Back in the early 60s my dad fabricated three stainless steel grills. No, not the ones you buy at the big box store. I’m talking about commercial-grade stainless that cooked with charcoal. Of the three, only one remains and he gave it to me 30 years ago. That grill can cook numerous whole chickens on the “spit” (the rod).

I’ve followed in his tradition of rotisserie cooking chickens. You marinate them with Lawry’s seasoning salt, both inside and out for at least 24 hours. You then put them on the spit and they spin on the rotisserie for 90 minutes. They come out hot and juicy – just incredible.

The maximum number of chickens I have ever cooked on that grill is four. They fit nicely. There is a space between them and it gets the job done. Until the day…

Each year, I like to do a cookout for the Charlotte Rescue Mission staff. It’s my gift to them. Last year I grilled four chickens. Everyone loved it. This year I ordered four chickens. When I went to get the chickens out of the cooler, there were five. Let me take you back almost 40 years.

In 1963, my father used this same grill. There is a picture of five chickens on it. I think he was more proud that he got five chickens on the grill than how they tasted. It became his bragging rights story.

I asked my food services manager why we had five chickens when I ordered four. His reply? “Everyone loved the chicken so much last year, we were hoping for more.”

Five chickens. I had never cooked five chickens. Would five chickens fit on the spit?  I could simply explain it was not feasible and everyone would understand. But that meant I would only cook them four chickens, not five.

Yes, I prayed about putting five chickens on the spit. It was as if God inspired me with an idea. I adjusted the right setting to give maximum space on the rod. Then I loaded the chickens on it. When all five were on the rod, there was less than two inches of room outside the hood. I needed more. I couldn’t move the right adjustment. The only thing left to do was to squeeze the chickens together – tighter. That’s what I did.

Each chicken was compressed to get a little more space. The amount each chicken gave me wasn’t much, but with each one, I gained a little more space. By the time I was done, I had almost three inches of room. Ninety minutes later, they were cooked. I cut them up, and served them to the staff. I was the last one through the food line. There were still some burgers and dogs remaining, but the chicken was all gone. All five chickens were devoured.

There are things that happen to you and me on a daily basis that appear to be too hard to tackle. We look at the situation and decide to take the easy road. Let me challenge you to take the hard road, the one that appears to be impossible to cross. As you rise to the occasion, you will accomplish what you thought was impossible. You will develop confidence to take on new challenges, new situations you think are impossible.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friend.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which provides a free, long-term Christian recovery program for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol.

On the other side, my 28-year-old daughter still lives at home with me. My 25- and 24–year-old sons left home seven months ago (but who’s counting).

Then they left me. No, not my mother or dog, but my incredible wife and my sister. They went away for four days and left me alone to take care of my mother and dog. It would become four very long days.

I know what my gifts are. Taking care of others isn’t one of them.

At my mom’s age, she forgets. She’s not sure if she has eaten or not. It was my job not only to feed her, but to cook her meals. I found myself panicking.

Three meals of PB&J were not going to cut it. In addition, when my wife goes away, my dog stops eating.

I’m not going to tell you my mom had cereal the whole weekend. She had hot meals. I discovered what she liked. My dog, on the other hand, did refuse to eat.

When my wife came home, I rose up and called her blessed. I made sure she knew all were present and accounted for. I immediately turned “my watch” over to her. The next day, I saw her effortlessly cook and serve my mother meals. This went on meal after meal after meal. The next week I called her and asked her what she was doing. She replied, “I’m trying to feed your mother but she’s giving me a hard time.” Yet I never saw her get flustered or dismayed.

Very different from her husband. What was the difference?

I was trying to operate outside of my gift sets. I know what mine are.

Put a microphone in front of me and I feel like I died and went to heaven. I love to eat, but I’d give up food to speak in front of a crowd.

My wife is exactly opposite. She won’t speak in front of a crowd. When I had a live radio show as a young pastor, she wouldn’t come into the studio with me. She was afraid I’d ask her to speak on live radio. She chose to wait in the car.

What is going on?  When I operate in my strengths, I shine. When I step outside of those gifts and try to look like I have it together, I stumble. I don’t shine. It’s not pretty. In fact, it’s pretty ugly.

My wife’s gifts are very different from mine. You won’t see her in the spotlight. You won’t see her center stage. She prefers to quietly work behind the scenes, letting other people be the upfront people.

