Place In This World

What motivates you?
What is your purpose here on this earth?
What do you do that really counts in life?

Are these questions that you ever wrestle with? I do. Probably too often. I love the song, "Place in This World" by Michael W. Smith. And so does my son; he sings it quite well. It addresses a theme that I’m pretty sure all mankind somewhat regularly considers.

"If there are millions down on their knees,
Among the many, how can you still hear me?
Hear me asking, where do I belong?
Is there a vision that I can call my own?”
Michael W. Smith, Wayne Kirkpatick, Amy Grant
(c)Career-BMG Music Publishing Inc., Sony/ATV Milene Music)

Can you relate? Everytime I fly into LAX over the thousands and thousands of homes, I think of the millions of people that God created and loves. It makes me feel so insignificant at times. I just want to find my place in this world.

So, I was reading chapter 3 in The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. The chapter is entitled: "What Drives Your Life?" He starts with a scripture verse paraphrased from the Living Bible:

I observed that the basic motive for success is the driving force of envy and jealousy! Ecclesiastes 4:4

Really? Seriously? What motivates us to be successful is sin? I was initially discouraged by this! I hope and pray that deep down this really isn’t true about me. I pray that the success I desire is a sustained momentum to accomplish God’s plan for my life.

Mr. Warren outlines 5 ways that people are driven today. They are driven by:

Guilt
Resentment and Anger
Fear
Materialism
Need for Approval (pgs. 28-30)

Ok, while all 5 may be true about me, I’ll deny it. However, I’ll own up to the last one. I love to do a good job in order to make someone else happy! I really like doing this especially if it’s a surprise. I am very motivated by approval.

Mr. Warren writes, “Nothing matters more than knowing God’s purposes for your life, and nothing can compensate for not knowing them.” (pg. 29) Do you know God’s purpose for your life? Are you accomplishing those purposes?

The book outlines how your life will improve if you know your purpose as designed by God. Knowing your purpose:

Gives meaning to your life
Simplifies your life
Focuses your life (“If you want your life to have impact, focus it.”)
Motivates your life
Prepares you for eternity (pgs. 30-34)

So, what’s the key to discovering your purpose here on this globe? I have no idea! Honestly at 46, I feel like I’m closer than I’ve ever been to knowing what my purpose is and resting in God’s grace. But it’s not a secret plan that you follow. God deals with us each on an individual basis. I know that the hours I have spent over the past year and a half straight, praying for God’s Will to be done in my life and in the scriptures that I’ve read through and meditated upon have contributed to feeling this peace and direction. But by no means have I arrived; it’s an ongoing journey from here to Heaven.

Take time out of each day to pray and read God’s word. It’s the only surefire way I know to seek out your “place in this world” and to live a purpose-filled life. Reading The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren is a good idea too!

You, Lord, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in you. Isaiah 26:3 (TEV)

Community Relations

I am, admittedly, not a great reader. But when I find a book (or author) that I like, it’s difficult for me to put the book down. So, this week, I came across a book called, For One More Day by Mitch Albom. I was really moved (I cried and cried) by the mother/son theme. (Note: I have worked diligently this week to be a much more attentive mom to my boys as a result of this read.) I recommend this book especially if you’re a mom or a son or if you have one! It will be worth your time.

I’m ashamed to say that I wasn’t familiar with the author’s name but I had heard of a very famous book that he’d written prior to this one called Tuesdays With Morrie. So, of course, after I finished For One More Day, I went to the public library and got three other Mitch Albom books; Tuesdays With Morrie, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, and Have a Little Faith. I like the way the author writes and the themes he chooses to write about. I’ve only finished Tuesdays With Morrie but I promise before May 8th when my books are due back, I’ll have read the other two as well!

So, my thoughts today are from my reading of Tuesday With Morrie. I’ve actually been wrestling with this topic for a few months, but with fresh perspective, this story caused me to rethink this issue.

True story: Morrie Schwartz, a dying college professor, re-unites with one of his favorite students twenty years after he graduated. They had lost touch since college and are catching up now that Mitch finds out that Morrie is dying.

Morrie starts the conversation with the following questions:

“Have you found someone to share your heart with?
Are you giving to your community?
Are you at peace with yourself?
Are you trying to be as human as you can be?” (p. 34)

Ok, so these questions are deep and they take an entire book to answer them, but I wanted to focus on the second question specifically: “Are you giving to your community?” I am not; well at least not anymore. Are you?

I used to: I was in the church choir. I was a youth sponsor for our high school group. I helped out as a counselor at church camp. I sang on the Worship Team one weekend a month. I volunteered in the nursery at church. I was on the Executive Board of Directors for Beau’s baseball league and Sarah’s softball league. I was President of the High School Booster Club, and served on the PTO for the kid’s school. I volunteered for the Board of Director’s for Beau and Sarah’s pre-school. I worked at our community crisis pregnancy center. I helped each year for VBS. I managed a Little League baseball team. I taught second grade Sunday School. I even bowled on the church bowling league.

So, what happened? Does this sound familiar to you at all? Did I just get older? Or busier at work? Kids get older and busier? Is working two full-time jobs pushing me over the edge? I don’t think it’s just that. I believe that our society as a whole has become more egocentric and lazy, and the idea of being involved in community and other’s lives just isn’t as important or valuable as it once was.

