“Be careful.”
I say this to my kids all the time. I cringe a little each time I say it. And yet I can’t stop myself. It just happens.
Paul jumps up on a banister to slide down 30 feet with concrete in every direction.
Be careful!
Jackson chases after his 6-year old cousin at Glacier Point, rambling up a big piece of granite after her.
Be careful!
Megan goes for a bike ride in our neighborhood, a place we’ve lived for 6 years.
Be careful!
Without even thinking about it, without even realizing it, heck– without even wanting to: I say it over and over again. Be careful! Jackson, our 3 year old, will look at me with his gigantic blue eyes when he’s doing something cool and say with a dagger, “I’m being careful, daddy.”
Ugh.
Why do I do that? Why do I put that “be careful” thing on them? That’s not really who I am. And it’s certainly not what I want my kids thinking their primary directive is. Sure, I don’t want them to get hurt. But I also hate that I must say it so much that my kids know to look at me and say, “I’m being careful, daddy.”
Be Less Careful
Risk aversion isn’t just about managing to keep my kids safe. A “be careful” mentality can get lodged in your soul. It sucks the life out of you. It lies to you. And it turns a life of boldly walking in faith into a life with a faith-flavored cologne sprayed on when needed.
If I want the people in my life to see anything from me it’s that I live a life of walking in faith, not a life walking in risk aversion.
Culture tells me that I need to manage risk. The New Testament is full of stories of men and women who lived out a faith free of risk aversion.
I’ll pick the New Testament lifestyle all day, every day.
A Commitment to Risk
A couple weeks back I wrote about turning thirty-eight. I don’t know what it is about this age, but I think it’s related to our kids rounding the corner into adolescence, my marriage closer to 20-years than any semblance of being a “newlywed,” and our small business growing… I now have a (new) natural tendency to be protective.
As I reflected on this last week I realized that this innate desire to protect had impacted important decisions about my family, what I write here on the blog, stuff that we’re doing at work, on and on.
Fear of failure or what people will think mixed with a tendency to protect what I have from what I fear could happen to it is like having an ocean worthy sailboat but being afraid to sail it on the open ocean. There’s no sense in having these things unless you really allow them to flourish where they are supposed to go.Putting that into Christianese… risk aversion is a perverted view of stewardship.
So that’s my commitment to myself: Be less careful.
And that’s my encouragement to you: Take the time to examine your life and separate “be careful” from “be faithful.”
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