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I hope to do more “You make the call!” posts in the future as I want to have more interaction involved on my site with the loyal readers that I have.  But, they don’t work if you don’t interact so please make a comment.

My wife is reading a book (by an undisclosed author) that she received for Christmas.  It is a fiction book, but the reason that Mandy likes it so much is that it deals with real life issues.  She has not finished yet, but tonight was talking to me about the book.  The reason she talked to me about it is because she wanted to hear what I think the characters should do in their given situation.  Here’s where you come in…I am going to lay out the scenario, but I will change the names of the characters (and some of the irrelevant details) and I want to know what you think should happen.

Scenario:

Katherine is the main character in the book, she is married to Tom.  Katherine is a very busy business woman, Tom is a college professor who is also a journalist.  For the last year, Tom has felt like Katherine doesn’t have time for him and when young Tina, one of his students, shows interest he begins pursuing her, to the point that he falls in love with her, tells Katherine that he wants a divorce and proceeds to move in with Tina and has lived with her for the last 3 months.  In an effort to get Tina out of his mind before he leaves Katherine Tom makes love to Katherine and now Katherine is 3 months pregnant with their first child.  About a month after Tom leaves Katherine runs into Jeremy, the man who she has known since they were 12 (they are now 28).  They were childhood sweethearts and had dated for several years until when Jeremy was injured during a professional game (he is a professional athlete) and Katherine went to the hospital to visit him the nurse told her that Jeremy was in with his girlfriend.  When Katherine heard this, she never entered the hospital room. Now, during the current situation, the mixup is uncovered and they realize that Jeremy never was unfaithful to her, he was in with the team trainer and had told the nurse he couldn’t wait to see his girlfriend (Katherine).  Katherine starts to let herself fall for Jeremy when Tom finds out that she is pregnant with their child and asks their pastor for a meeting between the pastor, Katherine, and himself because he has realized all that he is leaving behind.

We don’t know yet whether or not Tom wants to come back, but here is the question for you to answer, let’s assume Tom does want to come back and he leaves Tina, what should Katherine do?

A couple of Bible passages come to mind as I think about this:

• The book of Hosea
• Malachi 2:16
• Matthew 5:32
• Matthew 19:1-12

Remember, don’t just be a spectator, let me know what you think…

On December 29th, 2009 Michael Hyatt posted a very thought provoking article on processing what the last year has contained.  You can read it here.  The gist is that there are 7 questions you should ask yourself about the last year.  This post is my attempt to process these questions for myself personally.  I will also be blogging about this from a business perspective as well, head on over to the TwoMilesSolutions.com blog to check it out.  I will be doing resolution/goal setting posts next week, but here is a look back.

1. If the last year were a movie of your life, what would the genre be?
   I would have to say adventure.  My second child was born this year and it was a year of learning a lot of different lessons.  We never knew what was around the corner, but God always came through.
2. What were the two or three major themes that kept recurring?
   - Gaining a deeper understanding…this was a year of understanding myself, my wife, my son, and my business better.
   -  Survival of the Fittest…as most of you know this was a tough year economically for a lot of people because of the recession, but we made it through, sometimes just by the grace of God, but He always provided.
3. What did you accomplish this past year that you are the most proud of?
   Along with raising a great boy, having a great marriage to a wonderful woman, and the birth of my second child, I also became the Director of SERVOLUTION (coordinate service ministries for the church) at Metro Believers Church.   This was a huge thing for me as I love to serve and now we are able to put a focused effort on service in our church.
4. What do you feel you should have been acknowledged for but weren’t?
   This one is a personal question that I don’t feel I should post for the world to see.
5. What disappointments or regrets did you experience this last year?
   From a personal perspective (see my business blog for my business answer), I am mostly disappointed in myself for the amount of time I didn’t spend with my family and focusing on my weight loss goals that I have set for the past few years.  This is mainly due to the work schedule that I keep (it is a regular occurrence for me to work until 2 am.)  I make it a point to always have dinner with my family and spend time after dinner with them, but I want to work towards more time with them and there are things in the works that will help get me to that point.
6. What was missing from last year as you look back?
   This could probably go in the disappointments question as well, but I missed a lot of good quality quiet time with the Word this last year.  Along with time missed with my family, I should have spent more time in the Word.
7. What were major life-lessons you learned this past year?
   - When with your family, you need to disconnect from the office.  This is a huge thing for me given that I work from home.  What this means for me is that sometimes I leave my cell phone in my office so that I am not checking my email at the dinner table.
   - Sometimes you just need a break.  As much as I would like to think that I am superman, I am not, sometimes I just need to stop and relax.

