Recently in personal Category

While I was hanging out eating crawfish with the missus and her side of our family over the Easter break, I was asking myself what the big headline would be for my weekend. Would it be the charming Cajun tradition known as the crawfish boil? My experience of airplane rides, especially landings? The Easter Egg Hunt?

Then, I caught a fish.

I have never caught a fish before, you see. I fished once for about five minutes when I was in the fourth grade.

So when Holy Saturday began, and Terri's uncle, his son and daughter-in-law, my brother-in-law and I ventured into the waters of Bayou Du Large in deep Southeastern Louisiana, I assumed that I would spend most of my time watching. The few minutes I figured I would actually have a pole in my hand, I assumed I would just stand there leisurely and uneventfully.

Nope. When we stopped a pole was immediately placed in my hand.

Then my brother-in-law, who has already had to suffer through teaching me how to play golf, taught me how to bait and cast.

To bait, you have to feed the shrimp onto the hook such that the end of the hook pokes through the end of the tail, which is the strongest part. Makes sure your bait doesn't slip off your hook. No free rides for the fish.

To cast, as best I can understand it,

1. make sure you are facing the bank, about 20 or 30 yards out;
2. unclamp the line and unreel it so that you have about two feet hanging from the end of the pole;
3. hold the fishing line against the pole handle with your index finger;
4. pull back, then
5. throw forward, releasing the line at its highest point to get the most distance; and
6. once the bait hits the water, reclamp the line
7. If there's too much slack on the line, reel it in only enough to tighten the line, but not so much that the bait starts reeling back towards you. You want it as close to the bank as possible, because that's where the fish are.

Right, back to that. Now, for about an hour I'd say, I stood there trying to cast and mostly failing. Sometimes I threw forward and the line went nowhere because I had forgotten to unclamp it. "What the--?" I exclaimed to myself.

I unclamped the line, pulled back, and threw forward again. Every now and then I did it right. The bait would fly through the air and land just short of the bank and linger. After a few minutes I would see what I thought was a tug on the bait. Then, I would YANK the pole up as hard and as fast as I could. But what I thought was a bite was just a snag on a seaweed or the push of the current. But now the bait was outside where the fish were, so I would have to reel back and cast again.

At one point I got a pretty good cast off. It landed right near the bank. But at that point I was just muttering to myself. Something like this.

"Gah, this is so frustrating. I can't do anything right. I'll be lucky if I hook seaweed. What am I even doing out -- Hey where'd my bait go?"

I couldn't see my bait anymore. It had disappeared underwater.

I felt the tug on the line. Like so many times before, I yanked the pole upward, and this time it tensed and tugged bigtime.

Terri's uncle and I both saw something come flopping frantically out of the water for a split second.

"It's a flounder!" he said. "Reel! Reel!"

At that moment, the flounder and I were both hooked.

With the rod handle digging into my side, I reeled and pulled like every ounce of my own self-respect depended on it.

As it got closer and closer I could see the creature's panic rippling up to the murky surface. Terri's cousin got the net ready.

When the flounder came splashing up out of the water at the end of my line, it was like I had been born. Terri's cousin scooped it into the net, we unhooked it, and it went straight into the ice-chest.

Before that instant, I had never caught a fish, or successfully preyed upon any type of animal larger than an insect before. I was all that is man in that moment.

Course, I caught the fewest fish out of anyone on the boat. But still!

I've been thinking lately about the expression, and the book title, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff." I agree with that. But that does not mean small stuff is not important. Wherever we happen to find ourselves in life is typically not the result of one or a handful of big decisions, but a series of many small decisions.

For example: hoarding. I doubt that any person wakes up in the morning and says, "Hey, I'd like to live in a trash pile." The image we all have of a house inhabited by a hoarder is the result of many small decisions by the hoarder not to let go of things. On a less extraordinary level, a cluttered coffee table or a full sink is the result of several small decisions in the moment immediately after one eats to not clean up after oneself.

The exciting flipside is that what we consider to be the images of success -- be it financial or social or spiritual success, or all of these -- are also the result of a series of small decisions, made day after day. Decisions like whether to clean up after ourselves or put it off until next time. To watch TV or to keep working. To play Angry Birds before I go to sleep or to pray. To sleep in or go to class. To respond to setbacks by pitying oneself or by looking for opportunities within adversity. To respond to difficult people in kind or with kindness. To speak or to listen. To be restrained or to lash out.