She is one of those quiet servants who make the world a great place; it’s just that they’re not noticed.

None of us can be all things to all people. We need each other.

Get a copy of the book, “Strength Finder.” The thrust of it is that we are not to strengthen our weakness. Rather, we are to strengthen our strengths.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friend.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which provides a free, long-term Christian recovery program for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol.

The reaction to House Bill 546 was swift and for the most part negative – especially among teachers. Though it passed the House, we arranged to “park” the bill, meaning it wouldn’t be taken up by the Senate until Gorman built more support for it.

But less than two months later, Gorman announced he was resigning as CMS superintendent, and this past March the school board voted unanimously to disavow House Bill 546.

Today, the bill is dead – and that’s probably for the best. It seems there were just too many hard feelings surrounding it. But I hope the issue of reforming teacher pay isn’t dead.

Before handing over the reins to new CMS superintendent Heath Morrison, acting superintendent and veteran educator Hugh Hattabaugh testified before the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee that changing the teacher pay scale is “the most important reform needed in public education today.” In his seven pages of remarks – which he had emailed to thousands of CMS employees – he makes an extremely convincing argument for it.

We’re using the same salary schedule we’ve used in the American public education system since the 1920s. It doesn’t differentiate among great teachers, mediocre teachers and ineffective teachers. It doesn’t reward excellence or encourage teacher growth. It doesn’t give districts the flexibility to pay higher salaries to teachers in hard-to-fill areas – such as science and math – to lure them away from higher-paying jobs in the private sector.

Changing to a performance pay system, Hattabaugh said, has broad and overwhelming parental support.

Hattabaugh offered four elements necessary for a successful performance pay system. It must utilize reliable and accurate measurements of teacher performance and be easy to understand, economically sustainable and scalable (meaning it can be applied district-wide).

Hattabaugh reports that CMS is working on developing measures of teacher effectiveness.  But as students head back to school across the country, it seems many systems are ahead of us. Several states, including Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Mississippi and Florida, are in more advanced stages of actively reforming teacher pay to incorporate rewards for performance.

Developing an effective performance pay system won’t be easy. But the school system that figures out the right formula will reap great rewards in the form of more motivated teachers, more satisfied, supportive parents and – most importantly – more successful students.

Though I doubt they’ll be doing it with the help of House Bill 546, I hope our education leaders won’t be too far behind.

Rep. Ruth Samuelson represents Mecklenburg County’s District 104 in the state House, where she also serves as majority whip. District 104 covers much of south Charlotte.

As I created my own family, we continued those memories. Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day were all big events. My wife and I took on the responsibility of providing the food and inviting family and friends over.

A week before this summer’s Fourth, a couple things came to my attention. My daughter, who works retail, was not working that day. My youngest son had broken up with his girlfriend. I decided to take it on as my mission (you know where this is going) to make it a special day for my kids. My newly married son would come over with his bride.

My wife and I went to the store and bought the food. I wanted it to be a very special Fourth of July. We arranged for someone to stay with my 91-year-old mother (who lives with me), loaded up the minivan and went to the lake. I was going to be the “hero of the day.” You definitely know where this is going.

We got to the state park where it was free in previous years. This summer, they decided to charge us $5 per person to swim. OK, this was going to be special, so I didn’t argue with the ranger. I bought the swim passes. My son announced he doesn’t want to go swimming. He wanted to go canoeing. Since no one else wanted to canoe, he agreed to swim. He had a good time in the lake and then we cooked some hot dogs. We returned home and started cooking the feast. My son helped me.

As the food was coming off the grill, he announced he was leaving to hang with his friends. I also learned that my other son and his bride weren’t coming over as they had some unexpected friends stop by their apartment. There I was with this incredible feast and wondered what just happened.

What was interesting was that a few days before, my wife sent me a picture that says, “You spend your life making everyone else happy while you make yourself miserable.” All I could think about was that phrase later that day.

Is it our role to make other people happy? A few days later, someone sent me a blog that said, “If you don’t take control of your life, someone else will.” The two spoke volumes to me.

A week later I was speaking at a celebrate recovery. One of the attendees asked if I would speak to her Friday group. I politely said, “No.” I don’t speak on Friday nights. She looked somewhat puzzled as I explained it is a hard fast rule that I once broke and not again.

