Man vs. Wild

Heidi and I have recently taken a renewed interest in hiking. In past years, we would occasionally go hiking, but we never really kept at it because traveling to Camelback Mountain, or Squaw Peak was always too much of a trek. Now that we have discovered the trails at the nearby White Tank Mountains, our love for wilderness recreation has been reborn.

On our first hike, we decided to try one of the intermediate trails. The total hike was somewhere around 4 miles round trip, and took us about 2.5 hours. I wouldn't say that it was a difficult hike, but it was relatively challenging for two people who have not been hiking in years. On the way down, I thought it might be nice to view the scenery rather than watch my step, and I ended up spraining my ankle.

Prior to our most recent hike, we visited Sports Authority and loaded ourselves up with the right hiking equipment (ankle-supporting, waterproof hiking boots and Camelback water packs). We planned to go hiking on President's Day.

It rained on President's Day.

We were bummed because we were both looking forward to hiking on our day off. We stayed home and watched a movie that afternoon (we watched "Pride and Prejudice" as it happens -- a great film). At about 4:00, we looked to the West and saw blue skies. That was an invitation from God to enjoy his creation by hiking through it. So we headed out.

We took the waterfall trail hoping that the day's rain would make it possible for us to actually see water running over the falls. The weather was absolutely beautiful. Once we got to the top and saw the waterfall canyon, we turned to head back down the mountain. As we were making our way back, I noticed a very dark, ominous cloud come blowing in over the mountain. By about 1/4 of the way back down, we were beginning to be pelted by hail. After the hail came the rain. After the rain came more rain.

By the time we made it back to the car, Heidi, Bella (our dog), and I were soaked to the bone. It was the most fun I have had in a very long time. Heidi, who absolutely HATES being wet and cold, even agreed that it was fun hiking through the rain.

I think that watching that show on the Discovery Channel called "Man vs. Wild" has given us both a sense of adventure when it comes to braving the elements on our own. Please, no comments about how not-a-big-deal it is to hike in the rain. We are starting with rainstorms and working our way up to the Amazon. Baby steps...baby steps.

BIG Mistakes...

Mistakes are common. Every one of us makes mistakes on a daily basis. Mistakes can be as benign as putting your left sock on inside-out; they can be mistakes of negligence like forgetting to feed the dog; they can even be communication mistakes that acidentally start arguments -- like when your wife asks, "Do these pants make my butt look big?" while you are playing 007 and you unwittingly nod, "Uh-huh".

Mistakes are unavoidable. The tragedy regarding mistakes is that, on occasion, people make BIG mistakes. BIG mistakes are not all that common and are therefore not easy to overlook.

Last week, I had the glorious fortune to commit a BIG mistake with my job (please note the sarcastic italics). My mistake is far too freshly-committed at this time for me to go into detail, so I will save the specifics for another day (or another year perhaps). When BIG mistakes are committed, it is always good for others to offer sincere consolation to the offender. My boss, Pastor Greg, very mercifully told me this funny story in response to my BIG mistake:

On the very fist day of his new job at IBM, an employee made a mistake that cost the company over 2 million dollars. The next day, the employee hand-delivered his resignation to his boss.

"What is this for?" the boss asked.

"I figured that after yesterday's mistake," replied the man "that I would be fired for sure. I wanted to save you the trouble of firing me by resigning."

The boss looked at the employee and asked, "Why in the world would I fire you after just spending 2 million dollars to train you?"

You see, I have learned that the key to life after BIG mistakes is learning to never commit the same mistake a second time. Let's all pause right now and say a prayer that I don't commit my BIG mistake again...

[pause]

Amen.

My Home Team Mutated!

Heidi and I love the home team that we have been with over the past year. They have become some of our best friends of all time.

Last month, the group we have grown so close to mutated into two new home teams. I say "mutated" because the other similar words that popped into my mind didn't do justice to what happened. To say we split implies that we went our separate ways after some sort of fallout -- that didn't happen; to say we multiplied sounds to me like we all just started producing babies at rabbit-speed or something -- to date only Brent and Jessica have produced a baby while in our home team (due March 12, 2007!); to say that we diversified our interests is just too corporate America.

I choose the word mutated because it makes me think of the movie "X-Men". In that movie, mutation was both a bad and a good thing for society. For us, our mutation was bad in the sense that we were choosing to take half of our group and have them participate in the exact same event that we had every Wednesday night for over a year, only in a different place. We were losing time with friends that we looked forward to seeing and studying with each week.

What we realized, however, is that our mutation would allow other people in our church the chance to feel the same connection and spiritual growth that we experienced over the past year. Our home team was given a great gift. For us to hoard our personal connection all for ourselves would be selfish and short-sighted.

I'll be honest, the members of our home team do not have special powers like the "X-Men" characters (though, I do believe that Aaron is part Superman), but we have been given the chance to share the power of God's word through Bible study, and a chance for others to feel connected to Palm Valley through our home team.

And those are powers that must be shared with others.