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Skate or Die

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I am 41, and I still dress like I am 14. My closet is full of skateboarding t-shirts, and most often you’ll find Vans on my feet.

I actually do own some nice clothes and spend 40 hours a week looking like I live in a Dockers commercial. But I always return to what is comfortable for me.

I haven’t even stood on a skateboard for at least a few years. And the last time I checked, my skateboarding abilities had greatly diminished over the last 25 years. There was a time, though, when I was skilled.

I first started skating around 11 years old, and over the five years that followed, I invested countless hours honing my abilities. By the time I was 16, I was proficient with a skateboard.

Over the next couple of years, this hobby would fizzle from my life. But skateboarding, as part of my identity, stuck. In the 25 years since then, I have had many other hobbies and interests, but my first love for seven-ply decks and polyurethane wheels still lingers.

A few formative years in my youth forged a portion of my identity that has transcended nearly three decades. The formation of a life-long label happens to many of us.

For some, we learned we were good at something as an adolescent, and we obsessively honed that area of our lives. And though we no longer play football, gig in a band or dance competitively, those are still key pieces of our identity.

Others had negative labels applied to our lives early on that still haunt us. Even though I was good at skateboarding, I was mostly terrible at traditional sports. Standing 6-foot-3, many folks assume I possess some basketball abilities. They assume wrong.

My ineptitude at sports still affects me to this day. When someone asks if I want to play basketball, I flash back to seventh grade and feel like that lanky awkward kid who was bound to embarrass himself.

I know I am not alone. We all have tags that have been placed on us. Whether we were clumsy, weird or we just made some poor decisions along the way, we have all likely had negative labels applied to our lives.

Even worse, we have probably applied some of those labels to ourselves. We tag ourselves as not good enough, not smart enough or not attractive enough – when in fact we are enough.

We do the same in our relationships. When our marriage hits rocky patches or we don’t measure up to the social media feeds of our friends, we tag our relationship as damaged.

When our dreams of a fairy tale marriage dissolve into the reality of broken vows and violated trust, we label our relationship as irreconcilable.

When we identify our spouses as lazy, uncaring or self-centered, the more we view them through that lens. Then it becomes easier to see all of their habits that support this view and harder to see the positive traits they possess.

My suggestion (learned the hard way) – lose the labels. Don’t tag your relationship with a label that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you view your relationship as beyond repair, it won’t be repaired. If you see your spouse as unworthy, you won’t recognize their worth. If you see yourself as not enough, you’ll never be enough.

 

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Marriage Is A Beautiful Mistake

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I love JRR Tolkien. I know that is a bold declaration.

Making an obvious statement like that is like declaring that ‘I hate genocide’ or ‘I am pro-vacation.’ It is a forgone conclusion. I mean, who doesn’t love Tolkien’s adventure stories?

Beyond Tolkien’s brilliant prose that’s led many a reader on epic journeys of the mind, he was also a prolific proponent of marriage. Married for over 55 years to his teenage sweetheart, Tolkien held a very healthy, pragmatic view of marriage, which he passed on to future generations.

In a letter to his son Michael, Tolkien mused:

“Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to.”

As brilliant as Tolkien was, I don’t think Hallmark was beating down his door to write Happy Anniversary cards. The thought that most of us could have married mates that better suit us, but we’re stuck with what we have doesn’t exactly warm the heart.

The notion of a soul-mate, of a single person who is destined to come riding across a rainbow on a unicorn to complete us, is rubbish. But I love how Tolkien concludes the thought – your soul-mate is the one you’re married to.

My wife and I could not be more different. I am fairly certain that Match.com would never have paired us up. We are a classic odd couple who are polar opposites in many areas of our lives.

While this has created conflict over the years, it is also a strength. We nudge (sometimes more than a nudge) each other out of our comfort zones. Many couples, though, let their differences break them instead of strengthen them.

Tolkien went on to say, “When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find.”

This notion that there is somebody better out there who will really get us and who will better meet our needs is what drives many to divorce. When our spouse becomes deficient at recognizing our needs, or worse – we think they are intentionally neglecting needs, the appeal of others can grow in our minds.

The idea that we deserve more is a seed the enemy plants in our mind. And far too often, we water that seed and nurture it after an argument, when our spouse fails to pick up their socks again or has stayed too late at work once more. We give life to this noxious weed until it chokes out our marriage and blossoms into infidelity, divorce or lifelong disappointment.

The seed we should nurture is the idea Tolkien shared – we are married to our soul-mate. We should focus on what is awesome about them.

