Live Fire with Chuck Holton

I love the week between Christmas and New Years. It’s the time to look back at the previous twelve months and assess, then look forward and plan for the next twelve. It’s also the time to make archival backups of everything on my computer, re-organize my office and get some much needed sleep.

Normally I write down a list of goals for the new year – things I’d like to accomplish in these areas:

• Spiritual
• Family
• Personal
• Financial
• Academic
• Business
• Physical

Once I’ve set two or three goals in each area, I print off the sheet of goals and make sure to look at it weekly through the year. This week, I’m also looking over 2006’s goal sheet one last time, and evaluating how I did.

Looking back on this year, I see that it was one of the most frustrating years of my life. It wasn’t that we didn’t make enough money, or anything catastrophic happened – actually, quite the opposite, we had a great year by most measures. We spent time together as a family, I got to travel a lot (which is one of my great loves), and the family is healthy and happy. Nevertheless, I was hounded by this persistent, dull frustration for most of the year.

What caused this is no secret. Too many opportunities, not enough me. Part of the problem is that life in the United States is sort of designed to overcommit us. Think about it. If you really spent all the time required to adequately maintain your home, keep your vehicle registrations up to date, pay your taxes, track your budget, keep in touch with your mother, get the recommended amount of sleep, eat healthy, and exercise every day, you’d need about 30 hours a day. And that doesn’t include earning a living, spending quality time with your kids, or having a quiet time!

In a way, it’s a good problem to have – better to struggle to choose which opportunities to take than to spend all your time wishing one would come your way.

But there’s more to it than that. In his book, “Margin,” Dr. Richard Swenson makes the case that while our culture has made great strides in personal education, health, financial security and technological innovation, it has done so at the expense of the things that really matter – love. Love for God, for each other, and for ourselves.

All this progress has resulted in one other very important casualty: margin. That is, the time we used to have to explore, relate, rest, heal, and love others.

When you are working 80 hours a week – you know what it’s like to lack margin. When the phone is ringing, the kids are crying, and the bills are overdue, you NEED margin.

It’s easy to see this is what I lack. I need margin. To a certain extent, though, I must thrive on the hunger for it, not the having of it. I like going ninety-to-nothing most of the time. What I don’t like, though, is constantly being ganged up on by my own choices and commitments.

So this coming year, I’m going to make only one firm resolution: build margin into my life. It’s not going to be easy, because it means I’m going to have to say no to some thing’s I’d really like to do. I’m going to have to disappoint some people. I’m going to have to force myself to turn off the computer at five PM. (well, maybe six…or seven.) It won’t be easy, but progress is never easy.

I’m going to re-align my thinking about the meaning of progress. I’ve always thought progress was doing more, making more, seeing more. But William Wilberforce once wrote, “Above all, measure your progress by your experience of the love of God and its exercise before men.”

Wilberforce put it this way. Progress in any area – be it wealth, power, education, etcetera, is worthless if it is not accompanied by progress in virtue. In his opinion, true progress is this:

“To fear and love Christ. To show love and meekness toward our fellow man; indifference to the posessions and events of this life compared with our concern about eternity; self-denial and humility.”

Progress in virtue. Hmmm… I guess I’ve got two goals for 2007.

Just in time for the new year, I’m re-vamping the site. Hope you like it.

If you’re wondering about the new picture, here’s the story.

I’ve been having some nasal congestion, which is normal for me this time of year. Usually I ignore it and sound like Elmer Fudd during the day, and at night I resort to some sort of non-prescription nasal spray to allow me to breathe well enough to sleep.

So I was wandering around a pharmacy the other day and remembered that the nasal spray stash in my bedside drawer was about empty. So I swung by the stuffy nose aisle and grabbed the first bottle I found with the word “Sinus” on it – noting absently that it touted itself as “All Natural.” That’s got to be good, right?

The bottle got tossed in the nightstand when I got home. Then the other night after I lay down to sleep, I was having trouble breathing, so I fished around in the drawer and got ready for an “all natural experience.”

The first snort nearly killed me. It felt like I’d inadvertently fired an RPG up my nose. I started screaming and literally rolled out of bed onto the floor, writhing in pain. I just knew someone had snuck in and replaced my nasal spray with Drano. Images of KGB agents infiltrating my bedroom flashed through my pain-crazed brain. I was going to die.

Even Connie was worried. She sat up in bed and started screaming, “What? What is it? Chuck! Speak to me!”

Which just goes to show how serious this was – normally, I can sprint screaming past the living room window naked with my hair on fire and Connie will hardly look up from her book. This time she really sounded concerned.

