A fantastic conversation starter: Roadtrip Stories

Here's a great conversation starter: Tell me your favorite road trip story or story that involves you in a car.

I asked this question around a circle of young adults and realized that this was a great question because everyone had a long interesting story to tell!  Even if they couldn’t drive, they had ridden in a vehicle when something crazy had happened.   

So I'm filing this question away for future conversations. :)

What's one of my crazy road trip stories?

I remember pushing an overheating car til I blew the head gasket and completely killed the car.  I knew the car had something wrong but I thought the car might make it and I had to go surfing!!!

 

The moment I remember most is my friend Evy laughing as smoke came pouring from the hood and I was puttering down the road well below the speed limit.  

To add to the the craziness, another car passed us honking and upset because they got stuck behind us for a little bit.  SO upset that they actually threw something at the side of our car!  

All we could do was laugh and shrug our heads thinking, "What did they want us to do?!"  

You would've thought that the big smoke cloud coming out of our car's engine would deserve a little more patience and grace... 

But i guess not. :)

Good times to laugh and look back on. 

"No, I can't hang out tonight..."

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This is when you start feeling older.

It's the moment I hate because I want to say, "Yes" to every possible hangout.

And I don't want to feel like I've lost it... whatever it is.

But there is a huge lesson of limitation and maturity to be learned here:

I Have to Take Care of Myself More to Be Able to Take Care of Others More.

In college I could go off caffeine, less than 5 hours of sleep, and no alone time for days, 

if not weeks, before I crashed.  And I still managed to get good grades!

But as I take on more responsibility, I see that how I care for myself affects others. 

How we care for ourselves affects our work and those we love.

 I’m having to come to grips with reality.  That for me to take care of others I have to take care of myself… 

(ie. sleep, restful time with God, exercise, and saying no at times)   

…somehow I survived college and my early twenties without doing a good job at this, but I'm having to change as I take on more natural responsibility to love God and others well.

There are some effects of "growing older" that we can avoid, but this is not one of them.  Unless you decide to avoid maturing at all costs, life will require a growth curve of you learning: 

 I Have to Take Care of Myself More to Be Able to Take Care of Others More.

Everyone wants to be wanted

Everyone wants to be wanted.  I thought about this last week as I saw an attractive girl leave the room.  The thing that really stood out about this girl was that she was one of those girls who was definitely trying to be attractive and noticed.  I can’t explain how I knew, but you know the girl I'm talking about.  

I began to think about how deep our desire is to be wanted.  Someone who may have no direct person they know loves them, especially celebrities, could still settle for living off of the buzz of knowing that they will always be wanted to some degree because of their acquired popularity.  A logic that would say: “well even if I can’t find true love and acceptance, being wanted physically by someone as I walk out of the room will still suffice... because inwardly, I really just desire to be wanted."

            My thought quickly changed from "the noticed girl" who had now disappeared, to you and me.  I think absolutely every human being, including you and me, wants to be attractive and wanted by somebody.  Only someone who might’ve had a bad experience with people or pressures would say otherwise, and I believe that even that person still desires to be wanted.  It would just be in a different way than they know or could imagine. 
            Could you imagine not being wanted?  Being attractive to absolutely no one?  Feeling absolutely uninvited and unwanted every single place you set foot?  Not being wanted by any relative, friend, or person?  We have all felt unwanted at times, but to be unwanted by everyone with no hope would be absolute hell.  Literally.
            Seeing that everyone wants to be wanted made me see God in such a beautiful new light today.  His pursuit of us just isn’t a creative idea, it’s essential to the world feeling loved.  Noone can be unwanted because God is in a pursuit of everyone human.  Hell will be a place where you will be completely unwanted because the desire to be wanted and cherished is a direct reflection of God.

If I have… but do not have love, I am nothing.

-God's Words-

How To Stay on Course in the Twenty Somethings

I have two things I want consistent on my flow days and my not so flow days of life.
Today, I was reflecting on two ideas as I went for a run:

FIRST,
The verse that I was mulling over mid-jog was:
How can a young person stay on the path of purity?    By living according to your word. Psalm 119:9

One of my main goals this year is to be a pillar young adult who holds onto God's word because i know that those who cling to what God says, "Cannot be shaken."  Plus, men and women of purity in the twenty somethings are a direct reflection of God's glorious light in my opinion.

Recently at the annual Leadership Summit, Patrick Lencioni  (who is one of today's top leadership experts) blew my mind by defining an organization's core values as the top 3 values "your willing to be punished for".  In this case, I want to love the Word and let it exude so much in my every day life that people might actually feel like I talk about it too much or that I get too excited about conversations where I see the Bible's wisdom jump out of the pages.  To be punished for loving the message of the Bible at my core.

One interesting habit that I found in a recent book called Sticky Faith, was that those who went to their parents and the Bible first when a problem arose were more likely to stay firm in their faith through their twenties.  Love this!

SECOND,
I grew up reading the wisdom of Proverbs and it has shaped me tremendously.
As i was skimming over Proverbs, I was so surprised at how unimpressed Solomon was with riches in comparison to living a wise and righteous life for God.

Better a little with the fear of the Lord
    than great wealth with turmoil. 

Better a small serving of vegetables with love

    than a fattened calf with hatred. 
Better a little with righteousness
    than much gain with injustice.
How much better to get wisdom than gold,
    to get insight rather than silver!
The generous will themselves be blessed,
    for they share their food with the poor.

I pray that as I continue to mature and take on more responsibilities in time management, relationships, and money...

...that I continue to become a solid man of God; a pillar of purity, that keeps in perspective the value of God speaking into my life through the Bible to be a man of purity, and how to keep in perspective the value I put on riches in relation to it chipping away at my integrity and heart focus on God's provision.