Day 4 - The Familiar: Failure

“Certainty is not a natural human experience… but faith; is second only to error.”

Sometimes the thing that holds people back from doing what they know they are supposed to do or what they know they want to do is the fear of failure. I know this fear has been something that has held me back from many things I have really wanted in life. What is interesting is failure is something I am more acquainted with than anything else in the world. Yet so many times I have been gripped by fear of failure to the point of paralysis.

In a world where we strive so desperately for certainty the only thing that is certain is failure. I know that you might be thinking this is a very negative statement and possibly a depressing post, but it is actually meant to be a freeing post. When we release the idea that everything has to be perfect and according to plan and accept that we are probably going to fail and sometimes even fail hard then we realize that there is actually a grace that covers us when we do. It is almost as if we were never meant to be perfect and in control. That is the beauty of this exercise I am doing because it takes the fear of failure and being above average out of the picture. There have been many times I have been paralyzed by a blank page, but not anymore. At least not the past few days, because all I do is sit down and start writing about anything that is on my mind. Granted I missed a post only 3 days into the challenge, but the nice thing is the rules say if you miss a day you don’t make up for it you just keep going as if you never missed a beat. It is as if they knew this would be challenging and people would run out of things to write about and the fear of a blank page and the fear of not having anything to say and the fear of failure would paralyze people, so they went ahead and built grace into the whole package.

It seems similar to life in a lot of ways. There are people who concern themselves too much with living the wrong way and they never end up living at all. Jim Carrey recently gave a commencement speech at a university where he talked about our insatiable thirst for security. He told a story about how his dad could have been a great comedian, but there were too many uncertainties that surrounded it so he got a “safe” job as an accountant. He went on to say that when he (Jim) was about 10 years old his dad lost that safe job and his family had to do whatever they could to make ends meet. He wrapped the story up by a simple line that has been sometime I have held onto for a while now and that line is: “You can fail at what you don’t want to do; so you might as well take a chance at doing something you love.”

Sure, you are going to fail. But success isn’t defined by those who don’t fall, but by those who are able to fall and pick themselves up again as if nothing ever happened. Failure is probably the most familiar human experience, so let us embrace it and keep moving forward doing what we were born to do.

Day 2

As I went to bed last night I thought to myself, “This 500 words thing is going to be fun.” By the time I woke up I was laying in my bed thinking, “Why did I do this? I have nothing left say!” And now I wish I didn’t start out by saying that, but the rules of engagement are very clear about no editing, so there is that.

I like to be someone who can simplify things for people in a way they are able to understand. I think it is very frustrating when you look at problem or a situation and see all these complex parts and you aren’t able to make sense of them. It can be quite paralyzing. I learned early in life that if you can break things into more manageable pieces then any task, no matter how complex, is achievable. One of the earliest examples of this I believe came from my grandma, who loves putting together puzzles. Not simple 15-20 piece puzzles, I mean massive 1,000 or more piece puzzles that take days and weeks to complete. The steps are simple and most people know how they would go about putting together that big of a puzzle, they just wouldn’t take the time to do it. But if you wanted to, the next step after dumping out the thousand pieces would be to separate them by edge pieces and middle pieces. Next you would probably sort them into color groupings and then you would find your corner pieces and start building your frame. Some of you might be thinking, “I would never start a puzzle in such a way.” Well, my grandma would so write your own blog about how to put a puzzle together! (Booya)

The point is, it is simple when you know the process. It doesn’t mean that each step of the process won’t take time, but as long as you know what the process is then you are able to complete the task if you give it time.
Sometimes we tend to take something that has a very clearly defined process and we muddy it up and make it way more complex than it needs to be. We start allowing all these other influences that may or may not know what they are talking about get us trying things and we don’t understand how they fit within our process that already works. When we allow that to happen it is extremely easy to get side-tracked and allow things to become complex once again.

