1 year ago today (Keira)

1 year ago today Crystal and i learned the most amazing news... we were having a baby!

1 year ago today we found out that Keira was on the way.

i was actually on the phone up in my office when she came to talk to me with an extremely stern look on her face. she said "i need you to come downstairs right now." i figured either i was in big trouble or the dog, jack bauer was. i weasled out of the phone conversation i was in by saying "whoa, something is up. my wife needs me right away." i was hoping that person wouldn't remember and ask me later what had happened.

these pics capture our emotions through the expressions on our faces that night.

i remember we stopped right there immediately in the middle of the kitchen that night and PRAYED. couldn't think of anything else to do. i remember praying... declaring that we desperately needed God's help. and THANKS for this amazing blessing!

i remember thinking that i SOOOO wasn't ready. i seriously thought we had a solid 1-2 years at least before we would get pregnant.

we had just come home from Kenya and the malaria meds had JUST gone out of our system. i think we had literally come off birth control like the day before this. i seriously just figured we would get pregnant in a year or 2.
i could be ready in a year or 2, but not today.

i always said i wouldn't mind waiting til i was 30 or after to have kids, but i didn't make it. definitely for the next one though :)

oh, and here was the proof Crystal gave me that she was pregnant.

pretty convincing to me.

i'll always remember that moment. stunned and shocked. freaked and excited. overwhelmed.

our lives have not been the same since that night 1 year ago.

they have never been better. Keira is the most amazing source of joy over the past year. this is nothing like i ever imagined. it is so much better.

crazy thankful for that night 1 year ago. i feel way different about it today than i did that night. Keira is the most awesome baby ever. i'm crazy proud to be her daddy.

all out positivity & confidence

i heard a story recently... and honestly i'm not sure what it's intended point was... you know, i'm not sure what "the moral of the story" was, but i just made up my own. applied it in my own way.
i tend to do that a lot.

the story went something like this:

a little boy was playing out in his back yard. he was maybe 9 years old.

he's playing baseball with himself - you know, throwing the ball up in the air to himself and trying to hit it.

as he's doing this he keeps saying “I’m the greatest hitter in the world. I'm the greatest hitter in the world. I'm the greatest hitter in the world.” Over & over.

he tosses the ball up... swings & misses...

Strike 1.

“I’m the greatest hitter in the world."

he tosses the ball up again... swings & misses...
Strike 2.

“I’m the greatest hitter in the world."

for the third time he tosses the ball up... swings & misses...

Strike 3.

The boy stands there for a second... then throws both arms up in the air and shouts

“I’m the greatest pitcher in the world.”

Someone was actually standing there watching all this happen. That person asked the boy, How do you know you're the greatest pitcher in the world?

the boy answered

“because I just struck out the greatest hitter in the world.” 

i think it's a great story. i really like it.

i think all of us could learn something from this guy.

about reframing situations.

about all out positivity and confidence.

i want to live my life with this kind of confidence & undying positivity... no matter how many times i strike out.

go shave half your head

Demosthenes was one of the greatest orators in Greek history. he was a legit communicator and still recognized today as one of the greats.

Cicero called him "the perfect orator who lacked nothing", and Quintilian called him "THE standard of oratory" and said that "he stands alone among all the orators". that is some pretty high praise!

but this speaking ability did NOT come naturally. His first speeches were embarrassing, miserable failures. awful. he sucked.
in fact, he probably had a speech impediment.

so, this is what he did to go from being awful to being one of the greatest communicators in history = he shaved half his head!

yep, that was the solution. he shaved half his head and went and hid in a cave.
During his day, a half-shaved head was a public no-no. So he intentionally quarantined himself in order to reflect on what he most desperately had to say. 

He searched his soul to find his passion, his sense of identity, and his reason to communicate. did you catch that? he had to find his PASSION. what what was his whole reason to communicate? [because without these things... you can never be an effective communicator]
He thought about what his Greek audience truly valued and the language that would speak most meaningfully to them. he desperately wanted to connect with them. in a relevant way. in a way that mattered & in a way that THEY thought mattered.

