BORROWING BRIAN

Brian and I married sisters, very attractive intelligent sisters way out of our league. So we're brothers-in-law connected by wives we don't deserve. But Brian and I are also partners in a booking agency through which all my shows are funneled. He's the voice on the other end of the phone and the hands on the other end of the internet begging you promoters, I mean asking you to please book me to speak or sing for your city, school or church. And Brian road manages me, traveling with me for company and help of every kind, walking promoters through riders, explaining why we need room temperature water and not iced water, diplomatically asking the sound man to turn the vocal down a little and making sure I get where I'm going in one piece physically and spiritually - and on time. And Brian is my co-pastor at ikon where we take turns teaching twenty-somethings and each other. There he not only counsels and teaches with me but he also handles everything administrative, everything relating to time or money - two things my brain has a hard time wrapping itself around but which Brain's brain seems engineered for. And in addition to all this he is my kids' uncle and my closest friend of eleven years and my personal teacher though we're equals.

And all this has me thinking this morning about how I'm a better person, however that's defined, because of the people I'm living in close relationship with. My community. My wife, Brian, his wife Amy, mentors, parents. I think it's of utmost importance not to do life alone, to have someone there thinking different thoughts than me, validating my own thoughts, lovingly, humbly sharing most everything in life with me and asking me, demanding me to do the same with them. Do you have a partner, a spouse, someone who makes you better, who fills in the gaps in you and loves you as you are enough not to let you stay that way?

Until you find someone you can be yourself with daily and face to face, you can virtually borrow one of my someone's. For starters go here to read what Brian and I have been talking about these days and here for more. Then find someone of your own. How? Maybe you just start by being that someone to somebody else. Maybe we first need to admit we'd be better off with that kind of someone in our life, that we really aren't our best alone.