Luke’s Notebook

In our line of work, it’s not uncommon at all to run across with various lawsuits.  While a lot of cases are forgettable, there are some that really stick with you.

I recently became aware of a lawsuit against a police officer, with a then-pregnant lady claiming excessive force that resulted in the wrongful death of her unborn baby.

It really kind of stunned me to think about the facts for a moment.  Had this lady chosen, she could have gone to a clinic and aborted her baby that very same day, and nobody would be in trouble.  But since she didn’t choose that, this turns into a wrongful death suit.  Obviously, it would be terrible if the officer did cause the death of the baby.  Regardless of fault, though, it is just amazing to think how crazy our laws can be sometimes and how little common sense there is.

Can anyone explain how that baby wouldn’t have been a baby if it was aborted earlier that same day?  Did it somehow transform into a baby once she decided she wanted to keep the baby?  Or if she was okay with losing the pregnancy, would it no longer be considered a wrongful death?  What if she was planning to get an abortion the very next day, and then this incident took place?

I mean, to me, this is so obvious that I almost think that I am missing something.  It can’t really be that simple, can it?  Yet I keep doing the math, and I keep coming up with the same result:  This was, indeed, a baby, regardless of who did what.

Sometimes, I think the truth can be easily overlooked and dismissed because it can be so obvious.  It’s right there in front of us.  Yet… we don’t always accept it right away.  The tragic irony is that by trying to be intellectual and open-minded in regards to something like this, you can be doing yourself a disservice — causing you to miss the simplest answer.

Any little kid could reason that if a pregnant woman was carrying a baby on one day, then that probably is still a baby she is carrying the next day.

It’s very good to be educated, but we shouldn’t feel bad about finding a simple truth.  Some things are no-brainers, and they should be that way for everybody.

So I guess the moral in this is to not feel like the odd one out if you are the only one who sees something that seems so extremely clear, yet you wonder why so few other people see that.  We shouldn’t feel ashamed to see things clearly, in black and white.  It’s okay.  Sometimes the most obvious conclusion is the correct one.

Over the past 10 days or so, I have had such a lesson in a few things about God’s character.

Things that I have “known” for the longest time have become so real lately, and it has made me realize how literal God’s promises are.  Things that I might think of as more of a theory or good words of wisdom are actually completely, totally true, absolutely real.  There’s nothing theoretical about them.

I see that God doesn’t do anything halfway.  He doesn’t exaggerate.  He doesn’t understate; He doesn’t overstate.  He says what He means, and means what He says.

That’s kind of hard to believe these days, as we live in an environment with so many bold claims, promises, and predictions that we can start to take everything with a grain of salt.

But I’m reminded that God is not like we can be in this sense.  His words are 100% true, and deserve complete trust.

So with that, when God promises that He will guide me… it is completely literal!

About a month ago, I posted Proverbs 3:5, where we are told to trust in God with all our heart and to NOT lean on our own understanding, to just acknowledge Him, and He will make our paths straight — He will take care of us.

In Matthew 6, Jesus says to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then our needs will be taken care of.

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

These are all pretty significant promises.  What amazes me — and I know it really shouldn’t — is that these are totally true.  Basically, it’s God saying, “Hey, just love Me.  Obey Me.  I will take care of the rest.  I know your needs.  I know who you are; I know where you are.  I can do things you never imagined.  Just trust Me.”

It can seem very risky and reckless to live a life where you don’t protect yourself, but you just try your best to trust Him in  everything.  What happens is every time, He provides.  He does NOT let you down.

It’s a very simple proposition, really.  If people are truly willing to trust Him — even when it may seem odd or foolish — He will take care of them.

I think a reason this gets to be such a hurdle for me is because I am human.  I’m imperfect.  I forget things.  As much as I may try, I don’t always do exactly what I say I’ll do when I say I’ll do it.  I have also encountered plenty of other humans in my life.  Those people, unsurprisingly, were also imperfect.

