Article
January 17, 2022
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by Richard Wood

44

I am very late in posting this birthday post (backdated to January 17). I woke up on my actual birthday and writing a blog post seemed to be the furtherest thing from my mind. All things considered, I feel incredibly lucky to be alive.

This past year has been something else. While I have managed to avoid COVID, I did not manage dealing with some self-destructive choices that led me spending six months of last year living somewhere other than my house. That time away led to a lot of introspection and reflection on some horrible choices I made, realizing that I needed help to overcome my own demons, and to let go of some control. Basically, I shipwrecked my life and found myself floating, holding on to anything that would keep me afloat.

The process of healing is hard, both for me and for others. Yet I feel thankful for my family and friends who have stood with me as I attempt to take the broken pieces of my life and put them back together.

Nothing about this past year has felt normal. It’s hard to plan when so much is changing. My middle school classes have been Petri dishes and I spend most of my days wearing an uncomfortable KN-95 mask and sitting behind a desk covered with plexiglass. It’s taken a toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally. All I want to do with my free time is sleep.

The past year brought some uncomfortableness physically. On one hand, I realize that I’m 44 and not 24 now. I got back into officiating football and soccer, and while I love it for numerous reasons that I’ll explain another time, it has caused its share of aches and pains that I didn’t notice before. I really started to relate to this Garth Brooks song.

I don’t have any particular wisdom to share right now. I don’t feel worthy of dispensing it. Perhaps the best thing I can share is that no matter what you are feeling, keep ROWing.

This year, I want to focus more on my wife and daughter and get out of my head. I want to reconnect with old friends and listen to more music. I want to be a content creator instead of a content consumer. And I just want to enjoy life more.

Article
January 17, 2021
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by Richard Wood

43

I turned 43 today. As I sit here and reflect on this day, I feel very fortunate to be alive and writing this post, since I skipped last year. I haven’t been posting on here as of late, but with the way social media has been heading, now seems to be a good time to once again curate my own space on the world wide web.

Over the past year, I’ve started a new career as a middle school social studies teacher. It certainly wasn’t where I thought I would be, but after I found myself without a job during this pandemic, the nudging of some close people in my life led to that door opening. It’s been difficult to teach in this particular environment, but I must say that I am enjoying what I am doing, and have seen this more of a calling as of late.

Life has been pretty hectic at the moment. I’ve been dealing with some personal issues and some health issues, and they seem to interconnect with one another. It’s been difficult to plan in this environment, but lately I’ve been trying to think more about long-term goals rather than short-term gratification. One think I hope to do is to turn this space into a hub for projects I want to achieve over the next year or two.

So here’s to mending broken relationships, dreaming new dreams, daring to try something new, not being afraid to fail, and seeing where God leads from here.

Article
January 17, 2019
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by Richard Wood

41

I mentioned in my blog post for last year that I was going to be more intentional about “creating margin” over the next year. In some ways, it happened, due to some intentional steps, but also some unexpected unintentional steps. Having this margin allowed for some time to reflect on my life, realizing that I had spent way too much time living in some type of “organized chaos” without any real focus on much of anything. Some recent time off work after Christmas helped me to gain some focus again in order to be more proactive instead of reactive.

Probably the biggest achievement over the past year professionally has been the research and implementation of live-broadcasting the worship services at my church on a relatively low budget, along with updating the look of the website within the confines of a template. Neither are where I want them to be, but I dare say that both are probably the best quality compared to others in the area. All that said, now that I’ve got past a couple of major projects over the past couple of years, I feel the need to get back to some basics of ministry, to focus more on people instead of tasks, and to be more pastoral.

Healthwise, despite currently being on “injured reserve” due to a pinched nerve resulting from a recent car accident, I feel that I’m in the best shape I’ve been over the past 20 years. I decided a few months ago to plan my workouts over the course of two-week intervals and became part of a group of guys who play basketball in the pool at the local YMCA three mornings as week. We play 21. The games can get intense, but the result is a great cardio workout. My A1C level has been the lowest it’s been since I became a Type-2 diabetic, and I’ve been able to come off two of the four medications over the past year I’ve been taking.

