The time I hit a tree…

I was leaving the graduation party for one of the students in our youth ministry. It was an exciting day for sure! When it was time for me to go some of the people walked me out and waved goodbye from their front porch.

I waved bye, got in the car, and put it in reverse…..then BAM! As they looked on, I rammed my car right into their tree. Embarrassed I got out to see if there was any damage. There wasn’t….so I just drove off without saying anything. I was hoping to never speak of it again…but here we are.

The problem I have in life is I get distracted easily. My mind wanders. There are times I’ll be driving down the road and it feels like I am just going through the motions.

Have you ever been there? Driving and then snap out of it and think, “Have I been stopping at stoplights? How did I get here?” It’s a weird feeling for sure.

It goes beyond driving though, when I get stressed out I often end up just meandering through the motions of life. It’s like things become a blur. I stop being intentional about my connections in life. Inevitably it impacts the relationships around me.

Whenever I talk to hurting families one of the common themes is, “I don’t know how we got here.” There’s this undertone of, “One day we all loved each other and things were good and now things aren’t. Please help.” In reality, I think, someone, somewhere, in that relationship at some point, just started going through the motions.

We all do it, but hopefully we can wake up before our relationships back into a tree.

Paul says it this way, “Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning…” 1 Cor. 15:34

Man, I need that reminder. If you want to be better at life then you gotta be better at being intentional.

Think about this week alone. How much intentionality have you given the relationships in your life? How about your relationships with your kids? What about the relationship with your spouse? Have you been intentional or are you just kinda meandering through it all?

If you are a Jesus follower, how intentional have you been with your relationship with God?

What would it look like to wake up and be more intentional in that relationship this week? Imagine if everyone in your family was intentionally pouring into each other. How would that look?