Watch Out for Foxes

Today I want to talk about foxes.  It's funny because when I was a teenager we might call a pretty girl a fox but we don't call them that today.  Now while some guys might say that a pretty girl can certainly be trouble, I am not talking about them today.  However, I do want to talk to you about another type of fox.  The Bible says that little foxes spoil the vine.  I know this has been true in my own life.

Let me talk to you about a couple of things that happned to me in the last few days.  Yesterday I got up and went to the gym.  After I got done lifting weights, I went out for a run.  Well at least it should have been a run but my hips were hurting so I ended up running part of it and walking part of it.  Normally when I run, I let my mind sort of drift where ever it wants to go.  I think about my day and what needs to be done and the people in my life for the most part.  But yesterday was a little different.

My mind drifted to a couple of people and situations that I don't particularly like.  I envisioned myself confronting them and telling them exactly what I thought of them.  As I was doing this, I noticed that my mood started to darken a little.  I am generally a very positive person and I wasn't turning into Voldemort but I wasn't as positive as I normal.  Here is something else I noticed, I wasn't really all that upset with any of those people or situations, I was upset with the fact that my run was going extremely slow and that I was in a pain.  So the real question for me was how to let my thoughts effect my day.  If I continued down this path, I was destined to be in a bad mood the rest of the day.  These little foxes were going to spoil my day if I didn't do something.

At some other time, I will talk about the two Ts - Trust and Thankfulness.  For now, let me say that I had to trust God during my run and I had to consciuosly walk away from those thoughts.  When I did, my whole world brightened back up and I did enjoy the rest of my day.  While I am on the subject, let me say a word about the other T - Thankfulness.  I was out in the fresh air on a beautiful morning run/walking my normal six mile course.  The first several weeks of this year have been the best start of a year in at least the last 20 years of my life.  I have the most amazing woman in my life.  She has two kids who are truly a blessing to be around and I enjoy spending time with them.  I have three of the most amazing kids God ever gave anyone.  My business is going up and a new business that I started is really picking up.  For the first time in a long time, I feel great.  What's my point?  The Lord has truly blessed me.  God has been very good to Tommy!!

On top of that, both of my legs work just fine; I can see; I can smell; I can touch; I love and I am loved.  Let me take a side trip to relate a story that is pertinent to thankfulness.  On another morning I went out to run and had a bad time.  It wasn't a bad run but it was slower than I like.  After the fact, I was grumbling inside about life in general but the root cause of my grumbling was a bad run.  I was blaming other people for all kinds of stuff.  On the outside I was smiling and having a good day but on the inside I was throwing a temper tantrum like a two year old kid.  Eventually the Lord had enough of my unthankful attitude and He told me so.  You wouldn't have heard what He said to me because I heard it on the inside but it had a lasting effect.  He said, "You see that man over there in the wheel chair with no legs from the knees down?  He would almost kill someone to be able to go and do that "sorry" run you just did."  Well that jerked the slack out of me in a hurry. 

The same was true for my run the other morning, I trusted God to do what he said in his word and deliver me from those stupid thoughts (the foxes) that were running through my mind.  Once I put a stop to those, I went on to have a very productive day.

Let me wrap this up by asking, what little foxes are spoiling your vine?  Maybe you are faced with an annoying person or situation.  Maybe you are just allowing your mind to run all over the place like mine did.  Maybe you are just complaining too much.  Whatever it is, I want encourage you to take a hard look at it and make a conscious decision to walk away from it.  If you will focus on the positive things going on in your life, it will make the negative ones get so much smaller.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

What to Forget

OK, on Monday we discussed what to remember.  Now let's talk about the other side of the coin.  We need to talk about what to forget.

Most of us have embarrassing moments in our life or times when we failed.  Because these were so painful, we can recall them in very vivid detail.  I remember my junior year of high school.  All of the good athletes made the varsity football team that year.  I was stronger than most of the kids in my class and thought I would be a lock to make varsity as well.  The first week of two a days, I was even a starter on the offensive line.  But there was one practice where we were supposed to work on pass blocking.  This kid across the line from me was quicker than I was and he ran right by me and sacked the quarterback three or four plays in a row.

Not only was I demoted from a varsity starter, I was sent to the junior varsity team.  It was humiliating.  To make matters worse, when the list came out and I everyone knew I was on the JV team, a certain classmate of mine made a very vocal point of telling everyone around that I was JV.  That was even more humiliating.  When I tell this story, I can still feel part of those humiliating emotions inside me.  They aren't very big and it certainly doesn't bother me but it is still a reminder of a failure in my past.

There was another time while I was at TCU that I was trying to make an ROTC sport team called Ranger Challenge.  Now the TCU team was one of the top squads in the nation and I really wanted to make the team.  At the very first of the season, I was running pretty well and I had a good shot at making it.  Then I got hurt playing softball and ended up being a back up.  I was devastated and it sent me into a depression.  Now my friends on Ranger Challenge never said anything.  They were great guys about the whole thing but I was still embarrassed.  This even happened at least 15 years ago and I still remember it pretty well.

Yet, when I graduated from law school, I graduated Cum Laude and 4th in my class.  I certainly remember doing this but it is more of a distant memory and it only happened about 10 years ago.

So why do I remember my failures more vividly than my successes?  Because pain can stay around longer than that feeling of happiness that comes from success.  Now I can certainly tell you that after all these years, I learned lessons from both of the failures I described above and that's a good thing.  But I let my ROTC failure ruin my grades at TCU.  I let my high school failure completely shake my confidence.

So here is what we should learn from what I did.  There are certain things that we just have to choose to forget.  I'm not saying that you will completely forget those bad things that happened to you.  Obviously I remember high school and TCU to this day.  But we do have to choose to let go of what happened and we definitely have to learn to "forget" the pain involved.  If we don't let go of those bad events in our lives, we will never have an opportunity to reach for and then celebrate success.

If we continue to hold onto and relive those bad memories too long, it's like trying to swim with cement shoes on.  It will just keep dragging us down.  We will never be able to soar to the heights God intended if we continue to focus on our failures.  Now I am not telling you to pretend that bad things didn't happen and I'm also not telling you to never be sad when bad things happened.  That would be ridiculous.  But what I am saying is after you have had some time to feel sad, let it go.  Don't go around talking to yourself or other people about your failure, let it go and start climbing to the next place God has in store for you.  No matter how bad things are in your life right now, God has a good plan for your life.

So let me sum this up by saying that there are going to be bad circumstances in our lives that we have to deal with.  I know they are there.  However, if we keep our focus on all the bad things that happen to us and never choose to focus on the great things we have done or that God has done for us, we will never achieve the full potential God has for our lives.

That's another Opinion of the Minion