Timing is everything. Except in Real Estate.

I have come to realize that life is a lot about having the right timing.

When I first met Sandy I had creepy long hair and had naired a cross in my chest hair after losing in a ruthless game of cut the deck (thank you very little STEVE). Needless to say, she was not impressed. A few years later when our paths crossed again, her standards were apparently significantly lower and the rest is history.

When we try to do something and the timing isn't right, it rarely works. Often, it makes it difficult to ever get it done. When we moved to Assumption, Sandy was pregnant with Jack. A lot of projects got started and finished and (no matter what Sandy tells you) most of it was done by yours truly.

One such project was painting our living room. We painted three rooms a color that I will call light brown and the fourth wall was supposed to be a color I call dark brown. After all the moving of furniture, taping of edges, painting of walls, cleaning of messes, and returning of furniture, we were burnt out on painting for quite a while. As a result, we had three light brown walls and one white wall with a small dark brown "test" patch for over two years. It was a bad time to try to paint that room. Afterwords, we knew the amount of work that it would take - especially with a big bookshelf, large living room furniture, and an awkward, messy computer desk on that wall - to get it painted. For the room to finally get painted, it took me taking the initiative to paint it while Sandy was out of state for a wedding as a surprise for her return.

At times, when we try to accomplish something at the wrong time and in an inappropriate setting, it means we simply fail to actually complete it. As I type this, my son is crawling over me and trying to hit buttons on the key board. Now he is pointing at the screen saying, "Stop sign is right there. Bird is right there. Stop sign and bird! Stop sign and bird!



I had to wait for him to find another distraction before moving on.

I also had to go back and fix a few things he messed up.

Allow me to talk about church for a moment. I think that we often try to accomplish important, meaningful things without much regard for timing and experience less success than we hope for. Sunday morning services are about being together corporately. We sit together, we are led to sing together, pray together, learn together, and more. These things work, when done well, because the timing is right. We are in a large group (even 30 people is large in this sense) so the things we can do that are meaningful as a group are basically those things that are intended to be corporate. Those things where we are acting together as one unit.

On the other hand, you can't have conversation with 30 people at one time. Obviously, the larger the number, the more laughable the idea becomes. You would probably not share much in the way of personal emotions or struggles in that setting - not with all those people at one time. If you tried it would be more of an announcement than anything. Real relationships and community are built outside of that setting. Any semblance of relationship building at the standard morning service happens in the halls before and after.

Faith is about more than singing and listening. Its about living and doing. It is about tipping the scales from selfish to selfless. Whether or not we get that done as a Church, well that's all about timing.

Hungry Hungry Hypocrites

If you know me well, you are probably aware that I took part in something called Hungry Pastors for Hungry People for 90 days near the end of last year. During those 90 days, 8 ministers accepted the challenge to seek out pledges and lose weight to earn money which was then passed to Heifer International, an organization that supplies livestock and training to starving people in developing countries.

I finally am getting the last of the checks in now and I have to say I am impressed with these guys. Between the 8 of us, we earned over $6,000. Most of that ($5,000) will go towards buying an "Ark", two of every kind of animal they distribute. Another $1,000 will go towards a "Milk Menagerie" - a bunch of milk-producing livestock. The rest of the money will likely go towards Llamas...because I get to choose!

Among the Hungry Pastors, no one lost less than 20 pounds, and on guy lost a total of 42. The average earned was over $500, and one guy earned well over $2,000. I lost 35 pounds, going from 256 to 221. I recently started to get back on track with eating and exercise and I hope to get under 200 before the end of the school year. At this point, it is hard for me to comprehend being that weight again. It's been since almost high school! I was playing "college basketball" and "soccer" and never got down to that weight. I had a mystery stomach illness that many of my high school friends dubbed an insatiable thirst for bubblegum flavored Meth where I lost like 50 pounds and I wasn't at that low of weight.

A lot of people have made comments about how I must feel much better, or ask how I feel now. My response is generally that I am hungry and tired. It is true. Being healthy kind of sucks. It is hard. I can run a lot further and a lot faster than I could, but I am using up all that extra energy with the extra effort. It takes a lot more effort to work up a sweat and get my heart rate up when biking. The truth is, I am still pretty fat. I got myself out from under the "obese" label, but I am probably still like 20-30 pounds overweight.

This is starting to sound whiny and boring so let me make a point. These guys and I lost almost 250 pounds between us. It was stinkin' hard. Right now my reward is that I look chubby instead of fat, a few more of my shirts fit now, and I have to go further and faster in workouts to make a difference.

I like to think that I am on my way to being different though. I feel like I am less lazy. I went on a canoe trip in January that I would never have been able to do 35 lbs ago. If being a hypocrite is about putting on a mask and being who you aren't, I think I am on my way to being less of one. The trouble we all have is narrowing the gap between who we say we are and who we actually are.

The Misadventures of Seth Bates

I have been meaning to start blogging for quite some time. One of the things I have always enjoyed is writing and it seems like I should combine that interest with a middling ability and record my thoughts in this semi-public forum. Oddly, the title has been a hang up that has kept me from even starting to write for quite a while. It seems like you have to have one that makes sense, but I didn't want to be "that guy" and try to make the blog name more serious and self-important than it ought to be. I try not to take myself that seriously.

I also wanted to avoid writing a long list innane details from my daily life. That is boring, even if I have an awesomely exciting lifestyle, which I do not. Case in point: I am at home today because of a snow day and I am sitting on the couch writing (blogging, as it were) while my sick, pregnant wife watches the Doctors on TV and my gassy 2 year old son complains of his tummy hurt and asks if he can kick the kleenex box.

Now, I feel like I occasionally have something worthwhile to share, but I am also aware that any wisdom I happen to have gained has been gleaned through a long series of mistakes and misadventures. I am of the opinion that you learn much more from a bad experience, from the mistakes you make, than from success. Let me briefly quote James:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything"

That is obviously talking about faith, but I think it has broader implications and could just as easily describe the development of character, maturity, wisdom and a host of related qualities. I have had some really fantastic experiences in my life, but they do much more to produce memories than maturity. I could quote a lot of people and use a whole bunch of object lesson type things here, but I have a self-imposed limit on that sort of thing because it seems lazy and unoriginal.

My point is this: I have learned by being a failure how to be less of a failure... Don't simply try to forget your negative experiences. Don't agonize over them either. The idea is to evaluate what you did right and what you did wrong; to not make the same mistakes as before and to do the right things even better.

I have had my fair share of misadventures. I suppose that qualifies me.