This is leadership to me. What was once a very simple process became very muddy for me because I allowed different philosophies and structures to influence me without understanding how they fit into the process I already had established that was working. Lately I have been thinking of a time when I knew much less than I do now, but felt like I might have been a more productive leader. I find that very ironic that the more I knew the less effective I was becoming. What I am not saying is “education is pointless” in fact, I believe the opposite is true. What I am saying is that it is important to find a structure that works and stick with it and allow the new education to work within that structure. That is the piece I missed and so I allowed a lot of things jack with the structure I had in place. Leadership is actually quite simple. My philosophy is: leadership is influence. Relationships allow for trust and trust allows for influence. If you have influence, you are a leader.

I believe it is actually that simple. Let’s no longer complicate something that doesn’t need to be complicated.

500 Word Challenge

I have felt for a long time that I have an undeveloped gift of writing. Many times I have set goals to write a particular number of blogs in a year and have fallen well short each time such a goal has been set. There is something vulnerable about putting your personal thoughts out for the world to see. Every time a blog is posted it is a breeding ground for insecurity and doubts. “Will anyone appreciate what I have to say?” “Is what I have to say a waste of time for readers?” “What will people think about the parts of me that I share here that I haven’t shared with anyone else?”

Vulnerability is a word that gets tossed around a lot when talking about writing and it is true, there is a vulnerability that goes along with putting your thoughts out for the world to see. It was pointed out to me recently that even people you completely trust, if you are vulnerable with them, that just means they know how to hurt you more than anyone else. If you think about how many people actually know you—your fears, your struggles, the things that bring you joy, the areas of success you wish you had, etc.—you might be able to only count those people on one hand. I know I am not in need of a second hand when counting those people.

Because of the vulnerability that comes with writing I have not posted a blog in months. In fact, this is probably the longest I have gone without posting a blog since I created my blog in 2008. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t written anything in the last 7 months, it just means that I haven’t written anything that I had enough confidence in to post it for the world to see. There are a number of labels you can put that under (whether fear, insecurity, laziness, or others), but I realize that I have been a little selfish with my thoughts in general. Until recently I would remain as silent as possible in meetings, only offering my words when requested. But I have realized that I have been selfish. I have realized that maybe thoughts come to me and words pair together in my head in such a way that are meant to be viewed by others.

So here is the remedy: I have accepted a 500 word challenge. The 500 word challenge is that every day for 31 days I must get up and write 500 words and without editing I must post it. So for the next 31 days you will be getting unfiltered thoughts on paper from the mind of Jordan Curtis. By no means do I expect everyone to read all of my thoughts, but any kind of feedback is welcome. I want to know what kinds of things resonate with you and what things you could do without hearing. So here it is: my first 500 words.

24

Another year has come and gone. Here are some reflections on the past year and some things that I have learned.

This last year has been such a profound one in my life. As I look back on it I can see how much I have changed and hopefully matured, as well as areas that I still need to grow and develop.

Year 23 taught me to be bold and make tough decisions. It has taught me that I cannot please everyone, so I don’t need to try. It has taught me that I will only be as close to God as I want to be and whenever I call on His name He hears me.

23 has taught me that if I am actually committed to doing something and I have the right people supporting me in it that I can do anything I want to.

23 has shown me that God answers prayers. He has given me some of the best friends I could possibly ask for. Friends who are full of grace and truth, who love me in spite of my faults, who pick me up when I am down, and who give me a place to rest.

23 has taught me that when I am being who I was created to be I am the most effective for the Kingdom. I am not the typical personality for someone in my position, but as long as I try to be the typical I am robbing the kingdom of someone God placed in it. I believe now that God has uniquely equipped me to meet needs in His Kingdom that others may or may not be equipped to meet and I should acknowledge that and be comfortable in that.

23 has taught me that love has many faces and many forms.

23 has taught me to laugh in new ways. To laugh at myself. To laugh with others. To laugh when I am alone. And to laugh for no reason at all. It is quite enjoyable to see how many different ways you can laugh and even more enjoyable to see how many people you can freak out when you laugh in unexpected times.

23 has challenged nearly everything I believe and has made what I believe my own.

23 has been a hard year.

23 has been a wonderful year.

