Genius Lyrics

Use every crayon color that you've got
A fishing pole sinks faster than a tackle box
Nothing turns a day around like licking a mixing bowl
I learned that from a three year old

A garbage can is a damn good spot to hide truck keys
Why go inside when you can go behind a tree?
Walking barefoot through the mud will knock the rust right off your soul
I learned that from a three year old

You can be a cowboy on the moon
Dig to China with a spoon
Talk to Jesus on the phone
Say "I love you" all day long
And when you're wrong, you should just say so
I learned that from a three year old

"Mama is an angel," I heard him tell the man upstairs
He went on and on and back and forth like God was laying there
Tonight, I sleep me down to lay and pray to keep my soul
Yeah, I learned that from a three year old

You can be a cowboy on the moon
Dig to China with a spoon
Talk to Jesus on the phone
Say "I love you" all day long
And when you're wrong, you should just say so
I learned that from a three year old

Sometimes, all you need is a hand to hold
Couple arms to kill the cold
And when I'm wrong, I should just say so
I learned that from a three year old
Yeah, honey, I learned that from our three year old

Eric Church - "3 Year Old" 

t

Curtis Grimes "Smile That Smile" Lyric Video

A Little Fun Last Night

Life Is

 

 Like Sands Through The Hourglass...

TJ

Life Changes

You are not always on the ride you think you are on.

One day the whole world is right,

and in the blink of an eye everything can change.

Circa 1987 - My wife and our son.

We miss our boy every day.

Time does not heal.

It only provides an opportunity for the wound close.

Time never erases the what might have been.

What would we have done differently had we known

that in 4 short months,

life would change forever?

 

TJ

 

Government 101

 

TJ

Improve Your Communication Skills

1. Listen carefully when others are speaking. Keep your mouth shut – and focus totally on them.

2. Never, ever talk over other people. This is disrespectful – and a real turn off.

3. Even if the person leaves an hour between each word, resist the temptation to complete their sentence for them.

TJ

10 Traits That Lead To Success

1. Independence
2. Self-confidence
3. Persistence
4. Creative thinking
5. Being thick skinned
6. Knowing who you are and what you want from life
7. Setting clear goals – and going after them
8. Staying focused
9. Optimism
10. Passion and a zest for life.

TJ

10 Qualities that can make your personality attractive

 
Someone with an attractive personality:
1. Is warm and friendly towards others
2. Is open and real
3. Knows their own strengths and weaknesses - and neither boasts nor puts themselves down
4. Looks for the good in every situation, and is generally positive and optimistic
5. Doesn’t gossip or pass on others’ secrets
6. Doesn’t gloat when things go wrong for others
7. Is secure and has a healthy self–esteem; is not self-centered and narcissistic
8. Is not highly critical or argumentative
9. Is not possessive and jealous in relationships
10. Makes time for the people they care about
TJ

Click-Bait - Beware what you re-post

One bit of advice. I realize it is worth what you pay for it, but here it goes,

Beware as you re-post items on Facebook and Twitter. Just because the referenced article or site might have conservative, liberal, or progressive does not make it legitimate.

Most posts that appear to come from reputable sources just do not. 

They are more often than not trying to get you to do something and are nonsensical at best, and purposefully misleading at worst. (Click-Bait) 

Bottom line - research BEFORE posting.

Knee-jerking is for reflexive testing when performed by a qualified physician.

I'M OFF THE SOAPBOX NOW.

TJ

Leadership (vs Management) Part 1

Leading and managing are not necessarily synonyms. Some leaders can manage, but the converse is not as common. This is part 1 of a series on leading and managing.
This is a set of competencies identified by Boyatzis (1982). through critical incident research.

Efficiency orientation

Focusing on objectives, tasks and achievements. Setting challenging goals and supporting appropriate planning. Facilitating overcoming of obstacles. Encouraging people to act in this way.

Concern with impact

Demonstrating a significant interest in power and its symbols. Use of power-oriented behavior such as using various methods of influence, seeking positions of power, etc.