Hopefully, you found this post insightful, I would recommend doing the same as you get ready to start the new year and set goals for the upcoming year.  You can’t figure out where you are going if you don’t know where you have been.

A friend of mine posted this on his facebook account tonight and it reminded me of the great teaching we got as a part of the Growing Kids God’s Way small group Mandy and I were in. I thought I would repost it here for all the other fathers out there who could use a little encouragement.

(A mandate is something non-negotiable)

(Wives: please encourage and support your husband in this! Are you supporting these mandates? Helping, honoring, respecting him?)

It’s not the time I spend, it’s the quality of my RELATIONSHIP with my children. Their TRUST in me.

1. Cultivate a sense of family identity. A) verbally encourage my children. When I’m excited about the family, the children are excited. “This is a great family!” B) Know where I’m going with my family identity. Beautiful. Tight.

2. Provide an ongoing demonstration of love for my wife. If I really love my children, I will give them the gift of confidence and security in their parents’ relationship. Give my wife so much love it embarrasses the children!

3. I need to understand and respect my child’s private world. Stop what you’re doing. Listen. Be there. Give them the confidence that they can share their treasures with you. You never know when you’ll be invited in. Three worlds: A) Public. B) Personal. C) Private.

4. Give my children the freedom to fail. Failure is the first step to success; it builds wisdom. Children WILL fail; how will you respond? Children don’t fear failing; they fear failing dad.

5. I need to be the encourager of my family. Write little love notes to my children (lunchbox; backpack). My presence. My smile. Children need to know they have MY trust; give them opportunities to earn it. Create in them an HONEST trust in your leadership.

6. As a father, I must guard my tongue and my tone and learn to measure my response against the excitement on their faces. The more excited THEY are; the more excited I am!

7. I need to touch my children. Hold. Hug. Mom’s arms are comforting; dad’s arms are SECURITY. If you don’t touch your children, someone else will. Always hold them; always.

8. If I am going to build a trusting relationship with my children, it must be built on God’s Truth and not on man’s wisdom. Bible. My children see God through ME. My children will trust GOD based on how they trust me.

Prov 23:15 “Son, give me your heart”
Prov 23:26 “(child) if YOUR heart is wise; MY heart will rejoice”

You’re going to fail them sometimes. Remember to ask their forgiveness.

My relationship with my child is the precedent for their relationship with God. How am I doing with that?

Fathers and Mothers: am I doing it this way because that’s how my parents taught me, or because that’s God wants me to do it.

My prayer is that all of us fathers would take these points to heart.  Thanks for posting this Alex.

I read an article today on facebook while I was browsing through status updates that the government is thinking that the recession is finally over.  They gave the concession that life is still going to be hard for people affected by the recession.

I also read different blog posts postulating what it would have been like on 9/11/2001 if we would have had twitter, facebook, and all the other social media that we have today…and in the light of what happened with the recent recession, the thought scares me…

My status update on my facebook profile caused a discussion where I felt like I might have offended some people and that was not my intent, I didn’t express my opinion very well so this post is an attempt to clarify what I meant.  Carin, I’m sorry if I in any way made you feel like the recession is over for everyone and that people are not still being affected by what happened in our economy.

Did our country just go through the largest recession since the 1930′s?  We did, some would argue that, but that is not my point with this post.  My point is asking the question, did it have to be this way?  My answer is no, but with the combination of the national news networks and social media proliferation a situation that could have been turned around was blown way out of proportion and people started reacting out of fear which is never a good thing.

