What Is Your 4 Letter Word?

This has been a very trying week for me. My friend is still in the hospital, my son left to go back to college out of state, I met with a beautiful woman who is helping all the refugee children with navigate through that whole scenario. As we listened, she relayed one horrific story after another. It broke my heart. As I was driving to pick up plans for a bid opportunity, I came across what I thought was a homeless woman begging on the side of the road. Her hair was longer than mine, she had a petite little frame, as I got closer to hand her a few dollars and rolled down my window, “she” was a man who was trafficking his body. As he approached my car and peered in my window, our eyes locked, except his had nothing behind them. No hope, no worth, nothing. It wrecked me and it got me to thinking…what is my four letter word? Because I really wanted to say one that I’m sure most of you can guess.  When surrounded by such garbage, what will I choose to be my 4 letter word? For a brief moment I thought about my heart, I thought about what I try to do everyday to bring people joy and then I decided I choose HOPE for my four letter word. I choose to believe even in the midst of all the crazy in the world. I choose to see things through a lens of optimism. The alternative is just too sad. 

It gave me such pause to consider all these various situations though. When do people give up? When is it so bad that you finally throw your hands up and basically just wait to die? When do you quit trying? When do you stop hoping? Hope means no matter how much crap the world slings at you, you look back at the world and say “is that it? is that all you got?” My hope is bigger than all the landfills of negativity people can dole out. My hope is brighter than the darkest evil people inflict on each other. My hope is not a pie in the sky unrealistic notion rather it’s stock that I put in humanity because I have seen good in the world, I have seen people who dare to make a difference and I believe it’s not just a suggestion but rather our duty to bring healing to others. 

Why do I believe this? How can I choose hope? Because I’ve had the pleasure of meeting my heart and I know what it beats for. It longs for community. It’s fascinating, what I’ve found is once you meet your heart and begin to live from it, you recognize others that have done the same. You’re able to pick out people who pursue their passion and those that are simply going through the motions of what they consider “living”, while others meet their hearts and follow it. They befriend it so deeply that they take it up on it’s offer of adventure. Not knowing where the paths might lead, whether valleys or crested views, we believe. 

We long for the ending to the greatest love story ever written—us meeting the fullness of ourselves. Us realizing who we were created to be. Us facing the ultimate challenge that the hard parts along the way are worth every minute of joy in reaching our fulfillment. Us telling our heads that the fear we perceive is really just that—perceived. We gain strength and courage by taking the next step, by the great pursuit of ourselves, the great pursuit of our hearts. We realize that we are fully capable to take our own place in the history of the world to repair what we can. In Hebrew it’s called “tikkun olam”. We are tapped to bring wholeness not only to ourselves but to countless others who live their lives searching, wondering, waiting for something, anything to make them feel alive.  People who day in and day out who wonder if they matter, who wonder if what they do matters, who wonder if their hearts matter.

Yes for those of us that can believe in hope, we need to pull a little out of our pocket each day and pass it on. We need to stand tall among the sea of people in our places of the world as lighthouses. In the beautiful words of Anne Lamott, “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” So shine brightly today friends…shine with all you’ve got and let everyone see your 4 letter word. 

The "Family" Business

As I wrote about before, my friend is in ICU in the hospital. He’s had a rather colorful life, a hard life, a life full of experiences that have contributed to his choices. We’ll call him John. John is one of the most talented construction workers you’ll ever meet. He’s worked for some of the largest construction companies in the world and some of the smallest. We worked with John day in and day out, but didn’t really ever “see” John. Until now…

We were sitting at work last Friday afternoon when no one had heard from John for a couple of days. It turns out John had been taken to the ER at a local hospital by ambulance that day. He was coughing up blood for most of the day, actually he had been coughing up blood for two months and never told anyone. This time, it was severe enough for him to think he needed help. That night a couple of us went to the ER to check on John. The doctor would be admitting him and begin trying to figure out where all the blood was coming from. John had throat cancer. Tomorrow he will have a tracheotomy and a biopsy on the mass in his throat. Tomorrow he will begin a journey that will alter the course of his life. 