Recently, I came across the phrase mens sana in corpore sano, which is translated from Latin to mean, “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” I’ve done a lot to get what I feel is a healthy body, and I want to work more on the healthy mind. I’ve incorporated meditation into a regular practice, using the app Oak by Kevin Rose. I also want to focus on creating healthy habits in order to alleviate the stress that life brings, including a focused devotional time and journaling.

If you haven’t noticed by now, my theme for the upcoming year is focus. I felt over the past year that I just allowed life to happen and in some ways just ended up surviving a lot of days. Now, I want to be more of a “captain and commander” of my time, as David Allen puts it. So more intention will be put in to the day-to-day operations of life. I want to read more, to write more (since obviously the last post in from a year ago), and to continue to work on the work-life balance and mind-body balance. Now that I’m in my early-forties, I’m excited to see where all of this will take me.

Article
January 17, 2018
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by Richard Wood

40

My mother called me this morning and as she wished me a happy birthday, she reminded me that 40 years ago, it was snowing heavily outside the hospital as I was being born. This seems quite unusual, but it seems to snow on significant birthdays… 13, 16 (which I was not happy about since I had to wait an additional week to get my driver’s license), 21 (fun times at Gardner-Webb), 30 and as I’m typing up this blog post reflecting on my 40th birthday, it’s snowing outside.

This past year has been good, although it’s been full of challenges. I’m thankful that God’s strength and stability through the trying times over the past year, which have kept me sane in times of chaos. Professionally, I’ve been challenged by working through two significant renovation projects (they don’t teach you this in divinity school) which are almost completed. I’ve been blessed by the teenagers of my church, who are more mission-minded than anything else, and it showed during our mission trip to Washington, DC this past summer. My role has changed slightly as I will be responsible for the education ministry of the church, so I’m looking forward to putting some focus into that side of ministry this year.

Personally, I’ve been focusing more on my health. I joined the local YMCA on a whim a few months ago, and have been trying to work out three days a week when I can. I can tell that it’s helping, because I feel the best I’ve felt in a long time. I’m also working on my cooking skills more and hoping to expand my repertoire in 2018. In following up from last year’s post, I’m still wanting to focus more on gaining experiences instead of stuff and wanting to simplify things. “Creating margin” is my phrase for this year, and I’ve taken some steps over the past few weeks to begin that process.

I’ll probably write some more about this another time, but I can certainly say that the first forty years have been an exhilarating ride, and I’m looking forward to what the next 40-50 bring.

One more thing… leading up to today, I kept thinking about this rant by Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy. I hope you enjoy.

Article
January 17, 2017
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by Richard Wood

39

I was 16 when I began my first job working at Lowe’s Foods in my hometown of Wilkesboro, and one thing I have always done almost every year for my birthday is take the day off. The only times when that hasn’t happen is when my birthday falls on a Sunday (like it did last year). So today, I’m out of the office just enjoying the day to myself until I have a nice dinner with my wife and daughter.

In reflecting on this past year, I’ve had several ups and downs. With a change of diet and the help of medication, I’ve been able to drastically improve my A1C levels and get my Type 2 Diabetesunder control. Unfortunately, I’ve had to switch medications twice due to the awful side effects that my first two medicines caused. Here’s hoping the third time is the charm. One thing I hope to do is exercise more in the hope that perhaps someday I can remove some of the medicines I’m on.

This year also provided two big trips. The first was in July when I went to Montreal / Chateauguay, Quebec, Canada on a mission trip with JHBCYouth. It was my second trip to Canada, but it was a different cultural experience being in the French speaking side of the country. Our group did a lot of good work there and I hope to go back there again soon. The second was right after Christmas when we took MJ to Disney World. It was such a delight to be able to experience everything through her eyes, as she was excited about every princess and character that she met.

This year, I want to find more balance, mostly because I stink at it. I’ve been thinking about this over the past few days after hearing that a mentor of mine passed away unexpectedly. One of the things he taught me as I began in ministry sixteen years ago was to “savor the moments”. I confess, I haven’t done that very well because I’ve spent way too much time doing and not enough time being. I hope to change that this year.

I also want to read more, write more (since I haven’t written a blog post in a while), and focus more on experiences rather than the accumulation of stuff. So here’s to 2017 and cleaning out the clutter in preparation of celebrating when the next birthday changes two digits instead of one.