Manly Man & Ladies’ Man

Leading Off - I really do still like to blog, despite the fact that it’s been almost a month since my last post. But there’s a major difference in my life since I started blogging, namely that my life has gotten much more boring. When you’re a college student something wild and unpredictable could happen at any moment. When you’re a working stiff something wild and unpredictable could happen if you have the energy to make it happen when you get home from work, which is a rarity for me. Who really wants to listen to me talk about my day at work? It’s more boring than what I usually blog about. I already only have five readers. Why make the content worse? I say all of this in order to shape my excuse properly and logically. I would blog more if I did more. I would do more if I had more energy. I suppose I would have more energy if I exercised more. I would exercise more if I had more time. I would have more time if I did less. So, put another way, I would blog more if I did less. How ’bout that.

Man Retreat - I went to the Nav Man Retreat earlier this month without any real sense of why I was going. I didn’t want to go. Despite my generous review of last year’s man weekend I can distinctly remember not liking much of what went on. It seemed like two different people planned that weekend. One was your stereotypical man who wanted to play sports and eat until they got sick. The other wanted to explore what God designed men to be. There always seems to be this struggle with planning an event like this. We want to get them there so we can talk about their feelings and their “father wound” and struggles with all things sexual and all the other things we would never dare speak of around a woman. But we don’t want to take them too far away from their comfort zone, so we give them 10 lbs of ribs to eat while we have that discussion. There’s something about that that just seems fake to me, and fake has become such a turnoff after having been such a personal mainstay for so long. In the end I decided to go not for my own personal growth but because I still want to be in the lives of students, and this was a good way to accomplish that.

And so, as per the formula, this year’s retreat started off with a disgusting amount of food. This was followed by a talk given by the head staff of UF, followed by arm wrestling. Seriously, what do you want us to be? Is it the man who is after personal glory or the man who is after God’s glory? The pattern repeated itself throughout the weekend. And I’m sure there’s a slant of some sort at work here because, even if I tried, I would never be macho or the strongest or the fastest. I’m sure a psychologist would say that it’s my fear of failure that keeps me from enjoying these types of activities. My response would be that I don’t intend to “fix” that and my previous questions still stand.

The weekend redeemed itself through its small group time. No doubt about it, the talks were each very good. But the small group time with people from FSU was great. I really felt like we got to the heart of some pretty intense issues. That was the big difference between this year and last year. I also got to spend time with students, which as I said was my personal justification for going. I led the team in charge of making breakfast. Do you have any idea how good it felt to lead a team again? And it was just breakfast! But it was a lot of fun. All in all I’m glad I went. It was pretty much what I expected it to be, which at times was a bad thing, but I’d say overall it was time well invested.

Valentine’s Day Dinner & Dance - I find it embarrassing that it took a newbie, Mr Luke Skeen, to get the men of the FSU Navs off their butts to do something - anything! - to honor the women of the ministry. I find it particularly embarrassing because of my words after I was apart of the group that honored the women at NCP in 2005. To quote myself: “The one thing that’s been going through my head since last night is, ‘Why haven’t we done something like this for the Nav women at FSU?’ Or maybe I’m just wondering why honoring those women hasn’t been as big a concern universally among the FSU Nav men. In any case, it’s going to be a drum that I’ll be beating this year, that’s for sure.” Whoops! I certainly dropped the ball there.

So in an attempt to make up for years of Nav male ineptitude we put together quite a production on the Saturday before Valentine’s Day. Luke was the brains behind the operation. Rob hooked us up with dance instructors from the swing dance club in Tallahassee. Scott was our iron chef. James was in charge of music. I headed up the setup and decorations. This, as you may recall from that night at NCP, was a job I’ve had before. The difference between that night and this one is I felt like we all had far more to accomplish with much fewer resources to work with. I arrived at the Wesley Foundation’s fellowship hall at around 4 PM to start decorating. There was a lot of work to be done.

Since most of my readers probably attended the evening I won’t go into too much detail about what happened, but instead will focus on my reactions and thoughts. Let me sum up the evening in playbill format for the rest of you. The ladies arrived at 6 PM, each in their beautiful dresses. Dinner was served shortly thereafter, followed by dessert and a testimony about relationships from a couple from Luke’s church. The evening concluded with dancing and dance instruction. Well, that’s how it concluded if you were a woman. Most of the guys, including myself, were on kitchen duty after that. I was cleaning until around midnight.

