This sign that I spotted in Washington struck me as overly dramatic: “Falling Can Be Deadly. Please Stay on the Trail.” So if I leave the trail, I’m in danger? And if I stay on the trail, I’m safe? If only life were so simple.     
     Here are signs others shared with me that made me chuckle:     Molly wrote about a large billboard in Utah that announces, “Stop and Eat and Get Gas.” No thank you.
     Pat says an Oklahoma sign warns, “Hitchhikers may be escaping inmates.”    
     Terry laughed about the name of a South Dakota graveyard: Canton Lutheran Cemetery. To be buried there, how do you prove you’re Lutheran?         
     In the Utah desert, Julie drove by a wooden sign proclaiming, “Forrest Gump ended his cross country run at this spot.”     
     I puzzled over this sign beside a Colorado parking lot: “Caution - Children Ahead.” Am I supposed to watch that I don’t harm them, or that they don’t harm me?     
     Whatever signs cross your path, I hope you never have a deadly fall, that those who hitchhike into your life aren’t convicts, and that you don’t come across children who harm you.     
​     And perhaps in today’s heated political climate we could all use this Nebraska sign promoting civility: “When push comes to shove, don’t.”

     Ouch! Lies bite. I’m not talking about the ones we tell. I’m talking about the ones we believe.     
     Recently I felt stiffness in a family relationship. Why was she giving me the cold shoulder? Meanwhile, she believed her own lies and thought I didn’t want to be around her. Then, like ticks burrowing deep into our souls, we believed more lies: “She doesn’t value me.” “She doesn’t love me.” “Things will never get better.”     
     Finally the volcano burst. Anger. Tears. Gut-wrenching pain.     We could have walked away and called it quits, but Love pulled us back.     
     We talked. We cried.     
     And Truth cut through the confusion with laser precision, exposing the lies for what they were. Then with a skilled scalpel, Truth dug the festering falsehoods out of our souls.     
     Between sniffles, we said our “sorries.” We experienced what the first-century Jewish teacher Mark describes as the phenomenal result of having our thinking turned around: “times of refreshment.”     
     Relief!     
     Now I’m hoping we’ll be closer than ever in spite of this - or maybe because of it. If only we’d talked sooner and exposed the lies to the Light.     
     Do any lies fester in you about someone? Or any lies you’re believing about yourself? My advice: dig them out before they burrow deeper.
***
     Photo courtesy of the California Department of Pubic Health with text added. 

     As I sat in the movie theater watching the documentary about Mr. Rogers, an embarrassing memory crossed my mind. One morning at the rec center I’d stepped onto the elliptical, positioned my ear buds, and pushed up the volume on my phone. Only faint music. I cranked up the volume again. Not much more. Then the twenty-something man on the machine next to me pointed to my cord. “Not plugged in.”     
     Oops. I shoved it in, and the music blared into my ears from what had shuffled onto my playlist - a cover of an old Mr. Rogers song. Second embarrassment - the guy next to me had heard it all. I peeked up at him, and he laughed. “Hey, I was into it!”     
     I gave him a sheepish grin and began striding on the elliptical. The warmth of the song’s lyrics swept over me as they had when my kids were little and we watched Mr. Rogers on TV. Like a good father, Mr. Rogers reminded me that I’m growing inside. That I can make a snappy new day. That he has ideas for me. That each day he’ll have things to talk about, and I will, too.     And a thought crashed into my head: these words were not only from Mr. Rogers, they were from my heavenly Father. I’m growing inside. We have things to talk about. He has ideas for me. What a message I’d have missed if I hadn’t gone beyond the music and plugged into the spiritual realm.
     I left the rec center to make a snappy new day.
***
​     To hear the B.J. Thomas version of “It’s a Good Feeling,” click here.

     Trust me, like lilies bursting through murky waters to bloom in the sunshine, strength can blossom out of weakness.     
     Take, for instance, the life of Claude Monet. After cataracts nearly blinded him and he could no longer discern color, the French impressionist painter created some of his best loved works. He yearned to capture his waterlily ponds on canvas, but they appeared gray to him. Therefore, Monet relied on the labels on his paint tubes to know which to spread onto his palette. Through his perseverance, the artist’s shimmering pond paintings reflect not only the sky, they reflect a man who believed vivid beauty existed even when he could no longer see it.     
     Like Monet, I’ve been plagued with vision problems - near and far sightedness that forced me into lenses as thick as Coke bottles, astigmatism that distorted images, cataracts that threatened to turn everything dark. Surgeries improved my sight, but left it changing throughout the day - something not always easy to live with.     
     Yet my delight in nature grew out of this weakness. I remember when I put on my first pair of glasses and peered at tree bark. Shocking - how intricate! Years later, I still love photographing the world’s complexity, something I appreciate because it was once only a blur.      
     So what’s your weakness? Has it developed a strength in you? Don’t let that weakness overcome you. Search for the backbone of character and strength it develops in you.    
​     Because nothing in this life has to be wasted. Not even handicaps.

     First Tony’s parents divorced, then his mother underwent shock therapy. He begged his mom to set aside part of her alimony money for food, but she burned it up in cigarettes.
     Our friend Tony decided that if he was going to make it, “I had to make it on my own.” So he left home at thirteen and moved in with older guys. That dropped him into a culture of pot and alcohol.
     Yet he persisted in school, attending classes during the day and working at a Chinese restaurant at night (“I was the only white guy there.”). He graduated, married, had three kids, attended college, and joined the energy industry. Fast forward: Tony’s wife left, and he finished raising their youngest child. He remarried, welcoming his new wife’s family. Meanwhile, his expanding career moved him around fifteen countries on five continents.
    Then the bottom fell out, and Tony learned he couldn’t make it on his own. Work-related social drinking had drowned him. His greatest accomplishment occurred then when he “turned it all over to The Man, Jesus Christ,” he says. “There’s got to be a word above gratefulness to describe what I feel.”
     So how did Tony survive the odds stacked against him? As he told us about his life, I observed he never blamed others. He took responsibility. And he realized he couldn’t make it on his own.
​     That’s a wise man.

    Tony joked it was okay to tell his story
“as long as it includes that I love my God,
​rock and roll, and all people.”