45 Things I Have Learned

Today, I complete my forty-fifth trip around the sun.  If the numbers pan out, I should be about halfway to the finish line of this race we call life.  I'm happy to announce that some of the aid stations in this race have bacon.  And I'm pretty sure I'm on my way to a PR. 

I've tried to keep my eyes open and pay attention along the way, and I have picked up a few lessons that I try to live by.  Here are 45 of them--just one per year, because that's about as fast as life-lessons can penetrate my skull.

1.  Determining the right thing is seldom complicated.  Doing the right thing is seldom easy.

2.  A person who will not ask for help in time of need is just as morally screwed-up as a person who will not offer it.

3. If you ever hear yourself saying, "God wants me to be happy," beware.  God wants you to be faithful.  The happiness will follow.

4.  Here's the cure for boredom:  Find something that needs done.  Go to it.

5.  There's really no point trying to change anybody but myself.

6.  If you really want to fight for your family, quit fighting with your spouse.  In the long run, peace is often more important than vindication, and winning is seldom worth the damage.

7.  Depression is real, and it is true what they say about it:  You cannot just "get over it;" you cannot just will it to go away.  All you can do it fight it, with every spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational weapon that comes to hand.  When that crushing, unreasoning despair comes down, just finding the courage to fight is a major victory.

8.  Always accept when someone offers you a breath mint.

9.  Being a Christian isn't about being right; it's about submitting to Jesus, because he is right.

10.  There are very few obstacles in this world that cannot be cut down to size by love, hard work, and perseverance.

11.  Make kids laugh whenever and however you can.

12.  No matter how badly I want it to be otherwise, very few things are about me.  The more I make peace with this truth, the happier I am.

13.  "But" is one of the most powerful words in our language, and it gives its power to whatever comes after it.  "I'm sorry, but..." is a pretty poor excuse for an apology.  "This is hard, but..." are the words of someone on the verge of overcoming.  Don't ever say "I love you, but..."

14.  Act like a kid when you can.  Act like a grown-up when you need to.

15.  Sometimes God answers my prayer by changing the situation to suit me.  Sometimes he changes me to suit the situation.

16.  "The Golden Rule" doesn't go away when the other person is wrong; indeed, that is the only time it really becomes necessary. 

17.  If the person across from you admits that they were wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean that you were right.

18.  The more important and complex the topic--politics, religion, parenthood, ethics, the environment, that sort of thing--the more important it becomes to approach it with calmness, open-mindedness, and humility.  Bring your best spirit and your best thinking to these topics; approach them to learn, not merely to win; don't bother engaging with those who do not do likewise, especially if they agree with you.  The implications are too big for anything less than your best.

19.  Aging gracefully has a lot to do with learning one's limitations without being imprisoned by them.

20.  The Bible tells us to confess our own sins, so that we may be healed.  It's a whole lot easier to confess everybody else's sins.

21.  No matter what you see in the movies, angry outbursts almost always make things worse, not better.

22.  There is nothing that happens--Nothing--that God cannot redeem and turn into something beautiful, if we just trust him.

23.  Gratitude is the great stabilizer of the soul:  It contains the remedy for arrogance and shame, for laziness and perfectionism, for despair and over-confidence.  Thankfulness brings humility without humiliation, contentment without apathy, confidence without pride, and great riches without greed.

24.  There is always something to be thankful for.  Always.

25.  Don't be shocked and outraged when life is hard.  It's supposed to be.  If hard times take you by surprise, you haven't been paying attention.

26.  If someone offends you, it probably isn't worth taking it all that seriously.

27.  It takes great courage to love and serve in the face of injustice, heartbreak, pain, brokenness.  Those who choose to do so are worthy of recognition and great respect.

28.  Sometimes it's easy to ignore the acre of wild flowers and focus in on the dog turd over in the corner.

29.  We cannot teach our children to be creative risk-takers by forcing their teachers to play it safe, teach to the test, and go with the flow.

30.  There's nothing like a long rainstorm in the back-country to make people hoist their true colors.

31.  If you don't know what to say, there's no need to open your mouth and demonstrate.

32.  Being a parent frequently feels like grabbing the child's hand and leading them on a tight-rope walk between adventure and safety.  Sheltering and equipping.  Confidence and humility.  Work and play.  Independence and respect for authority. Compassion and toughness. Moms and dads tend to come down on opposite sides of these extremes.  I guess that's why kids need both.

33.  Faith is a journey, not a destination.  When you start thinking you've arrived, you can be pretty sure you've lost your way. 

34.   Pride and shame are the same problem.  If you are stuck looking in the mirror, focused on your own self-image, you are just as enslaved whether you like what you see or not.

35.  "Struggling with sin" is a good thing.  It's when we quit struggling that we're really in trouble.

36.  If the scenery doesn't match up with the map, go back to the last place that looked familiar, and just relax for a while.

37.  If you're going to make threats or ultimatums, you'd better be good and prepared to follow up.

38.  Worship isn't just something that happens on Sunday morning.  Worship has to be a way of life, if it's to be worth anything.

39.  It's pretty hard to feel stressed while running up and down mountains.  It's pretty hard to feel angry with a fish on.

40.  You really shouldn't do yoga in a kilt.

41.  When in doubt, put down the phone, turn off the computer, and get in the real world with  family and friends, sunshine and wind.

42.  Love people for who they are, not for what you need from them.

43.  "Weep with those who weep" means just that.  Sharing another person's suffering is very uncomfortable, and it is all too easy to minimize or explain away the suffering, not so much to comfort the sufferer, but to diminish our own discomfort.  But consider how God deals with us in our suffering:  He seldom makes it go away and he hardly ever explains it to us; he walks with us through it.  He expects us to do the same for each other.  It isn't supposed to be comfortable.

44.  A person who has stopped learning has no business teaching.

45.  Growth takes time.  Learning the right way, and learning to walk in that way, is a long process.  If you're a friend of mine, you've probably had to be patient with me at some point. Thanks.  I'm getting there.