Live from the third floor……

Treasure, treasure, I am storing mine up.
Like a few silver coins in a big golden cup.

Burying my goodies in a shallow dirt grave,
hidden away in the back of a cave.

Don’t ask me to share it, or lend it or give it away,
it’s mine ‘cuz I earned it and I’ll keep it that way.

For the treasure you see that I stockpile around me,
came not from your hands, but from my skills mentally.

Ah, who am I kidding? I can’t keep that up.
The stuff that I got was earned mostly through luck.

Right place, right time, isn’t that what they say?
Make the most of your chances on just the right day.

Well, maybe that’s true. I just lucked into bliss.
If that what’s you call bills, payments and lists.

But the truth – here it is. None of this is me.
I will fight to stay honest and live humbly.

The One who created me just somehow saw fit,
to give me some talent and a few special gifts.

See here’s the truth: I’m not better than you or him.
My imperfections & struggles keep me level with them.

Keep it real and stay humble, that is my aim.
Forget all the stuff because it’s really quite lame.

Do I want to lose it? Obviously not, but I recognize
that my true treasures were not earned or bought.

The gift I was given was paid with a price,
but it could not be measured except by His life.

Grace reaching down and pulling me up.
Forgiveness, second chances and fresh wine in my cup.

So take all my treasures, my plans and my junk,
But God be patient with me as I fight like a punk.

There will always be another day

A chance to just sit, and play

A full sixty seconds with no distraction

To cherish the moment – give more than a fraction

Of  time and attention to my littlest fans

Let them know they’re important, even more than my bands

To play with some Legos or a Calico Critter

But instead I check updates and hang out on Twitter

I am sorry girls – I’ve failed you and all this time passed

You’re growing up quickly and the time, it elapsed

Looking back won’t help now, for those days are fleeting

I must live in the moment, before they are leaving

And cherish the moments although they have changed

For being a daddy is a difficult game

I knew it the minute I put the new roll on the holder. This new toilet paper was, well, crap. I sat down on the floor of our half-bath and immediately wished I could go back. Back to Target to select the cushiony, double-rolled brand with the adorable little teddy bear.

But I couldn’t go back now. For one thing, I had thrown the receipt away and you know how Target is about that.  Secondly, and more important, I had argued and lobbied to my wife how I just couldn’t justify spending that much on something we just flush away. I put together a compelling, ten minute discussion as we moved up and down the aisles – a compassionate speech that was meant to persuade both her and anyone within earshot that toilet paper is bad for the environment and that by spending that much we’re just falling in line.

“We might as well burn trees in our own yard,” I stated in front of the pharmacy. “By spending that much we are just telling them to stick it to us,” I pleaded in front of the Organic milk door. “Think about it honey, if we get the $6.50 pack, we can earmark that savings towards the girls’ college funds,” I petitioned near the socks.

Eventually, my wife gave in. Sometimes, when it is something that doesn’t matter, I can convince her to let me do something. Something stupid. And so, I did.

I proudly took the name brand stuff back. I placed it on the shelf like I had just solved world hunger. Found a cure for AIDS. Won a World Series. If my body language could speak, it would have said: “Look here corporate minions, y0u won’t get my money. I am going with brand X and keeping money in my pocket!”

On the way home, I probably stopped at Starbucks to get a coffee.

You know what is crazy? This horrible toilet paper won’t go away. It is thin. Weak. Frail. Brittle. It causes clogging. It has been a disaster. But the odd thing is that has been a disaster for about four months! You know how good toilet paper never lasts long enough? When you get to the last roll of a 24 pack you think, Already?!??!

Not with this stuff, I cannot get rid of it. One weekend we had some family come for a visit and we broke out the good stuff. The good stuff here being the soft, cushy toilet paper. It was a wonderful weekend.

When they left I marched into the bathroom, sat down and……WHAT!? There it was, back on the roller. The pitiful toilet paper!

“Honey! Why is this toilet paper here? What happened to the good stuff?”

My wife said we had to work our way through the rest of the roll.

That toilet paper is like a bad decision. Sometimes in life, we make a decision in the heat of the moment that seems to be awesome. We make a compelling argument inside of our heads.

But we walk away and later find that decision was, well, crappy.

Moral of the story – think through your decisions. Like a really bad roll of toilet paper, some mistakes in life don’t go away very quickly.

