Daly Focus Blog
We can’t change our past. But we can learn how to transform yesterday’s pain into something positive for today.
I can still feel the embarrassment. Each football season my high school held an event called “Dad’s Night.” I dreaded it all year. The whole team lined up on the field as the announcer called out names, and dads ran out to stand by their son. All too soon, it was my turn.
“Jim Daly,” said the voice over the loudspeaker.
When life gets tough, we want solutions. Immediately. We want heartbreak, confusion, and physical pain all to just disappear.
But overcoming life’s obstacles is rarely easy. It takes faith. And patience. That’s how reality is constructed.
A few years ago, here in Colorado, a late spring snowstorm dumped a couple feet of heavy, wet snow. Tree limbs all over the neighborhood were broken. In my own backyard, one tree lost almost a third of its branches.
You won’t believe what I did the other day. I rented a jackhammer and used it to chip away the concrete foundation of my home. It was a lot of work, but I was determined to finish the job. When I did, about a third of my home was perched atop a large, gaping hole.
I didn’t chisel away the foundation as part of a home improvement project. I wasn’t making way for a new addition.
Popular author and relationship expert Dr. Gary Chapman illustrates conscience as a five-gallon bucket strapped to our backs. Doing wrong against our spouse or anyone else is like pouring in a measure of liquid.
After a few mistakes, the burden we carry gets heavier. After a few more, heavier still. Eventually, our conscience becomes so full, so heavy to bear, that the contents spill out in unhelpful ways, on us and our spouse.
In Acts 24:16 of the King James Bible, the apostle Paul says of himself: “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.”
The word “exercise” is the Greek word gymnaso, from which we get the English word, “gymnasium.” The word can also be translated as “discipline.”
Paul says, “I discipline myself.” To do what?
One of the most important qualities to being an effective parent is a willingness to overcome personal barriers that get in our way. My own dad provides a sobering example of how destructive it can be when a parent stays stuck.
One of the few times he showed up to one of my baseball games, he was stone-cold drunk. When I came to bat, I was so mortified I couldn’t move. Dad yelled awful things at the umpire as pitch after pitch zipped past me.
Years ago, when Jean and I moved into our current home, the truck was unloaded, and we pulled the lid off each box one by one and looked through every item.
So much stuff went into the trash that I thought it would be helpful to get one of those big trash bins used at construction sites. It was fantastic. I was throwing stuff away left and right.
That’s when the trash fairies showed up.
I’d spend an evening happily tossing one item after another into the garbage.
A man who knows that well is Tim Leatherman, the inventor of the Leatherman Tool. That’s a pair of pliers with additional tools stored in the handles, like screwdrivers, a saw, wire cutters, and a bottle opener. It’s like a Swiss Army knife that converts into a tool belt.
Tim came up with the idea during a vacation to Europe in 1975. Travelling on a budget, he rented the cheapest car he could afford. It broke down repeatedly throughout the trip.
What does a hero look like to you? Would you recognize one just by looking?
In comic books, heroes are easy to spot. They wear a mask or a cape and have superhuman abilities. In the real world, heroes often carry a badge and are trained to save lives. Then there are heroes like Darin Barton.
Darin was standing on a highway overpass in Denver, Colorado when a semi-trailer barreling out of control plowed into stalled traffic below him.
The great Winston Churchill once said, “Those who are unable to look back are unable to look forward.” For America to move into the future with our liberty intact, we must look backward and remember the principles of freedom upon which our country was built.
Looking backward is how Abraham Lincoln led America through the Civil War, one of our country’s darkest, most divisive, and bloodiest time periods. To keep the nation pointed in the right direction, Lincoln continually reminded the country of our noble beginnings.
It’s becoming controversial to take pride in America. Some say that a nation stained with injustice isn’t a nation worth celebrating. I would agree with that … if our country didn’t also correct our mistakes. And we do. The objective of a perfect society will never be obtained, so what counts is the direction we move.
Our Founders knew that building America would be a stumbling journey forward, toward our highest principles. And they gave us the greatest possible Constitutional framework with which to do it.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