But God is not like that.  He doesn’t forget.  He doesn’t need tapping on the shoulder.  He doesn’t get distracted.  He doesn’t promise what He can’t deliver.  He will never, ever let you down.

This is stuff that I have “known” for the longest time, but just recently it became so much more tangible.  In a few different things, I have seen things happen that only God could have orchestrated.  The perfect timing, and everything else surrounding these things have just confirmed how God knows exactly what we need and when we need it.  Not only that, He is always on time, too!

It has been such a thrill lately to have a couple of things happen that just had God’s fingerprints all over them.  It is tremendously helpful in those times where I get tempted to forget, or to reason, “Well, yeah, that did happen, but this is now.”  It doesn’t really make any sense, but it’s almost as if I think that somehow this particular issue is just a little too complicated for God.

But to have something extremely tangible happen — when I realize that, “God, only You could have known this” — it just is such a comforting feeling.  I know that God is so much bigger than all of my worries.  Things that will frustrate me when I try to figure them out are absolutely no challenge for Him.  He sees the entire panoramic — where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going.  Nothing that happens to me is going to surprise Him.  He cannot be caught off-guard.

When God gives you the thumbs-up or tells you “Everything’s okay,” what more could you ask for?  If God — who sees every aspect of my life — tells me not to worry, then that’s all I need to hear.  What a relief!

It is also just so humbling, because I know that by now there is NO excuse for me to ever doubt God, to ever question Him.  Yet… I still have that tendency to worry, despite all of the things God has done.  What amazes me is God’s patience with me.  I really don’t deserve it, but yet He still loves me like crazy, and He still will stick with me, even when I get antsy.

I don’t know if I will ever really understand just how much God loves me, but I am just so thankful that He does.

The 2009 Softball Classic is next month.  Five weeks from Sunday, the 11th Annual Safe At Home Softball Classic is set to kick off.

Wow!

The past couple of weeks has been a slow transition into “Classic Mode,” where a lot of new duties and tasks pop up for everybody in the family.  This is when things start to get pretty busy, as we enter the final month of preparations.  September 6th is going to sneak up on us.  These final weeks tend to just fly by.

It’s a busy time, for sure, but also a very exciting time.  I am really looking forward to the Classic as simply being a great time of fun; basically, a big party.  I love to see a bunch of fresh and familiar faces who come out to spend some time with us.  And, as strange as it sounds, I like the clean-up process.  It’s 11:00 or midnight, and most of us have sore feet and are kind of limping around the park to pack things up.  But there’s a feeling of relief to know that we pulled another one off.  What’s really special is that oftentimes, we’ll have visitors — either local or out-of-town — who decide to stay late and help us with the clean-up process.  Pretty awesome.

This is going to be fun!

Last week, we played six softball games.  Of those six, we won three of them, including the last two games of the week.  I don’t know what our team’s record is in 2009, but I believe it’s a little bit under .500.

So we are having a decent year.  Record-wise, it’s not overly impressive, but some of these games are truly incredible.

Since we still lose plenty of games, it’s sometimes hard to realize how much progress we have made and just how good everyone has gotten.  Sometimes, when we beat a really good team, I’ll marvel at the game and compare the other team’s player to ours, and it will just amaze me that this team of Arndts has just beaten this intimidating and talented team.

One reason we are improving is fairly obvious.  We have plenty of young players, so each additional game provides valuable experience for several guys at once.  The softball games basically serve as on-the-job training for many of us.  So one reason for our success has been the younger guys maturing, working towards reaching their full potential.

It’s not hard to understand how, as younger guys continue to grow up and gain strength and coordination, a team will improve.  But I recently realized that we have something else going for us, which I think gives us an enormous advantage.

We are a team in the truest sense of the word.  We are unified.  We know each others’ strengths and weaknesses, and we all work together to get the job done.  And as a team, we are gelling together so well.  Each game we play together, the more familiar we become with the guys playing next to us.  I think being so unified makes us play much better than we would if we were just 11 casual friends with the same skills that the 11 of us have.

