I took a breakdancing class when I was in the third grade.

In Ipswich, Massachusetts, a beautiful, little New England village, our elementary school offered breakdancing lessons.

Maybe they were swept up in the hype of Breakin’ 2, Electric Boogalo, in the same way all your friends took swing dancing when the movie Swingers came out.

I’m not sure. I was in the third grade and not focused on pop culture trends. I was focused on making sure I brought my square of cardboard to each class. That was our version of the yoga mat. Unless you grew up on the mean streets of coastal Massachusetts, I’m not sure you can relate.

My signature breakdancing move was the worm.

Recognizing that I couldn’t windmill to save my life, and fearing that if I spun on my head long enough I’d develop some crazy skull callus like wrestlers with cauliflower ear, I focused on the worm.

It worked. My worm was ridiculous. It was the one move I was the best at. And it should have been because it was my signature move.

Now, a bajillion years later, surveying my life, I’ve started to realize I have “signature sins” too.

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I want a plan.

I want a 10-year vision with details and steps and instructions.

I want to map out the next 40 years of my life and know exactly where I am going and how I am going to get there.

And every time I pray about that desire, every time I ask God for that, his answer is really simple:

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“We found a family of mice that nested inside the cushions of your couch, so we need to throw it away.”

That was what a woman on a recent television show said to a homeowner. This is the moment where the homeowner says, “Wow, I had no idea. Gross, a whole family? Ugh, let’s throw that out.” But because the show I was watching is called “Hoarders,” that wasn’t the response she gave. Instead, the old woman whose home was on the borders of being condemned said simply,

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“Promise me if you go on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, you’ll take me so I can sit in the audience.”

This is my father’s only request when it comes to the book release of Stuff Christians Like. I’ve never been on television. Two people attended the only meet and greet I’ve held. I’ve been assured by one of the biggest publishers in the world that Christian humor books simply do not sell. But I think that parents are required by DNA to hope. To believe that anything is possible if not down right probable.

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“Can I talk to you for a minute in a conference room?”

A co-worker asked me that a few weeks ago. My first thought was of course, “I’m about to get fired.” Even though this was a peer and not a superior, I still thought that maybe I was about to get the ax. Call me paranoid, I just assume that when a girlfriend says, “We need to talk,” they’re about to dump you and when someone at work asks to “talk to you for a minute,” they’re about to fire you. I admit, it’s a very sweaty existence I lead.

But when we went into the conference room, the one that smells like dry erase markers and disappointment, he turned to me and said something I wasn’t expecting, “I watched someone die yesterday.”

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In the 8th grade, the other wrestling team burst into laughter when I got on the scale in the locker room in my tighty whiteys because I was so skinny.

In the 9th grade, I shaved stripes into my eyebrows so that I would look more like Vanilla Ice.

In the 11th grade, I got dumped by a girl in a coat closet of a dance at the Polish American club in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In college, every frat rejected me.

I’m no stranger to failure and it’s many flavors, but what about you?

What if you fail?

What if that thing you want to do, just bombs? What if you get embarrassed? What if you leave a safe job for a new adventure and it’s all a big mistake and you regret every stupid minute that you thought you could do it and you end up gaining a lot of weight because you’re unemployed and eat macaroni and cheese for breakfast? (My summer of 2001.)

What if?

We worry about and that makes sense. I know right now, that if you’re like me, you wonder if you’re really doing what you were designed to do. You wait for the weekend and wonder if there’s a job where that wouldn’t happen. You wonder if there’s a mission or a goal or a journey you’re supposed to be on right now because such a small percentage of who you are, who you really are deep down is getting used at your day job.

And you think about trying something new, but that voice comes back in and you wonder,

“What if I fail?”

I wonder that too. The Stuff Christians Like book comes out in April and I sit down at night with my wife and talk about it not selling. At all. People have said that. Smart people with pleated pants and straight teeth have told me Christian humor books never sell. And I worry about that, about failing.

But I think as Christians, we have a duty, a responsibility, a call from on high to look at failure differently. So in the last few weeks I’ve come up with 3 new ways to answer the question, “What if you fail?”

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“Are you OK?”

That’s my wife’s polite way of saying, “Why are you being such a distant, distracted jerk right now?”

She said that to me about a week ago and she was right. I was distant. I was distracted. I was a jerk. Above all, I was surprised.

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If you change clothes in a handicapped bathroom stall at work, never start with your pants.