Then Demosthenes practiced speaking from his heart. practiced in the back of a cave, apparently, with half his head starting to look like a chia pet or something.

When he came back out into society he won the admiration of the toughest critics the world has ever known. His name has been married to speaking eloquence for more than 2,000 years. all from a guy with a speech impediment.

why?

all because he shaved half his head.

maybe you need to shave half your head?

then lock yourself away for a while until your hair grows back...
and until you find your voice. until you locate the burning passion deep inside you. what do you HAVE to say or else you feel like you'll explode? what is your reason to communicate? and how can you say it in such a way that people actually care? how can your PASSION and your REASON to communicate be RELEVANT to your audience? what do you most deeply have to say?

so do whatever it takes. shave half your head. do whatever you have to do.

i am.

because i'm not a great communicator, but i know that what i most deeply have to say is too important to not be heard and grasped and lived.

push them from the very bottom of your soul

when you think of James Earl Jones you think of that AMAZING voice. right? that's a God-given GIFT of speaking right there. too bad i wasn't BORN with that.

but James Earl Jones wasn't born with it either. His family moved from a farm in Mississippi to Detroit when he was only 6. (thanks to Boyd Clark for this story, btw.) 
this move was pretty traumatic for him & it prompted a stuttering crisis for him. a BIG stuttering crisis.

he hardly spoke a word for 8 years!

did you catch that? from 6 to about 14 this kid hardly spoke! that's pretty hard core. probably not the kid who's at the top of your list of kids who will grow up to become great orators.

In his high school English class they all had an assignment to write an original poem and then present it in front of the class. BUT James Earl's stuttering was SO BAD that his teacher was going to let him SLIDE on the reciting it to the class part! i never had an English teacher like that :)

but the teacher also called him out a little saying that the poem was SO GOOD, he wondered if James really wrote it, or just copied it from somewhere?

here's what Jones wrote about that:

"My honor was at stake. Plagiarism was bad business. I had written every word of this poem myself... I was shaking as I stood up, cursing myself. I strained to get the words out, pushing from the bottom of my soul. I opened my mouth--and to my astonishment, the words flowed out smoothly, every one of them.

My classmates were amazed, not so much by the poem as by the performance."

it's hard to think of a more important lesson for a communicator or a leader that communicates to learn...

Make sure the words are yours.

    
Push them from the very bottom of your soul.

         
The performance will take care of itself.

need to feel like a better parent? just read this

My wife's grandmother from New York has had the privilege to stay at our house and hang out with Keira twice since she's been born. and in that time i've probably heard this story about a half dozen times.

just letting you know up front that this is a true story! i didn't make it up and i didn't just steal it from something i saw on Tosh.0 or Ridiculousness.

here you go:
back in the day when my father-in-law was a baby, his mom (my wife's grandmother) was driving through town and made a U-turn...

the back door of the car came open and the baby FELL OUT!!!

he straight up fell out onto the street on his head!
out of a moving car!

she got out of the car, threw him back in the back seat, and kept driving.

wow.
hard to top that one.

and he turned out just fine (you know, for the most part). she seems like she was a wonderful mother & of course this kind of thing wasn't the norm.

but hey, stuff happens. we're all going to make mistakes. i'm sure i'll make TONS. thousands. i'm trying not to, but i'm sure i will.

but when i make those mistakes i'm going to remind myself of this story and say to myself "at least i didn't eject my baby onto the street from a moving car."

hopefully i never top that one.

no coke for half a life

When i was 14 years old i drank Coke every day. i drank Coke and Pepsi and Sunkist and Sprite and on and on and on...
all day long every day.

at every meal and in between every meal i drank sodas. loved them. never dreamed i would ever stop.

When i was 14 my whole soccer team decided to not drink any soda for 30 days. just during some big tournaments that were coming up.

i did actually feel amazing for 30 days. i felt free... like weights were lifted off.

but i couldn't wait to have a Coke when the 30 days were up. i could almost taste it.

on the 31st day i poured myself a BIG glass of Coke. Watched the fizz bubble up & then go back down. filled it up again to almost overflowing...

and then...

i took a big...

long...

cold...

sweet...

gulp.

and it was...

