Papa

Papa

David Percy likely had many different names from many different people, but this was what I called him. It's what I've called him since my junior year of High School in 2007. I called him Mr.Percy for six years before the Sunday morning everything changed but changing the title was as natural as breathing. I could have told you who he was long before then because he was Hannah and Sarah's father, and my knowledge of him mostly was going over to say hello to them on Sunday mornings in service. The title changed when after two years of having no man willing to take on a group of sometimes loud and crazy teenage boys during Sunday School, David sat down at a round table with us.

Let me tell you, I was raised that everyone was Sir, Ma'am, Mr., and Mrs. so when I happened to call him Mr. Percy and wound up with a shake of his head and two of my friends looking at me and saying 'It's Papa Percy', everything changed quickly. It's a fitting moniker though. This was a guy who would in those two years profoundly shape my faith and view on things (though we never agreed on country music), most notably his patience and love amidst all our craziness has rubbed off on me in ways I never imagined. I didn't yet know that I'd be with my own group of crazy teenage boys in only a matter of years. I happened to be talking to a great brother of mine earlier today and happened to mention that one of the things that I will forever remember this man for was his willingness to give us a chance when no one else would. I understand students are hard and I can assure you that we were  not the easiest bunch to deal with but it was rough couple of years dealing with the fact that every single other group of students had someone with them, willing to listen and teach, and we didn't have anyone who would make that commitment, Papa did.

Even when graduation came that relationship didn't stop. I still saw him on Sundays, and was at his house for game nights or bonfires or birthday celebrations over the past nine years. I can't actually remember a Sunday since then that he was in Church and I saw him that he didn't hug me and tell me he loved me. You've probably had some good hugs in your life but  as far as I'm concerned his hugs were legendary, bone crushing, squeeze you until you couldn't breathe type things. Sometimes those hugs came when I said 'Hello' and sometimes they came after a conversation, but they always came. I would sure love to have one of those hugs right now. Usually my talking with him would come after church was over while he was waiting to leave. A few months ago before he helped proudy show us Sarah's new jeep I had asked him something and he just laughed and said he was waiting to be told where he was going to eat. I never saw that man mad but I did see a lot of smiles and heard many laughs.

Over the years Papa made some interesting choices that were great to point out to Hannah and Sarah, his mustache and his motorcycle. The former I took great delight in pointing out how great it looked to them because it was at one point a long handlebar mustache that was well past his jaws. His bike was even better. It had a little basket attached to the back that he'd put stuff in to take to work. Anytime I saw him on the road I'd take a picture and send it to them with much amusement. He had a nice beard as well but that didn't faze the girls like the mustache or the motorcycle.

A little over a month ago he got sick. This morning his body gave up and he went home. I sat last night and this morning praying hard God would heal him and he could come home. I just wasn't aware that the home he was going to wouldn't be the one that is three minutes from my house. God certainly healed him and took him home, it just wasn't the home I visited him in, but the one where his healing would be final. It hasn't sunk in yet and I'm not sure it will for awhile that he's actually gone. He's been in my life for eleven years and I can confidently say it won't be the same without him. I learned a lot from him and don't know that I will treat Student Ministry quite the same without remembering the many mornings he got us under control without raising his voice or  with much more than a look that Sarah has inherited. If I can be half the teacher he was to these boys I will have done well. If I can love them half as well as he did us maybe they will understand that a big reason I'm there on Sundays is because there was a man who was willing to do the same for me. David Percy was many things to many people but to me he will simply always be Papa.

Cloud of Witnesses-Mark Schultz, give it a listen.

Millennial

The problem with millennials is:
They think they are entitled.
They are whiny.
They are lazy.
They are self-absorbed and narcissistic.

Except they don't and they aren't. Here's the thing, I'm a Millennial. I was born January 20,1990. I'm just shy of twenty-seven years old. The older people around me tend to throw around the word Millennial like it is an insult. They see young people that do match the above description and link it to all people of Gen Y. The recent protests and riots over Donald Trump becoming President Elect and having entire colleges shut down because of it is the latest wave of Millennial bashing to sweep my news feed on Facebook.

  There are many problems with that and one of the biggest is that you are assuming everyone in this generation is lazy, whiny, and wants everything handed to them without work. Such a broad generalization would be the same as me saying that those in 'the Greatest Generation' and many of the older Baby Boomers are all racist simply because of their age during the Civil Right's Movement. I mean there were certainly older boomers and those from the greatest generation screaming racial slurs as schools were desegregated. So why not lump all of them in one solid category as racist? If it works for lazy, whining Millennials it works for them. Clearly that is flawed logic or the Civil Rights Movement would have only been African American's, except it wasn't, there were white people involved.

I'm not saying that there aren't people my age who certainly act entitled or are lazy. But, you can't decry an entire generation for the actions of a few. That isn't how things work and it certainly isn't going to make them better. I'll admit that having people my age not go to school because they refuse to accept that Donald Trump will be the next President and are literally asking for crying time-outs from class makes me embarrassed. That being said hearing how poor a generation we are because of those people makes me far angrier. Why in the world would we want to take advice from the older generation when the only things we hear from them are you are horrible, lazy, good for nothing, brats? It isn't even logical to ask us to heed your advice.

