Grace Seeker 2006 October

This happens to be one of the things on my irrational fears list. I ve had a 30-minute or more commute for my entire working career so I spend a lot of time on the road. I ve thought more than once, almost to the verge of panic, that I would be powerless should some oncoming car decide that they needed a quick exits from this life.

From
By DOUG GROSS, Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA - A lovesick 16-year-old girl crashed her car into an oncoming vehicle in a suicide attempt, counting down the moments before impact in text messages sent to the female classmate who spurned her, authorities say. The girl survived; a woman in the other car was killed.
The teenager, Louise Egan Brunstad, was charged Thursday with murder in the Oct.

4 wreck.
There was what might be described as a countdown to the actual event — 10, 9, 8 then the crash, District Attorney Paul Howard said.
Howard said it was unclear whether the classmate the messages were intended for responded to them or even read them, either as they were sent or afterward.

Authorities said Brunstad rammed her family s Mercedes-Benz head-on into a smaller car driven by 30-year-old Nancy Salado-Mayo, a mother of three. Salado-Mayo was killed, and her 6-year-old daughter Lesly, who was in a child safety seat, suffered broken ribs and other injuries.
Brunstad, who was treated for an ankle injury, had told friends she planned to kill herself after another female student at Holy Innocents Episcopal School refused to have sex with her, Howard said.

Witnesses told police the girl never slowed as she crossed over a turning lane and into oncoming traffic on busy Roswell Road in Atlanta s Buckhead neighborhood on Oct. 4.
She was traveling at a high rate of speed, Howard said.

This is an intentional action.
Prosecutors said they intend to try her as an adult. If convicted, she faces an automatic life sentence.

The girl s attorney, Drew Findling, declined to discuss the allegations but expressed the family s sadness over the accident.
This young lady and her parents are devastated by this horrible accident and by the death of Mrs. Salado-Mayo and the injuries of her daughter, Findling said.

They are praying for the quick and healthy recovery of her daughter and for the well-being of her husband and other children.
After a memorial service in Atlanta, Salado-Mayo s body was returned to her native Mexico for burial. Her husband, Mario Bibiano, a steelworker, was unable to attend because he remained by his daughter s bedside at an Atlanta hospital.

Brunstad was on crutches in court Thursday for a brief hearing. Her lawyer said she was released on bail Friday. Howard said the terms of her bail require her to enter a mental health facility and wear an electronic monitor around her ankle to prevent her from running away.

Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
This is what gnaws at me day and night. When I toil at work, what do I accomplish?

I don t know if I can change the world, but I know that I can change myself and try to inspire the world to find the change compelling enough to change on its own.
I don t yet know where grace fits in with accomplishment, but I know that the two are neither similar or separate. I do know that will haunt my thoughts for some time to come.

My Father-In-Law is always good for one-liner. One of my all time favorites is They ought not sell clubs to people like me. He offered up this little gem after shanking a driver shot off of the tee box.

While I m sure that his intent was to beat me to the punch so that I couldn t deliver a one-liner of my own, I have found that this may perhaps be one of the most portable phrases that I ve ever stumbled upon. I think of this line almost every day. I m sure that he s thrilled that this is the phrase, which in my mind, defines him.

I have frequently used the phrase totally out of context. I have taken the liberty of replacing the material object (clubs) with nearly every object that could occupy space. Nice clothes, baseball gloves, computers, power tools, jalapeno peppers, knives you get the idea.

The phrase came to mind again today after a lengthy after-work discussion with my newest hire. In many ways, she is the anti-me. She is poised, wise, patient, almost over-communicative, very personable and task oriented.

For the most part, I am none of these things. I hope someday to be, but today not much, despite almost a decade working on these shortcomings. The concept of poise was one of the ingredients in my first batch of grace .

(That line will make more sense once I post my definitions over time of grace ) She stopped me today to basically tell me that I m not much of a leader. Apparently she agrees that I am impatient, crude and a disaster as a leader. She has no idea how much that hurt to hear, but why would she?

I didn t play along, so it s no wonder that she d be surprised.
Whenever anyone openly challenges me, it always triggers an automatic re-evaluation of who I am. I ve been thinking about her critique of my performance all night long.

It s been emotionally draining. After long reflection I ve decided that I am at fault for some portion of the wrongs she brought up. I also decided that she was at fault for at least an equal portion of those wrongs .

The simple fact that I decided that my actions were questionable started me questioning my fitness as a leader. Then I thought of the F-I-L s saying. This time I changed the words a bit but the tone was the same
They ought not let people like me lead other people.