(No toilet bowls were harmed during the writing of this post).

Had any regrets lately? My life is full of them. So that you can identify with this writer, I will now share some personal regrets with you:

1) I bought a Milli Vanilli tape when I was in high school. Not sure why I’d regret that?  Watch this: http://youtu.be/cG6fRHzVpNU

2) I once traded a totally hip Jeep Cherokee for a four door Oldsmobile Alero.

3) When my wife and I first got married we lived in a high-rise in downtown Chicago. When we walked to the grocery store, I would not pay $6 for a cab so we’d walk back with all the groceries and those ridiculous little plastic bag straps would nearly amputate our fingers.

The way I see it we all have some regrets in our lives. For some of you, it may be your hair in high school or something slightly more serious that deals with a  job or a relationship.

Well, I am here to type to you: don’t let regret take hold of you! In recent months, I have learned a little about myself and one thing that has become increasingly clear to me is that I tend to regret things from the past while at the same time fearing regrets that I may have in the future. How insane it that! (note: rhetorical, hence the “!” and not the use of “?”).

Used sparingly and responsibly, like wines in a recipe, regret can be a nice reminder to not make the same mistake twice. It can motivate. It can create a fear or a drive in a person that will help them achieve the next level. I’d argue that a healthy amount of regret can keep a person moving in the right direction.

But, when regret starts to consistently show up like a drunk at Applebee’s during the 2-for-1 happy hour window of 5-7pm (just guessing mom), then you need to take a step back and make sure regret is not controlling you.

As I watch my girls grow up, I often find myself gripped with regret that maybe I missed too much of their lives. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked so much. Maybe I shouldn’t have traveled, or read a book on a Saturday, or gone out with a friend to a ballgame, or……

When my wife and I decided to leave St. Louis and move ourselves to Dallas in the summer of 2011, one of the driving reasons behind it was so we could spend more time together and grasp a more manageable lifestyle. I did not want to watch my kids grow up and go to college while I sat on my couch and wept, wondering, “Where was I for the last 18 years?”

Now, I wrestle with conflict in my mind when it comes to big decisions because I am fearful of the regret that I may have if I do this or if I do that.

It is time for me to close. It’s not because I’m out of intelligent words, rather because the flight attendant told me it is time to end my super deep thought time.

So, in closing, I’ve got nothing for you. I am still learning how to navigate this power of regret. I’m trying to make it manageable, more reasonable. I want to own regret. Not the way I owned that stupid four door Olds, but in a way that allows me to live life to the fullest. To capture the moment. To not look back with regret while at the same time not worrying about what potential regrets may wait for me.

I hope this intersected with something in your life. Maybe it spoke to you. Maybe you have some something to share with me. I’m all ears. Trust me, I am all ears – I have to power down my iPod and remove my earbuds for landing.

It has been said that some things go better together. I think Jack Johnson made the phrase popular when he put together the soundtrack for the curious monkey movie. Indeed, it would be hard to pull apart these timeless combinations:

• Peanut Butter & Jelly
• Mickey & Minnie
• Hall & Oates
• Pitchers and Catchers
• Lemonade Stands and Summer
• Newark and Depression
• Socks and Birkenstocks
• Milk and Fruity Pebbles

Well, okay, the last two may be a stretch, but I think you get my point. Right? That very few things can be accomplished, employed or performed in perfection without the assistance from someone or something else.

My daughters were recently performing at a musical recital and one of the performers’ siblings joined her on the stage for a piano duet. The music was wonderful and the two pianist used the tones to compliment one another in telling a musical story. As they played, I found myself watching them very closely. The pianos were arranged next to each other but facing opposite ends so that each performer could peek through the lifted top of the piano and read the face of their counterpart. On a couple of occasions, the piece would violently change and speed up or come crashing down to a much softer sound. While I am sure that professional pianists can transition musical changes without looking up, it occurred to me that these two superb young pianist needed to look at each other to get it just right.

It wasn’t the needing to look at each other that got me to thinking. It was the fact that they needed to work together to create pitch perfect harmonies at just the right time.

So I thought about that for a while. Then I had some fruit punch and a cookie and drove home.

A couple of days later I was telling my wife how the sight of those two peeking through the pianos at each other was a mirror image of our lives lived in relationship, in community. I wondered how badly things would have gone if one of the lids had dropped a bit and blocked their view.