These are not huge decisions. They're small ones. And we shouldn't sweat them, because sweating won't help us make the right decisions. But that doesn't mean they are not important.

Our interior spiritual life is like that coffee table. I have to ask myself constantly: How cluttered is it in there? How many embarrassments and hurt feelings and mea culpas over things I did or that happened to me years ago do I carry around in there instead of letting go? And what kinds of better things, how many friendships and moments of appreciation, do I miss because my mind is too crowded with grudges and complaints? Choosing to carry those things around, too, is not a big decision. It is a series of small decisions made day after day.

But that's great news. Because tomorrow we can make a small decision to let go, to clean off the coffee tables of our souls. It doesn't have to happen on a mountain top. Our souls are more beautiful than mountains. Small decisions that happen in small places in enough small moments over enough small days can lead to great happiness, for ourselves and our loved ones. Whoever is trustworthy in small things, is trustworthy in larger things also.

By the way I do not have a problem with Angry Birds. Actually I really enjoy it. It's just better to put it down sometimes.

I have never been to Connecticut. But I have some friends from there. Yesterday one of them acquainted me with a crucial piece of literature from the Constitution State called the Connecticut Etiquette Handbook.

How on earth did this come up in conversation you ask? Well, this friend, we'll call her EC, recently moved back to Connecticut from Austin, and is visiting friends for the week. Several of us had lunch together today at Thunderclouds. Great sandwiches.

By the way, ever notice that Connecticut is the only state in the union entirely composed of three complete words? Connect, I, Cut. Hmm.

Anyway, we ended up eating outside. In the shade. On stone benches.

Now, this is Texas. And it's late January. And while my iPhone tells me it's 68 degrees today, I'm pretty sure it was at least 15 or 20 degrees colder yesterday. And things that are made out of stone tend to exacerbate the cold. And it is also a truth universally acknowledged that a cold tush means a cold entire body.

Now, when I am cold, I tend to shiver and tap my feet.

My friend EC noticed that I was shivering and tapping my feet. And this apparently offended her. Because, you see, she is from the frozen, merciless tundra of Connect I Cut, where people spend three hours every day digging their cars out from beneath the wind-driven snow before expertly fish-tailing their way to work.

EC looked at me with disdain and disgust (is there a difference?). "You can't shiver! There's flowers on the ground!"

She pointed me to some beautiful sunflowers blooming in the sun near where we were eating.

It was at this moment that I first became aware of Connecticut Etiquette -- the all-important rules of conducting oneself in Connect I Cut and in the company of Connect I Cutters. (What are they really called? Connecticuttites? Connecticuties?) Included among these is, I discovered the hard way, the unbending law that if flowers are in bloom nearby, you shall not take any measures whatsoever to warm yourself.

On the surface I can see the rationale for such a rule. If its warm enough for flowers to bloom nearby, you'd have to be some kind of wussypants to be shivering, right? Au contraire, I contend that 1) we were in the several-degrees-colder shade a few feet away, and 2) the flowers were not sitting on stone benches, but rather were having their tushes warmed by the earth's crust.

I should point out that EC has denied the existence of a Connecticut Etiquette Handbook, but only after admitting to me and others present that a copy of it is given for free to native Connect I Cutters, of which she is one. But, "if you're not born there, you have to work for it," she said.

By the way, I have just now googled "connecticut etiquette" and discovered that there is in fact a Connecticut etiquette school: The Connecticut School of Etiquette! Check it out! Today's "Etiquetip":

"Don't reserve your best behavior for special occasions. You can't have two sets of manners, two social codes -- one for those you admire and want to impress and another for those whom you consider unimportant. You must be the same to all people." ~ Lillian Eichler Watson

By the by the way, I just looked it up and people from Connecticut are, in fact, known as "Connecticuters." I was close, baby! Also "Nutmeggers." Connecticut is also known as the "Nutmeg State" and the "Land of Steady Habits." And good manners!

The other day Terri and I were watching this reality show on MTV called "Sixteen and Pregnant." What's really ironic about that is, I'm willing to bet a lot of the girls in that show are pregnant, at least in part, BECAUSE of MTV. To sit through the commercial breaks that play during the show is to be confronted with the media imagery that influence these young people's behavior in ways that are permanently, life, altering. And then MTV makes a reality show out of their plight. It almost defines exploitation.

I think one of the reasons we so often abandon New Year Resolutions is because we make them based on results that feel good to imagine, not on work that feels good to undertake. So ultimately we abandon our resolutions for the same reasons we make them in the first place: it feels good at the time.