This was nothing more than emotional response to my conversation with someone I am tasked to lead. Still it was deeply disheartening. After a couple of hours of reserved reflection, though, I realized that her picture of me was distorted by her own fears and biases.

It was like looking at my reflection at a Fun House. No matter how I looked in her mirror, it was not flattering.
Grace is the exact opposite.

Grace takes our reflection, airbrushes it, digitally removes our moles and adds only the most flattering light. Grace sees us as a ten despite the fact that we ve never been in Bo Derek s area code, much less zip code. Tomorrow when I see my co-worker, I will not look on her with retaliatory judgement eyes, but with the eyes of grace.

Perhaps if I succeed, I will have convinced her to straighten her mirror just a bit.
Again my new insightful friend on the blogospehere, Steve Olson, has posted another thought provoking topic: . While I don t totally agree with Steve s conclusions, I very much appreciate his transparency and his candor on his own experiences with criminality.

You should read his post. He makes some excellent points on the general populous incorrectly assigns blame on music, movies as triggers that push an individual to criminality.
I am posting my comments to his post on my blog.

I believe that the lack of validation, whether withheld for reasons of sarcasm, self-protection, cruelty, ignorance or selfishness, is last full step before reaching what is possibly the worst of all things desperation. Without further ado
Steve - As always, very interesting insights. I have always been the choir boy, so I don’t claim to understand the criminal mindset.

However being the choir boy, I can say that I’ve seen my fair share of hurting people. I’ve also seen hundreds of people who thought that they were helping the hurting by offering dogma or procedure.
If I can be so bold let me offer another reason why people make self-defeating decisions.

Without exception, everyone that I have ever known, counseled or conversed with was lacking something so natural, so fundamental that each of them was willing to try anything to fill the void.
You thought I was going to say God! Nope, even though I was the choir boy.

They lacked validation.
Validation is the most basic need that we have once we have met the minima of basic survival needs. Some people confuse acceptance with validation, but acceptance can be little more than begrudging patronization.

This basic need is why people search for peers that will validate them -or- their actions. This is also a key factor to why our youth, generation after generation, is perpetually at risk to make the same mistakes that we made. We know the pain in front of their questionable decisions, but don’t validate the feelings that led to those decisions.

You can’t keep yourself from being angry. You can only choose how you act in accordance with the feeling.
A lack of validation, no matter how mentally tough or introverted the person, leads directly to despair.

Desperation always leads to avoiding logic and over-relying on emotion. Feeling without thought, especially in the case of being invalidated, leads to self-destructive behavior. If you think that other people don’t value you, you’re much less likely to value yourself.

So you take risks…with your own life…with other people’s lives…
As a society, our rugged individualism lends itself to marginalizing the desire for validation as something which signifies weakness. I know that when I fail in my own relationships, which are so white-collar that I’m out of my league when discussing the criminal mind, it is because I fail to validate someone in a manner that they so desperately desire.
Movies, music and videos don’t cause the behaviors.

However, I believe that they those media do reinforce those behaviors. Every message we reinforce repeatedly, like music, does have a subconscious effect on us no matter how much we choose to believe otherwise.
Listening to “heavy metal” and watching Die Hard doesn’t make someone a derelict, regardless of what the Moral Majority may say.

Even so I can say that, personally, when I pull out my Soundgarden CD or catch one of those shows late at night on Showtime that has _all_ of the content warnings I know that afterward that I am going to feel more intense, more violent and more judgmental. Why do I watch those movies when I know that they will effect me so?
Perhaps that’s a topic for another day.

We all tend to believe that we are highly consistent beings. We look in the mirror and see that our bodies change, but most of the people that I know say that they are the same person today that they were yesterday. I think that there is something in our psyche that doesn t want to invalidate what and who we were yesterday by admitting that we ve evolved into something different today.

I am no different.
While I want to think that I am working diligently to grow and that my level of knowledge is broader now, I want to believe that my personality and principles are the same as a year ago. I, of course, am wrong.

I have worked with someone in my office for five years, let s call him The Collar. I had a difficult hiring decision to make between The Collar and another person who was more qualified for the position but lacked personal ambition. My business partner pushed hard for The Collar, even belittling me for considering the other candidate.

The Collar came to us through a personal relationship through one of my partner s college roommates, so naturally he preferred his guy. Because my partner and I were both trying to define our conceptual territories in our fledgling company I did not want to hire someone who would work for me but be loyal to my partner. It sounded to me like a headache that I didn t need.

