(Warning: Some of the images posted contain blood)
I took this picture while changing out the bearings on my
skateboard. My buddy Justin had given me some new ones since mine were getting
stiff. Mei was having so
much fun stacking the old ones up in neat little piles, there on the
dining room floor. Little did I know that a few days later I’d be in the
hospital after a nasty fall. Justin would sit in a lone chair across the room.
We’d laugh and tell jokes in light of the circumstance. It was a pretty
interesting day.
I used to skate in high school and college but the truth is
that I was never very good. I was always a better surfer and even that I’m not
so great at. At least when you fall off of a surfboard you generally don’t
crack your head open. “Aren’t you too old to be on a skateboard?” That’s the
question I get asked the most when I tell the story. I guess there is a sliver
of truth in the question. At some point I was feeling a bit low in regards to
my situation. I told my friend Mark that I might regret the decision to give it
a try, due to the physical pain and the bills that come with the damage. He
literally told me to “shut the f*** up”. He told me I should never regret
putting myself out there and trying something. “At least you tried,” he said.
I went skating for the sole reason that my friend Justin is
a skater. Aly and I have met some really great people recently and this was me
just wanting to hang out. I knew I would be a bit rusty and expected to head
home with some scrapes or bruises. We were bombing hills in a nice neighborhood
off of Scenic Hwy. I picked up some good speed and failed to turn fast enough.
The result was a broken wrist and five stitches in my head. Justin and his wife
Shelly later went and found the reddish smear I left on the asphalt. But,
honestly, I still got to spend the day with my friend. Not that nearly killing
myself was the best way to go about that. We sat in the ER and talked about
life, marriage, and Jesus. Pretty much all the same stuff I ramble on about
throughout this silly blog.
All of this happened in tandem with an issue I have been
thinking about for a while now. I’ve been asking myself if I’m meeting my
potential in life. Also, am I happy in the profession that I’ve chosen. Is this
what I should be doing with my life? At
what point do you cease to be a person with great potential and become the guy
who squandered it? There is an old song by Craig’s Brother called potential
that says:
You could be the best
there ever was
But nothing’s gained
when nothing’s shared
Potential shines so
bright when never dared
There’s more to it than that but you get the idea. I loved
this song when I was a kid and never wanted to be the guy it was about. I asked
some of my friends about this recently and here is how I phrased it:
What is a legacy?
What does it mean to leave a legacy?
What does it mean to leave a legacy that is reflective of
God’s purpose for your life?
Another friend of mine, Doug, literally wrote a book on
legacy. Even after reading it I still can’t really answer any of those
questions. It’s hard to figure out if your life has meaning when there is no
means to measure your success. Seriously, how on earth can we measure whether
or not we are meeting the potential God has for us? When you figure it out, you
let me know. Currently, Christians are satisfied to measure alter calls, baptisms,
and seats filled but those things are not quantitative of love or growth. If I
never convince another person that they love Jesus as much as I do does that
make me a failure? If my job consists of lining the pockets of executives in
another part of the world does that make my life without meaning?
When I asked my brother Jason the same set of questions his
response was very poetic. He said, ”If you learn to listen [to God] your legacy
will craft itself.” While I love this thought, I again have the issue of
wondering when God is actually speaking to me. Most of the time I feel like I’m
several steps behind where God is leading me. Like a child chasing after mom
and dad in the airport trying not to miss a flight. That’s how Kevin McCallister
ended up in New York. In hindsight, I’ve mostly ended up where I think God has
been leading me my whole life. How I arrived at each of those places has always
seemed haphazard at best.
If there is one thing I have learned over the years about
how God generally works, it’s that He hardly does what we expect Him to do.
Even Jesus was not what people thought he would or should be. God thrives in
the places we least expect. That’s why people say He “works in mysterious
ways”. So when looking at God’s purpose for our lives, I highly doubt it
involves the typical 5-year plan.
So, what does this have to do with skateboarding?
Sitting at a small outside table downtown, Mark asked me the
same series of questions about legacy. I told him that there is no way I could
have predicted my blood on the road. Sure, I could have guessed that I would
get hurt. But the exact pattern to which the red stained the street was not
something I could have planned. The only reason I ended up lying there was
because I followed God’s direction and was intentional about my relationships.
When God says “go” we go. Even if it means we end up at the bottom of the sea
or lying in a hospital bed. And now, every time someone sees that blood stain
on the ground they will know that something happened there. Something real.
It’s the same with the legacy that we leave behind. You
can’t predict what God is going to do with the choices that we make. The only
thing we can really be sure of is that God has a knack for making beautiful
things out of our messes. And what we leave behind is a permanent mark made
from the very thing that gives us life. That mark in turn tells a story. It’s
messy, it’s real, and there is a significant cost. We just have to have the
courage to follow God’s lead, even if it is only in the moment.
The other question I keep getting asked is, “I bet you won’t
be getting on a skateboard again anytime soon, huh?” The truth is, yeah I
probably will. Probably not an actual skateboard, but I don’t intend to stop
taking risks in my life in order to find God’s purpose for me. I value the
conversation Justin and I had in that hospital room, despite the cost that
brought us there. The cost adds to the value. My hope is that I will continue
to be intentional with my life. And hopefully, I’ll leave a few marks along the
way.