Proactivity

Showing a strong belief in individual self-control and self-driven action. Acting without waiting for full agreement or authorization. Taking responsibility for actions. Acting to dissuade defensive and risk-averse behavior. 

Self-confidence

Showing belief in self, values and ideas. Able to talk decisively and take confident and decisive action. Communicating this self-confidence to others and hence instilling confidence in them.

Oral presentation skill

Able to speak well, using effective language, modes of speech and body language. Uses effective symbolism and metaphor in words and actions. Appropriate use of visual aids.

Conceptualization

Uses inductive reasoning to identify patterns and relationships. Able to create models and symbols to communicate these concepts. Uses synthetic and creative thinking to develop further ideas and solutions.

Diagnostic use of concepts

Able to use deductive reasoning to convert models and ideas into specific instances and possibilities. Concepts are turned into practical and useful tools.

Use of socialized power

Developing networks and hierarchies of people and mobilizing them to to achieve specific ends. Acts as a person in the middle to resolve conflicts and bring people together. 

Managing group processes

Building the identity of groups and people in them. Building common goals and objectives. Developing group roles. Creating ways of working together and facilitating teamwork.


Historia est vitae magistra 
History is the tutor of life

TJ

Thinking About What Is Not There (Creativity 101)

 

 

Think about what you are thinking about, and then think about what you are not thinking about.

When you are looking at something (or otherwise sensing), notice what is not there.

Watch people and notice what they do not do.

Make lists of things to remember that you normally forget.

In other words, deliberately and carefully think about what is not there.

 

An artist draws the spaces between things.

A market manager for a furniture wonders about product areas where customers have made no comment. She watches them using tables and notes that they leave the tables out when not using them. She invents a table that can be easily be folded and stored.

The psychology of thought is such that we are very good at seeing what is there, but not at all good at seeing what is not there. Thinking about what is not there compensates for this by deliberately forcing us to do what we do not naturally do.

 Ab amicis honesta petamus
"One should only ask from a friend what he is capable of." 

TJ

Running the Church as a democratic republic

Many factors were involved in bringing the church down to a democratic republic‑type system. 

These include power abuses by unregenerate leaders, teaching that the power of God has passed away, corruption, greed, immorality, fear, lack of spiritual understanding, pride, and in the twentieth century, secular humanism.

Because of the lack of true and godly spiritual leadership in the church, God's people concluded that for their own protection and perpetuation they had better get together, and vote on what must be the will of God.

After drawing up creeds, articles of discipline, constitutions, by‑laws and statements of faith, they voted and told their leaders what to do and how to do it. ...the voice of the people was to be the voice of God.

So, instead of hearing from God, and following His leading, the leaders began listening to the people and obeying the followers.

The people began to think that the Pastor served at THEIR pleasure and whim rather than honoring him as a gift to them sent by God.

TJ

How to Live

Do not tell people how to live their lives.

Just tell them stories and they will figure out how those stories apply to them.

TJ

Normal Family?

“Normal” seems to be a moving target when discussing the family. Walsh claims that “normal” is not useable category when trying to describe the family and that family should be defined more in terms of markers present. 

I believe that cultural shifting probably plays some role in what most people consider a normal family. The basic Christian belief that all humans are created in the image of God, and therefore equally valuable before God, should be the mantra that equalizes the differences between. 

 However, societal/cultural shifting concerning the value and dignity of human life has contributed to the diminishing role of this Christian belief. Culture has shifted to more of a comparative view of people, and when we compare ourselves to each other we soon find that no family is “normal.”

The thought process behind comparing, whether we understand it or not, views people more in terms of worthiness, honor, success, and just about any other attribute we might inject into the comparison.

I’m off the soap-box now.

Assessing normality seems to be a very arduous task. Do we base our evaluation of a family on sociological, psychological, or biological factors? What I have learned is that to properly evaluate a family one must include all of the above to varying degrees. From a secular point of view, families need to be groups that provide for the basic needs of the members of the group such as food, money, shelter, psychological support, and problem solving. 