I think at some point in all of our lives we think it will be okay to crawl into a hole. Seek a little alone time. Maybe just take our antenna down and hope to disappear from everyone’s radar. And who knows, maybe sometimes it is good for us to step back and take some time to reflect and recalibrate our existence and purpose.

But, just like those pianists couldn’t work in tandem without a view of each other, I don’t think we can reach our maximum potential without peeking through our own metaphorical piano lids and making contact with the people around us. People challenge us and bring out parts of us that we probably couldn’t find without a little help. Many times we think we can go it alone. But when we march down that road, we alienate ourselves, we gather feedback from no one and we undoubtedly miss the opportunity to achieve more.

I truly believe that some people are placed in our lives by God on purpose – to challenge our beliefs, lifestyles, decisions and opinions. But we’ve got to put ourselves out there first. What do you think?

Well, I’ve got to run, a single seat where I can sit alone and uninterrupted just opened up at the coffee shop.

When I was a little kid I used to pretend I was the owner of a baseball team. I would build charts by hand that laid out an ideal draft strategy for my team. I would make up player names, height, weight, stats, even the college they had attended (assuming that I hadn’t drafted them straight out of high school). This was important stuff to me and it helped me pass a lot of time – at school, at church, in the car.

I would often build my teams around a couple of players and then I’d draft and create seasonal stats for supporting players. I would always be sure to have a guy on the team who was a switch-hitter and could play both the infield and the outfield – a supersub. He could fill all the holes that would likely be created in my mind over the course of a 162 game season if there was an injury that popped up.

I would build my pitching staff in a similar fashion. Usually a lefty would assume the role of team ace and then three or four righties would give me 25-30 quality starts behind their inspirational future Hall-of-Famer. It goes without saying that I always had a monster coming in from the bullpen in the ninth to shut the door and lock down each victory.

My teams were good. In fact, I cannot think of a single season that I created on the back of a church bulletin in which my team didn’t at least get to the World Series. They usually won.

But something I always had to adjust were the total innings pitched by my staff. If you simply assumed that a team played 162 regular season games and none went into extra innings, then the total innings had to be 1,458. That is before taking into account the playoffs and the fact that approximately 8.5% of MLB games go into extra innings.

So, there I would sit, with a beautiful, hand-made graph and spreadsheet in front of me. I was always so pleased with my work. But when I started adding up the innings pitched, I could never make them jive.

And I could never fix the mathematical problems because the pen that I had borrowed from inside my dad’s suit jacket would not erase (my dad was either teaching me a life lesson or he just hated pencils).

And I remember feeling like I had wasted all this time making this team but was unable to make it realistic. I couldn’t erase the mistakes and make it right.

Now, as an adult, I sit in meetings and make baseball teams but I have the benefit of an iPhone calculator to double check my innings and averages and ERAs.

The pain that my dad put me through by not using pencils did teach me something. Just like on the back of a First Baptist Euless church bulletin, mistakes are made in life. Sometimes it feels like our mistakes, our miscalculations, missteps or wrong turns are irreversible. It is easy to think that every wrong thing we’ve done is in ink and that the wrongs can’t be made right.

But that thinking isn’t accurate. Redemption does exist. Second chances, even third and fourth chances, are out there. A lot of times we just have to step out and assume the risk and liability of trying again.

I want to encourage you to try again. Mistakes are inevitable in life. If you can’t quickly think up your top five or 10 mistakes from the past couple of years alone then you probably aren’t living.

Sometimes, getting a second chance is as easy as forgiving yourself. Other times you have to go and confess and ask forgiveness of those you’ve hurt, wounded or let down. Deep inside I think people want to forgive. People have a lot of stuff to carry around, phones, purses, e-readers, power cords, coffee – they’d probably love to not have to carry the anger they have for you around any longer.

In cleaning up my messes, I learned about Jesus and how he was all about second chances. He didn’t even really ask anything of me. He offers up free cracks at starting fresh all the time.

It took me a good number of years to grasp that. I wish I could have understood some of that a long time ago. On a related note, I wish I would have known that Ed Walsh once threw more than 460 innings all by himself for the White Sox in 1908. That kind of info would have really helped even out the innings as I labored on the 11th pew on the right at First Baptist Euless.