One thing I love is that we don’t have egos on this team.  People are willing to do the humblest of tasks for the good of the team.  And this is just something that you aren’t going to see in a lot of other groups.  People would be more interested in trying to inflate their own stats, trying to have the best personal performance, instead of doing what’s best for everybody involved.

This is one area where, even though I try my best to always do it, I just don’t always feel it.

It really struck me a few weeks ago.  Our team had just played a great game and beat a tough team, yet I was very frustrated after the game.  Why?  Because I played terribly.  I may have batted 0-4 or 0-5.  I was just upset that I did so poorly, and that was starting to overshadow the fact that our team had just had a great win.

But… shouldn’t I have just been happy that the team won, regardless of my own performance?  The answer is obvious:  Yes, I should have.

So why wasn’t I happy?  Why was I upset with myself?  Why would I have felt better if we had lost but I had managed to hit three home runs in the game?

That’s something that bugs me, the very fact that I was so focused on how Luke performed.  And this is one of the hardest things to balance when you’re competitive.  If you’re always trying to better yourself, always trying to improve, then how to you handle things when you fail?  How seriously should you take it when you aren’t doing well?  Part of me thinks that you don’t improve unless you allow a sub-par performance to bother you.  I think you need something driving you.  But it can definitely be taken to an extreme, where you become selfish and self-focused.

Again, this is something I need to work on.  I know that I can get to be extremely competitive and hard on myself when I’m not doing well.  I don’t want to lower the standard and accept mediocre playing, but… I also don’t want to be too self-centered.

It’s hard.  I’m still learning.  That was definitely a wake-up call, though, when I found myself upset despite the team’s great accomplishment.  I realized that something isn’t quite right if I don’t really enjoy something like this.

Maybe it is an ego thing after all, but I really don’t think it is.  I think the main cause for the frustration in a game like that is I feel like I let the guys down, like I didn’t contribute as much as I should or could have, like I didn’t reach my potential.  I would feel that I’m underperforming, that I’m not doing my part.

I don’t yet have the complete answer to this, but I am trying to find the perfect perspective to look at it from.  I want to be able to have fun, win or lose.  Also, I want to be having fun even if I strike out five times in a game.  There is just something in that competitive nature, though, that makes this extremely difficult.

In this all, though, I don’t want to miss the obvious:  That I am so blessed to be able to play softball with nine of my brothers and my dad.  And the fact that we are healthy enough and athletic enough to do this is absolutely remarkable.  While there may still be some rough corners that need to be rounded out, a panorama view of the entire situation is phenomenal.  I know that, while it’s okay to be competitive and to want to improve, I need to make sure to have a blast while out there, win or lose; success or failure.  The most remarkable thing is that I get to play softball with all these great guys.  I get to be a part of this incredible atmosphere.  If I mess up here and there, who really cares?  The important stuff goes way beyond the box score.

I really have so many wonderful memories from growing up.  There are so many special things we did as a family.

One tradition I remember well is our family outings to Pantera’s Pizza for their lunch buffet.  They had a very good deal at Pantera’s, and we all loved to eat there, so Mom and Dad would take us every now and then, when work would allow.

At Pantera’s, they had a small video game arcade area.  They had your usuals — Ms. Pacman, Pole Position, a pinball game, and a few others.  Mom and Dad would sometimes give us each a few quarters to spend.  When we were out of money, we would typically just pretend that we were playing while the game cycled through its demo video.

Sometimes, on racing games in particular, you would be turning the wheel, hitting the buttons, and managing the gas pedal, and the car’s movement would be corresponding perfectly with what you were doing.  It was so accurate, in fact, that you might think there were some extra credits on the game, because you feel like you’re in total control.

So you’re feverishly turning the wheel to dodge bombs and to avoid other obstacles.  You’re flooring the gas pedal, to go as fast as possible.  You are about to break a sweat from the intensity, and all of a sudden, something pops up on the screen:  “Insert Coin(s).”