However, I might offer a few thoughts about what constitutes a “normal” family. I would suggest the idea that normal families can have some minor problems and even major problems although these should be few. “Normal” families can have communication problems, and they often will. The reason, I suggest, is that although God created everything and called it “Good.” Man (and woman) fell into sin, and therefore no matter how perfect a family may seem, there will never be a perfect family situation. We are not capable of normal. 

So, how do I define “normal?” “Normal” is the family that a midst all of life’s struggles, including social, psychological, and biological, strive to maintain God’s original design for the family (one man / one woman / and wherever that leads). It also includes Christ-like behavior toward those within the family group, and to those outside the family group.

Assuming you subscribe to the traditional model, with changing ideas about what a traditional family looks like how would you help a client understand the value of the traditional model? 

Do you think that many have just given up trying to maintain a traditional family? 

If so, why?

TJ

Biblical Anger

There are many verses that speak to anger found within the Bible. The Bible tells us that God became angry (Num. 32:10-15). The Bible also tells us that Jesus became angry (Mark 3:5). The Bible also tells us that we can become righteously angered (1 Sam. 20:34). However, unlike God who can only exhibit righteous anger, we often fall into a state of unrighteous, or fleshly anger (Gal. 5:19-20) which is not justifiable, and can most often be very destructive to us as well as the object of the anger.

Throughout the Old Testament we can read of how God can become angry. In chapter 32 of the book of numbers we see God’s anger focused on man’s disobedience. The prophet Nehemiah, in chapter 9, tells us that God is slow to anger. However, one of the great attributes of God is that His anger does not last forever. 

¹⁸ Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.
¹⁹ You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
²⁰ You will be faithful to Jacob,
and show love to Abraham,
as you pledged on oath to our ancestors
in days long ago. (Micah 7:18-20, NIV)

This passage can be summed up in this way:

The reasons why God pardons sin, and keeps not His anger forever, are all taken from within Himself; it is because He delights in mercy, and the salvation of sinners is what He has pleasure in, not their death and damnation. 

(Henry, 1961, p. 1157)

God’s whole purpose for humanity is to come into a relationship with Him. If He held on to His anger everytime we disobeyed His will, there would be no chance of salvation and reconcilliation. This passage, in context from Micah, is a great example of how we should also let go of anger in order to reconcile human relationships. 

People often focus on how God exhibits anger in the Old Testament, but it is amazing how many ignore, gloss over, have never read about, or minimize how God, in the person of Jesus, also exhibited righteous anger. There are many passages in the New Testament in which we read about how Jesus was disapointed and frustrated with the people around Him including His own disciples. At these times Jesus would explain things in greater detail, or leave and do nothing like he did in His own home town (Matt. 13:54-58). The writer of the Gospel of Mark gives us a picture that speaks volumes about when anger is appropriate.

¹AGAIN JESUS went into a synagogue, and a man was there who had one withered hand [as the result of accident or disease].

²And [the Pharisees] kept watching Jesus [closely] to see whether He would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might get a charge to bring against Him [formally].

³And He said to the man who had the withered hand, Get up [and stand here] in the midst.

⁴And He said to them, Is it lawful and right on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to take it? But they kept silence.

⁵And He glanced around at them with vexation and anger, grieved at the hardening of their hearts, and said to the man, Hold out your hand. He held it out, and his hand was [completely] restored. (Mark 3:1-5, AMP)

The example of anger presented here is what real righteous anger should look like. Jesus was angry at sin, but not sinners.

The sin of sinners is very displeasing to Jesus Christ; and the way to be angry, and not to sin, is to be angry, as Christ was, at nothing but sin. (Henry, 1961, p.1369)

The New Testament often illustrates the compassion Jesus has for people, but it also shows how much He hated sin. In our lives we need to be very careful about what we become angry about. We are all created in the image of God, and therefore we need to be mindful to focus on sin and not the sinner. We should have enough compassion to confront people, even in an angry manner if necessary, and help them get past the sin that is keeping them from having a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul writes a great deal about the flesh. The “flesh” as Paul describes it, is acting in ways that please us, or doing what we want contrary to what God would have us to do and how He would have us to act. Basically, it is acting in ways antithetical to Christianity. Paul writes to the church at Galatia concerning things that can keep us out of heaven. It is very interesting, in light of the passages listed in this paper, that anger is included in the list of abhorrent behavior.

