Fear. Productivity practically demands you face various types of fears each and every day. It might be the fear of imperfection. There is that project you have avoided because you are afraid it won't turn out perfectly. The fear of incompetence is another. You delay writing that paper due to a lack of ignorance of the subject. But there is another fear I have found in my own heart that often ruins my productivity.
All of these images should evoke a different emotion and response, that's the intention. Even as we see the church depicted in ways designed to illicit positive emotions, the reality can be quite different. And this past year was no different...
Needless to say I had to address the issue. But I wasn't sure how. So I asked the expert (no not youtube), my brother in law. I wasn't sure if caulking was a good choice, or if clear was the right way to go, but I trusted his advice. Why? Simple - I trusted him.
We don't want the deeper interactions we have to be like a game of "whack-a-mole", every time a kid comes up, conversation stops, we "whack" the apparent need, and move on. This is no way to have good meaningful dialogue with those we care about and love.
The primary reason my training in track was astounding, was because of my coach. Training was his thing. He wanted us not just to run faster and better - his goal was for us to know how and why we could run faster. The same must be true in our parenting...
When I eat too much from the top of the food pyramid, it's not healthy. When I starve my body of the foundational elements, it can be damaging. If this is true of our bodily diets, cannot we not apply the same framework to our intake of knowledge and information.
Preacher on the Run... 