Reflecting

From time to time, I have to stop and reflect. What's gone on in my life that was right, wrong, and what I learned about God in all this, and myself.

I spent most of the week obsessing over the LSAT. Friday I took a long walk to gather my thoughts and to "get my head in the game". After I got back, I was working on the Reading Comp section of the test, practicing the skills I am attempting to learn, when it hit me. "I am not going to have a perfect score on this test!" WOW! Here i was, during practice, worrying more about what I was getting wrong than why I was missing the questions, and why I was getting a few right. (by the way, i looked back, I was averaging around 70% right) I don't read well, after all I am a product of Quanah High School, (LOL! not that has anything to do with it, but an excuse for me) and I have never really worked to improve my reading skills.

I have spent most of my adult life trying to prove people wrong about me. Frances Marie Owens, who was the counselor at QHS, once told me that I was not college material. I took that at face value for a few years after high school, till I decided that just maybe I can do this. Well, I did it! Not only did I accomplish, or figure out that I was college material, I set higher goals during the process. I wanted to further my education, grad school. I was pushed and prodded by people like Randal Williams at VRJC. Then while at Tech, by folks like Dr. Vaughn and others. But, I fell again to the mainstream thoughts of going to college. Get your degree, get a decent job, and retire some day. Part of that had to do with being tired of not "living" comfortably. So i took the first job that I applied for out of Tech, something I seemed to be pretty good at and not getting out of the scope of how I was raised, agriculture.

But a few things happened along the way. One, I had given up on my dream to go to graduate school, had become "complacent" with the "status quo" (whatever that is) and had failed miserably at being a husband. I was a pretty good "dad", but an awful husband.

I spend a lot of time listening to different preacher's sermons. One that made me think about what life was about was form a guy I met at the Red River Family Encampment 2 years ago. Gary Smith, who was one of the speakers that weekend, is the preacher at the Fifth Ward Church of Christ in Houston, a predominately minority, inner city congregation. I became a fan of Gary's, downloading a few of his sermons to my ipod. He has one sermon that was directed to the youth of his congregation at graduation time about dreaming big. God doesn't expect anything less from us. I come to this realization from Matthew 25 in the parable of the talents. A man, fixing to leave town for a few days, entrusted his business to 3 people. You know the story, one he gave 5 talents and another 2 and the last 1. What did they do with the talents? The first two took there's and doubled them, the last took his an buried it, afraid of losing it. Who did God's will here? Of course! The first two. They took what they had been given, remained faithful, and was rewarded. The last guy, whom I can relate, was not faithful and therefore was not rewarded. He was complacent with the status quo of what he had been given.

Do you ever sit and wonder "what if"? I have way too much. It's time to get up and "dream big"!