¹⁹Now the doings (practices) of the flesh are clear (obvious): they are immorality, impurity, indecency,

²⁰Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger (ill temper), selfishness, divisions (dissensions), party spirit (factions, sects with peculiar opinions, heresies),

²¹Envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you beforehand, just as I did previously, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21, AMP)

The last line is often hard for Christians to understand, or if they do, often hard to accept. These are the sins which will undoubtedly shut men out of heaven (Henry, 1961, p.1845). I like to use the Amplified version to help shed light on this passage. The word used for anger (θυμοί) is translated here to mean ill tempered. Being ill tempered is a reference to a constant state of mind. It means that I am not going to be a very fun person to be around. Being ill tempered is a real anti-God state of mind because the Bible teaches that those who are in Christ have joy in the Lord in spite of circumstances. 

Therefore, the last line in verse 21 is very applicable. If we have an anti-God state of mind, heaven is the last place we would want to be, at least until the final judgment.

What should our attitude be regarding anger? 

We should be slow to become angry (Prov. 14:17). 

Be careful not to sin while angry (Eph. 4:26).  

We should remove unrighteous anger from our lives.

³⁰Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. ³²Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:30-32, NASB)

We must not do that which is contrary to His holy nature and His will (Henry, 1961, p. 1855). Here the word anger could also be translated as resentment or animosity. For us, as believers, to harbor resentment, or remain angry about something, will actually cause God to grieve. To cause God grief, in this context, means to offend Him. Again, when we offend God we cannot be in a right relationship with Him. If we are not in a right relationship with God, it will cause us to be hindered in all of our relationships. The Bible has laid out a plan, which if followed, will always result in a better life.

The book of Proverbs is really a complete guidebook on how we should live, and chapter 19 is a very concise look at life. It specifically addresses many facets of how to live, and how not to live. This chapter also contains a warning about anger.

¹⁹A man of great anger will bear the penalty,
For if you rescue him, you will only have to do it again.

(Proverbs 19:19, NASB)

Proverbs tells us that the penalty is great for unrighteous anger. The sad part of the story is that the one who is angry of injures innocent bystanders. 

Angry men never want woe. Those that are of headstrong passions, commonly bring themselves and their families into trouble by vexatious suits and quarrels. All which troubles to themselves and others would be prevented if they would get rule of their own spirits. (Henry, 1961, p. 768)

We have the ability and responsibility to control our anger. Anger is a very dangerous emotion with far reaching consequences. Controlling anger is what is required of a person claiming to be a Christ-Follower. 

With the exception of being angry at sin, anger is one of the most dangerous emotions we can exhibit. God can exhibit anger because He is perfect, and the creator of all, so there is no chance of unrighteous anger coming forth from Him. On the other hand, we are very imperfect created beings with a propensity to sin as a result of being fallen people. This means we have to always be on guard to keep ourselves from being a pawn of unrighteous anger, and experiencing the detrimental effects anger can have in our lives. 

Henry, M. (1961). Commentary on The Whole Bible. (L. F. Church, Ed.) Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Zondervan Publishing House.

"Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible ^®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission."

"Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified ^® Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission."

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

TJ

Unpacking the Boxes

You tell the world who you are
in a million different ways.
Some are subtle, some are not.

But it doesn't seem to matter:
this world has already got you pegged.

When you were born they put you in a little box,
and slapped a label on it.
So they could keep things organized,
and not have to think about what’s inside.

Over time you learn to make yourself comfortable
packaging your identity in different combinations
until you feel like you belong,
and can wear your labels proudly.

But there’s a part of you that never really found a home
rattling around in categories that couldn’t do you justice.

