serious wednesday

I don’t threaten God often. I know that’s surprising to you given how muscular I’ve been getting lately with all the working out and my increased acai berry consumption. (It really is a miracle berry and made me taller and balanced my checkbook while I slept.)

But despite the fast and slow twitch muscle increases I’ve been making lately, I don’t make it a habit to tell God what he should do. I very rarely scribble down a plan, throw it in a prayer and threaten him if it doesn’t come true. Buy shoes for mama cause she’s about to meet Jesus? I do that ALL DAY. Threaten God? Not so much.

Recently though, I caught myself doing that and it all came to a head at our neighborhood pool.

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A friend and I once ate a 9 pound lobster on Martha’s Vineyard. It was the size of a small dog and had claws the size of my head. Later that day, a group of us toured the island on scooters named “Cobras,” which immediately inspired us to pretend we were the Cobra Kai from The Karate Kid. We zipped around that island like 12 year olds, waving at guys on Harleys as if, despite the candy apple red paint and insanely small mopeds we were all on, we were part of a larger brotherhood of bikers. They did not wave back.

I was reminded of this moment a few weeks ago while going through some photos.

The design firm putting together the visual story for the Quitter Conference asked me to find some personal photos they could include in the presentation. I’ve never included visuals with any talks I’ve given so this is uncharted/awesome territory.

But as I flipped through photo albums representing the years 2000-2005, I kind of got sick to my stomach.

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Sometimes, when I speak about social media at conferences, I talk about the Most Interesting Man in the World commercials. Dos Equis put them together, and they are hilarious. In them, a parade of over-the-top statements are thrown out about a bearded James Bond-type guy.

They say things like:

His words carry weight that would break a less interesting man’s jaw.
He bowls … overhand.
His blood smells like cologne.
Sharks have a week dedicated to him.
He never says anything tastes like chicken. Not even chicken.

On and on these statements go. And as funny as they are, that’s not what I talk about when I speak on social media. The sentence in the commercial I find so interesting is the one The Most Interesting Man in the World says. Here’s what he proclaims when he looks at the camera and ends the commercial:

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It’s summer and that always reminds me of the story of me and Michael Jordan. No, it’s not that time I dunked on him. I had to sign a whole lot of confidentiality agreements about that. This story is different.

I met Jordan one summer while he was golfing at a country club in Pinehurst, North Carolina. My uncle and his family lived on the golf course, and I was spending a few weeks there before I started the eighth grade.

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I recently received an email that knocked me over.

I decided to post it for two reasons:

1. Somebody has a story like this and needs to know they’re not alone.

2. A lot of us have gifts we’re supposed to use that we can’t ever imagine God doing something with and this is a testament to what happens when we try. When we do something as silly and insignificant feeling as starting a blog.

After she emailed this to me, I asked Beth if I could share her story and she graciously agreed. I changed some of the details to protect her privacy for reasons that will become crystal clear as you read it. It’s time for me to just get out of the way and introduce you to the amazingly awesome Beth.

Hello!

My name is Beth and I’m from Texas. I am painfully shy. I didn’t always used to be. I used to be the crazy, silly gal that everyone laughed with. But now, I am shy. I used to be NUTS! I distinctly remember going to a pool hall and crawling around under the tables pretending like I was an alligator to cheer up a friend who had just broken up with her boyfriend. I was the only one who was SOBER.

My mother was a practicing (sorta) Catholic & my father was a Buddist. Since they could not see eye-to-eye on religion, I was not baptized. My younger sister, on-the-other-hand, was born 4 months premature & in 1977, there was no surviving that. She was baptized right away. She did survive though and in our Catholic upbringing, what that meant was that all my family went through the Christian education and rituals while I constantly sat in a pew. Because I was never baptized, I wasn’t able to go through church school or learn about the bible. My mom did the best she could to teach me, but she was hurt by being disowned by her family when she became divorced. It was difficult for her to teach me about Christ’s love when she was having a hard time experiencing it herself.

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A few weeks ago, my family and I went out to dinner together on a Friday night. The goal was to have a family meal, hang out, and possibly even enter into the Q realm. Quality Time.

Apparently every person in the greater Nashville are also had the same idea.

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