No Mor Chikin

This poor guy has no clue what he's caused.

If you've been on the internet, watched TV, or live anywhere within a 150 mile radius of The-Chicken-Chain-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, you're probably aware of what has been going on the last couple of weeks.

And if you're wondering what I could possibly have to say about KFC, you need to get out more. 

Of course, if you're anything like me, the moment you heard Dan Cathy's words a few weeks ago, you probably stuck your fingers in your ears, closed your eyes, and have been singing an obnoxious "La la la! I can't hear you," hoping to drown out the incessant opinions, cliche rhetoric, and ridiculous Facebook posts about this ever-controversial topic.

It's like we're children wandering in an abandoned war zone. Our parents warn us to be careful, but when we see a landmine, we can't help ourselves. Knowing full well what it will do, we decide to test it by throwing rocks and act surprised when we all get hurt.

Haven't we learned to avoid the pain that comes along with taking sides?

Meanwhile, if you're in any part of the world other than the USA, you're probably thinking to yourself, "What does all of this have to do with the Olympics?" You and me both, my friend.

Needless to say, we all know what's going on with Chick-Fil-A, and we're all tired of hearing about it. I think there's a bigger lesson to be learned here, though, and that lesson has absolutely nothing to do with chicken, marriage, or the so-called Christian foundation of our rather confused country.

Instead of discussing, debating, and dissecting the last few weeks to death, maybe we should all take a step back. Maybe we all need to stop talking, take a deep breath, and think for a moment.

We need to remember a couple of things:

First of all, there is no "us" or "them." We're all people. We're all affected in someway by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, or transexuals and their right (or non-right) to marry. We've all been burned in this unnecessary battle of harsh words and unfair criticism.

And while the opinion of one man won't matter at the end of it all, we still feel the need to fight. To take sides. Because something bigger is at stake. Whether we're for or against whatever our respective belief system stands for, we know (or at least think) we're supposed to take a stand. And in most cases, there's no problem with this. However...

The real problem runs deeper. There's an innate brokenness within all of us, and the pain of our imperfection rears its ugly head at times like this, masking itself as "virtue" and "justice." In reality, it's the insecurity of our souls that prompts us to fight so valiantly in these cyclical clashes of culture that rear their heads every few months.

What, then, should we make of this mess? We could continue on as we are, and follow the guidance of our own ambitions and desires. Clearly, this has gotten us so far.

Or we can choose to change our course and follow something or someone higher - a morality that has a better perspective and can see the bigger picture.

Oh how quickly we have forgotten these beautiful, revolutionary words that should decorate every breath of our lives:

Do not repay evil for evil. Instead, respect what is right in the sight of all men. You've heard that you should take an eye for an eye, because you're free to defend yourself. Don't. Turn the other cheek and give a blessing instead. Always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people. Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, loving him fully and loving others as you love yourself.

These are words from Scripture that few of us would argue with, regardless of what "side" we're on.

But on the off chance that you could care less about the Bible, allow me to share a story with you from Aesop's Fables, a perennial choice for the moral education of young and old alike.

"The Doe and the Lion"

A Doe hard pressed by hunters sought refuge in a cave belonging to a Lion. The Lion concealed himself on seeing her approach, but when she was safe within the cave, sprang upon her and tore her to pieces. "Woe is me," exclaimed the Doe, "to have escaped from man, only to throw myself into the mouth of a wild beast?"

The point of this obscure story?

"In avoiding one evil, care must be taken not to fall into another."

Friends, let's stop throwing rocks at landmines. 

Let's escape the war zone, declare a truce, and take a step forward instead of constantly running back to the safety of our beloved "positions" and "beliefs." 

Instead of pressing Pause and returning to this war again in a few months, let's press Stop and eject this tape. We're so over watching this play out for the thousandth time, because the end never changes.

Let's agree to disagree, but let's also agree that we're better than this (or at least we should be).

And for the love of all things good, let's forget about eating Mor Chikin and get on with watching Mor Olympics!

Running Around Like A...

Sometimes, life gets crazy.


And then, sometimes life floods you with crazy.

We're currently in the middle of our second move this summer, and so I'm trying to put all of my extra free time into that. Meanwhile, my wife has two jobs now, so any extra minutes I can have with her, I spend away from the computer (a hat tip to our recent media fast, for sure).

If you've been trying to get me to call you, e-mail you, Skype you, or anything else like that, chances are, I've sounded fishy, like I'm avoiding you. And the truth is, I am... in a way. Not on purpose, though. I'd love to be spending time in cyber reality now that I'm free from my fast. However, life calls. And when life calls, I run around like a chicken with its head cut off.

