Falling Into Your Legacy

(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.