You look around at other people,
trying to judge how loosely they fit in their own lives
sensing a knot of confusion hidden beneath a name tag.

And you realize we’re still only strangers,
who assume we already know what the other is going to say,
as if the only thing left to talk about is
who belongs in what category
and which labels are offensive.

You have to wonder if these boxes are falling apart.
If we should be writing our identities by hand,
speaking only for ourselves, in our own words,
taking our chances out in the open
and meet each other as we are,
asking: “What is it like being you?”

—and be brave enough to admit
that we don’t already know the answer.

Maybe it’ll mean that we’ve finally arrived,
just “unpacking the boxes”
making ourselves at home.

And maybe we’ll look back and wonder
how we managed to live in the same house for so long,
and never stop to introduce ourselves.

TJ

Questioning Your First Assumptions

Your life is a story. The days flip past, too quickly to absorb, a mess of seemingly random events. So you look back and highlight certain moments as important, as turning points in the main plot. You trace each thread back to its origin, finding omens and ironies scattered along the way, until it all feels inevitable, and your life makes sense. You know how this story is going to end, but you’re still eager to skip ahead, dying to know what happens next.

But there are times when you look up and realize that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore. You thought you were following the arc of the story, but you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand. Either everything seems important or nothing does. It’s a tangled mess of moments that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre, that keeping changing depending on what you choose to highlight.

What kind of story is this? Just another coming-of-age tale, the same one your parents told, with the names switched around? Is your everyday life part of the origin story of something truly epic? Are you unwittingly getting by on other people’s charity, mistaking your own luck for your own success? Are you a character in a romance, a tragedy, a travelogue, or just another cautionary tale?

As you thumb through the years, you may never know where this all is going. The only thing you know is that there’s more to the story. That soon enough you’ll flip back to this day looking for clues of what was to come, rereading all the chapters you skimmed through to get to the good parts—only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

TJ

Ordinary Life

When you look back over your life, or try to put it down on paper, You can see more of it now than ever before. And yet it seems somehow diminished. Humble. Almost quaint. So you begin scanning your life, looking for something interesting or beautiful.

You see an ordinary house, with an ordinary yard, on an ordinary street. It looks smaller than you remember. You once had wild dreams and obstacles and risks looming all around you, but now they look smaller too. You remember giants and goddesses and villains, but all you see is ordinary people assembled in their tiny classrooms and work-spaces, each of us moving around in little steps, like tokens on a game board. No matter how many times you rolled the dice, it was always these little moves, here and there.

Do a little work, Take a little rest. Make a little friend, Throw a little party. Feel a little boredom, Have a little rebellion. There are so many of these token moments, that were supposed to represent some other thing. You keep adding them all up, as if there was something you forgot to count, some stash of glory that fell off the back of a truck. You may adore the life you have, for everything it is.

You know it isn't groundbreaking; you wouldn't change a thing. Maybe when you first started building the life you wanted, you left plenty of room for what might happen, and somehow lost track of what was happening. Or maybe you were never 'in it' to begin with.

Maybe you knew even then that this wasn't the world you expected. A world so low and common you tried to keep your distance, floating somewhere above it, where nobody else could look down on this life you built.

TJ

Seen from this point forward

You were born on a moving train.
And even though it feels like you're standing still,
time is sweeping past you, right where you sit.
But once in a while you look up,
and actually feel the inertia,
and watch as the present turns into a memory
—as if some future you is already looking back on it. 

 One day you’ll remember this moment,
and it’ll mean something very different.
Maybe you’ll cringe and laugh,
or brim with pride, aching to return.
or notice some detail hidden in the scene,
a future landmark making its first appearance
or discreetly taking its final bow.

So you try to sense it ahead of time, looking for clues,
as if you’re walking through the memory while it’s still happening,
feeling for all the world like a time traveler.

The world around you is secretly strange:
some details are charming and dated,
others precious and irretrievable,
but all fade into the quaint texture of the day.

