The Fire Within

The topic of grace has been discussed recently in our house. Came about because in discussing different scenarios our girls have been in they see people they know acting differently.  We as humans are complex and each interaction we have can be impacted by what happened before. Think of the times you've had a bad day at work and then you yell at your kids or spouse for something trivial, certainly not something worth getting upset about. Those moments are what each of us experience. So when you are on the receiving end of it you have to ask yourself if this is a normal behavior or abnormal? If this is unusual behavior that is where grace comes in. You don't know what other hardships someone is going through causing them to behaving in a different way. Just as important though is to understand when you are having a bad day, it doesn't give you freedom to treat others poorly. We need to have the self awareness to realize that something in our situation is causing us to not ac...

I love this quote from Tim Tebow: I believe that sometimes God gives His toughest assignments to His greatest warriors. — Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) October 26, 2020 It makes me think of all of the kids that face medical issues, attacking them with courage and strength while remaining more joyful than those that have no real issues to complain about. It makes me think of the people who struggle through losing a job and finding a way to provide for their family. Sacrificing, working 2 or 3 jobs to supply what their kids need to succeed. I think of so many people who struggle with things we have no idea about. We all have challenges and battles that we have to face in life. But we are warriors and you have the strength to take on the assignments that you are facing. 

As my kids are getting older it is fun to have more adult conversations with them. My oldest and I were talking recently about COVID and the mandate to wear a mask. She was saying how it was hard to understand why there are so many people that refuse to wear one. For her, she thinks that the longer that it goes on and the more she wears one, the less you even notice it. In the beginning it was weird and different, but time and routine have a way of making the weird and different into something normal, something you don't even notice. Throughout history, and in each of our lives, changes come along that we find bizarre at first, or just very different, but then we get used to it and we don't even notice it. Technology is a great example of this. The computers used in the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 required a significant sized room to house them. The smart phone that you carry around in your pocket is roughly 100 million times more powerful. We get so used to them we don'...

Last week we took my daughter on her first college visit to the University of Nebraska Lincoln. We had been in Lincoln and on the campus a handful of times the past few years. As we drove around a bit then toured the campus my wife and I both commented how, though we couldn't explain it, Lincoln felt like home.  Thinking about that feeling and the word home. The feeling for me is a sense of serenity and butterflies in the stomach. There is just a sense of joy and peace being in that place. Each of us have places that feel like home to us. It can vary for each person. It could be the place you live now. Many people when they go to the town they grew up in have that feeling of being home. For some they have a dream of one day living in New York, Paris or London. Others have that vacation spot they visit once a year and when they are there it is just like home. As I think of my daughter going off to college and the adventure of life beginning for her, the idea of home becomes more pre...

In America we certainly like our sports. The games we watch or play bring out our competitive spirit. We want to win and we want the other team to lose. For most of us we can't play sports so we try to take that competitive spirit into our workplaces, be it a corporation, a government organization or a non-profit. If we aren't winning we are losing. We want to turn everything into a game where there is a clear winner and a clear loser, because that is what we understand the best. It sickens me to watch what is happening in the political arena in our country as we descend further into the black and white of needing to have only one winner. There has always been a difference of opinion and two parties who don't have the same ideology, but it felt like it used to be more about how to take those differences of opinions and find a way to make something work that everyone can agree on. You can't watch a debate or political ad, read a news article or the latest social media po...

The mind is a tremendous tool that can be of great benefit to us and it can be a hindrance at times also. We can overthink, overanalyze and become hyper-focused on topics that don't provide a lot of value. We all have a tendency to focus on a topic and dwell on it much longer than is needed. If we are thinking about it there is some value, there is a level of importance, but after a while the additional time and energy spent focused on it doesn't add any more value and actually becomes a problem.  I see it in projects at work, when things start going off the path where we need them to be we talk a lot about how things got off course, who is to blame and how it isn't our fault. There is some benefit in figuring out where things went wrong to make sure it doesn't happen again. However more energy needs to be put in how do we move forward and get where we need to. Post mortems are a good thing until they deteriorate into a whining and complaining session.  Learn from the p...

Have you ever realized how much food fits in your refrigerator? It is a lot. I needed to make a repair on our fridge that required defrosting it as there was a heat component that needed to be replaced. For the few days leading up to it my family was lectured how they had to eat something from the fridge any time they were hungry. The day before I was going to start the repair, for lunch I did my part by having the left over chili, a small amount of mac & cheese, a single taco with the left over meet from taco night, a container of yogurt and a slice of cheesecake for dessert. It was my own customized 5 course meal. So I did my part and our fridge had never been so empty. I then gathered every cooler I could find in my house, used all of the ice and ice packs I could find and used freeze pops to help keep things cold knowing they would refreeze just fine.  I was amazed at how much stuff we still had in the fridge even being as empty as it had ever been in the last decade. All I...

Centuries ago generally the government was handled by a king of some sort. The king had territory and all who lived within it were subject to the king. If you had a good king things could be pretty good, if you had a bad king things could get ugly.  If you were the king life was great. Servants took care of your every need, you had riches and castles to live in. If you were a subject, you would have to answer the kings call when needed. If the king decided he wanted to attack his neighbor to try to expand his land, then you would have to go to war for him. If you survived and were victorious your prize was basically getting to return home to your family. The ages of kings is mostly gone now because as time has gone on it became pretty clear that society and civilization doesn't progress unless everyone is able to progress. If the king is the only person that can see improvement in their standing the only way to move up is to kill the king. But there can still only be one. There is ...