Jim Pace

Definitely breaking one rule and likely another…

May 11, 2010 | 2 Comments

I have broken one major rule of blogging.

And I am about to break another.

The first rule of blogging is that if you want your blog readership to grow, then post consistently. Obviously you want to post high quality content, but you need to do that regularly. Over the past couple of weeks I have just been too busy to post much at all.

The second is that it is best to stay in your own lane. What that essentially means is you are most helpful to the blogospere if you select a couple of subjects that you care about and have some experience in, and stick with those. Unless your blog is intended to be about everything, then scaling it back to a few things can be good.

I say all this because I am about to step into a new blogging area. Don’t know if I will be regularly swimming in this particular pool or if this is just a brief dip. Either way, here goes…

I have been under a fair bit of pressure lately. Not exorbitant, but not light either. I am the husband of a wife that I dearly love and truly enjoy spending time with, and the father of three kids. Noah is thirteen, Seth is eleven and Emma will be ten this summer. Between math, sentence diagramming (thanks Jenna for guiding us through that one,) puberty, soccer, basketball, piano, girls saying mean things about you… It gets busy fast.

Then there is my ministry with [nlcf]. As we enter a different season as a church, several of the things that we will be doing are things that I will be heavily involved in. I love working with this church! I truly do, but one of the hardest things I do each week is figure out what I won’t do that week so that I can live a life of balance.

Then there is Should We Fire God?. I will be honest with you, doing what needs to be done and what I would like to do for the book could easily be a full time job all by itself.

I manage Seth’s soccer team, try to exercise, get enough sleep, have some growing friendships and have a meaningful and growing relationship with my Messiah.

It is a lot to do. Please hear this, I am not complaining and I am not saying any of his so that anyone reading this will feel sorry for me. Everything that makes my life intense during this season is borne out of a blessing I am enjoying. So… let’s be clear with that.

All this run up really just leads me to the reason I am blogging tonight instead of sleeping (or watching Glee.) The speed and pressure of life can sometimes make it easy to pass over moments where I have the opportunity to connect with someone. Tonight I almost missed one with Seth.

Tracy mentioned to me that he seemed more upset than usual and so I stopped what I was doing and went up and talked with him about it. After we dealt with the issue that had made him frustrated, he just kept going and I was privileged to be along for the ride. I got to hear his frustration with a kid in his class, his fears about talking to his coach regarding some things he doesn’t understand, the new type of clothes he likes (Aeropostale), how he is as long as the mattress when we extends his arms, how nervous he is about starting middle school next fall, and why he never gets in trouble doing his morning work.

We didn’t talk about much in great depth, but we talked about him. I loved it, probably that twenty or thirty minute conversation was a highpoint of my day. And I almost missed the chance – had he not been in such a bad mood and had Tracy not been paying attention I probably would have.
The scriptures tell us that children are a blessing from the Lord. Yes, they are a responsibility and yes that responsibility is very heavy at times. Tonight, I just sat in my sons’ room and enjoyed the blessing. I was blessed to hear about his emerging life and I was blessed to be reminded that I can be two feet away from someone and completely miss what is going on in their world.

Here’s to hoping it doesn’t take an abnormally bad mood for us all to have those moments in the future, eh?

Peace,
Jim

Categories: General, life, Mission, NLCF, Should We Fire God?