As we sat with John in his room the night before surgery, the morphine had him rambling on and on about work and whatever seemed to pop into his head at the moment. But I wanted to hear more about John’s heart. I wanted to know more about John’s life. I wanted to hear it from the lips of a man that may never speak again and I wanted to be able to record the memories of a man that may never get to share them. So I asked him, “what is your most favorite memory from when you were a kid?” Without even blinking his mind quickly went to his favorite fishing hole growing up, in a creek where the water was so clear you could see the year of a coin if you through it in. He was transported back to the smells of that fishing hole, finding his own bait, wearing cutoff levis and no shirt, feeling the warmth of the sun baking his skin. He remembered picking strawberries for a 10 cents a quart so he could give the money to his friends parents for taking them out to fish. 

“When was the first time you fell in-love?” The memory came to his mind like it was yesterday. He was living in the Methodist Children’s Home at the age of 10. He was there for two years and met Sandy Fickly. Beautiful blond little girl. He said they were young, so there was “no kissing or holding hands or anything like that”. Just sweet innocent puppy love. His first kiss? Well that was at the age of 12 playing spin the bottle of course. He was hoping the bottle would point at the girl he had a crush on and not her friend, but he ended up kissing the friend. John said he was scared but figured out how to do it pretty good. 

“How did you meet Brian?” Brian is our boss/president of Garrison Contractors. John was homeless at the time and Brian was one of the youngest project managers working for Lyda. Brian was running point on a 14 story hotel in downtown San Antonio. John came up and asked at the construction trailer if they needed any help. Most people there didn’t want to give John the time of day, but Brian did. He asked John what he knew how to do and John told him. Brian told him to be there tomorrow morning and he’d have some work for him. That was 14 years ago. Brian saw something in John that John didn’t even see in himself. Over the course of that 14 years, Brian gave John a place to live, gave him a truck or two and most of all, gave him an identity. John has had the opportunity to be part of the Garrison family. We have all taken turns caring for John’s dogs, visiting John, and just being there for him. 

Talking with John he’s overwhelmed by the outpouring of community. He says he doesn’t understand and doesn’t feel “worthy”. At the end of the day, how do we get to be “worthy” of people caring? The truth is it’s who we are at Garrison, and it starts with Brian. His heart envelopes and cares for each of us and as a result we all get to take part in the “family business”. We are all so fortunate to work for such a visionary. Someone who doesn’t just see the bottom-line but sees each one of us as people and lives that matter too. 

Longing to Belong

Hospitals are the great equalizer aren't they? Specifically when you see patients in ICU. Rich, poor, president/CEO or homeless man down the street, it makes no difference. We're all issued the same hospital attire and we're all hooked up to the machines monitoring our hearts, checking our vitals, laying in the same standard hospital beds. So what's the difference for each of us?

Having had a friend go into the ER and subsequently the icu over the weekend, the difference is the people outside of the hospital. You see, at our very core, I believe to be human is to be relational.  We want to be among others. We want to care for others and have them care for us. We want to be in community. Our deepest longing is to belong, to know we matter. 

Consider your deepest wounds, it's probably at the loss of a loved one whether physically or by relationship. When we're kids, doesn't it hurt when we're picked last or not at all for a team? Aren't our greatest joys because of a person too? The birth of a child, falling in-love, being chosen. We all want to know we matter. We all want to know that at the end of the day, our lives meant something to someone. 

Being in that hospital, for the large part of the weekend, I saw so many lives that became numbers on a chart. Lives that became bodies slumped over in hospital beds, hooked up to machine after machine. Lives that had an opportunity once to be known.
I saw countless hours pass without any visitors coming to visit. I saw many people with loss of hope on their faces, faces that looked like they forgot how to use the muscles in their face to muster a smile.

I won't pretend to know why, the reality is everyone's story is different. Everyone's path is carved out through daily living, through our consumption of this world and what it has to offer, through the choices we make. But, don't we all get to matter? How will our lives be recorded? How will we be remembered? Who will care?

I only have 1 son. He is beautiful, he is fearless, he is courageous, he is driven and he is loved by this woman probably more than he can comprehend. My point is he knows that he is. He will never have to wonder what I thought of him, because I tell him as often as I get the chance. I write him letters, I buy him cards, I tell him when he calls from college. He knows his life matters to me. He knows he is loved and he knows he always will have a place to belong, to call home.