Another reason we abandon our resolutions is because, in a weird way, we don't forgive ourselves when we fail to hold true to our resolutions. A New Year Resolution is like a decision that we make to try to improve ourselves which, once we first lapse on it, we abandon until the start of the next calendar year. What I mean is, I think we abandon our New Year Resolutions too easily, after backsliding only a bit. If I resolve to lose weight, and find that I have gained weight in February, I abandon the resolution for the rest of the year. In Christian terms, that means I refuse to forgive myself and abandon myself to iniquity for the rest of the year. By forgiving ourselves, the way Jesus does, we can resolve ourselves to our goals once again, even if after we relapse in February. And then by December 31 something may have actually improved.

People often ask why there will be yet another season of this or that TV show which stopped being good a long time ago, or that is morally repugnant, or is just plain not good. The simple answer is the economic principle of supply and demand. As long as demand exists for stale, morally repugnant, or terrible television, big media producers will continue to pay for stale, morally repugnant, and terrible television -- because it makes money. The best way to ensure that a show does not return to the airwaves is to ensure that it stops making money -- i.e., to not watch it. I, for example, do not watch Jersey Shore.

Have you ever stood in line at the sandwich shop and found yourself just getting annoyed with the person standing behind you? Maybe they're standing in your space or they appear very grumpy or have their noses in the air. Perhaps they hit on some pet peeve of yours. Or maybe you don't even know why you are annoyed with the person.

That was me yesterday on my lunch break. So I wrote this prayer last night:

LORD --
I want to see the beauty in other people.
I want to see you, Lord Jesus, in the face of every person that I encounter.
I want that awareness to guide my every interaction with everyone in my life.
Even if they do not see you in themselves, or in anyone else, when I see a person, let me first see you.

Protect me from the tendency, which I know I have, to be annoyed, to draw conclusions, to nitpick, to silently criticize, and to dismiss.
Give me the grace, please, to reflexively be, when I meet someone, delighted, curious, affirming, forgiving, and welcoming --
just as you so constantly are, with me.

In your name I pray.
AMEN.

I'd be remiss if I did not mention that during our honeymoon in Italy Terri and I, for the first time in both our lives, got to see a Successor of St. Peter, live in living color.

We saw him on Wednesday, Nov. 10, for the papal audience. The pope holds a papal audience each week, which is attended by thousands of Catholics from all over the world, and I do mean all over.

Terri and I got "sposi novella" (newlywed) tickets. Terri and I were extra-pumped because at each of his audiences, the Holy Father blesses the marriages of the newlyweds in attendance.

We actually got front row seats, if you don't count the three or four rows of folding chairs that ushers set up in front of us after we walked in. Yeah the place was pretty packed.

We were in Paul VI hall, rather than the customary location which is St. Peter's Square outside. This because, of course, there was rain in the forecast.

For about two solid hours before Pope Benedict arrived the place steadily filled up. Terri and I sat next to two young Americans, recently engaged, who were studying abroad in Austria. They had been across the pond, so to speak, since the start of the fall semester. They loved the experience of being in Europe and experiencing the culture. But ...

"I'm ready to go back," the young man said. "It rains all the time here. It's depressing." After several months I can see how it might get that way.

The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, first spoke in St. Peter's Basilica right next door to Paul VI Hall. He delivered his address in Italian there. He then left there and Paul VI Hall became all abuzz with anticipation.

Terri and I had been informed that Pope Benedict would deliver his complete address first in Italian, and then a summary in other languages -- French, German, Spanish, English etc. The weekly audiences are not Masses. They are merely catechetical lessons led by the Holy Father.

Before the Holy Father entered Paul VI Hall, a handful of Swiss Guard took their positions on and around the stage. Yes, they look like circus performers. But do not mess with them. They carry spears, you see. And if you try to charge the Holy Father, these nice Swiss boys will skewer you like last night's kabobs. I don't say that from experience, but I assume it's the case.

When the Holy Father first walked in, the place erupted. And I must say, I've never heard so much jubilation for such a simple figure. I don't know about John Paul II or any other pope since I have never seen them in person, but about this pope I can plainly say: He is just a regular guy. There is nothing larger than life about the priest and teacher formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. He looks good in the white, of course. I just mean there is nothing dramatic or smug or holier-than-thou about him. Pomp surrounds him everywhere he goes. But he himself is not pompous. He's just an ordinary fella doing what he's been called to do by the Lord. That's a rarity in itself nowadays.

