Have you ever felt like you had a bulls-eye on your head? Well I actually did. If you read my last post, you know that I recently had an incident with a straw that cut a circle into the middle of my forehead. I am glad that circle has healed and is now gone, but before it was gone, I felt like someone was shooting at that little bulls-eye.

I woke up early on Friday morning, heading into my regular morning routine. Well, almost regular. Ordinarily, after I have taken care of my morning business in the bathroom…brushing my teeth and such, I go to the kitchen and make myself a cup of coffee. While the coffee is brewing, I stumble to the living room, turn on the overhead light and head for my recliner where I turn on the lamp behind it.

On this particular morning, Kayla was sleeping on the couch so I decided that rather than turning on the overhead light, I would make my way to my recliner in the dark and turn on the lamp. I did not want to wake Kayla up with the big light. As I approached my recliner, ready to lean over it to turn on the lamp, I tripped. You have to understand, I am a clumsy person but in the mornings, I am like a bull in a china shop. When I tripped, my full 250 pounds pitched forward. I fell over the recliner, hit my head on the wall behind it, hit the lamp and then the recliner flipped on top of me.

At that moment, I found myself in a very awkward position with a really bad headache. I heard Kayla say, “Dad, are you okay?” She said I grunted out an “I thinks so.” Knowing I was okay, she broke out in laughter. While she laughed, I was able to maneuver my body around this awkward position and climb out of my mess. Then I joined her in the laughter. That incident left me with a nice red bump on my head just above the straw circle. It just missed the bulls-eye.

Saturday came and besides the red pump on my head and being a little sore, I was ready to tackle the day. Carla (my wife), Kayla (my middle child) and I (me) were out for the day. We decided to stop by a particular house. I was a few steps ahead of them as I walked upon the back deck. They had stopped and were looking at something. When I stepped on the deck, the deck board that I stepped my left foot on broke. All 250 pounds of me plummeted. There I was with my left leg out of sight under the deck and the rest of my body piled in a heap. I was almost afraid to move for fear the boards keeping me from falling all the way through would give way. With my leg dangling beneath the deck, I slowly pulled myself out of the hole and crawled to safety. Once Carla and Kayla realized I was safe, they began to laugh hysterically. It was painful but it was funny too. I joined them in the laughter.

After we returned home that evening, I decided to do a little mowing. Had I put the events of the past few days together I probably would have decided mowing was not the smartest thing to do, but I didn’t. I started my little Toro and began to mow, singing loud enough to disturb the neighbors. I was singing Doraville, by Atlanta Rhythm Section. About the time I sang the line,  “A touch of country in the city,” I heard a crunch…bang…POW. The crunch was the blade of the mower hitting a walnut. The bang was the walnut hitting the mower as it flew out from under it. The POW was the walnut hitting me in the face. It hurt like the dickens (whatever that means). My right hand wanted to comfort my face so it reached up and rubbed the point of contact. My eyes looked at my hand and my brain recognized blood. My mouth said, “I’m bleeding.” I looked around and there was no one watching or laughing. I was on my own with this one. Would I laugh or would I cuss? I broke out in laughter as I thought about the events of the past few days. Another shot at the bulls-eye on my head and another miss, but only by inches.

I closed out the day with a knot on my head, a sore leg and a cut on my face. Was someone aiming at that little bulls-eye on my forehead? If they were, they missed every time. Well, with the exception of when it was created. The bulls-eye is completely healed now, so I think everything will be okay from here.

The Bible says, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” If you don’t want your bones drying up on you, laugh a little. I discovered long ago that laughter is like sunshine on a cloudy day. Learning to laugh at yourself makes life easier and it makes others feel comfortable to get in a good laugh along with us. Take time today to get out of “serious mode” for a few minutes and laugh at yourself. You will probably do something worth laughing at. Have a great day!

There are times in life when little things happen that are funny but leave a lasting impression of the error of our ways. I experienced one such moment last week as our family enjoyed a meal with some friends at a local eating establishment. I will tell this little story, though embarrassing to me, for your benefit. It is a, do not do as Bud did, lesson.

The Kidstuf Team at church had just finished a Friday evening rehearsal for the kick off of our Kidstuf program for the season. We decided to extend the fun by going together to grab a bite to eat. We arrived at the restaurant and took our seat at the long table. I happened to be seated at the middle of the table. That is the place where conversations are taking place on both sides of you. It is easy to be listening to two conversations but involved in neither.

There was one moment when the conversation was taking place across me. Someone on my right said something and my wife, who was on my left, responded. For the life of me, I cannot remember what my wife said but I found it hilarious. The problem was she was not trying to be funny. Here is where I got in trouble. I started laughing and brought my head down quickly as to put my head on the table kind of laughter. When I did, I forgot about my glass of water sitting in front of me.

I brought my head down with hurricane force and hit it on that glass of water. The glass, amazingly, did not spill over. It just slid across the table. I almost knocked myself out. The first words out of Carla’s mouth were not “Honey are you okay?” but “That’s what you get for laughing at me!” I knew instantly that I had gotten what I deserved but it was not over yet.

Everyone at the table was laughing their butts off at me. Suddenly someone at the table looked at me and said, “Your head is bleeding!” The table broke out in laughter again. I am sitting there bleeding to death (exaggerated  statement) and my “so called” friends, my kids, and my wife are laughing hysterically. That was all bad enough but it was not over yet.

When I wiped the blood away, someone at the table said, “Look, he has the imprint of a straw in his head!” The table broke out in laughter yet again. Evidently, when my head hit the glass it caught the straw first and the straw cut into my head. I am sitting there with a nice little circle cut into my forehead and bleeding while people are laughing to the point of almost peeing in their pants. Every time the laughter would subside, someone would make a comment about what it looked like and the laughter would start up again. This went on for the next 30 minutes.

