Fully Alive
Spring is in full bloom in the deep south and it just moves my soul. I love fresh green zoysia grass, azaleas in bloom, daylillies springing up, warm days and cool evenings. My routine this time of year is to come home from work, change into shorts and move out to our back patio to enjoy the evening with my wife and kids. We talk, catch up on the day, play fetch with the dogs and just experience the beauty of God's kingdom. Even the dogs feel "fully alive" these days. Our indoor dog can't wait for me to come home. He jumps me when I walk in and goes with me to change clothes. All the while, he is eagerly wagging his tail and on the ready for my break to the back door and "dog time". There, the black lab is also on ready. He sees me come in the house and sits at the back door waiting. As soon as I step out into the yard, they spring into action, tails wagging and tennis ball in mouth ready to go.

Fully alive. Do you ever feel it? Isn't it a precious time? It is so fleeting. We feel it for an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon after the chores are done, the yard looks good and the day is cooling off. In that time, we can almost feel God walking with us "in the garden in the cool of the day". Fully alive.

When do you feel most fully alive? Think back to your days as a kid - what are the memories of fully alive back then? For me, it was wiffle ball. I had about 10 boys that were my close friends and we fell in love with wiffle ball. We'd rotate "home fields" - my house one week, George's house the next and occasionally, Lakebottom park. We perfected the game. On Friday afternoons we'd cut the grass tight and water the lawn. Some of the crew would spend Friday night together and work on our uniforms, tape up our bats and tape up a few extra balls. On Saturday the other 1/2 would show up and we'd spend 3-4 hours playing very competitive baseball. This was 4th, 5th, 6th grade stuff and we loved it. We'd watch the Braves and Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench of the Big Red Machine or Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates and we'd learn their swings and copy them on wiffle ball field. We were fully alive.

Saturday while I was working in the yard I heard some boys walking down in my creek. I edged over to the fence and watched them as they passed by my house. These guys were about 10 years old and two of them didn't have shirts on and all three were barefooted. They had set out for an adventure, found this creek and explored it. They were a long way from home but that just added to the fun. I heard them talking, "next time we do this, we need to bring our air rifles". I saw their mom Sunday at church and she said they spent all afternoon recounting their adventure in the creek. Fully alive.

Find it. Pursue it. God came and liberated us that we may live life to the full. Find it. It is out there for you. He wants you to experience it and stay in it.

Fully alive.

Soar!

Chasing the adventure...
That is the name of my blog. Here is a video clip of a young man who chased his adventure and found it. J Mac is an autistic kid who loved sports and was the manager of his high school basketball team. In the last game of his senior year, with 4 minutes to go, the coach put him in so he could live out his dream. Oh my what he did in that 4 minutes will bring tears to your eyes...

We all want our shot in life...J Mac took his...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzyhnkT_jY

clip and paste that into your browser

Soar!

Tough Times

How do we handle tough times? Why do we avoid them? Wouldn't life be easier if we could run downhill all the time? Why do hills exist anyway?

My career is volatile. I'm in the markets. Markets are naturally driven by greed or fear. It is really quite manic. The glass is either 1/2 full or 1/2 empty day to day. I'm changing the way I run my business and moving away from being glued to the minute by minute fluctuations of a ticker. Long-term investing, buying very high quality companies with strong fundamentals has the effect of killing the beast of greed/fear. I really don't care what the market does day in day out. If I have a bad day/month/quarter -- it really doesn't matter. I'm focused on the long-term. My eyes are on the prize - the long-term prize not the short-term gratification. We all "run the race" but only one will collect the prize. The goal is the prize.

There is an analogy to our faith. Our eyes should be on the prize not the day to day trials of life. "Life" is broken. It will lift you up one day and slap you down the next. There is an enemy. He is at work. His demons are real and they do pursue us. Life was broken in Eden. It isn't as God intended it. He came that we might have life and have it to the full. The only way I've found to have life to the full is to keep my eyes focused on the prize. The long-run. Not the short-term victories or painful defeats. They are all apart of the race I run.

I read a quote the other day from Abigail Adams that struck me. She was writing to her son about his second trip to France. The first trip nearly killed him and he didn't want to return. She writes....

"It is not the still calm of life that great characters are formed. Formation of character and the habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with great difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart then those qualities that otherwise lay dormant waken to life and form the character that define the hero and statesman."

God shakes us from time to time for a reason. At times we have to run up some hills. Yet it is the hills that strengthen our legs far more than the flat plains. As I look back on my life, the times my character has been strengthened has always been during the times of greatest stress and strain. We strain forward and run the race for the prize.

Soar!