In the book, Bowling Alone; The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D. Putnam writes that there has been significant social change in America in the past decade or so. He chronicles how political groups, veterans organizations, church, social clubs, schools, sewing clubs, and even bowling leagues have seen a drastic drop off in membership. We don’t exercise our right to vote. People are just not involved in their communities and with their friends like they used to be. He refers to a Life magazine article that warns America about the overabundance of leisure time that they are wasting (on TV and online programs). This problem of having “too much time on our hands” has led us to take life easy. Giving back isn’t important to us anymore. (p. 16)

I’ve experienced this not only personally but professionally as well. When Sarah and I began working on this movie project, I never imagined the amount of help we would get from friends and family members to get as far as we have so far. But surprisingly to us, for the most part, the majority of friends we talk to, don’t care at all. They are so wrapped up in themselves (and sometimes their kids) that they don’t want to even hear about someone else’s life. It was a sad commentary on life that Sarah and I had to learn quickly as phone calls to friends go unreturned and emails never get answered. At first our feelings were very hurt, but quickly we just decided to not worry about it and move forward.

One blessing that has happened, however, is that Sarah and I are now more highly aware and really try to take time to listen well when people who make up our community share about their lives, passions and dreams.

So, how do we remedy the problem of a lack of concern, care or connectedness between families? Between friends? And between other members of our communities? To be honest, I’m not completely sure.

But here’s what I am going to do - my own sustained momentum: I am going to do my best to develop better relationships one person at a time. I’ve started going to a women’s Bible study at my church and volunteer to help in the nursery at church. I’m signing up to work VBS this summer. At least it’s a start. Since, I honestly believe that God created us to be in community with our fellow human beings and that we aren’t complete without these ties, I’m going to follow through and get involved again!

What about you? Are you giving to your community?

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Galatians 6:9-10

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Philippians 2:1-4

The Stockdale Paradox

Have you ever read something and thought: Wow, I wish I’d written that idea! There are gems of thoughts so profound they can change the course of your day, your career, or your life. Well I’ve been reading “Good To Great” by Jim Collins again. I’ve come across a principal that I feel we must re-embrace as FGE pursues sustained momentum.

The Stockdale Paradox*

“Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties;

and at the same time

Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
(p. 86 *Named after Admiral Jim Stockdale)

Simple, right? And yet so profound!

I have faith that God will prevail in the end whether or not our little company does and that is where I find my comfort and hope. With that said, however, I believe that FGE will prevail in the end as well. We daily seek for God’s Will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We earnestly appeal to see how we can be part of His mission and plan. He has brought us this far; we are confident that he will finish the good work that He’s begun!

We have dreams to create family friendly entertainment that makes you want to dance or reflect or dream or reach out to someone but most importantly we want to inspire you to change your world for the better! We are not looking to make millions of dollars or create a huge conglomerate company; we want to keep it simple. We want to work with friends with whom we have a shared vision. We want to create and live with integrity and love. No matter what the difficulties, we know that our faith will sustain us and that God will prevail.

Now, the more difficult part of this paradox for us is “confronting the brutal facts of our current reality.” Do you know how many movies are released just in the U.S. each year? It’s over a thousand a year. Add to that the number of movies, created by little independent teams just like us! It can be overwhelming at times to think of the odds that SWAY will make an impact on anyone other than the LeJeune family! However, we feel called to accomplish this and so we persevere.

Another brutal fact is that we have never attempted something of this magnitude before. God has taken us step by step and day by day to teach us new concepts (and software programs) and to introduce us to new people who help us accomplish this seemingly impossible challenge. If God had allowed us to see a year into the future last January, I’m confident that we would have been so overwhelmed we wouldn’t have even tried. We are still finding sustained momentum every day.

Another brutal fact is that we don’t have the financial resources today to finish what we’ve started. But we trust God to know that he will provide. He has so far! (Check out our project on KICKSTARTER @ www.kickstarter.com/projects/swaymovie/sway.) God is using so many different tools and so many different people to make this project a success.

Let me finish this blog with the following paragraph from the “Good to Great” book:

“ . . . the key elements of greatness are deceptively simple and straightforward. The good-to-great leaders were able to strip away so much noise and clutter and just focus on the few things that would have the greatest impact. They were able to do so in large part because the operated from both sides of the Stockdale Paradox, never letting one side overshadow the other. If you are able to adopt this dual pattern, you will dramatically increase the odds of making a series of good decisions and ultimately discovering a simple, yet deeply insightful, concept for making the really big choices. And once you have that simple, unifying concept, you will be very close to making a sustained transition to breakthrough results.” (p. 87)

Feeling Good Entertainment's (FGE) new website debuted to very little fanfare two weeks ago. It is our official company website. Please check it out when you have a minute. We’d love any feedback or ideas that you want to share! You can find it at www.feelinggoodentertainment.com. Sarah made this website in her Website Design class at Austin Peay – I think she deserves an A. We’ll see what the professor has to say!

God bless.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Matthew 6:9-13

KICKSTARTER Project Approval for SWAY Today!

This blog will be quite different from my normal posts. I just wanted to get our good news (sustained momentum) out to our friends as soon as possible!

We finally got our project, SWAY approved on KICKSTARTER today! We have 90 days to raise $6,000 to take SWAY to the next level. Please take a few minutes out of your very busy day to check this out. If all of our FB friends donate $20 we will easily meet our goal!

Go to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/swaymovie/sway to see how you can get involved! Honestly, we can't do it without you!

Please also encourage your friends to become members on our Facebook group page - SWAY. Our goal is to get 1,000 FB friends all across the country!

Please let me know if you have any questions!