Big Things Can Be Scary

On my birthday Hudson and I headed to Lacy Auto Parts at the invitation of our friend David Lacy.

He purchased a 1970's era fire truck and invited us to go for a ride before his customer came and picked it up.

Hudson loves fire trucks.

So we set off. We pulled up and Hudson almost jumped out his skin to get to the Fire Truck. I put him on it and he crawled around and generally got excited. I put him in the drivers seat, took some pictures, got in alongside him, honked the horn, cranked the siren (one of the old crank up kind).

And he started to get scared.

So David's son Graham fired up the truck. He got even more scared. He was tucked in next to me and I could feel him clinging to me internally. As we rounded the first corner, his fear gave way to screams and tears of terror. So we backed up, turned it off, and got out to cries of "I'm scarewed daddy, I scarewed!"

That's when it hit me: big things can be scary.

As a leader I know that "big" is "supposed" to be what I am aiming at. But big things can be scary. They look great from a distance, sound great when playing with small models, feel fine when we pull up to them. But get in, turn the engine on and start moving...and things can get scary. I'm still chewing on that.