Would I do Fourth of July different if I could?  Would I still take the family to the lake? Would I still buy the swim passes? Would I still have the great food? Yes to all those questions. I just wouldn’t take on the role of making everyone else happy.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friend.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is the executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which provides a free, long-term Christian recovery program for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol.

My children did not go away for college. My two sons commuted from home and my daughter came home every weekend. After graduation, they all came home – to roost – for longer than I want to admit. If you go to Google Earth and visit my home, our driveway looks like a New York City parking garage.

You can imagine my confliction when my two youngest were ready to move out. They were 24 and 25 and we had long been (or been too long) the “Leave It To Beaver” family. The first two weeks after my first one left was hard. I’ll admit I had tears in my eyes. A few weeks later my middle child got married. Now there was only one to launch. (Still working on that.  Please, I do have a dowry for her if you are interested).

Everyone told me it would be wonderful when they leave. “The house is clean; there is still food in the refrigerator. You’ll enjoy it.” I also knew in my heart of hearts part of a parent’s role is to build your values into your children and then launch them into the world. My job was to share with them my heart, my values and my faith.

Let me tell you how wonderful it is. After entering this season of my life, I saw something I thought was impossible. I used to be able to tell what my son had for breakfast. The cereal box was left on the island, the pot was left on the stove and the dirty bowl hadn’t quite made it to the dishwasher. That all changed. I came downstairs and the island was as spotless as it was when I went to bed. The cereal box was not only in the pantry, but there was still cereal in it. Then I opened the refrigerator to get some orange juice. There it was, the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. It was a container of orange juice. The next morning, it was there still waiting for me. The following morning, it was still full. I got to Thursday and there was still orange juice in the refrigerator.

This was going to be good.

A few weeks later, I felt like the couple in the Venza commercial. My wife and I went away for a few days. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going and were beyond cell phone reception. It was wonderful. No one knew where we were or how to get in touch with us.

There is a Scripture verse that says, “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth.” Arrows were never designed to sit in the quiver. They were built to launch from the bow into the world. That’s what we should do as parents.

Do I love my kids? Absolutely, yes. At this stage of my life and their life, it’s important that I transition our relationship from parent-child to adult-adult. I will always be their father; they will always be my children. But my role is to help launch them into the world.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friends.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is the executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission.  The Charlotte Rescue Mission provides a free long-term Christian recovery program for men and women who are addicted to drugs and alcohol.

A few months ago, our minivan approached 195,000 miles. So I contacted the corporate offices of Dodge and asked them if they wanted to do a live commercial on it when the odometer hit 200,000 miles. I didn’t want money, just a really good wax job on it. They turned me down.

When it hit 206,000 miles, it needed tires again. While I usually buy my tires at Sam’s Club, I decided to go to where my son works, Discount Tire Company. The tire they sold me had great reviews. I told them to mount them on the minivan.

Some 200 miles into the tire, I realized they mounted the tire backward. The driver side was correct but the passenger side was backward. The tire needed to come off the rim, be turned around and then remounted on the rim.

My wife brought the van back to the tire store and explained to the manager they were mounted backward. After hearing her story, he explained to her why they were mounted correctly. After being convinced he was right, she called me and explained to me why the tires were mounted correctly.

We then had one of those conversations married couples have, you know, when you’ve been married more than 15 years. I don’t need to explain any more about our conversation. I told her that she and the tire man were both wrong. I was right. I was going to prove it.

I took the van to the tire store to show the salesman how he improperly mounted my tires. He was very gracious. I used a Goodyear tire for my example, pointing out the tread pattern, explaining to him how the tire was directional and that he mounted them on my car backward. He politely asked me to wait and went inside to get the same tire I had bought.

You see, I didn’t buy a Goodyear tire – I bought a General tire. While the Goodyear tire was directional, the General tire was not. The tread patterns were radically different. With a gracious smile on his face, he showed me how the tire was mounted correctly. It’s that moment all of us hate – where we are shown the facts, we are wrong and there is no way we can “spin” this to be right. We are wrong.

I hate being wrong. I thanked him for explaining it to me and left the store with my tail between my legs.

I’d like to tell you that incident has been the only one recently where I swore I was absolutely right when I was absolutely wrong. It’s not.