  Actually, think about that for a moment. If you walked into work starting Monday and for the entire week you heard nothing from your boss but how horrible an employee you were would you continue working there? I'd say most of you probably wouldn't and you couldn't be blamed for leaving. Money might help you live but dignity and self-respect are just as important to living. You can't constantly deride an entrie generation and actually expect anything  good to come from that line of action. There is a chunk of wisdom in the old adage 'you catch more flies with honey than vinegar'. People don't respond well to being debased or thought of as useless.

It certainly can't be said that we aren't open to communication. This generation is more tied to communication than any before it, we were young when the internet became public, we got internet at my house when I was in sixth grade. I remember well my years before it hit my house but I also remember logging onto AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) for the first time and the ease with which I could talk to multiple friends at once even though they weren't right there with me. We do like to communicate and I daresay we want to hear from those who came before us and get their take on things but that goes both ways. If you want us to listen to you, to heed the advice you have, you need to be willing to listen to us without telling us with your attitude that you'd rather be anywhere but speaking with us, because you don't think we matter.

  We are a generation not of lazy people but one who is fast finding it's footing and taking the world by storm. A vast majority of the non-profits that exist right now were started by Millennial's. If anything this generation is doing its best to make the world better, not worse. Social issues are a big deal, not because we are narcissistic  and want attention but because we want to help. Beyond that this generation has already doubled the number of businesses started by the one before us, Forbes 30 under 30 is a good place to check out just how profitable the area of business has been for people my age, Facebook, Instagram,and Snapchat were all started by Millennials and all raked in a great deal of money, entrepreneuership at its finest. Before you make your next purchase you might want to do some research, unless you are shopping at a tiny Mom&Pop shop you could be benefiting from the brainchild of one of those lazy Millennial's.

So from a Millennial that isn't lazy, whiny, self-absorbed, narcissistic, or entitled please think before you share a video on how lazy people my age are, or blast us with some article or another calling us any number of things. You had your chance to prove who you were to the world, give us ours, and please, don't judge all of us by the actions of a few, you wouldn't want such treatment.

(So here's the thing, I've had so many posts in my news feed the past week or so all of which were put up by people older than myself about how lazy and entitled people my age were. This is my response. I don't respond rashly, this has been in my head for a couple of days. I actually do enjoy talking to people older than myself and gaining advice. I just started farming and know 0 things about that lifestyle. But, I'm learning. Most of which is coming from our fantastic neighbors who thankfully don't look at me like so many others do people my age, they are willing to teach and to get to know me without any preconceived notions, and I have to say that is a nice thing.)

Orphan Sunday 2016

I'm not sure if it is normal to hate and love a day at the same time. Today is such a day for me, one I hate and love. Orphan Sunday makes me happy because it shows the Church being as it should and engaging to love, help, and speak up for the Fatherless as we are called to do. I just wish there were not a need for such a day. It exists because there are children who do not have families. That means there are children who've experienced the loss of parents through different circumstances and now do not have them. In short it means pain and loneliness.

I could show you plenty of statistics about these children. I could give you numbers that would help you see how many children do not have families just here in the United States, to say nothing about those around the world. But, you won't find any numbers in this years annual Orphan Sunday blog. If you give a face a number you can desensitize yourself to it. Numbers are sterile, not personal. We aren't called to go and help numbers, we are called to help people. That is personal. That is real. While there is a benefit to knowing those numbers and I've shared them before, this year I want to focus on the realness of this day.
 
"We learned that orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces."-David Platt
 
When you assign them a number that is when they go from people to statistics. Their identities get lost in a wash of this circumstance or that one. We might feel bad for them for a moment but then that fades and we are back to thinking about something else. If we make things personal, if we get to know their stories and their faces then they stick with us. Why? Because we aren't just reading a number attached to a group we are looking  into the life of a real child who has faced real pain. That makes all the difference.

This is where actually doing something comes into play. We can't just look,feel, and walk away. Action is necessary. Compassion is the catalyst. Feeling means compassion and compassion means to suffer with, that means we've got to get our hands dirty and allow ourselves to take the risk of getting close to the hurt these children feel. One of my favorite organizations that does this is Show Hope. It was started by Steven Curtis Chapman after he brought home two daughters from China. This is an organization that not only cares for children in China you can help fund adoption grants for parents who need help bringing their children home. Beyond that they keep this act of love personal. Each month a different child is prayed for specifically, not just by name, but by face. They e-mail, tweet, and post on facebook and Instagram about that month's child and ways you can pray for him or her. They don't shy away from the hard stuff but instead allow you to see that this isn't an easy thing, that there are risks, but we are called to love the fatherless, so they do it, and they do it well.

We are called to care for and love the fatherless. The only question you need to answer is how you will personally go about doing that. I would encourage you to visit Show Hope's website to learn more about what they do.
Show Hope

If you're looking for a different way to support orphan care and like to read you can get yourself a copy of my book The Forgotten 50% of the royalties goes to Show Hope and TN Baptist Children Homes. The idea of the book is to do just that, raise awareness for the children who do not have families. We cannot forget them they need to know that they are loved.

