Category Archives: Real Men

Real Men are Generous

Posted on by
Reply

I feel like I’ve written this one before, but after a cursory search of my previous posts, it turns out that I have not.

Real men are generous. Like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a real man knows that it’s better to “give it away give it away give it away give it away now” than it is to receive it.

A real man knows that he’s been blessed with an abundance of talents and/or resources beyond what he needs to live his life, and as a result, he feels compelled to share the wealth with those who need it. In other words, he knows he’s got to give it away give it away give it away give it away now. Like the graph above, a real man pays it forward.

A couple weeks ago, I had a door fiasco at my house that put me in serious need of a new exterior door. In the process of getting it replaced, I was left with an unfinished job by a less than honest handyman. He installed a pre-hung door in our house and failed to finish the trim work. For several days, I was left with a brand new door that was beautifully installed except for the huge gaps around it where the light from the outside was shining in because there was no trim on the inside or out. Not exactly sure what to do, I was planning to pay a second handyman to come out and finish the job of handyman #1. I probably could have figured it out on my own, but I would have also had to buy several new tools in the process. When my uncle, who is quite handy with the tools himself, heard about my predicament he volunteered to come and help. Between the two of us… okay it was mostly just him… we managed to finish the trim on the frame surrounding my door in just a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. When I offered to pay him for the wood he purchased for this project, he refused to let me.

There’s a lot of things about this uncle of mine that make me consider him a real man, but his generosity is the one that is shining through at the moment. He saw that his nephew needed help with something that he had both the resources (tools, wood, time) and talents (advanced carpentry skills) to greatly assist with and so he stepped in and did what generous people do.

Between that incident, lots of baby showers, and someone graciously sending me a check for $163 to pay for a recent speeding ticket I incurred, I have been the recipient of a lot of people’s generosity lately. These experiences have both humbled and inspired me to be more generous with my resources and with my talents.

There are so many small things I can do throughout each day to bless the lives of other people if I’ll only slow down enough to look for opportunities.

We can all be better at giving it away giving it away giving it away giving it away now. The Red Hot Chili Peppers certainly don’t have a corner on that market.

I leave you with the last few lyrics of the song I’ve quoted throughout this post:

There’s a river born to be a giver
Keep you warm won’t let you shiver
His heart is never gonna wither
Come on everybody time to deliver

Wise words brother Flea. Wise words.

Real Men Engage

Posted on by
1

Today’s post comes from my friend Derek who is the consummate renaissance man. He’s an avid reader and a talented musician. He teaches guitar lessons and hunts deer with bow and arrows. He’s a triathlete and a writer. He’s a good husband, a man of God, and he sometimes drinks his coffee black. And this intro wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t also mention his affinity for Amy Grant. Enough of my intro, here’s the post:

The best advice I have received in while, “Be more interested and less interesting”.

What a novel concept! Quick to listen, slow to speak…seems like I’ve heard this somewhere before.

For some reason, that little phrase stuck with me, and I immediately took it to heart. I think most men pride themselves in being interesting. Whether it’s my job, my hobbies, what my family does on the weekends or my knowledge about a particular subject, I find myself wanting to be the one who people say, “that’s interesting” to.

When I catch myself being reminded of this it often reveals in me a deeper truth about who I am as a person. Although, I know the world doesn’t actually revolved around me, I find myself having conversation like it does. However, when I converse and live by this rule, conversation and friendship becomes so much more freeing.

This small act of selflessness requires me to not bring up that “little known fact” just because the conversation is in a lull. It requires me to think of questions that probe and challenge and motivate. It requires me to view people as actually made in the image of God. It’s as if we all have this little piece of God inside of us — Christians or not. It becomes a much more interesting conversation when you ask yourself, “Which piece of God do they have and how can I get them to tell me about it?”

Maybe you don’t have a problem listening. That’s kind of what we do as husbands/men — listen. Sure being more interested is about listening, but it’s just as much about engaging.

Listening is easy. Engaging…now that sounds interesting.

Real Men, Weeds, Mums, and Pansies

Posted on by
3

The lovely and talented wife told me last night that she wanted to weed our front flower bed this morning. It was REALLY grown over and was in terrible shape so I was hoping our daughter, who still currently resides inside the body of my wife, would work some of her in utero magic overnight and make her mother forget about her desire to have the flower bed weeded this morning. Unfortunately, Izzy is not Leonardo DiCaprio and Inception doesn’t work in real life… at least not on pregnant women.

