Posted on: May 21st, 2008 What Kind of Legacy Will You Leave Behind?

It’s the question I’ve been asking myself for more than a decade, but only recently took seriously. It’s inevitable. The older we get, the more we come face to face with the reality of our own mortality. The limited scope of our lives. We are but a breath… a vapor.

And during that breath, we make choices… we touch people… hopefully, we love a few. And those people, though headed down the same path of inevitability, are left behind for a moment to consider our lives, and whether we lived a life of significance.

What kind of legacy will you leave behind? What kind will I leave behind? I hate to ask the question, because attached to it lies the unavoidable realization that my wife would be without a husband and my daughter without a father. I can’t bear that thought. I need to be here for both of them.

I choke back tears during these moments of vulnerable clarity. I choke them back for fear that my wife will see or hear, and she will lose confidence in me. She cannot know how much I care about her provision and comfort.

Men have failed in this family before. Men have jumped ship and remarried. They have abandoned their children to the cold harsh, spiteful, uncaring world. They have died prematurely. They have left behind brokenness. This cannot continue. THIS WILL NOT CONTINUE. I have drawn a line in the sand. Here and no further. Brokenness will not mark this family any longer. Men WILL be faithful to their wives. Fathers WILL nurture, protect, and impart value to their children. This WILL be a family built on a firm foundation. A city who’s foundation and maker is God.

I am but a miserably weak person. I am flesh made from dust. I will die. But not today. And not tomorrow. I am trusting in my God to carry on… to provide me the opportunity to love and provide for and to nurture my family. I believe that God will preserve me to change family history. To build something new. Left alone, we are the sum of our broken and wounded parts. With God, all things are possible. Resurrection from the dead is within our grasp. He is a father to the fatherless. He is the firm foundation. He is the reason my family will be restored to a glory we have only dreamed of.

He is the reason my family will outshine all former generations. He is the reason we will bring honor to our forefathers. He is the reason seeds of righteousness sown over centuries will be reaped in one magnificent harvest.

I love my daughter, Katie. I love my wife, Heather. They mean everything to me. I love my parents, my sister, my mother in law, my grandparents, and my close friends. I don’t know what exact legacy I will leave behind because I am in no way ready to leave. But I pray it will be a legacy of restoration… a physical proof of the redemptive power of our living God.

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Posted on: May 15th, 2008 When Personal Branding is Spread Too Thin

I’ve recently realized that I’m spread too thin. It’s obvious, actually, but painfully so since I became a father. Family comes first, and that’s not just a cliche to abuse. But in the realm of work and blogging and personal branding, I’ve put myself in the awkward position of owning too many websites and delegating too little.

Some changes are going to be made around here. You can already see this in play if you visit my culture blog, which is my flagship website. The site now sees anywhere from 8-12 contributors each week, and I’m rarely one of them. These writers are contributing some entertaining and thought provoking perspectives on American culture, and it’s a pleasure to work with them.

The next step is build the brand of several other sites without promoting my name at the same time. Each site is a unique brand, and should stand on it’s own merit. This helps keep branding steady when you begin to delegate most of the work to other people.

Whether it’s Twitter, blogging, or social media, I’ve found that it’s too easy to be “branded” one particular thing: i.e. a blogger, an SEO, a copywriter, a social media marketer, a reputation manager, a PR guy, etc. Those are hats I wear, but not who I am. And I’ve fought against being labeled one particular title for the past several years.

It wouldn’t suck to be considered an “expert” in one particular field, except I’ve had a notoriously short attention span and find the switching of hats to be a refreshing way to keep work interesting. Not to mention that some day I will finish writing my first book, and I don’t want to face a crowd of people who refuse to accept me as an artist because I’m a marketer of one fashion or another.

So guarding your reputation is important, though Madonna has taught us how successful a person CAN be at reinventing herself. Still, without global Madonna-like exposure, it is still hard to imagine getting the public to accept a guy who doesn’t have a deeply moody and creative starving artist background. Sue me. I don’t want to starve. Does that make me less poetic? Some say “yes.”

To those people, I say that their version of poetic is pitiful and limited to a selfish, self-serving person who has neglected family and personal maturation in order to excel at a talent/skill. I think a man who has experienced marriage, perseverance, compromise, the birth of his children, and the shiftings/growing pains of fatherhood - this is the kind of man who can speak to the human condition. Maybe he isn’t the one to play on our hidden desires to remain brooding teenagers forever. But he knows love, fear, risk, loss, and satisfaction on a level no isolated artist could imagine.

Here’s hoping that someday someone agrees with me.

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