Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCXLll

Okay, stop, close your eyes, and think about....no wait! Don't close your eyes, because I want you to read the rest of what I have to say. Just leave your eyes open and think about someone you know who is always late for wherever they are going. Can you think of someone? Yes, I can too. I made a determination a long time ago that I did not want that to be a part of my reputation. I can remember so many times when I was a kid, hearing my grandpa saying, "They wait until it's time to get there before they leave the house." I'm now following in his shoes, because I've said the same thing many times myself.

I can think of people that I've been around for many years who can be counted on to be fifteen minutes late every time. At least they're consistent. It just seems to me that after about five years of being fifteen minutes late, they would figure out that if they would get up fifteen minutes earlier, they could make it on time. That leads me to ask this question: Do they care if they're late? The answer is obviously, "No." That's the part that I have a hard time understanding.

I've been helping teach a class at church on Wednesday nights on "Parenting," and the one subject where we've spent the most amount of time is on "discipline." Naturally, when we think of discipline, we automatically compare it to the word "punishment," but there's much more to discipline than that. Discipline is setting boundaries and living within those boundaries. One thing we've learned is that if we expect our kids to live a disciplined life, we as parents must do the same. Our kids will be much more prone to do what they see us doing than what they hear us saying. The reason I'm saying all of this is because being on time is part of a disciplined lifestyle, and we can tell our kids how they need to be on time until we're blue in the face, but if they see us being consistently late for the things that we're trying to teach them are the important things in life, we can only expect them to follow the same pattern when they grow up and get out on their own.

I can also close my eyes and think about people I know who are consistently either on time or early for every event. And it's always the same people, either way. If you were to attend an event where you were meeting everyone there for the first time, and some of them were on time, and others came in late, what would be your first impression of each of them? I believe, maybe without even realizing why, you would automatically have a more positive first impression of the people who made it on time. There's just something about promptness that gives the indication of someone who "has it together." I know there are times when someone's car won't start, or they have a flat...those unexpected events can be expected. But I don't know anyone who has that type of problem ninety per cent of the time. I think the real difference is that the ones who are always on time put a priority on being prompt. It's a part of their reputation that they care about. It's a part of their lifestyle.

None of us ever know exactly what other people think about us, but I'm making an effort to be known as being dependable. And being dependable means being consistently on time.

Preston

Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCXLI

I obtained my first part time job when I was a teenager in high school, working at a little country store/gas station. My uncle owned and operated what we now know as a convenience store that was located right next door to our house, and I worked there in the afternoons when I got home from school. The first thing I had to do when I got to work was to take all the empty soft drink bottles, organize them by brand and size, and get them ready for when the delivery man made his weekly trip to the store. There probably aren't very many people under the age of thirty-five who even know what I'm talking about, but when you would buy a Coke, you would pay a deposit on the bottle, which was made of glass, and when you came back to buy another one, you were exempt from the deposit if you returned your bottle that you had already paid for.

At about that same period of time, there was a company called "Shasta" that came out with a drink that could be purchased in a metal can that could be thrown away after use, thus eliminating the need for a deposit. That idea was slow to catch on, but over time, other companies began to migrate toward that idea, and in the process, they made the glass bottles start moving toward extinction. Next came the plastic bottles with the slogan, "No deposit...no return." Then came another revolutionary idea that made many people say that its originator had to be an idiot...selling water in plastic bottles. I wish I would have been the one who came up with that crazy idea. Now, when you walk into a convenience store, you will have a choice of at least a half dozen brands of drinking water...all in plastic bottles.

Here's what I find ironic about this whole process: Back when we were strictly using glass bottles for our soft drinks, no one ever gave a moment's consideration about conservation or the environment. Now we rarely go a whole day without hearing someone using a new term, "being green," which has almost nothing to do with color. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a "tree hugging" radical, but I do have to say that I too am concerned with the amount of plastic that we are simply throwing away. And the thing about it is, if two hundred years from now, someone digs into one of our landfills, they will find those bottles almost as intact as they are when we put them there. In addition to the plastic bottles are all the diapers that are also being deposited into the landfills by the hundreds of thousands every day. During the time when we were drinking our Pop from returnable glass bottles, we were also clothing our babies with reusable cloth diapers. Not many people do that any more. I recently heard one young mother say, "I decided I wanted to go green and start using cloth diapers, and it worked okay until my baby pooped in one of them. You can't reuse that!"

Now, on a daily basis, innovators are coming up with all kinds of revolutionary ideas about how to recycle many of the products that we carelessly toss into our trash cans without even thinking about it. My son, who works for a uniform company, was telling me about some suits that they have made for the employees of a large hotel chain that they service, and those suits are made totally from recycled plastic bottles. That's just one of thousands of ways that we can help to care for the natural resources with which God has provided us . The biggest obstacle that we face today is persuading the general public to think "green." It seems like the area of the country where I live is much slower at catching on to this new way of thinking than some of the other areas I have visited, but part of that may be due to the difficulty in finding ways to recycle. The grocery store where we shop now has bins in front of their stores for plastic bottles and bags, and it appears that more and more people are beginning to use them. I'm glad to see that, and I'm determined to do my part. But to quote Kermit the Frog: "It's not easy being green."