23 has come and gone. Now on to 24: a new year with fresh adventures and new challenges. A year with joys I can’t yet fathom and moments that might bring me to tears. My goals for the next year are to simply: keep moving forward; don’t dwell on what I don’t have but look forward to what is coming; stretch myself; be proactive; and remember that The Lord is my shepherd and I lack nothing.

Here’s to 24, may it be a very good year.

Why I No Longer Want to be a Leader

For the majority of the last 5 years my desire has been to become a great leader. I have read numerous books, been to leadership conferences, read blogs, sat under and learned from some great leaders, prayed and have spent countless hours in a classroom learning what it means to lead. The problem is, who gets to decide who is a great leader and who is not? What is the measuring stick? Is it based on how many followers you have? Is it based on what your followers know? Or what they do? Is the thing that determines if you are a great leader how many leaders you are able to reproduce? Or is it the rate at which you reproduce them? And how do you know when you start out in a leadership position, like I am, whether or not you are doing it right? If results don’t always come in the first 5 years then is it possible that I will have to wait 5 years only to find out that I have failed continuously at what I thought was the right thing? Or is it possible that I misread my calling and wasted the last years of my life?

What I neglected to see is that I was not called to lead. I am called to follow. Every invitation Jesus extended was a call to follow him. He said that he would make his followers fishers of men, but he didn’t say that they would be leaders. He certainly didn’t promise that anyone would like them. When he would ask if someone would like to follow him and they would always respond by leaving whatever they were doing, which was usually what they did for a living, and went with him. There was something about the person of Jesus that created such a sense of life. People wanted to know him and be near him. They wanted to learn from him and hear what he had to say. Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that Jesus is so much more than I make him out to be. There is a wonder about him. Something mysterious that always had people asking questions, yet something refreshing that drew weary people to sit with him and soak up his love. Near Jesus the proud had no place to accuse others and the weak had no place to accuse themselves, and often you would find a little child in his arms. And our call was not to go ahead of him, but simply to sit with him and be in his presence. It was a call to follow.

I know what you might be thinking… What about the great commission? Even the great commission wasn’t a calling to go out and lead. It was a call to bear witness to what we have seen and heard. The disciples could only bear witness to what they saw and they heard. They never tried to go beyond that. All they would say over and over is we cannot stop talking about what we have seen and heard. And I wonder how much different my life would be if all I did was testify to what I have seen and heard? All the pressure of comparison is off at that point. All the pressures of leadership vanish. I’m not looking for approval… I’m just trying to tell you what I have seen and heard and what I believe I am supposed to do with that. My responsibility is to follow Jesus and if you would like to follow him with me I would love to be there to encourage you on that journey, wherever it might go.

I am a follower.

A Mossy Creek - Part II

So what is the most important thing if it isn’t serving others and it isn’t learning more and more? These things are really important things, don’t get me wrong, but they are not ultimate things. When you look at the way Jesus interacted with the world you don’t actually get the picture that these things were the most important. He would often leave and find a secluded place when the crowds were pressuring him to do something. Did he have this tendency because he was introverted by nature or was it because he knew that there was something more important than being around crowds of people 24 hours per day?

I’m going to opt for the latter.

Mark starts out his Gospel by telling of how Jesus would get up early before the sun was up and he would find a spot where he could be with the Father. Jesus held on tightly to his relationship with his Father; so much to the point that when there were crowds of people who wanted to talk with him he would wake up before the light and find a place where he could be alone with the Father. There were times when others would ask him why he would do something and his response was simply, “I only do what I see my Father doing.” His identity in who he was as a son of the Father was so grounded that it drove everything he did. While he healed many people from illnesses and ailments that wasn’t the most important thing to him or else he would have just sat still and allowed people to bring the ill to him for 3 years. Jesus spent some time learning as well. Luke tells us that he grew in wisdom and in favor with the people. But being a learner was not what drove Jesus forward, nor was being a servant of people.

It appears that the most important thing to Jesus was to be a faithful son. And that was exactly what he was. He was faithful to the end, completing all the work the Father had set out for him to do while never losing his identity as a son of the most high King.