What drew us to them in the first place? What are their most compelling traits? What do they do that makes us smile? What do they do that makes us proud? How have their differences challenged us to grow?

When you find the answers to these questions, dwell on them. Share them with your spouse. And when your spouse disappoints, return to these thoughts.

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Be the Change

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One of the most tattoo-worthy quotes to ever emblazon a meme is, “Be the change.” Shortened from “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” the origin of this quote is apparently misattributed to Gandhi.

If you want to waste 20 minutes of your life as I did, you can read the raging debates among internet scholars to arrive at the same conclusion I did – who cares? The origin of this quote does not matter. It could have come from Dr. Phil, Forrest Gump or Miley Cyrus for all I care.

What matters is that it is a beautifully simple, profound suggestion. If you want to see change in the world around you, become an agent of that change. Duh!

It is so simple, yet putting this idea into practice seems too difficult for most of us to bother. After all, what can one person do to affect change? Can we really change the world?

The answer to that question is an unequivocal YES. We can absolutely change the world. Now we may not alter the course of human events or earn a page in history books, but we have the power to change the world of those around us.

We all have spheres of influence in which we can create change. I think of this sphere like a body of water.

Some of us live in small ponds where the shores of our influence might not be wide-spread. While some of our social circles are more like large lakes. Every action we take has some impact on that body of water, like tossing a stone into its depths.

Our more mundane actions cast pebbles into the water leaving little ripples that dissipate quickly. But some of the choices we make or the words we let fly are like boulders crashing through the water’s surface. The waves are large and far-reaching. If you are married, your spouse is probably most affected by your waves.

Within that relationship often lies the greatest opportunity to change the world. Over the last couple of years, I have had several men share with me that their marriages were hurting and heading towards divorce. Without fail, those conversations inevitably turned to complaints about what their wives do or don’t do to contribute to their marital strife.

My advice, without fail, is “you need to focus on you.”

If we want our relationships to change, we have to change. I can almost guarantee that those wives who weren’t living up to their husbands’ expectations could share similar lists about their husbands’ shortcomings.

Put another way, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” That line is a little too long for a tattoo, but the sentiment is similar.

We have the power to change our world for the better. But if we don’t change, we can’t expect our relationships to change.

You want to change the world? Do it.

Start today by being unexpectedly kind and gracious to your spouse regardless of how they act towards you.

Stop complaining. Drop an annoying habit. Pick up a healthy discipline. Pray for your spouse daily. Hug more. Go on more dates. Talk more. Be the change.

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The Customer Is Always Right

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customer b&w

For the 2012 model-year, Honda pulled the wraps off an all-new Civic, and consumers politely asked them to put the wraps back on. Automotive journalists were much less polite, using words like bland, cheap-feeling, unadventurous and lackluster to describe the car.

The most-oft critiqued aspects of the model were the exterior styling, cheap interior, harsh ride and excessive road noise. Honda took notice. But they didn’t just take notice, they took action.

Major changes in automotive design usually move at glacial speeds, taking around three years from conception to implementation. However in an unprecedented 18 months, Honda released a refreshed Civic that addressed the major quips from naysayers.

One of Honda’s most meaningful measures for success is what they call “Lifetime Owner Loyalty.” In other words, are their customers coming back to buy their products? To achieve this loyalty, they continuously gauge their customer’s satisfaction with their products and with their service experiences. And they take the customer’s opinion of their product seriously.

What would it look like if we all did the same thing in our marriages? What if we treated our spouses as if they were our customers, and we actively sought to understand and exceed their expectations?

Marriage will be the most important contractual agreement that most of us will ever enter into. Yet we will spend more time researching and buying our next car than we will dedicate to reading up on how to be a better spouse.

Many of us act like salesmen when we are dating. We polish ourselves up, put on our best behavior and shamelessly promote our selling points. Then we close the deal and eventually stop caring about whether or not the customer is pleased with the product.

There’s no lemon law in marriage. You can’t take back a dud spouse once the deal is penned. But divorce has become a viable option for many as the luster of a new marriage fades. I would venture to say that most marriages that end in divorce do so largely because of dissatisfaction caused by unmet needs. My marriage almost ended for that very reason.

It took me more than a decade to ask my wife, “What are your top ten needs?” I made assumptions about her needs and how she received love based on my needs and how I receive love. I used to always wash our dishes, thinking I was showing love through my act of service. But Jody wasn’t receiving love. She needs to hear that I love her and that I find her beautiful – needs that I was woefully inept at filling.

