David Willis Faith, Lessons Learned, Life

What is in a name?

This past week at Lifechurch.TV, pastor Craig Groeshel started a new series called Getting Past your Past. I will be totally honest here. When we sat down at church I just wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t in the mood to sing. I wasn’t in the mood to listen. I have no good reason for this. I was just in a funk. That usually is the case when a good message is about to be given. Fortunately the fog lifted and what followed was awesome.

Pastor Craig asked this question near the beginning of the message: What negative label follows your name? This could be anything. Do you know what yours are? Mine started to pop up in a hurry. Granted, I know them well so it didn’t take much thinking. I have two that have bugged me for years: fat boy and quitter.

When I was a teenager I had a fat boy complex. I used self depreciating humor quite often to get a laugh. Looking back I see a huge problem though…I wasn’t fat. I was a husky kid, but when I hit my growth spurt I spent several years skinnier than I ever knew I was. See below. What did this view of myself get me? I promptly gained 40 pounds after high school. I graduated at 190 and weighed 230 the next year. (The freshman 15 is one thing, but 40 pounds..good grief.) I have lived with this false label for a long time. I wasn’t a fat boy. I am bigger than I want to be right now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. This label doesn’t own me. God created me for more than that.

Summer 1995

I have also lived with the label Quitter. There isn’t a sport that I have played that I haven’t quit. I played basketball in high school and when it was time to pass out the jersey’s I was one of two guys that didn’t get one. I saw no future with it and I quit. I signed up for the football team my sophomore year and made it through 3 a days and quit. I played a season and a half of baseball and wasn’t happy with it so I quit. From the paragraph I just wrote it seems that label would be true…but it isn’t either. I am not a quitter. Looking back I realize I chose other things over the sports. I chose to sing in the choir and had some success at it. (Went to college with all tuition paid for two years singing.) That label doesn’t own me either. There are several more important things that I have not quit at all. I have been married to the same beautiful woman for 12 years. There is no quit in my game. I am, however, more selective about what I start these days. Had I chosen choir in the beginning back in those days there would have been no need to play the sports. Singing was what I enjoyed doing.

Through the message I have been encourage to go back and look at many of those negative labels that have attached themselves to me over the years. As I look at each one and examine them closely I am finding that they are inconsistent with what I know to be true. As a follower of Christ I am a new creation. I have been made new. Labels that may have defined me at one time no longer have to. God has purpose for my life. Holding on to the past and being crippled by it is not it.

Are there any labels that have defined you in the past? What are you doing to overcome them? Were they valid in the first place? The service was eye opening. I am so glad I shook the funk and really heard what was being said.

David Willis Lessons Learned, Love and Marriage

If you take care of it it won’t break.

What was your first car? I remember mine well: 1984 Pontiac Bonneville with a V8 and room for 6 (up  to 10 if you got creative). It was a great first car. It got me from point A to point B without any trouble. It wasn’t a dream car, but it was a good one.

I once ran it into a tree stump. The hood was so long on the thing I couldn’t see, and didn’t remember, that I had parked it by the stump. I was in a hurry. Got in the car, fired it up, and punched the gas trying to pull forward and bam! I expected people to come out of the house I was at to find out what happened. It didn’t even scratch the bumper…or the stump. No harm, no foul.

I know that I changed the spark plugs on it once. I may have added oil to it from time to time. I am not sure I ever opened the coolant cap to check the fluid level. It was an old beater car, and I did very little to improve its status. I remember once when the brakes went out on me when I was driving. Somehow I got the car stopped, but I am not sure how. Did I check the brake fluid? I don’t think so.

As I have made it to other cars through the years I have learned to take better care of them. I didn’t spend any money on the first one (thanks for looking out for me mom and dad), so I wasn’t invested in taking care of it. The two vehicles my wife and I have now I do my best to take better care. It is common knowledge that if you don’t maintain it, you end up having to fix it, which becomes costly and takes a lot longer.

Marriage is much the same way. If you are wise, when you get married you realize that you have to take care of your spouse daily. You have to check all of the vital stats. How is my wife doing today? Is she upset? What is going on in her life that would cause her stress? Are there things that have her worried? Are the kids overwhelming her? Is there something she is saying, even though she hasn’t said anything? These are all things that need to be considered every day.

Marixa will tell you that I am a fanatic about taking care of her. I don’t wait on her hand and foot (which she would probably like, but get tired of), but I do go to great lengths to make sure of how she is and how I can help. There are times that I am not as observant as I need to be, but for the most part I am pretty perceptive. I can tell by talking to her if something is a miss.

I ask her frequently throughout the day what is on her mind. I want her to share her thoughts and her feelings with me. I want to know her more and more. If I feel like I have done something to upset her, I ask her what it is. I don’t go overboard with all of this, but I do make a habit of making sure everything is all right. (There is a fine line with being on top of things and being annoying. I don’t cross that one.)

I know that I can not be for her everything she needs. There are times that she is going to need to be by herself to catch her breath. That is no knock on me, that is just human nature. I know that she needs lady friends to talk with her about things that they are going through that she relates with. I am ok with that as well. I can only be so understanding on things I haven’t experienced myself.

Just like I can’t go out and jump in my car everyday and expect it to start if I don’t maintain it, I can’t ignore the needs of my wife and expect my relationship to be healthy.

What are you doing to keep your relationship the best it can be?