Imagine if the primary person you and I operated out of was that of the son or daughter of the King? What I mean by that is: instead of the thing that defines us being our job, a parent, a child, a student, an athlete, a computer guy, or “that girl” or “that guy”, rather the thing that defines us is the fact that we know and are known by the King and that we call Him ‘daddy’. This would greatly change the way we go about our business. Our prayers would sound less like rambling chants or spells and more like a conversation between a child and a concerned Father. When you tell someone that you will pray for them it would be more like the privileged son of a CEO telling a distressed employee of the company that he will talk to his father on their behalf, because he can go straight to the one person who can fix the problem in seconds. When we show up to a widow’s house to do some work it is not just a “charitable act” rather we are there on behalf of the Father because He wants them to know that they are just as valuable to him as anyone else in His family, so if they have needs then the needs will be met.

Imagine what all would change. There are many implications of thinking in such a way, and I’m sure that you have thought of some that I haven’t. But Paul makes it clear multiple times that we have been given a Spirit that calls out to Him “Daddy, Father”. So let us talk to God, not as if He is a distant concept to believe in, but a Father who loves you and wants to know you and what your fears are, what your joys are, and what you are looking forward to in the next week, month, or year.

A Mossy Creek - Part I

What if there was one thing that you were supposed to understand above all else and if you got that one thing right then all other aspects of life would simply fall into place? For several years now I have been trying to figure out what that one thing is and I have a feeling I am not the only one. My thought was, if there is one thing I am supposed to do then I will do it and that will be all I need. But what I found was that I did not need another thing to do, rather I needed to understand who I was supposed to be. This was a hard transition and one that is still in the works, but I would like to share a little bit of that journey with you. If you understand who you are supposed to be then your life will radically change, of that I am quite certain.

I was challenged with this idea several years ago by a pastor in Atlanta. He was preaching around New Years and talking about how everyone always sets out to make New Year’s Resolutions on what they want to do for that year, but rarely do people just sit down and think about who they want to be. The point he was making was that when people become really successful at doing something without being someone they end up sacrificing their character in the name of success.

So I set out to figure out who I am supposed to be and I did what I felt like I should do as a responsible Bible College student: I searched through Scripture. There were two sections of scripture that really shaped who I became over that next year or so: Philippians 2 and John 13. Philippians talks about how in our relationships with others we must have the same attitude as Christ who humbled himself and became a servant to all. Then John 13 is a picture of just that. It is where Jesus understands that he has all this authority given to him by the Father and his response to knowing this is that sheds his outer clothing and gets on his knees and washes the feet of everyone in the room, including the guy who he knew was going to betray him. So, I decided that the person I was going to be was a servant, because we are called to imitate Jesus and Jesus was a servant.

Something about this was difficult for me, but I continued to do it, not entirely sure what I was doing other than showing love to people in the way Jesus showed love to people. But I felt like something was missing or that there was more to it. So I began to study more and learn about different learning styles, study approaches, and the importance of growing in knowledge. The thinking there was that God created the world and everything in it, so if I learn more about the world then I will in turn learn more about the one who created the world. So I set out on a quest (of sorts) for knowledge. And I greatly enjoyed this. I told my friends on multiple occasions that I have such a great job, because I get to sit in an office and learn constantly. One of the most exciting days in my first summer at CrossView was when my friend Kevan taught me about the “memory palace,” this was a concept that allowed me to be able to remember large lists of things and blow the minds of many. It was a very fun time and I learned a lot in this stage… But this only carried me so far. There is more to life than being a good student.

Just to be clear, I am not saying in that being a servant is not something I am willing to be and I am not saying that being a student is not something I am willing to be. Nor am I saying that it is something that we should all give up. All I am saying is that it is so vitally important to get the main thing correct and despite what I have been taught in various settings I have come to a place where I don’t believe that the most important thing is to serve nor is it to study hard, though these things are typically elevated to such a status. I am saying that there is something more important than both of these things along with others that have been elevated to such a place of radical importance. But for the sake of time, because I believe the most important thing deserves a little more than a paragraph, I will save that for another post. So please hear me out in my next post before you pick up your stones or deem me a heretic.