So please forgive me, my friends. I pinky promise that I'll be back soon!

Win of the Week

It's Friiiiiday!

I know I've been gone awhile, but a few of you have mentioned that you really missed Fridays around here. To tell you the truth, I did too! So let's get down to business, my friends.

Around here, Friday means one thing, and one thing only: we party like it's 1999. Why? Because we're celebrating our Win of the Week! 


In case you're new around here, this is how our weekly Win of the Week post goes. Basically, we mull over our past week and share the highlights of our week together! More recently, we've begun distinguishing between our real life and virtual Wins of the Week, so be sure to shamelessly share about anything of note that you've accomplished on the internet!

Personally, I've had a rather ho-hum week. Obviously, I started getting back on the internet and blogging, but I wouldn't consider that the highlight of my week. Instead, I'd say that my Win of the Week would have to be... my wife starting two new jobs this week!

I'm really proud of her, especially for starting work at a maternity home here in town, which is something she would do for free. So when you comment, remember to mention how awesome Kalyn is!

My virtual Win of the Week would have to be... Trimming down my Google Reader. It sounds bad, but I'd rather fully read 10 blogs than skim 100. I enjoy interacting on other's blogs, but when I feel like I have a million to read, that becomes a lot more difficult.

So there you have it! Those are my Wins of the Week!

So what about you? What are your Wins of the Week? Feel free to shamelessly share about your achievements!

Step Away from the Screens

Yesterday, I shared one of the biggest lessons Iearned during the month of our media fast. It wasn't sexy, cool, or hip. And it certainly wasn't easy, which is why I suppose it wasn't very popular.

That was just a sliver of what I want to share about my month without media. I've been asked by a few people if my time away was "productive" and what I did with all my extra time. If you missed yesterday's post, though, you're missing the heart of everything I'm about to say.

First of all, you should know this past month was different than I expected it would be.

I didn't read 1,000 books, though I certainly had the time to. Instead, I was stuck on a single book, and became pretty frustrated with reading after about a week. Sometimes, I'm too tired to read (I'll fall asleep after a page or two), so this was pretty demotivating for me as I was deciding what to do with my time. In retrospect, I should have been reading more than one book at a time, but it's not something I typically do, so it didn't happen.

I also didn't completely avoid the internet or TV. Our living situation didn't lend itself to a total, 100% fast from media like I desired. Instead of moving into our own house at the beginning of the fast, like we expected to, we are still not moved in at this point. Everything which could have gone wrong with our move has. Things are finally starting to move along (pun most definitely intended), but we currently are still waiting for our house to be livable.

So, since we weren't living in our own place, able to control whether or not media was playing through the TV, we still watched some TV and movies with friends and family. We never watched alone, because we knew we had control over at least that much. But after about a day or two of pretending I wasn't watching Dora with my 2 year old nephew, I gave in.

We decided we couldn't control our family and force them not to watch TV and suffer with us. This doesn't mean we would “suggest” what our family watched, either. We let them watch whatever they decided to watch, without our suggestions or influence.

So, no, I didn't watch any basketball during the fast - turns out I'm the only one who enjoys it in a house full of females (shocker!). Instead, if I watched TV, it was along the lines of Dora, Go Diego Go, Glee, or Private Practice (my family’s shows of choice, in case there was any doubt).

Also, we checked our e-mails frequently (which we had planned on doing), and I used the internet to play games while I took medicine. I had always played games while taking my medicine before this fast started, and I needed some kind of motivation to continue spending 30 minutes twice a day inhaling a medicine which tastes like soap. Trust me, you’d need the motivation, too.

I did start writing a book. But before you get your hopes up, allow me to shoot them down. Because I did also decide to stop working on it during this month as well. I put a lot of time and thought into this project, and decided this isn’t the right place or time. For starters, I expected to be spending most of this month alone in my new house, with very little to do and lots of space to think and write.

Instead, what I was given was a 4 bedroom house with 7 people living in it. This has its upsides and its downsides, and one of the big downsides is a lack of space. This means there was very little down time to think and write during our past month.

Now this sounds like an excuse, and really, it is. But I think God had us living with my family for this time not so I could push them away, but so I could more fully invest in them. I suspect this will be one of the last times we ever live with them (unless they move in with us one day), so I didn’t want to remember it as a time where I was constantly trying to get away and make my own space where there was none.

