2. Know your PRIORITIES in life and stick to them no matter what.

3. LOVE God, yourself, and others…just as God does.

I can relate on some level because for 31 years I’ve carried and nurtured a dream; a dream that has brought me joy and pain, happiness and disappointment, fear and boldness, triumph and heartbreak, and now I’ve reached the “9th month” and I’m ready to birth this dream but I can’t quite yet. I’m ready to share this dream with the world as well as have my private moments in delight watching this dream grow and take on life itself, but my gratification has been deferred because I’ve been told that the “doctor” isn’t quite ready for me to “push”. Like the distraught and frustrated mother-to-be who lies on the table in agony, I sit…and wait.

I wait in excitement because I know, in my heart, that when this dream is shared with the world it will be a catalyst of energy that spurs people to greatness. I wait in fear because I don’t know if, once revealed, people may mock what I’ve labored over for years, treating it as a dismal failure in their eyes. I wait anxiously because I look at the clock and notice how time is not waiting on this hope to make it’s way into reality. So again I wait. How long? Who knows? But until then I’ll continue putting the final touches on this dream, and when the time comes…I will be ready!

Feel free to add to the list.

Like many, I’ve watched and read from both sides of the issue but the fact remains that I still really don’t know the point of the health care reform bill and how it will affect different people, including my grandparents. So in my analytical way I decided to go and read the bill myself. What better than the original source. I Googled “health care bill” and a PDF document came up from the U.S. government website. Indeed, it was the document I wanted to see, but as it pulled up I noticed one minor detail about it; it was over 1,000 pages! I never read a book over a thousand pages let alone a bill. I was stumped as to how to better understand this health care reform bill.

I feel a certain obligation to understand this issue given how many people have been raising so much fuss over it. We have a US President that’s campaigning for this bill as if he’s campaigning for his job (hmmm…maybe he is). I did vote to elect him so shouldn’t I want to understand his plan? Usually I wait until it’s too late to have an opinion on such matters, but this time I want to engage in the issue, not merely be a spectator, or worse a Monday morning quarterback.

So as I sit here typing I’m still trying to find out a simpler way to answer my grandmother’s question…as well as mine. Maybe there’s a cliff notes version somewhere I can read…who knows??? Oh yeah, you can read the bill here: Health Care Reform Bill

1. I visualize myself completing the task
2. I reward… lol! I’m just joking.

Honestly, I don’t have a proven system to get stuff done (yet), so I just get up and do it! Wait! Maybe that’s it. I’ve actually come to realize that once I begin something I can continue it until it’s completed (or close to). One truth I’ve had to address in my life, though, is that if I don’t tackle this issue of procrastination on a small scale it’ll eventually turn into a monster that will kill my dreams! I have a ton of ideas that I want to see become a reality before I die, but if I can’t get off of my behind and start at least one of them then the odds are others will never come to pass. The last thing I want in life is to be an old man constantly wondering “what if” simply because I never stood up and did something. So in the words of one of my friends, “Ain’t nothing to it but to do it!”

While driving home I thought of something, “I have a model rocket I can put together and take Deuce out to fly it.” So after a nap and a errand or two I sat at the kitchen table to assemble a favorite pastime of mine. I hadn’t put together a model rocket in over 20 years but I figured I had it down. The truth is it ended up taking me much longer than I anticipated; so long that the sun begin going down. But I was committed to fly this rocket for a few reasons: One, after I told Deuce about the rocket he reminded me every fifteen minutes about the “rocket ship that we were going to fly in”, and I wanted to keep my word to him. I want him to have the memories of doing stuff with his dad that I never had with mine. Secondly, I believe it was therapeutic and keeping me busy from the fact that I attempted to contact my father a couple of times that day to wish him a “Happy Fathers Day” and maybe stop by (he stays 15 minutes from me), but only got the voice mail and no returned phone call. I must admit that it hurts to continue trying to do my part in a relationship with no joint effort, but I’m trying to be the bigger man. So putting that rocket together for me was a legacy in the making; one that may continue when my son has a child of his own.

At about 9:20 PM I finished the rocket! I announced to my wife and son who then scurried to put on his shoes so we could go to the local park. It has a big field and I figured that if it was too dark I could keep the car headlights on to see. All three of us arrived at the park, jumped out the car, quickly paced to the middle of the field, and I begin to set up the launching pad for the rocket. After connecting the remote I told Deuce to come over so he could do the honors of pressing the launch button. I told him we’d countdown from 10 to 1 but soon realized that a three old usually can only count up to 10 so we did that. As we yelled out “Ten!” I showed him the launch button to push and when he did…nothing happened! I figured something wasn’t connected so I checked everything and was right. So I reconnected a fuse and we begin the process all over again. As Deuce pressed the launch button this time, nothing happened again! I was clueless, yet at the same time thinking that maybe I had bad batteries. After tinkering with it for I while I concluded that it was the launcher and would have to exchange it.

I regrettably told Deuce that we would have to launch the rocket the next day, but at that moment I saw something: Deuce wasn’t disappointed. Though he wanted to see the “rocket ship” go into space he was having enough fun being outside past bedtime and running around in a big field. As we returned home, put Deuce to bed, and sat on the couch my wife asked me if I was upset that the rocket didn’t work. In that moment I thought about my childhood, my strained relationship with my father, the unanswered phone calls, how Fathers Day is usually a drag for me, and the excitement of Deuce at the anticipation of us doing something together, and I told her that I wasn’t upset about it. I learned this Fathers Day that being a father is more about the journey than any destination…and about going to the store to exchange model rocket parts.

It started when I begin reading this book about how to read the bible (imagine that!) and in this book the author begin to dispel many conventional thoughts of some commonly known bible stories. At first I challenged it thinking “These liberals just want to tear the Bible apart!”, but as I continued reading and confirming their conclusions I reached the point of an epiphany: “Maybe much of what I’ve been told all of my isn’t totally true…” This sent me in a tailspin; going through notes, revisiting previously read books, and conducting impromptu interviews to find out how this could be! The realization I came to was startling: much of what I’ve come to believe as truth came from people who ALSO believed it to be true. This wasn’t some sort of “Malcolm X in prison realizing that all black people had been bamboozled by the white man” type realization, but one of coming to grips with the fact that many good intentioned people in my life had neglected to factor in one important step in the process of revelation: to consider the source.

It scares me how often we believe so much of what is fed to us without taking the time to confirm it. Now, I don’t believe we should become neurotic conspiracy theory skeptics, but I do believe that we should at least use common sense (and a bit of logic) before we begin passing information along. Because I’m a parent now, this really forces me to grapple with this because God-forbid I have children going around naively believing everything they hear.

So the next time you read your favorite gossip column about “who’s out of the closet now”, your Inbox welcomes that “unbelievable” e-mail to receive a free computer if you forward the e-mail to ten people, or you hear that family member describing your father as a jerk who hates your existence, consider the source. In every matter of life there’s only ONE truth…the rest, well, makes for a good story.

I often pray to make my current situation(s) better (you know, career, marriage, finances, etc) but maybe God wants me to see Him in my current predicament and appreciate Him there than always waiting to see Him "move in a powerful way". Sometimes my prayer are more of an ritual prior to me doing what I choose regardless of any "answer" rather than a requirement before making a next move.

I want to be happy because that’s what society tells me I should be, even have a right to be, and if I’m not I should do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make myself happy. That’s a pretty scary thought but it’s where we are as a society. It’s also where we’re moving as a religion.

As I mature I’m learning to appreciate a life marked by simplicity. I’m also learning that though I’m an advocate of change and growth, it should never cause me to make it such a priority in my life that it becomes my god.