If I were to run a business this way, dishing out a product based on assumptions and failing to keep my finger on the pulse of the customer, the business likely would have collapsed in much less than a decade. And yet, I pushed through a decade of marriage without once truly seeking the input of my sole customer.

If you are in tune with your spouse’s needs, good for you. I am too…finally. But if you have never asked your spouse to identify his/her top needs, do it today. Have them write the needs on paper, and you do the same with your own needs. Then carve out an hour when you won’t be distracted by kids, work or electronic diversions, and talk through your list, sharing what each need means and specifically how it can be met. I promise, your spouse will be glad you asked.

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Don’t Be An Ass

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I am a stubborn man. Truth be told, I sometimes walk a really thin line between stubborn and stupid.

A few years back, that line became really blurry when I injured myself during a canoeing trip.

I wore flip flops on that fateful day, which any experienced canoer will tell you is not smart. A dry summer had left the water so low that I frequently found myself outside the canoe pushing or pulling the vessel through low points in the river.

With my flip flops continually slipping off my feet, I tossed them in the boat and went barefoot.

You can probably guess what happened next. A couple miles into the trip, I gashed the bottom of my foot on a broken bottle.

This was no surface wound, and most of my friends cringed at the seriousness of the cut. Everyone advised that a hospital visit should be in my very near future, but I had a different idea.

You see, I have a stubborn (some may say stupid) aversion to seeking help from medical professionals. And frankly, I didn’t want to endure the pain or cost (in money or time) of getting stitches.

Although basic sense told everyone else who looked at my wound that I needed stitches, I was sure it was nothing a Band-Aid and some Neosporin couldn’t handle. After a week of cleaning and bandaging, my foot still hurt a lot and wasn’t healing well.

But I was already learning to live with it. I changed my walk to avoid putting pressure on that area and began to accept that I might always have some pain when I walked.

One night while cleaning my wound, I decided to look deeper into the cut to see how the healing was going on the inside. That’s when I discovered that there was still a piece of glass in my foot that I’d been walking on for well over a week.

Goodbye stubborn, hello stupid!

Now I can look back at this incident and laugh at what a fool I was, but it was far less funny when I realized I had been doing the same thing in my marriage. Over a decade, my marriage slowly drifted from the honeymoon phase to complacency to contempt on our worse days.

We were suffering from a wound that we tried to ignore and slap Band-Aids on, but there was something below the surface we were failing to address.

In my mind, I explained the complacency away and learned to live with the pain as we gradually adjusted to this existence. Our marriage was never terrible, but it was far from great.

My wife (Jody) and I both eventually settled for a state of quiet desperation. Tragically, more marriages exist in this state than you might imagine.

As Jody and I have been sharing our story with others and attempting to use our nearly-failed marriage to bring healing, it has become apparent that this quiet desperation is an epidemic.

When the shininess of marriage grows dull and the veil of illusion is lifted from our spouse, many of us find ourselves living in mediocre, unfulfilling marriages…and we just accept it.

At this point, there are three basic paths one can take: get divorced, accept mediocrity or start fighting for a great marriage.

Divorce seems like an easy out when the going gets tough.  While many of us just keep plodding along, choosing to live with the pain instead of seeking to identify and eliminate the source.

When discontent eventually led me and Jody to the brink of divorce, we decided to start putting in the hard work to make our marriage better.

This road is not easy. It calls for a great deal of humility to really assess one’s flaws as a spouse and as a person. The honesty required to chip away at years of half-truths and niceties can be extremely painful. And maintaining open, meaningful dialogue on a regular basis is downright hard work…especially for men.

We sought professional counseling, read numerous books on marriage, dedicated one night a week to talking and basically absorbed any information we could find on how to become better spouses.

The thought of all this work and the potential pain that comes from looking into our wounds is enough to keep many couples living on the surface, trapped in mediocrity. I know it kept me stuck for more years than I care to admit.

My encouragement for anyone who finds themselves in this kind of existence is to choose the narrow path. Begin to do the hard work to transform your relationship into the marriage that God intended for you to have.

Don’t let fear or comfort keep you stuck in mediocrity. Don’t ignore that feeling that your marriage isn’t what it should be. And don’t let stubbornness keep you from seeking help.

But don’t be stubborn and stupid like horses and mules who, if not reined by leather and metal, will run wild, ignoring their masters. – Psalm 32:9 (VOICE)

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I Have Weeds

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weedsI have weeds. My yard is full of them. Since we built our house, I’ve enlisted the help of lawn care professionals to help me get my sod established and keep it weed free. This year, however, my cheapness and my pride conspired to convince me that I didn’t need no stinking lawn care guy!

