VERY IMPORTANT

We are sitting here in the office watching one of the Founders of the company going through all the offices/cabinets and throwing stuff away. Stuff that way once very important and had to be held onto now that he is leaving just doesn’t have the value it once did.

He is leaving because he was sort of pushed out and is trying not to be too cynical. He gave his 2 week notice, but basically was shut out on the day he told them and is just trying to kill time now.

I sit here and think about what it must feel like for him, something that he devoted so much time and effort to, time he sacrificed his family for and now both his wife and his company are leaving him. As he looks for something to do, anything, continues to look at the remnants of the last few years and loads trash can after trash can.

I for one have a tendency to hold on to important papers thinking they might be needed. I struggle to get rid of something that still works even though I’m not using it and never will again. But my true prayer is that I never hold on to things and forget where the true worth is; Jesus, my husband, my family and my friends.

Luke 12:34

Square Peg In A Round Hole

Cut to shape; pound to fit; paint to match

I have heard this term used more than once in my engineering career, especially when ever a problem came up in a project. But I also think we try and use this creed when working with people that don’t exactly match our expectation or perception of how someone should act. We always think that life will be somewhat easier if everyone we interact with fit into the proper “shape” of the board of life.

In any given situation statistics will tell you that people will fit into a bell curve or the 80/20 distribution. Eighty percent of the people will fall in the middle, with 10% about and 10% below the mean. So what do we do with the 20%? We try and force them to conform and fit in with the 80%. My husband is always telling me about the time when he was real young and they had him do a test and sure enough he pounded the square peg into the round hole. No one could deny that he made it fit, but they also could never use that peg or that test piece again.

Often I find myself in that 20% group. I belong, but I’m just unique enough that no one really knows what to do with me or how best to use that uniqueness. I have come to celebrate my difference and accept the fact that I am an enigma to so many. I have tried to conform and act like others and it just doesn’t work, at least not for very long.

We all have unique quirks and characteristics and I Thank God for them. It would be a dull world if everyone was like me.

Song of Solomon 6:9

The Lesson of the Five Balls

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drip it, it will bounce back. The other four balls – family, health, friends, integrity --- are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.¹

I read this quote a few weeks ago while on vacation. I have been guilty of making my job more important than it should be in my life. Thinking that if I wasn’t there or if I didn’t do something how would the company stay afloat. I mean REALLY, I’m just a person who happens to work and those companies survived before I joined their ranks and are still around after I left.

I remember how it felt when I was laid off a few years ago. It wasn’t for performance, proven by the fact that I received notice of a pay raise on the same day that they announced I would be laid off, gotta love big companies, at least my severance package was calculated on the new higher salary. I had to do some real soul searching to make sure I didn’t place my own personal worth in the fact that I was working and had a good job.

Last week while I was on a business trip to Dallas, the company I am currently working for had 2 significant events, 1^st they was reduction of workforce (lay off) of +25 people and then 2 days later there was a hostile takeover of the company by an investment firm. WOW.

This week the new Company President was in our remote office with the 6 of us that work in Bellevue. It was a strange and stressful week. Would our positions be eliminated? Would they close the office?

The questions still go unanswered, but I know I no longer place my worth in my job. I like my job and will always work doing something but i the ball of work drops, it is made of rubber and it will bounce back. I have to stay focused on the other ones for now.

Matthew 6:26-27

¹ Susanne’s Diary for Nicholas, James Patterson, 2001.

How To Vacation

I received a text message this morning from a friend asking if I was ready for a vacation. I reply back, “No, I am glad to be back to the routine. We have figured out how to vacation.”

How many vacations have all of us taken and didn’t want to miss out on anything and wanted to make sure we got our “monies worth”. We schedule and plan and rush form one activity to the next. Setting the alarm each night to meet a schedule on vacations seems to be wrong on so many levels. We come back from our time away exhausted.

Last week my husband and I took our annual “vacation”. He has a limited number of vacation days and we tend to do a couple of weekend getaways each year, but we purpose to take a vacation each year. A vacation to us is about spending time together while getting refreshed and restored.