He just sat down in his chair at center stage and began reading his teaching for the week in the various languages. Some people from nations who spoke those languages would cheer when he began. He would smile and wave, then continue reading.

After reading the summaries in a couple of other European languages, the Holy Father began to speak in English. Terri and I still could not understand what on earth the Holy Father was saying. Don't get me wrong -- he could have started speaking Swahili and it still would have been flippin' sweet. Just, if you, dear reader, ever get to see Pope Benedict, don't expect to be able to understand anything the blessed man says unless you are fluent in German or some other language.

Here is the Holy Father's address in English from that day, Nov. 10. It was news to me when I read it.

After he was done with the teaching, the long part of the audience began. This is the part where clergy of various native tongues who work at the Vatican introduce the various international peoples to the Holy Father.

And let me tell you, we Americans may like to beat ourselves up here at home, but abroad, we are proud to be Americans. After a few other international groups were introduced, an English-speaking cleric introduced the various English-speaking people including from the UK, "the United States of America ..."

APPLAUSE ERUPTED from various cheering groups sprinkled throughout the auditorium! The poor cleric had to stop for a moment and let the cheers die down before proceeding to other English-speaking countries.

Terri and I did not participate in the ruckus. I just sort of smiled and nodded.

The Holy Father laughed and waved.

And that was just the beginning! After that general introduction the English-speaking cleric proceeded to introduce particular parish or diocesan groups from the United States.

I should mention at this point that it is not uncommon for church groups from around the world, when they are singled out for introduction to the Holy Father, to sing a little worship song as an act of special greeting to the pope. However, the longest and most obnoxious songs of greeting were all by parish and diocesan groups from the Land of the Free. One of them took at least six or seven minutes. It started off fine, but around minute 4 you could see the thousands of other people in the room start to shift in their seats, including Terri and me.

Then the Holy Father led a closing prayer, and before you knew it, it was a wrap.

But wait, Terri and I wondered, what about the newlywed blessing? We were not sure we ever actually heard it. Did he do it in the basilica before he came to Paul VI Hall? (The blessing still would have applied to us in that case, but we just didn't know if he had.) Do we have to walk up to him in person to receive it? Or did he say it already and we just couldn't tell?

Take a guess.

I ran down a Swiss Guard (they are all known polyglots -- and this one did not have a spear) and asked him if the Holy Father had blessed the marriages.

"Yes," he said. "At the very end."

"Oh... Okay great! Thanks!"

I walked back to my wife. "Yeah, he did, at the very end."

Terri smiled. "Oh good!"

Now that you know all about the insane roads of Rome, here's a look at some of the stuff the missus and I saw while we were there.

The very first thing we did when we arrived in Rome, as much because we were fighting off jet lag as because I was very eager to see it, was walk a couple of miles from our hotel to Vatican City. I'm not sure what I can say about the place that people don't already know about it.

When you're standing in St. Peter's Square, it will seem a little surreal. The place is huge, of course. It's kind of like standing on a really holy football field made out of cobblestone, surrounded by pillars and giant holy statues, with a fountain at midfield. Once you're inside St. Peter's Basilica, you will feel like you're inside another holy football stadium. And that may not be doing it justice.

Almost immediately when you walk into the main nave of the basilica, to your right you will see Michelangelo's Pieta. The sculptural masterpiece used to be displayed openly to passers by, but is behind bulletproof glass now. The sculpture, which depicts the Virgin Mary holding Jesus' body after his crucifxion and death, was attacked on Pentcost Sunday in 1972.

I could go on about all the stuff you will see in the Vatican. Just a couple more quick observations. If you go down below to see the papal tombs, you will notice that while popes of years past had tombs that were sculptures of themselves. Very detailed and ornate. John Paul II has a simple marble slab for his tomb. People passing through stop to pray in front of it. I did briefly. Won't ever forget it.

You may not get to see the tomb of St. Peter directly, but you will get to be right on top of it.

Words cannot describe what it is like to stand in the Sistine Chapel and look up at those two fingers nearly touching. ... Be prepared though. The place will be packed with people. There is supposed to be silence in there at all times and absolutely no photographs. If you don't know this at the moment you walk through the doors you will know it a few seconds later, because the handful of guards on hand will be constantly saying, at various decibal levels, "Shhh!" and "No foto!"