How did it go? I suppose I can’t speak for every man, woman and child that attended but that’s never stopped me from making general blanket statements before. The goal of the evening was to honor the women of the Navigators. I believe that goal was accomplished. The goal was to show them the love of God and our love for them through that lens, and I can only speculate that that was also conveyed.

Now to run down each point. The food was tremendous given all the budget restrictions we faced. Something that surprised me was the leadership ability of Scott DeSpain. I believe he is one of those types of leaders who is major “Type A” when he knows that things are riding on him but is otherwise major “Type B” when authority isn’t his to wield or when he’s apart of a team effort. That’s something that needs to be further explored. I felt bad for the people in charge of desserts simply because there was so much extra that not all of them were used. Regarding the decorations, I am probably a little biased. But I did hear many sweet things said, including one comment about wanting the same men to decorate for her wedding (yikes). The supplies came together easily enough, and with the amount of manpower that turned out it was truly an easy task to set everything up. James did a good job with music, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from him there.

I didn’t hear the entire testimony from the couple from Luke’s church but what I did catch was compelling. I’m not entirely sure it was necessary but I’m sure it spoke to someone. The dance instructors were fantastic. The fact that they were believers was huge. Had they been nonbelievers just teaching us dance steps it would have felt disconnected to the rest of the event. But because they knew Christ and were sharing a message through their instruction it really made the dancing feel like the natural next phase of the evening. I had the privilege of having dinner with them and I think they’re a really cool couple.

I know very little about women, a fact that is becoming increasingly more accurate by the day. But I do know one thing: women, in general, are very concerned with details. Why on earth would a women spend so much time on her nails? I have never paid attention to the way a girl’s nails look. But it’s an important detail for them. The same can be said for this past Saturday evening. In my opinion, they weren’t going to be impressed that we managed to pull off a big event that included Part A, Part B and Part C. They were going to see how much we cared when they saw the attention we put into the little things. And it’s going to be different for every girl. I talked with Suzanne late Saturday night at my house and she was bubbling on about the fact that the salad wasn’t made up of iceberg lettuce. I heard a number of girls talk about the rose pedals on the tables. The fancy china was a big hit with many. Even the prom photo thing, which ended up tanking as a whole, was really special to a select few (Brandon and Matt have a special memory). When we pay attention to detail we communicate that they are worth our time, which in my estimation is not something we communicate often enough.

The thought of doing this again has already come up. That alone should say we did something right. JD tossed out the idea that we should have something like this every Valentine’s Day and a smaller production (dancing without dinner) in the fall. It’s really healthy, you know? We’re around each other all the time, and I’m comfortable around most of the women in the ministry (I say most because I don’t know all of the younger set). But as comfortable as I am I would never suggest going out dancing or for drinks or anything outside the realm of what’s kosher with a Baptist youth group. And there should be no reason for that!

I know that I left very encouraged. I think everyone who attended felt the same way. To the men involved I’d say we accomplished what we set out to do.

Testimonies - I wanted to say publically that last week’s Nav Night was one of the best I can remember. We had four people give testimonies: Jessica, Chris, Mandi and Zack. Each of them did an amazing job. You could tell they were up there not because they wanted attention (in fact a couple of them probably would have rather not been up there at all) but because they wanted to talk about what God was doing in their lives. I’m a big fan of this Student Leadership Team putting four of its members up there like that. Again, you all did a fantastic job and I was really encouraged by what you had to say.

The rest - Something that’s been on my mind a lot lately is where I’m going with my life. Data entry wasn’t my endgame, if you can believe that. I don’t have any delusions of becoming an overnight sensation as a writer. Okay, maybe I have a couple of those delusions, but I don’t sell the farm because of them. But I can’t tell when I should act and when I should wait. Furthermore, I don’t know what either of those options really looks like. I know what I’m doing now won’t get me where I want to be. I feel like God’s been speaking to me about this out of Psalm 27. But even within that Psalm there’s a lot for me to question. If you think to pray for me, pray that I’ll be patient, but that I’ll have the boldness to make a change even if it’s a big one.