The best is yet to come. I love this Frank Sinatra tune. I like it because it is a good love song. It is also a good mantra for life. The best is yet to come. Things may be good now, but that doesn’t mean that can’t get better. Maybe things are hard right now…the best is definitely yet to come. For 2020, this is how I am going approach the new year. This is also how I approach every day.

One of the cool things about writing my thoughts down over the years is it provides perspective. For years I have come to the beginning of a new year with the hope that ‘finally this year will be different’. I have looked at the beginning of the year as a fresh start. While it definitely can be, I have come a long way in my thinking regarding this. I have discovered that each moment holds the potential for something new. You don’t have to wait for the New Year. You have the power to choose on any day, not just New Year’s Day.

For the past few months I have been working on a few specific things…fitness, reading and writing. As I wrote in a previous post, I have been working to get my habits right around these things. As I continue to practice good habits in these areas, I am finding that it leads to building habits in other areas as well. It all started with the power I have to choose. I finally got tired of looking in the mirror and seeing my face, knowing I could be more.

Knowing you can be more and doing something about it is the difficult part. What more could I be? What did I need to do? How was I going to do it? Let’s look at this through the lens of New Years resolutions and see if we can spot the problem.

Lose Weight. Yes. That is one of the most common New Years resolutions out there. I have had that on my list several times. We all want to lose weight and finally feel our best…or just look good on the beach. How do we plan to lose weight? Sign up for a gym membership. Eat better. Avoid cookies. Can you see why this doesn’t work? None of what I have written in this paragraph is specific.

If it is important enough to write down on your list of resolutions, then it is important enough to make a plan. So, you want to lose weight? How is it really done? If you don’t know, there is this cool thing called Google. You can find out the information for yourself, or you can find someone who has already done it and see what they have to say. For me, I bought a fitness program and have been following it. Now I know that after I get my gym membership here are the exercies I have to do and on which day. When I go to eat every day, I know now what my calorie count and nutrition breakouts need to look like. I am no where near where I want to be, but moving from the general to the specific has me a lot further down the right path.

When you know what you want, you can make choices that support the goal you have identified. When you get specific about the goal, the choices that you make become clearer and much easier to make. It is a process and takes time. Any goal worth pursuing will.

There is greatness inside of you. There are amazing things that you are meant to do. What do you want? You have the power to choose. A mediocre life is not an acceptable choice. The best is yet to come. I choose to be the best I can be. I choose for 2020 to be a year of purpose. Will you join me?

There are many who believe these two words go hand in hand and that to have one you must have the other. I have a different take. (For this post I define nice as pleasing; agreeable; delightful. I am defining good as excellent or virtuous.)

There are four ways to look at this:

1. There are things that are good and nice at the same time.

2. There are things that are good, but not nice.

3. There are things that are nice, but not good.

4. There are things that are neither.

I know a woman who I find to be a good person. From the conversations we have had she seems to be very genuine and heartfelt. She can be nice. But that is not her strong point. She is good. Good at her job. Good to her friends. A good person. I wouldn’t consider her a consistently nice person. It wouldn’t fit her if she were. She doesn’t have to be both.

There are times when people refuse to tell you what they should. They don’t want to hurt your feelings. They don’t want to turn into a difficult conversation. The could choose to be good and do the right thing. The settle for being nice and letting something continue that shouldn’t.

It has been a paradigm shift to look at things like this. Knowing that the good thing to do is not always the nice thing to do flies in the face of convention. People aren’t used to hearing the truth. It hurts, but the truth is a good thing. It is not always a nice thing though.

We face the choice everyday of how we respond to things. If we can do both nice and good, great. If we must choose one over the other, do it with caution.

I can’t think of many things that hurt more than seeing hurtdisappointmentrejection/loss in the face of your own child. This is especially true when they felt safe and then no longer feel safe in a place or situation.

Not long ago we were visiting somewhere new. My boy (T) was around a group of kids that he was meeting for the first time. I am always curious how the interactions will go, but am confident that he can handle most things thrown at him. The adults were gathered in one room, and the kids were off playing in another. Everything appeared to be fine.

As we were wrapping up the evening, T came out you could tell that something was off. His mama checked on him and found out that some of the boys were playing a bit rougher than he is used to. He felt like they were being bullies. After a bit more conversation, I realized they were not just being bullies, but were engaging in competitive banter. What is that? Trash talk.

Now what, you ask, is the difference between bullying behavior and being competitive? There is a distinct line, in my opinion. It is fairly thin though.

I have grown up around competition. I have had guys tell me that I am awful to throw me off my game. It occurred in the game and they knew and so did I that it was being done in competitive fun. Generally afterwards there was friendly conversation and no one left feeling insulted.

Bullying, on the other hand, is done to purposely put the other person down to make the bully feel superior. There is no game that is being played. It is not being done as a joke. It is done to suppress and hurt the person being bullied. I think if we all are honest, there are times we have been bullied and there are times where we have acted like a bully.

Where do I stand on the issues of trash talk and bullying? I don’ t like either one. Once I realized what they are and what they do, it made me aware of why I never liked them to start out with. If you are trash talking, you are being mean to help you play your game better. If you are bullying, you are being mean to make yourself seem better than another.

If I am playing a game now, and I am playing to win….I do it quietly or I tell jokes. I find making your opponent laugh is much more distracting than trash talk. If someone starts to trash talk me now, I usually ignore it. Just because they are stooping that low doesn’t mean I have to. Most games I play these days are not winner take all. Playing to enjoy is usually what I am up to now. Jokes work in this environment as well.