NASTY.

it tasted horrible. i hated it. i think i forced myself to drink it and i felt awful the rest of the day. i felt like something was burning my insides. i burped all day long. that was not cool.

i tried for a few more days to like Coke again. or any soda. but i just didn't like it.

i had formed a habit - not drinking soda. i didn't like it anymore. and i felt amazing. i felt like i could run like the wind.

so i just went with it.

and now it's 14 years later. i'm 28. and i haven't had a soda for 14 years.

half my life.

for half my life - 14 years -  i drank sodas every single day. then i took 30 days to form a new habit. and now i haven't had another soda for these past 14 years.

habits are formed in 30 days or less. that's pretty crazy. and they could be STRONG habits that affect the rest of your life.

so what kind of habit could/should you form over the next 30 days?

Rachel and water

watch THIS.

now check THIS.

This beautiful little girl, Rachel had a dream to raise $300 to help 15 people have clean water! and that's awesome. that's a world changing dream for a 9 year old girl. scratch that. that is world changing period. world changing for 15 awesome people that God created.

But Rachel was just short of that goal.
then Rachel was killed tragically in a car accident.

now as i write this, her dream has turned into over $239,000 helping almost 12,000 people have clean water!

Rachel, you're a hero. you're my hero. You're heaping glory and renown on God. you lived a life worth telling stories about.

makes me think of THIS.

in this place

speaking of living "lives worth telling stories about" you have GOT to get a copy of In This Place and read it ASAP!

it's written by an awesome friend of ours, Kim Abernethy. She and her husband, Jeff spent about 15 years in Liberia and the Ivory Coast serving the people there and they have some ridiculous stories to share.

they truly lived and are living lives worth telling stories about.

and many of those stories are detailed in Kim's new book that came out this year, In This Place. you can pick up a copy from Amazon HERE or HERE for the Kindle version.

Today, Jeff and Kim were awesome enough to come hang out with the students at Ridge Church and share some of their stories.

we were all inspired to live lives worth telling stories about. the only kind of life that satisfies.

Their stories will inspire you too, which is why you need to read the book! you'll laugh one minute and cry the next.

Crystal and i are so so thankful to be able to call Jeff & Kim friends!

lives worth telling stories about

that's the kind of life i want to live. one worth telling stories about.

we've been talking about this idea with the students at Ridge since the beginning of 2011. This phrase isn't original with me but i heard it at a conference in 07 from Mark Batterson. i think the phrase also shows up in his book In a Pit with a Lion On a Snowy Day. (+ a big thanks to the talented Natalie Osborne for the above logo.)

so, we challenge this rising generation to live lives worth telling stories about.
the sad part is that the vast majority of people on this earth do the OPPOSITE. they just lay low and live easy, "secure" lives.

most people live lives that no one could ever make a movie about. nobody will ever write a book about them. because their lives are boring. safe. predictable. free from all risk. most peoples' lives don't make good stories.

but that's not the kind of lives that God calls us to. that's not the kind of life i want to live. maybe we can pave the way and blaze a path away from the normal and safe into a new way of living our lives.

when i'm 80 years old i wanna have some crazy awesome stories to tell.

St. Paddy's and March Madness!

what an awesome combination!

my favorite holiday (because it's my name's sake & Irish & fun) + one of the greatest times of year (NCAA March Madness)
all kicking off the same day! wow... like a dream come true.

there's just nothing quite like March Madness.

& St. Patrick was no slouch himself. i'm proud to be named after him. (actually i was named after my great great grandfather Patrick O'Hennessey who came over on the boat from Ireland.)

Contrary to what you might think - St. Patrick wasn't even Irish. He was Scottish, but kidnapped by the Irish as a kid And then followed God BACK to the land of his kidnappers as a missionary! that's pretty hard core!

He did some crazy awesome stuff for the sake of the Kingdom & lived FAR from a glamorous life... pretty much lived in poverty for the sake of the only renown that matters.

Patrick lived a life worth telling stories about and then died 1,550 years ago today.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!