But that won't matter when you're standing in there looking up at that ceiling, and when you realize that this is the room where the new pope is selected. In one corner of the chapel is actually the "Room of Tears," where the new pope goes to weep after his number gets called.

Now, the Vatican was amazing from beginning to end. The thing about the Vatican though is that you EXPECT it to be amazing. Most people don't go to the Vatican expecting it to be some kind of ho-hum tourist experience. It'sa the frickin' VATICAN.

What's almost more surprising is when you're on your way from the Trevi Fountain to the Pantheon or wherever, and you get tired of looking for the place, so you decide to just duck into this whatever church right here, nestled in between buildings that line a narrow city street. So you walk nonchalantly into this church and it's FREAKIN' ... HUGE. You thought this was just another church, and yeah, it pretty much is just another church -- in Rome. But in ROME, "just another church" is a freakin' huge church. Sure there are some smaller ones, but by in large, you will come to expect that the church you walk into is basically giant.

And the stuff you see in them is amazing as well.

The most jaw-dropping thing I saw was the tomb of St. Paul at his church -- the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, in Rome. On display right next to that tomb, were a set of prisoner's chains. According to an undisputed tradition, those chains were the chains that made Paul a prisoner of the Roman Empire. When I saw this, I realized that St. Paul did with his life what I would much like to do with mine -- he wrote well about Jesus, and he did it without fear. I asked him to intercede for me, that God might give me the grace to do likewise.

All these churches are packed with stuff. I say "stuff," but what I mean is basically treasures -- and not just gold-plated stuff, although there is surely lots of that. I mean saints' relics, sculptures, paintings, Catholic religious iconography of every sort. It's almost too much to process. You can expect to see the phrase "AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA" ("Hail Mary full of grace") quite often in these places. And then there's the chapels that run along the sides of the churches' main sanctuaries. Almost every church has half a dozen to a dozen mini-churches. I call them "mini", but they are often huge in their own right!

Oh, and Jesus Christ is there, too. In some of those ancillary chapels, they will have adoration -- the holy Eucharist exposed on the altar for Catholic faithful to worship and pray before.

What you won't find in many of these holy Houses of God, is a bathroom. Go to the gelato place next door.

So the missus and I just got back from our honeymoon in Italy, specifically Rome and Florence. It was my first time overseas. It is a trip I would absolutely make again. We had a fantastic time. The places and sights were incredible.

Before I get into that, though, I feel the need to let you, dear reader, know a few things about the general Roman sight-seeing experience itself. If you've been there already, then you already know what I'm about to say. If not, lend me your reading eyes.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "All Italian drivers are crazy -- including me." That was the guy driving Terri and me to the train station in Rome to head for Florence. He spoke the best English Terri and I heard all week from a European, all while zipping through the insane road system of Rome.

And yes, those roads are crazy. Anyone who google maps Rome will see that it is clearly not a grid system. Imagine taking a bunch of uncooked spaghetti noodles of varying lengths and throwing them onto a table. That is Rome's road system. There is, in my experience, nothing in Rome like Austin's Lamar or Houston's Westheimer. The closest thing may be the Fori Imperiali, which connects the Colosseum and the Roman Forum -- although even that stretch of road can be a crapshoot. In Rome, there is basically no such thing as following this road or that "all the way until you get" ... anywhere. Often you will follow a road for a little while and then it will become five roads.

I tell you this not to discourage you, but to urge you to enjoy the experience of getting lost in Rome. Because believe me, if you try to walk everywhere -- say, from the Trevi Fountain to St. Paul's Basilica, you will get lost. You will walk outside and have no idea which way is north. You will ask a native for directions. (Remember this phrase: "Doe-VAH lay" meaning "where is...") He or she will give you directions. You will follow those directions to the best of your ability as a reasonable, thinking person. It won't matter. Five minutes later you will not know where you are and will ask someone else for directions.

Don't get mad when that happens. Embrace the obliteration of your inner compass! Find a nice gelatteria and everything will be all right. You may have a hard time finding the Colosseum, but you won't have a hard time finding gelatto, or authentic Italian pizza. Both are everywhere.

What you won't find is a free parking spot. (Not that it will matter for you. You will be walking, cabbing, or busing everywhere.) Almost every road is lined in full with parallel parked cars. Double parking is commonplace. Driveways will be partially blocked. Some of them will have their passenger-side wheels on the curb. Or the driver side wheels. That's another thing. You know how in the United States all the parallel cars have to face the same direction? Not in Italy. In fact, you will come across Smart Cars that are parked perpendicular to the curb. AND THEY FIT.