Preston

Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCXL

Some days I just feel like being lazy. After all, when God created us, he provided us with an example of how we're suppose to carry out our week when he rested on the seventh day, and who am I to try to improve on God's plan. I know there are some people who like to take this "rest day thing" to extremes by making several days out of every week into rest days, but I've been giving it some thought lately and I've come to the conclusion that that's not such a good idea either. There again, God worked six days and rested just one, and then instructed us to do the same.

Just a couple weeks ago I was working a trade show in Jackson, MS, and the first day of the show was extremely slow, so I basically sat in my booth that entire day with practically nothing to do. The next day was the exact opposite...I barely had time to even go to the restroom. Here's the part that puzzles me: On that first day when I had nothing to do, when I got to my hotel room that night, I was totally exhausted; but on the second night after a very busy day, I felt more refreshed than I had the night before. Why is that? I don't have a definite answer, but, like I said, I've been thinking about it and I do have some possible theories. Maybe on that first day I was stressing because I knew I needed to be busy and business just wasn't coming. Another theory could be that there is a calming effect on a person when he knows that he is actually getting some things accomplished. Or maybe it's a combination of the two. Whatever the truth is, I'll take a busy day any time over a slow day.

One other theory I've come up with is that our bodies and our minds may get into a slothful mode, making us not want to get out of our restful state, therefore the tired feeling at the end of the day. And then the opposite could be true when we're in a productive mode, making us have the desire to keep producing. I'm obviously not an expert on the human mind or body, so really all I'm doing now is just surmising as to what causes us to react to certain situations the way we do. I guess that just brings us back to the first paragraph...we're better off if we follow the example and instructions that God provided for us.

My rest day is Sunday. First I get up and head to Sunday School and Morning Worship, which is actually a form of rest in itself, and it takes up my entire morning. After that, we have a nice meal, and then we crash for the rest of the day. We'll take a short nap, and then it's time for relaxing with the family. I love my Sundays. Thank you Lord for showing us how to do it. There's no telling what we would have come up with if we would have had to figure it out on our own.

Preston

Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCXXXIX

The noise in the stadium was deafening as thousands of fans were chanting my name after I had just scored the winning touchdown, giving our championship team a perfect season. I guess you could call that a "virtual" event since in actuality it didn't really happen. The only place that event ever occurred was inside of my own imagination. That's just one of the places that my ten year old mind took me. The next day I was elected President of the United States, marking the first time in history that a world renowned rock star had achieved that honor. The neat thing about it was that, even with all of the wealth I had accumulated and the fame that had found its way to my door, I remained the same good old down-home boy that I had always been, staying in close contact with all of my good friends back home.

Surely I'm not the only kid who ever had those kinds of dreams, am I? I feel quite certain that practically every person reading this article right now can identify with what I'm talking about. But then reality sets in and we come back down to earth to the realization that fame and stardom have evaded us as we settle into our lives that are pretty much the same as everyone else around us. Then, however, the dream re-emerges, only this time it is for our kids instead of us. Maybe this is just a never ending cycle, and I don't have a problem with it as long as it just remains a dream. Dreams are what lead people to bigger and better things. The more I think about it though, the more I'm convinced that we're better off when the dreams of becoming a major celebrity remain just that--a dream.

Both of my kids are grown and married now, and I'm happy with the way both of them turned out. I'm thankful every day that I'm not the father of a Brittney Spears or a Lindsay Lohan. I'll take my kids just the way they are. I just finished reading an autobiography of Ronald Reagan, a poor kid from Dixon, Illinois, who achieved the goals of becoming a movie star and President of the United States. He said that although he did enjoy being President, he sometimes felt like he was trapped inside a prison called the White House. After he had reached the place in life where he no doubt had the most recognized face in the world, he dreamed of just being a normal guy so that he could walk into a drug store and buy his wife a Valentine card without attracting large throngs of people, some of whom wanted to do him harm. One day he decided he would do just that, and he told his staff that he was going to a small gift shop near the White House to buy Nancy a card. He said it created such a stir, and so much preliminary work had to be done by the Secret Service, that he decided that he would never put another merchant through that kind of trouble again.

So I guess you could say that I've had some unfulfilled dreams, but I'm reminded of a song by Garth Brooks that says, "I'm thankful for unanswered prayers." Actually, when I stop to think about it, maybe I achieved my dreams after all, because I'm as much of a star right now as I ever hope to be. My kids are stars as well when we consider the fact that they are idolized by the people who really matter. I'll never see my name in lights or hear thousands of adoring fans chanting my name in unison. I'm glad. This is just the way I want it.

Preston