You try to read the faces around you,
each fretting about the day’s concerns,
not yet realizing that this world is already out of their hands.
That it doesn’t have to be this way, it just sort of happened,
and everything will soon be completely different.

Because you really are a time traveler,
leaping into the future in little tentative steps.
Just a kid stuck in a strange land without a map,
With nothing to do but soak in the moment
and take one last look before moving on.

But another part of you is already an old man,
looking back on things.
Waiting at the door for his granddaughter,
who’s trying to make her way home for a visit.
You are two people still separated by an ocean of time,
Part of you bursting to talk about what you saw,
Part of you longing to tell you what it means.

TJ

Impact of Technology on the Family

 
One of the first things that come to mind when discussing technology and its affect on families would have to be the lack of personal interaction involved. Now some who read this are probably shouting “we are connected more than ever before,” and they would be correct. However, this connectedness seems to be mostly illusion. Follow the argument for a minute or two before writing it off. Most people under a certain age, that we will not determine here but are more than likely under the age of 40 years old, spend vast amounts of time texting. Texting has almost become the primary way many families communicate on a daily basis. The interaction problems that texting introduces begins with no eye contact. If a child is texting a parent it is often very easy for the child to omit important details (inherent in texting) that could very well influence an important parental decision. For example, if child A tells a parent, via text, that a teacher has wronged them in some way, how would the parent judge the veracity of the claim before stomping into the school to confront the teacher? Does the parent take everything the child tells them as the absolute truth? If they do, they are probably not living in reality. Can a parent discern if their child is being truthful by observing eye contact when having a face to face conversation about that same teacher? Most often the answer should be yes they can. What about Facebook? If my wife and I are having a disagreement about a family issue, and one of us vents our frustration in a Facebook post, will it have a positive or negative effect on the outcome of the disagreement? The answer should be obvious. With the introduction of the World Wide Web everyone seemed to jump on the ideas that the world would be soon be one big family. However, due to the individualistic nature of the new technological means of communication, people do not physically interact like they used to. Example two, picture a mother in the kitchen texting a child in the next room to remind them to do their homework. Sounds absurd, but this type of communication happens every day. I believe this contributes to the further disconnection between family members, and ultimately the breakdown of important family relations.

There are many aspects of technology that really introduce more questions than answers. If I were to say that I believe technology has negatively affected living in the moment, would you agree or disagree? Think about standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon (only for short time because you are on a tour), and you hold your phone and enter a Facebook message about where you are, but you do not fully engage yourself in the true beauty and magnificence of the moment. Did you really enjoy the experience? Did you learn anything while standing there? Was there a life-lesson you missed because technology had your attention? Who knows the answers? Hang on though, it is not all doom and gloom when we discuss technology. These are negative scenarios about the impact of technology, but technology can also serve as a way to convey images and thoughts to family members that are not close.

Living in the most mobile society the world has ever seen has presented us with challenges that many of prior generations did not face. Families are often spread out due to jobs, military service, school, marriage, and many other reasons. Technology has provided a way to send photographs virtually the very second a baby is born from parents to grandparents who may live thousands of miles away. So in this respect, technology can help families stay closer than they otherwise would.

Managing Stress

My family of origin, and handling stress probably should not be discussed within the same writing. Growing up, stress was often handled in strange ways. At least they seemed strange to me at the time. We always used the bottle-it-up, bottle-it-up, bottle-it-up, and then explode method for handling stress. It was just this plain and simple. There were no real complex dynamics at play. We just all kept our focus on the tasks at hand, and prayed nobody blew a fuse. The lasting affects have proven to be quite a source of consternation as time has gone by. Stress creeps in most often during transitions in life, structure changes within the family and on the job, and many times from trying too much to conform or trying too much to be unique as a person or family. I tend to bottle up stress and work it out through isolating myself, and then either doing physical work or just vegging’ out while watching mind numbing television programs. I know both are inferior ways to handle stress, and since embarking on the psychology journey I had endeavored to rectify the situation by handling stressors as they arise. 

 

TJ