Oh and let's not forget the scooters. Those are parked just everywhere. Along the sidewalk. ON the sidewalk. Up in the trees, practically. Almost always closely packed together. They are the sardines of Roman roads.

(If you absolutely do not want to get lost, your best bet is to take a cab. Yeah, it costs a bit. The starting fare is EU2.80, and it will go up ten cents every 30 seconds or so. But in my mind it's worth it just to get where you know you want to go next. If not that, you can learn the bus system.)

But to return to our masterful English-speaking driver's observation -- Italian drivers are crazy. I know in America we call the learning process "defensive" driving. I doubt that's what they call it in Italy.

In Italy, it doesn't really matter what the speed limit is. If you have 20 meters of empty asphault in front of you, you floor it for 19 and a half. That's just how it works. The white lines that mark the asphault, be they dotted or solid, really are just guidelines there. You will see massive circular turnarounds that have absolutely no lane demarkation.

What we in America refer to as "cutting someone off" happens in Italy all the time. If there is more than one car-length between two cars, that space will be filled by a merging vehicle. Italian's have amazing depth perception. They have the ability to drive 45, 50 miles per hour, literally inches away from pedestrians.

But Italian drivers, as far as Terri and I could tell, are not ANGRY. Crazy, yes, but not angry. In America, we get angry when we get behind the wheel. We take offense to someone else cutting us off. I know I do. But not Italians. We heard from multiple people there that Italians don't believe in "lines," in the right of getting somewhere first just because you were on the road first. Nope. In America, we have this sense of "I was here first, and you have no right to cut in front of me," a first-come first-serve mentality. Not there. It's much more, to use Eddie Izzard's words, "relaxed and groovy."

Yes, a strange dichotomy. Crazy on one hand, but relaxed and groovy on the other. Crazy in the way they drive, but relaxed and groovy in the way they respond when other people drive the same way they do. In some ways it is less hypocritical than the way of driving I encounter in my native country -- and yes, sometimes practice myself. What right do I, driving crazy, have to expect others to drive reasonably? I hope to never drive the way Italians do. But I hope I can imitate them in responding to other drivers.

No, you cannot borrow my iPhone. And here's why.

It's flu season again and it seems like the biggest carrier of germs could be that sleek little smartphone you just can't live without.

That's right. Personal touch-screen devices like iPhones, iPads, Droids and BlackBerrys carry more germs than a toilet in a subway bathroom, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology.

And that's not even the half of it. The study also found that these devices are so good at spreading viruses, that sharing them may be as bad as sneezing in someone's face.

Awesome! What a great excuse to be inexcusably stingy with the greatest $200 I've ever spent!

The person who should be most concerned about this: my beautiful wife. So she can check her email, she has asked to borrow my iPhone at least 100 times in the three weeks since we've been hitched.

Because I love her so much, I routinely pause whatever app I happen to be playing at the time so she can do so. But now, because I love her so much, I will have to tell her to just pull out her laptop. You wouldn't want me to sneeze in your face, now would you, honey?

I'm getting married in thirty days.

...

Sorry I had to read that sentence a few times before moving on.

My fiancé and I have been engaged to be married since late last year. I had been told by a recently married couple early on that as the time approached, we would get antsier and antsier. "Let's just get hitched already!" we would say.

Well, they were correct. I'm ready to be Terri's husband and I don't want to wait any longer. I don't even want to wait five minutes.

But I can't help remembering St Paul's words: "Love is patient."

Patience isn't just about learning to wait it out. It's about learning to make the most out of the time you have to wait. In my earlier life I did not think it would take until my 29th year to get married.

But God wanted me to do some things during those years that I could not have done had I married at 21 or 22. And I like to think I did at least some of them.

Moreover, had I forced myself to get married back then, I would have completely missed out on Terri, whom I didn't even know back then. That's why we must rely on God's timing. Because he is the only one who KNOWS the timing.

But I digress.

Too many people spend their lives just waiting, saying "Someday, someday my dream will come." Don't.

Live. The way God wants you to live. You and I have zero days to wait before we can live our lives where we are to the absolute full.

If I had spent the last 29 years just waiting for God to bless me, not seeking his will in my life, I think I would have a lot longer to wait today.

Now, all I have to do is figure out what he would like me to do with the next 30 days. And I better. Or I might lose my mind.