Practice Your Best

          Today I want to talk about change, loving, and allowing.

Some people make waves and some people make way for things to happen.

          Some people make waves that slow down everybody and every thing. Some people make the way clear for themselves and others to move forward.

          If you wanted to experience health, would you study disease?

          If you wanted joy, would you study depression?

          If you wanted to have a happy marriage, you’d study divorce, right?

          This is the way the world approaches life. We study weaknesses and try to improve or eradicate them in order to have a positive experience.

          This, it seems to me, is how many of us approach our walk along our spiritual path.

          Is this what you’ve been doing… studying your weaknesses in order to bolster your strength?

          Does knowing what does not work make what does work, work?

          Study/ practice what does work in whatever it is you wish to accomplish. “What doesn’t work” will become evident because it will be in glaring contrast to what does work – you won’t have to wonder.

          Sometimes we make the same old decisions that are driven by our weaknesses.  It seems easier, but is it? Is it easier to make the same old choices and stay where we are in awareness when we long for a different experience?   

          Some people say it’s easier to make the wrong decision than it is to make the right decision. In other words it’s easier to do the thing I want to do even though it’s not the thing I know I need to do.

          Really? Is it really easier to do things the same old way that bring the same old results to you in your life… when what you really want is to have a different experience? 

We never get anywhere keeping on with the same attitudes and actions… and we never get anywhere with a defeatist attitude, either.

          I want to share a story with you about the great poet Maya Angelou. When she was young, her grandmother raised her in Stamps, Arkansas. Her
grandmother had a particular routine when people who were known to be whiners entered her store. Whenever the grandmother saw a complainer
coming, she would call Maya from whatever she was doing and say, “Sister, come inside, come.”

Maya said, “Of course, I would obey. My grandmother would ask the customer, ‘How are you doing, today, Brother Thomas?’”

“The person would reply, ‘Oh, not so good.’ There would be a distant whine in the voice. ‘Not so good, today, sister Henderson. It’s this summer heat. I hate it so much, it frazzles me up and it frazzles me down. I just hate the heat. It is almost killing me.’

“Then my grandmother would stand, her arms folded, and mumble, ‘Uh huh, uh huh.’ She would then cut her eyes to me to make certain that I heard the lamentation.

“Another time, a whiner would moan, ‘Oh, I just hate plowing. That packed down dirt, it ain’t got no reasoning; the mules ain’t got no good sense.  It’s killing me. I can never seem to get it done. My feet, my hands are sore; I get dirt in my eyes, and I get dirt up my nose. I just can’t stand it. It is killing me.’

“My grandmother again with her arms folded would stand there and say, ‘Uh huh, uh huh.’ Then she would look at me and nod.

“As soon as the complainer was out of the store, my grandmother would call me to stand in front of her and then she would say the same thing she had said a thousand times before. ‘Sister, did you hear what brother complained about?’

“I would nod, ‘Yes, Grandma.’

“Grandma would continue, ‘Sister, there were people who went to sleep last night, all over the world – rich and poor, black and white – they will never wake up again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not. Those dead folks would give anything for just five minutes of this weather, or ten minutes of plowing the person was grumbling about. You watch yourself about complaining, Sister. What you are supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.’”

I recently was counseling someone who said it was hard for them to change because they were stubborn.

Let me tell you how I see “stubborn” in that context: stubbornness is not weakness, stubbornness is misused strength.

It takes a lot of strength to dig your heals in and fight against the pulls and pushes of life and other people (not to mention our own inner struggles). Stubbornness to move off your position when deep down inside you want to is the misuse of strength. 

So, if you’re stubborn, please know that you do have the strength to change. Redirect that strength and it will work for you instead of against you.

In the book of Mark there is a story about the disciples following Jesus on the way. “Then they came to Capernaum; and when He was in the house He asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.’ Then He took a little child and put it among them; and taking the child in His arms, He said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in My name welcomes Me, and whoever welcomes Me welcomes not Me, but the one who sent Me.’”

They were not enjoying the way, they were arguing on the way. Can you hear them now? “Well, I’m the greatest because Jesus likes me best.”

“Oh no,” another says, “I’m the greatest because Jesus said this to me three weeks ago.”

Another one said, “Well, I’m the greatest because last night at dinner it was Jesus who asked me to sit next to him.”

Jesus was saying you must love others. I interpret the idea of the first being last and being the servant of all this way: you know that I like to suggest we have the “human being” thing backwards, that we put emphasis on our humanness and our personality as our primary identity. We think we are our bodies. I think the instruction here is that we put the idea that we are primarily human behind the idea that we are Being. In other words, put what was first (human) last and let our personalities and our bodies carry out our spiritually inspired direction/ instruction.

The child represents innocence (purity, incorruptibility, virtue, blamelessness, i.e. God’s Love). Whoever welcomes God’s Love welcomes God, and the way you do that is by extending Love… by living from your Being first.

Rather than exalt yourself; express your gratitude to God. Again, we do this by living from our Being first. This is living from strength first.

