Brandon Andress's Blog, page 3

Deep Calls to Deep: A Canned-Food Extravaganza

Many years ago, we invited twenty or so of our closest friends to our house. We did not tell them what we were planning. Once everyone arrived, we gathered in our kitchen. I formed five teams and gave them the instructions.

“My wife and I are going to stay with all of your young kids,” I announced. I know what you are thinking at this point. You imagine that Jenny and I sent these couples off on a date while we watched their little ones. While I appreciate you thinking of us as servants, that...

Deep Calls to Deep: The Insistent Neighbor

It was a summer scorcher. I was mowing my lawn and racing to finish it. As I dumped the last bag of grass and prepared to clean up around the house, I felt as if someone was staring at me. I subtly looked over my shoulder and saw my neighbor standing in his driveway with his hands on his hips and staring at me. 

I went about my business as if I did not see him. But as I continued to clean up, it became obvious he was still staring. So I looked at him and politely waved without taking off my h...

Deep Calls to Deep: The Butt Hurt Customer

A few months ago, my mother-in-law was with some of her friends at a local mom-and-pop restaurant for breakfast. As it has been with many businesses recently, the restaurant was struggling with not having enough help. On top of the tight labor market, some employees quit, while another called in sick. The one or two people working were doing their best to do everything, but it wasn’t enough. 

Because of the restaurant’s lack of service and the time the food was taking, customers were frustrat...

Deep Calls to Deep: The Center of Inattention

Some of my most formative experiences happened when I was 25-years old.

Last week I shared the story about getting verbally assaulted by one of my advertising accounts and how those dehumanizing words wounded me. While working at the same job, and likely within months of that encounter, my boss asked me to go to a Chamber of Commerce cookout in a neighboring county. She believed this would be a good way to make contacts and increase business. 

Well it is… if extroversion is your thing. 

...

Deep Calls to Deep: Four-Letter Assault

I was 25-years old and new on the job. My latest occupational choice had me selling ads for a newspaper. As an introvert with a background in psychology and work experience in social services, I knew this endeavor was a huge stretch.

One afternoon, I received a call from a business owner whose account I managed. He asked me why their daily advertisement had not been in the newspaper the previous days. I realized very quickly that I had failed to schedule them. Before I could finish my meager ...

Deep Calls to Deep: People Like You

This post is not political. It is a piece on how we treat each other.

About twenty-five years ago, a friend and I believed we should start an organization called Taking Back America. We intended to fuse faith and politics into a positive, mobilizing force. We were in the process of planning an event with some nationally recognized political speakers and faith-based musical artists.

With a few political speakers already committed, I contacted a particular artist management company to line u...

Deep Calls to Deep: The Gray Zone

I believe it was my dad who told me when I was a teenager that “this is our first time at parenting.” 

What he meant by the statement was that he and my mom were learning in real time how to parent their firstborn. Being a narrow-minded young man, the idea that my parents were making it up on the fly was mind-blowing. That one cataclysmic line jolted me and forced me to consider life from their perspective.

Twenty-five years later, I was the parent of two teenagers myself.

I remember sh...

Deep Calls to Deep: The Muffin Man

A group of us took day-old pastries to the local homeless shelter every Saturday morning for almost six months. My sister, who worked at a local coffee shop, brought the leftovers from the previous night so the residents would have pastries for breakfast. Some weeks she would drop them off. Other weeks I made the drop. But each time, the staff passed along their appreciation for the kind gesture.

Taking pastries to a local homeless shelter was my first attempt at breaking out of a comfortable...

Deep Calls to Deep: Please, Make Way for My Ego

Every year between March and August, I work out at the Mill Race Park lookout tower in Columbus, Indiana. I walk up and down this architecturally designed 84-foot tower to train for the backpacking trips I take each August. For vertically-challenged Columbus’ cornfield flat terrain, which rarely varies in elevation from 630-feet above sea level, this is the easiest way to get quick elevation to strengthen the legs.

With only five days before my next backpacking trip to the Wind River Rang...

Deep Calls to Deep: Living With the Enemy

There was a television series I watched several years ago by Morgan Spurlock called 30 Days. The premise was to take two radically different people from ideological extremes (Christian/Atheist, Pro-life/Pro-Choice, etc.) and have them live together for a month. 

On the surface, the show appeared to be more shock television than anything else, but there was a beautifully hidden genius in what subsequently transpired in each episode.

I remember one episode vividly. A patriotic, anti-immigrat...