It’s at that moment that you realize that you weren’t actually in control.  Even though you thought that the well-being of that on-screen car was in your hands and your hands alone, you find out that that wasn’t the case.

The animation loops on the screen, and this time your hands are off the steering wheel.  You see the same car, following the same paths, performing the same maneuvers.  Everything is the same, with one important difference.  The first time through, you were convinced that you were in full control.  If you let go of that steering wheel for even a second, you were sure, you would crash into a fiery heap of pixels.

The second time through, you understand that your efforts aren’t going to change anything.  You simply sit back and watch this time around.  It’s kind of embarrassing to realize that all of your stress and strain were for naught.  You thought you were doing a lot, when in fact your efforts were totally useless!

It’s not the perfect analogy, but I think it’s pretty appropriate.  This is how I feel oftentimes.  I will be straining and trying my hardest to avoid “crashing,” and then I will have the revelation that I am not in control and, in fact, never was in control.  God will do something that shows such a massive gap between the fruit of my best efforts and then what He can do.

I should realize by now that the key to life is to find out what God is doing that day, and then to follow that.  Instead of trying to barge in through locked doors, life is so much simpler if I just look for those “doors” that God has opened.  That way, if something doesn’t seem to be on that day’s agenda, it’s probably simply because God doesn’t want it to happen at the moment.

Psalm 127:1

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

My mistake is that so many times, I don’t take that literally.  I believe it and all, but not enough to apply it to real-world cases.  It’s silly, but I think that God may need a little bit of my help or a little coercing in order to get the ball rolling.

As if God isn’t already billions of light-years ahead of me!  Somehow, in my 24 years of living, I have become arrogant enough to think that I know better than God at times, to think that I might be able to manage things slightly better than He does.

It sounds so terrible when I call it what it is.  An old song that I haven’t heard or sung in years has just come to mind:  Be Magnified

I have made You too small in my eyes
Oh Lord, forgive me
And I have believed in a lie
That You are unable to help me.
But now, Oh Lord, I see my wrong
Heal my heart and show Yourself strong
And in my eyes and with my song

Oh Lord, be magnified
Be magnified, Oh Lord
You are highly exalted
And there is nothing You can’t do
Oh Lord, my eyes are on You
Be magnified,

Oh Lord, be magnified
I have leaned on a wisdom of men
Oh Lord, please forgive me
And I have responded to them
Instead of Your light and Your mercy
But now, Oh Lord, I see my wrong
Heal my heart and show yourself strong
And in my eyes and in my song
Oh Lord be magnified

Such a beautiful song.  And it’s my prayer, too — first off, that God would forgive me for not giving Him the proper respect and trust.  Secondly, I’m asking Him to humble me and to teach me to lean on Him like never before, to realize how powerful He is, how much He loves me, and how all I need to do is seek Him first.

Early this morning, I drove over to Chesterfield, Missouri, for a videotaped deposition of a psychologist.  The attorney taking the deposition, who was heading to North Carolina, told me he needed a copy of the video right away, and asked if he would be able to get it Monday morning.

I told him that that should be no problem.  The depo ended around noon, and I knew it would be a bit of a squeeze to have a DVD produced and ready to be FedExed by the end of the day, but I was confident that we could make it.

Fast-forward to the end of the day, around 6:00, when I run out to drop the envelope into a nearby FedEx box.  The typical pick-up time for that box is 7:00 or 7:15, and the green not-yet-picked-up flag was showing on the box to let me know that I had beat the drop-off time, and that it was safe to drop the envelope in the box.

I was just about to let the package go when my eyes happened to fall on a small note posted on the box, saying that there was no pick-up on Friday, July 3rd.

Shocked, I pulled the envelope back and closed the lid.  I immediately called John, and we spend the next half-hour or so on the phone or online with FedEx and UPS, trying to figure out a way to get this overnighted.

“Overnighted” in this instance meant Monday delivery, as they don’t have anything going on Saturday, the 4th of July.  We eventually found a FedEx facility in downtown St. Louis that had an 8:00 pick-up time, so it sounded like our worries were over.