The reality is, we can get so consumed by our schedules, by our work, by our "crisis" at the moment that we overlook what truly living is. I spoke with a beautiful icu nurse while at the hospital. Truly an angel as she cared for my friend and others. She said she doesn't worry about the dishes in the sink or the toys on the floor anymore when she gets home. She doesn't freak out if the laundry isn't done, she's witnessed life or death, and she's come to realize what life is. 

For the patients in the hospital, when we receive very sobering news, when the tears flow in reflection of your swing at life, when you are faced with limited time…what do you do with it? Why wait? Jump--and don’t be afraid to fall, when you get the chance to love—do it with all you have and most of all, when you get the chance to be “someone” in another person’s life—be that someone they’ll never forget.

Our Bookshelves of Life

I’ve often thought when we’re born, we’re each given a bookshelf with three rows. One row for our annual experiences. One row for dreams. One row for our values and character. Each day we live, each moment we are in the world, we’re creating more titles for more books to set on our bookshelves. We’re born and we begin learning. We begin adapting to our environment. We begin observing people’s response to situations. We begin deciding which values and traits we’d like to have and which we need to discard. We record these in our “annual experiences”. Our annual experiences are who we are, who we’ve been, who we’ve impacted…and they should never ever read the same. You should not be able to pull one year of your life off the shelf and have it read almost identical to the next except with different characters. We should be evolving. We should be moving toward something else. We should be recognizably more. 

But why is it that for most of us, any year can be interchangeable with the next? What keeps us from progressing, from evolving, from pursuing our passions? I believe for some it’s fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the risk, fear of an adventure that we might actually enjoy. What keeps us practicing the same old habits year after year? Is it the thought of change and how much effort that presumably takes? Is it that we’ve lulled ourselves into the security of what is that what if seems so far off? Is it that our experiences good or bad is what we’ve allowed for our lives and to change would mean a shift that’s well… just a little scary? Who would we be then? What would we dare to do? At least we know what our limits are now, what if we blew the ceiling off? What if we dared to step into the arena of life and battle for our hearts? Do we consider our lives worth the fight? If all of your annuals look the same, are you ready to change the channel? 

Or perhaps its the author of our annuals of life experience? Maybe our days are so much more. Maybe we have had opportunities along the way that we just haven’t seen. Maybe we’ve had gifts and surprises along the journey but we’re afraid of unwrapping them for fear of what’s inside. Maybe our days really don’t run together or look the same, maybe it’s our eyes that fail to see the beauty in the simplest of moments and precious pearls in our wake. Maybe we need to be willing to give ourselves permission to get outside of our boxes of predictability and dare to dream again. 

Can you see your bookshelf of dreams? Is it so full of titles that there are books laying along the tops of the other books? I wonder what titles you see? Trip to Australia, Hiking the Grand Canyon, Scuba Diving in Belize…or maybe your titles read College Professor, Encouraging Speaker, ATP Tennis Tour Player…perhaps even smaller books like Seeing Wild Mustangs, Sunset in Maui, Skydiving. Maybe for some of us, there are books that have been on the shelf so long they’re covered in dust, their titles read Writing a Book, Meeting The One My Soul Longs For, Girls Weekend in Paris. Maybe for some of you, dreaming has been on hold for so long that it’s time to start filling up your bookshelf! Carve out time to consider what titles you’d like to add, it’s never too late, just the possibility of allowing yourself to dream will slowly begin to awaken your heart from the slumber it’s been in far too long. 

So be of good cheer friends, your bookshelves are sturdy enough for the weight of your life. Your bookshelves are big enough to hold all the dreams of your heart. Most of all, your bookshelves are what people will read of you when you’re time on this earth is done, what will yours say? 

Who Is Your Neighbor?

One of the definitions of the word “sight” is what our range of vision allows us to see. I think that’s fascinating. Quite often when I have the opportunity to teach, I’ll often ask can you “see” that? What we “see” is governed by what we want to see sometimes. Have you ever noticed when driving somewhere, especially driving somewhere familiar, you just seem to get there? You probably couldn’t tell me the color of the car you were behind most of the way, you probably couldn’t remember who was sitting next to you in that traffic, you wouldn’t remember much about your journey from here to there because you’re thinking about what you have to take care of when you arrive, or the things you have to do later, or whether or not you took care of what the kids needed…the list goes on. Honestly, I’ve been in meetings with people, one on one, and my mind is thinking about what I have to do after my meeting. I’m not “seeing” the person in front of me. I’m missing an opportunity to share in their life, to listen to their opinion, to just be present.