Still, I liked The Collar because even though he was just 23, he didn t back down and I knew that he would be fiercely loyal. So despite my own instincts to build our company in my image and not my partner s, I chose to hire The Collar.
Every day at the office since he started at my company, life at work has been an adventure with this guy.

He has been head-strong, occasionally belligerent, condescending, impatient, often inflexible, dogged even when he had no basis for his argument, disrespectful, argumentative and even cruel to his co-workers just to win an argument. I ve been ready to fire the guy on multiple occasions and even started collecting material do to just that. Despite all of that, I never could pull the trigger to fire him.

For all of his issues, he s also an honest, hard-working, capable, diligent and intelligent. With him it always seemed that for every two steps forward, he always made one big step back. Even so he still was making progress.

I year ago when I delivered his annual review, he asked whether or not I thought he should leave to get another job. Without thinking it through much, I told him the I thought that he should. Now I told him that the only reason that I was giving him that suggestion was that he deserved to learn from more people than the few of us at my office.

He took it as a sign that I was being cowardly because I wanted him to leave but didn t have the guts to fire him. All of that happened about eighteen months ago.
Since all of that happened, I ve tried to give The Collar as much space as I could.

I believed in his desire to uphold what I call the highest ideals of our company, so I didn t have to worry about him doing something that would put our business at risk. That made it easier to give him the space. I also made it my mission for the first six months after his review to remove any and all roadblocks from his path.

I was pleased to find out that I was not the enormous roadblock that he made me out to be.
Without understanding our history it would be hard to understand why the rest of this story is one of grace.
Yesterday, I took The Collar with me on a sales call to a temperamental customer.

I positioned him as a subject matter expert and turned him loose on a client where I have two personal relationships in the balance. Of course, he could not have done a batter job. He was engaging, direct and consultative.

After the visit to the client we went to lunch together. We talked for almost the entire hour at Applebee s like we were brothers catching up on each other s lives since we last met. When I stood up from lunch, something occurred to me that I hadn t expected.

We have become friends.
Since that moment I ve thought of little else other than how we transformed our competitive relationship into one of friendship. Since he s about eight years younger than me, my first thought was that he had started to grow up and move up to my level.

The thought never got out of my head to my lips. I realized almost instantaneously that my first thought had better not be my last thought on the matter. I knew instinctively that if that was the best that I could do that my arrogance would keep me from ever understanding what changed.

I m sure that he is growing up but I also know that change in a relationship always takes two people to change.
By giving The Collar space and removing roadblocks from his way, even though I didn t think of it from this perspective, I was showing him grace. He had not earned the right to be given preferential treatment.

I had two people that I d hired to manage him leave the company, due in no small part because of the antics of this guy. Still I had made it my mission to give The Collar every chance to be successful and he had responded. By giving him a wide berth he received the opportunity to learn for himself that consequences of his selfish action and because he really was a good person, he learned.

He also noticed that I was working so hard to help him succeed. That realization added a level of trust to our relationship that had been lacking. I decided to trust him every time when I was in doubt about what decision to make and he noticed.

If you notice, I ve again been talking about the changes in him. After yesterday s surprise I ve been shocked at all of the changes in me. I began thinking about our relationship from all angles and I realized that I ve changed just as much as he has.

Over the last eighteen months, instead of trying to expend energy in figuring out how to delineate and conquer my own dominion at work, I ve focused more on how to make the people around me successful. Instead of blaming my partners for their inadequacies, I ve focused more on how to accentuate their strengths. Instead of making all of the decisions when options were presented to me, I ve made it a priority to get input of those best suited to give input on a direction.

Instead of forcing myself to be the contact point for all of our project engagements, I create opportunities for the team to own the communication for a client and this own the relationship with the client. Instead of directing, I have spent so much more time inspiring.
The Collar didn t deserve the gift of my investment of energy into him.

I didn t deserve the gift of breaking though a glass ceiling of self-consciousness that allowed me to become more of the leader that I ve always wanted to be.
Grace is funny that way. By giving without keeping score, often both the givers and the receivers are gifted in peculiar and fantastic ways.

Tonight, I worked out in a time window that didn t afford me enough time to take a shower before I had to leave home. My errand as a dutiful dad was to pick up my daughters from their churches. I m one of those who really needs a shower after working out.

Even so I thought that, since the Big Girl didn t really want me to come in to fetch her anyway, my appearance wouldn t matter. It turns out that I was right. She was ready at the right time at the right pick up spot.