Friends Matter-Choose wisely

"The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."-Rudyard Kipling

The above is one of my favorite quotes. When I was younger I liked it simply because it mentioned wolves but several years ago I realized what it meant and it became more important.  Parents tell their children to choose their friends wisely. Be careful who your friends are and so on is advice that I heard a lot and now find myself telling middle school students fairly often. We've had several lessons on the subject on Wednesday night's, Proverbs is especially full of criteria for what a good friend should look like.

  So, why open with that quote? About six years ago I started writing a book about my best friends. It is titled The Pack, and the above is the opening quote. I see my friends as a pack (my sister has actually dubbed us the Wolf Pack). Like any wolf pack we are stronger together and are both very much alike and vastly different at the same time. But, I will tell you that I would not want anyone else in my corner. When push comes to shove these are people who have my back.

Choosing your friends  is important. The funny thing about friends is that as much as you choose them they are choosing you. Statistically speaking your friends change over the years. You gain some and lose some as time passes and lives change. Much like everything else about me I broke that statistic also. While I've gained friends over the years the core of the Pack have been my friends for going on ten years now. In fact, I've known Hannah (I'll get to her in a moment) for fifteen years now. While I had friends growing up none of them were like these people. Until I got older I only saw these people two days a week but that didn't matter, they'd invited me in and things just grew from there. These people have helped me become who I am and to coax out a shy kid who didn't say a word to people.

  Anaias Nin said it best "Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until this person arrives, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." They've certainly helped shape my personality but they also introduced me to so many things. Much of my musical tastes stems from car rides to get coffee or frozen yogurt. Most of my food adventures involve them as well. I gained many new worlds thanks to these people and look forward to gaining more over the coming years.

It's interesting because as many things as I've learned from being with them the one thing that bonds us isn't music or food or even personalities, it's faith. God clearly had his hand on getting these relationships together because to be honest I'm an introvert and if they hadn't talked first I would have no friends. (Thanks to said friends I do actually talk to strangers now so thanks guys). It is what we believe that keeps us together. These people challenge me to grow closer to God with their own relationships with Him but aren't afraid of pointing out things that are hindering my own, or where they can see Him moving in me.

  I'd love to tell you that we are constantly having stimulating conversations that would make the great thinkers wish they could sit at our feet and learn. Unfortunately, many of our conversations are in fact nonsensical and based only on random humor. That humor is important though and sense the introduction of GIF's into texting it has only gotten better. We make each other laugh and that is something that can't be taken for granted, deep conversations are great, growing together is great, but having someone you can laugh with is equally as important, you can't take yourself too seriously. Life with these people is never boring. That being said those same texts are often full of prayers and encouragement. When I need something these are the folks I talk with. Doesn't matter what time it is, doesn't matter how trivial the problem is, they are there. Find people who can help you deal with life and are willing to encourage you and pray for you.

Now, to Hannah. The first chapter of The Pack involves Hannah. She was the first friend I made at Bayside. This post was stirred up in my head because of her. You see she is getting married in two days. Which is a little bit crazy. (Mostly because sometimes my brain forgets that we are in fact in our mid twenties and likes to pretend we can all still hang out until one or two in the morning in the church parking lot). So what does that have to do with anything? Quite frankly without her I wouldn't have these other friends. The Pack started with her and grew because she knew these other people that also became my best friends.   I told her once that I hoped that if I have kids they have a friend like her because if they do I know they will be alright. While I could say that about any of The Pack (the whole having wise friends is huge here) she was that first connection. Everything started with her just being nice. Without her there would be no pack. I'd probably be that weird kid who hides in the corner and eats paste if she hadn't said hello to me (except I've never eaten paste and I met her in middle school so that doesn't completely apply) but I really doubt that I'd ever learned to be me without that influence she started. I owe so much to her and this pack. I certainly couldn't have imagined in sixth grade what would have taken place all these years later and how a simple hello changed everything for me. See, I didn't do much choosing in the beginning, these wise friends were just there and I'm eternally grateful that I learned what the right friend was suppose to look like because of them.

You want friendships that will stand strong?
Find people that will make you laugh
Find people who aren't afraid to be honest
Find people you can be yourself around
Find people who seek God and will push you to do the same
Find people you can trust
Lastly, communication is important. TALK TO THESE PEOPLE. You don't have to be constantly talking (we don't talk every day and we don't all live in the same city) but if you can't actually talk to them there is no point.

I'm not going to tell you that if you find people like this you won't have problems. Relationships of any kind take work and friendships are no exception. That being said they are worth building and putting in the work to keep. Life is much easier and for that matter way more fun with people you can trust to live it with you. 





To end this I'd just like say to thanks ladies and gents. Thanks for the prayers,the laughs, the car rides, the deep talks and the not so serious ones, the honesty, and for letting me be me and accepting all that entails. Here's to growing old and maybe not completely growing up. Can't imagine doing it with anyone else. #Wolfpack4life