Is Reality T.V. ruining families or just revealing the “truth”?

It’s not one of my best qualities, but I am a reality T.V. junkie.

I don’t know why, but I love reality T.V. There’s something strangely compelling about peering into the lives of normal (or abnormal) people and hearing/watching/indulging in their stories… I wish I had an explanation for why I find a guy “surviving” in the wilderness appealing; or why I will watch people fishing for Alaskan Crab for hours; or why I care to see people “cook it off” on Top Chef; or why I love, love, love to watch people lose a lot of weight! It’s part competition, part drama, part story – part who knows – but I love it!

Lately I’ve been wondering though… Is Reality T.V. bad for families?

We all know that power and money corrupt, but maybe so does celebrity – even the pseudo celebrity that comes from being a reality T.V. star.

I submit three examples:

John and Kate + (or – ) Eight …we’ve all seen the tabloids. What’s funny is that I used to actually enjoy their show. I admired them as parents, and believers . My daughter used to say she wanted to move in with them, because it really looked like they had an amazing life. …then it all fell apart. Greed? Selfishness? Who really knows what happened…

 

 

 

The Teutel family from American Chopper …if you’ve followed the show (as I have) you’ve seen the drama unfolding lately. It’s sad to see a family unravel on national television. They have always been volatile – but can’t someone step in and say “STOP this insanity?” In case you missed it – Jr. and Sr. had a blowout. Dad fired son, and now both are doing their own thing with Mikey lost in all the shuffle.

 

 

Little People Big World …this used to be such a great show – but lately, every episode talks about whether or not the two parents are headed to divorce. The kids are all growing up and Matt and Amy can’t seem to decide on whether they are in love or not. They can build a great farm I guess, but not a great marriage… It’s just sad.

 

 

Is there a lesson here?

I mean, very few of us are ever going to be offered an opportunity to have a T.V. crew in our living room.  …so what’s the lesson?

Maybe it’s to be very careful for what you wish for? …sometimes getting it can destroy you…

Current Cover Letter

Although I loved my last comic cover letter, I recently decided that its time to be a little more conventional. Here’s the current cover letter I am using.

coverletter

Is a Kids TRI in your future?

Most people are amazed when they find out our kids are doing triathlons. Admittedly, the distances aren’t that long, and that’s usually the first question asked – but we honestly don’t do it primarily for fitness (or difficulty).

Watch this great video and you’ll get a pretty good idea…

…we do kids triathlons because they are fun!!

As a parent, I love to see the kids compete – but even better – I love going for run, swim, and ride workouts with my kids in training. It’s all good

Sibling Rivalry (with results added)

This past Sunday, Aaron and Ashley (and their friend Devin) competed in the Colin’s Hope Kids Triathlon conveniently held in Wells Branch.

They all had a great time racing! It was Devin and Ashley’s first and Aaron’s second. He enjoyed being the “relaxed veteran” the morning of the race. They were all in the same age bracket and so they all had the same distances: 100 meter swim, 2.8 mile bike ride, and a 0.6 mile run.

Ashley wanted to beat Aaron (her older brother) really bad! She came up a little short though… Aaron finished in 24:27:15 and Ashley finished in 26:05:62.

They had USA Olympians give them their finishing medals!! How cool is that! (The guy on the left in white is Ian Crocker and in the blue is Garrett Weber-Gale.)

We finally got the full results… You can see them here. Aaron came in 4th – just missing a trophy by 1:10. Devin was 20th in that same division. Ashley had an impressive 7th place among the girls for her first Tri! Way to go gang!

Guaranteed way to kill your blog…

…just stop writing.

Sorry for the lack of creative, fresh content lately. I’ve been in a little funk. Oddly enough, I think having a job would help me be more consistent with this blog. When there is no pattern to the day, my motivation wains.

…not THE way, just MY way…

A week back, my wife and I decided on a 30 day challenge. The challenge was to read/study the Bible for 30 days. It’s not that we weren’t reading it at all, but we needed a little more structure – so we remodeled our morning schedule to give each other 20-30 minutes in the morning (before the kids are up) to read/study/pray.

It’s been going pretty well… Dana’s been working through a study and a workbook. Women love workbooks! I’ve been doing my own thing. Men love doing our own thing!

But allow me to be brutally honest: It’s completely possible to open the Bible and to pray, and to not get anything out of it! …especially at 6:05am …when you are still really asleep!!

So I’ve implemented two things:

1) I’ve started using the One Year Bible again. (I’m not using the Kindle edition yet, but I may buy it soon!) The OYB is just a Bible divided into daily readings. It has an Old Testament reading, A New Testament reading, and a reading from Psalms and Proverbs. It doesn’t take long to read. It’s nothing that amazing …but it does allow you to have a focus to your readings. I’ve also noticed that whenever I use the OYB, God will speak to me somewhere in the readings. I can truthfully say that I’ve never had a day of readings where God didn’t reveal himself to me somewhere… I cannot say the same thing about waking up, and guessing (that’s the finger pointing method) where I’ll read for the day …especially at 6:05am!!!

I also just found the One Year Bible Online. I haven’t used it yet, but you might give it a look see if you’ve never tried the OYB.

2) The other thing I’ve been testing out is R.E.A.P. I heard about REAP from my Austin Stone friends. (I’ve also heard it called SOAP.) REAP stands for Read, Examine, Apply, and Pray. REAP’s a pretty simple way to give you a mental structure for reading the Bible so that God will reveal himself to you… Here’s a link to what using REAP looks like.

…and in case you’re counting – today’s day 8 of the 30 day challenge

Practice makes …everything!

I just gave my soccer team homework. Really…don’t laugh! I gave them 15 minutes a day of kicking the ball up against a wall somewhere.

Why?