There is a scripture verse that says, “There is wisdom in the council of many.” It’s too easy to think we have the correct answers when we don’t. During the Bay of Pigs invasion in the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy decided what he wanted to do and then told his advisors. Those who agreed with him applauded him for his wise decision. Those who disagreed with him said nothing. His plan failed. A short time later, Kennedy was faced with the Cuban missile crisis. This time, he first asked all his advisors what they thought. Not having heard the president’s ideas, they all felt comfortable sharing their various thoughts and perspectives on the situation. After hearing all their opinions, he announced his position. He successfully dealt with the situation.

We all want to be right. Just don’t try to go it alone. Remember, there is wisdom in the council of many.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friend. q

The Rev. Tony Marciano is executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which provides a free, long-term Christian recovery program for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol.

I don’t want to disillusion you if your summer plans include taking the kids on a trip to Disney World. I’m sure they’ll love it. But remember research shows their favorite part of the vacation will be the pool at the hotel. So save the nine-hour drive and go to a local hotel with a pool and make some memories… only kidding, kinda.

Back in the early 1990s, my wife and I bought our first home. It was in New Jersey where they hadn’t heard about homeowners associations and what they allow you to do or not to do on your property. We received an ad from K-Mart advertising a 12-by-3 pool for $150. The price not only included the pool, but also the ladder, filter, everything I needed for summer fun. We bought it.

My childhood memories were of a 20-by-3.5 pool in the backyard. Back in the 1960s no one ever heard of putting a fence around the pool. My dad just put it in the backyard and we had fun. I wanted the same for my kids.

We unboxed it and just stared at it. The potential for fun-filled memories was unlimited. We cleared a spot in the backyard and worked hard to make sure we got it round and not oblong. The pool of my childhood had metal bars that you clipped together and formed a perfect circle in which to lay the wall. My pool had no bars, just the wall. We got it round, put in the liner, attached the filter and added liquid memories.

This had to be the smallest aboveground pool I have ever seen. When I was in high school, friends had pools that were at least 4-feet deep. The smallest was 15-feet wide. The cool families had one that was 18-feet wide. My pool was 12-feet wide and 3-feet deep. But no one else I knew had a pool. Suddenly, we became the coolest family because we had a pool. If it created liquid memories, it also created instant friends.

We had more fun in that pool. We played games such as Marco Polo, created whirlpools (as I worried we were going to twist the liner and lose the pool). It became that place that my mermaid daughter demonstrated her swimming skills and my youngest son learned the pool was his friend.

We had the pool for three years before we moved just outside of Washington, D.C. There we bought a house with a homeowner’s association. I wanted to set up the pool inside the garage. My wife thought I was crazy. It stayed in the box. Eventually we moved to Charlotte and got rid of the pool.

At the time, K-Mart was the only one selling such a pool. Today, everyone sells them, bigger than my 12-by-3 pool. Sometimes I wish I had a bigger choice back then when my kids were younger. I would have gotten a deeper pool, a wider pool (After all, don’t we, as Americans, always want things bigger and better?).

I should have looked at the Scripture verse that says, “I have learned in all things to be content.” Looking back, I am grateful. For three brief years, I gave my kids a wonderful summer. I gave them memories to cherish. And it only cost $150.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friend.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which provides a free, long-term Christian recovery program for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol.

When I was a kid, we were taught the “new math.” I don’t know what it meant, but it scared the fire out of my parent’s eyes.

Non-verbally, the school system was saying, “This is different. Don’t try to help your kid or you’ll totally confuse them.” Somewhere between being in third grade where I felt special and was learning the “new math” and ninth grade when I was facing good, old-fashioned algebra, I didn’t feel very special any more.

But I do remember this:  if A = B and B = C then A must equal C. It makes sense. If A = 3+1; B = 2+2 and C = 4, then you can see how the above formula works.

You can understand my dilemma when I discovered that maybe the new math was wrong. You see if A = Thoughts; B = Feelings, C = Behaviors; D = Habits, E = Character and F = Destiny, then C becomes the beginning of the crisis. Or is it really A?

Stay with me. I’ll totally confuse you, don’t worry.

Imagine the teen whose thoughts are: “I never do anything right.” Their feelings will cause them to see themselves as inferior. When that happens, they choose behaviors that reward those feelings by hanging with the crowd that reinforces those beliefs. Those behaviors lead to habits, i.e. running with the wrong crowd. We become who we hang out with (Character) and we end up somewhere we never intended to be.

