I hope and pray that all of you are in a place where your well planned summer is being executed to perfection. You’re hitting on all cylinders and batting 1000. Vacations, day trips, fun filled around the house activities, perfect weather, gardening, summer house fix it projects, sun tan, super busy productive kids nowhere near a screen, no stress from driving everyone everywhere, plenty of time for you…all of these things are coming together for you so far this summer.
Maybe that’s the case…maaaaayyyyyyyyybbbeee not. Well, allow me to not burden you one minute further. I have wanted since this website began just over two years and 232 posts ago to put together a podcast. Perhaps it would be with my good friend Ryan Lowe as web designer and pop culture/technological guru Eric Hammond (of The Design Scoundrels) suggested. Perhaps it would simply be by myself talking about the craziness of my life (or just Trey stories) as my lovely sister Marcie has suggested. I have always wanted to do something with a very simple person (Pittsburgh accent a must) reading the bible for the first time and asking the questions that everyone wants to ask but they never do for feeling of looking stupid or at least ignorant. That wouldn’t so much be a podcast but nonetheless a project in my mind nonetheless. Well, I’m here today to announce that I am ready to move forward on…none of the above.
However, since so many of you check out my posts directly from other social media links you may have missed something. It is the “Listen” page on my site. Just click on it. Currently, the first segment of my series on “Keeping It Simple – Loving Yourself” is available in its entirety. It is based on the fact that we are to love God with all of heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love others as yourself. The problem is that we never really look at loving ourselves. Well, if we don’t love ourselves, how can we truly love others? If we aren’t loving others how can we say that we love God? So I took some time and spoke about it.
You are worthy of love and it is not narcissistic to love yourself. I love that the passage in Matthew 22 (and elsewhere) just assumes that we do…well we don’t. Oh, very often we are consumed by ourselves, but not in a healthy loving way, quite the opposite.
So, since you’ve done such a great job getting executing your summer plan and are just sitting on your hammock in the shade while your kids are doing their summer homework (hurry before they’re done!) why not listen to one or two? At the end of it you may not hate yourself for the trainwreck of a summer you have put together.