Because – the only way to get better at anything is to practice. The more you do an activity – any activity – the better you get at it. Mastery will only be achieved after repeated successful and unsuccessful attempts.

But here’s the rub – don’t we all hate to practice??

When I graduated seminary and got my first church I decided to check a life goal off my list. I decided to learn to play the piano! I’ve always dreamed of sitting down and tickling the ivories… I could easily see myself playing worship songs for fun and enjoyment… So, I found a teacher. His name was Bill Owens. He’s a musical genius and a great teacher. He actually sort of looks like Einstein. It was a match made in heaven: I was an energetic learner and he was a great instructor. I was playing in no time! But after about two months my progress slowed. I was still having a blast at lessons, but Bill stopped me after class one week and said, “Listen Charles, I love having you come for lessons. We have a great time, and I enjoy taking your money – but unless you practice at home on your own its all just a waste of my time and your money. You’ll never learn to play from just lessons. You have to practice!”

That intervention was all I needed to realize that my dreams of playing the piano were just that …dreams… unless I was willing to commit significant time to practicing. I quit taking lessons by the way, and decided to play more golf.

Who you are will never match who you want to be unless you commit to some discipline in your life. It could be your diet, or exercise, or that hobby you’ve always wanted to try – or even your spiritual life. Everything requires practice before you achieve the level of perfection that you want.

…so get out there – find a wall and kick the soccer ball against it!

* and if you’re keeping track – Day 2 of my 30 day challenge is going great!

The 30 day challenge

Dana (my wife) and I have been having some really good conversations lately about who we want to be versus who we are right now. They’ve been great conversations because we aren’t trying to judge one another, or fix each other, or cast blame. In other words, we’re not telling each other, “You really need to change this, because its what I hate about you” – but rather, we’ve been admitting areas of weakness and putting our collective heads together about how to fix them.

One of the areas that we’ve decided to tackle is our spirituality.

Dana and I both admitted that we have a desire to have a deeper walk with Christ. We both want to be reading God’s Word more and praying more. This is one of our core values, but over time, we’ve grown lazy spiritually.

In the past, both of us have tried to focus on this area without much success. I can only speak for myself, but my main problem is consistency. For me, focus in this one area eventually rubs against things with greater priority – and I quit. So when Dana and I put our heads together we decided that we needed a plan to tackle this together – but we knew that the plan had to work for both of us or it wouldn’t ever truly be adopted into our lives.

Here’s what that looks like for us… Dana gets up really early to get ready for school. She’s shouldered the responsibility of getting herself and the kids up and out the door. The kids do their own breakfasts, pick their clothes, etc. but its still a chore for her to do everything alone. For us to have a quiet time together (even though we do our own thing separately) two things have to happen. First, she has to get up a tiny bit earlier. The other thing that has to happen, is that I have to wake up and help with the kids.

Our plan (and challenge of the next 30 days) is for her to wake up and shower. She then wakes me up and we have our time alone with God, reading and praying. Then I wake up the kids and get them going while she finishes getting ready.

You might say… But aren’t you forcing it? (I mean who wants to get up early and read their Bible and pray, right?) The answer: Yes! …but we’re not doing it to punish ourselves. We are doing this to add some discipline to an area where we want to yield results. If you stop and think about it, pretty much everything that is beneficial is work in the beginning! Its like eating vegetables or working out – both yield tremendous results but are no fun initially.

So that’s our challenge… If you want to join in with us you can – but you need to find a way to carve out about 20 minutes each morning. Shoot me a comment if you do, and I’ll pray for you. I’ll also try to update you all on how we’re progressing. Today, Day 1, was pretty awesome!

Stuff I’m thinking about this week…

This has been an odd week… It all started with finally getting some news regarding a job that I had interviewed for – they said “no thanks” – but at least now I can move on. Not-knowing is ALWAYS worse than knowing, even when its bad news. So this week, I’ve turned my attention to another possible opportunity and I’ve started the search up again. Here are a few other things that have been on my mind:

My sister had a kid this week! Beth and Tim now have 4!! (She likes to beat me in everything, so it figures that she’d eventually have more kids too.) I’m excited for her, and our family is really looking forward to meeting Grant. He’s a cutie!

I’ve also been thinking a lot about writing… Specifically, three areas: Books, Articles, and a new website venture.

Most of you probably know that I like to write. The question (for me) has always been, “Could it actually be profitable? Could I make a living at writing?” I think its finally time for me to do something with all those ideas, so the tentative plan is to develop the ideas and work them up as possible article series for magazine publication. Who knows if anyone would ever publish any of it, but at least it would give me something to do. …assuming I can get disciplined and actually sit my butt in a chair and write. If you have any advice on getting published in a magazine, please email me (charles dot whitmire at gmail dot com) and let’s talk!

I’ve also been thinking about starting a triathlon website. I’ve really enjoyed getting into Triathlons – and I think there’s a market out there for a website that shares a rookies journey, as well as advice, product and race reviews, etc. I’d love to find someone willing to offer some start-up funds... I think I have a pretty cool idea that would make my website standout from the rest, but that’s still Top-Secret!

As if this post wasn’t random enough… This week I’ve started sending out the “ministry” version of my resume. For a variety of reasons, I’ve been wondering if maybe God wants me to stay in ministry (vocationally). The conversation I’ve been having with God has been pretty interesting…

Finally, here’s something I really want! This is a gps training watch called the Garmin Forerunner 310xt. It looks freakin’ amazing – but it also has a pretty hefty price tag that’s well outside my budget. Feel free to buy it for me… Or hey – buy it for Baby Grant and send it to me. I’ll use it for a few years and give it to him when he’s old enough

Wery good, Levi, Come on!

Ever wondered what it would be like to be in the chase car behind a top professional cyclist during a time trial? …well now you know!