I have an “earthly” story here that represents how living from strength serves us best. Leo Hauser tells it in the book, “Five Steps to Success.” The story is about Jim Kaat. Kaat traces his success back to spring training in 1966. The Twins had acquired a new pitching coach, Johnny Sain, who silently watched the pitchers perform. One by one, he called them in for a personal chat.

“Jim,” said Sain, “I’ve been watching you pitch. What are your four best pitches?”

Kaat, knowing his pitching ability well, responded, “Well, my best pitch is my fast ball, then it would be my curve, my slider, and my change-up.”

Sain said, “What pitch do you spend the most time practicing?”

“My slider and my change-up,” said Kaat. “If I could improve those two pitches, I know I could have a good season.”

Sain looked at Kaat, pondering his comments, then he responded, “I see it a little bit differently, Jim. I want you to take a different approach. Work on your fast ball. I know it is your favorite pitch, so go out there and practice and warm up during the games concentrating on your fast ball.

Throw your fast ball 80% to 90% of the time, all year long, and you are going to win a lot of games.”

Kaat left Sain’s office stunned. He had expected expert tips on improving his change-up or his slider. At least Sain could have provided technical advice on smoothing out his curve ball. Telling him to do more of what he already did best didn’t make much sense.

That season, Kaat threw fast ball after fast ball. He thought his arm was going to fall off, but he heeded the advice. That year, 1966, Jim Kaat won 25 games and went on to become pitcher of the year in the American League.

(As an aside. Only 87 other pitches have won more than 25 games in a year since 1900. The chance of a pitcher winning that many games this year is less than 1%!)

My friends, we tend to practice what we are not good at. Practice instead the easiest thing in the world. That is loving yourself, and loving other people. You will realize it is your greatest strength. Even if you’ve underutilized it to this point, or you think you’ve never utilized it, it always has been your greatest strength. If you do this one thing, you will become God's way-maker.

Kathy Lamancusa (Kathy Lamancusa, a nationally known trend strategist, inspirational speaker, She is the founder and editor of the annual magazine "Quilts Are Forever,” and a frequent visitor on HGTV, etc.) tells of her son Joey. When he was born, his feet were twisted upward with the bottoms resting on his tummy. As a first time mother, she thought this looked a bit odd, but she didn’t really know what it meant. It meant that Joey had been born with club feet. The doctors assured her that with treatment he would be able to walk normally, but would never run very well. Joey spent the first three years of his life in surgery, casts, and braces. His legs were massaged; they were worked and exercised. By the time he was seven or eight years old, you would not even know he had a problem when he walked.

If he walked great distances, like at amusement parks, or on a visit to the zoo, he complained that his legs were tired and that they hurt. They would stop walking and talk a break for a soda or an ice cream cone and talk about what they had seen, what they had to see. She said, “We didn’t tell him why his legs hurt and why they were weak. We didn’t tell him that
this was expected due to his deformity at birth. We didn’t tell him so he didn’t know.

“The children in the neighborhood ran around as most children do during play. Joey would watch them play and of course, would jump right in and run and play, too. We never told him he probably wouldn’t be able to do
that, to run as well as the other children. We didn’t tell him he was different. We didn’t tell him so he didn’t know.

“In the seventh grade, he decided to go out for the cross country team. Every day, he trained with the team. He seemed to work harder and to run more than the others. Perhaps he sensed that the abilities which seemed to come naturally to so many others did not come naturally to him. We didn’t tell him that although he could run, he probably would always remain at the back of the pack. We didn’t tell him that he shouldn’t expect to make the team. The team runners are the top seven runners of the school. Although the entire team runs, it is only those seven who have the
potential to score points for the school. We didn’t tell him that probably he would never make the team. And so he didn’t know.

“He continued to run four or five miles a day, every day. I’ll never forget the time when he had 103-degree fever. He couldn’t stay home
because he had a cross country practice and I worried about him all day long. I expected to get a call from the school asking me to get him and
take him home. No one called.

“I went to the cross country training area after school thinking that if I were there, he might decide to skip practice that evening. When I got to school, he was running alongside of a tree-lined street, all alone. I pulled up alongside of him and drove slowly to keep pace with him as he ran. I asked how he felt. “Okay,” he said. He had only two more miles to go. As the sweat rolled down his face, his eyes were glassy from his fever, yet he looked straight ahead and kept running. We never told him that he couldn’t run four miles with 103-degree fever. We never told him so he didn’t know.

“Two weeks later, the day before the second to the last race of the season, the names of the team runners were called. Joey was number six on the list. Joey had made the team. He was in seventh grade; the other six team members were all eighth graders. We never told him that he probably shouldn’t expect to make the team. We never told him that he couldn’t do it, so he didn’t know. He just did it.”

Friends, as humans, we have a tendency to give others our opinion. How much better to give others a piece of God's opinion - which is always optimistic, always positive. God would say to Joey, “Yes there is a WAY! No matter what you have, no matter what obstacle you have faced, no matter what block has come in your life, through My power you can do all things.”

And so it is.