Taken at Our Lords Community Church
Yep. We have a little surprise on our hands. Truth be told, I am pretty excited about it. I heard my friend Ben talk about having kids, and he said that every time his next child was born, he felt an enlarging of his heart, and caught himself saying "I didn't know that my heart had this much capacity to love." Another of my friends says they doubled their joy with their second, and hope to triple their joy with their third someday. I'm going to test the joy math for him and let him know how it works.
And so, I'm excited. I worry a bit at times, as we currently have a 3 bedroom house, and will either be giving someone a roommate or looking for a new house (which isn't in the budget, but then #3 wasn't either. they're a surprise baby!). But I know that in this we will struggle, we'll plan and see some of the plans succeed, and that our family will grow, and that we'll see our love for each other deepen in our capacity to love and care for each other.
The moral of the story? Don't put your maternity clothes in the garage sale box. You'll find yourself digging them out quickly.
Live deeper.
So, this weekend, I got a chance to go check out a day-long seminar called "your one degree," and I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of data in 7 hours, and it's taken some time to decompress it all. I'm still not finished by any means either. But, I figured I should at least write some of it down, as writing is a great way for me to decompress it all.
One of the great take aways I was encouraged by was the whole concept of the seminar to begin with: finding YOUR one degree. The illustration works like this:
Picture your life/skills/experience/etc as a circle. He said you have greens that energize you,
yellows that you're good at, but don't thrive on, and reds that drain you. What he argued for,
was that you focus your time, attention, and energy on finding your degree, and cutting the
other 94 degrees out.
What?! Sounds crazy, right? I mean, you can't just CUT everything out!!
But, what if you could?
What if, instead of spreading yourself thin doing lots of different things, you focused in on your best skills, gifts, etc, and grew even better at them?
Now, there's a 60/40 rule in there as well, that you aim for your one degree in 60% of what you do. For example, I don't generally budget/plan $$ well. Never have. And you can hear my blood pressure kick up like a turbocharger on a car when it comes up. Just a slow annoying hiss. That said, not planning a budget or looking at money leaves me in a terrible place. It just has to happen. Some reds just have to happen (like changing a poop filled diaper). But, finding the skills you live for and focusing on those sounds great, right?
It's also hard. It means giving up on good things. Example: As a coffee snob, I would enjoy working the coffee bar at church. But, I'm committed to the band, and I am good at it (not saying that arrogantly, just saying, I'm capable of playing well). Music would be my one degree.
What I find so interesting in this is that it seems to be a thing that a lot of youth pastors have said (myself included) in the past. Our kids have tried to be experts at everything so they get big scholarships and have lots of options. And so they're too busy to "do something dumb like get someone pregnant." Which is a whole different issue I'll leave alone. Our culture has created people that jump in the wheel, run hard, and switch wheels multiple times, trying to be good at everything. If you think I'm lying, look at a high schooler's schedule. Fall sports, spring sports, clubs, homework, jobs, extra curriculars, church, family events, AP courses, playing an instrument, band, etc. I could go on, you get the idea. How many did you do? I had more than one.
And then now in my 30's, I finally have a guy who has encouraged me to say no to good things. Fortunately, I had to learn that already, but he pushed even more than I thought was necessary, and I think he's right. You learn, you adapt, and you swim in a sea of yellow tasks that you can do well so you get your job security, you score a raise, you keep the peace at home. And you miss out on greens that would energize you in tremendous ways. Extend that to the broad family, what does that do to my family? I enjoy life less, so I'm shorter, angrier, less satisfied. And if they're stuck in 100 yellows and 2 greens, they're in the same boat. What if I pursued more greens, and empowered my wife & kids to pursue greens?
Our family would look DRAMATICALLY different.
And so now comes the hard work of trimming off the fat. What am I good at that I don't need to make a priority anymore? My skill in my greens goes up, my love for those tasks goes up, my impact as a person goes up. Why? Because I get better at doing what I love, and because I am a happier person because I'm doing a task I love.
This is all meant as a broad thing, a life orienting so to speak. But it translates to work too. What if you did the same with your career? All things worth asking. All things worth leveraging your gifts, abilities, and time for. Worth throwing your heart into that conversation to watch it come alive.
Live deeper.
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