Musings at Altitude

I made it to 37,000 feet four different times this past week, and I truly enjoyed the freedom of thought that came from being removed from constant connectivity and the associated tension when on the ground.  That freedom begins the minute they make the announcement, “please shut off all electronic equipment”, and that freedom leaves the minute the wheels touch down on the arrival runway.

On the last two trips to altitude, I put my earphones in, put my iPod on my favorite songs, and the first song that came up was a song by Casting Crowns called “Somewhere in the Middle”.  The message in the song is about our path to sanctification and how we’re in the middle of what we were and what God wants us to be.  In one particular line, they sing, “somewhere between who I was and who you’re making me, somewhere in the middle you’ll find me.”  If you want to listen to the song, here’s a link to it – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DveYBno-pmQ&feature=related.

As I focused on the words in the song, I realized how true that is for me in my spiritual life, and I then realized that it also applied to every phase of my life.  In fact, as I began to do an assessment of my life, I broke it down into four different areas – spiritual, personal, physical, and professional – and then I laid out a simple assessment tool with a very candid rating on each area of my life:

In the scale, I used “P” for “perfect” on the far right and “PF” for perfectly flawed on the far left.  I then thought long and hard about how I’m doing in each area. 

In my spiritual life, I spend a lot more time in prayer and in reading God’s word, but I don’t spend nearly enough time living my life in accordance with the way God wants me to live.  It’s pretty clear to me that to live in accordance with God’s will, I need to live a life of service to others and live a life of obedience as well.  I struggle at times with the first and I struggle mightily with the second. 

In my personal life, I have struggled a lot with balance, spending most of my time on the road and not being available when and where I was needed to be the husband and father I needed and still need to be. 

In my physical life, I’m a slug, sitting here fat and dumb but not necessarily happy with my physical condition much of the time.  It’s pretty simple as to the solution – get active and get committed to improving my current physical state, but I always find reasons to wave off on that long walk or to eat that extra piece of pie. 

And in my professional life, the more I experience and the more I learn, the more I realize how little I really know and how lacking I really am.  I compensate by working extra hard and quickly apologizing for all my mistakes, but in the end, I’m only half way through my 50 year work life, and I feel like I’m only half way through the learning I need to do to be able to be the person I want to be in a leadership role.

So I truly am somewhere in the middle, and unfortunately in several areas, well below where I ought to be at this point in my life.  As the song says, I’m “somewhere between who I am and who I used to be, somewhere in the middle you’ll find me,”  but I’m not sure I’m very excited about where those ratings fall right now.  I’ll ponder these ratings for a while now, and I’ll come up with some commitments and resolutions to improve in each of these four areas.  But I’ve done that before and only nudged myself up the scale a little bit.  At this phase and stage of my life, nudging isn’t good enough anymore – I need leaps up the scale.  That’s what I need to figure out how to do.