Tag: time

The Day It All Got Real

March 19, 2026 / / 1 Comment

There are moments in life that don’t ask for your attention. They take it.

Last week was one of those moments.

Everything slowed down and sped up at the exact same time. The kind of moment where the noise of life fades, but the weight of it presses harder than ever. Sitting in a hospital, staring at monitors, listening to words you never want to hear. It does something to you. It strips everything down.

And what’s left… is clarity.

Not the kind you chase in a podcast or a productivity hack. The kind you don’t want, but can’t ignore.

It became painfully obvious how much of life I spend holding onto things that don’t actually matter. Not bad things. Just… lesser things. Things that feel important until they’re standing next to something that actually is.

Because in those moments, you don’t think about what you own.
You don’t think about what you’ve built.
You don’t think about your plans, your goals, or even your next move.

You think about people.

You think about the ones you love.
The conversations you had.
The ones you didn’t.
The time you assumed you had left.

And for a second, maybe longer, you realize how upside down it all is.

We’ve built lives around accumulation. More success. More security. More comfort. More control. And none of those things are wrong… until they quietly take first place.

Because when life gets heavy, and I mean really heavy, those things don’t hold you up.

They don’t sit next to you in a hospital room.
They don’t speak peace into fear.
They don’t remind you what actually matters.

People do.

Love does.

Presence does.

And maybe the hardest truth in all of this is how often it takes a moment like that to wake us up. Not a gentle nudge. Not a sermon. Not a quote we scroll past.

It takes the floor dropping out.

It takes the realization that everything you have can be gone. And one day it will be. Not to create fear, but to tell the truth we spend most of our lives avoiding.

We are not as in control as we think we are.

And the things we’ve placed at the center of our lives? A lot of them won’t be there when it actually counts.

So what do you do with that?

You don’t wait for the next scare.
You don’t wait for the next moment that forces clarity on you.
You choose it now.
You reorder things now.

You put people first on purpose.
You say what needs to be said – now because later might not be here.
You show up when it’s inconvenient – now because you can’t take tomorrow for granted any longer.
You hold a little less tightly to the things that won’t last, and a little more intentionally to the things that will.
You reorder everything just to be a little more present.

Because life is heavy sometimes.

And it has a way of reminding you without asking that you don’t get to keep everything.

But you do get to choose what matters while you have it.

Don’t waste that.

Measuring Time Differently

July 13, 2021 / / 0 Comments

If you’re a linear thinker then you like the idea of time being a very neat and tidy concept. We have seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years…you get the point. Linear thinking is how we live most of our lives going from task to meeting to appointment. But there are moments in our lives when something interrupts the flow of time. These can be frightening and yet exhilarating moments! It just depends how we respond to them.

One can see a timeline and consider it to be chronological in nature, going from set point to set point through a series of life circumstances. But the interruption in time doesn’t work this same way. There’s another word for this and it comes from the Greek word Kairos. It’s basically a cycle in time that will send our lives out on a potentially new trajectory.

Think of one of these Kairos moments as a loop in the middle of the timeline.

Interpreting Kairos

The drawing above is simple but it gets the point across. We go through life nearly on autopilot. Then a moment in our life takes us by surprise. Maybe it’s a death of a love one, new job, catastrophe, birth of a child, illness, win the lottery – who knows but it can be a good surprise or a bad surprise. The idea is that it takes your breath away and has the potential to alter your way of thinking.

When one of these moments happens we can basically have two responses. The first is to ignore it as if nothing happened at all. The second is to go through an evaluation process to learn what you can while the event is still fresh.

If you notice on the right side of the circle, you’ll see the word reflect. This is when we ask some questions. What happened? What emotions am I wrestling with? Who around me can I talk to about this?

This side of the circle is powerful and essential. This helps us process what’s going on. It’s about chance to admit that we could and probably should come out of this thing differently. The only problem is this is where most of us stop in the cycle. But there’s a whole other side that can really make this worthwhile.

The left half of the circle is about response. This is when we actually do something with what we learned through our evaluation and processing. If we just process and never act, we’ll get nowhere. In this side of the circle, as we make our way back to the timeline, we make a plan for how to implement change. We find the people in our lives who can come alongside us and hold us accountable to actually do what we commit to doing. And finally we determine check in moments to assure that we’re following through.

