Golf Balls and Healthy Leadership

The math is simple. Six grandkids + golf course water hazard + ball retriever = immediate fun!

Pattie and I spent a couple days with our sons and their families in Palm Desert, CA, and while it can get a bit toasty (115—but it’s a dry heat, right?), there’s nothing like some vacation time. Not to mention that packing is a breeze: board shorts, flip-flops, and sunscreen and you’re out the door!

One night after dinner, after the final foursome had made their way around the local golf course, I rallied the grandkids and my all-too-often-used golf ball retriever and trotted out to the nearest water hazard. From there, we trolled for golf balls. Basically, it’s the summer version of hunting for Easter eggs and each grandkid gets an extra scoop of Chunky Monkey if they find a Titleist ProV1 for me!

I love looking for golf balls with my grandkids, but there is something else I love looking for. As a student of leadership, I love discovering people who, in their writings, have captured what it means to lead from the inside out—what it means to lead with their lives. I’m always on the hunt for someone who brings a new level of understanding about the reality that God first works IN you, and then THROUGH you.

Several years ago, I read a book that took me to a new level of understanding. The book carries the title Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, and in its pages, author and pastor Peter Scazzero argues the vital link between spiritual maturity and emotional maturity.

Here are a few verbatim quotes. I believe they are worth some reflection—both for your sake and for the sake of those who live downline from your leadership.

• Christian spirituality, without an integration of emotional health, can be deadly—to yourself, your relationship with God, and the people around you.

• But work for God that is not nourished by a deep interior life with God will eventually be contaminated by other things such as ego, power, needing approval of and from others, and buying into the wrong ideas of success and the mistaken belief that we can’t fail.

• One of our greatest obstacles in knowing God is our own lack of self-knowledge. So we end up wearing a mask—before God, ourselves, and other people. And we can’t become self-aware if we cut off our humanity out of fear of our feelings.

• There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality. In fact, the true spiritual life is not an escape from reality but an absolute commitment to it.

• As emotionally mature Christian adults, we recognize that loving well is the essence of true spirituality.

• Our activity for God can only properly flow from a life with God. We cannot give what we do not possess.

Potent stuff. Essential stuff. Life-changing stuff.

Perhaps we share a common prayer: “Father, do a deep work in me that I might be a leader who walks openly and honestly about who I am and the places in my heart and life that are still works-in-progress, allowing the weight of my ever-transformed life to bring Your honor and influence to those who look to me for leadership.”