Posts tagged as:

Rejection

Choosing Your Regrets

by Andy Wood on August 29, 2011

in Following Your Passion,Hoarders,Life Currency,Love,LV Cycle,Pleasers

Ronnie Blair spent a lifetime waiting for the perfect moment.  And he never seemed to find it.

He waited to ask Lisa Crane to the Senior Prom.  Ricky Styles beat him it to it.  Now they’re married with two kids and a third one on the way.

He waited to apply for the college scholarship from his father’s employer; didn’t want to appear too eager, he said.  He missed the deadline.

He waited for the perfect job to present itself upon graduation, and in the process passed up three good choices.  He wound up taking an entry-level hourly position not even in his field.

He waited for the perfect time to ask Leanne Wilson to marry him, and to her it seemed as though he was afraid of commitment.  They wound up possibly the only couple in town who got engaged as the result of an argument.

In Ronnie’s life, the pattern was always the same.  [click to continue…]

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Tracing the Rainbow Through the Rain – Life After Rejection

by Andy Wood on July 1, 2011

in Life Currency,Love,LV Stories

You wouldn’t have wanted to trade places with George.  But bad as it was, when all was said and done, I don’t know that he’d have wanted to trade places with you, either.  Years ago George Matheson was ushered into new dimensions of faith, understanding, and intimacy with the Lord.  But the price he paid was beyond expensive.

It all began with the brutality of rejection.

George had his future shining in front of him.  He was engaged to be married, and was pursuing a career and calling in ministry.  But that bright future began to dim – literally – when George began going blind.  When his fiancé learned that the doctors gave him no hope for a cure, she ended the engagement, saying she couldn’t go through life taking care of a blind man.

I don’t know of a loneliness more devastating and bitter than that of rejection.  Matheson had to learn to do without a woman he had come to feel he couldn’t live without.  What’s more, he had to live with the piercing thoughts that taunted him incessantly: [click to continue…]

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Call Him Benjamin

by Andy Wood on September 1, 2010

in Five LV Laws,Life Currency,LV Cycle,Principle of Abundance,Waiting,Words

Call him Benjamin. 

Nice Hebrew name for this fictional, but oh-so-real young man who lived outside of Jerusalem in the first century.  Benjamin is 20 years old, and his family raised him in a typical Jewish home.

Until that day. [click to continue…]

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Graduate Level Problem Solving

by Andy Wood on July 27, 2010

in Insight,Life Currency,LV Cycle,Protecting Your Investment

In the 2004 version of The Alamo, there’s this scene where Billy Bob Thornton, as Davy Crockett, looks over the fort wall at Santa Anna’s approaching horde.  There, standing next to Colonel Travis, Crockett mutters grimly… “We’re gonna need a lot more men.” 

Sam Houston… we’ve got a problem.

Problems come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Oh, to have the impossible-looking situations we faced in third or seventh grade!  But every now and then, you and I are faced with circumstances that go beyond a headache or a flat tire.

We’re in grad school, friends.  And we’re getting the third degree. [click to continue…]

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PS2 – The Prodigal Son Sequel

by Andy Wood on July 12, 2010

in Five LV Laws,Gamblers,LV Alter-egos,Principle of Freedom,Tense Truths

(Here’s a parable that didn’t quite make it to the Bible.  It’s a follow-up to the story of the Prodigal Son.  In case you missed that first episode, you can find it by clicking here.)  

When last we heard from the Prodigal Son, his loving father, and his older brother, Dad was appealing to the older sibling to come join the party.

“All that I have is yours,” he was saying – which was technically true, since the younger brat had wasted all of his part of the inheritance.

By and by, life settled down.  The older brother continued to do well, and was admired by all for his performance.  The younger son got with the program – for the most part.  Occasionally his friends and family could see some of those old streaks of self-will-run-riot in him.  But for the most part, he lived in great gratitude for his father’s forgiveness and restoration. [click to continue…]

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The Bus

by Andy Wood on March 27, 2010

in Esteem,Life Currency,Tense Truths

Inspired by an analogy I heard from my friend Bill at lunch yesterday…

Let’s say you’re a camp counselor.  And on this day you’ve loaded up 45 nine- and ten-year-olds on the bus for an outing.  Everybody’s had a great time as you have taken them into the city or to the beach… picture you own favorite locale for a gang of kids to have a blast.

Now it’s time to head back to the camp.  So you load ‘em up and move ‘em out.

That’s when it hits you.  You forgot the first rule of kids-on-the-bus management.

Yep.  You forgot to count heads.

Forty-one.  Forty-two.  Forty-three.  Forty-uh oh.

It’s every kid herder’s worst fear.  You’ve left somebody behind.  He’s lost.

So what do you do? [click to continue…]

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Hindsight is for Idiots

by Andy Wood on January 21, 2010

in Five LV Laws,Insight,Life Currency,LV Cycle,Principle of Legacy,Protecting Your Investment,Tense Truths

Tense Truth:  Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.  But we are virtually helpless to reinterpret history for ourselves.  We need a Source of truth that isn’t subject to the distortions we bring to hindsight.

+++++++++++++++++++

Ms. Past, she’s such a wicked lady,

Ms. Past, she’s always there a waiting,

She’s the Devil’s favorite tool,

She’ll play you like a fool,

She’ll try until she rules.

-Michael and Stormie Omartian

Whoever said hindsight is 20/20 needs new glasses.

Hindsight is blind as a bat. 

It’s a house of mirrors.

You can get more accuracy from a weekend weatherman about a 10-day forecast than you can from looking at life in the mirror.

If hindsight is 20/20, why do historians always argue?

If hindsight is 20/20, why do two people in conflict always tell two completely different stories?  (And tell two more a week later?)

If hindsight is 20/20, why does the same event speak to you completely differently from the perspective of a day, a week, a month, a year, or a generation?

If hindsight is 20/20, why does God repeatedly have to remind the children of Israel about their rescue from Egypt and the whole Red Sea episode?  I’ll tell you why.  [click to continue…]

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Send in the Clowns

by Andy Wood on November 7, 2009

in Insight,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,Pleasers,Tense Truths

rodeo clown 3“It seems plausible that folly and fools, like religion and magic, meet some deeply rooted needs in human society.”  -Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter

At a convention, filled with pastors and other very religious people, I was sitting on a shuttle bus going from the parking lot to the convention center.  The bus made a stop, and on hopped Dennis Swanberg – comedian, and then-pastor.  I recognized him, because we’d recently had him as a guest in our church.  Somebody else recognized him too.  A good ol’ boy hollered from the back of the bus, “Hey!  Aren’t you Dennis Swanberg?  Say sumpthin’ funny!”

Dennis smiled good-naturedly, but the look in his eye said it all:  Seriously?

I joked with him about the cluelessness of the request.  “Yeah,” he said.  “It’s sorta like saying to a doctor in public, ‘Cure something,’”

One Planet, Two Kingdoms

Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Where are the clowns? [click to continue…]

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The Reach

by Andy Wood on August 31, 2009

in 100 Words,Esteem,Life Currency

Reaching babyEvery baby enters this world reaching out or up. 

Instinctively, we crave knowing that if we reach, somebody will come to pick us up.

Babies grow up, but this desire never leaves.

We learn to mask it, but the question remains.

Many of us learn to be the ones who pick up and hold.  But inevitably, even for pastors and nurses, parents and life-nannies, life takes us back to that First Question:  If I hold up my arms, will somebody – ANYBODY – pick me up?

Be the “yes” to somebody’s First Question.  Tomorrow, it may be you who’s doing the reaching.

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