I also needed to pick up the Little Girl. My plan was to have the Big Girl go into the different church to retrieve the Little Girl. My plan would have worked, too, except that the church recently changed their pick up policies so that only an adult could sign out a little one.

The Big Girl bounded back to my truck to give me the news.
I knew that I was about to be humiliated. Not only was I still soaked with sweat from my workout, but my entire ensemble cost less than today s lunch when purchased new three years ago.

Frankly, I m shocked that these women let the Little Girl go with me based on my appearance.
The reactions to my appearance started me thinking about grace. At first I wanted to judge the people who were giving me suspicious looks as ungraceful.

I m proud of the fact that I didn t dwell long on how I thought that they lacked grace. After a minute I started to think about what grace they saw in me.
I ran into my next-door neighbor, but I wasn t even cordial with her because of my embarrassment over my appearance.

I ran into someone else s mom whose daughter played soccer with the Big Girl one year. I didn t even maintain eye contact long enough to offer a meager hello.
Then words of wisdom from one of my former mentors hit me like a ton of bricks.

She told me, I m paraphrasing, that the appropriateness of your appearance is not for your own benefit but for the comfort of the people who you interact with. I always rebelled against wearing formal clothing because my business style is informal. She taught me that neither my comfort or any selfish desire to impress others should not be the primary consideration for dressing appropriately for an occasion.

She was trying to teach me that elective conformity does not diminish my individuality but improves the opportunity to connect with others in their comfort zone.
As a younger man, I always asked why do you have to dress up to go to church? I never received a satisfactory answer until I applied my mentor s filter on the question.

A large percentage of attendees take church very seriously and they dress accordingly. Do I have to dress with a certain level of formality to be accepted at church? Not if the church members care about people more than procedure.

Will I be in a position to relate and connect with the people at church ( or school, or work, or dance class, or you get the idea ) better if I have a similar appearance to them? Absolutely yes.
Tonight I didn t take seriously my responsibility as a community leader.

I simply thought that I was only fulfilling my tasks as family chauffeur. Because I chose to take a short-cut, I automatically disqualified myself from being taken seriously if I met someone new or ran into someone who doesn t know me well. What grace would they see in me?

Did I ruin the nights of the people I ran into? No.
Could I have been in a better position to extend grace had I showered and dressed appropriately?

Yes.
I m not disappointed with myself because I can give myself enough grace to know that my motives were innocent, even if they were short-sighted. However, I wonder what kind of positive difference I could have made to brighten someone s night if I had been prepared and if I had not been embarrassed by own appearance.

Grace can shine through the appearance. Grace also allowed me to walk out of the church with my youngest daughter minus a police escort.
Grace also would have me consider how my actions, even the most seemingly innocuous, affect others.

Grace cannot be selfish and its luster is diminished by short-sightedness.
Over the last couple of days, I ve been looking over my blog statistics and have been surprised that nobody has been reading my blog. I have hoped that at least my family was reading.

I didn t start the blog in order to create readership but it doesn t hurt to know that someone else is reading my thoughts, even if their intent is to disagree. My disappointment never turned to despair but it was certainly frustrating. I actually had to slow down my thoughts to stop trying to figure out why no one is reading and come to grips that this project is for my own purposes only.

It put me in a good place to think about the project in those terms.
then tonight I realized that I d turned off capturing statistics accidentally a couple of days ago when I installed the latest theme.
I m a CTO and I forgot to check that my application was being monitored.

Grace is often given unexpectedly. Children are some of the most proficient givers of grace. The example of their innocence can direct us to live more graceful lives.

I appreciate the directness and simplicity of list, so I stop to read almost all of the lists I find in the blogosphere. Today I found a list worthy of sharing. shares the wisdom of his four year old.

I know that if I can follow Steve s son s example that I will be living a more graceful life.
I m including the list, summarized. Still you should follow and read it all for yourself.

It s good stuff.
On Sundays, I am going to diverge from my usual search into grace. Sundays are now advice days.

Here I will give my best advice on how to live better, be more discerning and cherish more.
In almost every situation, we have an opportunity to be consultative with the people around us. Often, though, we choose to try to dictate instead of trying to inform and our results are less than stellar.

Being consultative is not an easy thing to do, even for full-time consultants. The skill is one worth learning, growing or perfecting. The following list will help you train your thinking on how to be consultative with people, regardless of the venue.

Celebrate successes with the client, no matter how large or small.