I went ahead and drove on over there, arrived around 7:05, and walked out the door a few minutes later, with the package safely on its way.

It was definitely a relief to have fulfilled our commitment.  It was a bit more involved than we had thought, because we didn’t think that the 3rd would be viewed as a half-day or a holiday.  So when we went on our end-of-the-day run, we were surprised to learn that no FedEx box (or UPS, for that matter) in the area was available at that time.

With this all, what amazes me is the fact that I happened to see that little notice posted on the box.  I had the lid of the box open and was a second away from dropping the envelope into the box when I saw the notice.

I can’t explain how I managed to catch it, but I don’t think I can take credit for it.  I think God must have just brought it to my attention just in the nick of time.  A second later, and I would have dropped it into the box, confidently thinking that it would arrive in North Carolina by Monday morning, when in fact it wouldn’t even leave that box until Monday morning.

I’m so thankful that God kept us from making what would have been an embarrassing mistake.  I just never really considered that the shipping services would take a half-day.  I imagined it would be an all-or-nothing deal; either they do business as usual, or they don’t.

So tonight was one of many examples of just how good God is.  Occasions like this really bring God’s love down to a personal level, where you just want to say, “Wow… thanks so much, God.  You didn’t have to do that, but You did it anyway.”  It just shows how much God cares for us in the most practical ways.

Life can get pretty complex; that’s for sure.  Trying to figure certain things out can leave me feeling scared, frustrated, and totally confused.

But Proverbs 3:5 just set me straight:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

That’s it!  That’s the solution!

It doesn’t feel natural for me to not rely on my own understanding, but God is telling me — promising me — that if I just humbly trust Him and seek Him, essentially the rest will fall in line.

It’s a difficult task, especially when I am so accustomed to having to use my brain to solve other problems, and it can be really scary to not be able to figure something out, to not know the answer.  But God is reminding me that I shouldn’t even be trying to figure things out.  That’s not my job.  That’s His.  My job is to love Him and obey Him first.

So really, it should come as no surprise to me if I find myself puzzled and unsure of the solution to something.  My task then is not to tense up and not rest until I crack the code.  Instead, it’s to just give it to God — who loves me like crazy, as it is — and trust that He is, in fact, trustworthy.

I would like to expound on this a little more, but I have an early video depo tomorrow morning, so I need to put both my laptop and myself to sleep.

One thing I just can’t quite fully understand is why exactly I get to be a part of this family.

The family that I have and the life I get to live — I am so privileged to be in this spot, and it kind of hurts my head to try to figure out just why I get to be involved.  I mean, I feel like I was born into royalty.

It’s hard to know where to begin.   The character that I see in not only Mom and Dad, but in my brothers — and Wizzy — is so admirable.  The hard work.  The talents.  The senses of humor.  The integrity.  The pure joy.  The humility.  The athletic abilities.  Put simply, I’m surrounded by the best of the best.

So we have this incredible cast of characters.  Such a diverse group, yet many similarities and common interests.  Sprinkle in some very entertaining chubs, a beautiful little sister, and two amazing parents, and you should understand how sometimes I wonder how I could ever have earned a spot on this all-star roster.

It’s kind of a deep question, really.  I mean, obviously I didn’t have a choice.  We can’t choose our parents or our family.  So the whole “Why me?  Why here?” question can’t really be answered.  It’s simply God’s goodness, His grace.  I guess He just wanted me to be a part of this group.  I’m a piece of the puzzle.  And it’s humbling to know that I had absolutely no control over it.

Since I clearly had no control over it, I just find myself constantly thanking God for such a wonderful setup.  I still have to almost pinch myself at times, to really realize that I’m part of this!  I’m one of the Arndt boys.  I’m a part of the all-Arndt softball team.  It’s an enormous privilege to be a part of the figurative team as well as the real thing!

One thing I know for sure:  If this is the best it gets, I have already had an amazing life.