How many times have you gone into the grocery store and you don’t even remember the name of the cashier? You didn’t notice them. You didn’t see them. Maybe the waitress when you went to eat…did you catch her name? Did you see her face? Did she look like she had something weighing on her? Did you see her? I’m as guilty as anyone. I can get so “me” focused that I forget to “see” others. I forget the world has more people in it than just me, myself and I. Consider this, often times when we go home we pull into our garage, the garage goes down and we walk through the door into our house. Did you see your neighbor? Did you have the opportunity to ask about their day? If you live in a very pedestrian city like New York, how many people are walking around with their headphones in? Kids waiting for the school bus stand around with their headphones in. When did we lose our sense of “sight”? When did we forget about community? 

The reality is we live in a society that breeds isolation and independence. Often times we’re taught self reliance, it’s perceived as a quality of strength. But, what of a collection of people versus only one? Aren’t two heads better than one? Isn’t it more challenging to break a chord of three rather than a strand of one? What about in the workplace? Does your company carve out a culture of competition with one another or does it encourage the efforts of utilizing the strengths of the team? Don’t get me wrong, for those of you who know me personally, I’m highly competitive. Having said that, I’ve also found the beauty in being vulnerable and sharing my strengths with others as they share theirs with me. 

So why do we need one another? Belonging to a group or community gives us a sense of identity. It helps us understand who we are and feel part of something larger than ourselves. Researchers also find that people with strong social connections have less stress-related health problems, lower risk of mental illness, and faster recovery from trauma or illness. Having friends and family can also encourage and support us in pursuing our goals and taking part in theirs. 

Consider some of the tragedies we’ve faced as a country. The truth is when drastic events occur, we pull together. We lean on each other. We weep together. Why do we have to wait for something awful to occur before we “see” each other? I’m reminded of a quote I once read, “(Neighbor is) not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek.” I wonder, who is your neighbor? Who will you choose to “see” today? 

Who Are You & Why Are You Here?

There’s an old story about Akiva, the rabbi, who had been in the village to gather some supplies. Walking back to his cottage, he absentmindedly took the wrong path. Suddenly, a voice came through the darkness: “Who are you, and why are you here?”

Shocked to awareness, Akiva realized he had wandered into the Roman garrison, and the voice had come from the young sentry keeping guard. But being a rabbi, he answered the question with another question: “How much do they pay you to stand guard and ask that question of all who approach?”

The sentry, now seeing that this was not an intruder but a rabbi, answered meekly, “Five drachmas a week, sir.”

At that point the rabbi offered, “Young man, I will double your pay if you come with me, stand in front of my cottage, and ask me that question each morning as I begin my day: ‘Who are you, and why are you here?’”

What about you? What if I asked you that question? Who are you and why are you here? For so many of us it’s easy to find ourselves much like the rabbi wandering down a road unaware of where we’ve wound up. If we don’t live every day with purpose, with a mission then it’s easy to forget who we are and why we’re here. 

If we don’t have a clear understanding of who we are, we allow other people, situations, our accomplishments, our heartaches to tell us who we are. If we don’t have a concrete foundation of why we’re here, then how will we know where we’re really supposed to be? 

If you’re like me, you probably have a daily to-do list. You see for must of us it’s easier to do than be. We launch into auto pilot mode and begin scratching items off our list rather than purposely  pursuing our goal. We have to have a mission based on knowing who we are. We have to have accomplishments we are striving for that can be weighed. It is not enough to simply wake in the morning and hit the floor with no plan or purpose. If we allow ourselves to be reactive to our days and the events as they unfold, what will that accomplish? People who know who they are plan their day so that there is a defined and measured outcome. It’s about living with intention. It’s about meeting our hearts and knowing they matter. 