Now don’t get me wrong we still take what we call “working vacations” where we go with a purpose and a project to be completed. But these are becoming less frequent. Is that age or wisdom?

So how do we vacation? We stumbled on this formula by accident, but it has served us very well the last few years. We decide what part of the country we would like to explore, usually around something from the Civil War because that is one of Kyle’s passions. (Side bar – for all of you home schoolers, if you want someone to speak about the Civil War, I know this guy). We get a rental car, guide book and a map and we take off. Our only schedule for the entire vacation is when to be at the airport to leave and to return. Everything in between is left up in the air and we decide as we go. We don’t use a GPS because we might miss something and I am pretty good with a map. We don’t pre-book hotels, we just decide we are ready for the night and find one that looks good preferring one that has a hot tub/spa.

By doing this we take the structure out of our way too over scheduled lives for a few days. We spend quality time without distractions while in the car driving. We get as much rest as we want for a change sleeping in, going to bed early, and relaxing when we just want to relax.

Vacation - leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure.

MATT 11:28-30

Travel Companions

An elderly woman being accompanied by her daughter who is just a younger version of the first are sitting towards the front. There is the family traveling with 3 small children. A couple of young mothers one whose child sleeps quietly the others does not want to sit in one place. A college student is busy reading a text book while the business man is sleeping while the movie playing goes unwatched.

We all sit on the same airplane headed to the same destination, at least on this flight. We all get on for different reasons, some visiting family, some returning home, so going on vacation, all different reasons but a common destination.

As I sit and work on my laptop while my husband naps next to me I think about how being on this airplane is a small version of life. At different stages or “legs” of our travel we are doing life together. We spend time with people and then for various reasons we lose contact with people that we were once close to. Our travel companions though life will change, but we must chose to travel with the right people and along the right path.

After 3+hours we arrive at our destination and all of us get off of the plane. Some are done and will return to their homes, some will rush off to catch another flight, some like us are just moving onto a different mode of transportation to continue our trip.

Proverbs 13:20

Dear Dr E:

It has been 5 years and I have thought about what you said at our last visit many times. You probably don’t remember me, I am just another patient in a long series of patients and just another record in your files.

The look of the exam room – beige walls, veneer cabinets and a reproduction print of a lily that is found in many doctors’ offices, I am sitting on the chair in the room when you enter, as I sit in stunned silence you talk about my future.

I walk out of the office not sure what to do next, I am on auto pilot as I make my way through the halls, down the elevator and out to the parking garage where I get into my car and wonder what to do next.

Six months later in a small church on Main Street, Monroe Wa, God performed a miracle in my life and healed the cancer in my breast. Thank you Lord.

Dr E, I write this to you as I have just received my latest mammogram results and to let you know that for the last 5 years I battled in my mind almost daily as symptoms would come I battled to stay in Gods embrace and to keep the faith in Him. I battled against the words you spoke that day. I battled to prove you wrong.

Dr E, you were right it isn’t a matter of if – I have been clean for 5 years now, but where you were wrong is that it is NOT a matter of when either.

Matthew 15:30

End of a Season

Here it is Labor Day, the time when summer and all the related activities are coming to an end. Kyle just pulled the furnace filters and cleaned them preparing for the winter months. Seasons change and try as we might to hold on to one it will change into the next one. There is no stopping fall, then winter and then spring from happening.

As a farmer knows you spend time in one season so that you can harvest in the next. But after the harvest there comes what seems to be the longest season, the season of rest. It is in these season that the fields are dormant, you have to cut down the plants that were once producing so much fruit, stop the activity in the field and allow the ground to rest. Allow the ground to recover and rebuild the nutrients that the next crop will require.

Sometimes a season in our lives has to end, maybe it is has been a fruitful season and yet you know deep down that season is waning. If you try and prolong that time it would be like running around in shorts when the weather is cold and rainy. It will no longer produce fruit and it will cause much discomfort.

It is hardest to be obedient and stop doing the good things when you don’t know what you are going to be doing next, but if you don’t give up the old, how will there ever be time for the new? It is only after the dormant winter season that spring comes and there will be new growth, new plants and the potential for a new harvest.

ECC 3:6