Quick Read 1: Who Do You Play For?

One of my favorite moments from any movie comes from Disney's "Miracle," the movie about the US men's hockey team. 

Now, I do love sports, but I really don't like hockey, so there must be something else to this movie. There is. 

In my favorite scene, the coach is having all the players skate a whole bunch as punishment (it looked hard, but I'm from Texas and we don't ice skate so I don't know). Anyway, the reason the coach was punishing them was for failing to play together. 

See, the members of the U.S. hockey team were the best players from the best colleges, so there were some natural rivalries. Coach would ask his players, "What's your name, and who do you play for?" Time after time, the player would answer with their name and "Boston College" or "Minnesota" and immediately be punished by the coach. 

The best moment happens as one player figures it out and says, "Mike Eruzione. I play for the United States of America!" 

That's what it was all about. The coach just wanted them to play as a team, but first they had to realize what team they were on! Sometimes we struggle with this, there are different churches and schools we attend or club teams we play for, but is that the REAL team we're on? 

Nope. We're hand picked by Jesus Christ to come and play for God's team. He wants YOU to play for Him, and work together with other Christians. That can't happen if we hang on to our differences and fail to recognize the end goal: spreading God's word and His love. 

"May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God."

(Romans 15:5-7 ESV)

Delicious Cobb Salad

I'll be honest. 

Not now, but eventually.

 I don't really know what Cobb Salad is, I assume it has something to do with lettuce and corn. 

What's important is that it's food, I think. I've never eaten a Cobb salad but judging from Google images, it looks pretty neat. Cobb salad is healthy, you can tell that it's healthy because it's got "salad" at the end and all salad is healthy. 

Why are we talking about food? 

Because I'm hungry, duh. 

Anywho, I recognize that everyone comes from a different background, but let's all take a trip back in time to our respective childhoods. Don't like time travel? Pardon me. Don't like your childhood? Imagine someone else's. Don't like questions? Don't, you know, be so weird. 

Alright then, let's remember dinner time. 

*This is the part where you remember it and you're like, "Oh Brussel sprouts... So Brussel-y, so sprouty..."* 

As a kid, little baby Levi, I always knew what was for dinner. I always knew the main course, the sides, the drinks we were going to have. I loved dinner because dinner was always the best meal. There was a good reason for this: my mom made dinner, we typically made our own lunch. Mom was a great cook, still is, but she really made dinner a great experience. Pot roast, king ranch chicken casserole, home made enchiladas, pizza, stir fry, INFINITY CHEESE LASAGNA... It was the best. 

But here's the thing: most everything she cooked was pretty dang nutritious. She was big on vegetables, studied the food guide pyramid, did just about everything to make sure we, her kids, were eating healthy. That's pretty impressive. 

But, here's another thing: despite her or my dad's instruction on what to eat and how much, we could always screw it up and make it unhealthy. See, stir fry is healthy if you eat the right sized portion; if you go overboard, that's a lot of sodium and that's unhealthy. (And that's a run-on sentence). The key is portion control, staying in the parameters of what is recommended. 

Okay, that's a looooong intro to basically say this: consume healthy. Healthily? Healthfully? Whatever. 

It's very simple, but also very easy to mess up. You KNOW going into dinner that eating five pounds worth of melted cheesy goodness is a very bad thing, but, gosh darn it, it just tastes so good. You know you shouldn't drink like any egg nog ever, but you do because it tastes like Christmas. Don't judge me. 

So, look at it this way. Your life, and everyone else's life for that matter, is a table set with a multitude of different plates to eat off of. I suppose you could say that it's all part of one big plate, but I like to compartmentalize things, and that's what I'll do. 

Free time for me is possibly my most unhealthy plate. I know that it needs to be filled with healthy things like reading the Bible, praying, or just resting, but often times I fill it with video games, movies, writing dumb little paragraphs on blogs, twitter, or anything else that's really worthless. When I'm at work, I know that my time is best spent doing what my boss asks, being attentive to customers and letting them talk to me, but sometimes I spend it being snarky, making up excuses, or just being negative. With everything I do, there are more than a few healthy things I can fill my plate with, as well as more than a few unhealthy things. It's up to me to decide what to fill my plate with. Ultimately, my decisions on what I consume will determine how healthy I am. 

Which brings me back to a prior point about my mom: she always made it possible for us to be healthy. And, try as she may, there was no way to force us into a balanced diet. The same applies with our Heavenly Father. Now, He gives us every opportunity to fill our plates with healthy things, it just takes realizing the importance of being Healthy in Him. Not like, "do the right thing and you won't get sick and you'll be rich," more like, "do what you can to honor the God who made everything possible." 

Mouth Stuff:

“Don’t you realize that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated? But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a man." (Matthew 15:17, 18 HCSB)

But He answered, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4 HCSB)

So, what do your plates look like? Do you need to go on a diet, so to speak? I do. 