David Willis Lessons Learned, Life

Name your adversity.

There are times in life we encounter adversity. Some of us come up against it in some form every day. It comes with being human. It is not something that can be avoided even though we all try. I have heard that there are only three phases in life. You are either headed into a storm, you are in the storm, or  you are coming out of the storm. I think there is a fourth stage as well. There are times of peace. Make no mistake though, those times can go in an instant.

When I was 25 life was good. I had been married for 5 years. I had a steady job. I was enjoying myself. There wasn’t much that time with my wife, a good nap, and a good meal wouldn’t fix. Then, came the lump.

It felt like I had been kicked hard in a way that hurts a man most. I blew it off for a short time, because after all I was invincible. After the pain persisted I made a visit to the doctor. I was referred to a specialist. Within 5 minutes of meeting with the specialist I was being scheduled for surgery. There was no time to think. There was hardly time to plan. I just knew I had a tumor and they were going in after it. Enter adversity.

Chemo took my hair away. I didn't care. The cancer was no more.

Cancer is not one of those things that you can stand up to by yourself and beat. If you could I wouldn’t have gone through surgery or chemotherapy. I needed help. I had just named what was wrong in my body and measures could be taken to combat it. I listened to the doctors, weighed what they had to say, and then picked the best treatment plan for me. Thank the Lord it worked.  It has been six years and I am cancer free.

What is it you are going through? Call it by name. Don’t beat around the bush. Is it an addiction? Are  you in debt? Are you overweight? Whatever the adversity is, name it. Only then can you start to take steps to overcome it. It may take time to overcome. You may need help getting it done, but now is the time to start. There is a lot of life to live on the other side.

David Willis Lessons Learned, Life

I am thankful for the rain.

I woke this morning to the sound of thunder. I almost didn’t know what it was. It has been a few months since it has rained in this part of Oklahoma. It has been dry and dusty for weeks. So, I lay there in bed listening to the rain come down. It was a peaceful moment.

Aside from enjoying the sound, I am thankful it rained because my yard and my garden needed it. It amazes me how differently things grow when they are watered by rain water. I can water my yard and it greens up a little. It can rain and the whole yard explodes into life. We also noticed last year that our tomato plants responded really well to the rain. It left everything outside my house looking clean and fresh.

Though I know that the rain is a good thing (or can be), why do I almost always think of it in a bad way? I am usually frustrated when it rains. There is something I wanted to do that the rain has interfered with. Or, the electricity goes out in the house because of a lightning strike (not fond of this one) and we are left in the dark for a while. Despite all of the good things that the rain brings, we focus on the inconveniences or troubles.

Maybe this is why we call the hard times in life the storms. We all face times of life when it feels like the wind is howling around us. Thunder and lightning are crashing from all sides. The water is pouring down, cold and hard. We feel battered and are in desperate need of shelter. Anyone who has ever been caught out in an Oklahoma thunder storm knows exactly why this metaphor is used. The storms are hard, but many times good comes from them.

Have you ever had a storm in your life that caused you to reevaluate the way you did things? I have had many. Cancer, financial hardship, and lost friendships just to name a few. After these storms blew over I had a different perspective on things. Many things that I thought were important no longer were and that is OK. I needed the priority change. The storms left some wreckage, but they also washed a lot of things clean. There was a chance to start over at the storm’s end. The yard had been watered, so to speak.

I try to keep this perspective when it rains (in life and for real). I welcomed the rain today because the ground needed it very much. I welcome the rain in my life because it helps shape my character. I may not always like it when it is going on, but I know that it serves a purpose. Even if I can’t see it immediately.

David Willis Books, Faith, Lessons Learned

Now that is Weird.

For the past few weeks at church we have been involved in a series called Weird: Because normal isn’t working. Our pastor, Craig Groeshel (LifeChurch.TV), has been challenging the church to take a good look at what the world calls normal and urging us to be Weird in a good way. (In this context weird is a very good thing…keep reading). It has been an eye opening experience.

What is normal in America today? Normal is broke. Normal is fat. Normal is divorce. Normal is doing things because everyone else is doing them. Normal is depressed. Normal is stressed. Normal is without hope. Who wants to be normal? Not me.

We have been called by God to live differently than that. The key point that has been repeated over and over the past couple of weeks goes like this: If you want what normal people have do what normal people do. If you want what few people have do what few people do.

This is an issue that Marixa and I have become very passionate about over the last few months. (You can read her take on it here.) We have been evaluating what we do. Is it because it is the way it has always been done? Or because we have chosen to do it that way through thought and prayer? This relates to how we spend our money, how we treat our relationships, how we care for our bodies, and many other things.

I have a confession to make. I have been so normal in many areas of my life that it disgusts me. I have made some of the worst goofs with money that can be made, because it was normal. I have made some of the worst decisions with my health, because it is normal. I could go on for a while here. I have come to this conclusion: normal stinks.

Why do we fall into the rut of the normal? It is the path of least resistance. To be weird you have to work at it. You have to think about what you are doing. You have to walk a different path than those you disagree with. To be weird you have to do what few people do. That is the hard part. That is the rewarding part.

I am reading through Craig’s book of the same title. It is amazing how simple this stuff is and still so profound. Is your life overwhelmingly normal? Are you looking for something different? Want to be a little weird? Pick up the book and check out the sermon series at www.lifechurch.tv.