“Don’t settle…Don’t settle…Don’t settle.” That’s my self-talk. It’s easy for me to get lazy, give in and grab junk and eat it.

I wrestle with responsibility. I assume you do too.

Note: Today’s my 25th anniversary at TreeHouse, and this is the final post of the “10 for 25″ series on ten important lessons I’ve learned at TreeHouse.

As you may know, when I was younger one of my best friends said to me, “common sense is not common to you,” and he was right. He didn’t know the whole story, I was young and even more reckless than he realized. 

These days I’m learning not to do stupid things. I knew I was supposed to do good things, but I didn’t really think about why I should.

Then, years ago I read in my Bible, “Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.” 1

This is a picture of my friends Tiffany and Barry. I’ll see Barry next month. I last saw Tif in 1991.

Tiffany, Kris, Jenny, Eric, Rajjon, Adam, John, Beng, and Tyler, all TreeHouse teens. All gone. Way too soon.

Life Is Short

This is post is part of a series entitled “10 for 25.” It’s about ten lessons – most of them hard lessons to learn – that I’ve learned over my twenty-five years at TreeHouse.

Life is short. Our time with loved ones is never guaranteed.

Tuesday I began a series called “10 for 25.” It’s a series of ten lessons I have learned in my twenty-five years at TreeHouse. Today: Who do I want to become?

As a child I wanted to be heroic. When I played super-heroes with some of my neighborhood friends. I wanted to be bold like Hawkeye, fly like Nighthawk and have the courage of Captain America. I still love the Avengers, in fact I’m reading issue 150 (see photo) today.

As heroic as I fantasized becoming, I’ve learned that it’s more important to Be Yourself rather than try to be someone you’re not.

In the movie Batman Begins, Henri Ducard tells Bruce Wayne: You traveled the world now you must journey inwards to what you really fear; it’s inside you there is no turning back…If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely. Are you ready to begin?

Beginnings are important. Yesterday I began a series called “10 for 25.” It’s a series of ten lessons I have learned in my twenty-five years at TreeHouse.

B…

I’m in the midst of a ten-month curriculum re-write and most of my writing time and energy has been focused on that project rather than #mysilentscream. That said, when TreeHouse graciously offered to throw me an “open house” to celebrate my 25th anniversary at TreeHouse I began to think beyond the present and reflect on the past.

In the past twenty-five years I’ve learned an incredible amount about myself, my family, my friends, the staff I serve alongside and the teens and parents that we serve. As I thought about it I decided to think through ten important lessons I learned in those twenty five years. This series is called “10 in 25.”

Professional sports leagues have a new player draft to give teams an opportunity to refresh their roster, and bring new skills, abilities and opportunities to their team and prospective players.

When teams and their draft choices are a great fit championships are built. When they are not, writers and fans relish the opportunity to vent in articles like, “10 worst No. 1 picks in NFL draft history.”

Careful research, interviews and thoughtful analysis are essential.

Intern Draft

This coming weekend I will be on a retreat. The images I’m featuring on #mysilentscream this week will be from works of “art” I created on various TreeHouse staff retreats.

I might struggle with painting and drawing, aesthetics and having an eye, but since I was in high school poetic words came more easily.

I learned to put words on paper
That reached deep into my creative soul
Within the frame of eternity
The poet wrote the verse
A gift to one and another
Revealed but thought perverse
Broken, bleeding, stripped, exposed
Our God hung humiliated
Unbound, unburied, freed from pain of death
Heaven’s poet stretched and celebrated

This coming weekend I will be on a retreat. The images I’m featuring on #mysilentscream this week will be from works of “art” I created on various TreeHouse staff retreats.

When my friend Jill Lacher first challenged us to do art I laughed. “I am not artistic. I got Ds in art class, and I earned them.”

In time I learned that I had an artistic eye, but not like in art studios, museums or hanging on walls.

I learned to put words on paper that reached deep into my creative soul.

This coming weekend I will be on a retreat. I’ve been on many retreats. Some of my favorite retreats have been TreeHouse retreats. The images I will be featuring on #mysilentscream this week will be from works of “art” I created on various TreeHouse staff retreats.

I know of no art medium that covers up bad art skills more than pastels. So when my friend Jill challenged me to create art with pastels in hand I was less afraid of failure and rejection for my lack of skills.