The Beauty of Margins

One of my favorite leadership talks to give is that of self-leadership.  You cannot effectively lead others until you are successfully managing yourself.  Of great importance in this arena is building margin into your life.  Margin is the extra time that you may need as you live this gloriously unpredictable life.

Case in point would be my life yesterday morning.  I was gathering my family together so that I could drive my husband to the airport to catch a flight.  We left plenty of margin within our schedule and it was a good thing as our battery was dead-graveyard dead-when my husband tried to start the van.  Time for plan B.  Because of the margin we had built into our schedule, we had plenty of time to go get another battery, install it and still get to the airport, after having a quick lunch, with time to spare.  This is the beauty of margin.  

I was taught early in life by my grandmother that tardiness is the highest form of selfishness because it communicates to others that your time is more important than theirs.  She always told me to allow more time than I thought I would need so as to NEVER keep others waiting.  And this lesson has served me well in life.  The slow traffic, dead batteries and coffee spilled in your lap as you pull out of your driveway can all be handled without costing others if you build margin into your schedules.  Try it this week.  It will bring you great freedom, cost you little, and speak volumes to others.  And if the unexpected doesn't happen, you will have a little extra time to create something beautiful in the margin of your life.

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Friday Jumbles

--Chronicles of Charmia: Epilogue...I went to Walmart (see below) this week to buy toilet paper and lo and behold, what did I see in the middle of the aisle? A HUGE display of Charmin multipacks....on sale. Then the heavens opened and the angels sang and a blue bird landed on my shoulder. Okay, not really, but it could have happened. It had to be a sign from God and right now I could use one.

--I went to Walmart again this week and rather than take the first cart available, I gave it to the older lady that came in the door right behind me. My good deed for the day. I then took the next cart for me to use and I PROMISE YOU....two of the wheels were broken! I am going to have to shift the percentage up from last week to approximately 84%. Moral of the story: Nice girls finish last due to a broken-down buggy.

--Important quote of the week: It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin. --Dave Barry

--My sons were discussing breast implants in the van earlier this week. We passed a Curves gym and my youngest thought it was a place to get breast implants (or boob jobs as he so eloquently put it). He then began a monologue about how interesting it would be to have an implant in your forhead to make you look like an alien. He said it would be called a "freast". I can only imagine what he will become when he grows up...boggles the mind.

--If you are considering buying a new fragrance for the man in your life and you have thought that the new Tim McGraw cologne might be nice, please lie down until this urge passes. Eddie sprayed it on himself (without smelling it first, mind you) in the store the other day and we had to ride home with the windows down. One of the boys even gagged. I think this was just for effect.

--I was driving around town the other day and I got behind a truck that had a bumper sticker that read, "TURD". Now I ask you, what would possess a person to put that on their vehicle?? Is it a southern thing? Should you really need a passport to come down here? You can't even find anything like that in a country song on the radio! Just one of those things that makes you say, "Hmmmmmmmm."

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Get Paid For Your Passion

I think I have already mentioned that I have been reading Seth Godin's most recent book, Tribes, and it is really speaking to me where I am.  One sentence in particular grabbed my attention.  Seth says,

 "Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don't need to escape from."  

  Godin asserts that the people who love what they do and are eager to get to work each day are people who are affecting change in their sphere of influence.  'They challenge the status quo and push something forward-something they believe in.  They lead."  Many people get up each day and head to jobs where they are working to help someone else accomplish their hopes/dreams/goals.  How many of us are getting paid to "do" the desire of our own heart?  

One of the things I love to do when I get the opportunity to speak to a group of leaders is encourage them to allow the desires of their heart to be resurrected that they might begin living from the overflow of those dreams and desires.  Most folks are taught to get a good job with great benefits and retirement.  I am telling people to make smart financial decisions but live your dreams.  If you are college age or younger, get in touch with your heart and discover what keeps you up at night, where your passion is.  Then figure out how to get paid to do that.  It may take some time and require paying a few dues, but you really can live, and get paid for, the passion in your heart.  If you are further along in life, but disappointed with where you are, it is NOT too late to get paid for your passion.  You just have to take that first step.

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A Unicorn In A Balloon Factory

As I pray and talk to the Lord about His heart for women to lead strongly in His body, I go back to the handful of scriptures that have been misinterpreted and then used as institutional bars in the church to keep women safely imprisoned in the cage of the status quo.  Sadly, many women have accepted these rules as a reflection of God's heart towards them.  They assume that what they are allowed to do in the church is all that they were created for and that men were designed to carry the weight of real leadership.  Some of the women I have talked to even seem relieved that they are limited because it is safer to hide behind man-made walls of limitation than to have to step out and lead where it might feel uncomfortable.  This is understandable given the fact that it is all they have known their entire lives.

I remember years ago asking one woman, who I greatly respect as a leader in the church, her opinion of women in leadership and she gave to me the response I have heard so often from men in my 25 years in the church, "Women can teach and preach and lead in any way they choose except for church government.  Pastoring and and leading in positions of eldership are for men only."  I remember how stunned I felt when those words left her lips.  I had never felt so alone as I did in that moment.  I never expected her to have swallowed such a gross misrepresentation of God's plan for His daughters.  But she did and so have many others.  