Connie turned on the light. “What happened?”

I was on all fours, gasping for breath and every mucus membrane I had was in full flush mode. “Minsch Nuffle Sprift” I said, pointing at the nightstand.

“What?” she reached over and picked up the bottle, then read the label. “Sinus Buster. All Natural Nasal Spray. Made with Natural Hot Pepper Extract.” She turned the bottle over and looked at the back label. “Chuck, this stuff is made with Capsicum. Isnt’ that the same stuff they put in pepper spray?”

I just whimpered. Three hundred and eleven facial tissues later, when I was able to once more see and form coherent sentences, I read the label and found that she was right. The back of the bottle says, “Users will momentarily experience a strong heat sensation…”, which is apparently their way of saying, “you will feel like you just snorted napalm. Enjoy.”

I have to say, that kind of pain is an almost spiritual experience. At least it had me speaking in tongues. And I was so happy to find that the KGB isn’t really trying to kill me with a nasal supernova device, that I feel like I’ve got a new lease on life. So the picture above represents the new me.

So if you want to have a great laugh on your hypochondriac mother-in-law this Christmas, stick some “All natural” Sinus Buster in her stocking. Available anywhere fine instruments of torture are sold.

A quick follow up to my report on the Border fence issue: it was reported today that one company contracted to build the border fence was hiring illegal aliens to do so.

I guess they could claim that these employees only worked on the Mexican side of the fence. Ha! Except that in most places, the fence is actually about 15 feet inside the U.S.

This also might be a little like hiring the KGB to construct our embassy in Moscow. Something of a conflict of interest, no?

Luke 7:44-47Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”

I experienced this truth first hand at a recent worship service I attended at a drug rehabilitation center. I’ve never seen men so joyous to be serving God. Instead of trying to describe it to you, I have to show you the video:

My recent embed with our troops on the Mexican border was a real learning experience. I’ve spent time reporting on the border patrol before, last time in November 2004 in the Del Rio sector, and it was interesting to see what has changed in the intervening two years. But even with my previous experience, I was still astounded at the magnitude of the problem.

And no matter how hard politicians try to make the question as cut and dried as “to fence or not to fence,” this issue is really more difficult and prickly than seventy acres of cactus.

In reality, no fence is going to keep the immigrants out. In the Tucson sector alone, they are currently apprehending over 1000 illegals a day, and last year picked up over 600 TONS of marijuana. If you build a 20 foot fence the entire length of the border, all the coyotes will do is build a 21-foot ladder. Without the ability to post a border patrol agent to cover every inch of the frontier, a wall is as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

And look at the root of the problem: if there was somewhere you could go and do the same job you do now, only it would pay you as much per hour as you currently make in a day. And if 11 million of your countrymen were already there, doing just that – what would stop you from going? Certainly not a little fence.

That’s exactly the situation along our southern border. And with 14% of the Mexican workforce already in the United States – and unwilling to go home for Christmas, for fear of not making it back in – you don’t fix that problem with a fence. At best, that can only be a stopgap measure.

That’s exactly what the National Guardsmen along the border are: a stopgap measure aimed at putting more eyes on the frontier at any given time. And it’s working – the coyotes are feeling the heat. These 1000-plus guardsmen are leveraging the effectiveness of the agents already in place. And further leveraging all the high-speed technology we’ve put in since 9-11, to include thermal imaging cameras, ground sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles and more.

The ironic thing about this embed is that the unit I was attached to was the same one I lived with for three weeks in Iraq last year. These guys should have joined up active duty. But despite the high operational tempo, their morale is extremely high, probably because they can see concrete results of their efforts here every day – something they didn’t get as much of in Iraq.

In some cases, literally. One of the more fun weapons the BP is using to combat the conga line of illegal immigrants is paintball. That’s right – paintball. Only these are no sporting rounds. The BP plays dirty with rounds filled with the hottest pepper known to man – capscium.
See, in Nogales, there are daily clashes between angry folks on the Mexican side of the fence, and the US customs and Border Patrol agents on our side. Large rocks, molotov coctails, and anything not nailed down get thrown. Until recently, the BP was having to replace, on average, one windshield a DAY.

But now, if the immigrants get skippy, our men in green light-em-up with pepperballs. Now maybe that’s not politically correct, but it’s effective. Even the Mexicans don’t like their salsa that hot.

You have to wonder if the US politicians are missing a significant opportunity for revenue enhancement here. I’m sure there are lots of testosterone-poisoned, red-blooded American patriots who would pay good money to get in on this sport. Open season!

It’s a joke, folks. Merry Christmas.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

These are the states I’ve visited in 2006.