And so I awoke this morning around 6:30 to the sound of the most beautiful, angelic voice I’ve ever heard whispering the words, “Let’s get to work.”

And so we did.

I got up, threw on some clothes, and stumbled outside. After I’d found my work gloves, retrieved my shovel from the garage, and dragged our trash can over to the flower garden, I immediately surveyed the landscape and the job that was ahead of me. This was not going to be easy. After a few minutes, I was joined by the lovely and talented wife who, to her credit, was not afraid to get down in the dirt and get her hands dirty. Then again, it was her idea.

Our system was simple. I would use the shovel to dig under the large patches of weeds and crabgrass and she would lift them out by their roots, shake the dirt out, and then throw what remained of the weeds and roots into the trash can. After a few minutes, however, it became obvious that it would be much easier if I just did the shoveling and the pulling on the big stuff and she focused on the smaller stuff.

And so that’s what we did until the job was done.

What a pair the two of us made out there this morning. We were the very embodiment of the last few verses of Genesis 3. She nine months pregnant. Me toiling the ground. We were a real life VBS lesson.

It only took us about an hour of backbreaking labor, sweating, shoveling, toiling, bending, and pulling to get the entire garden cleared of weeds. And though I had offered to save us a ton of time and work by taking my mower to it set on the lowest setting, I was glad we did it the hard way.

Then again, if I had used my mower to mow the weeds and crabgrass down, we would have been finished a whole faster with a whole lot less toil and labor.

But…

We would not have gotten the roots out.

Everything would have looked better on the surface, but in a few weeks or a few months (depending on the weather) we’d be right back where we were before this morning with a front flower bed so grown over with weeds that our neighbor kid could walk in there on a Friday morning and maybe not make it out until Tuesday afternoon the next week. And I certainly don’t want to be responsible for wasting taxpayer money paying for a search party to comb the neighborhood looking for little Eddie. I’d rather just keep my garden weeds tamed.

I digress…

The point is, we’ve all got weeds in our lives. Some of them are in the gardens in front of our houses and some of them are in the gardens of our hearts. The easy way to get them out is to just mow over them. It’s quick, doesn’t take a lot of work, and for at least a little while the weeds are gone. But if we really want to get rid of our weeds, we’ve got to dig them out by the roots. Unfortunately getting the weeds out by their roots takes a lot more time, a lot more work, involves getting dirty, and sometimes causes lower back pain. But in the end, when the weeds are really gone and the soil is cultivated and ready for new life, that’s when the mums, pansies, and other great fall flowers flourish.

A real man doesn’t allow weeds to grow up and choke out the mums and pansies of his life. He digs them out with a shovel, grabs them by the roots, and tosses them in the garbage where they belong.

Less is More

Posted on by
Reply

Though I sometimes fail, I try not to spend too much time on Sunday blogging or doing other things that require mental or physical energy. In that spirit, instead of writing a post today, below is an excerpt from what I consider to be one of the best blogs out there on living a simple life:

a brief guide to life

less TV, more reading
less shopping, more outdoors
less clutter, more space
less rush, more slowness
less consuming, more creating
less junk, more real food
less busywork, more impact
less driving, more walking
less noise, more solitude
less focus on the future, more on the present
less work, more play
less worry, more smiles
breathe

And as always, these rules are meant to be broken. Life wouldn’t be any fun if they weren’t.

This list couldn’t have come at a better time for me. With the exception of the one about driving less, these are all habits I’m trying to cultivate in my life right now with varying degrees of success.

Enjoy your Sunday. Eat good food today. Speend time with friends and family. Take a nap. Be still. Carve out some time to reflect on your life. Go for a walk. Read a book. Play with your kids. Be a man.

-M&M

What Up Manhood?!?!?!?

Posted on by
Reply

Despite the whirlwhind day I had on Tuesday, and in addition to breaking into my house, starting a doctoral program, and eating strawberry cake for dinner at 10 p.m., I also managed to eek out 103 good form push-ups in just under 4 minutes.

As weird as Tuesday was for me this last week, being able to accomplish a goal that I set out to achieve over two months ago was a really great experience. I had every intention of videoing the feat, but in the busyness of the day, it just got away from me, though (thanks to PhotoBooth) I did manage to take a few pictures.

If you bet against me on this one, it’s now time to pay the piper… that is, if by piper I mean a really cool non-profit organization… and I do.

If you commented on the original post, please be a man or woman of honor and make a donation in the next week or so to Christian Services Adoption Agency or the Oklahoma City Rescue Mission. Thank you for helping encourage me to do this.

-M&M