Greetings,

It’s been too long since I have been able to share a full length blog with you all.

We always talk about how busy we are… but I do think this is the busiest season of my entire life.

Right now we have calving, baseball x 4 kids, a new business, and highly demanding church callings… and this silly little podcast that I release every week. This is all in addition to a 40 hour/week job at the hospital.

Just whenever you don’t think you can add anything in… something else comes along and you’re either able to squeeze it in or you take something away to make room.

I’ve talked about this before, but we are all blessed with the same amount of time… no one is truly busier than anyone else. We just all spend time on the things that matter to us at a given time. We all have priorities.

Regardless of the things I try to stress, I still struggle to have a positive mindset around this from time to time.

For those of you following along on Facebook and Instagram, I made a post this week about Levi overcoming seasons of injuries to start his first varsity baseball game yesterday. I was so proud of him I could hardly contain it. But then the following morning we got news that the game for that evening had been postponed to the following afternoon.

Well typically this would be no big deal. Levi would miss church activities for a baseball game. That’s not ideal but it would be manageable.

This Wednesday, however, is not a typical Wednesday. Levi has two very important things on his schedule. First, he has officer interviews for FFA in the early afternoon. Levi loves FFA and wants to be involved in it to the fullest capacity. He is embracing being a farm kid and trying to expand on that. Possibly an even bigger deal is that he is being inducted into National Honor Society Wednesday evening. This one makes my chest swell. I was to big of a knucklehead when I was a kid for them to let me into NHS, so knowing my own has this level of character makes me so proud.

My initial reaction and emotion to the news of the baseball game getting scheduled to conflict with these two was anger. How could there not be another time when we could reschedule this? How could they do this to us? Don’t they know how BUSY we are? My next emotion was sadness. I was so put out that Levi was going to have to make such a hard decision. He had just broken in to start on varsity and he was possibly going to have to miss the very next game. On the other hand, if he chooses to play ball he will have to miss out on huge opportunities in two great organizations.

I wallowed in pity for about 30 minutes… because you know… it’s all about me.

But then it hit me like a ton of bricks… Levi GETS to make that choice.

I had this all wrong. How happy would I be if Levi was 1 of the three things that he has going on that night. What if he was only starting varsity, interviewing for FFA officer, or getting inducted into NHS? I would be super proud right.

But no he’s not doing just one of those things… he’s doing all three.

How cool that my kid, someone I have raised with my wife, is getting ALL of these opportunities.

I mean it’s so cool it shouldn’t be real.

Full disclaimer here… I did not write this post to gloat about what an amazing kid we have in Levi.

Levi is a great kid even despite me messing up so much as a parent.

I wrote this post to tell you how changing our mindset around something can totally change our attitude.

We get to choose how we respond to situations.

Situations are neutral. It’s totally up to us how situations affect us.

I was being super poopy pants about Levi having to make such a hard decision. That was very childish of me.

Lucky for me I have become very self aware that I tend to always go to the negative when looking at any particular situation. But being to analyze this situation and realize what I thought was unfortunate was instead an incredible blessing… it changed the trajectory of my whole day.

I am so thankful that I have become so self aware that I’m able to stop myself midstream and change course. I’m also so thankful for the guidance, patience, and example of my wife Keri in helping me frame a better mindset. She makes things so easy on me.

Thanks for reading. If you aren’t already, go follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Also, go check out the Ag State of Mind Podcast to find more regular content.

Be sure to leave us a 5 Star review there!!

Jason