We don’t think about the power of thoughts. We also don’t think about the power of other people’s words that can affect our thoughts. Last summer, we celebrated my mother’s 90th birthday in New Jersey. I was looking forward to being the MC for the evening. But I felt like the comedian who taps the microphone and says, “Is anybody out there?” I wasn’t connecting with the audience (my cousins). I realized months later that they saw me as the six-year-old cousin they didn’t like decades ago. However they saw me in the early 1960s, they still saw me the same way when I was an adult decades later.

I had a choice. I could let their perception of me affect my thoughts. I would have inferior feelings. I would then stuff those feeling with a big bowl of macaroni and cheese (that will kill any negative feelings). If I continued to believe their attitude toward me was correct, I would eat more macaroni and cheese every night. I would see myself as a loser (Character) and lose sight of all that God would have me to do.

Sounds far-fetched. Don’t answer this but let me ask you a question – do you really want to go to your family Fourth of July picnic and get insulted by your aunt again just because she doesn’t like you?

So how do we change?  There is a Scripture verse that says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”  What are the thoughts that race through your mind?  Do you see yourself as having made a mistake, or do you see yourself as a mistake. Those are two separate concepts.

There is another Scripture verse that says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

You have to come to the point where you take that thought captive and not allow it to side track your life and all that God has for you.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friend.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which provides a free, long-term Christian recovery program for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol.

OK, I won’t quit my day job and go into standup comedy. But I do want to talk about tuning things. And for some of you, I’m going to date you.

I want to take you back to the 1970s, when cars had points and distributors and carburetors instead of things like electronic fuel injection. We still have one of those cars. Yes, it has points, a distributor and a carburetor.

My son borrowed the car but didn’t like the way it was running. He decided to fix it. When he gave the car back to me, it was running horribly. When you sat in the passenger compartment, it bounced up and down. I wondered whether the engine was shot. My other son and I decided we needed to tune it.

We re-gapped all the spark plugs. One of the spark plug wires was loose and I thought maybe that was the problem. We fixed the broken wire and made sure all the wires had a good connection. We removed the distributor cap and re-gapped and set the points. We checked the timing and found it to be off. We reset it to specifications. Soon it was running better, but you still “bounced in the seat” (bounced less, but you still bounced). In other words, it was still running rough.

There was only one thing left to adjust – the carburetor. I turned the air/fuel mixture screw and it began to settle down. With each turn of the screw, it began running better and better. When I was done, it ran as smooth as silk. You could put a full glass of water on the dashboard and it wouldn’t spill a drop.

A few weeks later, my son asked to borrow the car. When he returned it, he bragged that it was running so smooth. In fact, he said, he did such a good job tuning the car that when he started it he didn’t need to use the choke.

I was at a loss of what to say next. In my mind I thought, “What do you mean ‘you’ tuned it? You gave it back to me running horribly. I was the one who returned it back to perfection. I’m the one you need to be thanking!”

I may have thought that, but – other than this article – I will take those words to my grave (he doesn’t read my articles, so I’m safe). Instead, I was being confronted with the expression, “Would you rather be right than be happy?” If I wanted to be right, I would have confronted him with the truth of who really tuned the car (and it wasn’t him). Instead, I wanted to be happy. I also wanted a relationship with my son.

I never told him who tuned the car. The relationship with him was more important than being right.

There is a scripture verse that says, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.” The challenge of parenting is to separate “willful defiance” from “childish immaturity.” As a parent, it’s too easy to see the behavior and react to it without looking at your child’s motivation behind their behavior. Parenting will always have the tension of maintaining the relationship with our child while setting strong boundaries that every child longs for.

I’ll be back in two weeks. Until then, live well, my friend.

The Rev. Tony Marciano is executive director of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which provides a free, long-term Christian recovery program for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Are we once again looking at more property taxes after last year’s evaluation increases? Now it’s the “have” neighborhoods of South Charlotte funding projects for the “have not” neighborhoods? Who thinks up these divisive ideas? Is this clear thinking to attract more businesses and new residents to Charlotte? Funding yes-or-no projects on the backs of already-burdened property owners is not the way to go forward. Maybe city and county leaders should kick in the first few millions?

Jon Schuller
Charlotte, 28277