On the flip side of that coin is a moment I recently experienced.  I asked Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine and author of two books on women in leadership, to speak at our women's conference earlier this month at Christian Heritage Church.  During one of his teaching sessions Lee had the women come forward who had been trapped by fear so he could pray for them to be free to lead and fulfill God's destiny for them.  So many women come forward crying out to God to free them to rise up for such a time as this.  My heart was ignited with such a passion to see women come to the place of understanding that God places no gender limitations on them.  He longs to see the misuse of His word come to an end, just as He did when slavery was an issue in this country and people were misusing His word to validate their sin of holding back other races.  I was reminded in that moment, as I stood and watched the women find freedom, that THIS is my holy discontent and the reason I have been given a voice at this time.  

It is time and I am excited.  I realize that this makes me much like (to borrow a phrase from Seth Godin) a unicorn in a balloon factory.  And I'm okay with that.  This is not about me.  This is about the other half of the army of God.  In the coming days and weeks I will be addressing some of these passages of Scripture with the hope of bringing light to a dark place in the church.  To quote Loren Cunningham (Youth With A Mission), "If we don't seize this opportunity now, the church will fall behind for generations."

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Confessions of a Neat-Freak

Ahhhh, the sweet consolation of things put in order.  I realize that not everyone is a fan of order and some just may not know how to attain order much less maintain it.  For me, order is part of my DNA...I crave it and I thrive in it.  I have been told that this is indicative of a deep, dark,  hidden issue and that I organize and straighten to compensate for those things over which I have no control.  And to this I say, "WHAT????!!!!"  I don't think that I need to tell you that the people who have said this to me were chronically messy, perhaps even terminally so.  Now this is not a criticism of messies or adulation for neat freaks, but rather a confession that I find difficult circumstances easier to endure when my little world is in order.  Of great comfort to me is the fact that I am married to a man who is just like me in this arena.  In fact, he is worse, and I say this with great respect and admiration.  His sock drawer is color-coded as are the clothes in his closet and once, I caught him alphabetizing the spice cabinet.  I pointed out to him that alphabetizing spices might border on some sort of neurosis, but he did not think so.  

The only problem with these OCD (actually it should be CDO....in alphabetical order, the way God intended it) tendencies is that my friends who are gifted in messiness do not like to have me over unless their homes are clean.  This is crazy because I don't care how messy your house is...I don't have to live in it.  And I would certainly never criticize you for it.   I'm a live-and-let-live kinda girl.  You be messy, I'll be organized and the world will continue to spin on it's axis.  Spinning and spinning, making complete rotations every twenty-four hours, while revolving in an orderly orbit around the sun........

So which are you?

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Risky Business

Following God can be risky business.  Sometimes the thrill of adventure is exhausting and I just want to take a little nap and pretend I'm not hanging out on a limb.  Sloths eat, sleep, and even give birth while hanging from tree limbs and I have never understood that as "hanging" anywhere is not comfortable for me.  But you do get used to the view and you even begin thinking, after a while, that you might just be hugging a small space forever. I reminded myself today that I am not a sloth, but a daughter with a destiny and that this "hanging" is not a permanent condition.  Oftentimes I don't listen well to my own advice.  I am great at giving pep-talks to others but I am not a good listener when I am the only one in the conversation.  This is one of those times when I find myself yelling my own words in my own ears, hoping like crazy that they will penetrate my heart.  I am reminded that when Peter stepped out of the boat onto the water, he was fine until he began looking at what was around him.  Taking your eyes off of the face of God is never a good idea.  Why do our eyes like to wander so?  Why does the heart doubt what the head knows so well?  When will I ever be like my friend, Jesus, who could sleep so peacefully in the middle of a raging storm?  Someday.  Someday.  

If you,too, are finding yourself hanging in an uncomfortable place for an uncomfortable amount of time, just know that you are not alone.  And it is not forever.  And He will never, ever leave you alone.

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Exit Interview

Wouldn't it be interesting if you could have an exit interview with everyone you have encountered this past week? What would they say about their interaction with you?  Were your words dazzling?  Were your arguments convincing?  Did you make your point with dizzying clarity? 

I have been thinking that what we say really doesn’t matter.  It is how we make people feel that matters.  Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  That might sound a little “touchy-feely”, but I find that in most of my dealings with people, it is what they walk away with that matters to them.  Kind of like the aftertaste when you have something to eat or drink….it doesn’t really matter what you swallowed, your stomach doesn’t know the difference.  But your mouth will register the aftertaste for quite some time and it is that by which you judge the meal or the drink.  You leave a mark on each one you touch, a fingerprint on their soul.  What does it look like?  What will others see in your wake?

My wake could have been better this week.  I would like to say that my fingerprints were lovely, but some of them were not.  Tomorrow is a new day and I will purpose to think before I speak, listen much, and leave behind something remarkable on others.

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