For some reason, people in other stalls freak out if you strip your pants completely off in a bathroom. I find it’s best to start with your shirt or sweater. Focus on your torso until the bathroom is empty and then change out of your jeans.

These are the valuable lessons that people like Max Lucado refuse to share, but not me. I’ll tell you everything, because right now, everything is weird.

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Please don’t be offended, but the Acuff family leaves vacations like bankrobbers fleeing the scene of a crime.

When we go on long trips or short weekend visits, we like to get up ridiculously early on the last day and beat the traffic home. I blame my upbringing. My family hit rest stops like a NASCAR pit crew. We timed our average miles per hour speed when we road tripped to Sunset Beach, North Carolina from Hudson, Massachusetts and sometimes I don’t think my dad even brought the car to a complete stop. My brothers and I would just tuck our shoulder and roll out into grassy medians like Hungarian circus performers, sprinting to the bathroom while my dad circled the parking lot.

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I’m a little terrified of my friend Nathan.

He’s not physically scary. I mean he’s kind of a brawny, weight lifting type of guy, much like myself if you’ve seen the video from Cross Point. And he has a breakdancing ministry in inner city Atlanta so clearly it’s not a pop n’ lock issue. It’s just that he tends to ask tough questions. He tends to say things that make me uncomfortable. And that’s exactly what he did at Willy’s a few weeks ago.

We went there for a burrito because unlike Chipotle they don’t charge you for chips. (At this point in the history of burrito consumption, I feel like charging extra money for chips is like a restaurant asking you to pay for the use of a fork. Boggles the mind really.) During lunch I was telling him that I felt like I had hit a spiritual wall. I was stuck. There wasn’t any one thing I could point my finger at, some neon issue I had jumped back into with both feet, but for some reason I just seemed off kilter.

After hearing me ramble for what probably felt like 19 years, Nathan asked me simply,
“Where is all this stuff going? Your quiet time, your study, your reading, your Bible work? Where is the outward expression of your faith? Who are you serving right now?”

Ahh come on. I don’t want tough questions. I want easy friendships where I show up and you show up and we tell each other how awesome we are. “You’re a fantastic Christian!” “No, you’re a fantastic Christian!” I don’t like questions like that.

But as I thought about what he asked, I was confronted with the reality that I really only want to follow the first and greatest commandment. Are you familiar with that one? In Matthew 22:37-38 a guy named Jesus says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”

I am down with that verse. When I read it, I think to myself, “Yes, that is what I am talking about! I will focus inward and learn to love the Lord with all my heart and my soul and my mind. This is fantastic. I can twist this into some sort of God-flavored self improvement course. This will be like a Biblically based version of that productivity book I’m reading right now, ‘Getting Things Done.’ I’ll find a quiet spot, cocoon myself in self effort and just go to town growing my faith in a little greenhouse of me.”

That’s what I want to do. But Jesus doesn’t stop thought there. I want him to. I want him to drop a hard period at the end of that sentence and move on to walking on water or multiplying fish with his bare hands. “End scene Jesus, end scene!” I want to shout. But He doesn’t get down that way. He follows verse 38 with this gem about the second commandment:

“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Nards! Really? There’s a neighbor involved? Can’t I just go on a deep spiritual retreat to a cave in the desert where I grow a beard, and live alone as I work on my faith, perhaps keeping a wolf as my only companion? I’ll name him “Timber” after the one Snake Eyes had in GI Joe. Can’t I turn the Bible into a self help book and God into a self empowerment guru? Can’t this faith thing just be about me?

But it’s not. There’s a second half to that thought. There’s a neighbor and a call to love and an outward expression of faith and Nathan challenged me on it.

The truth is, I sometimes want my faith to be like a bonsai tree, the miniaturized versions of trees made famous in the Karate Kid movie. I want to manicure it and study it and prune it and move piece by piece around with tweezers, never once taking my eyes off the small little tree and refusing to admit there is a forest outside my window. Never once admitting that there are deep woods all around me. Never once realizing that I walk through groves of trees every day that need to be loved and served.

Is there an inward direction to faith? Is there a place for being deliberate about your heart and your mind and your soul? Without a doubt. I don’t think Jesus made a mistake when He called loving the Lord the most important commandment. I think the internal life is a critical part of our faith experience. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He didn’t end the thought with that foundation. He didn’t end the thought with a single tree. He jumped into the forest. He finished by calling us toward our neighbor. He ended by calling us toward outward love.

And whether I’m afraid or lazy or selfish or a million other things, I can’t escape from the fact that He wants me to have more than bonsai faith.