In addition to the issue of space, I have my own more personal reasons for quickly discontinuing the writing of a book. I’ll share those with you in a future post, because I think they merit their own time and thought. Suffice it to say I didn’t come to this decision easily. If you’d like to know more about what I was writing about, feel free to ask – I’d love to share, anyway!

By the end of this fast, I expected to be dying to regain internet access. Turns out reentering cyberspace after a month of absence is a little stressful – at least it was for me. Think of it like this: you’ve had your license to drive for a few years, and suddenly, it’s revoked for 5 years. Then, one day, you get it back and are asked to drive the Autobahn. You’d be a little stressed too. (Okay, so the analogy isn’t perfect. Work with me here, people.)

So forgive me if I haven’t been as interactive as I usually am. I wiped my Google Reader clean of quite a few blogs – this doesn’t say so much about those blogs as it does about me. I was simply overwhelmed by how much I “needed” to read and I realized I didn’t enjoy it much anymore.

I also haven’t turned Twitter back on my phone, so I haven’t been replying or retweeting many people. I’m sure I will soon, but I’ll most likely cut down the number of people I receive tweets to my phone from as well. Prior to our month of fasting from media, I discovered my little “dumb” phone (aka, non-smartphone) gets upwards of 10,000 texts per month! This. Is. A. Problem. So forgive me if I don’t reply or retweet you as often as I usually do. I promise I’m still here and I’m still reading your awesomeness. It's just that I can only handle so much awesome at once.

Consider escaping from the internet
for even an hour today!

Moving forward, I want to be intentional about spending less time with my laptop and TV, and more time with the people sitting around me. I can’t emphasize this enough. We’re addicted to our screens and ignoring what really matters, people. And we wonder why this world is so messed up.

Let go of your pride, stop saying, “Not me!” and ‘fess up. And then do something about it. It doesn’t mean that you have to fast from seven types of media for a month. But maybe that is what you need.

Whatever you do, though, don’t walk away from this post without doing something. Even simply acknowledging your addiction to the internet or television to yourself is better than nothing.

From here, move forward, deciding to intentionally spend less time with yourself and your computer or TV, and more time with people. You’ll be less lonely, you’ll probably sleep better at night (studies have shown that over-exposure to screens that lead to varying degrees of insomnia), and the quality of your relationships will increase dramatically.

Meanwhile, your Klout score or your Alexa ranking might suffer, but really, who cares? Does it really matter how many pageviews your blog had last month? Will it really matter if people on the internet forget you exist for a week or two? Are you really so important that we shouldn’t forget about you from time to time? In the grand scheme of things, will it matter whether you had 1-2% less followers?

Because that’s the only difference I’ve seen in my blog after I’ve been gone for a month. And frankly, I don’t think God is going to judge me based on my sphere of influence. I don’t think I’ll be chided for having 1-2% less influence than I could’ve had. If my focus is on the people who are around me on a daily basis, I can’t go wrong.

Step away from the screens, people. It's time to wane ourselves off of cyberspace and reality shows. It's time to realize there's a real world around us with real people who have real problems. And as it turns out, they could really use our help. If only we weren't glued to our precious screens, we could look up and see what's really going on around us and start truly living real life.

... ... ...

Questions: Have you ever considered whether you're addicted to screens? What good can come from the internet or television? What bad can come from the internet or television? How have you worked to wane yourself off of depending on screens? What other thoughts do you have on this topic?

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I'd appreciate you subscribing to Life Before the Bucket and sharing it with your friends. Thanks a million for reading!

image credit - michaelaw - sxc.hu

Living to the Fullest: A Word of Advice

Over the last month, a lot happened.

A lot also didn't happen.

I spill the details on all of that very soon. For today, though, I want to encourage you with the encouragement given to me through my technology fast. 

Normally, I would be featuring a "Living to the Fullest" guest post today. Seeing as how I've been AWOL from the internet for what seems like an eternity, though, this isn't going to happen today. Instead, I want to leave you with some advice to make today better than it could be:

Spend more time today face-to-face with people than with a screen. 

It's that simple.

Do that much, and I promise today will be fuller than it ever could have been while you were having a staring contest with your computer or TV (besides - who ever really wins those contests?). 

If you're interested in contributing to our "Living to the Fullest" guest post series, I would love to hear from you. These posts are often the most popular posts on Life Before the Bucket each week. Just shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment on today's post and I'll get back to you ASAP. 


image credit - tomdavies - sxc.hu