Each of my kids is special to me in their own way. I love them all, but each of them has a special place in my heart for different reasons. Michael is my first born, I’ll never forget the moment the delivery nurse said “dad” trying to get me to take him into my arms. At first I didn’t know who she was talking to. My dad wasn’t in the room. Then I realized that she was talking to ME. I was ‘dad’, and it was an amazing moment. Katelyn was a choice, she was part of the package that came with marrying Loralea. As her dad, it’s special to me, even 12 years later, that I got to make the choice to have her in my life. Jake is the first of the children that are mine with Loralea. Sharing the moment of his birth was fantastic. Emily will always be the baby, and reminds me so much of Loralea that it’s just scary sometimes. In fact, I tried to get Loralea to name her ‘Loralea’ when she was born, but no. As it turns out it would have been a perfect fit: They look alike and have the same mannerisms and personality.

All my kids are special, but Lexi is special in a way nothing short of a miracle. Just a few weeks into the pregnancy Loralea began spotting and we were pretty sure that we had lost the baby. That’s a moment in my life that I can’t put into words. I was hopeless, and yet not. I didn’t WANT to be hopeless, I didn’t WANT to give up, but I didn’t want to hold on to hope, only to be hurt more. Something in me just didn’t want to let go. We cried, we prayed, we talked. It was very difficult, and very painful. After a while, we called the doctor for guidance. I will never forget that moment in my life when he said “I’m afraid you’ve lost the baby”. It was a moment that all my hopes seemed to be gone, but in an instant, just as clearly as I had heard the doctor’s voice, God spoke to me and said “I’m afraid the doctor is wrong.”

Wow. At that moment something inside me changed. It is impossible to describe. For years I’d known the scripture that says “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It’s Hebrews 11:1, I’d heard it all my life, but at that moment I REALLY understood what that meant. In fact at that moment it went way beyond my understanding, and became a reality to me. In that moment my hope had substance, and my heart had proof. On the outside, nothing had changed. Loralea was still spotting, the doctor’s opinion was the same, he was still giving me instructions. But something HAD changed in me. It was a reality to me.

There’s something spectacular that happens at the moment that your will becomes the same as God’s, when your ‘understanding’ no longer gets in your way, when faith rises up within you and becomes the new reality. In that very moment, miracles happen.

Their life is over, they can’t change a thing about the way they lived their life. They can’t go back and say the things that they wish they had said. They can’t do the things they wanted to do. They can’t patch up that relationship. They have nothing left but regret. They can’t rest in peace.

I don’t think you’ll find a Zombie wishing they had spent more time on the Xbox, or more time watching So You Think You Can Dance (which I happen to love, especially when they do a good Zombie dance number). Somehow, I don’t think you’ll hear a Zombie saying “I wish I had spent more time on Facebook” or “One more tweet would have made my life complete”. I don’t think so.

Maybe they are trying to tell us something. Maybe they are trying to keep us from living a life of regret, wasting our time doing thing that don’t matter.

At the end of my life, I want to look back (or have people look back) at my life, and see accomplishment. I want to have made a REAL difference in people’s lives. I want my wife to know that I loved her with all my heart. I want my kids to be living by the example that I set. I want all of my family to talk about the investments I made in them. I want to die with no regrets.

What about you? What do you want to be remembered for? How do you want to finish?

1. I thought I knew what I was doing. I had seen people swim, how hard could it be? If those other kids could do it, surely I could. All I had to do is get out there and try harder, I didn’t need lessons. I could learn by simply trying harder by myself.

 

2. I was impatient. I wanted to SWIM, not float. I wanted to be out there in the deep end with my friends, not in the shallow water learning to float on my back. Besides how was I supposed to relax and just float, which brings me to my next point.

 

3. I did not trust. How was this girl, just a few years older than me, going to hold me up and keep me from drowning while I learned to swim? No way, not gonna happen, I can’t relax and drown.

 

4. I did not have a qualified teacher. That girl from the neighborhood was well intentioned, but not an instructor. I needed someone with the skills to teach ME, this difficult, impatient, eager kid. She was a good swimmer, and if watching her swim had been the way to learn, I would have been swimming in a week.

 

So, I had all these things stacked against me. Failure was inevitable. It was a bad experience, and I didn’t want to try to learn the next summer, or the summer after that, even from a qualified instructor. It was several years later, in Boy Scouts, that I finally decided to get some real lessons. By then I could swim enough to jump off the diving board and not drown, but that’s it. I couldn’t swim very far, or very well for that matter. I could ‘not drown’. That was the extent of my skill.

Finally, I was a little more mature, and thanks to the Boy Scout programs, I got some better swimming training, and was able to even get a swimming merit badge, and eventually was even able to teach others to swim.

Recently, a discussion with friends started me thing about swimming lessons, and how it it a lot like many people’s desire for ministry. We want to minister to people so badly, we are so eager that we jump in over our heads, and all we can do is work really hard, barely keeping our heads above the water, possibly even drowning. Some thoughts on that matter:

1. We think we know what we’re doing. How hard can it be, other people are doing it. Why would we need ‘training’ to do something that looks so easy.

 

2. We are impatient. We don’t wait on God’s timing. Sometimes, we need some time in the ‘kiddie pool’ to learn the basics of ministry, before we go out into the deep.

 

3. We do not trust. I remember trying to teach my son Michael, how to swim. He had gotten water in his mouth and was choking. I tried to reassure him that I wasn’t going to let anything happen to him. The look in his eyes said that he didn’t believe that. I believe that sometimes we get that way with God. We don’t fully trust Him, so we try to go do things on our own instead of waiting for Him to put His plan into motion in our lives.

 

4. We do not have qualified teachers. If you’re not connected to a local church, and a church that focuses on equipping, then you’re not goig to become equipped to do the work of the ministry. Ephesians 4:11-12 says that Jesus gave “some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry”. If you’re not doing more than sitting in a church service once or twice a week, you’re not becoming equipped. Simply watching someone do something, no matter how good they are, isn’t going to prepare you.

 

Much like my bad experience with learning to swim, I also had bad experiences in ministry. I got in too deep, too fast, and I had to quit because I was drowning. I wasn’t where God wanted me, and it was a constant struggle. Sure, I tried hard, and for brief moments I was doing things right, but my lack of training, and my lack of patience got me to a place where I couldn’t stay above the water. It was a painful experience, and one that I didn’t want to repeat. So I didn’t even try. I gave up. It was years before I really even wanted to try.

One last thought. That girl that tried to teach me to swim probably nearly drowned once or twice herself trying to keep me from dragging her to the bottom of the pool, because I convinced her I was ready for the deep end. I still wonder how many people there are in the ministry that I almost drowned, who were simply trying to teach me…