Here's to the Roaring Twenties

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It’s going to be a great decade—the Roaring Twenties!

I’m not naive, and I know there will be hard times ahead. But I also know that life is what you make of it, and I believe these next ten years will be the best ten years of my life.

Why Not?!

Every year I pick a One Word theme for the year, but since it’s a new decade, I’ve decided to be extravagant and also pick a 2 word theme for these next 10 years.

My two-word theme for the Roaring Twenties is, “Why Not?”

Last year, just after Dabo Swinney led the Clemson Tigers to their 2nd National Championship in 3 years, he gave a postgame interview—all of which is worth watching—30 seconds of which have stayed with me since I first saw it. Over the past year I’ve gone back to that clip often.

Some background: Dabo, who grew up poor in Alabama, was a walk-on for the Alabama football team while he and his mom shared an apartment, because she had nowhere else to live. Dabo’s Clemson beat Alabama for both of its recent national titles. Here’s the clip:

 

Dabo Swinney gives a memorable answer in his National Championship postgame interview, January 7, 2019.

 

I love that!

It’s going to be a great decade.

It’s going to be the Roaring Twenties.

It’s going to be the best 10 years of my life.

Why Not?!

 

P.S. What’s your One Word (or two or three) for the Roaring Twenties?

Leave me a comment below.

These Past 10 Years

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Ten years ago today, December 31, 2009, I was in a snowstorm in Boston, Massachusetts. In the picture above, taken on that afternoon—New Year’s Eve 2009—you can see me and my wife, along with my parents and my youngest brother, posing outside of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which was offering free admission for the holiday.

I stumbled across that picture today as I was reflecting on this past decade, and I’ve been struck this evening with the memories of all that has happened since.

These past ten years have been something, let me tell you.

I officially started work as the pastor for Munger Place Church on January 1, 2010, so I’ve been the Munger pastor for exactly 10 years, or 3,652 days. Munger didn’t exist as a church when I punched in that first day of 2010 (we launched worship in October of that year), and as excited as I was for the opportunity to help bring life back into our old building and into our neighborhood and launch a new church, I can honestly say that what has happened at and through Munger over the past decade far exceeds anything I could have imagined 10 years ago.

One of my strongest desires was to be the pastor of a church that people wanted to attend; one of my greatest blessings these days is to know that in those of us who call ourselves Mungarians, that desire has been realized: we love coming together as a church on Sundays (and other special days).

The video taken below is from this past Christmas Eve 2019. We opened our doors for our services 30 minutes before the services were to begin; when we did so, there were crowds of people already lining up to enter church. Here’s the video of the doors opening at 4:30 PM for our 5:00 PM service. How great is that?!

Folks waiting to enter the church when the doors open 30 minutes beforehand. Munger Place Church. Christmas Eve 2019.

You can’t see it in the Boston NYE picture at the top of this post, but my wife was 4 months pregnant with our son on New Year’s Eve 2010, so I’ve officially been a father for the past 10 years, as well as being a pastor, though both son and church were embryonic when 2010 began!

I’m at home with my little family this New Year’s Eve, and though I always knew I wanted to be a father—I wanted a whole gang of kids— I can honestly say that being together with my family is the source of my greatest joy and that marriage and fatherhood and family have far exceeded what I could have imagined 10 years ago.

One blessing I didn’t imagine was the blessing that comes from being the father to a daughter. I came from a family of boys and I first became a father to a boy, so princess dresses and pink stuffed animals were not things I had personal experience with before my daughter was born. Having a little girl—and a very girly little girl, at that—in the house is a source of constant delight and amusement for me. I love being the father to a daughter!

I don’t think I would have believed, if you had told me 10 years ago, how blessed my life has been and how many beautiful people and experiences would be a part of my life, 12/31/2009 to 12/31/2019. These past 10 years have really been something.

Of course, these past 10 years have not been without pain and difficulty, too.

Being involved in any kind of start-up venture is stressful, and being part of a new church start is no exception. I’ve aged a lot in the past 10 years, and no doubt some of my grey hairs (I have some on my temples these days!) are due to my work at Munger.

And being a pastor is not an easy job. My job is worlds easier than many of my pastoral colleagues in my city and around the world—I have nothing to complain of—but even at a cushy gig like Munger there are the difficulties that come from leading and loving people. This past year, e.g., has been by far the hardest I’ve had in ministry. As a pastor, I’ve pressed my forehead into the living room carpet in anxious and desperate prayer, had relationships severed, faced serious opposition, and tasted despair for the first time in my life.

I have learned lots about love and grace this past year and this past decade, and even now I can say I’m grateful, though the learning has come with a cost. (As does anything worth having.)

But, as is always the case in life, the most difficult and painful times have come in my personal life. About a year after the birth of our son, my wife was struck with constant and inexplicable vertigo. For several months in early 2011 my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to live with us to help care for Elaine. Over the course of several years of medical explorations, we finally ended up at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. After that, my wife had a serious of inexplicable miscarriages. When she finally did become pregnant with the baby who would turn out to be our little princess, she had a series of catastrophic events happen afterwards.

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I will never forget being up all night in the waiting room, kept company by some men from our small group, and wondering how I was going to wake up our son and tell him his mother died. Through the grace of God, that didn’t have to happen, but I don’t think I’ll ever think of the birth of my daughter without a sick feeling in my gut.

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We won’t ever have any more natural children: that door is now shut forever. If I could wave a magic wand and change anything from the last decade, that’s what I would change. But I can’t, and so we won’t.

Which is not to say that I’m unwilling to accept that things might be exactly as God needs them to be. And also not to say that I am not joyfully grateful for the life and family God has given me.

As I’ve written before, I think the difficulties we’ve had together has made me more grateful of my wife and family than I would otherwise have been.

The 2 Words of Advice I Would Give The Me of 10 Years Ago

I don’t want to know the future—I think I would be too terrified of the difficult times and too likely to mess up the good times. The future needs to be sealed away until its proper time.

So, I would not want to go back to New Year’s Eve 2009 and tell myself in that Boston snowstorm all that was going to happen. But, there are 2 words of advice that I would like to have given to my 2009 self, and 2 words about which I’m reminding myself tonight.

Pray. It is only prayer than can prepare us to face the hard times. I wish I had prayed more and prayed more deliberately and habitually this past decade. God gives peace and poise through prayer; prayer is preparation.

Because life is hard, I would like to have told myself to pray.

Praise. I wish I had rejoiced and praised more this past decade. Every breath is a gift from God, and every day I get to see is a blessing. Praise is the only appropriate response to all that we’ve been given.

Because life is sweet, I would like to have told myself to praise.

I couldn’t have imagined in that Boston snowstorm all that God would give me these past 10 years, and I can never be grateful enough for all my blessings.

I don’t know what the next 10 years will hold, but I strongly suspect that on New Year’s Eve 2029 (if God allows me to see it), that I’ll be saying the same thing:

Thank you!