“I got this,” I reassured myself as I spread chemicals across my lawn in early spring. Now, late summer finds me on my hands and knees plucking dandelions, crabgrass, clover and a half-dozen other weeds that I don’t even recognize. I don’t got this! Dejected and head hung low, I recently mumbled to my wife that I would be contacting a new lawn care company next year.

For me, there’s some connection between my lawn and my pride. One of my husbandly duties is to take care of the lawn. And this is one of those duties that, when done poorly, is on display for all to see.

I find that I worry too much about appearances, and I am not just talking about my lawn. There is a human tendency to want others to think we have it all together. But if we’re not careful, we can spend more time building a façade of well-being than we actually spend working on our well-being.

If you’re not convinced, just look at social media. How many hours are spent posting photos, typing clever comments, checking in at restaurants, liking, sharing and taking surveys? So much time is wasted carefully crafting our images.

We don’t post pictures of us arguing with our spouses or losing our tempers with our kids. Most of us don’t let the world know when we’ve been selfish or when we struggle with addictions. It’s understandable that we don’t broadcast our flaws to the world, but I think it’s important that we share them with someone.

I am guilty of keeping others at arm’s length…not letting people get close enough to see the weeds that have taken root in my life. But I keep hearing this idea that we should “let our mess become our message,” and I am trying to put that idea into action.

I’ve shared with many how my marriage nearly ended in divorce as well as my shortcomings as a husband and father, with the hope that others will identify with my struggles and see how I turned some of those things around.

Everyone is broken. We all have weeds. For some the weeds are in the front yard where everyone can see. Others hide them in the back or keep them neatly manicured so they almost look like grass.

I’m calling a new lawn care guy next year because I’ve realized I don’t know the proper techniques to eradicate the weeds from my lawn. I need someone who’s been there and done that to help me.

In what area of your life do you need someone who’s been there and done that? What struggles have you overcome that you can share with someone who may be struggling in that same area? Don’t let pride keep you from sharing your mess with others.

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Marriage-Changing Event

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b&w holding hands2One of the habits of highly effective people is “sharpening the saw” – investing time and effort in self-renewal. There are many facets of my life that need sharpening, but one area where I have been keenly focused is becoming a better husband.

This weekend I had a pretty vigorous sharpening session as my wife and I attended a day-long “Marriage-Changing Event.” With our kids safely stowed at my parents’ house, we trekked to Chicago and spent our Saturday listening to renowned relationship experts talk about the keys to successful marriage.

I was struck by the sense of urgency among all of the speakers as they discussed the many negative impacts that broken marriages have on couples, their children and our society as a whole. One speaker shared the idea that, “Every divorce is the death of a small civilization.”

This notion that the loss of many small civilizations is contributing to the decline of our large civilization is one of the reasons I write this column. The destructive ripple of divorce leaves irreparable, irrefutable damage in its wake. The statistics on the social ills that result from divorce are too numerous to list here, but they are shocking.

My own marriage nearly became a statistic several years back as the “D-word” was discussed. But through the grace of God, we fought for our marriage and became part of a more encouraging statistic that was shared at the event. A study showed that 80% of couples who nearly divorced but ended up staying together were “very happy” in their marriage.

One of the key concepts I heard repeated through the event was the need for humility. How many fights could be avoided, pain prevented or divorces diverted if we weren’t so strong willed and selfish? One speaker shared that, “The richness of your marriage is in direct proportion to the sacrificial investments you make.”

Our society teaches that comfort and happiness are paramount, so the thought of putting others needs above our own seems foreign. As soon as the going gets tough, the covenant vows of marriage often go out the window. We seek happiness in things, experiences and in other people but like a carrot on a stick happiness eludes us.

I will be the first to tell you that my wife and I don’t have it all figured out. We even experienced some snippiness with each other during our marriage retreat weekend. But we’re both working on cultivating humble hearts that allow us to apologize and quickly forgive one another.

We have come to understand, through many trials, that the joy in our marriage isn’t based on fleeting emotions. Rather, we are learning to submit our wills to serve one another and follow Biblical guidelines for marriage. And because of it, we have achieved levels of intimacy, honesty and hope that eluded us for a decade.

It is so easy to wear down in marriage, to let the drudgery of daily living dull us. It happens to us all. We simply lose focus on what matters most. That’s why I attend events like this, read books on marriage, talk to other married men and practice self-discipline…to stay sharp and to be the man I am called to be.