Let me make a confession, I haven’t watched CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or any other national news station since January.  Before the election last year I did watch the news because I wanted to stay informed about the candidates and have as much knowledge about who was running so that I could do my civic (and biblical I might add) duty and in the most informed way that I could possible.  In my mind there really wasn’t a good candidate, both of the major party candidates had some things right, but also had some pretty major things wrong, but I voted the best way I could.  Anyway, back on track.  After the election, I shut off the news because I was sick of hearing about the economy.  I turned the TV on for about half an hour while I was working one day in January and shut it off after about 30 minutes because I still didn’t want to be hearing about the economy, the national news networks were feeding the fear.

Let’s look at the national news networks for a second, what are they in business for?  Take a second to think about it…

They are a business, which means they are in business to make money, regardless of what your product is (in their case it is reporting the news) a person goes into business to make money.  They sit around tables planning how they are going to make money and what will make them money.  If this wasn’t the case, then the news networks would be non-profit organizations.  How does a news network keep people watching their news network?  They make people afraid.  That’s it.

My mother in law gets my wife a Reader’s Digest subscription every year for Christmas and the issue covers just make me laugh.  If you are a RD subscriber, participate in an exercise with me…grab your stack of RD magazines…now ask yourself the question, what sells magazines?  Look at your RD covers…

8/1/2009 – Brad Paisley “I’d like to beat up the guy who says…”, The best way to avoid scams… (playing on fear)
7/1/2009 – 50 Secrets your Dentist Won’t Tell You (playing on fear)
5/1/2009 – not too bad, but there is the cancer risk you can switch off…(playing on fear)
4/1/2009 – the shocking truth about cancer tests (playing on fear)
2/1/2009 – keep more of your cash! 29 tips to put YOU back in control (playing on fear)
1/1/2009 – Beat the Cheaters! 9 new scams to avoid. (playing on fear)
12/1/2008 – another not too bad one…maybe they took a break from the fear for the holidays.
11/1/2008 – election issue, health care related…another fearful subject for a lot of people (playing on fear)
10/1/2008 – 13 things your pharmacist won’t tell you (playing on fear)
9/1/2008 – Election ’08 Who’s best for our future, on the bottom 13 things your computer guy won’t tell you…(playing on fear)
8/1/2008 – TEEN DRIVERS AT RISK, Smart Fixes That Save Lives (playing on fear)
7/1/2008 – 41 (WOW) Things Doctors Never Tell You (playing on fear)

Hmm…fluffy the happy dog didn’t make any of the covers…

The point is, news networks make their money by scaring people…that’s what keeps people watching…I remember back in October, Ali Velshi on CNN was backpedaling because people were starting to freak out about the economy.  He was telling people to stop freaking out, the problem is he was talking out of both sides of his mouth.  On one hand he was talking about the financial collapse, preaching doom and gloom…by the time he told people to stop freaking out, it was too late, the snowball was already rolling.

My theory is that if people would have shot their TVs and littering (I mean twittering) their fear, things wouldn’t have gotten nearly as bad as they did.  Dave Ramsey said on his Fox Business show (I don’t know where he got his numbers) that only 4% of the US was affected by the housing “collapse” and it was primarily in areas that were already too inflated to begin with.  He went on to say that 68% of the US population thought they were on the verge of losing everything.  A 64% gap between reality and perception…where in the world did this gap come from…any guesses?  You got it, the national news networks (and everyone facebook and twittering their fear to all the people around them).  So now we have 64% of the American population making decisions based on fear, which is never a good thing…Other companies just used the recession as an excuse to trim things they should have trimmed a long time ago.  But the end result was panic in the American population because a majority of the population was thinking they were going to lose everything and twittering and facebooking it to everyone they knew causing even more panic.

So now we are dealing with recovering from a recession where too many people lost their jobs because of fear.  America will do it, we always do.  I just hope we learned our lesson.  We’ll see.

My answer to the question what would it have been like on 9/11/2001 (and following) without belittling how bad it was is that it would have been hell on Earth.  The fear would have been overpowering.  To use a social marketing term, like it did during this recession, fear would have gone viral, but the degree to which it would have gone viral is horrifying…you thought this recession was bad…

To read my thoughts from a business perspective and lessons learned, head on over to my business blog…