Seeing the Amazing

I’ve been blessed to do some really amazing things in my life. First, there was the opportunity to go to Houston when I was sixteen years old and represent the state of Kentucky at the Hugh O’Brian Youth Foundation (HOBY) World Leadership Congress. While there, I sang the national anthem at an Astros-Expos baseball game, flew in the real Space Shuttle flight simulator at the Johnson Space Center, and had my first kiss with a girl from Boston. (We were madly in love for four hours.) At the age of seventeen, I received a congressional appointment to the United States Air Force Academy. In college, I got to travel all throughout the United States as part of the Western Kentucky University Men’s Basketball team. I’ve been on national television multiple times, once spoke to over seventy thousand people in one weekend, had the honor of preaching a church planting service in Manaus, Brazil where a gang knife fight broke out, and I’ve had my own local day declared in Breckinridge County, Kentucky. As I stated at the start of this paragraph, I’ve been blessed to do some really amazing things! 
 
However, I want you to know that as I’ve grown older, my definition of amazing has changed. I now believe the most beautiful, breath-taking, and amazing things can be witnessed in the most ordinary moments of marriage and family.

Here is what I now determine to be “amazing.”
 

• Amazing is sitting down with a ten-year-old who’s struggling with homework.
• Amazing is hearing a seven-year-old ask their 317th question about a video game or Pokémon.
• Amazing is talking over upcoming schedules while you and your spouse brush your teeth.
• Amazing is looking into the eyes of a man who’s about to die and hearing him say, “I love you.”
• Amazing is hearing the uncontrollable giggles of your children and their friends as they laugh at a shared secret in the backseat.
• Amazing is making love to my wife as we hear the patter of rain and the roar of thunder in the background. 
• Amazing is going in for surgery, holding your wife’s hand, and taking great comfort in knowing that she’s simply there. 

 
I turn forty this year and that has caused me to be reflective. As a pastor, I’ve learned the humbling truth that no one is promised a long, prosperous life. Any one of us could be taken from this earth at any moment. Which is why I’ve been asking God to teach me to number my days. I don’t want to assume I have forever and lose sight of the precious amazing things around me every day. I want to live life with eyes-wide-open so that I am truly able to see the amazing truth that God is good.
 
And, I believe such seeing occurs at home with spouses, children, and extended family/friends. If you’ve lost the ability to see the amazing in the simple things your children do, then unplug from work, turn off your phone, and just watch your kids play. If you haven’t gotten lost in the amazing embrace of your spouse lately, schedule a date night where you and your spouse can simply be together, talk, laugh, confess, and forgive. If you’ve lost the ability to gaze as a family at an amazing sunset or picturesque rainbow, walk outside tonight and watch God work. If you no longer celebrate amazing events around a picnic table, dining table, or kitchen with fixin’s spread all around, clear your calendar, schedule the dinner, and have a celebration. 
 
A long time ago, the Biblical hero Moses wrote, 
 
12 Teach us to number our days, 
that we may gain a heart of wisdom. [1]
 
Ask God to teach you to number your days and may you, may I, may we all have the wisdom to recognize and celebrate the amazing things we see in life, in our marriages, and in our families. 


[1]The New International Version. (2011). (Ps 90:12). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.