Now the really cool part of this circle is what happens when we reemerge back into our normal routine. Often the learning of the circle, from the pausing to the planning and implementing, will move us in a slightly new direction. It’s like riding a bike. When we learned to ride bikes as kids, we were able to go places faster than we could without a bike. In this case, when we learn the value of these interruptions in time, we’ll be able to get places we couldn’t have gone living in the monotony of a chronological existence.

So the long and short is be on the look out for interruptions to your day. Not all of these interruptions are bad. As a matter of fact, one of them might send you on a new path to a God ordained destination. Happy time hunting!

So do you really love me?

April 29, 2021 / / 0 Comments

There’s a thing going around these days when some people like to tell other people how to love properly. It’s a pretty touchy subject actually. It’s been around for quite some time but has gotten worse through the challenges we’ve faced in 2020 and now into 2021.

The thrust of this kind of thinking is basically saying that one set of actions has to be done to actually demonstrate love for someone else. When actually we’re saying that set of actions would make me feel more comfortable. Some in our world are trying to make everyone express their kindness in the same way. But that’s just not how it works.

There’s a book titled the 5 Love Languages and it’s a pretty good book. Granted its primary focus is on marriage relationships but there’s a crossover in application to all relationships. We have to be aware not only of how we receive love but also how someone else, the recipient of our love, receives it best.

There’s nothing more frustrating than going out of your way to show someone you love them only for them to totally miss it. I mean if you’re the gift giving type and the person you’re trying to love could care less about gifts, then your efforts will fail to communicate what you’re trying to say.

The problem with saying you have to do this or that particular thing to demonstrate love for another person is that you are only taking into account how you prefer to show love for someone else and NOT how they receive it. There are some people who are totally different than you. Some people don’t see the world the same way you do. When you aren’t willing to show them love in the way they best can receive it then you’re really not loving them. You’re trying to force them to be like you.

I get it. This isn’t easy. As a matter of fact it’s freaking hard sometimes. But if you love someone you really don’t care how hard it is. You’ll go out of your way to love them, not how you want to love them or how you’d like to be shown love, but how they best see love.

Do some investigative work. Find out how that other person in your life receives love and show them in their language not in your own. It will make a massive difference.

Do You Have Room?

April 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve been in a crowded place. No not because of covid but because I really don’t do crowds that much to be honest. But I remember the last time I was at Disney with my family, the ride attendant wanted everyone to move forward and fill all available space. Those words made me cringe. I don’t want to fill all available space. I didn’t want the sweaty man behind me pressing in closer to me. I didn’t want to lose any opportunity for air to flow through the hot line as we awaited entry on the ride.

We need to leave some room to breathe.

Maybe you’re not a ride person or have never been to a busy park like that. But what about reading. Have you ever read a book that had such tiny print and the margins were so small that there was literally no extra room on the page? Or how about when you take notes in class, were you the kind of person who filled the page in every possible direction and filled all available space?

We need to leave margin.

This is a really important principle that we need to really take to heart. Margin is critical. When we pack too many people into a small space and leave no extra room (aka margin), we can feel claustrophobic and have a hard time breathing. It can even cause a panic attack in some people.

The same is true in our schedules. If we don’t leave some margin in our lives, we end up pushing too close to the edges of our ability and have no room for emergencies or small changes in our schedules.

I find in my life, there are seasons when I run from place to place and fill my nights with meetings and games for the kids and projects around the house. When these things happen I have so little margin that I tend to miss some key moments in life. Or I miss just simple opportunities that pop up unannounced.

For a season I worked two full time jobs. I was gone all the time. From sun up to sun down and then after all went to bed I was on the go preparing for the next thing. I missed parties and outings and even some holidays. I had no margin. My neighbors and friends and family didn’t know who I was because I was never around. I missed being able to have a beverage with my neighbors around their fire pit. I wasn’t there to help a friend through a challenging time. I even missed some key moments in my children’s lives.

Living with no margin means we miss out on far too much important, spontaneous stuff in life. I’d like to challenge you to evaluate your schedule and be honest. What needs to go? What needs to stay? Who can do some of the things on your calendar that you really don’t need to do? What are the things that only you can do? And what are the things that someone else is just as qualified and just as capable of doing?

See if you can create some margin in your life. You’ll be glad you did.

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