I will have to admit that I was laughing as hard as everyone else was, except maybe my wife. Something like this could only happen to me. I did learn a lesson though. Without giving it much thought, okay, any thought, I was getting a laugh at Carla’s expense. You have heard of the old saying, “What goes around comes around?” Well, it can happen really fast sometimes. Simply put, be careful what you dish out to others today. It will come back to you and sooner than you may expect.

FYI: The straw mark is almost gone but it stayed around long enough for me to have to tell this story many times. Maybe I will think next time before I laugh at something that was not meant to be funny.

I am going to weigh in on something that has consumed the media world today. I seldom write about issues that are media driven but this is, one of the few times that I will. You will understand why in a moment.

The MTV Video Music Awards were on MTV Sunday night. Kanye West, a popular Hip Hop artist, made his presence known as he usually does on the music award shows. Taylor Swift, a young Country Music singer had just won an award and was giving her acceptance speech when Kanye took the microphone from her and shared that Beyonce had the best video. Obviously, he did not think Taylor should have won. In a brief moment, he robbed the glory of this teenage Country Music singer. It left everyone in the audience feeling awkward and sympathetic toward Taylor.

As I watched the news yesterday and today, I listened as Kanye’s own peers in the music business publicly criticized what he had done. It was apparent that they thought he crossed a line by being so full of himself that he robbed the glory of an innocent young star. I personally did not see it happen live but I have since seen the clips. It was a sad moment. The only person in the building that was not uncomfortable was Kanye.

Today as I thought about the whole thing and feeling as critical as everyone else, something came to my mind.  We were, created by God for His pleasure, purpose and His glory. When we choose to do life apart from Him and refuse to recognize Him in His awe and wonder, we have done no less to Him than what Kanye did to Taylor.

How often do we, in our arrogance and pride, upstage God by doing life our way and refusing to acknowledge Him in all His glory? How often are others unable to see Him in His glory because we live out ugly attitudes and actions that upstage Him? How can they hear the loving voice of God when we upstage Him by drowning it out with hateful words? How can others see His wonderful grace when we upstage Him by refusing to extend it to others? How can others see His forgiveness when we upstage Him by holding grudges?

What Kanye did was bad, really bad,  but he just did what Kanye does. Maybe instead of focusing on him, we could take the opportunity to look into the mirror of our lives and learn from him. We may find that from heavens point of view, we are more like him than we want to admit. Everything has a teaching application if we remain teachable at the feet of our Father.

When I was a kid, I loved to watch the Bugs Bunny cartoons. I especially liked the one where Elmer Fudd was going wabbit hunting. Elmer was my inspiration for a rabbit, hunting trip I took when I was 8 or 9 years old. The home that I grew up in sat on 15 acres of wooded land. It was the perfect place for a, wabbit hunting outing.

It was a snowy Saturday morning with about a foot of snow on the ground and Bugs and Elmer on the television that I came up with the idea to go hunting wabbits. I just knew this would be the most awesome hunting trip ever and I wanted my friend Terry to go with me. We did most everything together. I knew if I shared my idea with him, he would be onboard. It was not hard to find Terry on Saturday mornings either. All I had to do was open my back door and tell him to come in. Terry woke up with the chickens and came straight to my house. His mom told him not to bother us so he would wait patiently on the back porch until someone opened the door.

Terry and I sat making plans for our big hunting excursion. We packed a sandwich and water because we never knew how long we would be out, especially in blizzard conditions, even if they were only in our imagination. We packed a magnifying glass and a couple, sticks too just in case we ended up lost and had to build a fire. Fifteen acres to a couple 8 year olds seemed like the size of Texas so we had to be, prepared for anything.

We bundled up in our makeshift hunting cloths that we had purchased from the Army Surplus store with the deposit money from coke bottles we had picked up along the side of the road.

The only thing left was what we would use to kill the rabbits. I have lived long enough to know that, that last sentence brought a cringe to animal lovers or hunting haters. I personally do not see anything wrong with hunting, though I am not a hunter, but you will soon see that the rabbits had no reason to fear unless they died from laughter. I did not grow up in a hunter’s home. The only guns in our house were in my dad’s gun collection, which was for show only. Terry and I were up for a challenge and guns would have been too easy anyway. We gathered up our slingshots with a bag of rocks tied to our belts and headed out for the hunt.

With the snow on the ground, we knew that tracking rabbits would be easy. Deep into the forest, we spotted some wabbit twacks. We quietly followed the tracks when suddenly we spotted one. It was a big rabbit too. He was just sitting there with seemingly little concern for the two hunters that were nearby. I am thinking he must have seen those two boys armed with slingshots and saw no need in hurrying away. Terry and I loaded our slingshots with stones, stretching the elastic as far back as we could, we fired at the rabbit. It was a miss and not even close, miss. I am sure that rabbit must have laughed, and then it went to its home and told all the other rabbits to beware of the wabbit hunters.

We decided it was too cold to hunt so we headed for home. We told everyone of how we almost killed a rabbit with a sling and a stone. We were confident that the next time we would be successful but for the moment, we would be satisfied to eat our lunch and watch Bugs and Elmer Fudd.

Obviously, we were ill prepared to be successful hunters and the hunted had nothing to fear. Of course, David (remember David and Goliath) could have done it but we were not that prepared. That is okay for two kids but things change when we grow up. What is it that you want to accomplish in life? What purpose has God called you too? If you find yourself frustrated and never getting there, it may be because you are trying to do it with a slingshot when what you need is a shotgun. That just means that to accomplish what God has called you to in life, you will need to prepare adequately and then go after it with confidence. Even David gave God something to work with when he went after Goliath.  Happy hunting!