion along with my undying appreciation.

I got the news via text message as I was getting out of the shower.  If you’ve never received a text message that says, “We’re on our way to the ER,” let me tell you it gives new meaning to “pep in your step.” We’re new in town and had no idea where the nearest hospital was so the paramedic gave Katie the address, I popped it into Google Maps on the iPhone (I only mention this because growing up we used this…) and did my best Jensen Button impression on the 101.  Also, by mistake Katie had my wallet and I noticed only half way to the hospital that the gas light was on in the car so I couldn’t stop for gas.  I started calculating how far I would have to run if the car ran out of gas on the freeway.  I texted and tweeted our prayer request to friends and family.  Interesting note: my brother @adamtaylorbond and @prayer_network retweeted our prayer request to 4,500 people less than a minute after my original tweet.  Who knows how many people threw up a quick one for Grey but all of a sudden we weren’t alone.  Technology IS cool.  The car held up and I ran into the ER.  Crying baby.  That’s my son.

His temperature at the time was 103.7 but he was alert and crying.  The nurse said she would rather see a baby alert and crying with a 104 degree temperature than a listless, incoherent baby with a 101 degree temperature.  Good news.  They dosed him up with a fever-reducing cocktail, gave us the full run-down of febrile seizures, and waited to see if the cocktail worked.  It did.

We were discharged 3 hours after intake.  The doctors explained that it’s not necessarily the fever they’re worried about because a fever is simply a symptom of infection.  If he continues to run a high fever for a few more days we’ll have to bring him back.  He’s doing much better now and was even playing with his toys tonight like nothing happened, though he’s had so many drugs running through his system that he was stumbling around like a drunk little sailor.  He’s sleeping soundly at the moment but we’ve been holding and hugging him relentlessly.  It’s funny how we can go days just running through our schedules without fully appreciating the little life we hold in our hands.  I love my son more than my own life but I rush around the home too much.

It’s been said that any fool can make a baby but it takes a father and/or mother to raise a child.  Today, Grey made us laugh, cry, then laugh, then cry all over again.  I guess that’s the life of raising children.  I pray for my son’s safety, health, development, his spiritual life, and relationships and do my best to trust God for his life but my own sense of control is an illusion.  There will be many more times when things go wrong.  We can only do the absolute best we can to protect and raise our kids and then do the absolute best we can when things go wrong.  As a wise and good friend of mine once said, “Our kids don’t give us grey hair because they drive us crazy.  They give us grey hair because they break our hearts.”  And somehow when my heart breaks, it grows.

Thanks for reading.  This is my therapy.

Mission Surf Trip Essentials

For the past 6 years, we’ve been taking a group of students to Nosara, Costa Rica to serve a local church community and surf our brains out.  Everyday is the same: up at dawn for a surf, breakfast, devotion, hard-core manual labor and serving the amazing families at Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, back to surf, dinner, evening small groups, sleep.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Sometimes stuff happens and you just gotta roll with it.

If you’ve ever found yourself frantically throwing personal belongings into a boardbag because you’re late to catch your flight to some far-away surf destination then it could at least be somewhat helpful to have a list.  Here’s one by CJ Hobgood, reprinted from his blog thegoods life:

CHECKLIST:  ticket

BASICS:                                                OPTIONAL:
passport                                                iPod
bible                                                       bug repellent
drivers license                                   jacket
credit card or $                                 jeans
surfboards                                          long sleeve shirt
leashes                                                 dress shirt
leash string                                         beanie
ding kit                                                 wax comb
towel                                                     electrical adapters
back pack                                            camcorder
fins                                                         camera
fin key                                                   DVD player
wax                                                        DVD’s
hat                                                         computer
sunscreen                                           flash light
sunglasses                                          books
rash guard                                          magazines
wetsuit                                                 snacks
rain jacket                                           medicine bag
t-shirts                                                 band aids
board shorts                                      duct tape
socks                                                     games
sandals
shoes
phone
phone charger

Kelly on NPR

Growing up in Ft. Lauderdale, we used to hear about this grom from Cocoa Beach that was tearing up the ESA age-group contests. Who’d a thought that the greatest surfer in history would come from a relatively wave-starved stretch of beach in up-coast Florida. A great interview from a surf-bum ambassador that more than holds his own with the NPR crew. See link to radio interview below…

Click HERE to hear Kelly on NPR