I have this tendency to want to make things bigger and better, to constantly improve, to reach the next level — win more softball games, earn more money, lose more weight, run a faster mile, get a better phone.  Sometimes, some of my “gripes” are even over pretty trivial things that just aren’t quite right in my eyes, and so I worry about them.

While that could be a good trait to have, I guess, I need to make sure that I keep things in perspective.  Sure, it’s fine to improve, to sharpen up, but let’s not miss the obvious:  I live an incredible, privileged life. I never want to forget that.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying or stop pushing for improvement.  I just need to keep things in their proper place, and realize that right now — today — I have more than I could ever deserve, and that anything more is simply a bonus.

And to think that this is just a temporary life, too.  I get to have all this fun while it lasts, and then I have even so much more to look forward to when the time is up here.  Amazing.

God is so good.

Check out the main FamTeam page.  Look at the “Luke’s Notebook” animation.  Does it look like this? “Title Of Blog Entry” and “Blog text here”?

That’s not supposed to happen!  I don’t know why it’s not properly displaying the title of the entry as well as the excerpt.  I must have broken something… again!

Do me a favor, friends out there.  Check out the main page, and let me know if this is what you’re seeing.  You can e-mail me at luke@famteam.com.

I don’t think it has been malfunctioning for very long, but I’m really not sure.  I’ll have to investigate it a little bit.

Update:  Well, now that wasn’t too tricky.  Turns out it was thrown off by a little configuration-file edit I made when fixing a FamTeam Today bug the other day — specifically relating to how the database is accessed.  All is well now, as you can clearly see!

Now, back to your regular programming.

We have had a couple of situations recently where we have found ourselves trying to locate some old files that we thought we had stored on a computer somewhere.  In one instance, we were looking for a deposition transcript from several years back.  A couple of other cases had us in search of a bunch of photos that we had taken on various trips of ours.

To our surprise, we were unable to locate some of these files on any hard drive on any computer anywhere in the house.  I phrase it that way because there are many, many hard drives in many computers in this house, so we have a bunch of places to look.

Eventually, we located some DVDs that we had burned as backups several years back.  We were relieved that, when it was all said and done, we had recovered everything that was missing, thanks to a few DVDs or CDs that we had gone to the trouble to burn some time ago.

To be honest, I didn’t really think we would ever need them.  And I actually had forgotten that a couple of them had even existed.  They were just created years ago, and essentially thrown into a closet or a desk drawer.

I’m a little sobered up by this close call, because we could have easily lost a few chunks of photos just like that.  It wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but those vacation photos are very meaningful, and it would be such a shame to lose them due to carelessness.

Right now, I’m in the process of copying roughly 170,000 photos from one hard drive to another.  I don’t want to ever have this scare again.  Hard drives are so inexpensive.  The $100 or so I would pay to have another drive to back these up onto is well worth it.  These pictures are priceless.

Moral of the story:  Back stuff up.  If you have anything on your computer that you would miss if the computer blew up tomorrow — be it photos, videos, documents, music — I’d advise you to back them up somewhere!  It really is extremely simple to do, and it can save so many headaches in the future.

What’s really ironic is that this all happened after we had implemented our automatic backup system over the network.  My suspicion is that these photos were lost beforehand, but we just never realized it.  That would mean they never actually had gotten backed up onto the server, but that we had just assumed they were with all of the other photos.  So technically speaking, it wasn’t due to a flaw in the backup system; most likely, we just never checked to ensure that those photos were where we thought they would be.

So my advice to everyone out there is to take a quick inventory of what you have on your computer.  If there’s anything that you would miss if something were to happen to your computer, then you need to have some sort of backup system in place.

Finally, if you love the idea of backing up all of your stuff but don’t quite know where to start, you could contact our computer business, Arndt Computer.  We can give you advice on what to buy, and we can actually help you set things up via remote control!  If you’re local, we can obviously do on-location work, too.

One way or another, make sure you have a safe place for your stuff!  It’d be a shame to lose anything precious in the event something bad happened.