As far as bullying…yeah…don’t do it.

So, how did we handle the situation with our boy? I asked the dad of the trash talking boys to join us. I unpacked what had happened. With real compassion he apologized to my boy and offered to have his boys apologize as well. My boy thanked him. After the scene was over, we reminded T that things like that are going to happen. How we respond to it is what is important. He did the right thing. He told us what was wrong. He was honest about what happened. He asked for help immediately.

We were then able to remind him that his worth and value have nothing to do with the hurtful comments that he received. Just like when you are offered something you don’t want…you don’t have to take it. He was offered mean comments. He now knows he doesn’t have to accept them.

I didn’t know it the first time I met you

You smiled at me and looked the other way

I didn’t know when you walked into the next room

That one day you would take my breath away

I didn’t know the one day I’d be counting hours

Until I could hear your voice again

I didn’t know that I’d see you walking down the isle

Putting my ring on your hand

I didn’t know that I would love the small things

Like the way I find your hairs on me.

I didn’t know I would be this happy

Just to hear you laugh uncontrollably

I didn’t know that you could spend forever

And still find things you never knew

I didn’t know what true love was

Not until I started down this path with you.

I’m so thankful for the things I didn’t know.

I have a confession to make. I can sing. Yes. I can sing fairly well. No, I won’t sing anything for you to prove it. Well, maybe I might. You pick the song and pay for the karaoke. The truth is I don’t do it much at all anymore. But there was a day…

A long time ago in a world far, far away, there was a time I sang a lot. I mean, all the time. Incessantly. Sometimes the singing was good. Other times it resembled Will Farrell’s character in the movie “Elf” (I am in a store and I am singing…). I enjoyed singing before I got to high school, but I really started to focus in on it in about the 10th grade. I got some funny looks when I gave up most sports for choir, but that is what I wanted to do.

I still remember a comical phone call from an army recruiter my senior year:

“Hello Young Man,” a gruff, but friendly voices said on the other end of the phone. 

“Hello, sir. How can I help you?” I replied respectfully. 

“Son, have you ever considered a career in the armed forces? The Army could just be the place for you.”

“Thank you sir,” I replied politely. No, I hadn’t through of going into the Army. I had no interest in it either, but it is nice to be wanted to so I continued the phone conversation 

“Tell me something boy,” the recruiter said sizing me up. “How big a boy are you?”

“Six foot and 190 pounds.”

“Really?” I could hear that he was pleased. He thought he had a good sized fish on the line. He decided to try to reel it in. “What do you like to do?”

Upon hearing this question, I smiled. “I sing bass in the choir.” 

There was a slight pause. “I am sorry young man. I don’t believe we have a spot for you.” True story.

I sang in the school mixed choir, men’s choir and show choir. I also sang in the church choir and performed solos for services. I just loved to sing. It became my identity. So much so that I became extremely competitive and a tad bit arrogant. Ok. A lot arrogant. I thought I could sing really well. Turns out, I was partly right. I could sing. The quality of the signing from those days is still in question. Some was very good. Some never needs to be heard by human ears ever again.

I tried out for many honor choirs while I was in high school. I was in the All District Choir 3 times. I made the All State Choir twice. I even made a Regional National Honor Choir as well. I went to every summer music camp that I could find. I loved those days. I got to sing and I enjoyed it. 

After high school, I got a full scholarship to go to college to sing. So, my freshman year of college I attended University where I majored in Vocal Music Education. I knew I loved singing and I had no idea how I would make a career out of it, so getting my degree to teach it seemed like the thing to do. I figured that I could also lead music at a church somewhere while teaching music at school. It would be the best of both worlds. While there I was in the choirs, show choir, and even a barbershop quartet. I enjoyed it for a time, but I began to get restless.

I thought the restlessness was just that I needed to get out of the small town where I went to high school. So, I auditioned at a different University and I received a full scholarship to sing. I was on my way again, on an exciting adventure doing something that I loved. While there, I changed my major from Vocal Music Education to Vocal Performance. I can’t say I put a lot of thought into it, but it has been interesting over the years telling people that I majored in ”Opera” at school.

By the end of my sophomore year, I knew that I did not enjoy the choir environment as much as I once had. It may have been the fact that I was singing more than I ever had at that point, but I am not sure that is why my passion was slipping away. I was beginning to understand that I wasn’t as good as I had always thought I was. There were singers around me that were a lot better than me. Some that weren’t as good. But, everyone had their own very strong opinions of what they thought good and bad singing was. I got told more than once by an upperclassmen that I was not matching pitch. I wanted to punch him. He was probably right…

My junior year of college was starting and I knew that I needed to make a change. So, I walked into the counsellor’s office and I asked what the shortest route to victory was. I was almost 80 hours into my college journey and I changed majors. Funny thing was though, six months later I took my first (mostly) full time position at an area church as a…you guessed it…music minister. Maybe I just wanted to use my singing to serve God. In another 2 years I was burned out on that as well. 

I finally realized that I love music, because I love music. I don’t need a degree to love it. I don’t have to sing in a choir. I don’t have to sing professionally. I certainly don’t need to lead a choir. If I choose to write a song, I write a song. If I want to learn a something new on my guitar or piano, I do that. Once when my boy was younger I had my guitar out and I was making up silly songs about my his socks and how I didn’t want him to touch me with his stinky feet. I loved every minute of that. He did too.

Sometimes I wonder if I missed it by not finishing my music degree…nope. For me, music is something I enjoy for me. I’m ok with that.