Be healthy, my friends. 

-Levi

The Most Perfect Plan

Story time!! 

Whoa, that was exciting, right? Exactly, man, it's like "woo!" ya know? Like, "dang, I just looked at 43 pictures of kittens in a variety of baskets" kind of exciting. Okay, now that you're prepared, let's boogie. 

*proceeds to boogie without regard for humanity or surrounding*

I do have a bit of a story to tell, but it kind of has to involve a ton of other people. I've had a super hard time puttin this into words, but that's okay because there may not be very many people who read this anyway (#sadtweet). 

So, Sunday, May the 25th, I proposed to my girlfriend Brianne. She said "yes!" kind of. She really was crying a lot, but she shook her head up and down, so I think that's a yes. Afterwards, we had a semi-surprise engagement party for her/us. And guess what? 

*you guess what, do it now* 

That's right, it was a day that I've relived every day since(that's only been a week, but still). It was one of those moments that, as it happens, you recognize the potential effect that it'll have on your life before anything even comes to fruition. As I knelt down to ask her the question, I knew she was gonna say yes, I knew the people watching me make the biggest life decision yet were going to be happy for us, I knew we were going to get married in about a year, and I knew that God was going to guide us every step of the way. 

The moment was perfect; better than I could have imagined. But, I didn't know how I was going to get to the moment. All I knew going into the service that Sunday night at 6 was that I was going to play piano, sing a song, sit down, and wait until the right time. I had planned this out several weeks in advance: I was going to propose at the end of the service and then we were going to have a surprise party after, with the great help of Mary, Jaime and Jessica Hall, and Sherry Woods. I would have known everything and the exact agenda of the service if not for one hiccup: Teddy Turrentine. 

See, when I brought up the idea to Teddy  on our trip to El Salvador, he thought it was a great idea and told me to let him know when. I did. May 18th came around, I asked Brianne's father permission to ask her to marry me, he said, "get off my lawn and go home," and then I cried. 

Kidding, but you believed it. 

Anyway, Mr. Woods said yes and I immediately emailed Teddy, "we're on for next week!" To which he replied, "ok sounds good." 

No, no... 

"So, what's the plan teddy? I was thinking we could do such and such and Kyle and Kenneth could do a song as I propose what do you think?" 

"Leave the planning to me, I've got it covered." 

Okay so this is the point where I'm like, "Oh, that Teddy, always a-jokin!" 

Then comes Monday... Wednesday... Friday... I still don't know the plan and I'm getting engaged in 2 days... Saturday I see him at a wedding:

"Hey man, what's the plan? I'M GOING TO DIE!" 

(Btw, I'm pretty cool under pressure.) 

He smiles.. "Don't you worry your little head, I've got this. Trust me." 

HA! HO HO HA HA!! 

On the way back home from the wedding, I was considerably nervous. We had a service that night and it was wonderful. The next morning I woke up and went to and Teddy asked me to have the band ready to play a couple of songs. I replied like a normal adult would, "Oh sure just do a couple songs on the night I'm proposing? No problem sure that's cool!!" 

Still had no idea how it was all going down. 

I practice for that service with the ring in my pocket, hid it behind the pulpit and waited for the service. Agonizing. 

Then, Teddy delivered the best sermon on marriage I've heard. Then, Teddy called up couples one by one and had them tell of their engagements. Then, Teddy called us up and said, "Levi, the floor is yours."  

It was perfect. Looking back, it was THE ONLY way it could've happened. It was the fulfillment of every feeling and emotion in the last four years of our relationship. 

So, what's the moral here? That I get what I want and everything always works out? NOPE.  

I get to marry Bri, she gets to marry me, and we share this incredible experience, for sure. But it also taught me a valuable lesson: God's plan is greater. 

Just because I knew what the end goal was doesn't mean I knew how it was going to happen. I knew when, where, why, what, and who, but I didn't know the how. I feel like that's where a lot of us are in our walk with God, with our direction in life, even. We maybe know what we want to do with ourselves, we see the end goal coming into focus more and more, but for the life of us we can't figure out how in the world it'll happen. I've had this talk over and over and over again: "I know what I want to do, but I don't know how to skip all this junk and just get there already!"

I'm that way. Frustrated, confused, impatient, etc... Pretty dumb haha. 

I don't know, what will happen in the coming years, but I know where I'll end up and that's serving God. I'm doing my best at that right now, but I know it'll grow if I continue in faith. Just like Teddy perfectly illustrated for me, though, it's better to trust that God has a perfect plan and keep quiet, than say you trust Him but demand the blueprint anyway. What kind of faith is that? It's not. Thank God that He looks out for us anyway. Thank God that He still gives immeasurably more despite us. 

And thank God I get to marry Brianne Woods.