As a young person, I spent many years getting to the heart of who I truly am. I’d find myself moving in certain directions. In my work, certain tasks would come easy to me, doesn’t mean it was what I was meant to do. For those of you who know me, I am very relational, doesn’t mean I’m an extrovert. The reality is in the last few years, I’ve realized what my strengths are in business and I love everyday that I come to work as a result. I’ve finally found a place to establish roots and be able to flow in my strengths. I’ve also discovered that while I am relational, I am more of an introvert. I relish my “alone” time and find that I need it in order to be “relational” with others. In other words, I’m not very “relational” when I haven’t had the chance to center my heart again through running or reading or even spending time writing. The point is that time is mine and I get to enjoy it and fill back up again so that I can continue to pour myself into others.

My parents are 83 years old. They’ve lived long full lives. They remain active and engaged in their community but when I asked what they wish they would’ve done differently to this point in their lives, my father said, “I wish I would’ve had the courage to live the life meant for me, instead of the life others imposed on me.” That was enough for me, it’s a very sobering statement isn’t it? Why do we wait till the end of our lives to look back at what we wish we would’ve done? Why do we allow ourselves to be blanketed by the security of predictability? If I asked each of you, I’m sure there is something you wish you would’ve done, wish you would’ve become, wish you would’ve accomplished. Don’t let another day, another month, another year pass you by without spending sometime getting to know who you really are and why you’re here. 

Sunflowers And What We Can Learn From Them

I simply adore the sunshine. It fuels me. When I step outside and feel the warmth, it’s like the strongest embrace that makes everything right in the world. I can be having the worst day, but let me go outside and look toward the sun and suddenly I remember the blessing of experiencing that glow upon my face, that heat upon my skin and it reminds me that I’m alive. So, it’s no wonder my absolute favorite flower is the sunflower. Since I was a little girl, I remember having a shirt with a bright yellow sunflower and the sun beaming gently upon it. It was my best shirt as far as I was concerned and I wore it every chance I got. 

Sunflowers are strong, tall, amazing happy flowers that stretch up toward their source, the sun. Their beauty far exceeds the thick bright green stems. The sunflower’s bloom is spectacular with golden yellow petal upon golden yellow petal. And that face…what a sweet happy round face that gazes upon passers by of bees and butterflies with a welcoming stop for their weary flight. So I got to thinking…why do they follow the sun? What makes them dance for their maker with such grace and brilliance? 

As I researched, it turns out this is a process called heliotropism. As I learned more about this wondrous cycle, the more I realized how similar our spiritual walks are. Entertain me for a bit and Ill explain. Heliotropism suggests the sunflowers have a 24 hour clock that allows them to track the sun. In fact, at nighttime, they automatically bow their heads facing the east in expectation of the sun rising. They know their source and they know where their source will be. Every day they follow their source and every night they prepare to receive from it the next day. They take a posture of waiting and resting for the next opportunity to track with the sun. To worship the sun. To receive life from it. 

Do we know our source? Do we expect our source to be there 24 hours a day? Do we take a humble posture not only expecting our source but humbling ourselves before our light that feeds us? Our Father that loves us. Our Lord that we receive from. Do we track with Him not taking our eyes off Him? Do we raise our heads and shine brightly allowing passers by to rest from their weary travels in this journey we call life?

What’s even more amazing is even if light is disrupted behind clouds or an overcast haze, the sunflower continues tracking the sun’s flight across the sky uninterrupted. Lack of actually feeling or seeing the sun does not disturb the sunflower for he knows his source lies just on the other side. He knows that the sun is consistently there and the sunflower is not dismayed. So my question to us friends is, when life’s challenges “hide” our sunshine, do we continue to keep our eyes fixed on faith? Do we allow the haze of an overcast sky to steal our hope? 

Typically, young sunflowers follow the sun from east to west. The warmth attracts insects to the sunflowers to continue the life cycle that’s shared in pollination. Mature sunflowers become fixated toward the east with only their outstretched leaves continuing to track the sun. Once they form seeds and multiply, they no longer practice this and the process begins for the young sunflowers that have sprouted. This reminded me that we should keep ourselves fixated on our Maker. That we should  be available to share who we are, to share our gifts with others in our life cycles and last but not least, the importance of spreading seeds so that we multiply. And finally, coming along side those we have planted seeds in so that they too can plug into their “source” and track their maker too.